In Search of Memories Lost

J had experienced one particular little imbroglio in which he had listended closely to dubious propositions put forward by a council official. Each time, he asked them to explain further, they responded with an obvious evasion in another untrue statement.

Once a day when you talk with someone you know, notice your body posture and change it. Be receptive and ask exploratory questions without any assumptions, like What do you mean? and Can you expand on that? rather than telling them things. Observe what you are feeling when you ask the questions. Listen very, very carefully to the other person and seek to understand, as if it is a humble exploration of the wild. Afterwards, consider any wrong assumptions you made about the conversation.

L had been trying to improve his chess by doing chess problems, and one of the things you were advised to do if you failed to get the solution was to think afterwards what false assumptions you had made, and this had been part of the Challenge. He thought the same logic applied after every conversation with somebody. This was something B had stressed in the previous Meeting, that you had to be aware of your assumptions, and if your assumptions were wrong, then you failed to understand the situation that was going on. So it was very important to have this kind of post mortem after the event and reflect what assumptions were wrong about the situation, and how one could do it better next time. He had also found that changing the body posture while listening altered the quality of the listening, and made it more effective. The previous evening, he had gone to a house concert, and in the interval was chatting to a lady - he had listened to what she was saying very intently, and adjusted his posture, and she said something very interesting. They were talking about music, obviously, and she said she found that if she moved while listening to the music, she heard it differently, and better. He thought this was just like the Challenge. So physical movement did affect the quality of taking things in, and that reminded him a bit of the Gurdjieff Movements.

T had realised that there were five points to the Challenge, which was helpful in trying to write up her experience. The first one was when she remembered the Challenge. She was either sitting or standing. When sitting, she was aware that her legs were crossed or uncrossed, and she did the easiest thing and did the opposite each time, and when she was standing with feet together or apart, again, she did the opposite. For the second one, she noticed that her habitual way to show that she was listening was to intervene with a comment that showed she understood the point or affirmed what they were saying. She found it a struggle to ask them to expand on what they were saying or what they meant, because they were intent on telling her this story anyway, which had emotional content; she had to fight to find a gap. With the third one, when she did ask a question, she felt manipulative and ashamed, because she was thinking of something other than the actual conversation, and felt deceptive in the relationship. This bothered her as she felt she was partly play-acting and only partly sincere in asking about the content. Her usual sincerity felt partially obscured, which made her feel uncomfortable. With the fourth, they were almost immediately answering with more information when she did ask, and she was able to experience having asked and to see how they then took the reins and ran with the fresh angle.

N had found that when he started changing body posture, it would change his kind of reception of what people were saying. and also then have a feedback loop with how they would express themselves. He found that if he changed things, and showed more enthusiasm for what they were saying, then people would be much more flowing in what they said to him, whereas if he looked more severe or stern, they wouldn't say so much, and might actually block it at some level. He observed that when he was trying to reflect on what he was doing, he did not feel so guilty that he was acting, but felt that he was trying to see what it was inside of him that was giving out information to them, in terms of his body language, his posture or the expression on his face, He did not find it changed him internally in terms of feelings, because he took it as an experiment, rather than as anything else.

Responding to L's statement about the woman who found that music changed when she started to move, N said that if he started dancing to music, he heard it in a different way than if he just sat there passively receiving it.

Responding to T, J said this was the endemic problem with the challenges. The moment you were involved in reacting to someone with the idea of a challenge in mind, you were to some extent play acting and not concentrating fully on the situation at hand, introducing that element of falsity into your reactions. He had also been interested in N's analysis of how one could ramp up the reactions that one was showing someone in order to infuse them with more enthusiasm and an easier flow or the reverse, because that was a little bit like driving. He had never considered how he showed enthusiasm. There were obvious ways - inflexion of voice, expression of a long face. Was it to be supposed that we try and work out how to calibrate the degree of this, or should we continue to do it just as a normative daily exercise?

B thought this was completely wrong. It should come from yourself just to be authentic. What is important is what it provokes. It is not a social gathering, you want to get to the bottom of something. You want to know the response of the person rather than soothe them. Responding to T, B said that exploration was proactive, and not a passive thing. If you felt guilty about having a voice, how could you extract anything, or get more information? She was not disputing anything, but would have liked to move from the social demeanour into what we were discovering in the world. T said her work was always about listening and helping people expand and say more. She supposed that was the professional self. When she was in social situations, the professional self was taken away, and she noticed that she listened less. Maybe she listened too much in her work and wanted a break. B said she had experienced the same.

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

        

With acknowledgements to Harold Good
Watch this on YouTube

You must know that in the presences of the three-brained beings of the present time, as well as in the presences of every kind of three-brained being in general, every new impression is accumulated in all their three separate ‘brains’ in the order of what is called ‘kindredness,’ and afterwards they take part with the impressions already previously registered in the associations evoked in all these three separate brains by every new perception in accordance with and in dependence upon what are called the ‘gravity-center-impulses,’ present at the given moment in their whole presence.

B was reminded of Freud's theory of primary repression, in which new ideas gravitate to the centre of the repression where the old ideas are away from conscious awareness. N liked the way he talked about the kindredness, and how these impressions go into the three brains. So therefore, the associative link was very strong, because it was in all three centres.

... the common presence of each of your contemporary favorites during the process of his existence consists, as I have already told you, as it were, of three quite separate personalities—three personalities which have and can have nothing in common with each other, either in respect of the nature of their arising or in respect of their manifestations.

Hence it is that there just proceeds in them that particularity of their common presence which is that with one part of their essence they always intend to wish one thing; at the same time with another part they definitely wish something else; and thanks to the third part, they already do something quite the contrary.

In short, what happens in their psyche is just what our dear teacher Mullah Nassr Eddin defines by the word a ‘mix-up.’

T said she was experiencing this type of mix-up at the moment. At work her thinking centre wanted to try and keep up, her feeling centre wanted to do all sorts of things that were fun, and her moving centre wanted to rest. L thought Gurdjieff was saying two things. On the one hand, by intent and trying, that we could adopt a different persona, as in the example of these demonstrations that they were doing, even though it needed to be done in three centres which might all be pulling in different directions. However the corollary was that normally, that did not happen. People were being pulled in different directions, and what they did was largely a matter of chance, which meant that what happened in our lives was largely a matter of chance. We did not like that notion, because it was very ego-crushing to think that where we were, and what we did, was happenstance. So we prefered to believe it was through purpose and considered choices. It might well be that what everybody here and everywhere were doing was the consequence of pure chance, and the Gurdjieff Work, from that point of view, was trying to counter that, and enable people to decide where they were going and to go there.

... They also had it in view to implant these works of theirs in the customs of various peoples, calculating that these ‘melodies’ they created, passing from generation to generation, would reach men of remote generations who, having deciphered them, would discover the knowledge put into them and that had already been attained on the Earth, and would also use it for the benefit of their ordinary existence.

For your understanding of how the learned beings there of that group made their indications in the ‘musical’ and ‘vocal’ productions of theirs, I must first explain to you about certain special particularities of the perceptive organ of hearing in the common presences of every kind of being.

Among the number of these special particularities is the property called ‘Vibroechonitanko.’

You must know that those parts of the brains of beings which objective science calls ‘Hlodistomaticules,’ and certain of which on your planet the terrestrial ‘learned physicians’ call ‘nerve-brain-ganglia,’ are formed of what are called ‘Nirioonossian-crystallized-vibrations,’ which in general arise in the completed formation of every being as a result of the process of all kinds of perceptions of their organ of hearing; and later on, these Hlodistomaticules, functioning from the reaction upon them of similar but not yet crystallized vibrations, evoke in the corresponding region which is subject to the given brain, the said Vibroechonitanko or, as it is sometimes called, ‘remorse.’

B said this was associating the Vibroechonitanko , which alludes perhaps to vibrations, with remorse. L thought it was like empathy, tuning in the vibrations of somebody else, or being on the same wavelength. J asked if the implication was that there was a very specific message encoded in music and colour, or just a generalised impression to transmit to future times.

Vive la difference

N had encountered a huge, Arctic-looking dog that belonged to someone else in the office who would leave it off the leash, and it often wandered into N's room. He tried to understand it, but could not adjust to its experience of time. He had also met a tabby cat on one of his walks in Hampstead. He thought it might have smelt some sashimi that he had in his bag, as it jumped down from where it was, coming around to the bag. He tried to imitate it internally, but once again, could not get into its time consciousness at all.

Once a day, when you observe a creature, reflect on it, physically and emotionally imitating it in some way. Let your experience of time adjust to that of the creature. Consider the Bon Iver lyrics for Woods.

A quote by Jacques Derrida - To pretend, I actually do the thing: I have therefore only pretended to pretend. - 

had come to T's mind in connection with this Challenge, and she had taken it literally, and enacted it in the privacy of her own home.  On one occasion she was watching a cat. In her attempt at being a cat, she looked around the room, and her experience was different from usual. She lowered her head to the floor, to sniff along the wall and the floor and in the corners, and she noticed the dust, which was quite displeasing. She sat up and looked around to check there were no threats to her safety, and then she relaxed and cuffed her ear with her hand to clean it. Another time, T was watching a large bird. Although she could not imitate the flight, she imagined it. Alighting on the tip of a large umbrella in the garden, she looked this way and that to see what what was there. It was a large bird. It was a jay. It was beautiful. But she looked to see what was there. Was it moving? Was it edible? Was it a threat? She took off to land on a metal branch growing out of steps to a square cave. She looked around again, listening, watching. Anything moving? Anything edible? She took off and landed grasping with her feet on the strange round metal construction that human giants bounced up and down on. She looked down and up and around. Anything moving? Anything edible?

First of all, L thought it was partly about empathy, if we were to try and appreciate how an animal was feeling. He thought he had always had that because of being a lifelong vegetarian. He had experienced or considered the terror that the animal might have felt as it was being taken away to be to be slaughtered. So every time he chose what to eat, or saw people eating meat, then that might come to mind, but in terms of creatures passing by it was hard. It was often very small creatures. He had seen snails crossing the road, after the rain. They walked away from the garden wall towards the opposite edge of the pavement, and they were probably going to get trodden on by somebody, but they were on this urgent and very slow errand, riding away against this cold, hard surface. Another time there was a tiny mite he had rescued and put out of the window. It was very hard to think what was going through its mind and what it was experiencing. When he was on the Heath, or near trees, he would say the Bon Iver words. The mind was the problem, and somehow being in nature helped and made it a little bit slower.

Responding to N, T wondered what dogs made of rooms. When she had been thinking about the bird, it was alighting on everything that was manmade, and it could not find anything. So it went off to the trees to get some insects, but what did they make of it? The noises the dog in N's room made - what was happening? N said the dog had found some water, and then the owner came in and said: No, you can't come in here, and pulled him out again. N thought the dog had been offended by this lack of acceptance.

B recommended a Kurosawa film - Dersu Uzala - about a man who lived in nature. It was about instincts and being in tune.

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

        

With acknowledgements to Harold Good
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From that moment, the learned being who had spoken would become a physician, because he had chanced to call his chief the head physician of the city, while the second learned being whom the former had called a policeman would assume the role of a policeman. Two other participating learned beings were then immediately called from the other room by the one who assumed the role of policeman, and they assumed the roles of cobbler and soldier respectively. 

And these two latter learned beings assumed and had to manifest themselves in just those roles, namely, one in the role of a soldier and the other in the role of a cobbler, only because the first learned being, having himself in accordance with his Darthelhlustnian state assumed the role of a physician, had called them soldier and cobbler respectively. 

Well then, these three learned beings who were thus cast impromptu by the fourth learned being for fulfilling every kind of perception and manifestation, which had to flow by law, of types foreign to them ...

L said that this description of the person calling the policeman, and telling him to deal with the cobbler and the soldier, and those people having to take on the roles, as part of the structure of the event, was what we would now call performance art, where the people involved do not know what they are going to be doing, and have to take on the assigned roles, immediately, without any rehearsing for it.

Here it is very important to emphasize that then in Babylon the three-brained learned beings who belonged to the group of the mysterists did indeed reproduce in action amazingly well and accurately the subjective particularities of the perceptions and manifestations of various types foreign to them.

L said that what came to his mind in these descriptions was enacting the Stanislavski technique, in which the idea was that the person actually became the role. B said that was interesting, because we were all in a role somehow. L said that this meant we were not our real selves. Perhaps being so was impossible, but we could build towards it. When in society, we were told to be in roles. N said that part of the education that Gurdjieff was trying to teach us was having this flexibility, this adaptability, this ability to change roles and not necessarily be stuck in the particular role that life seemed to have handed out to us. L said this was very profound, as if we succeeded in the Gurdjieff Work and created our real role, then we would have failed, because we would be stuck in a new one. So there was no end to it.

A Twist in the Tale

N had come back from hospital with a whole host of pills that he had to take. He tried to think and reflect on the pills and the benefits they were giving to him, being grateful for the fact that such technologies now existed, and such pills existed, which would help him get better. He took it in a more emotional way, as he swallowed the pills, and reflected on the goodness and the benefit it would do for him. So he was trying to be more present to those pills, making it a more intentional process, not just simply gobbling them down as one had a tendency to do hoping that the instinctive body would react to them. After having had the pills, he finished up the experience with standing on one leg. He thought it was a good way of doing it, warming it up at some level for the reception of the benefits that the pills might give him.

Once a day, when you are about to do a habitual action that you normally do instinctively, slow down, and imbue it with a lot of emotion and appreciation, presence and import. Observe the different way in which you experience it. When you have finished, stand on one leg for a few moments.

For L it had been very mundane actions, and he had found that doing things slowly often improved the way they got done. On one occasion he had been washing up a dish too quickly, and some water splashed over the lip of the sink. Then he proceeded to wash up much more slowly, giving it attention and meaning, and that made for a much better experience. Also, he had found sweeping slowly to be quite therapeutic, and more effective if done slowly, too, because the dust flies less. There was the old Latin saying: Festina Lente (hasten slowly). If you did things slowly, sometimes you got more done and did it better. He had done the standing on one leg too. The Challenge had made him feel more awake, and things felt more meaningful and true. He thought that our society was quite a mercenary one where, if people thought time was money, they gave incentives to do things quickly, but sometimes that could have a sub-optimal result.

When T had slowed down her actions, it reminded her of slow motion in films, and she noticed detail that surprised her. When she was at the kitchen sink and reaching over to turn on the tap, there was a clear and perfect reflection in the surface of the water of the bowl. She would not have noticed that if she had been on her usual, rapid automatic. She was surprised at her usual speed in comparison, and it highlighted that the mechanistic style usually prevents the range of senses from registering; the usual speed gets the action done at the expense of experiencing life on on many levels. The slow motion became balletic, and the standing on one leg part of the slow dance. The slowing down - taking a tea towel from the hook or the kettle from the stove - enabled her imagination to come into play. So she was able to imagine that if her arm wasn't visible, then the tea towel or the kettle would look as if they were magically moving through the air by their own volition. It made her realise that if an observer was unable to see her physical manifestation, then it would be as as though the material objects had the capacity to move themselves through the air like birds, and it would seem balletic, like a cartoon or animation of a children's fairy story. She could see that the movement she brought to the otherwise stationary object was in itself a magical skill, and how she took for granted not only how she moved things and objects about, but also how she moved her own body about, like standing on one leg. The other thing that had happened was when she was doing the invidious computer work, and she had slowed that down too, and it was much more pleasurable.

Responding to T, J said that the moment you put a schedule into something, you had a deadline that would abstract some of the pleasure from doing whatever it was. If he was playing chess, and then suddenly played by a chess clock, he found that some leisure enjoyment from the whole experience was slightly cut short. This was a problem in the purpose, the set of mind. The atmosphere of wherever you were was undermined by a purpose in being in that place. For example, if you were a municipal inspector, you would not look at Hyde Park from the standpoint of the beauties of Rotten Row, you would look at it from the standpoint of how many trees you needed to plant. These things sat slightly at odds, you could not really do both at the same time fully. T replied that when she slowed down, she became all herself, and then somehow whatever she was involved with, became a relationship with the outside rather than something that she was doing to something else. N said that T's description of balletic movements and the slowing down process reminded him of Tai Chi, where the movements look very poetic, but there was more of an inner connection with the movements. So you were moving from a different place within yourself and within your body. 

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

        

With acknowledgements to Harold Good
Watch this on YouTube

So, my boy, from the time when these favorites of yours completely ceased consciously to actualize in their common presences the ‘being-Partkdolg-duty,’ thanks only to the results of which what is called sane ‘comparative mentation’ as well as the possibility of conscious active manifestation can arise in beings from various associations, and from the time when their separate ‘brains,’ associating now quite independently, begin engendering in one and the same common presence three differently sourced being-impulses, they then, thanks to this, gradually, as it were, acquire in themselves three personalities, having nothing in common with each other, in respect of needs and interests.

J thought it was a large claim to say the manifestations had got nothing in common with each other. Was it not like, in a long winded way, Dr Johnson's refutation of the idea that a table was not solid by kicking it. On the level of kicking the table, he was perfectly right, it was solid, but at the level of quantum physics, there was fluid and nanomatter inside, so it was both things at the same time. He understood Gurdjieff him to be saying that there was this tripartite splitting up of everything you were doing for its purpose, and its inspiration and its manifestation. Everything was this. So these arguments that people had - is the table solid or not - were quite irrelevant. In one sense, it was solid, and in another sense, it was not. N thought Gurdjieff was also trying to represent the confusion that arises from us being three-brained beings, and the different manifestations that come from our nature, which trigger off different manifestations or associations, making it extremely difficult to see things as they are.

Gut Feeling

To help her be more specific, T had had to define awake as self-aware, and asleep as unaware of self. Then she had to define self, and all the terms were nebulous and vague. The instances when she recorded the challenge were when she was involved in routines in the home or at work, usually when she was in a rush. One of the instances was when she was clearing a room, and she was on automatic  - and that needed defining - and she put the air purifier in the wrong cupboard. On another occasion she put a tub of margarine in the cupboard and not the fridge. Each time, finding herself at the wrong location brought her to her senses, and she backtracked and corrected herself. Each time she had had her hands full, and her head was full of other thoughts. It was when she remembered the shock of the mistake that she remembered the challenge, and that was when she touched her head and said Got it! It felt disconnected, so being awake started to mean being aware of all and everything in the process of deliberate intended action.

Catch those moments during the month when you realise you have transitioned from being asleep to being awake. Observe how you feel about it, and try to recall what you were doing at the time of transition to sleep, and what it was that brought you back. When you remember, tap your head, as if to say, I've got it!

L had not noticed any particular pattern to becoming awake and going back to sleep. It had happened a few times naturally. He even wondered if it was a phenomenon in the brain, a chemical process that made us sometimes more aware, or sometimes less aware. It could also happen because of external events, too. A week before he had been waiting at a roundabout and someone drove into the back of his car. When something like that happens, you wake up psychologically, but even that might be because the body then produces adrenaline.

During the period allocated to responses, 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
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... yet those mysteries in the contents of which the learned members of the club of the Adherents-of-Legominism then intentionally placed varied knowledge, calculating that it would reach beings of very remote generations, have during recent times almost totally ceased to exist. 

These mysteries there incorporated in the process of their ordinary existence centuries earlier already began gradually to disappear soon after the Babylonian period. At first their place was taken by what are called their ‘Kesbaadji,’ or, as they are now called there on the continent Europe, ‘puppet shows’ (Petrushka); but, afterwards they were finally ousted by their still existing ‘theatrical-shows’ or ‘spectacles’ which are there now one of the forms of that said contemporary art of theirs which acts particularly perniciously in the process of the progressive ‘shrinking’ of their psyche. 

These ‘theatrical spectacles’ replaced the mysteries after the beings at the beginning of the contemporary civilization—to whom only ‘a-fifth-to-a-tenth’ was passed down of the information about how and what these said Babylonian learned mysterists had done—began to think of imitating them in this also and set about doing, as it were, the same. 

From that time on, the other beings there called these imitators of the mysterists, ‘players,’ ‘comedians,’ ‘actors,’ and, at the present time, they already call them ‘artists,’ of whom I may say very many have sprung up during recent times.

It seemed to J that what interested Gurdjieff here was the way that information and learning becomes, over time, more and more attenuated as it is passed down from generation to generation. T said Gurdjieff takes what we consider to be the high arts, and says that they are very, very diminished from what they originally were.

... As this said ‘currents-of-associative-movements’ does not proceed in the presences of the three-brained beings who have taken your fancy, as it generally proceeds in the presences of other three-brained beings, and as there were quite special reasons there for this, proper to them alone, I must therefore first of all explain it to you in rather more detail.

The process is the same as that which also proceeds in us, but it proceeds in us when we are intentionally resting to allow the whole functioning of our common presence freely to transform, without hindrance by our will, all the varieties of being-energy required for our all-round active existence, whereas in them  these said various being-energies can now arise only during their total inactivity, that is during what they call their ‘sleep,’ and then of course only ‘after-a-fashion.’ 

Owing to the fact that they, like every other three-brained being of the whole of our Great Universe, have three separate independent spiritualized parts, each of which has, as a central place for the concentration of all its functioning, a localization of its own which they themselves call a ‘brain,’ all the impressions in their common presences whether coming from without or arising from within are also perceived independently by each of these ‘brains’ of theirs, in accordance with the nature of these impressions; and afterwards, as it is also proper to proceed in the presences of every kind of being without distinction of brain-system, these impressions together with previous impressions compose the total and thanks to occasional shocks evoke in each of these separate ‘brains’ an independent association.

Regarding the mention of three separate independent spiritualized parts, which each have their own brain, L could see that the thinking part had its physical brain in the head. There was also a kind of brain in the gut - the stomach worked a bit like a brain. T said that science now recognised this and used the term "second brain" for the gut. B asked if this corresponded to the feeling centre. T said it did, and that the moving brain was the proprioceptor system. L said that this "brain" did not have a specific location in the body, and was linked to the nervous system. B distinguished two types of behaviour associated with the moving centre. The first purely instinctive, like responding to danger, and the second skilled learnt motion, like dancing. J said there was a different wakefulness state way back in time from our progenitors or ancestors. It gradually became part of our psychic hinterland, and we were not so conscious of it, and were on to a new wakefulness state; but the old knowledge, which at that time we acquired during wakefulness was now only really available to us in sleep.

Sincere Laughter

N said this kind of discipline about active listening was a very good one, because it made him not interrupt, but rather to let people finish exactly what they had to say before he came in. He also refrained from jumping in, leaving a few seconds after someone had finished speaking, in order to respond. He noticed also when he talked with them, if he looked into their eyes, he got a very strong connection at that stage, and people could sense it. It was an interesting result and it added to the quality of the communication, to the feeling about two people meeting on a human level rather than just talking in a utilitarian or practical way with each other. There was much more of a connection,  rather than just an ordinary communication. He had also opened his palms as suggested in the Challenge. He thought it was an interesting experiment in terms of how to be a better listener, and how to get more from his experiences of talking to other people, and being present in talking to other people. People felt they had been heard.

Every day, when you notice that you are talking at somebody, or being spoken at, engage with the person by talking with them or empathically listening. At the moment of engagement, open your palms. Consider whether you are taking on board the emotional quality of what is being said. Are you just wanting to jump in there and express your own opinion? Afterwards consider modifying your views and observe if you do so.

RM had been spending time with a new friend, and had talked a lot about listening. As soon as something he said triggered a thought in her mind, she would jump in quickly before he finished what he was saying, and he would close his hand tight. Over time, they got better and better at listening to each other. He had noticed that he himself would also jump in before she had finished speaking. He intended to continue working on this in the coming month, and hoped to become a much better listener.

L had usually forgotten about opening his palms, but he did often monitor his communication and try to listen with empathy, speak with empathy more, and that made the conversations much more meaningful - and more real. So that had enhanced his life, and he would keep doing it too. He had also observed, looking at interviews on television and online, that some hosts had the skill of empathising with the other person, whereas the others were talking at the interviewee. The ones who were purely listening produced a much better interview and product.

T had had one experience at work. There had been terrible noise from drilling, which she was not in a position to stop, and she became angry. Afterwards she spent a long time writing an email about it, trying to be restrained. While doing this, somebody burst into the room and was very apologetic. That was when she had remembered the challenge. She wanted to say how much she appreciated the apology, but could not get a word in, and at that point stopped trying. Then she remembered the rest of the Challenge, and wanted to open the palms. She tried three times, and just could not do it.

N asked T if she felt the apology she had received was genuine, and what her feelings were about receiving an apology in that way. T said that authenticity can sometimes be very hard to hear - it was full of emotion, and got mixed up with her emotions as well, because she was battling with feeling angry but appreciative at the same time.

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

        

With acknowledgements to Harold Good
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... each large or small part of the whole totality of the planetary body of a being has exactly proportionately increasing or diminishing dimensions in relation to his other parts.

For a clear understanding of what I have just said, the face of any three-brained being can serve as a good example.

The facial dimensions of every three-centered being in general, and also the facial dimensions of the three-centered beings of the planet Earth who have taken your fancy, are the result of the dimensions of seven different fundamental parts of the whole of his body, and the dimension of each separate part of the face is the result of seven different dimensions of the whole face.

RM said this meant to him that we had to look at the whole, not the part. Body language was so integrated with feelings. L was wondering if Gurdjieff was really serious about the seven-fold symmetry he specifically describes, or if it was just put it in the words of one of the characters of the book, because it was an appealing and seductive idea which might, however, be a Procrustean bed in which people tried to force everything to fit.

On Saturdays—the day-of-mysteries, or the day-of-the-theater—the demonstrations produced by learned members of this group were the most interesting, and, as it is said, the most ‘popular.’

I personally preferred these Saturdays to all the other days of the week and tried not to miss one of them; and I preferred them because the demonstrations arranged on those days by the learned beings of that group frequently provoked such spontaneous and sincere laughter among all the other terrestrial three-centered beings who were in the given section of the club, that I sometimes forgot among which three-centered beings I was, and that being-impulse manifested itself in me which is proper to arise only in one-natured beings like myself.

L said the text talked of being one-natured. That suggested some degree of attainment which most people did not get. So he might be three-brained but one-natured, particularly integrated, perhaps. T had picked up on the spontaneous and sincere laughter, which was about authenticity. Was it not being in the moment? L said that on Radio 4, you got the canned laughter which was not sincere, but in great comedy, you did get sincere laughter. Stand-up comedy was more likely to be sincere, because it was not entirely rehearsed, and was live. B asked what point Gurdjieff was trying to convey. L said Gurdjieff was describing experiences which come from somewhere very deep. So in terms of laughter, in English usage there was the phrase, belly laugh, indicating it came from the gut. So he was talking about experiences which came from somewhere deep inside our psyche, and which were not pre-planned or mediated through the superego. B cited the Ukrainian president, who used to be a comedian, and was in the middle of a tragedy - she was thinking about how to connect these things. L said we can think of comedy as waking people up. It makes us think again. An old friend from long ago had spoken of the image of God laughing, and that had always stayed with L. Laughter was also considered important in Hasidism. Maybe Gurdjieff was talking about sincere laughter as being a way of affecting personal change.

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
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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
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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.