Harrison Koehli and Elan Martin
Sott.netFri, 04 Aug 2023 00:00 UTC
Do human beings have 'higher bodies'? Is there an essence or essential part of one's being that individuals can consciously help to grow? And what does the development of the personality have to do with these possibilities? Philosopher and teacher G.I. Gurdjieff presented the world with an esoteric framework for self-development that has been carried forward by a number of thinkers.
What does esoteric growth look and feel like? What are some of the processes involved? And how does one go about verifying that such a process is even occurring? Does an inner questioning end when one reaches a higher state, or does it just go deeper? Joining us for his third appearance on MindMatters is author/teacher Alan Francis. Alan's decades of experience with Gurdjieff's work have helped him crystalize some insights as to how we may become more than what we are. He is the head of the
International School of the Fourth Way, and the author of '
Secrets of the Fourth Way.'
Running Time: 01:27:54
Download: MP3 — 121 MB
Harrison Koehli co-hosts SOTT Radio Network's
MindMatters, and is an editor for
Red Pill Press. He has been interviewed on several North American radio shows about his writings on the study of ponerology. In addition to music and books, Harrison enjoys tobacco and bacon (often at the same time) and dislikes cell phones, vegetables, and fascists (commies too).
Born and raised in New York City, Elan has been an editor for SOTT.net since 2014 and is a co-host for
MindMatters. He enjoys seeing and sharing what's true about our profoundly and rapidly changing world.
Reader Comments
One of the difficulties of work on oneself, is it begins from your identity being within the chief feature and your current beliefs about who you are. This means that you think about the system’s ideas from the part of your being that the system is trying to get you to observe, meaning your identity needs to move to the observer. For example, on numerous occasions “I” would get frustrated and upset with certain ideas and trying to do them, when “I” would exclaim, “I do not understand” with a feeling of failure. Then one day, I realized that particular “I” will never understand, the observer I was separate from it, and I understood. You can see how easy it is to use words of the system without understanding in your being.
This affects much more. If one has a chief feature of “dominance” one will try to dominate oneself with the system ideas. If one has a feature of “power” one will try to overpower oneself. If one has a feature of “self-pity” one will always fail in working on oneself. Gurdjieff said the one thing people will not sacrifice is their suffering. From experience, you go beyond this through “love” or “service” to someone or something higher.
What is necessary to grow the observer? You have to have experiences and you have to have the attitude that this is a necessity for me to learn. The experiences in a school involve physical work or exercises, and they involve working with other people. This is pressure. This is friction. Do you want to dig a trench in the sun? Do you want to work with a “lazy” person who wants to sit in the shade? Do you want to work with a person who is more fit than you and works faster? The pressure and friction in a normal situation would lead you to express negativity or quit being around someone.
What is necessary to grow will? You work beyond your self-perceived limits. It is just like any athlete who wants to be the best they can be in their sport. They work, they build endurance, agility, skill, flexibility, programmed movements, etc. Most people, they work only to their perceived limit. For some people their life itself pushes them beyond their perceived limit. We are entering a time when we will all be pressured more and more. There is another beyond when higher centers enter, which the best athletes experience and call it "the zone".
I haven’t read Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson. I have read most of Ouspensky. Gurdjieff gave the advice that to develop “attention” read Beelzelbub 3 times. If you read the first paragraph of Beelzebub it is one sentence. You cannot read it mechanically if you are to understand. There are multiple threads that you have to hold in mind as you read. As an experiment read it.
I have never resonated with the phrase “deputy steward”, so you have to think about it. You are trying to develop a “master”, real I, authentic individuality. You are in a process, the master has not arrived. The process demands that you do things you haven’t done before, like work with people who are different from you, don’t express negativity, observe yourself in activities, etc. You have to use your existing personality to make efforts to work. What does it mean? It is your effort to work and use it for your self-observation. Will you fail? Many times. Will you be confused? Many times.
One of the realizations that came to me in a meeting, was that it is “imagination” to think you can do this work alone. Why? Mostly because you are one point of view and one essence that thinks it has the “right” point of view. If you think you can do everything for a group, that is imagination and self-defeating. In my view, Gurdjieff’s Essentuki group of 12(?) was his experiment in this area. I wonder sometimes what happened to each of the members of that group, besides Ouspensky. A group is an experiment, a journey, an adventure, where you are not tied to knowing everything. Gurdjieff and Ouspensky gave too much knowledge, in my view, and as noted this causes an imbalance between knowledge and being. Chief feature becomes adept at using the language to maintain itself.
One of the first focuses is self-observation. How do you do it? What are the conditions that make it more accessible? The first thing to observe, is that when you are comfortable and in your comfort zone, you don’t observe. Alan said, What the hell is amber? Then gave some meanings derived from Beelzebub, like energy, fuel, friction(?). I would suggest Gurdjieff is using it as a symbol that represents requirements for the work. The second thing to observe, is that when you have friction with physical work or other people, and you make the effort to not react, you can observe yourself. Friction and pressure are required for self-observation. For example, you have 2 people working together washing dishes, one has a chief feature of fear and the other power. Power will act on or over others, fear will resist and react to power. This creates the dynamic for self-observation, if you make it the aim. If you don’t use this time to learn, you don’t learn.
You begin to see how judgment is an obstacle to being. The key to the work is self-remembering and the first steps are self-observation. What does self-remembering require? Energy, but energy of a certain vibration per the ray of creation. This gives 2 directions in the work. How do you limit loss of energy? Limit expression of negativity, unnecessary talk, imagination, reactions and identification. How do you gain useful energy? This can be an experiment for each individual. Shakespeare plays, as an audience or a performer? Music? We each have a comfort zone. Art? We each have a comfort zone. Literature? We each have a comfort zone. This is an experiment.
....in that moment .
For myself, it was a given, the mechanical has always been accompanied by an uncomfortable feeling of perdition, a disconnect that could never be, the fountainhead, always near, always heard, why ? perhaps I hadn't drifted far from it, weakened in distance, contaminated by oceans of time set assimilation, though as it's spume does have the unfortunate addiction to extemporize in tides of aimless repetition, the ability to effect it's flow and touch home with increasing ease, is the invigorating force and sublime essential...that gives life - to life.
Humans are vehicles, liken to ants, programmed to achieve tasks so as to ensure the system survives.
When one becomes detached ( few situations can promote this, pain is one ) the system is no longer the goal and the body is no more than a means to and ends, at this junction one accesses one inner self.
The matrix is real.
What do we observe? This is one aspect. Gurdjieff described man/woman as 3 brain beings: intellectual, emotional, moving/instinctive. Each of these brain/center’s activities can be divided by attention. Is the attention mechanical/moving? Is the attention drawn/attracted? Is the attention directed/controlled? These correspond to parts of each center. The mechanical/moving part of each brain/center is the library for each domain.
The moving center’s mechanical part contains all of your learned movements and the maps of spatial relationships in the house, yard, park, city. Think of all the games, bicycles, cars, musical instruments that you have learned. This is your individual library of movement. Much of our day to day moving activities are simply mechanical functioning of this part.
The same is for each other brain/center. The emotional center’s mechanical/moving part is your library of emotions and emotional reactions and communication you have learned. The first thing to note, is our moving/instinctive brain has training to develop playing a game like basketball or driving a car. How do you learn similar skills in the emotional brain? Think of a ballet dancer expressing through movement emotional states. Think of an actor like Derek Jacobi portraying the emotional state of a Macbeth. Think of a pianist or a singer or artist. There is some effort to teach emotional intelligence, but not effectively. This is a direction.
In the intellectual center is the same. The mechanical part of the intellectual center contains your library of readings, discussions, and thoughts that have been stored over the years. Obviously usage determines if it remains accessible. When Gurdjieff talks of formatory mind this is the part of the intellectual brain he is directing attention to. Why? Because this part is what many people call “thinking”. It is simply finding a stored thought and responding to a situation with it. However, these tapes are often extremes like “All Jews are hateful” or “All MAGA are terrorists.” One of the prime characteristics of this “thinking” is either/or, yes/no, good/bad evaluations. What did Bush say? “You are either with us or against us.” Another characteristic of formatory mind is rigidity and dogmatic beliefs. It cannot adapt to a change of circumstances, it cannot reason.
All of these mechanical parts of centers do not require attention. How are you going to observe them? One way is to introduce a change, or friction, into common speech, common movement, common emotions. This will show how difficult it is to remember the change because that part of the brains works on ease and flow and no attention. It will also show how quickly those parts learn to use the change mechanically. The point of such exercises is not to get good at them, but to create the conditions for observation. How will various chief features respond and interact?
Keep a focused attention in meetings to one direction. This raises the energy. Preferably it is an area you have inner experience with, or one that you are interested in exploring. Gurdjieff said that to learn more, you have to teach. Regardless of other people you can learn from any experience.
Along the same line, don’t allow questions to deviate you from the focus. If the question does not connect, indicate that as a group you will return to it at another time. Any single idea can be a focus, like understanding and formatory mind. Set the aim to not be scattered in many directions.
One aspect of true personality, is to protect essence. Chief feature of others can try to manipulate you. Try to get a sense of sincerity with others which is essence which is what you should expect.
The quote from Hamlet, “This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.”
In our current time, where does the education of the emotional center occur? What teaches you to distinguish between emotional levels? What does TV teach? What does Disney teach? Who are the emotional models of today? What are higher levels versus lower levels of emotions? What is woman regarding emotional teaching? Where do we find emotional teaching and thought regarding levels? In the history of religions what emotional teachings did they include? What is in your own emotional library? What is in the emotional library of a Woke adult-child? What does culture teach of emotional connections? In a time when “fear” of death, weather disaster, starvation, “virus”, “alien invasion” are promoted, where is the emotional teaching of courage?
Gurdjieff indicated that the being of people in the early 20th century was low and imbalanced when compared to earlier times. I would suggest much of that is because the emotional development of people has been stunted and directed towards triviality, and “scientific materialism”.
Much of our higher emotional teachings are in the arts: Bach’s St. Matthews’s Passion, Shakespeare plays, Homer’s Odyssey, Sufi poetry of Kabir and Hafiz, philosophy of Plato, Rembrandt’s paintings, the Parthenon, Venus de Milo sculpture, Swan Lake ballet, Gospel of Matthew.
Here is what one Hindi teacher states: “[The Heart] is the Centre of spiritual experience according to the testimony of Sages. The spiritual Heart-centre is quite different from the blood- propelling, muscular organ known by the same name. The spiritual Heart-centre is not an organ of the body. All that you can say of the Heart is that it is the very Core of your being, that [with] which you are really identical (as the word in Sanskrit literally means), whether you are awake, asleep or dreaming, whether you are engaged in work or immersed in Samadhi. (Ramana Maharshi, MG, 73.)
From this point of view, you can understand Jesus attacking the money-changers, merchants and others who have set up shop in the temple. The money-changers and others are aspects of chief feature and ego within each person. This sheds light on the 40-nights Jesus spent being tempted. His life represents everyone’s choices; Katy Perry chose fame and fortune over humility and faith. What has to be sacrificed in the end? If you find a book of Rembrandt self-portraits you see that one of his intents was to examine his personal identity. The portraits move from vanity and self-importance to self-realization which involves suffering.
When you introduce a neophyte to a work of art and describe it to them as a C influence, chances are that it will be received by that person as an A influence or a B influence, the wind will change and no further progress will be made.
And that is as true of The Fourth Way as it is of anything, which is a most unfortunate state of affairs.
Ouspensky said something not quite the same but similar.... "Oh I really like Robert Fripp's music. Did you know he's really into Gurdjieff?" = A influence.
"Oh I really like John Lennon's music. He sang about peace" = A influence.
"Oh I really like Oliver Anthony. He is an authentic man of the people with a folksy ginger beard and he plays on an authentic blues-lore-fabulous Gretsch G9220 Bobtail Resonator" = A influence.
For those attracted to the Fourth Way work, they have a magnetic center that is attracted to B influence, and over time the attraction grows. What is B influence? Mostly it is art, music, literature, poetry, Teachings of individuals who awakened like Buddha, Lao Tzu, Rumi, Jesus, and others.
I read 'em all.
G. I. Gurdjieff was an unfriendly manipulator for his own needs and wants. He used people in such a conniving way as to leave his helpers guessing, walking egg shells to do perfect make person (anxiety ridden), unnecessarily stressed and sometimes in fear, lingering fear. Spellbound in confusion or a resentful attitude towards the work and himself. He wasn't concern nor happy about any of the people whom help him soo much. Gurdjieff was a self made idiot. I think gurdjieff seen the world through gurdjieff towards the last decade of his life and turned against just about everyone. Besides him not cleaning up after himself which shows inner turmoil. Sure he gave knowledge but at a price that far exceeded the average person an exceptional idiot had to have been fooled that long to support him when his response was more than likely suspicious and hostile or at best He would reduce a person bare without the spirit of life, inspiration nor feelings of gratitude although he speaks highly of the consciousness; as if no person besides him could know as much as he. He became towards the end of life of that which he schooled against that is being mechanical. He had genius to overlook the feelings and love of others. Though his times of living in the mid 1800 to mid 1900 corruption and ponerology was a outwardly normalcy manifestation. So I think he manifested an inner cunning, clever, crafty exploiter a skillful or masterful puller of strings and a communicator of the finest kind. He left his helpers in mental disarray. Eventually he struggle against himself due to an inner pride of self-struggle and lost the overall balance and perspective before he died. He enjoyed fritz peters because fritz was mechanical he could use him; only Peters was smart enough to wise up further than rest. Maybe this was rare improving story when it came to the Chateau Le Prieure. So the authoritarian in gurdjieff was something of a tyrant and he required too much obedience to where couldn't be the self. Although G.I. Gurdjieff paid too much of price in his life to meet people at least half way. Gurdjieff was traumatized in his earlier years to give a damn about others for very long.
Dwoods44 "We all lose when bullying and personal attacks become a substitute for genuine conversation and principled disagreement" - I have no idea
When G.I.Gurdjieff agree with the ptb he became obnoxious with anger and narcissistic inner rage that he himself failed to mitigate or transmute out of himself. He became bitter in his later years and turn against people even more in his sitting pessimistic belief center.
Starview-from-ground When G.I.Gurdjieff agree with the parasitic psychopathic ptb he became obnoxious with anger and narcissistic inner rage that he himself failed to mitigate or transmute out of himself. He became bitter in his later years and turn against people even more in his sitting pessimistic belief center.
"It is difficult with many 'gurus' to determine if they are honest and sincere in their lives and teachings. With Gurdjieff there is no such difficulty."
[Link]
When G.I.Gurdjieff agree with the parasitic psychopathic ptb he became obnoxious with anger and narcissistic inner rage that he himself failed to mitigate or transmute out of himself. He became bitter in his later years and turn against people even more in his sitting pessimistic belief center.
Well, to be fair I guess is to be more informative.
"Every criticism of modern life and of human history is perfectly just, and this is perhaps one of the most important things in the book, since it is absolutely necessary to understand that all our ideas have been falsified - before we have been able to correct at least some of them. The Greeks and the Romans have been responsible for putting in train fundamental errors - and then the Germans.... It is necessary to state that a great part of the book is not clear, and one has the right to suspect that G.G. [meaning Georgii Gurdjieff] has done this intentionally."
(Commentary by Denis Saurat)
[Link]
By my estimation G. I Gurdjieff is a borderline sociopath if not one. And a whore! He search for conscience probably because he didn't have one.
His thesis also states that alcohol, cigarettes and general bon-vivant-ry were a fundamental part of The Gurdjieff Work, and it's supported not only by common sense, but also by Fourth Way literature, that The Work is meant to be practiced 'within the general life' and not separate from it.
I think his theory does have at least some merit, and it should also be noted that Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson contains many warnings against religious puritanism and austere shit.
How do one cleverly and cloak a type of psychic acceptance of pathology. How does the sts manufactured system seed acceptance of psychopathy. Within the teachings or the teacher so that weary searchers of truth and wanting to wake up carry on that pathological seed. The unconscious acceptance do to being gullible and naive can have fertile ground to survive and transmogrify it's cloaked nature. Sex is the tool. You have a lot of good people whom are willing to take shit to make something out of it. Not so much the knowledge but the outward acceptance of being treated like shit so that ones clarity is masked and submitting becomes an option and a path for seeding and growth of a callous pathological perspective or outlook upon other people and life.
I'm not convincing anyone what I think. I don't have much of a belief center so I say it's up to any to understand something about themselves and the world in which they live. These are my simple mentation of observation which is not always true to the accuracy of objectivity.
Probably slightly paraphrasing here but somewhere in ISOTM, Gurdjieff says "Work cannot progress on a level lower than life".
Stinking of Zen is most definitely on a level lower than life
"Everything more vivid".
Haciendo y Deshaciendo Se Va Aprendiendo" –Proverbio español
"Que cada palo aguante su vela."
"Camarón que se duerme se lo lleva la corriente."
"El camarón que se duerme, se lo lleva la corriente."
Benjamin Franklin's autobiography is about his work on himself through virtues.
Here is a list from the internet, some have an intellectual component.
Virtues are the essence of our character and character does indeed determine destiny.
Acceptance Assertiveness Authenticity Beauty Caring Cleanliness Commitment Compassion Confidence Consideration Contentment Cooperation Courage Creativity Detachment Determination Dignity Encouragement Enthusiasm Ethical Excellence Fairness Faith Flexibility Forgiveness Friendliness Generosity Gentleness Graciousness Gratitude Harmonious Helpfulness Honesty Honor Hope Humility Idealism Integrity Imaginative Joyfulness Justice Kindness Love Loyalty Moderation Modesty Optimistic Orderliness Passionate Patience Peace Perseverance Preparedness Purposefulness Reliability Respect Responsibility Reverence Self-discipline Service Sincerity Tact Temperate Tenacious Thankfulness Tolerance Trust Truthfulness Understanding Unity Visionary Wisdom Wonder
Human [Link]
Correction Gurdjieff was not a sociopath. That I have read more of his thoughts and interactions with his pupils and life experiences. Although G. Gurdjieff not the end all be all..
We each have experiences that teach us profound lessons. It is important to remember these and use them. On one occasion, I slammed my thumb in a car door while driving at night. The pain was piercing. My whole identity was sucked into this pain. Since I was driving a long distance, I tried my best for hours to detach myself from this pain. Finally, I said out loud “I give up, I can’t do it.” At that moment, I became separate from the pain. How did that come to be?
At one time, I spoke this phrase “The meaning of the words must come from your own experience.” This was the meaning behind this experience. We use the word identification as indicating our identity is sucked into events or experiences. This experience was demonstrating that within us there is something which tries to work, our sense of identity, is often exactly what must be released. Our sense of I must move to being.
What was the process, “giving up”? It was acceptance of the moment as it was. It was not trying to change the moment or fight the pain or change myself. Much of our unnecessary suffering is simply not accepting ourselves and the situations we are in. Acceptance opens a door to experiencing events, suffering, and experiences differently.
Yin
Mother, bio... until we know we are OUR Moher's child. Made of MATER..
3D material body.
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