This week on MindMatters we discuss a new development in research that seeks to bring together these seemingly separate subjects with Susannah Hays, MFA PhD. In her doctoral thesis and subsequent paper 'Nature as Discourse: Transdisciplinarity and Vagus Nerve Function,' Dr. Hays lays out not only the historical precedent for polyvagal system research, but also what the great teacher and mystic Gurdjieff may have been seeking to do with his exercises - and where a broader look at all of this information may be leading us towards. Join us as Dr. Hays takes us on a transdisciplinary journey through Gurdjieff, polyvagal theory and more.
Running Time: 01:14:50
Download: MP3 — 68.5 MB
Show resources:
- Susannah's website
- Harold Terry Lindahl's website
- Stephen Porges's website
- Intropy=Entropy Institute
- 'Nature as Discourse' paper
- 'Generative Art' paper
- III World Congress of Transdisciplinarity Virtual (featuring Hays, Porges, Lindhall, and Azize)
Reader Comments
Can anybody elaborate on ‘Spirit to enter them...’ most people seem to have a spirit that’s their own, even if underdeveloped, unrefined and overcompensated by some persona-lity...
Is she talking about possession?
It's an unfortunate and somewhat frequent occurence that people who come across the Fourth Way canon, suck it all up like a fly eating liquid sugar, then go on to devote themselves to doing the exact opposite of those ideas. Joining and forming spirit-of-the-cardboard colonies of one sort or another, writing cardboard-y books, appearing in cardboard-y podcasts, etc. It's insufferable.
I don’t know, but perhaps if G.I was around today his end might be similar to Chrysippus
Although there’s a bit of an ass in everybody... anybody got any figs, I’m all out.
Damn sure he didn't say "everything more cardboardy".
By their 'vivid' ye shall know them.
By their 'cardboardy' ye shall know them too.
Anyway her perspective clears up some things.
At 25:50:00 Harrison asks a question about "Polyvagal" theory. The reason she's on the podcast. But she punts the whole question into Puff the Magic Question. Well it's too high and difficult for you pleas....do listen again. Doctor Hays really has little use for inconsequential morons like you and me. Just get her erudite words into mainstream. So she can lecture us all on what Gurdjieff and his ilk really meant. Yes...you...morons! /sarcasm/
My suffable groveling to Dr. Hayes and her minions. (Spittle dripping from my uneducated SOTT watching/reading lips).
God...shovel her some antidepressants and a few antipsychotics. Maybe a pill for an understanding of humanity as well. I hope Jospeh Azizzi gets winds of this and stays away from this narcissist-psychotic. Really!!
I only made it through the first ten minutes of eye-rollings, so as regards polyvagal theory, I assume this is based on Gurdjieff utterings in Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson re 'the wandering nerves'.
Will probably come back and listen to the rest later.
You never know, I might find out something I didn't know already.
But if you waver...remember Oliver Cromwell's sage words.
" I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be wrong". We, I or you..could be. But, nah. The Doctor is horrendous. LOl!
Holy hasnamussian Lentrohamsaninisms, Batman!!!!
So 'wired for connection' is redundant to always already connected - but the experience of anything is always through SOME differentiation - but not necessarily set as polarised conflict. Refractive colours (or qualities of light) do not compete such much as complement, contrast and share in the nature of light.
That there are physiological as well as symbolic representations of the internalised structural conditionings or framework of definition and core belief is - well of course - but the attempt to generate a myth for our existence from observed conditions has to also fully accept that the parameters of our conceptual and perceptual instrument are generating the full experience as a total expression - now.
Because we are in a linear mind of unfolding cause and effect we are unaware of the deeper nature of Cause-Event as Synchronicity or total connection - as this moment of experience.
That Meaning extends FROM wholeness rather than as a result of All the king’s horses and all the king’s men is in the formless qualities of Life Being - that is lost to a mind set in 'separation trauma' as it object condition.
The lockdown into a masked reality is being reflected in its current covid reiteration.
See The Pattern.
Artists Lindhal and Hays wish to promote Objective Art, ( conscious) which if I have understood correctly, they claim is superior to subjective art. ('freed 'from consciousness) The Vagus Nerve and Gurdjieff studies has given their work a boost. Here I disagree as I think many painters and musicians often start from subjective doodles or melodies then flesh out consciously, therefore both work in harmony. I sense pretension, one one-upmanship in this desire for superiority.
Whilst I appreciated the artistic work of both I did not feel that their art was in anyway higher, superior or transcendent.
Extract from ‘Alfred Orage’s commentaries on Gurdjieff’s ‘ Beelzebub’s Tales to his Grandson’’.
Lentrohamsanin‘s critique was that of a good philosopher but a pure rationalist-Objective Reason without Objective Conscience. His views was that man was created for service therefore he was a slave. Plausibly, and craftily he proposed to repudiate this service and attain to absolute freedom. He considered it possible to attain this without making the effort entailed in conscious labor and voluntary suffering.
In one sense Lentrohamsanin was the forerunner of our spiritual ancestor, the Greeks and the Romans, who are regarded by us as the beginning of civilization-anything before them being barbarous and barbaric. But Gurdjieff says that the ancient Babylonian civilization was far superior to the Greeks, which latter descends, not from Ashiata Shiemash but from Lentrohamsanin-the rationalist with no higher emotional urge.
In each of us Lentrohamsanin tries to undo the work of Ashiata Shiemash-an unconscious force working against a conscious force. In this Work, the work that we are engaged in, some people in whom knowledge has outstripped understanding may not be able to endure the suffering which follows-the sense of guilt, remorse, self-reproach, the despair at feeling that they are unable to do anything about themselves. This is the dark night of the soul.
Some may go off at a tangent, looking for an easier way, the way of a philosophical school for example; or an Eastern cult unsuited to the Western Psyche; or they may become Lentrohamsanins and, with the best of all egotistical motives, actually become opposed to the work. This Work is a strong positive, as Gurdjieff says: ‘A strong positive provokes a strong negative’. Lentrohamsanin is the personification in us of the unwillingness to bear the suffering that is necessary to obtain Objective Conscience parallel with the attaining of Objective Reason.
OMG. The intonation. It's like with every breath she takes she's secretly willing all the geraniums in my window boxes to die.
Vagal nutrition tip: Raw eggs and cigarettes. Not necessarily at the same time though.
"I'm meant to be vibrating at a certain rate, a finer rate than I was born with."
You've got a way to go, Miss.
[Link]
Is it some kind of deadly fiendish organic portal hive-mind plot?
I don't understand what it is. Never have.
I guess... Would explain some of it, but even then....
[Link]
For all you plant-based fart-arses out there....[Link]
Higher emotional centre = fast.
Either that, or she's drugged off her nut. Or both.
Now I must go to YT and eviscerate commenters to this sham of a Doctor. Be well!
No, me neither.
All those little smiles, like a small dog baring its teeth.
That's the thing about the Gurdjieff work. You wear it on your face. You can't fake this stuff. Well you can, but you'll be caught out by anyone who's made even a small amount of progress in regard to 'work on oneself'.
That is likely the main reason I reacted to her spiel. False, haughty elitist drivel. What did G. call it...?? Oh yes...the "lunatic". Some one who wants to change the world...but is a failure in their own existence. Hahaha!!
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Also, these kind of ideas are likely to square peg as poorly into the round hole of 21st century academe as they do into 21st century legacy new age dharma bum-ese. It couldn't be any other way.
All the people I've ever known who've actually made any progress at all with the Gurdjieff work, as opposed to merely learning work language like a parakeet have been down to Earth practical people.
'Building contractor', that kind of thing.
Gurdjieff said words to that effect himself. This work is for normal people.
I might check out Porges stuff, regardless. You never know, I might find out something I didn't know already.
I think for a number of reasons it was worth having Hays on the show.
As re SOTT: This place, all chock full of SOTTites, rules!
RC
This woman has nothing to offer to the world of human spirituality. She is the new age of spirituality, all talk, a FA Phd in thesis, garnered, purely from a theoretical background, not understanding the concepts what it means to be living in a real world, in essence, what is means to be human.
I have come across this when BBC presented Ice Art to the Public from the
British Museum. all MFA prior students, they haven't a clue, this is the new age of academic archeology
They interpret, the world, in their own minds
[Link]
Or so it seems to me.
But mind you, what else could they have done?
LOL.
i guess i might be a bit slow/thick?
And the video, was a representation of the thought, of the peoples that live millennia ago that lived and survived great upheavals, and the interpretations of the so called academics of our time are nothing more fantasy in there own minds, a confabulation if you will.