Reclusland

The child who was speaking in the name of the sun

used to go into the streets of the dead village;

rats would run towards his bare feet

when he stopped at the crossroads.

The child called with a voice full of ships,

white sails and flying fish,

and men who had turned into stone

creaked as they were awakened.

It was a dawn foretold by the hissing arrows

of the neighborhood’s happy archers,

men came, each carrying his night

like an umbrella.

They crouched around the child,

their big, red eyes were laughing,

their large mouths spit sand through

their teeth.

The child who was speaking in the name of the sun

said: “Listen no longer to the crow of the foolish

rooster,” and in the streets men with long lips

slapped their asses with laughter.

The child said: “You laugh, you laugh,

but when you awaken with your ears

full of blood, the you will laugh

no longer.”

His head fell, broken and warm,

on the shoulder of a young woman,

she thought he wanted to kiss her

and she laughed out of fear.

“You are laughing, you are laughing,” he said to her,

and the men showed their yellow fangs.

“Your laughter is not the alms

that the heavenly Mouth begs for.

It needs your young children,

your freshly cut noses,

it needs a harvest of toes

for its supper.”

The great Mouth laughed and laughed,

she sizzled and glistened.

“You laugh, you laugh, fearsome grandmother,

but soon, old lady, your sons and daughters

will laugh no longer, will laugh no longer.

You laugh under your evening umbrellas.

They are going to break, they are going to break,

listen to the great Mouth laugh,

for soon you will laugh no longer.”

We are living in a special time.  Throughout the world there is a stirring and an interrelation of forces never before experienced by mankind.  All around us we see an unprecedented acceleration of the possibilities of change.  Power potentials have been released which threaten to upset cosmic balances.

Ironically, the more gigantic and astonishing our manipulations of these energies, the more puerile and insignificant our understanding of them.  Philosophers and scientists are coming to agree that not only do we need a deep alteration in the present state of mankind, but that a radical shift depends solely on our relationship to consciousness – the invisible, fundamental energy behind phenomenal existence.

As one walks the streets of the city, one is struck by the energies manifested through each human being – the results of wishes, emotions, and physical movements, energies in incessant random motion.  Inextricably bound to an entire fabric of events, we have no choice but to submit to the rhythm and momentum of our ordinary lives.  Yet, in the midst of the flux, a call to consciousness can be heard.  Is it possible to accept one’s inevitable destiny, and, at the same time, open to the timeless, spaceless, essential movement?  Can we microscopic entities, beset by our frailties and mal-training, initiate a radical transformation for ourselves and for the earth?

When one first begins to work with conscious attention one discovers that the subsystems of body, feelings, and mind function inefficiently and disharmoniously.  Yet the simple awareness of misalignment may introduce an element capable of binding the disparate parts into an integrated whole.  With sustained awareness  comes a heightened sensitivity, openness, a quiet mind.  Man’s structure becomes receptive to the advent of fresh, vivifying energies descending from a mysterious source.  This creates a field, where higher energies can transform the lower.

True knowledge, to perpetuate itself, needs living forms.  Those who seek it must assimilate it directly by participation of their whole being.  It is not knowledge but the experience of the “other” that a teacher imparts.  This becomes yours; when you receive it, you can shape it in your own way to meet your particular needs.  Our life situations, our make-ups are different.  You will use the experience of wholeness to meet your life, not adapt it to my way.  This is a living teaching.  The way is shown, the experience is passed on like a light from candle to candle.  But is always an individual light.

Watchfulness at the moment of receiving an impression; the deeper the impression enters, the greater its power to do work.

What is written and printed does not yet have dramatic form. If we say to ourselves: “These words must be pronounced in a certain manner, have a certain tone or rhythm…” then, unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, we will always be mistaken. It leads to everything that is so awful in tradition, in the worst sense of the term. An infinite quantity of unexpected forms can appear from the same elements, and the human tendency to refuse the unexpected always leads to the reduction of a potential universe.

We are now at the heart of the problem. Nothing exists in life without form: we are forced at each instant, especially when speaking, to look for form. But one must realize that this form may be the absolute obstacle to life, which is formless. One cannot escape from this difficulty, and the battle is permanent: the form is necessary, yet it is not everything.

Faced with this difficulty, there is no point in adopting a purist attitude and waiting for the perfect form to fall from the heavens, for in that case one would never do anything at all. This attitude would be stupid. Which brings us again to the question of purity and impurity. The pure form does not come down from the sky. The putting into form is always a compromise that one must accept whilst at the same time saying to oneself: “It’s temporary, it will have to be renewed.” We are touching here on a question of dynamics which will never end.

True questions are often found in paradox and are impossible to resolve. There is a balance to be found between that which tries to be pure and that which becomes pure through its relationship to the impure. One can thus see to what extent an idealistic theatre cannot exist as long as it attempts to be outside the rough texture of this world. The pure can only be expressed in theatre through something that in its nature is essentially impure. We must remember that the theater is made by people and executed by people through their only available instruments, human beings. So the form is in its very nature a mixture where pure and impure elements meet. It is a mysterious marriage that is at the centre of legitimate experience, where private man and mythical man can be apprehended together within the same instant of time.

A great ritual, a fundamental myth is a door, a door that is not there to be observed, but to be experienced, and he who can experience the door within himself passes through it most intensely. So the past is not to be arrogantly ignored. But we must not cheat. If we steal its rituals and its symbols and try to exploit them for our own purposes, we must not be surprised if they lose their virtue and become no more than glittering and empty decorations. We are constantly challenged to discriminate. In some cases, a traditional form is still living; in another, tradition is the dead hand that strangles the vital experience. The problem is to refuse the “accepted way”, without looking for change for the sake of changing.

But what is more comforting than to discover that we are less than nothing? It’s only by turning ourselves inside out that we shall become something. Is it not a great comfort to the caterpillar to learn that she is merely a larvae, that her time of being a semi-crawling digestive tube will not last, and that after a period of confinement, in the mortuary of her chrysalis, she will again be born as a butterfly – not in some non-existant paradise dreamed up by some caterpillary, consoling philosophy, but here in this very garden, where she is now laboriously munching on her cabbage leaf? We are all caterpillars, and it is our misfortune that, in defiance of nature, we cling with all our strength to our caterpillar appetites, caterpillar passions, caterpillar metaphysics, and caterpillar societies. Only in our outward physical appearance do we bear to the observer who suffers from psychic shortsightedness and resemblance whatsoever to adults; the rest of us remain stubbornly larval. Well, I have good reasons for believing (indeed if I didn’t there’d be nothing for it but to go off and dangle from the end of a rope) that man can reach adult stage, that a few of us already have, and that those few have not kept the knack to themselves. What could be more comforting?

With difficulty, I succeeded in reaching the room above. It was a sort of operation-cum-observation post. The only means of seeing out was provided by two lenses embedded in the wall like a pair of binoculars. The room was cluttered with levers, handles, gadgets, gauges, and dials by means of which it was presumably possible to direct the movements of the mobile house.

Upon my first attempt at turning a knob, the whole place was seized by an inordinate shaking. Things cannoned into each other. I pulled on a wire, there was a terrific jolt followed by a brutal crash an an impact and then everything began to sway. I patiently continued my efforts with a feeling of utter detachment from what I was doing. Gradually, I learned which mechanisms were dangerous to engage and which had to be manipulated all the time to stop the house collapsing altogether. It was not long before I realized that it was an almost impossible thing to do and it was at that moment, fortunately, that the servants appeared.

They were large anthropomorphic apes which till now had remained lurking, invisible, and silent, in every dark recess. They stood watching me and then one of them, seeing me carry out the same maneuver for the third or forth time, came up with a gesture that indicated he would take over. The others in turn emerged from the shadows and reproducing my movements with startling exactness, assumed control of all operations required for maintaining and running the building. Free of these tasks, I sat in the cockpit in front of the binoculars surrounded by my dials and gauges. Telephone links enabled me to communicate with my apes. In this way I learned to control them, after a fashion, though this left me with very little time for rest, since at frequent intervals one of them would fall asleep, another would do as he pleased, and I had to bring them to heal.

Or again, an unexpected jolt would sometimes throw me right out of my seat down to the floor below where my fall causes confusion: the pump and bellows would begin to race – for once the moment of danger is passed, the anesthetized emotions start getting their own back – and I had very great difficulty climbing back up again.

Training apes to maintain and work the machine is not easy. Training them to keep a steady balance between the machines input and output is less easy still. But to train apes to drive the vehicle – I cannot imagine when I will even dare hope to manage such a thing. But only then will I be master, free to go where I like without ties or fears or illusions. But I’m dreaming again.

Near to the Sophers, who looked down upon them rather, stood a small band of internees grouped around a young Tibetan whom they considered their leader. This Asian was known as Nakintchanamourti, which means, in the language of Sanscruting, “Incarnation of nothing whatsoever.” I had the opportunity of taking a look at him. He did not look ill to me, perhaps just a little too easy-going, and I suspect that he was being kept there against his will by his so-called disciples. They regarded him as the trustee of all wisdom, and he answered them saying:

“Leave me in peace. I have nothing to teach. Get out of here. Each of you must do his own seeking,” and other equally sensible words. But the disciples, and especially the women, opened their eyes wide, assumed an air of inspiration, and interpreted the words of the Master in what they called an esoteric sense. This words was intended to express, so our pocket dictionary informed us, “a hidden flattering meaning that we imagine beneath harsh words the better to suffer them.”

“Take a close look,” an old woman was saying, “at the first sentence the Master pronouced: ‘Leave me in peace.’ Four words: It is the cabbalistic tetragram, the sacred quaternity of the Buddha-guru, which the Greeks pronounced Pythaguru. ‘Leave’ is, according to grammer (which was once a sacred science), in the second person. ‘Me’ is the first person, and the preposition ‘in’ takes us toward the third person: herein lies the Trinity. Note also that ‘leave,’ second person, contains two ‘e’s.’ and that the Master starts with the second person and not the first, meaning that the point of departure for us human beings is in duality and struggle. After this comes the first person, that is to say that we elevate ourselves to the notion of self which surpasses duality. Finally, with the preposition ‘in,’ which contains two letters in a single syllable, we go beyond the illusion of self to identify ourselves with impersonal reality. The fourth word ‘peace,’ which falls outside the constraints of the trinitarian division, aptly describes the state that is reached after we have negotiated the three preceding stages. Many other timeless truths are hidden still within these four words, but they are intended only for the ears of the initiated. Everything is said in this simple sentence. Only a god could speak thus.”

Then she went on to the next sentence and in this manner dealt with each word that the Master had reluctantly uttered, much to the great wonderment of his disciples of whom the unfortunate Tibetan was quite unable to get free.

I say “chance”, and this could be misleading. Chance exists; it is not the same as luck, it obeys rules we cannot understand, but it certainly can be helped and favoured. There must be many efforts – all efforts create a field of energy, and this at a critical moment attracts toward it a solution. On the other hand, experimenting chaotically for its own sake can go on indefinitely without ever reaching a coherent conclusion. Chaos is only useful if it leads to order.

We can follow this better if we think of a fisherman making a net. As he works, care and meaning are present in every flick of the finger. He draws the threads, he ties the knots, enclosing emptiness with forms whose exact shapes correspond to exact functions. Then the net is thrown into the water, it is dragged to and fro, with the tide, against the tide, in many complex patterns. A fish is caught, an inedible fish, or a common fish good for stewing, maybe a fish of many colours, or a rare fish, or a poisonous fish, or at moments of grace a golden fish.

There is, however, a subtle distinction between the theatre and fishing that must be underlined. In the case of a well-made net, it is the fisherman’s luck whether a good or a bad fish is caught. In the theater, those who tie the knots are also responsible for the quality of the moment that is ultimately caught in their net. It is amazing – the “fisherman” by his action of tying knots influences the quality of the fish that land in his net!

Art is a spinning wheel, rotating around a still centre which we can neither grasp nor define.

The human animal is a superimposition of vicious circles. The great secret is that they are turning by themselves. But the centers of these circles are, themselves, turning upon a circle; man leaves the latter in order to enter the former. This revolution has not escaped the eyes of wise men; only they escape the whirlwind and while escaping it, think about it. Spheric harmony, cosmic hearts, god-stars of contemplation, fiery systems forged from flesh to flesh, for all the suffering is the surrender of flesh whether it be red with blood, orange with dreaming, or yellow with meditation; heart-hole astrolabe of white heat, far from the rat-trap, under the demons staircase and the biting air of the open sea which thickens into mud. The true trajectory of celestial steel pierces the throat, while men, down below, practice sneezing – for one sees all from above, and all is true in more than a thousand ways, but all these means of understanding are worthless unless joined together: god of black and white, a celestial zebra quicker than a flash…oh! Tell me, haven’t savages ever built a huge statue of that zebra-god in their virgin forest? God of all contradictions resolved between four lips: it is no longer worth it, let there be light and the world crumbles, and light needs no prisms to be dispersed, and all unstable reality is frozen – shocking words, inevitable folly of human discourse, shocking anger jolting his cries, these false hopes – swindles of Prometheus, how handsome he is, how handsome he is! Prometheus, panting victory subject to language of fire, with the whirlwind crown of suns, the little allies of Men . . . BUT THE GREAT, BLACK ANTI-SUNS, FOUNTAINS OF TRUTH IN THE MAIN PLOT, IN THE GREY VEIL OF CURVED SKY GO AND COME AND BREATHE EACH OTHER, AND MEN CALL THEM “ABSENCES.” Who will teach them what being is all about and that all they have to do is think about non-being in their own way? Subjected to the languages of fire, turn your face towards the flames, towards the divine kiss which will suck out your teeth with one smack.

I drag my hope along with my sack of nails,
I drag my strangled hope before your feet,
you who are no longer,
and I who am no more.

I drag a sack of nails over the burning shore
while chanting all the names I will give you
and those I no longer have.
On the barge rots the rag where my life used to beat;
all the gangplanks were nailed closed,
it is rotting on its mattress
with its eyes that could not see you,
its ears deaf to your voice,
its skin too heavy to feel you
when you touched it,
when you were transformed into a stinking wind.

And now I have cast off the decay
and I come to you completely white,
my new skin is already shivering
in your presence.

The two poles of poetic manifestation, male and female, are composed of Idea devoid of attributes and primary matter that contains all possible attributes. The passionless poet is impotent; the poet who only expresses his passions would make no sense and would only be able, at most, to emit discordant screams.

For Daumal, the work of art stands for something expressed, projected, as it where, from within. As a representation of an inner experience, the work of art becomes a symbol of a momentary state of being crystallized in an artistic form. Once outside the artist, it serves as a mirror in which different states of the artist’s inner spirit can be witnessed. Art and literature, then, must transcend the descriptive and narrative limits within which they are often cast and become, rather, a means to identify oneself with universal principles and to witness the comprehensive manifestation of one’s particular state of being. Artistic expression is thus conceived as artistic and vital evidence of the self made manifest through an objective medium. Its purpose is not to formulate specific terms that will give meaning to the medium, but it is to seek to continuously redefine its creator as he evolves, with his work, through forms of self-coalescence. The creator must then make a connection between the multitude of selves that have represented him in past creations and the self he now perceives so that he might experience a sense of totality and confirm his movement towards the spiritual absolute.

To unlearn to daydream, to learn to think; to unlearn to philosophize, to learn to speak. This is not done overnight. Nevertheless, we have little time left to do it.

Today, as far as I can tell, is the officially agreed-upon birthday of Mr. George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff.  In his honor, Reclusland will be posting quotes and clippings from three followers of his work throughout the next week.  Rather than going with the better known Gudjieffians though (Ouspensky, Orage, or Bennett), I’ll be focusing on three of my recent favorites: Peter Brook (director of the film version of Mr Gurdjieff’s “Meeting With Remarkable Men”), Rene Daumal (surreal poet extraordinaire), and William Segal.