Views From the Real World
Take the understanding of the East and the Knowledge of the West and then seek.
Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson
Form and Sequence
“And in the ‘Reason of understanding,’ the first factor, that is, the Holy Affirming, consists of the newly perceived impressions in whatever localization is, at the given moment, the ‘center of gravity of functioning’, the second, or Holy Denying, consists of the corresponding data already present in another of the localizations, and the third factor consists of what are known as the ‘being-auto-kolit-zik-ners’ or, as they are otherwise called, ‘hoodatz-babog-nari,’ which is a word that means ‘the results of perseveringly actualizing the striving to manifest one’s own individuality.’
Commentaries on All and Everything, A.R. Orage
Understanding is one of the most difficult things to understand. As Gurdjieff often said, “You don’t understand what understanding means.
In the Conference of the Birds, the Hoopoe, telling the birds about the Third Valley, says, “After the valley of which I have spoken there comes another—the Valley of Understanding, which has neither beginning nor end. No way is equal to this way. Understanding, for each traveller, is enduring; but knowledge is temporary. The soul, like the body, is in a state of progress or decline; and the spiritual way reveals itself only to the degree to which the traveller has overcome his faults and weaknesses, his sleep and his inertia, and each will approach nearer to his aim according to his effort… There are different ways of crossing this valley, and all birds do not fly alike. Understanding can be arrived at variously—some have found the Mihrab, others the idol.
…(B)y striving to understand we develop the real mind; for this it is necessary for all centers to work together.
“Primordial substance is one. But one is three; affirming, denying, reconciling; or positive, negative, neutralizing…
In an atom of hydrogen the proton is the positive, the electron the negative, the movement of the electron around the proton produces energy—the neutralizing. …We have three brains, each manifesting a form of electricity. A normal being is one in whom these three correspond. Nature has developed the brain of the planetary body almost to perfection …but has left it to us to develop the brains of the emotional and mental centers. As such, we are abnormal. ‘Yes’ is of the mind, ‘No’ is of the body, the reconciling is of the emotions. Body knows the ‘how’ of things, mind knows the ‘what’ of things; emotion, plus mind and body, understands the ‘why’ of things. …Knowledge without understanding is the root of all kinds of evil.
“One of the chief purposes of a man is to develop from a substance called ‘essence,’ a special kind of reason—objective reason—which will establish him as a permanent brain-cell of all life. Man, by attaining to objective reason, can help to redeem Creation. Nature, says Gurdjieff, needs these relatively liberated beings. As we develop consciousness, will and individuality, we take our place as one of the brain-cells of the Universe. The reason of ordinary man is the reason of knowledge; the reason of developed man is the reason of understanding. Instinctive reason we share with the animals, but have a higher type of it. Associative reason functions according to verbal associations. Of objective reason, at present, we know very little; again, this can be developed only by the practice of being-Partkdolg-duty. Objective reason is the opposite of mere intellectualism, mere philosophical speculation, which produce only monsters.
“We cannot understand objective reason in the light of subjective reason. Objective reason means coming to the end of subjective reason and then having a totally different experience.
…”Verbal reasoning is dangerous because words are species, entities—a humanly created phenomenon capable of giving a sort of experience. Slogans like ‘All power to the worker,’ and ‘Liberty,’ stir people’s emotions, fill them with lively fantasies. When they do get their famous liberty they immediately begin to take away power and liberty from those who do not agree with them.
“Speculative reason …Gurdjieff rates …lowest because it does not lead …to either formal or objective reasoning.
Pondering is the neutralizing force of thought.
“There are notes in the thinking scale, of which Sol is concentration, La is meditation, Si is contemplation. But each is still a process of thought, in which the emotional may enter; and it must be present in pondering, which is motivated by the emotional center, by the personal relation to the subject pondered. Pondering is essential thinking.
“Pondering is the assimilation of the third food. With the Psalmist we can say: ‘When I consider the heavens, the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained,’ I ask, ‘What is man that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that thou visitest him?’ This is asking, after contemplation, ‘What am I?’—the transfer of the note Si of the thinking octave to Do of the pondering octave. Pondering is thinking with the emotional center (its thinking sub-center) which is the seat of essence. This sub-center is said to be the most highly developed of the sub-centers.
“Suppose that our state of being depends on our serviceability to the Creator, that our future being, our life, depends upon our creation of values contributing to the Creator’s purpose. Not knowing the purpose—the meaning and aim of existence—these objective values are matter for pondering. On the supposition that we exist by the will of a Being, the individual’s question is whether he is producing the desired values. This question is not intellectual because my being depends on this understanding.
Hassein says ‘Things are a-thinking in me!’ The mind is always ‘a-thinking,’ and if we take a hand in it and direct the thinking it is active being-mentation; it is the result of an experience digested and made part and parcel of our being. In ‘being-mentation’ we are mentating with materials, which, since they are part of experience, have an emotional element. Instead of dealing with words and their associations, which makes possible verbal logic, we have to use experiences and their associations, which make possible a being logic.
“…Active being-mentation is used in such mantrams as ‘I wish to remember myself,’ when with each word you call up the most vivid experience connected with that word; and then you are in a state of wishing to remember yourself.
“Formal understanding—understanding by forms—is brought about by being-mentation.
“We have reached the conclusion that we have two forms of reasoning, formal and associative, and the distinction is made without reference to objective reason. It is not possible to develop objective reason so long as our center of gravity remains in associative reasoning; we have to go from formal to objective. The material of the language of gesture, posture, tone of voice, facial expression, and movement, is the material of formal reasoning, and the Gurdjieff method is designed to shift the center of gravity to formal and then to objective reasoning by making use of this material.”
No one can impart or explain to you the experience of objective reasoning; they can show the way, but you must work for it.”
The Reality of Being
81. Who am I?
Who am I? The question sounds in me. It is a call from Above, from higher than what is moving in me.
….This question resonates in my Presence… I feel I need to become conscious of this power, to attune myself with this source in order to be connected to it and obey it. …When my thought and feeling are attuned to it, another knowledge of myself is revealed, and I feel my question differently. In the experience of knowing, what takes place is a direct movement, like an electric current. The knowing is an experience of being because at this moment I know my state of being.