Burnt Toast.

Burnt Toast

This is an old work story called burnt toast. There was a man who woke up one day feeling wonderful and full of life and very excited about the day ahead. He was married to a fine woman, had a nice house and a nice car and a wonderful career where he never felt like he was actually having to work, but that his work was fun, and brought Win/Win situations to every endeavor.

However there was one thing he hated, and that was when his wife would burn the toast. So today he wakes up feeling wonderful, gets dressed and starts down the staircase to the dining area but his nose perks up and he thinks he begins to smell burnt toast. His wife had been preoccupied with one of the children and had in fact burnt the toast. She tried scraping it and put another couple of slices in the toaster, but he had smelled the burnt toast. His good mood was destroyed and he stormed into the room and asked his wife what she smelled, and she admitted that she had burnt the toast. Now she also, lost her good mood in the smell of burnt toast.

The man ate his breakfast hurriedly and went to the garage and started his car and began backing it up into the street but he wasn't really thinking and his rear end collided with another car coming down the street. The driver of that car had been in a very good mood this morning – he had gotten a raise and had proposed and was now engaged to be married and he loved it. Until that unconscious bastard banged into his car. Now that guy was fuming and he smelled burnt toast. They exchanged insurance information and each went on their separate way smelling and tasting burnt toast.

The man's secretary had woken up in a great mood. She had finally caught up completely with her work at the office and this allowed her a little bit of free time to attend to her own needs, such as polishing her nails. Her boss, our man, roared into the office screaming at her for polishing her nails and telling her to get back to work. Now the secretary smelled burnt toast instead of nail polish.

The men had a meeting that was almost certain to earn him a great deal of money but because he was in such a foul mood he transferred the taste of burnt toast to his client who promptly fired him and went somewhere else.

Perhaps you can begin to see how negativity spreads like a contagion – just like a virus on the border between life and nonlife it spreads like wildfire, and by the end of the day perhaps 1000 people have been affected by this one event of the wife burning the toast by accident.

That's the story of the Burnt Toast. There is nothing more to say and it is a perfectly true story being played out all over the world. People have requirements, no matter what they are, and if they are not fulfilled – well then, burnt toast.

What is the Work?

What is the Work is a question often posed at the beginning of each semester at the Gurdjieff Foundations as well as the question: "Why do you keep coming here?"

These are questions not easily answered, as one's ideas of the meaning of Gurdjieff's Work tend to change over the years. At the very beginning when he showed up in Moscow and began to accept pupils the first thing he would ask them was, "Why are you coming to me?", And "What is your aim?" And then he would say to them that if their aims and his correlated (and at the time he declined to describe his personal aim), then they could walk along together for a while. But at some time in the future perhaps their aims will diverge, at which time they would of necessity go their separate ways.

He made all of this very clear to everyone who came to him – that to follow him was not easy and would never be easy but only get harder and harder, because "man" is a swine, unbalanced and malevolently formed. Gurdjieff said the same thing that Jesus said: "Man's name is Legion."

In physics work is defined as a certain amount of energy required to stimulate activities among the molecules of water in order to raise their general temperature by 1°. That's pretty cheap work, and Mr. Gurdjieff emphasized the fact that his Work was very expensive, requiring many zeros. One, 10, 100 and so on. He once said to the D Hartmann's that he could raise their temperature to 100°C (the degree at which water turns from liquid to vapor), but that they could not remain there but would return to their own temperature. He told them that they must work on themselves to increase their temperature to 100°C and keep it there.

Notice that if you have water in a container and you heat it up to 100°C it will evaporate and become water vapor and no longer constrained by the container that held the liquid – now the vapor is constrained by the shape of the room you may be in, and there is no way (according to entropy, the second law) for the vapor to condense back into the bottle. So, not only do you need an alchemical vessel or bottle but you also need it to be in the shape of an alembic, so that the vapor condenses in the alembic and drips down into another container, but that which is in the new container is purer because the contaminants and debris remain in the alembic.

So, as an alternative method of looking at this one can use the image Gurdjieff used of the vessel containing metal powders, where they heat will melt them into larger and larger chunks – less "Legion", and more single person. That is the right direction.

These larger chunks can be made magnetic, or radioactive or radiant. There are many things one can do once one has become a single individual that are not within the scope of powers of the ordinary man.

Of course, these new powers must not be used, because they are simple signposts that one is headed in the right direction – they are Great Natures own powers which as a last resort she bestows upon a man in an attempt to get him back inside the net of illusion. One must recognize them as what they really are – signs that escape from lower orders of laws is imminent. This means that that point is that where a man must be more discriminatory and vigilant in order to congeal these new powers so that they cannot be taken from one – one must fuse them into one's own being.

But most of us are so very far from that. One of the aphorisms that used to be in Dr. Welsh's basement and which came from the Priere said "I Love He Who Loves Work".

Once upon a time it was a thorn in my side – I did not know what the work entailed and I did not want to work, as far as I knew as my associative thinking allowed me to consider what work was.

Now I see differently, and I am eager to work, according to the five strivings: on myself, with others and for the Work itself. I have become a grateful servant, a watch guard on point, and I Am Responsible. I Have an Aim and cannot be dissuaded from it.

The Olive Press

This is BTW, an old, old story:

Once a long time ago, the Devil and his ministers and demons held a conference. The Devil was tired of using all his manpower to assign a devil to each person in order to squeeze negativity out of each one separately, and he sought for a way to set up a kind of "toll booth", or other such contrivance that would squeeze and suck out the negativity of many people at once, or at least free up some demonic power to be used on another front.

There were many suggestions, but the one that interested the Devil the most was the idea of the "olive press".

If you know anything about olive oil, then you won't have a hard time following this logic: First and best olive oil is called cold pressed extra virgin olive oil, which is really sweet high grade olive oil. Then there is second cold pressing, followed by third cold pressing, after which the olive need to be heated to get out more oil. Then there is final pressing which crushes as much oil out of each olive as can be gotten. The remnant is simple pulp which is thrown away.

One of the Devils most trusted Demons, who had been studying engineering in his spare time suggested setting up mechanical devices all over the world that would squeeze the oil of negativity out of people as if they were olives.

First cold pressing virgin olive oil could be gotten from small children simply be placing obstacles in their way, like high walled cribs, and those leashed that parents put their children in, and they invented the word NO, which they taught to parents all over the world...

Every time a parent or guardian would tell a child NO (try to imagine how many times a child hears that word before it is even 5 years old -- it's astronomical), a little trickle of really high quality negativity would be squeezed out of the child, and eventually the word NO would have a siphoning effect, and the child would learn the word and use it on it's parents and then the olive press would work on the parents too, so that this one word, a negative word, NO, which had never been in Man's vocabulary until then, would serve as a wonderful way to introduce children to the world of demonic negativity. At the same time, at about the age of two, soon after the child started to talk, it would learn this negative word and use it on the parents, and the oil would start to flow from all sides.

Yummy, thought all the demons and imps. They applauded this engineer Demon and called him a genius and immediately began teaching the parents to say NO to all sorts of harmless things like a child exploring it's world. They added "DON'T" and other spicy words to the parents vocabulary and the olive press was all set. Nothing for the demons to do but sit back and enjoy their contrivance at work. Wonderful juicy extra virgin oil out of mankind.

Then they thought about the adolescents, and their natural rebelliousness, and they added a few adjustments and they managed to create huge fights between parents and their teenagers. This is "wonderful", they thought, "magical", now they had a second pressing and got tons of delicious oil from families.

The engineer demon wasn't finished. He called together all the architect devils together and asked them to influence the world by setting up devices all over the place to squeeze negativity out of otherwise calm and "good" people.

They worked all through the night (which in hell lasts forever), and then put their plans into action. Some examples of "olive presses" that squeeze negativity out of ordinary folks might be:

Hotel elevators that are too small, so that when everybody checks in or checks out they have to rub up against one another.

Construction on highways that cause bottlenecks and traffic jams, which drive people nuts and cause them to honk their horns at each other (which by the way, does nothing positive - makes nobody go any faster, but just increases everybody's tension)

Squeaky brakes. General increase of noise in cities. Narrow sidewalks. Detours. Crowded shopping malls.

You name it... the list goes on and on. And on and on and on.

Now, I play a game. I listen and look for the olive presses. When I see one I yell out (not out-loud but to myself),

"OLIVE PRESS, OLIVE PRESS, OLIVE PRESS!

I ask myself if I am going to let the olive press squeeze negativity out of me and I use their own word on them and say inside, NO.

I see "olive presses" all day long, and hardly any of them get any negativity out of me because I see them for what they are. Contrivances set up by the Devil and his cohorts.

How do you re-act when you are face to face with an "olive press"? Do they "get you", or do you recognize them?

Now that I have explained this subject, I wonder if it might be of any use to anybody else, to be on the lookout for olive presses and resist letting them squeeze you? Or will they succeed day after day getting the oils needed for the fires of hell? It's up to each of you your very self. Please let me know, and if you notice any "olive presses" that I have not mentioned, please make me a list, so I can be on guard for these nasty devices.

Right now they are using a jackhammer in front of my apartment, and have been making all kinds of noise from 8 in the morning till 5 at the very least. I know that they are only doing their construction jobs, but they are also without even knowing it, acting as an olive press to all the tenants in my building. They may get oil out of my neighbors (in fact I have heard some of them complain in the elevator), but they get very little out of me.

The I AM in each of us & the Homunculus Concept.

 When I was five or six years old a mantra came to me. I said it over and over for several years, especially when seeing "other people" It read:

"I AM the same I AM as you are, when you say I AM" 

The ONLY difference is conditions; if I had been born into your body by your mother at your time and place and conditions, I would BE you. Completely, substantially and fully; I WOULD BE YOU. Not like you, not a doppelganger but actually you. The only thing that exists is relationship.

I said this mantra day and night for years, until it became an inviolate part of me. I AM as you ARE, and we all live as One, fractured only holographically.

If you take an ordinary photograph, and break it into pieces, every little part will be in focus, but only contain part of the image; However, if I take a Hologram, and break it into smaller pieces, each piece will contain the entire picture, but the smaller the piece, the less focused the whole would be.

This means that the search for what are known as Homunculi ("little man") is important to the alchemist and hermeticist. Above you can see two pictures of the same ear. The one on the right is easily recognized as an ear, but the one on the left (the same ear upside down) can be with little effort be seen as a fetus in the womb. This represents a homunculi. A little picture of the upside down ear shows the entire body as it forms in the womb.

This is how the Chinese build a method of acupuncture in the ear, so the outer rim of the ear now represents the spine, the ear lobe now represents the brain and inside the ear are represented the internal organs and their respective 'meridians'. 

So the Hermetic Alchemist looks for Homunculi, and the study of ratio and music turns out to be a very large piece of the Holographic Universe. Chemistry and Alchemy were born of the same parents, as did Astronomy and Astrology. Religion and Science were also one, and the schism between them has cost the world it's primordial and primeval connection to the levels above and below. Admittedly, each seeks the other, because without the Alchemical Marriage between the two, the world is doomed. The Earth will have failed; great Nature will have failed, and the Sun through which the Sun generates it's radiance in the sky may fail.

The greater universe may not even notice, but we sure would. 

The Imperfection of Perfection

The Imperfection of Perfection

When I am working with my musical students on guitar I teach musical theory which is based on very ancient sources – many thousands of years before Pythagoras, whose name means "He who is as a Python" (the snake that kills by squeezing the breath our of it's victim). The basis of this beginning of musical theorem is the concept of Ratio, which is based on the ancient Greek root word Logos.

The word Logos can mean a symbol, such as copyrighted shapes that designate products and companies; Logos can also mean Word, in the sense of a word being an image phenom that is a symbol for something else. It can also be translated into English as the word Ratio/Symbol/Word, which makes the beginning of the Gospel of John all the more interesting, because an equally efficacious beginning might be as follows:

"In the beginning was Ratio, and Ratio was with God, and Ratio was God". This is as fruitful as "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God"

Ratio is defined by the relationships that exist between differing sizes, numbers or shapes. In music, I only need a single string (called a mono chord) to study the ratios of what is known as the Major Scale. Here again we come up against language variants – when I say the major scale I do not mean that there is another scale, because all other scales and chords are developed by means of this one static formula: whole step, whole step, halfstep; whole step, whole step, whole step, halfstep. But this scale interval numbers of 123456 and 7 can start at any pitch so long as they follow the formula WWH, WWWH, WWH, WWWH, WWH, WWWH and so on. On a piano or similar keyboard this is why the black keys come in sets of twos and threes. Now let's return to the word ratio and look at the ratios within the major scale:

1:1 unison, (the tonic) and in perfect agreement with itself – this agreement or agree ability we call consonance, and at the very bottom we have dissonance to the point of what we call noise. The next ratio would be found by stopping the string halfway and allowing only half of the string to sound. This was give us the ratio:

1:2 equivalence, (the octave) and perfectly in agreement with the tonic and sharing its name or designation. Any multiple of two will yield octaves straight up in a vertical line, and always yield even numbers. Then we come upon the next ratio –

2:3 the Dominant (the fifth major scale tone) it is dominant because in a world of unison and equivalence we have no measure, but the dominant is a different tone completely, although it stands in complete agreement with the tonic. Then –

3:4 the Subdominant (the fourth major scale tone). A little bit of arithmetic may help us here; the four is an octave of the two, and one of the threes is above while the other one is below – this is why they are called the Dominant and Subdominant and are also considered perfect in relationship to the tonic.
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We have reached the end of the intervals considered perfect, and now I get to ask a rhetorical question: if I state that there is something wrong with "Perfection", what might it be?

The answer is rather simple: Anything that has reached perfection has no reason to change or to move, and is therefore nonexistent. There is nothing in the phenomenological universe we live in that is not subject to change over time as well as in motion relative to all the other factors in the universe. So we need imperfection and asymmetry in order to sustain anything at all. The next ratio is:

4:5 the Mediant (the third major step in the major scale) played along with the tonic it is not perfect. Next we have:

5:6 this is the minor third and contains a good deal of suspicious sorrow when played along with the tonic. We're going to skip the ratios of 6:7 and 7:8 because they are only found within portions of the major scale. The next ratio we find usable is:

8:9 the super tonic (the second major tone in a major scale). It is also what is known as a whole step. Then penultimate, we have the ratio of:

15:16 this is a minor second, or a half-step  As the numbers get higher and the notes get closer together they become less and less affable or consonant and more and more dissonant. In the tempered scale that we use in modern music the only more dissonant and ugly combination of notes is found in something called the Tritone, which is also called the Devils Interval, because in the major scale it rests between the perfects of the Fourth and Fifth and is equally three whole steps from the Tonic and it's Octave.

Now if you have followed this simple progression from unison and perfect consonance down to the utmost dissonance, we find that we can utilize these ratios to create what is known as the Major Scale.
1-2-34-5-6-78-2-34-5-6-78 etc. ad infinitum...

Now we should have a look at the words of Jesus as he tells his disciples to "be perfect as your father in heaven is perfect".

The Greek word in the Gospels is 'teleios', which is used 48 times in the New testament, and has multiple meanings, meaning both Perfect or Mature. Certainly Jesus could not have meant Perfect as I have described the Creation, because as we have noted, nothing in the phenomenological universe can be perfect. Anything that was perfect would automatically disappear or become non-existent and this includes the entire Creation.

Mr. Gurdjieff knew this well, as he differentiates the original condition of Creation by the term "Autoegocrat", which means essentially "I govern by myself" – this is a condition which must exist outside of time or space,, or what Mr. Gurdjieff calls "The Mighty Heropass"; the equivalent of the Hindu God Kali, the wrathful goddess who represents the irrevocable destruction of all things through the inexorable movement of time.

And as we have seen through our creation of the major scale by ratio, that a single octave is asymmetrical, which concurs with modern physics in its examination of the big Bang which describes the creation of a minute ratio differential between matter and antimatter, where for every million particles of antimatter there may be 1,000,001 particles of matter. It is that minuscule differential in favor of matter/energy that allows for our universe to exist

Mr. Gurdjieff calls this change from perfection to a cyclic asymmetry by the term "Trogoautoegocrat", a term that means "I Govern by Eating Myself", this symbol for which is called the Oroboros, the pictured of a snake eating its own tail, which by the way proved to be the solution to what is now known as the benzene ring, which opened the door to organic chemistry, discovered by a fellow named Kukulke. This is also the secret of the third force of which Mr. Gurdjieff asserts that we are blind. He calls us "third force blind".

• Mr. Gurdjieff asserts that every manifestation requires three equal and opposite forces to come into existence, which he calls the "Active, the "Passive" and the "Reconciling". They are also known as "Affirming", "Denying" and "Reconciling". These correlate exactly to the Holy Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Ghost as well as the parent of this concept of three attributes of reality that braid together to form the Creation which is the Hindu Philosophy of The Samkya (which translates as "enumeration") and which calls the forces the three Gunas, or tendencies, Rajas or active; Tamas or the resistance of Inertia, and Sattva, which sits between them in the same manner as the backwards S in the double fish Yin Yang symbol of Chinese Alchemy, and is considered balanced and "perfect" in the meaning of reconciling and mature.

Physics also describes these three forces, although our Scientists do not know the esoteric or inner meaning of their schemata by the designation of the three forces as Centrifugal, or Shiva, the God of Creation and Destruction both. The Big Bang falls under the authority of Shiva which blows all things apart; Physics' opposite of Centrifugal is for Centripetal, or inward force that is under the auspices of the God Vishnu, the "preserver", who causes gravity and for things to have stability through time. The third force in Physics is something rarely thought about, although without which, centrifugal and centripetal cancel each other out, is The Revolving force, The God Brahma, who has no devotees in Hinduism, but which creates the process of the Trogoautoegocrat, meaning that everything rotates either around itself, like the Earth, which creates the illusions of day and night (although the Sun, which also revolves, pours out radiant energy in all directions at all times), or revolves around some other center, yielding spirals all the way from the fingertips to the galaxies.

Again we are brought home to the Hermetic formula: "As Above; So Below"

Be then as mature as your chosen deity, understanding that "God" may not be as perfect as the usual reading of Jesus' words would seem to apply. Mr. Gurdjieff said it best when he noted that "Angel can teach only one thing; Devil can teach everything" Become as meek as Doves and as wise as Serpents. Drink with the Devil, but leave him to pay the bill.

The Prayer of Jabez

The Prayer of Jabez

Hidden amongst the Chronicles in the Bible is a very strange paragraph which deviates from the line of heritage that Chronicles is mostly concerned with; that is, so and so begat so-and-so begat so and so, and so on (pun intended). Embedded in this 1 Chronicles 4:10 is something called the story of and the prayer of Jabez.

It is a very short piece which goes something like this, paraphrasing in my own language that which is translated slightly differently in various versions of the Bible: "And a woman birthed a child she named Jabez, which is translated as "I delivered him in pain and sorrow ", and Jabez was considered more righteous than his brothers and he prayed:

"Dear Lord, Oh, that Thou would bless me and increase my purview, and let me not lapse into Unconsciousness, whereby I may cause Harm, and our Gracious Father Endlessness Granted This unto Him ":

Also rendered as "And Jabez called on the God of Israel, saying, Oh that Thou wouldest bless me indeed, and enlarge my coast, and that Thine hand might be with me, and that Thou wouldest keep me from evil, that it may not grieve me! And God granted him that which he requested."

After that detour the Chronicles returns to the lineage of who begat whom begat who, almost endlessly. Torturous to read, but this simple Jewel stands in stark relief. How am I to interpret this short prayer? First, he asks for a blessing – and the blessing among the Jewish people of antiquity was the placing of the dying patriarchs hand upon the head of his firstborn son and imparting to him the spiritual power and blessing that the father has to give. Then, he asks for an increase in purview, which is the area under which one has control – one might also read it as "increase my reach and the power thereof". Finally, in the third section of the prayer he asks for God's continuous presence, so that he may not cause harm or suffer in vain himself.

These are three lofty requests, but it then says that God granted him that which he requested.

For me today the most important part of the prayer is connected with the word purview, the definition of which is: 

1a : the body or enacting part of a statute

b : the limit, purpose, or scope of a statute

2: the range or limit of autha : the body or enacting part of a statute

b : the limit, purpose, or scope of a statute

2

: the range or limit of authority, competence, responsibility, concern, or intention

3

: range of vision, understanding, or cognizanceority, competence, responsibility, concern, or intention

3: range of vision, understanding, or cognizance

I am particularly concerned with definition 2, which describes the scope or boundary of one's authority and responsibility.

The question then falls upon me: what is the scope and boundary of my authority, competence, responsibility, concern or intention?

Certainly, the government of the United States is beyond my purview. I can have a small role in voting, and I can have a horizontal input with my activities, but these are attempts to enlarge my purview, acting outside of my real and authentic powers, perhaps in order to attempt to bend a higher power towards my wishes. But if I recognize my own purview I will come to understand that I am incredibly small – practically nothing. In my room I am large, in my building I am smaller and in my neighborhood I am a tiny speck of life which goes hither and thither.

If I read a newspaper or watch news on the television and take-up a political opinion which I then attempt to foist onto my fellows, I am looking and speaking outside of my actual purview. If I am to be a mature adult, and not simply a grown-up child who asks childishly for things to be different, I thereby become a fool. So I do not gossip, and I do not engage in useless dialogue, "barroom arguments" or anything of that nature. Men do not realize how much of their own energy is wasted by this frivolous imaginary powers that they pretend they might be in possession of. They are NOT.

If I am honest and sincere with myself and allow myself to be disillusioned from these imaginary false and chimera capabilities, and very soon come to the conclusion that my real purview is vertical while radiating out horizontally some short distance from myself. But myself – that self which is beneath the false and the ludicrous, within those bounds is my true purview. I may pray as Jabez did, that my purview or sphere of influence becomes enlarged, but I cannot do it – I have no power in that area. One might say that one's being has a number of limits: my actual physical body, the body of my emotions, the body of my mental facilities and my attention and powers of image making, or constructive imagination – constructive imagination is what I need prior to any real impact in the world of inertia, the world of things, and I cannot influence the being condition of another, unless there is a common aim or search for commonality.

Today this is my prayer. That we may find commonality, because we are all of one species.

The Devil

The Devil Who is the Devil?  1):  There is a hidden teaching which says that when God created the universe it was perfect, but because of this perfection it had no reason to change. It was perfect in all directions. It therefore threatened to collapse in on itself and disappear.  This would have undone the universe which would have made God sad and bored.  He therefore brought his firstborn principles before him, the Archangels; and asked which of them would be willing to descend into the material creation and to act as a "stop gap"; introducing asymmetry and preventing perfection from threatening creation.  Lucifer was the most beloved of God and stepped forward. He agreed to this task even though it would make him a scapegoat, because he would prevent the perfection of any created thing.  Since all created things have an urge towards perfection in the hope of returning to the bosom of the primordial unity and bliss, they would necessarily resent this action of Lucifer's. In addition, because Lucifer loved God more than any other and because he was going to be sent to the position farthest away from God in his task, he decided he would perform another service for God that could only be performed from the position of the antipode.  He decided that he would invent allure, and seduce all those who sought to move towards God away from him.  This would have a double action: it would keep God's love for himself, as the first action of jealousy, and second; it would keep all the unworthy out of God's "hair."  In this function, the devil would act as "trier" of purity and intention, with the ideal that none should pass into God's bosom. Because Satan would be at the antipode of creation but standing between the fulfillment of perfection, and since God in his role of creator stands at the center of the creation, from the position of those things which are created, Satan would seem to have usurped the divine position of the creator.  This has the result that the universe resembles a house of mirrors, and thwarts any efforts towards finding God.  With the introduction of the devil at the antipode of creation, the universe becomes an exitless magic circle.  The foregoing is from an esoteric musical teaching. 2):  How are we to relate to the Devil? In the late 1800s there was a group of French poets who reasoned thus: Since God and the Devil were engaged in a kind of military warfare, one should use military allegory to understand spiritual strategy.  They reasoned that most persons are of very little interest to the Devil because while thinking to themselves that they are headed for heaven, by their own actions they are in fact headed straight for Hell.  It is therefore unnecessary for the Devil to waste any of the energies of his demonic legion on them.  They could be assigned very minor imps and demons who would guide them towards the right berth in Hell.  These souls were also quite skinny -- providing very little fuel for the fires of Hell.  To the demonic reasoning most of the world provided much quantity but very little quality.  This was offset however by certain individuals who led exemplary lives or who performed holy actions known or unknown.  These souls were headed directly towards the gates of heaven, even sometimes without knowing it, and especially without intention (which itself would be a disqualifying "sin").  In order to capture these types of souls, a kind of ambush needed to be set up.  This required rather high-ranking devils to hide in ambush near the gates of heaven.  Then, after the "do-gooder" saw that he was virtually at the gates of heaven he would let down his guard or become Shanghaied and become ripe pickings for the demonic hordes.  These types of souls would provide plenty of fuel and nourishment for the fires of Hell. Again, the poets reasoned in the following manner: It is extremely difficult to find the gates of Heaven.  It is not so hard to find the Devil.  Since the Devil is likely to be waiting in ambush near the gates of heaven, finding the gates of heaven only requires that one heads straight towards one's own strongest Devil.  Of course there is the difficulty of eluding his clutches when you are headed straight towards him, but the poets reasoned that it would be worth the attempt and that in addition, great art might be spat out during the throes of battle.  If one could weather this centripetal force, then one would be flung through the doors of heaven though a kind of trampolining effect.  In addition, one's art would testify on one's behalf of one's original intent. This lead to the terms "disarrangement of the senses" and "intentional vertigo." 3):   Spiritual cultures around the world have come up with different terms for dualism, for the active and passive forces which operate in the world.  For the Chinese and they are called Yang and Yin.  In the Indian subcontinent there are called Rajas and Tamas.  The Christian culture would use the terms Heaven and Earth.  In each of these sets of opposites the first term would be the light and active force and the second would be the dark and resistant force.  This second force would include the ideas of the Devil.  But not so well known is the fact that in each of these sets of opposites there is postulated a relationship between them which has its own name, and which forms a third and invisible force.  For the Chinese this is called the Tai Ji, or great ultimate limit; in India it is called Sattva, the balanced pure and spiritually even force.  Even in Christianity the third force is known specifically as the holy ghost, which is usually termed the love which exists between the father and son; the son in this instance standing for the passive or resistant force.  Therefore it is not simply a case of choosing between opposites but rather coming into a balanced relationship between two only seemingly antagonistic forces which create the world.  In this instance, the Devil cannot be avoided, resisted or eliminated.  Instead, the Devil and all that he stands for needs to be integrated into a balanced whole.  This is very similar to the ideas in psychology of C. G. Jung of the integration of the shadow self as part of the job of individuation, which is the goal of Jungian psychoanalysis. 4):    Astronauts are known to lose muscle mass in outer space where there is no gravity.  Science realizes that bone density and muscle mass are depended upon weight bearing work against resistance.  Without resistance no work can be accomplished.  In a world without any friction nothing could develop.  Therefore the Devil is necessary for any kind of spiritual development.  If he did not exist we would have no chance to develop our spiritual musculature at all. 5):   Beelzebub is known as Prince of the Devils.  He is also known as Lord of the flies, and flies are connected with the elements space and air.  As Lord of the flies Beelzebub commands these forces.  To human beings, flies are irksome pests who are obstinate and troublesome.  In a way, flies are like our own unwanted habits which seem unamenable to our will and which return to plague us even as we shoo them away.  Interestingly, in Hatha yoga there is a figure who is one of the founders of the yoga called Matsyendra.  Matsyendra is known as Lord of the fishes and king of the yogis.  Why is this so?  One reason is that the energies of the body are likened to shoals of fishes who travel through the body and who are as difficult to control as the direction of fish in the water.  Therefore, he who has mastered control of the subtle energies of the body, or Prana, is called king of the fishes.  Clearly an analogy can be drawn between these two perhaps mythical entities; Matsyendra and Beelzebub both represent a mastery over ordinarily uncontrollable forces.  One could also deeply ponder the connection between the flies and air, and the fish and water; Air and Water being two of the great elements postulated by ancient esoteric teachings worldwide.