The Three Forces

The Three Forces

Every authentic spiritual transmission has as one of its principal understandings that the universe contains and is run with only three forces, which braid together in more and more complex levels to create the phenomenological universe.

In Sanskrit these are called the Gunas -- a word which can be translated pretty well as "tendencies." In the Christian faith, this same idea as formulated as The Holy Trinity.

In the Chinese model, there appear at first glance to be only Yin and Yang, the pair of opposites, but they too understand fully about the three forces. The third force is called the great ultimate limit or Tai Ji, and it appears as the backwards S in the famous yin yang symbol which is also called the symbol of the fishes.

In each of these formulations, it is easy to see the pair of opposites, and the other force is much more difficult to see. As Mr. Gurdjieff put it, we are third force blind.

Let's look at the Christian model: no one knows where the concept of the Holy Trinity came from or where it started, but seemed to arrive full grown. And I'm going to tell you plain and simple that the Christian Trinity came from the Egyptian understanding. After all, they built a lot of things with triangles -- I think they are called pyramids?

In the Trinity we have Father, Son and Holy Ghost. The Father is the unknowable Lord of all -- the Creator. The Son represents the creation -- the manifest universe, and the Holy Ghost represents the love that exists between them. It's not hard to see that in a relationship between two, the love that exists between them is pretty damn invisible to the naked eye.

The most important model of the three forces is the one contained in the Hindu branch of knowledge -- more specifically in the philosophical viewpoint known as the Samkya, a word meaning enumeration.

The Tantras (a word the root of which means warp and woof -- the weave of the universe --also a series of writings containing details about tantric practices and thinkings) say that the root of error is the number 1 -- that one is the number of delusion. This doesn't make for a very good prognosis on monotheism and monotheistic religions, but try to follow the logic:

The Creator is primordial, being before number.
One cannot know itself; it therefore has to create a second. Then the two can know each other, and this knowledge forms a third element. It stands between them but is completely separate (and completely invisible); therefore the first number is three.

Mr. Gurdjieff calls these three forces or tendencies by multiple names, but the gist remains the same, and it is the same gist as in the Samkya. It is so crystal clear that Mr. Gurdjieff is teaching the Samkya, that by the time we are finished, you will understand exactly what I mean by that.

Mr. Gurdjieff calls these three forces active, passive and neutralizing. Sometimes he prefers to call them active, resisting and reconciling. In Sanskrit they are called Sattva, Rajas and Tamas. I'd better explain these terms. In an ordinary explanation -- something like a grade school version of a subject which could be a doctorate dissertation, Rajas and Tamas could be considered as the pair of opposites; Rajas stands for activity and Tamas stands for inertia. Sattva is the balance point between them and is considered luminescent.

In the kindergarten version of the Gunas which most people follow, Sattva is more highly valued than either Rajas or Tamas. This is idiotic. One needs both activity as well as resistance. If one had no Tamas, matter would have no mass, and if you had no Rajas, everything would be dead and unmoving. In either condition you would have no Sattva, because Sattva is the balance between Rajas and Tamas. In fact, you can't have one without having all three. That's the whole idea, and there is no third created by the other two -- all three have equal stature. For any of them to exist, they all exist.

Now, in addition to these descriptions I am going to add a more unusual one: we are going to call these three forces by the following names. It doesn't matter which force gets attached to which name. I doubt that you knew the names a half an hour ago so what difference does it make what we call them now?

We are going to call them centrifugal, centripetal and revolving. All three forces we are going to associate with the names of the three Hindu gods. I could attach them to the Christian Trinity but the Hindu application, which is not really Hindu anyway but quite a bit more ancient -- the famous perennial wisdom which is called the Sanatana Dharma, is more fun.

The centrifugal force, that is, the force which acted during the explosion which we call the Big Bang, and which tends to make things disintegrate, we will call Shiva -- God of creation and destruction, life and death.

The centripetal force, that is, the force which tends to make things coalesce and become what they are, and that which helps things to stay what they are, we will call by the name Vishnu.

Between these two forces, one pushing out and one pulling in, somehow somewhere, there was introduced a little spin, which turned into the third force, which is the source of all action, and which is a revolving force in the dance between the two other forces. Although it is invisible, it is responsible for all action, movement, change; because otherwise the two other forces of centripetal and centrifugal would cancel each other out. This force we will call Brahma.

Now, it is really important to see that these three forces or tendencies are real; that they act in the real world of phenomenon and that they effect us all the time without us noticing it.

I will give you an example of how I am under the influence of the three forces:

My name is Richard. I have a personality constellation and behavior and behavioral patterns and I have some bad habits I would like to change, but for whatever reason, I don't seem to be able to change these bad habits. This means that I am under the centripetal influence called Vishnu, who in his coalescing and stabilizing role, acts like gravity to keep me as I am. Let's be plain about this. These forces are as real as gravity, and when you know where to look for them you can see their actions quite easily. So I wish to change but the power of stability -- of centripetal force, of Vishnu, works to keep me as I am.

As I go through time, I find forces in my way which demand that I change. I would rather stay as I am -- it is more comfortable and I find change to be unpleasant. But there is a force which is as real as any other force which is making demands on me to change. It is a centrifugal force which at some time in the future will act strongly enough that I will so to say, come apart at the seams. That will be called the physical death of the organism, or a least of the food sheath section -- what Gurdjieff calls the planetary body (perhaps ought to be better known as the Earth body -- because there can be another body which would be more properly known as the Planetary body). This force we will call Shiva.

Then there is an invisible force -- a third force. It is called Brahma. It is the revolving force. The one that makes things have space and time -- that makes things change but remain the same -- like the Earth which has a new day every time it turns but guess what? Every day is the same day. There is no "more than one day." There is no time and there is no space. But we think that there is. That's the action of the third force called the Brahma -- to make us think that we are going in a straight line when we are not. This is the reason why we are said to be "third force blind."

You may find it interesting that in Hinduism there are devotees of Shiva and there are devotees of Vishnu, and they like to fight amongst themselves as to who has the better God, but there are no devotees of Brahma. No devotees of Brahma. As you should be able to see from above, the revolving force is invisible and it requires training to recognize it.

I hope you've enjoyed this refreshing break from chemistry. We will return to chemistry, and we will be touching on many other subjects, because Mr. Gurdjieff said the following, and I agree with him:

"In order to know everything, a man needs to know very little, but in order to know that very little, he needs to know a great deal."

For fear of boring you I will apologize first, and then I'm going to repeat myself:

This teaching -- this exposition -- this explication of ideas, is practical. It is not philosophical theory. Let's review the only two concepts which we have so far presented.

One: Everything you look at, touch, hear, see, taste, smell or otherwise experience might as well be called Hydrogen, since hydrogen amounts for 88% of the universe. Start calling everything you look at, smell, and taste, hear or feel, a Hydrogen. No matter what it is -- it is a Hydrogen.

Two: There are Three Forces at the bottom of everything, working at every level of the universe, and these three forces account for every law that you are under, all the way from gravity to getting a parking ticket. Start looking for these three forces in everything that happens to you or that you see. These three forces are:

Centripetal: things are trying to stay as they are.

Centrifugal: things are trying to change

Revolving: there is the experience of time and space.

It really couldn't be any more simple. Enjoy your study. I'll talk to you soon.

Helium

Here are a couple of more facts: the universe consists of about 88% Hydrogen, 11% Helium and for all the other elements combined in toto, about 1%.
Is it any wonder why Gurdjieff would have used the word hydrogen to speak of matter?
I want you to get this simple fact into your head -- a "hydrogen" is the word for a matter, period. I am looking at one of the speakers on my computer stereo. That speaker is a hydrogen.
I am considering my right foot -- in fact, my entire body. My right foot and my whole body are both hydrogens. Everything and anything I can think of is a hydrogen. That's the first part of Mr. Gurdjieff's alchemy -- a chemistry which is objective.
Now we go on to the second element which is Helium. It has an atomic number of two. Helium is the second-most abundant element in the universe. Although in terms of numbers there are about eight times as many hydrogen atoms as helium atoms, helium and hydrogen together account for 99% of the observed matter in the universe.
To me, this is as strange an idea as the one Mr. Gurdjieff postulates about the Moon -- more about that later, but that what I look at, touch, smell, hear, taste or intuit is 99% hydrogen and helium is pretty damn amazing.
Mr. Gurdjieff is silent on helium. His approach to alchemy (a term which I will use as shorthand for the more proper phrase objective alchemical chemistry) only uses four elements -- hydrogen, and three others that we will be getting to shortly.
I am going to take a wild and audacious path. I am going to speak about matters upon which Mr. Gurdjieff remained silent. For those who are followers of Mr. Gurdjieff's work, this audaciousness may seem ill advised, even sacrilegious -- to have the nerve to think that I can add anything to or explicate facts about objective reality and authentic objective chemistry which Mr. Gurdjieff left unsaid; and yet I have no choice, as the mandate to teach for the benefit of all mankind, and to help Mr. Gurdjieff, as he is no longer here to speak for himself, has ripened and is poised to fall from the tree.
Hydrogen is atomic number one. It is matter.
Helium is atomic number two. It is the appearance of the opposites. Since the Tantras (the body of sacred writings connected with the other teaching I follow -- the Shaivite) proclaim that three is the first number (and this brings us closer to the beginning of the discussion of the three forces or Gunas), the appearance of opposites did not need to be spoken of, when Mr. Gurdjieff first outlined his teaching in 1914 and 1915, but now it does need to be spoken of.
Here is the beginning of the book of Genesis:
The Beginning:
In the Beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth (opposites already). Now the Earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the Waters.
And God said "let there be Light," and there was Light. God saw that the Light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light "day" and the darkness he called "night." And there was evening, and there was morning -- the first day.
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So out of One is created Two. Helium was one of the elements produced by the Big Bang, along with hydrogen and lithium. And stars like the Sun produce helium by the fusion of hydrogen nuclei. In doing so by the fusion of hydrogen nuclei, massive amounts of energy are released. Later we'll talk about a lovely anthropomorphic way of looking at how the Sun works, but for now we return to Helium. I am going to make a Proclamation. You should not believe me. You should take it for what it is -- an outrageous statement which makes no sense except that the more you think about it the more sense it makes, because it takes information that is Objectively True, and it presents it to you in a way that ( I am doing my very best to attenuate and minimize cognitive dissonance in you, my esteemed reader) you should have very little trouble understanding, even if you aren't a chemist, and even if you are a fabulously intelligent chemist -- you are going to find the following proclamation to be ridiculous:

HELIUM IS THE LAUGHTER OF THE UNIVERSE.

That's why Mr. Gurdjieff was silent upon it. Some of you may be familiar with the Chinese spiritual classic which has been translated into more languages more often than any other book except for the Judeo Christian Bible, and which is called the Dao De Ching. The Dao de Ching is one of the most sublime statements of "seeing reality" and it's deepest laws that has ever been written, and it is written in only 5000 Chinese characters. For those of you who are editors, to imagine a book still selling like hotcakes 2500 years later and which is written with only 5000 words, would be publishing house heaven.
One of the chapters (you can find it for yourself -- I am not big on "pp" or on locating quotes or providing footnotes -- I speak on my own authority. I do not need a Dao de Ching -- but you do) says the following (OK, Chapter 42 -- OK? Now get off my back!! (:-->)):
The Dao bear one; one bear two; two bare three; three bear 10,000 thing. 10,000 thing carry Yin and embrace Yang; mix force to serve -- as Harmony...
That was a word by word translation from the Chinese ideograms and pictograms which serve as "words" (they are not in fact, "words," but rather richly valenced conceptual symbols, so much so that there is a "well-known" phrase among scholars of classical Chinese writing which says: "To know what the first word in a book of classical Chinese writing means, you have to have read the whole book!" What this means is that the ideograms and pictograms contain all possible meanings all at once when they are written down. The following ideograms or pictograms serve to narrow the "meaning" of the first Chinese character. By the time you read a sentence or two, the original first word would have been narrowed and delineated in its meaning so that you would have a pretty good idea what it meant. (The idea that you need to have read the whole book is designed as a shock, to remind the scholar of classical Chinese writing of the extraordinarily multi-valenced properties of these ancient Chinese characters -- by the way, modern Chinese writing has lost much of this significance -- being practically an entirely different language)
Now here is a more user friendly reading of the same chapter 42 of the Dao de Ching, and please forgive me and indulge me in my previous lengthy detour and aside from the point I am trying to get across. Trust me only and as far as to believe that I still know exactly what I want to say and that after I'm finished you will have a document which will help you and in fact, if you are of reasonable intelligence and you read it with attentiveness, I can warranty and guarantee that you will know exactly what I want you to know about the matters of which we are speaking, with the hope that the "knowing" will percolate into a kind of gnosis, ultimately reaching your deepest and most important interior parts all the way down to your bone marrow. One of my personal aims in writing this blog is that by following it and participating in it, you will be gently assisted in a restructuring of your entire organism, so that ultimately, you may become a Real Man or Woman -- what the Chinese call the True Man, and what Mr. Gurdjieff called a Man without quotation marks.

Dao De Ching, Chapter 42:

The Path of the Dao traces a single line (the "tai ji") and gives birth to One. --------------;

One gives Birth to Two;

Two gives Birth to Three;

Three gives Birth to the 10,000 things

(a phrase which means simply a colloquialism or idiomatic speech meaning the multiplicity of "things", in other words, the 10,000 things is a phrase that stands for everything.

All things carry Yin and embrace Yang; (we have not explained Yin and Yang yet -- we will get to it)

All things mix these Forces together to create Harmony.

Translation by the author. (rlnyc)
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There we are again, back to music. After all, what does the word Harmony imply?

I was an only child, until my half brother was born but I was already 13, so you might as well say that I am an only child. Only children tend to be more intelligent -- they get more attention from their parents and their left more time to ponder. In my case, trust me a little, I have been pondering from the very first moment -- right out of the womb, and I remember it and I trust my memories. I have tried everything under the sun to go to the brink of consciousness and unconsciousness and for those Gurdjieffian's who don't like to talk about or feel threatened by drug use or the use of intoxicants as sacred tools, I would point them in the direction of Rene Daumal, who wrote Mount Analog and who is considered to be a highly honored member of the Work, his personal teachers being Madame De Saltzman and Mr. Gurdjieff himself. He spent his youth getting so stoned that he would knock himself out, all for the purpose of finding out where the brink of consciousness was, and if he could stay conscious while being knocked unconscious. I consider Rene Daumal an essence friend, even though he died in 1944 from tuberculosis.

So an only child has no one to play with. That's hydrogen. 1 electron. Atomic weight 1.00794
and atomic number one.

Helium is atomic number two -- 2 electrons, with an atomic weight of 4.002602.

Now the electrons have someone to play with. They are happy and they laugh. Not only that, but with two electrons they can now play the game of opposites, which is the first GAME of the universe. Or perhaps I should be more accurate and say that in the Shivaite tradition which I follow and two vehicles in which I ride (Yoga and Samkya), this game which the universe plays (or one could say is the enjoyment of the Creator), is born of the separation of opposites. Remember Genesis -- God separated the light from the darkness -- the white marbles from the black marbles. And then he separated the other opposites for more fun.

WITH THE TWO ELECTRONS STANDING FOR THE PLAY OF OPPOSITES, AND WHIRLING AROUND DOING THEIR THING, HELIUM IS PERMANENTLY HAPPY -- SECOND CHILD OF THE UNIVERSE. AFTER THE PRIMORDIAL CREATOR SAID "LET THERE BE NUMBER AND RATIO, " HYDROGEN AND HELIUM ARE THE RESULT -- THE OCTAVE OF HYDROGEN, IN A RATIO OF 1:2. (actually it would be two octaves up, being a ratio in atomic weight of: 1.00794/4.002602. Since the human vocal folds are about double the length in a male as in a female voice - which is why women have higher voices than men), it would be reasonable to say that the second born child Helium is a girl. Perhaps SHE IS ALSO KNOWN BY THOSE WHO KNOW AS SHAKTI.

an aside

A brief respite from the elegant line of reasoning being presented on music and chemistry... but not unrelated.

Giant Pipe Organ In The Solar Atmosphere

Science Daily — Astronomers have found that the atmosphere of the Sun plays a kind of heavenly music. The magnetic field in the outer regions (the corona) of our nearest star forms loops that carry waves and behave rather like a musical instrument.

The acoustic waves can be extremely powerful and reach amplitudes of tens of kilometres per second. Professor von Fay-Siebenburgen adds, “we found that the waves are often generated at the base of the magnetic pipes by enormous explosions known as micro-flares. These release energy equivalent to millions of hydrogen bombs. After each micro-flare, sound booms are rapidly excited inside the magnetic pipes before decaying in less than an hour and dissipating in the very hot solar corona.”

Sacred Alchemy -- Real Chemistry

Today we are going to begin to unravel and talk about sacred chemistry. And we are going to talk about Mr. Gurdjieff's exposition of chemistry in a way that will allow you to understand more about everything.

The first element in the periodic table in any chemistry textbook is Hydrogen.

Mr. Gurdjieff had a special Alchemy, where he used the terms Hydrogen, Oxygen, Carbon and Nitrogen to stand for the three forces or Trimurti (three aspects of God known as Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma -- also known as the holy Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Ghost or Holy Spirit -- also known as the three forces or Gunas; which Gurdjieff variously called active, passive and reconciling or neutralizing, or sometimes various other wordings).

The term Hydrogen he used to indicate a Matter when it was being talked about simply as a matter without regard to which of the three forces was running through it.

We are going to investigate this special chemistry, this "alchemy" and its terminology -- we are going to explain in simple terms what many long-time practitioners of the "Work" do not understand, because they have followed the line of tradition and of the practice of the Work without understanding some of its most precious and profound concepts which form its so to say, backbone. Without this backbone, men stay only chronologically in the Work, and their movement qualitatively towards their aim is glacially slow. As Mr. Gurdjieff would put it, you can work for 300 years in this way and get nowhere but walking in circles with a circumference of 11 miles. Just long enough for you do not know that you are turning, because no one has two legs of equal length -- that means that when you walk straight you turn on your shorter leg -- clockwise or counterclockwise it doesn't matter. That crap about clockwise on the northern hemisphere and counterclockwise on the southern hemisphere is baloney. The fact that your legs are not equal in length accounts for the strange turning in the woods that fascinates so many storytellers when they talk about finding a path and holy crap, it's their own footsteps from hours ago.

So back to our study:

Hydrogen

Hydrogen has one electron. We will talk about its nucleus later. Right now all that matters is the fact that it has so to say, one nucleus and one electron. It can't get any more simple.

HYDROGEN FORMS 88% OF ALL OF THE MATTER IN THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE, MOSTLY AS SINGLE BACHELORS -- in other words, Hydrogen was the first element of Creation.

It is the most abundant element in the Universe; it is the element that fuels the Sun and other stars; as a gas, it is the lightest of all gases, and it bonds to other elements in its own unique fashion.

Hydrogen really likes oxygen. Hydrogen really digs oxygen. Hydrogen is really into oxygen, and oxygen is into hydrogen right back. They like to hook up. When they hook up, they hook up usually as a threesome. It's OK, think sexually (or sensually, if you prefer)

An aside -- chemistry is sex; valence is sexual proclivity; atoms bond into families called molecules.

Hydrogen is named because it likes oxygen so much. The name is derived from the Greek words Hydro meaning water, and genes, meaning "forming". Hydrogen and oxygen get along so nicely as a trio that formula for water is H2O. Two hydrogen atoms bond through electron valence bonding with one oxygen atom and they form water.

Hydrogen bonds influence the structure of all living things because the double helix of DNA is held together by hydrogen bonds. The same is true of the structure of all the protein in our body. We will stop there with the chemical trivia facts. They are all confirmable by any chemistry textbook. We will work slowly. When I read an excellent book I read very slowly. Perhaps I might read a sentence a day, or a paragraph or I might read the same book extra fast all day long. It is just like eating food. In fact it is eating food. It's just that the food is in the form of meme's -- that is, ideas. I eat until I am full and then I digest. If I catch myself reading over and my attention has wandered or slipped away, I do one of several things: I go back to the place where my attention wandered and I bring it back; I close the book for the day, or at least for the time being; I try to remember where my attention lost the track and why. The answer can be anything -- maybe I am hungry.

We will continue later. You have lots to think about. Please, as they say in the racing business: "gentlemen, start your engines." Please feel free to join me at any time.

Welcome to Sol

Lee and I (rlnyc) have decided to continue the work of do re mi shock by moving to the next Tetrachord, which I will oversee and moderate.

In order to help you to understand what the Do Re Mi shock and Sol La Si shock have to do with one another, I will explain some technical things having to do with Music in a way that anyone should be able to understand. There is a series of musical notes that is considered to be so important that it had its own instrument built just to emphasize it and allow people to see it clearly easily and quickly (the piano -- forte) -- The Major Scale.

The major scale is a series of seven notes selected out of the 12 possible notes (leaving five rejects -- the black keys on a piano) and having a formula in Italian from the Latin which is called the Solfege -- that is, Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Si, Do from octave to octave. The word Major in the term Major Scale has nothing to do with the emotional quality of the music -- that is, the word Major does not mean major as opposed to minor scale (which is a sadder scale) but rather it is the first definition in any dictionary -- greater in importance, more significant, greater in stature.

So the Major Scale of do re mi fa sol la si do is the "important" scale. All other scales, in fact all aspects of Western music fall under its purview: chords on a guitar, melodies on a flute, every instrument in the symphony is tuned to the major scale. All other scales are modifications of the Major Scale. Now let's look at the word scale for a moment.

To scale the heights. That's the closest in meaning that I can give you for what happens with a scale. You climb it like a ladder. You scale it like a mountain. In fact, all of the degree tones are called degrees in exactly the same manner that degrees exist in a thermometer. How far above the one (or sea level) are you? Now in the scale, it follows another formula which is so important that it will put you to sleep if you repeat it over and over quicker than counting sheep. Remember that it is not the notes themselves but the distances between the degrees that the formula obtains. We already named the notes, but they are not all the same distance from one another. The Major Scale is a diatonic scale; that is to say, it has two types of intervals or sizes of intervals might be a better way of saying it. This is the same thing as me saying that water is dihydrogen oxide, H2O; the prefix DI tells me that there are two hydrogens who have hooked up with an oxygen atom -- hey, it sounds like a three-some -- let me in the hot tub!

OK, you've been waiting long enough. Here's the formula, which is based upon the fact that the distance between the main notes is 2 half steps -- that's called a whole step. Half of that is called a half step. Whole, whole, half, whole, whole, whole, half. It's better if you look at it:

1-2-34-5-6-71

Now you can see better. The distance between the 1 and the 2 is called a whole step. The distance between the 3 and the 4 is called a half step. Now the formula again:

Whole, whole, half, whole, whole, whole, half

That's the formula taught to every beginning music student. If there is a finer and more magnificent way of turning off a young brain than having him recite that formula, I don't know of it. I tell my students that if they want to fall asleep they should count out that formula as though it were branded on the side of the sheep that they are counting and that the fences that the sheep jump over are of two different heights, a whole step and a half step. Later, to their benefit we switch the heights of the two different sized intervals and we make the whole step fence easy to leap and the half step more difficult. There would be reasons for my doing this with my own students which you will understand later, if you choose to follow me on this pathway through a labyrinth of concepts and ideas.

If you are into the Gurdjieff work, or any other spiritual discipline, ultimately you need to know this knowledge as it forms an inner body of understanding which then allows you to understand far more abstruse concepts and ideas.

So now we have a formula of whole, whole, half, whole, whole, whole, half. What are we going to do with it? We are going to apply it to the solfege in something called tetrachords, that is groups of 4 -- this has nothing to do with chords played on an instrument. We have two identical tetrachords:

1-2-34 (do re mi/fa) and

5-6-71 (sol la si/do)

You see that they are identical in their structure -- both being whole whole half. This is important. That's why this blog is called Sol La Si Do, because Sol is the fifth note in the scale and has a special name musically it is called the Dominant.

So this becomes:

Doremishock and Solasishock. Forget about Fa for the time being. We'll get to it, and everything else besides.

So we are going to be talking about things on another level. In some ways, more demanding. In some ways more enriching and most definitely interconnected, so that do re mi shock and sol la si shock have an intimate relationship with one another; they are both part of the same musical scale, and more importantly, they form a relationship between them which is called Harmony.

I hope you'll join me in this exploration, this course of study which has no curriculum except to seek ways of seeing which serve the active participation of Man in what is one of his principal duties -- to continually work his brain and all the parts of it so that he works towards an understanding of the universe and his place in it and his relationship to it and all other relationships.

I have a saying, and I abide by it:

"They never have and they never will find a limit to the storage capacity of the human brain. There is nothing that in order to learn you have to forfeit or forget anything else."

And Alchemy has a saying, and I abide by it:

"One book opens another."

And Mr. Gurdjieff has a saying, which also I abide by:

"War, or no war, it makes no difference. We always turn a profit. "

Please join me. Consider this blog a kind of savings bank where you can put ideas in and take ideas out and they will always earn a profit by being placed in this bank. I myself rlnyc, will work hard with you at you through you because of you and on your behalf so that this warranty of profitability obtains at all times and thoroughly.

Be well. I look forward to hearing from you.