Lawful Inexactitudes

L had not noticed the connection of people with animals very much, especially at first. When he had his first vaccine, he had a reaction which led to a frozen shoulder, and he had been having physiotherapy for it. He thought the physiotherapist might be bear-like, and contemplated how to likewise become more physically attuned. More recently, L met someone whom he realised was sparrow-like, fast-speaking with brown hair and freckles, and thought that maybe he, L, could be a little faster-thinking. At a later time, he was looking at photos of people on a TV screen shown in succession, and he did find he was starting to recognise possible animal likenesses in them. He thought about the terms we used in English. We had bird-like, leonine, bovine, ursine. It was in the language. He had forgotten about stroking the chin.

Each day, If you see somebody with an apparently animal characteristic, become aware of how that emotionally affects you, and consider how you can apply that characteristic to develop yourself. Stroke your chin.

N had been looking a lot for animal characteristics in people, and there were occasional flashes, but there wasn't a lot to go on. He met someone whom he thought was fox-like in his demeanour and in the way he went about things. There was someone else who was dog-like, so he saw that in another individual. He found it hard - there were not so many obvious situations or people he came across, but he thought his significant contacts with people has been fairly limited because of COVID, so he had not met as many new people. He thought that once you knew someone, it was hard to see their animal characteristics as much.

During the period allocated to responses, there was much discussion, but nothing was said about specific instances of doing the challenge.

The reading then continued from Chapter 30 of Beelzebub's Tales.

        

With acknowledgements to Harold Good
Watch this on YouTube

So, whenever the Babylonian learned painters wove or embroidered with colored threads or colored their productions, they inserted the distinctions of the tonalities of the colors in the crosslines as well as in the horizontal lines and even in the intersecting lines of color, not in the lawful sequence in which this process really proceeds, in accordance with the Law of Sevenfoldness, but otherwise; and in these also lawful ‘otherwises,’ they placed the contents of some or other information or knowledge.

T said that the practical weaving of a carpet or a rug was very physical and manifested physically. It was very exact, because otherwise it would fall apart. Gurdjieff was speaking from experience in making carperts. She said there was a relationship between inexactitude and exactness. It was not one or the other, but both. RM took otherwise to mean they started adding their own overlay on it, their own opinions.

...Among these productions were also various what are called ‘allegorical beings’ which were represented with the head of one form of a being there, with the body of another, and with the limbs of a third, and so on.

L said this was interesting, because the Meeting had been talking about animals being associated with people. The sculptures combined different animals, which was a different way of looking at people. It was about us having different aspects of personality or make-up and associating each of those with an animal. So we had the Sphinx, and centaurs, which he thought represented human beings changing from a natural form.

Umvelt

For L it would normally be a cat or a dog, maybe sometimes a bird. Sometimes he tuned into the animal. Cats were usually flustered, and thinking either to avoid the person or wanting to be stroked. The colour would normally have been brownish or greyish, and then he would see that colour around him, and then choose another colour, which would typically have been green, tree leaves, and then there would be a green car, and so on. That reminded him of when he studied the Shona language, which had fewer words for colours than English, though they had extra words for brown and green animals and plants in nature. He supposed that this was natural language corresponding to natural perception. All the colour-names we had in English - yellows and reds and different shades - might be more suited for a production economy where  things were sold in different colours of a specified shade.

Each day, when you observe an animal or a bird, try to tune into its feelings and emotions. Pick out a colour from that creature, and try to be aware of the extra shades of that colour. Blink twice, turn away from the creature and look at another colour. For as long as you remember, observe this second colour and its shades.

T recalled an occasion when she heard the patter of clawed paws on the path and then saw a small dog running along ahead of its owners. The Challenge came to mind. The dog was black and white. It veered onto the grass heading for a tree, circled round it twice with what she considered a happy wagging tail, cocked its leg and wee'ed in what she considered was satisfaction, before it scuffed the grass with its hind legs and hurried on, with what she considered to be a delighted nose to the wind. She blinked twice, then looked around for a different colour and noticed the sandy yellow of a running track. Then she noticed a train in the distance with a sandy glow of dimly lit windows. After that she noticed flats with sandy yellow-lit rooms in the dusk. Another time, she saw a black crow high up gripping a black branch. Its emotions or feelings were hard to imagine, except for alert attention and watchfulness. She blinked twice, looked around for a different colour, white, and noticed that in the overcast sky. Her weakest link in the challenge, was to be aware of the extra shades of the chosen colour. She had not recalled or consciously done this. She became aware during the Challenge that the colours of the animals she was noticing were black, grey or white.

Responding to L, N said he wondered sometimes what came first? Did we observe different shades of different colours, because we had different words for them? He remembered that when he was in the textile trade, he used to love looking at the different colours and fabrics that were there. They used to make up swatches of different shades of colour for people who wanted to buy fabrics, and he had become very much aware of the different colours of blue, the different colours of red, different colours of yellow. It was interesting that the West had developed colour and observation of colour to a phenomenal extent, whereas in some areas we had not, for example the Eskimos had many more words for snow than we did. So it was interesting how language develops in ordered to assist us in having experiences and being able to differentiate in our experiences.

The reading then continued from Chapter 30 of Beelzebub's Tales.

        

With acknowledgements to Harold Good
Watch this on YouTube

Certain beings who were then enthused by this founded, in imitation of the followers of the said branch of painters, a similar society and the motto of their new movement was: ‘To-search-the-truth-in-the-shades-of-smells-obtained-between-the-moment-of-the-action-of-cold-at-freezing-and-the-moment-of-the-action-of-warmth-at-decomposition.’

Like the painters, they also then found between these said two definite smells about seven hundred very definite shades, which they employed in their elucidating experiments.

I do not know to what these two peculiar ‘movements’ then in Babylon would have led and where they would have ceased, if a newly appointed chief of the city, during the time we were there, had not begun prosecuting the followers of that second new ‘movement’ because with their already sufficiently keen sense of smell they had begun to notice and unwittingly to expose certain of his what are called ‘shady dealings,’ with the result that he used every possible means to suppress everything connected not only with that second new movement, but with the first as well.

N said it was interesting that Gurdjieff used the word smell, and its connection with corruption - the smell of corruption - that there was something they noticed, in behaviour or essence, which came across, which was not very conducive to them. There was a kind of connoisseurship of the differences that are there out in the world. What was the point of all of this? Did it enhance our lives? Were the distinctions important, of these different shades of feeling that we experienced? What was Gurdjieff trying to talk to us about here? T wondered if it was do with increasing intelligence, perception and observation, to know what was really happening, including the shady dealings, and that this increase in knowledge would attract the attention of the established people in power.

Angle of Declination

The first thing for N was the trigger. It was not every day that he saw something beautiful, that arrested his attention, but he did notice in particular, when he walked down the road where he lived, there was a group of trees, and because of the extraordinary changing colours around this time of the year, they were a wonderful orangey, yellowy colour, and that stopped him. Gosh, Wow, isn't that beautiful? That created a sense of wonder in him, and registered at a deeper emotional level.

Each day, if your attention is drawn in by something beautiful, consider how that makes you feel emotionally. Shake a leg, and allow yourself to be drawn in more. Write a one line poem, or a haiku, reflecting the experience.

What T had noticed was that she was very attracted by light. So she had a few one liners:

• Twinkles of light in water on the pavement

• Glints of light in grey mineral tough flooring

• Sparkling water on leaves in sunlight

and over the month, she managed one haiku:

under the green tree

five pointed yellow red leaves

in shafts of sunlight

She noticed the yellow and red leaves scattered like confetti on the pavement. She noticed bright yellow leaves catching the sun fluttering against the shadowy dark background. She noticed the low sun's rays through the car windscreen in the morning creating an ethereal atmosphere. Noticing something beautiful, she felt connected to the wonder of nature and felt joy. Each time it seemed easy to remember the challenge and shake a leg whilst walking, and surprisingly, when driving. When she shook her leg it amused her because it was the gesture of a clown, or a dog after it has peed. The amusement took her attention away from the next part of the challenge, which was to draw herself in more. Looking back, she was naturally, automatically, but not consciously, drawn in more to something she experienced as beautiful. She either pointed it out to herself, or when she was with someone else. When she was receiving something enjoyable her attention was directed and held a lot longer than usual. Regarding the part about the haiku, she was aware of starting to put into words the sight she had seen, and each time she was struck by the inadequacy of language to recreate the experience. Putting the experience in words was for her a translation for herself, and for communicating to others.

It did not happen to L that often, but when it did he paused and let it draw him in, and he wrote a haiku, which was usually to do with the sun or the leaves. On the first occasion, 15 November, he was on the platform for the Overground, and it was to do with red leaves that had fallen on a path leading to the platform. So he wrote:

the path descending

deep red leaves of autumn hue

soon the train arrives

A couple of days later, he was at the Studio, and there was a really nice sunset outside. He put

round and round he goes

pink and noble is the dawn

sunset is the crown

And then, another red leaved tree in the street.

trees - so red the leaves!

sunlight permeates, the wind

makes them sway and fall

And then, a few days before, there was a fallen leaf with dew or rain on it. He had written:

water droplets lie

upon the fallen leaf

below the rising sun

By doing this, he had just felt more of a connection with nature, and therefore reality. It had been a good experience.

Responding to L, N said he had liked L's haikus very much, he thought they were very well put together. He also thought T's were nice as well, with the light, seeing the the shafts of sunlight. He had not actually read out his haiku, which said:

beautiful trees, so

compelling in your orange

and yellow colours

He said what the haiku did was interesting, it tried to encapsulate the experience poetically, but we all knew that we were going to fall short of that experience, however gifted we might be in trying to write haikus or anything else poetic. There was something so compelling and mysterious about the beauty that we were seeing and which was affecting us emotionally, it was hard to fully express it in a way which would satisfy a similar emotional experience.

Responding to N, T said it resonated with her experience of the season's red and yellow and orange leaves. In a sense, they felt like a distraction. It was autumn - maybe other countries were not as blessed with these changes - but how sensitive we were to it! We were sensitive to it when we saw nature, and it elevated us, but the desire to communicate the experience to ourselves again, or to others, through language - why would we want to do that? There was a tension between our own experience and wanting to convey it to someone else or to another human being - perhaps it was for some tribal reason, a kind of glue for community. When N was speaking it resonated with her own experience; the desire to express the beauty, to hold on to it or to experience it again, but always the inadequacy of language to enable that.

J said he thought N's point about looking for beauty was where a difficulty arose; either we felt it without looking for it, or the moment we actually looked for it, there was a danger that we were going to be in self-illusion. When we looked for beauty we would experience it, not because of its innate quality, but because of our desire for it. N replied he had been talking about the involuntary experience of beauty, where his attention was taken away, and he was pulled out of himself and experiencing something in that moment which was powerful. He knew this from listening to music, because music was a flow, a continuum. If he got caught in the moments of a beautiful leitmotif, or whatever it was he was listening to, he would miss the next bit. T said that whilst N had been talking, she was thinking about natural sounds, like birds singing or the river flowing, and those could not be stopped and re-wound, not like artificial human creations. Although creations were from us and in that way they were natural, we could manipulate them more - we could listen to something six times over, because we loved it so much.

The reading then continued from Chapter 30 of Beelzebub's Tales.

        

With acknowledgements to Harold Good
Watch this on YouTube

It is necessary to say, first of all, that according to the completed result of the fundamental cosmic law of the holy Heptaparaparshinokh, that is, that cosmic law which was called by the three-brained beings of the planet Earth of the mentioned Babylonian period the Law of Sevenfoldness, the ‘common-integral-vibration’ like all the already ‘definitized’ cosmic formations is formed and consists of seven what are called ‘complexes-of-results’ or, as it is also sometimes said, of ‘seven-classes-of-vibrations’ of those cosmic sources, the arising and further action of each of which also arise and depend on seven others, which in their turn arise and depend on seven further ones, and so on right up to the first most holy ‘unique-seven-propertied-vibration’ issuing from the Most Holy Prime Source; and all together they compose the common-integral-vibration of all the sources of the actualizing of everything existing in the whole of the Universe, and thanks to the transformations of these latter they afterwards actualize in the presences of the cosmic ‘Insapalnian-concentrations’ the said number of the various ‘tonalities-of-color.’

J said that, funnily enough, Gurdjieff was very modern. He was saying that everything was vibration and interdependent on everything else, but why was it necessary to interpose a very human concept - seven? If everything was together, all vibration and energy, splitting it up in the way described might help a flowchart diagram, but J felt it was not the source of universal energy that animated everything, including us. So there was a problem immediately with the framework, as opposed to the perception of what it was that was happening. N said that if you looked at Chinese culture, they did not have this concept of seven in the same way, but had much more the concept of eight, for example, in their culture 64 was the number of hexagrams in the I Ching. He was wondering how much was culturally determined in these criteria, these frameworks, and how much was actually inherent in reality. RM said he found it intriguing that the Chinese universities would still talk about the fundamental seven crystalline forms.

... During such transformations, this said ‘common-integral-vibration,’ that is the white ray, acts with its gravity-center-vibrations upon other ordinary processes proceeding nearby in intraplanetary and surplanetary arisings and decompositions, and, owing to ‘kindred-vibrations,’ its gravity-center-vibrations dependently upon and in accordance with the surrounding conditions blend and become a part of the whole common presence of these definite intraplanetary or surplanetary formations, in which the said processes proceed.

J thought Gurdjieff was giving an entire new vocabulary to a set of concepts that relate to the way we were going about the world, but we did not see it. For instance, he was talking about the white ray. Now we can imagine various sorts of spiritualists or healers, saying there is a white ray coming down, and that this somehow transforms the mosaic of our normal experience into an holistic way of seeing the world and the interpermeation of all vibrations, and Gurdjieff is trying to put a framework in, which is quite instructive, but there is an outside non-human framework intercession with all this. Even when we say two and two is four, right across the universe, it is still, in a way, a human tautology. It is something outside, that is beyond language. He is trying to give it a language, which is actually, J thought, probably a modern truth in a way. It is impressive, but difficult to grasp in the detail.

... Deteriorating century by century, the ‘sensibility-of-perception’ of that organ also—namely, the organ by means of which there chiefly proceeds for the presences of the three-brained beings what is called the ‘automatic-satiation-of-externals’ which is the basis for the possibility of natural self-perfecting—had reached such a point that at the time of our fifth stay there during the period called by the contemporary beings there the period of the ‘Greatness-of-Babylon,’ that organ of theirs could perceive and distinguish the blending of the gravity-center-vibrations of the white ray at most up to the third degree only of what are called its ‘sevenfold-strata,’ that is up to only 343 different ‘tonalities-of-color.’

Here it is interesting to note that quite a number of the three-brained beings of the Babylonian epoch themselves already suspected the gradual deterioration of the sensibility of that organ of theirs, and certain of them even founded a new society in Babylon that started a peculiar ‘movement’ among the painters of that time.

This peculiar movement of the painters of that time had the following program: ‘To-find-out-and-elucidate-the-Truth-only-through-the-tonalities-existing-between-white-and-black.’

L said that was interesting, because they became aware that their sensitivity and perception were in a process of decline, so they tried to reverse the process and accentuate their senses by focusing in on just a narrow band of spectrum, and to try and raise awareness of it. J asked if we could not hang on to a point or a peak of perception. L said it was definitely a motif in Beelzebub's Tales that the ability of human beings to perceive and be aware was gradually reducing and in decline over the ages.

Over the Rainbow

L had received shocks during the month, but did not always remember until afterwards, so the immediate trigger did not seem to be working very well for him, but he did subsequently snap the fingers. On one occasion, after experiencing a shock, he picked out something to do, which could be significant. This was to write back to somebody who was  interested in selling one of his pieces of music. He had told the person, "Sure, go ahead." It was difficult to pick out significant things to do, as opposed to routine things to do.

Each day, observe any shocks that happen. If a particular one throws you off your stride and takes you away from where you thought you were going, snap your fingers, and decide on something to do later in the day that will move your life or goals forward. At the end of the day, observe whether you have done it, or tried to do it, and consider how you feel emotionally about that.

N had experienced a shock which was in relation to a professional event, which he had wished to go a particular way, and of course, it had not gone that way at all. Great disappointment and frustration came as a result. He had remembered the Challenge, and then accepted it. At first, the acceptance was not a very positive acceptance, but he found that if he did the snapping of the fingers, and then said to himself, Okay, well, what can we positively make out of the situation? What are the positives and the plusses? he could turn his feelings in a different direction. He could turn the shock, which he had felt emotionally, from a negative experience into a more positive direction, by interrupting the flow of negativity that might have otherwise followed from the situation.

Responding to N, L thought it was an interesting twist, after the shock happened, to try to reframe things in a positive light. This was different from what L had done, which was to find something to do which was completely unconnected with the shock.

The reading then continued from Chapter 30 of Beelzebub's Tales.

        

With acknowledgements to Harold Good
Watch this on YouTube

This law, which has utterly failed to reach the contemporary three-brained beings of that planet, was then quite familiar to the beings there, that is to say, they were already quite aware that the size and form of enclosed spaces and also the volume of air enclosed in them influence beings in particular ways.

... Then utilizing the law of Daivibrizkar they combined the interiors of this proposed building in such a way that the required sensations were evoked in the beings who entered them, not in the anticipated familiar lawful sequence but in some other order.

N said that this was about the objective law behind the objective art. Gurdjieff talks about evoking the same sensations in every being who enters the the interior of the building. Gurdjieff had certainly gone around France looking at Gothic cathedrals, because he believed they had been constructed in that way, to evoke that similar type of experience in each person.

... But if the three-brained beings complete the perfecting of their highest part, their perceiving organ of visibility thereby acquires the sensibility of what is called ‘Olooestesnokhnian sight,’ then they can already distinguish two-thirds of the total number of tonalities existing in the Universe, which number, according to terrestrial calculation, amounts to three million, eight hundred and forty-three thousand and two hundred differences of tonality of color.

And only those three-brained beings who perfect their highest being-part to the state of what is called ‘Ischmetch’ become able to perceive and distinguish all the mentioned number of blendings and tonalities, with the exception of that one tonality which, as I have already told you, is accessible to the perception only of our ALL-MAINTAINING CREATOR.

N said we knew that our sense perception mechanism was very limited. We knew from science, that there were other colours which we did not perceive. Gurdjieff was saying that if you worked on your selves, at some level, you could increase that ability to perceive things. We knew that some animals could see some colours or hear sounds which we could not. T said that the enhanced perception of animals was a matter of nature, but if you worked with colour or sounds, like painters or musicians, you could expand your perceptions a little bit, but not much. N said that if you were a taster of wine, and started practising and trying to distinguish between the various wines that people presented to you, you were going to take a long time, because your perceptive faculties had not yet been developed to be able to appreciate the differences in textures and the taste of the different wines, but over a period of time, that faculty would increase. The more you practiced, the more you would be able to distinguish. What this Work was trying to do was to elevate our sensitivity to the higher senses. Instead of living in the gutters of our body, we could try to raise that level. Gurdjieff was saying that those perceptive centres were there, available to us, but that we were not often in them because of negative emotion. So he was trying to raise our consciousness to that level to experience life through those higher senses, not through the way we tended to register life.

Good Vibrations

N had had one particular experience in the course of the month, which was like this  It was a meeting with someone which had gone very badly, and that, and some of the things that were said subsequently, had thrown him off his equilibrium. He thought there was a part of him that was quite outraged for a few days afterwards, and he noticed that I thought, and asked himself, Well, what's behind this and what have I learned from it? Usually, it was something to do with his ego or some form of injustice or not being treated or accepted in the way he wanted. So it tended to be egotistic things, when he analysed it.

Each day, observe any shocks that happen. If a particular one throws you off your stride and takes you away from where you thought you were going, raise your palm to your head, and consider what the shock means to you and what you can learn from it.

On one occasion, T had got geared up the flu jab appointment at her local pharmacy, before she had another appointment. But the pharmacist was not ready.  it wasn't ready. This was a shock, and she was left wondering why. So she left the pharmacy, and that was when she put the palm of the hand to her head. She experienced anxiety and a sense of lack of trust, but delayed her other appointment and braved returning to trust the doctor a second time.  The second one was having no petrol after driving around for an hour finding and avoiding long impossible queues, and she slapped her forehead. The consequences for her were alarming. She faced the uncomfortable reality of a long cycle ride the next morning. She faced this and managed the ride.

For L it was more a question of being literally taken off his stride. He would walk into something, knock a toe, or hit something with his arm, and it would be a moment of pain. That would be a shock. And then he might slap his head. then I might, I might do that. Then it was the question of how he felt and what he could learn from it, and that was quite useful. It was usually a matter of walking more slowly, stopping thinking about distracting things. Generally, he thought he was quite level-headed, and usually did not get as upset or affected emotionally by things other people did. So for him it was mainly physical things, which is very literally what was in the challenge.

Responding to N, J said there seemed to be, in that approach, the presumption that there must have been some sort of mistake, and it might have been to do with a missappraisal of N's own ego. We do find, even with shocks and the unexpected, that we have an expected way of dealing with the unexpected. J had found, generally, with so many of the things that apparently had gone wrong in his life, that they had actually gone wrong for what was ultimately a good purpose, and it was not necessarily that he had mis-reacted. There were these people who will say that for everybody you meet, there is a purpose to it as if there were some sort of divine or providential orchestration to our every encounter, which he thought was trying to second guess God a little bit too far. So he just wondered if, looking at what were the basic building blocks of one's own prejudice, whether it might be a useful alternative to consider what goes wrong in people's strange behaviour, as useful, rather as the Chinese see opportunity in crisis. The fact that one was disproportionately angry, may mean that there was some good reason for staying away from or reworking one's attitude towards situations like that. It may be better to know that one had got a warning from within one's own body, that this was something to steer clear of, as opposed to it being something wrong that had done by oneself.

The reading then continued from Chapter 30 of Beelzebub's Tales.

        

With acknowledgements to Harold Good
Watch this on YouTube

This posture of his infallibly demands, in accordance with the Law of Sevenfoldness, that his feet should normally be placed in a certain position; but these Babylonian learned beings intentionally put the feet of the said leader of the ceremony not as they should be placed in accordance with this Law, but otherwise.

... On Tuesdays, namely, on the ‘day-of-architecture,’ the learned beings belonging to the second group brought various models for such proposed buildings and constructions as could endure a very long time.

And in this case, they set up these buildings not exactly in accordance with the stability ensuing from the Law of Sevenfoldness, or as the beings there were mechanically already accustomed to do, but otherwise.

For instance, the cupola of a certain construction had, according to all the data, to rest on four columns of a certain thickness and definite strength.

But they placed this said cupola on only three columns; and the reciprocal thrust, or, as it is also expressed, the ‘reciprocal resistance,’ ensuing from the Law of Sevenfoldness for supporting the surplanetary weight, they took not from the columns alone, but also from other unusual combinations ensuing from the same Law of Sevenfoldness with which the mass of the ordinary beings of that time were also already acquainted; that is to say, they took the required degree of resistance of the columns chiefly from the force of the weight of the cupola itself.

T thought this had to be a metaphor for, in terms of the human being, that the usual way of doing things - which is exact - is being taken to to another point where it is inexact, but still works.  J thought it was to do with the sort of degree to which we ought to re examine preset patterns in our lives for doing things. In this case, a particular outcome was needed, which was that the cupola did not crash to the ground, and there was not just one, but other ways other than the norm, for ensuring that that did not happen. N said they knew what perfection could be, in terms of the law of Sevenfoldness, but they were choosing to make these changes and do things in a different way. Suddenly some of the mysteries about the Sevenfoldness were hidden away from people. Conscious mistakes were being made in the way buildings were being created, and conscious changes in the way that dances would be. Gurdjieff had studied dancing, and Gothic architecture. So it was partly some of the coding that Gurdjieff was talking about here, whereby some of this knowledge was kept esoteric purposely, because people did not want all this knowledge to be out there in the world. L said that Gurdjieff had talked about deliberate exactitude earlier, in connection with doing some of these constructions slightly wrong. And that would stand out to future historians. But he might be also be saying that the sevenfoldness law was not really true, that it was a dogma that was legitimate to change. L thought that when Gurdjieff talked about it initially, it was presented as something dogmatic.

... This group of learned members of the club of the Adherents-of-Legominism further indicated what they wished in their minia-images or models of proposed constructions, by utilizing the law called ‘Daivibrizkar,’ that is, the law of the action of the vibrations arising in the atmosphere of enclosed spaces.

This brought to T's mind walking into a cathedral. It is very inspiring and enhancing of your sense of yourself. L said the big cathedrals might be legominisms because we had lost the art of building them.

The interior of the Dominican church in Antwerp
Pieter Neefs the Elder c. 1636

Inexactitudes

The thing that was most real for N during this month was, sadly, the sudden death of a friend. He was only 71. It was a shock, and N went to the memorial service, and there was an overwhelming feeling of sadness. Sadness, especially at funerals and losses, was something real. He sensed that and tried to feel that sadness, that realness, through the extremities in his body, and it brought him back into feeling the mystery of life. We try and explain it to ourselves. We philosophise about it, and put all kinds of abstractions around it, but in actual fact, there is nothing which can represent in verbal terms, the mystery of us being on this planet, and disappearing after a period of time.

Every day, when you become aware of something which is real but can have no explanation, take a deep breath, pause, and try to feel your whole body including the extremities, fingers and hands. Open up your sense of wonder and accentuate your awareness.

T had been thinking of the challenge when she was on a walk. She stopped at a lavender plant and squeezed the dry seeds and smelled the fragrance on her fingers. She thought of the question, 'Is it real?' There was the lavender and there was the fragrance. But what was the realness about it? She had experienced what is called something, i.e. a fragrance, but the word was a pale shadow compared to her experience. To experience something was very different from a word for it. Just as her name was a something, a word that she answered to, but was not her. She walked further and saw a tree. The tree was standing in the pavement as it did all the time, but she was experiencing it. It felt substantial and real, but was it? She then experienced her own eyelashes, looking at it. She put attention to her hands and feet. The tree was in her field of view, and they were both standing for a moment before she moved on. In that moment, the real was a lot of things coming together. Her attention to her own material substance and seeing her eyelashes, her feeling her feet on the ground, and seeing and being near the tree, and how that felt. She experienced the substance of the tree through her sight, and the faint substance of her own self in the trace of the lashes, and the sensations of the hands with her attention in them, and the feet with her attention in them and the ground pressing into them. She moved on and everything was a memory, and new sensations were in her senses.

L had made a note of a quote he had come across which he thought was relevant, from Helen Keller, and she said:

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched - they must be felt with the heart.

L thought it was about feeling. During the month, he had experienced this issue quite a lot with nature. It might be the sun coming out and feeling its warmth on his face. Or the rain, or other aspects of nature, and that was reality. But if you took a photograph of something in nature, you could not capture it. The photograph was an artefact and very different from reality. If a composer writes direct from inspiration, the inspiration is something real out there, and the composer is transcribing it, but once he starts to change it, it becomes something different. L had been on the Heath the previous day, and there had been a terrible racket, some kind of impromptu party, and they were playing a version of Summertime from Porgy and Bess,  which had been turned into rap music with a heavy beat, which ruined it, but the original song by George and Ira Gershwin was obviously the product of inspiration. But once humans get involved with inspiration, they can sometimes mangle it. He had also done the exercise with stretching on the extremities, and that was where he could feel his own realness.

T offered her condolences to N. It also resonated with Gurdjieff's warning about how all of what we valued and the beauty we sought or experienced was momentary or transitory. N said it had brought home his own mortality, in a sense, because his friend was relatively young. We were receiving machines, and we processed what we received, and that one day would come to an end, we would not be there, there would not be a receiving mechanism for the experiences that we now had, or processing mechanism there, but we were obviously more than just that as well. He thought the quote from Helen Keller was very profound. Here was someone who did not have a sense of sight or even a sense of hearing, so very much locked into her own body, but nevertheless able to enjoy the world and perceive the world and have a very profound sense of her own being.

The reading then continued from Chapter 30 of Beelzebub's Tales.

        

With acknowledgements to Harold Good
Watch this on YouTube

... Among the number of the models they brought and the various being-manifestations they demonstrated were combinations of different colors, forms of various constructions and buildings, the playing on various musical instruments, the singing of every kind of melody, and also the exact representation of various experiencings foreign to them, and so on and so forth.

... Here it is interesting to notice that this definite period of the flow of time, namely, a week, has always been divided on your planet into seven days; and this division was even made by the beings of the continent Atlantis, who expressed in it that same Law of Sevenfoldness with which they were quite familiar.

... On Mondays, namely, on the ‘day-of-religious-and-civil-ceremonies,’ the learned beings of the first group demonstrated various ceremonies in which the ‘fragments-of-knowledge’ that had been previously selected for transmission, were indicated by means of inexactitudes in the Law of Sevenfoldness, chiefly in the inexactitudes of the lawful movements of the participants in the given ceremonies.

L said that Gurdjieff talked about musical instruments here, and any civilization which started to make sophisticated musical instruments would come up against what was called the Pythagorean Comma which is where a succession of octaves, and a succession of fifths almost match up, but never quite. So to make a piano which can go through all the keys, some engineering has to be done to average out the difference, and that is what Bach did. That could be a legominism because it could be forgotten and then rediscovered. He thought it was quite likely that the ancient Greeks knew about it. It was discovered a few hundred years ago, in our civilization, and had been forgotten, since the equal temperament. So when we heard mediaeval music played, it was not played exactly the same as it would have been when it was originally written. So in that sense, it could be a kind of suppression of knowledge as the technology was developed. So he wondered if Gurdjieff was referring specifically to this peculiarity about musical tuning, because there were seven notes in the diatonic scale, which was a slight inaccuracy, a slight flaw which would be discovered and rediscovered. It might be that this issue arose in other areas, too, because planetary and lunar orbits tended to become tidally locked, with ratios of orbits which were similar to ratios of musical intervals. We knew from the Antikythera mechanism that the ancient Greeks knew in minute detail about the orbits of the moon and the planets.

Seventh Heaven

N had come across an interesting book called How Spies Think: Ten Lessons in Intelligence. He thought it was very easy to get into a mindset, to get pulled in by stuff on social media, and so much was out there, trying to persuade people into a particular way of thinking. He had found the book quite reassuring, that people were aware of it, and saw it happening all the time, and how social media, which was a great thing, had now been perverted in so many ways.  He felt that this book was trying to preserve knowledge or at least objectivity at some level, and it gave him quite a boost to come across a copy of a book like this, and a feeling for optimism in the future.

When you see a case of somebody trying to preserve knowledge, observe how you feel. Look upwards for a moment, and adopt a feeling of optimism for the future.

J had written a history of the job he was doing. There was now a new director, who agreed that the history was important, in contrast to a previous director, who had thought it didn't matter. When J saw that what the group had been about for fifty years, was not being junked in favour of going down an entirely different branch, it induced a feeling of satisfaction.

L said there had been one occasion during the month when former President Trump had announced a lawsuit against Facebook, Twitter and Google calling for an end to un-American cancel culture, because he was being blocked by, in particular, Twitter. So he was an example of somebody who was trying to preserve knowledge, not only in the context of himself, but also for other people who were being silenced every day. So then L did look upwards, which was part of the Challenge, and engendered that feeling of optimism, because one can change the way one feels. Feeling negative is not necessarily a state, it can be a decision and feeling positive can likewise be a choice. Another occasion was a comment made by the departing chief conductor of the Liverpool Philharmonic, Vasily Petrenko, who said “I have all my belief in the future of music, the future of the orchestra and in the future of humanity.” L thought that was an example of somebody trying to preserve knowledge.

Responding to L, T said that preserving knowledge required such a lot of effort, attention, inquiry, and keeping to the course, and destroying knowledge might require less effort. It was easier to cut down a tree than to grow one. She thought the main thing was that the effort required, to preserve knowledge and to keep truthful, was phenomenal. B said that there are plenty of people who used a lot of energy to go to court to falsify knowledge.

The reading then continued from Chapter 30 of Beelzebub's Tales.

        

With acknowledgements to Harold Good
Watch this on YouTube

In regard to the human Soldjinoha, as for instance various “mysteries,” “religious ceremonies,” “family-and-social-customs,” “religious-and-popular-dances,” and so on, then although they often change in their external form with the flow of time, yet the impulses engendered in man through them and the manifestations of man derived from them always remain the same; and thus by placing the various useful information and true knowledge we have already attained within the inner factors which engender these impulses and these useful manifestations, we can fully count on their reaching our very remote descendants, some of whom will decipher them and thereby enable all the rest to utilize them for their good.

The question now is only this, by what means can such a transmission through the various human Afalkalna and Soldjinoha as I have described be actualized?

I personally suggest that this be done through the Universal Law called the “Law of Sevenfoldness.”

The Law of Sevenfoldness exists on the Earth and will exist forever and in everything.

For instance, in accordance with this Law, there are in the white ray seven independent colors; in every definite sound there are seven different independent tones; in every state of man, seven different independent sensations; further, every definite form can be made up of only seven different dimensions; every weight remains at rest on the Earth only thanks to seven “reciprocal thrusts,” and so on.

T wondered if this was tongue in cheek, because it was so simple, the law of seven, and she was not quite sure that the white ray did go into seven independent colours. L said that in this extract, Gurdjieff might be demonstrating the tendency to suppress information, because he was now enveloping it in mysticism, and it may be very seductive to many people to think there are seven colours in the rainbow, seven notes in the octave. B said that was quite right, because people will try to simplify knowledge, which can destroy it. J thought Gurdjieff was saying that knowledge can go forward in time only up to a certain level. The general truth is something that through all these different manifestations - dance, ritual and the rest - can be projected, but the particular truths that particular societies were putting forward, may be more questionable. So the truth lies in the generality. When it comes to his perception of the different categorizations, which supposedly permeate all schemes and frameworks, he states clearly that this is a personal view of his.

... And as regards the method itself, that is to say, the mode of transmission through this Law, in my opinion, it can be actualized in the following way:

In all the productions which we shall intentionally create on the basis of this Law for the purpose of transmitting to remote generations, we shall intentionally introduce certain also lawful inexactitudes, and in these lawful inexactitudes we shall place, by means available to us, the contents of some true knowledge or other which is already in the possession of men of the present time.

In any case, for the interpretation itself, or, as may be said, for the “key” to those inexactitudes in that great Law, we shall further make in our productions something like a Legominism, and we shall secure its transmission from generation to generation through initiates of a special kind, whom we shall call initiates of art.

And we shall call them so because the whole process of such a transmission of knowledge to remote generations through the Law of Sevenfoldness will not be natural but artificial.

L found this final phrase very interesting, because he explains his use of the word art, which was the title of this chapter, as alluding to an artificial process. He had never thought of the connection between art and artificial, but it meant something that was made by people. T said that if you made something, it was a manifestation of your understanding and your psychological motivation, it was coming from human nature in addition to what we normally call nature. N gave the example of a flower - it could be a process of nature, but could also be artificially produced as a blend.