Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

The second division

Today we're going to continue to take a look at the allegory contained within Gurdjieff’s “Society of Akhldanns,” but let's start off with a quote from Dogen’s Shobogenzo, taken from the Nishijima and Cross translation, book 3, page 159, in the Chapter “meeting Buddha.”

“Sakyamuni Buddha addresses a great assembly: “if we see both the many forms and their non-form, we at once meet the Tathagata.’”

To see the many forms and to see their non-form, as described now is a liberated bodily experience, and so it is to meet the Tathagata.”

I am offering this quote just to make the point that Dogen understood seeing to be a bodily experience--that is, it arises from the organism itself, and not the organism's psychology. This brings us back to yesterday's point that we are meant to use the direct and immediate sensory abilities of the organic inner tools we are given to understand our life and our experience, not the associative thoughts which we mistakenly believe lead to understanding.

The passages on the Society of Akhldanns highlight the subtle sophistication of Gurdjieff's methodology, where he presented esoteric understandings in an elaborate historical allegory. This is in keeping with a long-standing tradition in both Christianity and Sufism of presenting practical spiritually refined concepts in the form of stories.

Gurdjieff, furthermore, for all his apparent complexity, offered us what may be more accessible information on this subject than we find in the distant, obscure, and flowery language of Dogen's Buddhism. He was, in other words, a man for our times, offering us a work for our times.

...Well, no one said all of this was going to be easy or obvious. We now come to the second division of the society, which in our hypothesized system of allegory is associated with “2”, or, sex center.

"The members of the second section were called 'Akhldann-strassovors,' and this meant that they studied the 'radiations' of all the other planets of their solar system and the reciprocal action of these radiations.”

This passage may well be read and viewed, among other ways, in the context of the formation of an inner solar system. In this context, the other planets are our “other centers.”

In Gurdjieff’s chemical system, sex center is the seat of si 12, which is the highest “hydrogen” or higher substance automatically created by physical processes in man’s body. The passage suggests that sex center has a hitherto unexplored capacity to evaluate the quality of energy within all the other centers. So if we were to explore our overall inner structure from the perspective of the flower at the base of the spine, we might then explore our inner energies from the perspective of the sex center flower.

In my own experience, sex center energy tends to divide itself into two qualities: the obvious biological one, which carries an overwhelming power of its own, and a peculiar intangibility when one attempts to bring it into relationship within the context of the multiplications.

We’ve probably all heard, over the years, a great deal of commentary about what Gurdjieff called “wrong work of sex center,” that is, inappropriate use of the Si 12 energy, which produces a kind of fanaticism. On the other hand, we hear little or nothing about “right work” from this center.

The passage about the society suggests that in a right work, our sex center has an entirely different capacity which we know little or nothing about. That is to say, the energy of our sexuality may have a use in terms of seeing the energy within the other centers.

I have had a number of discussions with a friend, group member, and elder in the work who believes that the proper transubstantiation of sex energy involves its transmutation from our usual erotic impulse into a compassionate one.

When we originally had this exchange earlier this summer, I took the understanding—logically enough--as one applying to external manifestations, but I now wonder whether we should examine the inner question of transubstantiation and compassion.

Do sex center, and sex energy, have anything to do with developing a capacity for evaluation of, and compassion towards, ourselves? It doesn’t seem like an irrational suggestion. One of the first consequences of wrongly formed self image seems to be damage to the function of sex center of one kind or another.

These questions can’t be answered with glib theories. The effort needs to be to immerse ourselves more thoroughly, and more respectfully, within the sex center itself to see what is available there. Only by forming a relationship and “making friends” with it can we begin to form a more complete picture.

May your trees bear fruit, and your wells yield water.

Thursday, October 18, 2007

the third division

Today I flew into Guangzhou. Got to the hotel rather late. Fortunately I have today's post prepared... tomorrow, that may be a wee bit more difficult to pull off.

On examination, for me, the most difficult division of the society of Akhldanns to interpret in the context of inner divisions of work according to “six flowers” is the third section. I called out this difficulty when I originally wrote the essay about the allegory. It deserves some further scrutiny.

This section of the society corresponds, on the enneagram, to the number 4, or, the solar plexus.

In Beelzebub, Gurdjieff shares the following observations with us:

"The members belonging to the third section were called 'Akhldann-metrosovors,' which meant beings occupied with the study of that branch of knowledge similar to our 'silkoornano,' corresponding in part to what your contemporary favorites call 'mathematics.'”

I pondered this at some length over the past day, thinking about what “mathematics” consists of.

Mathematics is a system of logic that operates according to an established system of prestated laws.

Moreover, the practical application of mathematics is to describe real-world events in logical terms.

In Chapter 23, Gurdjieff says that Belcultassi, the founder of the Society of Akhldanns,

“…began to make similar sincere observations of impressions--coming from without as well as from within--at the very moment they were perceived by his common presence; and he made all these observations with the same exhaustive, conscious verifications of how these impressions were perceived by each of his spiritualized parts, when and how they were experienced by the whole of his presence, and for what manifestations they became the impulses.

"These conscious observations and impartial verifications at last convinced Belcultassi that in his common presence something was proceeding not as it should proceed according to sane being-logic.”

Once again we see reference to the effort to perceive with each of one’s spiritualized parts, which is the selfsame subject of this particular series of essays. And here we discover, moreover, that our common presences ought to contain a process of “sane being-logic.”

If so, where would we find that? Could the organic seat of this capacity be resident in the solar plexus?

The solar plexus has a unique place in various esoteric understandings of man’s body and being: repository of energy, storage center, place of gravitation, and so on. It’s the central location of the lower story of the body; a “collecting area.”

Moving past the literal, we come to the possibility that a “calculus of Being” may be resident within the perceptive abilities of this center. Only an attempt to invest ourselves within it and discover the grounding properties it offers can lead us towards any kind of verification.

When we examine the comment about the society in detail, we notice that it is said the work of the third division of the society corresponded “in parts“ to what we call mathematics. The inference is that there is more to it than just mathematics alone. I think we might presume that there is an indication here about studying the law of octaves, or, perhaps even more broadly, the laws of world creation and world maintenance, since they are intricately tied into mathematical systems—notably the law of three and the law of seven-- in Gurdjieff’s cosmology.

Could it be that the solar plexus is a location from which we can begin to undertake practical, that is, physical, investigations of these laws?

As with the first two centers, the only way to get a footing here is to make an effort towards investment of the attention within the flower of the solar plexus. We may not know quite what that will mean, or what it might bring.

We can know that this type of work is possible.

May your trees bear fruit, and your wells yield water.

the fourth division

I never set out to do that. I simply set out to incrementally record my daily observations about my own work and the Gurdjieff work in general. And, as always, it is the forward movement within life that interests me, not what is left behind. I was like that as an artist; I am like that as a writer, and if you listen to my music, you may notice that it also shares that quality.

We all live within the constraints of the merciless heropass; give it its due.

Let's move on to the fourth division of the society of Akhldanns, which in our hypothetical allegory corresponds to the number five on the enneagram, or, the heart. Here's the quote from Gurdjieff's Beelzebub:

"The members of the fourth group were called 'Akhldann-psychosovors,' a name designating those members of the society who made observations of the perceptions, experiencings, and manifestations of beings like themselves--observations that they verified statistically."

What interests me about this particular division is that there is an inference that it involves compassion.

One might argue I am reading into it -- of course one can make that argument for the whole enterprise --but it seems to me that to outwardly consider, to practice compassion, is precisely to observe the perceptions and experiencings of other beings.

This is the practice of putting ourselves in their shoes -- a practice Gurdjieff said we should always engage in ("consider outwardly always, inwardly never.") In effect, he instructed us to always live our lives first from the heart. To live first from a compassionate observation of our fellow men, a consonance of emotion, a tolerance born of understanding that others labor under the same misapprehensions and organic conditions that we do.

The specific point in the body that this center relates to is the center of the spine. We can sense the top of the spine; we can sense the bottom of the spine, as we do when we attempt to seek the understanding of the first division. We can even connect the top and the bottom of the spine, possibly. But unless the center of the spine participates, the connection is not complete. The origin and the consummation of the connection do not complete themselves without the life of the connection, and the life of the connection lies in the center, just as the essential nature of our being lies within the center of our being.

To open the heart is a sacred task. Every man has this opportunity within him; few men understand that this is an organic task. Heaven and earth cannot be joined unless man makes the effort to act as a mediator from the center of his own life. If a man undertakes this task, and succeeds even in a small measure, it will transform his nature and his understanding in a permanent manner.

I'm not speaking here about a transformation of attitude, but a transformation of experience.

Transformation of attitude in the absence of experience is temporary, fugitive. Within the transformation of experience lives the birth of a more real attitude.

In my own experience, when we invest ourselves within the opening of this particular flower, compassion becomes unavoidable, fundamental, irrevocable. This does not mean that the condition becomes permanent; it does mean that for as long as we are within the capacities of this center, negativity becomes impossible.

Of course, within those conditions, sorrow becomes inevitable. We cannot help but suffer our own lack when our parts begin to connect in a right manner. And in that seeing of our own lack, we discover that organic compassion which leads us to meet our fellow man on level ground, instead of coming at him from the soap box we like to prop under our feet.

May your trees bear fruit, and your wells yield water.