Doremishock

Experiments in raising the organic rate of vibration

Contemporary material on the Gurdjieff system and esoteric cosmology

Richard Hodges

is a member of the Gurdjieff Foundation.

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New addition 5-21-09: An essay on the Octave

http://r.hodges.home.comcast.net/~r.hodges/MusicalScale.htm

"Objective" music

Concerning music, one of the most challenging ideas in Gurdjieff's oeuvre is the idea of "objective" music (or any art). The idea, as presented, is that it has an effect that is consciously known and intended by its author, and that is "the same" for all listeners; whereas "subjective" music has its effects by accident of association. From this and other ways in which Gurdjieff opposes these two terms, one is led to adopt a value judgment favoring "objective" over "subjective" in relation to music and other things. Following rlnyc's suggestion that our exchanges are a kind of music, objectivity would also be an aim in regard to our exchanges.

But wait: what does it mean, "objective"? Do we have any examplars of objective music, for instance the Gurdjieff/deHartmann music? This is a claim heard often enough; but what does it mean?

Strangely, the above-quoted definition entails that the only instrument we have for judging the objective quality of music is its subjective effect in ourselves. Let us accept for the moment this possible conundrum, and also the claimed status of the G/deH music, and explore our own subjective response to it to try to understand more deeply what is special and, as supposed, universal. We might say that the thing that distinguishes what we recognize as different levels of musical compositions, and even whole genres, is what they are about: pop music (with rare exceptions) is about emotions connected with sex, power, anger, fear, emotions that are functions of the lowest levels of the lower story, the body/essence devil; classical music is about arguably deeper emotions that at times seem to reach well beyond these lower drives; religious music is about the emotions and ideas that connect us, "re-ligare", to mysteries attested in religion that are beyond the individual; the Gurdjieff music is about--what? Well, it is about "work", about the process by which certain vibrations occur in the body feelings and mind when the vibrational state of these parts is raised by the conscious action upon them of an "attention" that comes from above them. And even though our individual work may be only semi-conscious, may only be an acceptance of a higher attention without understanding what its reality ultimately consists of, and without the ability to emanate this attention consciously, the subjective effect of this process is recognized immediately. It is distinctive and universal, it joins us immediately with all others in the work who have experienced it (though possibly at different levels). This is also the effect that religious music aspires to, and might manifest if it were not contaminated by the romance and ideologies of the received religions (we leave open the possibility that certain religious music does have a sense of objectiveness: say, some of Bach, some Tibetan chant, perhaps some Voudou drumming; but each of these cases requires a specialized discussion based on deeper knowledge of the material than I can go into here).

This begins to address a major problem for recognizing certain art, including the Gurdjieff music, as objective: from the point of view of music as ordinarily understood, the Gurdjieff music is not necessarily even good music, but that doesn't prevent it from being objective in the sense understood here.

From another angle, we can say that the way in which music achieves its effects on the body feelings and mind is that the movements of its elements (tones, rhythms, textures, etc.) echo or resemble movements taking place within these centers of being, and stimulate similar movements within the listener. Similarly for other arts, except that for many arts, the associative effects of familiar visual forms, words, etc., are intrinsically subjective and therefore more difficult to disentangle from the more absolute elements of which music constructs its images of movements within. What is necessary for music to be objective is that the movements of which it presents images be those that move simultaneously and correspondingly in each of the centers. A tall order indeed, and the ability of Gurdjieff to be a midwife to such music is, according to the argument presented here, one of the most conclusive testimonies to his stature as a conscious man.

Evil, the origin of apes, mysticism, cynicism

The peace of the world is overwhelmed by people calling other people "evil". This is a highly contagious and often fatal disease. If there be evil, it is in ourselves, in adopting the hypnotic suggestions that come from every side because they seem to affirm the desires of the body/essence. It is in this sense that Gurdjieff says "body and essence are the same devil"--it is not the essence that is evil, but our becoming a slave of it. And it is only evil if we wish not to be a slave. Who wishes, and knows this evil in himself suffers; to struggle intentionally to know it is "conscious suffering", a rare thing. First we have to stop projecting evil outside, because it blinds us to ourselves. Then we have to see that our whole inner sense of identity has been taken over and now consists only of these inner attitudes that reinforce the hypnotic suggestions. These attitudes are the "little I's", fixated concepts, always fighting each other, that make it impossible to hear the Truth. In the beginning, the only hint we have of hearing the Truth is the all-too-faint memories of certain special states where this screaming chaos inside quietens briefly for some reason. In adulthood, this usually requires a profound shock. To not depend on shocks, the law of accident, it is necessary for the mind to become more responsible, not to be always the whore of the body/essence. For this it must become mature, much more impartial, able to entertain contradictory ideas and impressions without identifying with any one. To accept and follow up on uncomfortable observations of oneself without flinching. The effort to do this is the source of real individuality, inner freedom.

The whoring of the mind is one of the meanings of Beelzebub's story of the origin of apes. The mind, which is meant to be the "passive" bride of the bridegroom/master within, receiving and becoming pregnant with the creative current flowing down from above, and giving birth to new witness, instead is passive toward the animal impulses, and toward the hypnotic suggestions coming from outside.

Many of the great mystics whose witness comes down through the ages to remind us of a higher reality have gone through this passage. Mysticism is often bedfellow to reformism. Reformism only becomes mysticism when the reformism includes the reform of oneself even if it begins in the wish to reform corrupt institutions. But later, mysticism often becomes extremism and fundamentalism. I could cite examples in all the traditions. St. Augustine was one. If you haven't read his Confessions, I recommend it. Of course only if you have some independence of mind already and can separate from the reactions to the religious language, and to what you think you know of the historical consequences. This is a reaction very common today but worth struggling with in the sense discussed above. His idea of "original sin" can be understood as what we are talking about, the person identifying with the impulses of essence and forgetting the higher.

It helps to abandon all overarching theories, whether philosophical, religious, anti-religious, humanistic, or scientific. Or musical. To accept, even to court, new experiences, and to practice believing in only what is in front of you. There was a school of Greek philosophers whose practice was like this. They were called by their enemies "cynics," from the Greek word for "dog" because like a dog they only believed in what they could taste and smell. They liked the term and adopted it.

The question of revisisioning Gurdjieff

Ideas are free. But what about expressions of ideas, so-called "intellectual property"? This is a question of our times. There is now a great tension culturally between rights-holders and those who "illicitly" copy and distribute copyrighted and other "proprietary" material. In the larger Gurdjieff world, there is currently a huge tension about this, between those who feel that, say, the movements should be available to anybody, and those who want to keep them tightly controlled for use only in authorized ways within the Foundation.

What about religious and spiritual ideas? There is a long-standing tradition of re-imaging old ideas, and (re)-interpretation of traditional images and texts; sometimes these efforts eventually attain the status of "authorized" commentary; but when this re-invention seems to trespass on some orthodoxy, the consequences for the re-inventors and their followers are often dire. Sometimes, re-interpretation is for vain or destructive purposes and leads to bad consequences; but who is qualified to judge that, a Holy Office of the Inquisition? Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Is intellectual property the new frontier of post-industrial "civilization", and control of its ownership as essential to the next phase as ownership of capital was to the industrial phase? This is a widely held view, by power-possessing beings, which many would enshrine into new laws and institutions that would better protect ownership of intellectual property. In October 2000, just before the disputed election, I interviewed George W Bush on this subject (there is a story about how this came about which I will tell elsewhere). He said: "There should be a negotiated settlement between all the rights-holders" (he was including the "sharers," I think). But is such "civilization" a good thing anyway, an order backed ultimately by institutionally defined and rigorously enforced carrots of profit and threats of punishment? Or is it that, adapting what radicals in Berkeley used to say to the new more virtualized world situation, "(intellectual) property is crime"?

Can those of us concerned about this cultural turning point, possibly a great interval, think together about its implications for our work with the Gurdjieff teaching, and in the wider world?

One yearns for conditions allowing honorable free thought. One reads of periods when this seemed to be a reality, where many new and strange flowers bloomed, spiritual and intellectual. Perhaps the classical period of Athens. Then again perhaps not, given what happened to Socrates. Perhaps medieval Islam. Perhaps the Renaissance. Then again perhaps not. These three periods, by the way, are connected by a historical line of influence, and may represent different flowerings of a similar impulse.

My impression is that actually current conditions inside the Gurdjieff world are not too bad for reimaging Truth. There is always reaction and opposition, sometimes quite powerful, but in spite of that there are often ears to hear, and underneath the surface condemnation a spirit of laissez faire, let everybody go their own way to the devil. A personal aim of mine is to carve out a larger sphere for free thought under the general umbrella of Gurdjieffianism, to lead by the example of giving substance for people's inner work through far-reaching revisioning of received materials. This entails, at times, "stealing" from any source at hand: other traditions, science, history, literature, Gurdjieff' legacy, what individual people say and write, etc.

The way to be able to Do

We begin understand that we can't "do", and that there is no real "do-er" present. This is discovered by "correctly conducted self observation," which inevitably leads to being convinced of our "complete and utter mechanicality." These formulations are taken from the end of Beelzebub's Tales, chapter 48 "From the Author". I have recently been studying to connect with the last three chapters as a whole, having realized that I knew only a few high points and many of those not well. These chapters are a microcosm of the whole teaching, and address the question that comes out of knowing our mechanicality, which is: how to work?

Why was Hassein weeping in the beginning of Chapter 46 "Form and Sequence", the occasion for Beelzebub's long discourse in this chapter? Because human beings, as well as their "higher parts", due to the "consequences of the organ Kundabuffer," were not able to experience bliss during the sacred breathing; in other words, during sittings! Beelzebub explained that this showed that Hassein was able to put himself into the positition of another, and while experiencing bliss himself was able to remember those who were deprived of it. Thereby he qualified for admittance to Purgatory, that place of simultaneous bliss and anguish. So: we sit, mostly not experiencing bliss, "as a service", in order that whenever one of these for us rare and evanescent moments does appear, we can engender the anguish that we are not able in general to touch this bliss, which ought to be our birthright.

Beelzebub then explains the methods he had followed in Hassein's education. This is the "form and sequence" of the Work. An important aspect is summed up in the final paragraphs of this chapter where it is explained that in order to have "active mentation", a three-center balanced activity essential to development of higher bodies: that each center be brought up to speed individually and gradually.

At the end of the next chapter, "Inevitable Results of Impartial Mentation", Hassein actually asks the burning question, by what means if any can human beings be saved. Beelzebub's answer is memorable: memento mori. Remember that you and everyone must die.

In the final chapter, Gurdjieff, writing in his own voice, explains his own efforts to help people by bringing them The Work. After a long section on self-observation and several images of the lack of being of modern people (including the striking image of the dysfunctional cart/horse/driver), he restates the three stages of work: 1) engendering an unquenchable desire for change; 2) a long preparation; 3) "dying", to everything in ordinary life.

It is good to take things at their whole. In getting our attention around the whole of these three chapters, we begin to sense the dimension of what it would take to be able to "do". Have we ever really surveyed the whole of our lives and asked, how can we become engaged in the whole of ourselves on this path?

The Existent and the non-existent

To say that there is no do-er is only nihilistic if it is not included that there is a real Existent. In esoteric sufism, for example the works of Ibn Arabi, it is explained that all things, including ourselves, are in reality non-existent, but are "loaned" a fragment of the existentiality of The Existent in order that they may reflect a true aspect of Existence, as an image reflects an aspect of the thing it is an image of without being that thing. All complete traditions have this idea. In Gurdjieff and in other traditions such as certain Upanishads one term for The Existent is "I Am." See also the 46th psalm: "...Be still and know that 'I Am' God" (Ps. 46:10). But terminology differs, and we must be very careful to make sure we are listening to the truth behind such words and not to our associations which are subjective. Buber, when he speaks of "Soul" may (or may not) be talking about what we are calling "I Am" .

Gurdjieff, good to his promise to himself recounted in Life is Real, expounds his theory and philosophy powerfully in Beelzebub's Tales, and in Ouspensky's record. There is much of his philosophy that reminds one of Ibn Arabi, and of other traditions as well; I hasten to add this lest someone think I am preaching a sufi provenance for Gurdjieff's teaching as some have done. His work rests upon the traditions, both in its philosophy and practice. But he very carefully covers his tracks and puts his teaching into newly minted non-religious language partly to avoid confusion with people's established subjective understanding of such language, based on things they have only half-understood from contact with extant vestiges of the traditions.

He calls attention to the fact that we cannot "do". To claim to "do" would be to claim to "exist", a claim which would falsify our real situation, our "nothingness", or as he also says, our "mechanicality." Establishing personal conviction concerning this is indeed the first step of the path, without which no existential change can take place. Notwithstanding our nonexistence, the aim is to have "Real I", that is to have a connection with the current that comes down from above and grants us our being, being which is relative to and dependent upon the "I Am". One never possesses the great I Am any more than one can become God, but an individual "I Am" can be developed which is a true image if the Great Whole and which relates us to it.

In a mathematical metaphor, this would be the relation not of zero to infinity, but of One to Infinity. Unconscious man, i.e. us as we are, is indeed zero, but our potential is to be One; and then as individualized I Am, we would be infinity in relation to our unconscious parts. The full diagram of Man's situation is 0::1::∞. As Ouspensky reports, three worlds are required to establish the place of any one world.

This is our obligation: to pay back our debt of relative existence, to manifest the return current, by becoming a complete image of The Existent, to become the mirror plane between the Worlds. The way we do this is by contemplation. This word occurs many times in Beelzebub's Tales where it is described as an important being-faculty whose lack in contemporary people is one of the chief things they need to redress. It comes to English from the Latin con-templum, which refers to the marking off of a sacred space for "observation" or augury. The Latin in turn comes from the Greek Θεωρ?α, theoria, which means looking at, contemplation. In Gurdjieff practice, we mark off our body as sacred space and a sacred duration of time known as Time for Work, in which we try to bear witness to the reality of the triad of worlds and the two currents.

Proposed example of lawful inexactitude in music

This example is from African Music.

The so-called "standard pattern" of the timekeeping bell found in much west-African music is a series of strokes in 12/8 time. It has, most interestingly, the same pattern of long and short notes as the Ouspenskyan diatonic octave. Here is a diagram of the rhythm, with comparison to the octave. To sense this rhythm properly make sure you are feeling it as four tacta of three pulses each, aligned with the "main beats" in the diagram. To feel it in 6/4 time, which is the way that naive westerners are likely to feel it, is a violation of the west African understanding, as bad as if a naive non-westerner were to hear a piece in C major as if it were in D dorian. The tempo should be rather fast:

<--------o n e p e r i o d------>[repeat ...
C C# D D# E F F# G G# A A# B [C ... chromatic octave
do . re . mi fa . so . la . si[do ... diatonic scale
|_____|_____| |_____|_____|_____| whole steps
|__| |__| half steps
^ ^ "shocks"
x x x x x x x [x ... bell pattern
X . . X . . X . . X . . [X ... Main beatsThere are two shocks or unexpected short intervals. An expectation or law is set up by the two-against-three pattern of the first three strokes, then suddenly changes to an offbeat two-against-three. At the end, it changes back when the pattern starts over again. This assymetrical interrupted flow of rhythmic movement gives a sensation of breathing out and breathing in, or of the in-and-out movement of sex, or of attention. Music is created out of this scaffolding by placing yet further movements of tension and relaxation polyrhythmically against the bell pattern.

There is in West African musical thought a definite conception of something like the idea of "objective music", that combinations of specific contrasting rhythms have definite effects on the human organism. The rhythms that achieve this are thought to have been composed in ancient times by very intelligent people, some of whose names are even known in the tradition. The transmission of these rhythms in African context is entirely oral, however some Africans as well as European ethnomusicologists have begun the work of notating them.

See my article "Drum is the Ear of God" for more details, online at http://r.hodges.home.comcast.net/Ear.html .

The question of playing a role

“Inward, not consider. Outward, play a role.” These words sum up the core of the practical teaching of Gurdjieff. But what do they mean, for us, practically?

He placed importance on the order: first, “not consider”. We always consider. In spite of what we may know theoretically to be good and true, in practice our desire wants something different. And our mind falls under the sway of desire, and like a hypnotic subject we confabulate a belief to justify wanting what we want. We “consider” everything: we consider black to be white, ourselves to be better than other people, personal gratification to be noble justice. No wonder our actions so often make parodies of our intentions, though we rarely notice it! We cannot “do”, because there is no unity, no order, in our unconscious parts.

Is there a way to cut through this considering? Impartial self-observation can reveal the situation. How to be impartial enough?

But this is only the diagnosis. What it the prescription to cure the disease?

Second: “play a role”. The world is a theater. A theater of myth in which every event has, potentially, archetypal meaning. A theater of relationships, in which our intrinsic relationship to all other beings is expressed in our actions toward them. A theater of war: the holy war between good and evil, between truth and ignorance. “Theater” comes from the Greek θ?ατρον, from θ?α, "view." This root is also found in θεωρ?α, “contemplation”. To attempt an active role in life is a more complete kind of contemplation than sitting quietly; our whole nature is engaged, and intimately revealed in its lack of being, lack of capacity to do. To witness this drama and benefit from it, we must prepare, by becoming impartial, by “non-considering”.

We are not speaking of the kind of “acting” in which the actor “becomes” the role. It is the same thing as “possession”, such as in Voudou. What possesses the actor or the voudouisant is as likely to be chthonic as divine. Similar experiences occur in art, in music, in athletics, in war, in religion, in hypnotism. People fall in love with these experiences. Gurdjieff said “Love not art with your feelings.” These experiences, in spite of their attractiveness and the pleasant feeling they bring, often flattering to one’s vanity, are not under the law of evolution. They are at best semi-conscious. The voudouisant does not remember his possession; characteristically, even in music or sports one says afterwards “Something took over, I didn't know what I was doing”. Nothing substantial is deposited by mere experience. Only intentional effort is of value, and if experiences like this are sometimes the result of a real effort, the effort may create substance for growth of being, but wallowing in the result tends to dissipate it.

The other meaning of “play a role” is to fulfill a needed function. What we are speaking of then is moral action. This is not morality, not moralism, but engagement of the faculty of moral intelligence, which begins with the sense that something is needed, something is lacking, and also takes into account the consequences of actions. Moral action can only be from the whole of oneself, as a three-centered being standing consciously between god and devil, the head as it were bowing obediently to Truth and Goodness; the body touching the Beast, the animal impulses, the root of vanity and self-love; and the feelings relating us to the needs of other beings, and of ourselves. How to keep the three together?

We are under the obligation to act in the world. All our acts have an action, intentional or not. Gurdjieff asks us to try to make them intentional. To act intentionally is ultimately, to “do”. It requires us to come to an impartial intention under obedience to “I am”, then to bring the body and feelings under dominion of the mind.

All traditions at their deepest levels address this question. But they have become distorted; the question is lost in fogs of religious sentimentality, theoretical conjecture, and historical justification of political compromises. For a much deeper study of this than I can give, I strongly recommend Jacob Needleman's new book Why Can't We Be Good.

School and the Individual

The social context of inner work is School. This enables us to place in their proper context all questions about symbolism, ritual, diagrams, etc. The only way in which these can be fully understood is within School, where their true understanding is the result of a long discipline that trains the mind and feelings and body. Only when the person has been deconstructed and then reconstructed by school work can symbols etc. be integrated within the person into a system that can be relied on. It must also be emphasized that within a school there is always a vast hierarchy of different levels of understanding of symbols. This hierarchy is represented in some schools by grades of initiation, but not always, for example in the Gurdjieff school there are no formal grades but the principle is still clear that in any gathering of people some understand more, some less.

This picture is made more difficult to apply by the fact that there are false schools, imitation schools, and symbol systems that have escaped school conditions. These facts are largely the result of people in school work who lose their way and fail to maintain the hermetic seal that is an essential aspect of school. The result is that we have many books both ancient and modern, seminars, workshops, etc. in which people can quickly get the idea that they understand something from symbols. Such imitation work is far more common than real work. People actually in school work have to be careful not to be deceived when they encounter this, but once a certain level of understanding is reached a standard of discrimination is developed, an inner taste for the taste or vibration of true symbols, a vibration that must encompass the whole being (not just the mind, or the feelings), and that must connect at least three interpenetrating levels of being.

The idea of "collective mind" or "collective will" is an example. This idea, which is originally a school idea, and related ideas, have been understood in absurd ways and used to justify any number of horrifying manipulations; one example would be the way that political regimes justify the power of a few over the many by asserting divine right (medieval kings), or an "imperative of history" (as in Marxism, and even in the "manifest destiny" idea of American history).

But there are many smaller-scale absurdities too among things that various groups of people practice and "sell" these days. Examples abound: astrology and all systems of divination, Kabalistic numerology, all forms of ritual removed from their proper context of a real school, including for example Magick, Goddess worship, Sufi dancing, and even Gurdjieff movements. The study of these can have value only if the student can maintain a critical mind alongside his temporary suspension of disbelief, and the test is passed only if at the end of his study he does not believe in the system even when he can manipulate it effectively.

It is obvious why the promoters and profiteers in all such practices discourage a critical approach. In fact only a person who has been through substantial school work has the maturity to maintain critical mind in the face of such pressure. And then, is there any reason he should seek anything outside the school? This is a very important question and at a certain stage can have an affirmative answer; this must depend on what the person needs in order to fulfill his own essential task.

This is the basic question a student in a school must always ask: Why am I here? Who am I meant to be? What is the Individuality whose becoming justifies all my trouble to be born, to live, and to Work? What do I need to become Myself? This question must become constant. It must always be more central than all questions of symbol, form, ritual, idea, learning, all the things that tempt us to abandon our essential quest for Individuality.

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