Thursday, April 2, 2009

The Crushing Weight of Law

We're going to follow Mr. Gurdjieff's descending table of hydrogens -- that is, his concept of atoms of varying densities. This has nothing to do with the periodic table, so it is best to leave ordinary chemistry behind. This is more of a cosmogony, that is, how the universe is organized in terms of its material and energy. Practically everyone thinks they understand the formula E=MC2, which states that matter and energy are the same thing -- that matter is congealed energy, and that energy is extremely thin matter, but the two are interchangeable.

Mr. Gurdjieff called himself a materialist -- meaning that his view was that everything is material, even thoughts; even angels, archangels and God himself.

At the top is the unity -- unknowable by human senses or standards, but that this unity is also a Trinity -- The Father Son and Holy Ghost, or in Hinduism the Trimurti, murti meeting face, so that this word means the three faces of God -- Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma. They have three attributes which are called Satchitananda. This is a compound word of three separate words meaning Sat=reality, Chit=awareness and Ananda= bliss. So the three attributes are reality, consciousness and bliss. These three are considered as one -- imagine a mind with no obstruction. Anything this mind thinks would have as much reality as reality itself, because it has no obstacles and nothing to argue against it. Then it would also be completely aware, and because it has no obstacl it lives in bliss. This is how the ancients thought of God, as three in one. So the first atom would be three in one. This would be world one.

Then we would come to world three, where the three attributes would become the three Gunas -- in other words they would separate so that now we have three laws.

Next we would come to world six, because every new world has three new laws, of its own, plus any laws from above -- so this world would have three new laws as well as the three laws from world three. That leaves six

The next world would be world 12, because it would have three new laws, plus six laws from world six plus three laws from world 3 -- add them together and you get 12: three plus six plus three equals 12

The next world would be world 24, because we have three new laws plus 12 laws from the preceding world, six laws from the world above that and three laws from the world above that. The arithmetic is simple: three plus 12 plus six plus three equals 24

The next world would be constrained by 48 laws -- 3 of its own plus the cumulative effects of all the laws which exists above it: three plus 24 plus 12 plus six plus three equals 48.

The next world would be world 96 -- 3 laws of its own, plus 48, plus 24, plus 12, plus six, plus three equals 96.

This is as far as we need to go right now. Each of these world are like Russian dolls -- they live inside one another. Mr. Gurdjieff says that the first world or the highest world we can know is world three, and its laws travel through the entire system but seem to get further and further entrapped inside of the other laws. Each world's only three laws are stronger and closer to it than the above laws.

World three would be the world of all galaxies.

World six would be the world of the Milky Way

World 12 would be the world of the Sun

World 24 would be the world of the entire solar system including the planets

World 48 would be the world of the earth

World 96 would be the world of the moon

That's as far as we need to go, because that is as far as the Ray of Creation goes, on our particular ray. There may be myriad rays, but we only live on one of them -- our own particular ray of creation, and the moon is the endpoint. If you use the analogy of a tree, the moon is the endpoint or bud of our particular branch.

Each world would contain atoms which correspond to each world's weight. So the higher up the scale, the less dense and more ethereal the atoms get. And as we go down the ray the heavier and more gross and material the atoms get.

So we live on the earth, which is under 48 laws, or 48 jurisdictions -- 48 sets of laws. What they are is not told us. We know that the first three are reality, consciousness and bliss, and we know that they extend all the way down to the end of the ray, but they are contained inside "walls" or coatings of denser laws, so that by the time we get to law 48, we are under an immense load of laws. The moon is even under twice as many laws. Try to ponder this, and we will continue next time.