WITW #5 The Cosmic Sacrificing Satan

This is an ancient story which belongs to an esoteric musical theorem that I follow. It has concordance with the ideas of Mr. Gurdjieff, but is not from his Work directly.

The Cosmic Sacrificing Satan
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In the beginning, the Creator was alone, in the ratio 1:1, and having unopposed Will, Being and Consciousness, he deigned to create a universe to enjoy so he moved in a dream away from himself and looked back. This was the Ratio of 2:1, but being of God's own nature, it was perfect and equivalent and he only stared back at himself. This in music is the "octave".

Being perfect has significant problems. Anything that is perfect has no reason to change and no reason to move, so that the Creator was at a standstill. No "time" or "space" existed. Without "time" or "space" the universe collapsed back into the unsullied being of the Creator.

Again and again the Creator tried to create a universe to enjoy but each attempt brought the same results. No time or space and no change or movement, so that his creation kept going "poof" and dissolving back into his perfect nature.

Being lonely, he decided to create companions for himself so he created the Archangels which were also perfect, one on each side of him. To his right was Lucifer, the light-bringer and guardian of energy, and to his left Gabriel, the guardian of matter. These stood in Ratios of 3:2 and 4:3 and were the first Holy Trinity with no faults or flaws.

Still, being perfect in Trinity, the Creator was stymied. There was no "time" in which events could occur nor "space" for them to occur in. So he asked a favor of the Archangels; asking who loved him enough to diminish himself and take on the role of the Satan, which means opposer. This would be a being that would create asymmetry in the universe, making it imperfect, and allowing things to have a wish for movement and change. Something would need to act as a stopgap, not allowing any created thing to achieve perfection. This would enable the creation to rotate and swirl in an everlasting movement of agony and hope.

Lucifer the first born stepped up and declared that he would diminish himself. In music this is the most dissonant interval, in a ratio of 45:32, and is called the Devil's Interval, and is as far away from the 1 as possible. So the Creator let Lucifer be diminished, and asymmetry was born, and with it, "time" and "space". Lucifer became the "Cosmic Prodigal Son", who denies any created thing from reaching perfection, because if any single thing reached perfection, the entire universe would disappear.

In music, Satan created all the dissonance, and the Devil's Interval (1 -- bV -- I) is the ground root of all musical movement by reason of it's extreme dissonance which demands resolution, and makes music as well as all things "move" and "change". In Music this is called the Cycle of Fifths/Fourths and it has 12 stations or "notes" which rotate around in an endless spiral. Just as the Major scale is the static law of music; all scales and chords coming from it, the cycle of Fifths is the involutionary movement, the Divine Fiat of the creator, and movements along the Cycle of Fourths are the hope of all things who have found themselves in the world of multiplicity to return to the bosom of the Creator. But they are not allowed to do so, by the denying force of the opposer.

If this is understood, as the musical form of the Enneagram, all things can be understood. There is a saying:

"If you wish to know God, make very good friends with the Devil, because they are in cahoots; always have been, always will be".

Selah!

WITW #4: A Heated Argument Groups vs. Loners

Jim Turner and I were discussing the act of learning to walk. As infants we watch the people around us and because we see them walking eventually we begin to try to stand up and walk ourselves. This is an arduous learning process; so much so that I often turn it on its head and state that in learning to fall I had to first learn to stand up. In any case, toddlers walk and fall incessantly–they climb stairs with the same foot until they master the complex movement patterns required to walk up a flight of stairs using both legs. I like to lose. I prefer it as a conscious choice, because losing consciously is better than BEATING the other guy. And what's the FIRST thing they teach in any martial arts class -- how to fall. Learn to fall and one can learn to roll right back up. Now back to our show... There are those who learn to walk because they live among other people who can walk, or...

Then there are the “wild–children”. It is a matter of historical fact that children have been found that may have been abandoned and taken care of by animals and to grow up to be healthy human beings with the exception of the fact that they cannot walk–they often walk on all fours; they cannot speak beyond a certain kind of grunting and animal sounds. One such child found in France and studied over many years was impervious to temperature, and would sleep naked in the snow with no ill effects. But he could not walk without an intense process of learning, and in learning to talk, these "wild" children (in there past 200 years quite a few have been found), very little beyond rudimentary garbled language skills could be taught them.

How does this relate to The Work? 

Well, I am speaking to the Group Despisers and Group Deniers and Loners who think that they can learn and practice the Work via books and other materials. You may gather loads of "information", and even think you understand some of the diagrams and lectures given by Gurdjieff, but you don't and you CAN'T be in a teaching that at every turn commends every reader to locate others who ARE IN the Work, and where there are senior people who know how to "WALK".

i am sorry kids, but anyone who continues to argue against the concept that a group is necessary (not forever, but for a long time - it's a school for adults) and that one must find others in the Work IN PERSON are fooling themselves and are warts on this site. They can talk, but when they read any literature regarding the Work and the absolute and invariable law that one must submit one's will to others, and especially a senior member who knows how to walk, they must have felt nausea reading those sections or perhaps they used a magic marker to delete the strict instructions which are given to EVERYONE WITH NO EXCEPTIONS.

I took a magic marker and the Ouspensky Book "Fragments of an Unknown Teaching "ISOM" and I blacked out EVERYTHING BUT THE ACTUAL WORDS OF "G". Turned out that I still had 90% of the book intact. This was when people would quote G and attribute it to O. I researched and verified FOR MYSELF what was said by "G", and the reportage written  by "O". My first teacher asked me to bring it in and was floored that I had gone to so much trouble to differentiate what "G" said and what "O" said.

Not a "super-effort" but a determined one to get things delineated properly, and IF YOU HAVE NEVER BEEN OR ARE NOT CONNECTED WITH THE WORK YOU AREN'T IN THE WORK. Sorry, you may be able to talk a blue streak, but you can't walk, skip, leap or run. Every piece of advice that fouls the air around here is from people who are AFRAID. Of what? I don't know and I don't care, but even the "Objective Way" is not what you think it is. The Staircase isn't what you think it is, and the inner WORK ISN'T WHAT YOU THINK IT IS.

Even crawling is stupid if done alone. Find and go to a school, or you are just a worthless new age delinquent.

WITW#3: The Enneagram of the Sun

http://soho.nascom.nasa.gov/gallery/PreLaunch/PL_p4.mov

Please cut and paste to view the video.

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Order in the Solar System principally depends upon the Sun, which has been seen as the representative of the Deity throughout the entire history of man. Now, scientists are studying the Sun more closely, with various satellites and we have found that the Sun produces Music, as well as containing within it the figure of an Enneagram. I doubt that anyone not connected with the work would understand the figure. But it blows my mind.

This should be startling at least. Completely flabbergasting anyone who does not serve the Sun and its representative, Great Nature, as humble servants.

Above, I have placed a URL to a video which was created by the European Solar Agency (credit: ESA). In combination with NASA. It is extraordinary, how many different nations contributed to this effort.

But it is revealing secrets of the Sun which have never before been known. How then, did Mr. Gurdjieff know about the Enneagram, which is part of the musical structure of the Sun?

In the above video, which is about the music produced by the Sun, the Enneagram appears at 1 min. and 31 seconds  in chapter 4 of a movie that lasts about a half an hour and if one watches the entire movie the Enneagram is  shown at 13 min. and 21 seconds.

One should note that the Enneagram  is upside down and all the lines are curves with the outer solfege  closer to the surface whereas the triangle which points downwards is arched considerably towards the center of the magnetic field of the sun.

The Enneagram which is shown does not contain the inner circulation and appears upside down. This should be made clear so that the Enneagram because the Enneagram which is shown during the film also uses curved lines because they are adhering to magnetic forces and magnetic fields within the Sun, but for anyone in the work who has  looked at or studied the Enneagram,  it should be easy to see.

Also in this video, it is shown how the sun wobbles between 2 tones, and as more and more lines are added you finally get a perfect image of a sunflower. To me, this is simply mind blowing. And Mr. Gurdjieff introduced the Enneagram  to his students sometime between 1914 and 1918.

It is sometimes said that we either serve the Sun and Solar System or we serve the Moon. Here it is shown in an undeniable manner, that the Sun contains all the patterns which affect the Earth.

I would like to hear comments from any of the other members of What Is the Work?, after viewing this very short but illuminating video. I do not fully understand it, and think it presents myriad questions to us who follow the work. Thank you.

WITW#2: Some strange sayings of Mr. Gurdjieff

We are told by Mr. Gurdjieff that we must keep both the Wolf and the Sheep in us alive unto death, or Rascooarno. What does he mean by that, and how do we reconcile these two natures, when so many in the work want to be "good" people?

"I have good leather to sell, for those who wish to make shoes". Again, how are we to understand this strange statement?

"Big Angel/Big Devil" What does THIS mean?

"Angel can only teach one thing, Devil can teach everything" What position does this place us in in terms of our personal aims, morals and ethics?

"I Make Ore, it is for Others to Refine". How much can we trust the teaching? And how do we differentiate between different metals, and what they might stand for?

"All Pleasure is Shit". Is this literal? Are we to believe in this axiom?

"By Teaching Others You Will Learn Yourself". Who then is competent to "teach" or "pass on the teachings?"

"He is God and I am God! For all and in everything we have the same possibilities and impossibilities" Do any of us believe that, and if so, does it also apply to ourselves?

Others may have other peculiar sayings they wish to explore, or take one from above and work with it, sharing your inquiries and findings.

Thanks,

--RL

Blogs from WITW #1 Conscious Suffering

One of my favorite quotes, from "Boyhood with Gurdjieff" by Fritz Peters, pg 96:

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He went on, then, to say that life was a “two-edged sword.

“In your country, you think life is only for pleasure. You have saying in your country: “pursuit of happiness”, and this saying show that people not understand life. Happiness is nothing, is only other side of unhappiness. But in your country, in most of the world now, people only want happiness. Other things also important: suffering important because is also part of life, necessary part. Without suffering man cannot grow, but when you suffer, you think only of self, you feel sorry for self, wish not to suffer because this make you feel not comfortable, make you wish escape from thing that make you feel bad. When man suffer, he feel only self-pity. Not so if real man. Real man also sometimes feel happiness, real happiness; but when he also feel real suffering, he not try to stop this thing himself. He accept this because he know is proper to man. Must suffer to know truth about self; must learn suffer with will. When suffering comes to man must make intentional suffering, must feel with all being; must wish with such suffering that it will help make conscious; help to understand.

“You have only physical suffering, suffering of body because of pain in leg (Fritz had hurt his knee). This suffering also help if you know how to use for self. But this is suffering like animal, not important suffering. With other suffering, suffering in all self, is possibility understand that all people suffer this way, is possible also understand how depend on Nature, on other people, on everything, for help in life. Cannot live life alone.

Aloneness–not loneliness, which is bad thing–but aloneness can be good thing for man, very necessary for life, but also necessary learn not live alone because real life depend on other human being and not just on self. Now, you still boy, cannot understand what I talk–but remember thing; remember for time when you not thank me because I save life.” (Gurdjieff had returned just in time to treat Fritz's knee, which threatened his life through infection).

A CHANGE OF STATE

A CHANGE OF STATE

 We are in an information age that trumps experience. Watching Television (which I call the "pseudo-life machine" because the amygdala and limbric sections of the brain contain no negatives) gives the organism the same sense as if it was living the experience. Therefore, we must exclude much of what we call experience to the realm of the phantasmagoria, as well as reading books especially of fiction, which suffice for the ordinary person as a substitute for actually facing their own life and 'living it'.

Conscious Influence C can only come from direct contact with "one who knows", and must be a direct transmission. Otherwise it becomes influence B (like the exoteric outer trappings of religions) or A (the ordinary 'world and all it would seem to contain) --  where it is said that the "gods are asleep", as in the Kundabuffer, which is the opposite of the Kundalini, according to Gurdjieff's vernacular. 

But let me take Christianity as an example; during the first three centuries (334 YEARS), one had to keep the fact that they were Christian a secret or face a fierce demand to also acknowledge the Emperor as a deity. Failing that could lead to death, period. So the Christians met in the underground catacombs or at each others houses at great bodily risk.

 Now let's move to Mr. Gurdjieff during the second world war. Paris was under strict curfew by the Nazis, and going to visit Mr. Gurdjieff in the evening for the dinners and meetings carried with it the risk of being shot on sight. So the Work enters the world at great peril of turning into it's opposite, as the Enneagram has done, having been turned into a kind of "astrology of types".

 But the real work remains, as in the Lord's Prayer, which starts with these words, (from the Aramaic): "Father/Mother/Breather of ALL, ye ARE Heaven; may your "Name" be kept protected, secret and sacred." Now, who does the Lord's name be protected from and kept secret and sacred? US: You and Me! Otherwise it becomes degraded and becomes influence B and ultimately A. So the question in this information age is "how do we protect the work from ourselves?"

 In the book "Our Life With Mr. Gurdjieff" by the De Hartmann's, there is an interesting passage: Gurdjieff tells his students (and I paraphrase, not having the book in front of me): "I could lift you to Heaven, but you could not stay there; I could raise you to 100 degrees Celsius (boiling point of water which involves a change of state and greater freedom - water vapor is not under the laws that govern liquid water), but you would return to your ordinary state: YOU must learn to raise your own temperature to 100 degrees Celsius". What this implies is that we must undertake INTENTIONAL SUFFERING (Not "Voluntary Suffering", which is another thing altogether) we must OURSELVES create the friction within ourselves to initiate a permanent change of state, which only change of state can place us under higher laws. Ice, Water, Vapor, Plasma. THESE are the equivalent states that we find ourselves in. Opaque, Translucent, Transparent and finally Radiant. But WHO has the WILL power required to place oneself under such intentional pressure? Practically NOBODY. THIS is the reason why one must make direct contact with "One Who Knows", or barring that (we can't ALL have the highest teacher -- we would implode, explode or be burned to a crisp), we must make contact with a group containing SOME who know more than we do, which is at the beginning (and in some cases forever) absolutely essential, because we do not know what a man of higher being even looks like. Gurdjieff told Ouspensky that a conscious man might even look "more mechanical" than the average Joe. We cannot know the being of others before developing higher being bodies in ourselves, which require actual "changes of state", as modern science would put it.

Of Late

Of late I have been feeling a great weight upon me, to increase my efforts towards the aim of the work and the payment of my own debt for the life that travels through me, having been given me unbidden and yet which by grace, mercy and justice, demands a payment.

This payment can be extracted through accident, illness and ultimately death of the physical body. These sufferings cannot be avoided–and when Great Nature fails to have a quality of work from a certain number of men (when I use the term and I include woman- as man in this terminology means mankind), then She is required to derive these necessary sufferings from quantity, wars, genocides and pestilences.

One might look on these sufferings as mechanical demands or taxes which cannot be avoided. If one does not pay once taxes, one accrues penalties and interest. In just the same manner, if a man pays his taxes voluntarily he can alleviate much of the useless suffering he otherwise accrues in trying to cheat. This in no way implies that a man should pay more than his fair share, but if one is sad or angry one should realize that these are his own energies turned either inward or outward. And of 7 billion people, how many are feeling the same emotions at the same time?

So one may say that Great Nature requires for mankind a certain pound weight of sadness or of anger. One cannot suppress these emotions without turning them into poisons, so, what is to be done?

A man may feel sadness at the same time that he is glad to be paying his fair share of sadness or grief to the general machinery of the cosmos. This is not a non sequitur. A man who feels anger is also among so many equally angry people that if he were to drop his anger or be angry gladly, Great Nature would hardly notice the difference. So in the general framework, one man may escape what the mass of men cannot. But how could one do this–how could one accomplish this and attain to greater degrees of freedom. One must 1st of all learn how to suffer so that that which befalls man involuntarily he accepts  voluntarily, while he studies himself and his untoward manifestations against his brethren–all the rest of humanity.

Then what might come next? Let's take the case of a man who gets angry at his employer, but has to maintain a dignified approach because if he shows anger towards his  employer he will lose his job. Such a man will probably get angry at those who he perceives as those who love him, in other words, those closest to him–his spouse and his children, or his friends. They decide that he is an angry man–prone to anger without cause, not realizing that his anger is simply misplaced and he allows for it to be expressed in what he thinks are safe directions.

Such a man paints a pitiful figure. Going through life affected by every little prod or barrier to his desires for pleasure and a life of ease.  He may wish to change towards what he thinks is a better person, but as he does not know himself in fact but only in his imagined self, he has no inkling of how to go about it, and thus suffers from what Mr. Gurdjieff calls “The Disease of Tomorrow".  He thinks that he can change tomorrow, not realizing that today is tomorrow's yesterday and yesterday is today's tomorrow.

Such a man lives almost entirely according to his animal nature–its instincts, desires and aversions, and I can paint a picture of the disunity of such a man by stating that the man who sets the alarm clock is not the same man who has to wake up to it.

This is the state of mankind at the moment, and is a sad commentary on the workings of the world which we destroyed by seeking pleasure at the cost of suffering correctly. Only great men have found out that the way to bliss is through suffering itself, and the way to heaven requires a descent into hell, as represented by our own unconscious and subconscious drives and urges.

Read slowly. Ponder carefully. Be thankful for every new breath, because it brings with it a new opportunity.