Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson
Chapter 16 – The relativity of the concept of Time
“The first principle of being-existence, …is to serve as the vehicle for the transmutation of cosmic substances necessary for the ‘common-cosmic trogoautoegocratic process.’
Chapter 17 – The arch-absurd: According to the assertion of Beelzebub, our sun neither lights nor heats
“”First of all, …everything in the Universe …exists and is maintained solely on the basis of the ‘common-cosmic trogoautoegocratic process.’
“This most great common-cosmic trogoautoegocratic process was …established by our Endless Creator to permit the ‘exchange of substances,’ or ‘reciprocal feeding’ of everything existing, to proceed in the Universe, so that the merciless Heropass would no longer have its maleficent effect on the Sun Absolute.
“This most great common-cosmic trogoautoegocratic process is actualized, …on the basis of the two fundamental cosmic laws, …Heptaparaparshinokh,’ and …Triamazikamno. ‘
“Owing to the action of these two sacred cosmic laws, …there …arise, …various large and small, more or less independent, definite cosmic ‘formations.’
“And it is just within and upon these cosmic formations that the processes called ‘involution’ and ‘evolution’ take place, …and all the results obtained from these processes in the atmospheres …blend to assure …this ‘exchange of substances.’
Chapter 39 – The Holy Planet Purgatory
“…those three-sourced substances entering their common presence for transformation are, for them just as for us, a threefold being-food.
“…those substances which, on the path of their returning evolutionary ascent toward the Most Holy Protocosmos …enter the three-brained beings for further transformation as …their ordinary ‘food’ and ‘drink. ‘ …as the …’air’ they breathe, and…
“Finally, the substances of the ‘first source’ which, for them as well as for us, are a third kind of being-food serve for the coating and perfecting of the ‘highest being-body’ itself.
…”Although these sacred substances of the higher being-food have never ceased to enter into them, they enter, …only spontaneously, without any participation of their conscious intention, and only in the amount required for …common-cosmic trogoautoegocratic harmony and for the automatic continuation of their species demanded by Nature.
“When the abnormal conditions of ordinary being-existence were finally fixed there—with the result that both the instinctive and the intentional striving for self-perfecting disappeared from their essence—they not only ceased to feel the need to absorb these cosmic substances consciously, but even lost the knowledge and understanding of the existence and significance of ‘higher being-foods.’
Conversations with Madame Ouspensky 1939-40 at Lyne
From Notes of Robert S. de Ropp
July 1939
…In life men think they are moving somewhere, but this is illusion. For all their activity they move no more than a squirrel in a wheel. When the impressions octave does not develop, the machine functions as a pig or a sheep fattened for the slaughter…
November 9, 1940
…God created on a large scale. He provided man with material to develop himself if he so wished. Man has in him the machinery for development, but as everything in the Universe is limited as regards the amount of energy allotted to it, so man can only grow if he uses his energy rightly. The whole struggle centers round one point, direction of attention. Air and food are sufficient to keep man’s machine functioning. They give him his movements, feelings, thoughts, which he calls “I.” Impressions do not develop in him because there is nothing to receive them.
Return to Now, Henriette Lannes
A Talk at the Gurdjieff Society, London, June 18, 1961
Life, for us, is to receive impressions. I cannot conceive a better way to define it. Everything we live through, everything we live for, everything we do or dream is impressions. We come into this world, and we receive our three foods. …We know the place our teaching gives to “impressions,” although we do not fully realize the greatness of this idea. …(W)e cannot, in fact, digest and assimilate impressions as food. At a certain place in our inner vital workings, a relationship is lacking…
This is shown in our system in a strange and striking way, …There is a broken octave, sounding only the first few notes of an initially familiar and thereafter quite unknown octave. At a certain note, vibrations slacken, lose their force, and go no further. As a result, impressions play a very different role than intended—they are kept out, as it were, turned from their original direction, and energize only the wheels of the passive and mechanical part. Because of a lack, an absence at that very place, our potential remains out of reach; we are cut off from it.
Here is the point, the very point of utmost interest. At that place, our consciousness is called—our consciousness of ourselves…
Exchange in London: Impressions – Henriette Lannes, Henri Tracol, Jeanne de Salzmann
(Mr. Tracol): In reality, what is… most important is my way of opening, of receiving, and then of giving myself to the action of the influence I receive through impressions and welcoming that action.
Inner Octaves, Michel Conge
I Exist, I Am, I Have Always Been
An impression of oneself is an organic phenomenon that is not at all intellectual. How is it that at one moment I don’t vibrate and at another, I do? ? How is it that I receive or do not receive a current of energy, allow it to feed me or not to feed me?
There is one extremely simple thing: it doesn’t even enter my mind that I exist… and it never occurs to me to stop and be attentive to this. By the way, I’m not even sure that you are hearing what I’m saying right now….
What is important is that I AM. I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN. This impression is what’s missing, the clear impression that I AM. That would change everything in my life. …We treat self-remembering as if it were an exercise. It is not an exercise! Riding a bicycle is an exercise; self-remembering is not an exercise… Whatever effort you make, what you are looking for is always there. Do we accept this principle? How to search, starting from there?