Reclusland

“Soon, Gurdjieff gave the group a new series of exercises which required a complex and sustained inner attention beyond anything that had before been attempted.  He asked them to take a pledge before beginning each new exercise that ‘we would not use this for the self, but for all humanity’ – what Gurdjieff expressed as ‘good-wishing-for-all’.”

“For Kathryn, this opened up an entirely new perspective.  ‘This “good-wishing-for-all” vow,’ she said, ‘so deeply moving in intent, had a tremendous effect on me.  For the first time in my life, I felt that I was truly doing something for humanity as I strove to make my own molecule of it more perfect.  The meaning of this Work, which had first seemed quite egotistical and self-centered, suddenly blossomed out like a tree of life encompassing in its myriad branchings the entire human family…. It was my first experiencing of the Mystical Body of Christ, of which I knew nothing then.”

Another excerpt from William Patrick Patterson’s “Ladies of the Rope”.  Kathryn Hulme was another member of the Rope.  Included in the above idea can be seen Gandhi’s “We need to be the change we wish to see in the world” and Buckminster Fuller’s idea of synergy.  One can also see similarities here to the idea of the World House-Earth Body mentioned in the long Martin Prechtel quote from last week.

“It is a madness that will pass, only to be succeeded by another.  In the current of madness even Hitler isn’t to blame – he’s merely a tool of Nature: on the theory that Nature needs certain emanations and gets them – millions of human beings agonizing over war – all those vibrations filling the invisible universes… The wish to go on, the struggle not to fall back – all this makes a friction that produces combustion…and out of these energies springs a fire”

This is not meant to excuse the violence and loss of life Hitler caused, but is rather an attempt to make sense of the senseless truth of his existence and rise to power.  When read in conjunction with yesterday’s post from Martin Prechtel, perhaps something of the sense here can be understood.

Also, just for informational purposes, Margaret Anderson was a student of Gurdjieff, a member of a group of women student’s Gurdjieff worked with late in his life.  They were known as “The Rope” and much more can be read about them (and Mr. Gurdjieff himself, thanks to the wonderful notes they took during their meetings with him) in William Patrick Patterson’s “Ladies of the Rope”.  Margaret’s take on the meaning and purpose of the existence of war is a brief outline of the fuller view expressed in Gurdjieff’s “Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson“, in particular, chapter 43, entitled “Beelzebub’s Survey of the Process of the Periodic Reciprocal Destruction of Men, or Beelzebub’s Opinion of War”

“We knew, too, that the whole world was spiritually endangered.  Shamans knew this because we were shown during our training and initiation how the world is actually one big body.  The world is also a sacred building called The House of the World, and our own individual bodies are made like it and are also called House of the World.  Inside the other world of our bodies, everything that can be found in the outer world also exists.  When spirits see us, they see a beautiful house, a temple.  When we see them, we see the world.

<…>

When an individual falls ill, something in his World House-Earth Body is being attacked, gnawed away, eroded, shed, burnt, dismembered, or is beginning to fade because of neglect.  The shaman assesses the destruction and, after dealing with the cause, begins rebuilding the World House of that person’s body by remembering all its parts back to life – by making it echo off the Original Flowering Earth, what shamans call creation, the Big Earth House Temple.

<…>

The secret of village togetherness and happiness had always been the generosity of its people, but the secret to that generosity was village inefficiency and decay.  The House of the World, like our village huts and our human bodies, no matter how magnificent, is not built to last very long.  Because of this, all life must be regularly renewed.  To do this, the villagers come together once a year at least, to work on putting back together somebody’s hut, talking, laughing, feasting, and helping wherever they can in a gradual, graceful way.  This way, each family’s place in the village is reestablished and remembered.

If a house is built too well, so efficiently that it is permanent and refuses to fall apart, then people have no reason to come together.  Though the house stays together, the people fall apart, and nothing gets renewed.  Smart people might be able to invent excuses to get together, but this is too abstract and hollow, and some contrivance insults the soul.  People have a genuine need to make things with their ingenuity and with their hands.

This coming together to gather water by hand, to do communal tasks gracefully – tasks that a machine could do in an instant anonymously – or to repair rickety houses ensures that the very smiley togetherness so missing in the pre-planned, alienated lives of modern civilization.  When a Tzutujil (Mayan) says he needs to be healed, he asks the shaman to chumij, or replaster, him.  When we begin to fade, the shaman plasters us with remembrance so that we can shine again.

Ironically, the great amounts of unnatural violence, senseless killing, and mechanized warfare that we see these days signals extreme fear in the face of natural death and decay.  These difficult conditions come about when a people are not truly at home.  Unable to re-create the House of the World as we shamans do, subscribers to modernity jettison all ideas of ritual life and feeding the spirits.  Instead they look for permanent solutions, such as nuclear bombs, war, concentration camps, laws, and ideals that must be upheld and defended.  All this activity is a search for  increased security to protect uninitiated people from what they perceive as a hostile universe.

<…>

Though the modern world can appear somewhat soulless and its people numbed and asleep, I discovered that deeply in the World House of their bodies live resourceful, intelligent, soulful refugees who, like myself, waited and wondered when they would ever be welcomed back home again.

When I divine the Earth Bodies of many people of today, their worlds look like a post-war country, bombed out, dry, flowerless, and tired.  That flat devastation wreaked upon these people’s Earth Body needs renewing.  Their World House needs reassembling, replastering; it has to be remembered back to life, so that the faraway native souls, their natural indigenous beings, can return to their homes.  Maybe this is why Chiviliu sent me away, to sing and speak these people’s lives back together.  After all, he said that the destruction was coming from them.  Our world was being killed by people whose naturalness had been disenfranchised long ago.”

“You can only hate yourself if you have some kind of stand point or some kind of idea about who you are supposed to be, and then who you are of course doesn’t measure up, so you hate that. You hate who you *actually* are, you hate your tenderness, you hate your light, you hate your darkness. So the more we let go of our story line, the less reference points we have to hate ourselves.” ~ Reggie Ray

Since one story is pretty obviously a bad thing, is it possible to live with multiple stories?  What would doing so do to our sense of identity?

But oh, the perils of leadership in a species so anxious to be told what to do.  How little they knew of what they created by their demands.  Leaders made mistakes.  And those mistakes, amplified by the numbers who followed without questioning, moved inevitably toward greater disasters.

—>

CHANGING LINE:
Hexagram Fifty-Two/Line Three

Nine in the third place means:
Keeping his hips still.
Making his sacrum stiff.
Dangerous. The heart suffocates.

This refers to enforced quiet. The restless heart is to be subdued by forcible means. But fire when it is smothered changes into acrid smoke that suffocates as it spreads. Therefore, in exercises in meditation and concentration, one ought not to try to force results. Rather, calmness must develop naturally out of a state of inner composure. If one tries to induce calmness by means of artificial rigidity, meditation will lead to very unwholesome results.

All this talk of “animals” has got me thinking.  If our desires and thoughts can be compared to animals that, when seen clearly, run about fairly randomly within the wilderness of our own naked awareness, what does that say about the whole “free will vs. determination” debate?  When desires, which are the source of any “willed” action, are seen to be separate, impermanent, component “creatures” which come and go as they will, can the idea of a personal will even exist?

Gurdjieff would have said yes; BUT in his system, the ability to “will” or “to do” was something only possible for a very realized being, impossible for most of us standard grade three-centered-beings.  The Buddha (and please do correct me if you think I’m wrong on any of this) would have said no; no-self + dukkha + impermanence leaves little ground for a “will” to take root.  Christians have the whole “thy will be done” thing.  And Hindus, I believe, are sort of all over the map about that, depending on which school of Hindu thought one subscribes to.

Since there is no unity among the great religions and traditions, we standard level folk can’t point any fingers and say “well, everyone says it’s like that, so it must be so.  And it’s more fun that way I think (which might be why they’ve done us the favor of disagreeing).  However, while appreciating the fun that comes along with any good mystery, I also kind of have my own opinion on the matter, one that was recalled to mind recently by the quote on “animals” from Herbert and Daumal.

To whit: “free will” takes as its base the idea that we can do what we want.  Yet this doesn’t take into account that we do not choose our desires.  That is, discovering that we desire a certain outcome, we cannot then choose to change desires and begin to desire a totally different outcome.  We can choose to act on one or another of our many desires, and we can choose the degree of free rein we allow them, but this is not the same as choosing what it is that we will. Given that we cannot choose to will, I do not see how we can actually claim to have anything a personal will.  If anything, we are engaged in a supremely difficult balancing act of different desires while things change around us at a rapid, rapid pace.  Not a good basis for saying that we control our own fates.

For me, this pretty much wraps up the whole “free will vs. determination” thing, in a fairly logical manner, without resorting to any sort of dogmatism.  Total free will is impossible, but, at the same time, it does not follow that everything is already 100% determined.  It’s a false argument.  Stuff just comes up, be it “external” stuff or “internal” stuff, and all we can do is choose when and how they react with each other.  There is choice in that, and some room to exercise a bit of will power, but only within limited options.  And chances are, we are much more limited by the options than we care to admit.

If you realize that all things change,
there is nothing you will try to hold on to.
If you aren’t afraid of dying,
there is nothing you can’t achieve.

Trying to control the future
is like trying to take the master carpenter’s place.
When you handle the master carpenter’s tools,
chances are that you’ll cut your hand.

So yeah, that’s my thoughts on the matter.  However, I do think there’s a good chance I’m missing something in the argument.  Does it hold weight?  Is it water-tight?  Since I personally quite like the whole explanation, it says to me that I need an outside opinion on that matter.  So, what do you say, oh wise and learned readership?  Am I missing any logical circuits there?  Anything unnoticed dimensions that make the whole thing much more ambiguous than what I’ve laid out above?  I’d actually like to see this picked apart here, so please, do me the favor of doing so.

From “Keys to a Great Poetic Game – #15”

“To the same light, perpetually active in its inaction, organic functions that contribute to the maintenance of the corporal form and those more subtly organized functions that constitute within the body, bodies of many particular desires are enfolded. Since I stop considering them as my nature or as my property, they tend immediately to reunite with nature which ceases, at the same instant, to be considered as something exterior. They now appear as animals which have been enclosed for a long time within the human skin and which, once freed, hasten to rejoin their own packs.”

“So who asks: What am I?”

“Dangerous question.  Asking it put her in a universe where nothing was quite human.  Nothing matched the undefined thing she sought.  All around her, clowns, wild animals and puppets reacted to the pull of hidden strings.  She sensed the strings that jerked her into action.”

<…>

“Strings. What came with the egg?  We speak glibly of ‘the mind at its beginning’. But what was I before the pressures of living shaped me?”

So I am back in Portland for the foreseeable future.   No more traveling except for a short trip in October and then Thanksgiving in Seattle.  However, I am also at the point where I need to find myself some gainful employment.  I’ve also got several other things I’m juggling, so posting here may be a bit more sporadic, unfortunately.  The goal is still a post every weekday, but if I am honest with myself, I have to admit it will likely be less than that.  Still, I have some good things on the horizon:  Some bits from the last Dune book, a bit more from Senor Prechtel, some wiseacring on some Gurdjieffian material, and some excellent stuff from Alexandra David-Neel’s “Magic And Mystery in Tibet”.  Hope you all are doing well.

I, meanwhile, have plans of sending out resumes en-masse, along with all the stress and anxiety that entails.   Why is it that we have such a weird system of finding employment in this society?  A company describes itself in a few short words, telling you nothing of what your day-to-day life will entail, nor what your co-workers are like.  Yet these are some of the key things for workplace happiness.  And we, the jobseekers, must similarly describe ourselves in a brief little bit of text (the briefer the better!) .  Then we have one or two chances to feel each other out before committing to what should be, in the very least, and relationship of several years.  Imagine if marriage worked like that.  Gives a whole new definition to the idea of “speed dating”….

“You know our future, why won’t you share it?” Moneo was close to hysteria…refusing anything his immediate senses did not repot.

Leto turned to glare at the Majordomo, a gaze so obviously filled with pent-up emotions that Moneo recoiled from it.

“Take charge of your own existence, Moneo!”

Moneo took a deep, trembling breath.  “Lord, I meant no offense.  I sought only…”

“Look upward Moneo!”

Involuntarily, Moneo obeyed, peering into the cloudless sky where morning light was increasing. “What is it, Lord?”

“There’s no reassuring ceiling over you, Moneo.  Only an open sky full of changes.  Welcome it. Every sense you possess is an instrument for reacting to change.  Does that tell you nothing?”

The more he remembered consciously, the more his abilities were blocked.  He was forced to pause, breathing deeply in the attempt to center himself, to back to the natural ways of his past.

Most civilization is based on cowardice.  It’s so easy to civilize by teaching cowardice.  You water down the standards which would lead to bravery.  You restrain the will.  You regulate the appetites.  You fence in the horizons.  You make a law for every movement.  You deny the existence of chaos.  You teach even the children to breath slowly.  You tame.

(Note, however, that he says “Most civilizations”.  Cowardice is not being pointed to as endemic in civilization, just the easiest way to it.

“Each of us comes into being knowing who he is and what he is supposed to do.”

Moneo opened his mouth but closed it without speaking.

“Small children know,” Leto said.  “It’s only after adults have confused them that children hide this knowledge even from themselves.  Moneo! Uncover yourself!”

“Lord, I cannot!”  The words were torn from Moneo.  He trembled with anguish.  ” I do not have your powers, your knowledge of…”

“Enough!”

Moneo fell silent.  His body shook.

Leto spoke soothingly to him.  “It’s alright Moneo.  I asked too much of you and I can see your fatigue.”

Civilizations collapse when their powers outrun their religions!

First-hand access to human mistakes was his greatest strength now.  Knowledge of mistakes taught him long-term consequences.  He had to be constantly aware of consequences.  If consequences were lost or concealed, lessons were lost.

Do you know what guerrilla often say?  They claim that their rebellions are invulnerable to economic warfare because they have no economy, that they are parasitic on those they would overthrow.  The fools merely fail to assess the coin in which they must inevitably pay.  The pattern is inexorable in its degenerative failures.  You can see it repeated in the systems of slavery, of welfare states, of caste-ridden religions, of socializing bureaucracies – in any system which creates and maintains  dependencies.  Too long a parasite and you cannot exist without a host.

(and so once the coup is achieved, the parasite turns into an near-exact copy of its prey, as that is the only world it ever took the time to embody.  See also this)

If the demands of your flesh are for maturity, but something holds you in adolescence, quite nasty behavior develops…. All of us try to evolve, but if something blocks us, we can transfer our potential into pain – seeking it or giving it.  Adolescents are particularly vulnerable.

The realization of what I am occurs in the timeless awareness which does not stimulate or delude.  I create a field without self or center, a field where even death becomes only an analogy.  I desire no results.  I merely permit this field which has no goals or desires, no perfections nor even visions of achievements.  In that field, omnipresent primal awareness is all.  It is the light which pours through the windows of my universe.

“I have deliberately ignored the admonition of Mohammed and Moses.  Even you know it Moneo!”

It was an accusation.  Moneo started to nod, then shook his head from side to side.  He wondered if he dared renew his retreat.  Moneo knew from long experience that lectures in this tenor did not long continue without the coming of the Worm.

“What admonition might that be?” Leto asked.  There was a mocking lightness in his voice.

Moneo allowed himself a faint shrug.

Abruptly, Leto’s voice filled the chamber with a rumbling baritone, an ancient voice, which spoke across the centuries: “You are servants unto God, not servants unto servants!”

Moneo wrung his hands and cried out: “I serve you, Lord!”

“Moneo, Moneo,” Leto said, his voice low and resonant, “a million wrongs cannot give rise to one right.  The right is known because it endures.“

We carry all of our ancestry forward like a living wave, all of the hopes and joys and griefs, the agonies and exaltations of our past.  Nothing within those memories remains completely without meaning of influence, not as long as there is a humankind somewhere.  We have that bright Infinity all around us, that Golden Path of forever to which we can continually pledge our puny but inspired allegiance.

Let there be no doubt that I am the assemblage of our ancestors, the arena in which they exercise my moments.  They are my cells and I am there body.  This is the favrashi of which I speak, the soul, the collective unconscious, the source of archetypes, the repository of all trauma and joy.  I am the choice of their awakening.  My samhadi is their samhadi. Their experiences are mine!  Their knowledge distilled is my inheritance.  Those billions are my one.

“Reason is valuable,” he said, “only when it performs against the wordless physical background of the universe.”

“When you rule, you gain knowledge of power.   This can lead into impetuous irresponsibility, into painful excesses and that can lead to the terrible destroyer – wild hedonism.”

“You have all the makings of a saint,” he said.  “Do you understand how painful it can be to find a saint in the wrong place and the wrong time?”

She shook her head.

“People have to be prepared for saints,” he said.  “Otherwise, they simply become followers, supplicants, beggars and weakened sycophants forever in the shadow of the saint.  People are destroyed by this because it nurtures only weakness.”