Morris, Lawrence S. – Note Books of L. S. M.: Orage Lectures. [1927-1928]
Morris, Lawrence S.
Note Books of L. S. M.: Orage Lectures. [1927-1928] 133p., illustrations. Unpublished typescript.
Lawrence (Larry) Morris was—along with C. Daly King, Sherman Manchester, Gorham Munson and Wlm Nyland—a key member of Orage’s New York inner circle and Gurdjieff group during the late 1920s while Orage was editing the English edition of Gurdjieff s typescript of Beelzebub’s Tales. Morris’ notes cover thirty-two weekly meetings in New York City, interspersed with breaks, from January 17 to December 27, 1927 and from March 19 to May 28, 1928. Most of Orage’s discussion focuses on Beelzebub’s Tales.
Orage lectures. New York.
Preface (undated)
This preface is to the Book what an overture is to the opera. The ideas to be developed are indicated lightly. The expression is not by direct statement but entirely by parable. Compare Swift’s Tale of a Tub. The preface is called a Warning. “When commencing a new venture, it is customary everywhere and always to recite ——– in the name of the Father, the Son, and also in the name of that Holy Ghost, said to be known only to the priest as and a few of the learned——-“
Father is the Intellectual center
Son is the instinctive center
Holy Ghost the emotional center
The “higher” emotional center, i.e. the “heart”, I.e. the capacity for emotional understanding of things as they are 9 reverence, awe real love etc. is the Holy Ghost
The Book thus opens with an invocation to all three centers. Wholeness but with special attention to the Holy Ghost. That is this Book is to be read from the real heart.
It is true that it is not “customary everywhere and always to recite such words”, at least in our experience; but G. wishes to suggest at the outset that beings living normally would undertake all ventures in this attitude or wholeness; and that in all the rest of the Universe such in fact is the case. But in our little corner, due to local conditions, we never undertake anything in this attitude.
———- therefore, placing my hand on my heart(but in parenthesis
he adds “which is well known to be below the stomach ——– i.e. we mistake our solar plexus for our heart, we have no real emotional understanding developed, no Holy Ghost, no neutralizing force, he says ” I have no wish to write this book”. He is compelled to write by will, which is Indifferent to personal inclination.
The attitude of the Preface is the attitude of Beelzebub: and the attitude in which Self-Observation must be undertaken by each one of us.
Important considerations lead him to write a book. What is a book? (see later). Further: Will begin with a Preface, because other books do i.e., will follow conventional methods so long as useful.
But reface will be a warning. Art (see later) consists of conscious variations from the usual. And the art we know ordinarily is as natural as the song or the nest of a bird. The nest of the oriole seems to us more perfect than the nest of the snipe; but we attribute no value; similarly Shakespeare or Michael Angelo. He will not be a creature of custom; but will use customary form and add something not merely different but better and thus fulfill two purposes.
He will address his readers. Notice his tone. This is the attitude and distance we will take in addressing our object of observation ” my dear, honorable and doubtless very patient—-“ i.e. will not take it very seriously, non- identified. Amused but not unkind. ——- “with God’s help and of course, with the permission of the local authorities” — all the conventions and rules of this planet that is the worldly body, “(word ‘local’ in the book means of this planet. We are squalid villagers in the Cosmos.
He will not, use the language of the intelliganzia, i.e. our local dialect of thought, will not write in the language of grammarians not grammarians of words but of logic. In short, ideas in this book will not be presented in our habitual thought patterns.
Our intellectual life is based on chance associations. Only when our habitual associations are broken up can we begin to think freely. Our associations are mechanical; a whole mood can be destroyed for example by the use of one word with a different group of associations (ln midst of a serious discussion, introduce a vulgar word)
In what language shall he write? He has begun in Russian but cannot go on because he is going to treat of philosophical themes. (Russian is a mixture of Essence and personality. Russians will philosophize for a short time; and then drop into gossip and yarns. Russian is excellent for stories in the steam bath (this refers not really to the Russian language but to the Russian psychology)
Also English is useful for practical matters but inadequate for abstract thinking of the Whole. This also is of the English psychology and not of words. It is of the way of thought. There is no language in English for speech about self “I” and ” you” are excluded. Russian and English are like a soup which contains everything except «you» and “I”. English cannot confess. In an English or Russian psychological state, we cannot tell the truth about ourselves.
The English are the psychological that is sociological not biological descendants of the ancient Romans, the Germans of the Greeks.
He is familiar with two languages, Russian and Armenian; the Armenia 30 or 40 years ago (i.e. development of every person from essence to covering of personality) English is personality; Russian, half and half; Armenian is essence, pure. But in Armenian one cannot express modern ideas, because modern ideas are not about essence he was familiar in childhood with Armenian (i.e., we all are essential but as we grow up, we “learn Russian and English” i.e. take on sociological influences. Armenian used to be pure (essential) but In 30 or 40 years has acquired neighboring words i.e. psychologically has grown to be interpreted as the history of Man impure.
Native Greek was his first form of speech, infantile, (posture, gesture etc); but unfortunately cannot use Greek (ln case of a conscious person, behavior is a language. Jesus said” watch what I do”) because somebody would have to translate, i.e. explain his behavior.
How to get out of this language mess? Heigh ho! Will get over the difficulty (G. never uses the word life in the book. He merely asserts that we exist; but says we can live. Life consists in voluntarily getting over voluntarily imposed difficulties. Arrangement of ideas etc will be behavior: Native Greek.
Every style indicates the psychology from which it is written. There are tubercular, cancerous, syphilitic styles. The latter Is disintegrated, glittering short sentences, epigrams etc. It is very seldom we find a book or work of art which is not symptomatic of pathologic disturbance. But in this book G. is not writing from impulse, wish, etc. He is constructing this book as an implement to bring about a given effect. He has disliked the language of the intelligenzia since childhood, because he is a Black Sheep. Suppose there is one sheep in a flock who realizes the two things which we consider especial to sheep: mutton and wool. If he continues to develope this realization it will alter his attitude from other sheep; he will become the black sheep.
He suspected that our bodies are mutton and wool i.e. that our bodies are stations for transferring energy up and down regardless of our own purposes; and we fail to realize that our intellection is mechanical reactions
While a “teacher of dancing”(that is of movements teaching our bodies to make non- habitual movements) he learned that man has two modes of speech (thought) I: – Words 2:- Form
When speaking or writing you often use words for which you have no personal experience. If you ask yourself «Have I a personal content for this?” you will realize the difference. There is often nothing but literary associations. Veterans speaking of front trenches and journalist who stayed at home speak of front trenches on two different planes of psychology.
Animals have only real experience; human beings have both, can pretend and often get away with it.
Can you, as a literary critic tell the difference between a style which is only words and style which is words plus content? (Song of Deborah in the Old Testament). It still is not art even if written out of the fullness of a heart; because its content depends on accidental associations.
This book destroys existing values in art and is devastating to a sincere person.
He will write in a manner befitting a teacher of dancing i.e. a person who is directing his movements.
How warns you; you may find cacophonies which will be disagreeable and will make you not want your daily meal i.e., your habitual associations.
You may think I’m young. I’m not young. I have lived long enough to have “eaten dog” i.e., swallowed my pride, endured disagreeable sensations; fatigue; made an effort; swallowed negative emotions.
“I stand on my own feet”. Beelzebub has hoofs (Individuality). Boots are sociological aids.
The compulsion for writing the book is a realization of logical need.
I propose to allocate certain sums to those who return the book after beginning it i.e., if you listen to these ideas a little ………. psychological agility, very useful.
in ordinary pursuits;— but if you go on ! —————
Fable Of the Resolute Kurd
who bought a freshly gathered, i.e. (from someone practicing the method) red pepper, which looked beautiful but made the tears pour from his eyes and his face burn. The wily bookseller will urge you not to return (A.R.O.); but if the book is digested it will be for your health and the health of those near you.
The book will be like the red pepper, disagreeable ton our mental and emotional association and to our inertia
Beelzebub has hoofs; individuality, ability to stand on his own feet Tail: consciousness which can be furled and unfurled Horns will. Explanation of use of this symbol comes later. Beelzebub is an “I” who has developed Individuality, Consciousness and Will. He is speaking to Hussein, who is any little “I” who has Begun S.O. and is by way of developing these three functions.
Beelzebub is an “I” who has developed individuality, Consciousness and Will. He is speaking to Hussein, who is any little “l” who has begun S.O. and Is by way of developing these three .functions.
We have B. in us, undeveloped. The book may help us develop him. Wish is always for or against i.e. polarized. When freed from polarization it becomes Will. It still contains its double potentiality but contains the two in one and is directed by reason. Hence the symbol of the two horns sprouting from the head which is the seat of the Mind or Reason. Finally: he is a “teacher of dancing” of The Movements, also one who directs the three streams of movement, instinctive, emotional, intellectual. All is nonsense but Is right so long as things that don’t exist, exist. This is a dig at those who console themselves over Realization of non existence of things, by falling back on one of them.
“I have spent the night writing this. Now I shall sleep and you go about preparing a meal of first food. He has prepared us a meal of third food. Go on stirring to make it thick with water. (a nourishing soup. Water, our usual associations)
Terrifying suggestion that all our thought depends on chance associations; for I realize that I have been using these ideas for two years, hoping to assimilate them into my old set of values and enrich these latter without giving them up. ~ thought the new ideas would widen the scope, extend the perspective and give variety to the content. Now, I feel the actual framework becoming valueless. Will I go far enough to lose the old values which gave incentives and then perhaps not be able to go on to new ones of a different order?
January 17, 1927
The preface defined the attitude. Also mentioned a form of thought corresponding to two forms of consciousness. Will now discuss the third form.
There are three kinds of food. To digest, we need two shocks, one at “mi” of air digestion. This shock must be conscious and from within. It is given by conscious impressions, taken by S.O. Each S.O. is a spoonful of food to build the astral body.
Bodies and corresponding states of consciousness
I: – Food, body waking and sleeping consciousness.
2:- Air spirited or astral body self- consciousness
3:- Mental for cosmic consciousness. We have no fact of this yet and have no mental body at all.
The three stages of S.O.
l:- S.O.
2:-Participation
3:- Experimentation
At first it is not “I” who observes. The above three takes us to the «mi» of air exercise. Then we must have exercise of thought.
For example
1:- Imagine ourselves in a different body (Lady into Fox)
2:- Write down what somebody really thinks of you; and you will find it requires unusual processes.
In The Book, we will find graded exercises in this kind of thought. It is not Verbal Thought, nor Thought in Forms (i.e. so much of astral mechanically thought as we possess) but is a different sort.
Ordinary imagination consists in assembling known images into new patterns.
Objective thought is an attempt to understand the nature of things as reasonably exhibited. To understand the reason in the mind of the Creator. Start on the assumption that the whole is intelligible, a process being played through; man with a function; but not yet intelligible in terms of our reason as so far developed.
We can understand only what we have chemicals for. #1″ is only a word, #2 Emotion only three sevenths understood (such words as sin, sacrifice, purgatory). If an individual can develope reason he will come In contact with #1 and will put content into the word he now knows.
Why Beelzebub was on our Solar System
It was the year 223 in Objective time, after the creation of the world (l923). It was on the ship Karnak in Space, between the solar systems. This means in complete detachment; from here impartial observation may be made. The ship was passing from the Milky Way to the Pole Star. He was on his way to a conference. The implication being that the universe is reasonably and intelligently conducted and that there are many details to be taken care of.
There is a suggestion that beings may develope from unconscious agent “mutton and wool” to reasonable agents.
Beelzebub was reluctant to go on this journey, because he had just returned, an old being, to his planet Caritas, after long exile. What is it has been exiled? The “l”, Objective reasoning. B. has returned by great effort. Later will show how. He is marked by his experiences and has aged.
In youth he had been taken into service on the Sun Absolute, in attendance on His Endlessness; that is ho had obtained a moment of non-identified Observation. “Remember the first moment of Obs.” he had dropped back to the emotional or instinctive center. This is comparable to having been on the Sun Absolute and then exiled.
B. then was young and thought he detected something irrational and he interfered, that is in a moment of illuminated S.O., he tried to correct something he saw wrong. He was banished to a remote corner of the Universe, Solar System Ors. We try to correct from Solar Plexus, Ors. We are all identified with the Solar Plexus. But our solar plexus is a disconnected and disorganized center. One result of continued S.O. would be the hitting up of the solar plexus with one emotion toward a situation instead of struggle.
B. was sent to Mars (Planets are emotional moods). Our moods are determined by earth, instinctive center. We live on the earth. But Mars mood is the mood of overcoming, more frequent in some people than others. There is a Venus mood, Mercurial mood, etc. B. was with his associates (early ideas of fairy tales, occult ideas put in different cells than scientific ideas, forming a magnetic center. These are the associates of B. The magnetic center makes reception of these ideas easier. Ors had been neglected; Solar Plexus B. and his associates were sent to Mars. Some of his associates migrated to other planets either voluntarily or because of general needs. B. stayed on Mars and organized an observatory to observe remote corners of the universe. This is the first reference to The Method. Afterward this observatory became famous but not until after many improvements had been made.
General application: Must practice S.O. a long time and make many discoveries before developing Reason. Personal: G. worked thirty years before he was able to publish The Method.
Ors was neglected but occasionally messengers were sent. Jesus Christ trained among the Essenes, an Egyptian sect. B. played a necessary part. This does not refer to the temptation on the mountain. His Observatory also Egyptian, that is he added a practical method to Christ’s message addressed to the solar plexus.
The first objection often made to The Method is that it is selfish. Christ says: take no thought for yourself and B. says: take thought only for yourself because only then will it be possible to take thought for others. The Gnostics introduced The Method into Christianity. But the early Christians expelled the Gnostics.
Jesus recognized the value of The Method and pleaded with His Endlessness to restore B. although Jesus own followers denied The Method.
His Endlessness pardoned B. on account of his Cognizance, i.e. his living for understanding—— Life. WE LIVE FOR UNDERSTANDING
So B. is back in the center of the megalocosmos, that is he was identified with his true center, his real “I”. His prestige was not spoiled by his errors and identifications, for mistaken identifications enrich the final one with the true center. So B. at and his attendants were with the crew on the ship Karnak. Each was busy with his duties or his being-intellection. Most of what we do is done mechanically; but when we do something, putting into it all of our three actualized functions, thinking, feeling, doing, this is a being act, although still mechanical.
Karnak is an Armenian word, meaning our body as put into the grave. The ship is our body, travels on the planet, the planets and the systems.
B. has his grandson Hassein. Who is Hassein?
H. is here
Organ capable of listening to B. or the magnetic center. Open to suggestion from the undeveloped “I” (Compare “stop exercises” where the suggestion is given from without and must be reissued from within.)
Hassein listens and what he takes in he will apply. The Book is of words uttered by “I”, what is understood will be acted on. Nothing I have not known and yet nothing while I ordinarily realize. The Book is to provoke my own understanding.
“More radiant than the Sun, purer than the snow, subtler than the ether, is the Self, the Spirit within my Heart. I am that self, that Self am “I” Hassein is representative of the Self in us.
B. undertakes the education of Hassein; and H. was always with him and eagerly devoured all that he heard.”Interest” is a chemical process, heating the crucible. (Light, heat, weight, psychological attitude must precede qualities we attribute to objects.
Hassein is stirred emotionally by being with B. and accumulating raw material of thought, combining the two, he actively ponders.
Ahun, B.’s faithful servant, his body, which he always takes with him.
He is seated in the topmost cabin under a dome (the head) surveying the universe (mind) B. is speaking of the Solar system Ors (solar plexus) of experiences we all have. He was talking of Venus (discussing love).
Interrupted by the Captain of the Ship who asks B.’s advice Captain is Common Sense “If we continue, we will run into gas” (if we keep on with this discussion of love we will come into an aspect of the situation which will be poisonous to young Hassein)
B. says either we detour (hedge), finesse, evade the issue or stop and think (Venus, love, Christianity). The line of love will end in distaste. Pauses and provides a neutralizing force.
We will stop and talk about ships (ships are means of communication between centers i.e. methods (Method of S.O. is a Ship) Ships when he began the method were very clumsy that is G. spent years of effort and travel searching for a method. All those he found were wasteful of most of their energy in clumsy approximations.
B. finds this present ship so simple that one might think himself on a planet i.e. this method seems to be a natural and logical conclusion of behaviourism, yet is not contained in it. He sends the captain off and offers to talk to H. about anything he wants to hear. H. asks the right questions, showing a real desire to know, without which B. would not talk.
Are there beings on the planets of that system with which you were identified? Yes, except on planets too young or too far from the Sun, with potentiality of becoming Souls. Their external forms vary according to physical constituents (form determined by biology) An element is present on this planet which is not on the others, try to imagine the same three centers in different physical forms Creatures on Mars, large trunks, little legs, large shining eyes, which light up the darkness, wings (imagination); eyes (power to see meaning in dark places) On a planet, a little lower, they are coated with fur (three centered essences, dipped into chemical element of any given planet and assume a form. This is not incarnation.) This is like electro-plating, if one can assume the object was invisible.
Also a planet of the second order, the Moon, which B. observed (What is the Moon in us?) Frail bodies and strong spirits, figures like ants. Swarm results visible. H. should find results visible in him. Climate variable from extreme cold to extreme heat.
Behind the Moon earth beings have form like that of B. except their skins are a little slimier and they have no tail (consciousness) no horns, Will; no hoofs, individuality. They have invented boots or personality, pretence that we have true individuality but not real defences as shown by the fact that we are touchy, open to wounds of vanity, self-pride, etc. The psyche also is imperfect due to abnormal conditions, established after physical birth, leading us to develop abortive, monstrous reason, unlike reason on any other planet.
January 24, 1927
B. is the prototype of a complete individual; H. the nucleus of the magnetic center; the companions and kinsmen are other cells.
B. begins a series of stories in reply to definite questions from H.
H. Is interested, like every magnetic center in questions as to the nature and purpose of life; what response to such words as immortality other states of consciousness, etc.
H. asks “What are Souls?” and “Are there souls on all the planets?” Planets are emotional states or postures the body passes through movement from posture to posture, emotions as of body. Can we pass from mood to mood?
The use of the term ship will be familiar to those who know the two schools of Buddhism, esoteric and exoteric greater and lesser vehicles. They refer to two psychological methods.
Transition from one emotional state to another at will; for example from anger to reverence; this is movement from one planet to another.
This presupposes an organization—a ship—a vehicle, found within ourselves, the Body Kesdjan results from the first three stages of the method: S.O., Participation, Experimentation. Those who have practiced these three can thus pass from planet to planet, by the technique of change of images. The greeter passage from Sun to Sun requires the third body, a change of intellectual states e.g. contemplation to meditation, to ecstasy, to Logic.————–
We have astral matter; but no astral body; mental ditto. The Method will do what other methods have been developed for, to form astral and mental bodies—Souls, Self and Cosmic Consciousness, i.e. a consciousness of cosmic phenomena.
These ships the Captain mentions here include religious institutions which promised to carry their devotees from earth to heaven.
Three types of ships; three psychological stages of religions development
1:- Everything done physically. Sacrifices, etc; fumes produced which caused pathological results. Introduced to astral phenomena their appeal to physical senses, a clumsy flight from planet to planet. Brief, uncertain. Astral – plane, physically demonstrated 2:-Symbols. Astral plane symbolically represented
3:- perfect method with all extraneous machinery left off. Cf. Three forms of reason, words, forms, objective. Psychological processes require Method.
Captain is responsible for conduct of Method (Orage, a junior apprentice) The Captain started young and earned his rank. His father had been made governor of a system (not all those capable of being captains are captains (there are other jobs beside those of conducting groups). This Captain had intended from the beginning of his interest to be a captain.
Earlier ships were cumbersome and employed substances surrounding all planets; not psychic, not psychological. For example, in seance astral phenomena materialized in fumes of freshly spilled blood.
Improvements were made by St. Venema, who for his good work was allowed to go to Purgatory. It seems odd that Purgatory should be reward; but certain ideas can be realized only in certain emotional states ideas in the Book can only be realized in Purgatory, which is that mood resulting from an emotional understanding of what one’s objective duty is and at the same time realizing that we are not yet prepared to carry it out. Mental anguish is the energy supplied for certain realizations. If we continue S.O. through the three steps, we will certainly go to Purgatory.
In purgatory St. Venema improved the Method by the discovery of the Law of Failing.(This is difficult to understand and suggests two lines of thinking Psychological Gravity
1:- Consider the illusion of space in a dream, a psychological space in which things fall. What is the origin of Space, Fall, Gravity, in ourselves.
2:- What is meant by fall of tone. From one rate of vibration to another. A note struck dies down the scale. Each planet and each solar system is a note in the octave; one rate of vibration. Transition is a change from one rate of vibration to another.
The practice of the Method produces a change in the organism. Strike one note and perhaps a falling note will produce effects on low notes. The change is indirect. The _Method was invented by St. Venema (associated with the Therapeutics) Link this with the three psychological stages of religion.
1:-Ancient Hebraic
2:-St. Venema, Therapy. Jesus sprang from organizations, included by the Therapeuts and was at first hailed as a Healer, which was only a minor part of his work.
3:- Method of Jesus. No machinery. Abolished all the clumsy mechanism of the Schools by which he had been trained, with at least machinery used in ordinary living.
Law of Falling. Everything falls to bottom, stable points, converging lines to bottom of each mood from others. No mood cut off from all others (At moment of conception, all planets conspire; according to distance, in rate from rate of germ as hereditarily determined). There are seven main moods; but also a disorganized cloud of asteroid by which we are ordinarily governed. We very seldom experience purely one of the seven main moods.
Earlier ships were cumbersome, hard to steer from planet to planet, mood to mood. Slow. Space is an externalization of difference of rate of vibration. How fast can you move from mood to mood by S.O.?
St. Venema’s system had a disadvantage, it felt a pull when trying to navigate past other planets (temptation to fall into by-products). Planets on the left are negative states: depression, despondency bitterness, despair. On the right are planets where you feel you can do something other than the thing you started out to do (temptation to turn energy into a particular art, science, etc. instead) Question: Why solar and planetary images?
Major emotional states are related to images in intellect, dependent Planetary images for emotional center. Solar images for intellectual center.
An angel is a fully developed three center being. The rumor of this no method soon spread inter solar and interplanetary. Soon after there were experiments open to all (Apply this to Gurdjieff’s “last degree of occultism is commonsense”
Jesus exemplified publicly the psychological stages of the rise of the soul from the death of the body. He voluntarily abandoned his body. This ended closed instruction for the whole world is the Occult school of Jesus.
This ship is psychological effort which replaces the older method of faith, hope and love. The captain describes this ship (the Method) they now are on.
The cylinder is the torso. Juxtaposition. _Generator is Effort. (At first of self obs. the Method aims to produce a consciousness of self and the cosmos plan, here, now, in this body. The cylinder in the barrel is hermetically sealed, and its energy ceases to escape by waste (with the seal of Hermes, who taught the method). Gas, fog, planetary emissions (negative states) are automatically dispersed and the ship passes from planet to planet or from Sun to Sun, very rapidly because there are no conflicting states. The denser the substances to be dispersed, the more efficient the generator works. The passage is more rapid, (transition from low to high more rapid where there is resistance, external circum.
These new ships control their own courses. Earlier religions required devotees to stay. There were certain early conceptions of the church as an ARK, stay in it and be safe, be carried mechanical to Paradise. Contrast this with self-direction. The difficulty a heretic had in getting himself out of the ARK. These ships were not only cumbersome but had within themselves no possibility of Self-Initiation.
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Chap vl
This parable is in mechanical (psychological) terms. Perpetual Motion ;( the notion that somehow or other we achieve immortality. An immortal body is a machine capable of perpetual motion, power, etc. This is a satire on these notions. “Many went insane”. Everyone tried to set up a religion, whether he was qualified for the job or not. Some trusted to knowledge, some to luck; and some because they were crazy.
All the systems of cults, all the pathological states produced by rituals, monasteries, systems of breathing, diets were such. But in their best and real values moral, physiological, emotional based on superstition. Amateur religions as source of degeneration. All religions without Method are superstitions.
How would all this have ended if someone had not proved by means known only to himself that perpetual motion was impossible i.e. that an era of rationalism is negative. They had thought of everything but AIR (air octave) e.g., weight; asceticism. Machine made of astral body, poorly organized may continue as an animal: hence the Birth Stories of Buddha. The length of life of the physical body is cramped by a waste of energy. Under ideal conditions, that is living from birth in a society, not merely a small community, where everyone was engaged in working for development of consciousness with the effects of this on institutions, the body might survive for four or five hundred years; the astral body seventy thousand time as long; and the mental body as long as the universe. Due to the wretchedly short existence of the body, there is not enough time to organize the astral body, unless one works professionally with the intensity of a fanatic Value of reviewing plctorially. An Initiate is one who initiates.
January 31, 1927
Becoming aware of genuine duty. This has nothing to do with usual morality. Duty is in the sense of obvious function. We are accustomed to think of the body as a machine; and every machine has its proper use as determined by its structure. This is so with the body. Morality would consist of its use in accord with its structure. Conceive of the Arch- engineer of the Universe judging us by this standard. But the body has not only an immediate use, it has other potentialities. By analogy, consider a group of savages who find an auto and use it only as a hut. Speaking technical: this is immoral. Our psyche is treating our body in this way. This is the morality of which Hassein becomes aware: «duty» is not to another organism but the duty of utilizing the body in full scope of its functions. This becomes a concept outside of the usual morality e.g., if we assume for the moment that we have three brains and are in the habit of using only one, we are two thirds short of duty, that is genuine. H. was pondering, “What is the matter?” asked B.
H. admits having new thoughts; he now understands that everything he has and uses came to its present state through the labor and suffering of many beings, and much unnecessary (gratuitous) suffering. We do not thank those beings, we take everything for granted. H. says “From you, talk with the Captain, I have become aware with all my being; and “think with remorse” as to what and why all these blessings. What are the duties laid upon me by my existence? What must I do in return for all this? This question is the basis of any morality.
Is the body is not a machine with a function, this has no meaning if it has a function, it is an obligation.
H.’s question is the question of every three centered being at a certain stage: What is the meaning of my life? And what do I owe? I must make a distinction between I am a body and I have a body “I” is potential. Duty applies to “I”. Must have had a realization of “I” as distinguished from “It”
I Hassein, realize I have a body. Presumably it has a designed use; but do not yet know what its potentialities are. How can I use it? The final chapter of the Book summarizes the answer as developed through the Book: Good and Evil. We are machines with potentialities but the discovery of these potentialities is not in our personal power.
B. answers: “You must not think or worry about all this just now. When the time comes you will understand and know what you must do. You are still young”
All we can expect from the magnetic center now is a moment of realization. We are still young. No duty now, but will understand and know what you must do. At present can have only the morality of the pupil, the morality of effort. Our only duty is to try to learn our duty, and prepare ourselves. Later when we become aware of what our job is, we will do it. Let the energies in you move among the energies in it.
He who is too lazy every day to learn everything he can, will be unable later, when he realizes his duty, to practice it. Purgatory: when one realizes what one should do and has not the necessary technique. No need for undue haste. Prepare. Perhaps we knew before we came. Cf. certain myths. Prodigal Son, originated with the Gnostics. Hymn of the Robe of Glory. The son went off, not in a huff but in search of a robe which had been stolen. Fell into adventure and forgot his mission. When eating with swine—i.e. mechanical life, he remembered his mission and returned to his father.
B.:”I am glad for your future that you have asked this question. This word «glad». B. might never have used if he had stayed at home; but has lived in-foreign surroundings and side by side with his proper nature, a second body was formed also real. H. could not have been otherwise and his father could see occasion to rejoice. But B., thanks to his misfortunes is “glad”. Differentiate between a being whose, completion is mechanically arrived at and a being who develops by effort. Angel —Man.
On some planes perhaps beings develop without gaps of scale, without effort, hence without sin, hence without realization, hence without gladness, (as distinguished from happiness). If everything which happened could not be otherwise, we could not be glad.
There are planets where everything is natural, evolution without effort; no religion; no gaps in octave.
B. points out the advantage of our disadvantages. Fully developed Man is superior in realization to the angels. Man becomes the mind of God. Angels and arch-angels are His higher emotional centers. God thinks with human entities. It is possible to be unhappy and glad.
“Not Good and Evil; but henceforth Good and Bad”. Nietzsche. “Bad” is amateur, failure to carry out.
There is no positive evil force, merely the difficulty of the problem.
B: “Ask me a question”
H. Tell me anything you like. I shall be interested because you tell it” (Flattery) An effort to avoid the effort of formulating a question.
H. “Tell me about those–eh– those ‘Slugs’”
B. “What?” He knew damn well
H. “Those being a like us, but with slimier skin (smoother, hypocritie
B. “I know them well; they are very peculiar. This planet is in certain respects unique and hence interesting, if only pathological. l offers psychological behavior not found on normal planets (Legend that this planet is called the Ridiculous Planet or The Lunatic Asylum of the World. G.B. Shaw sometimes uses it in this altitude. Shaw inherited this from Lucian, who got it from)
B.: “I saw their rise and watched their development. I almost saw the creation of the planet itself. It had not yet cooled when he arrived on Mars”.
First, he will tell about Cosmic Troubles. Genesis of The Moon. B. and his companions were busy adjusting themselves to life on Mars. Suddenly the whole planet was shaken. A stench arose. When it cleared off it was found that the earth had split with two fragments thrown off. Cause was a comet of long path on its first trip. Bumped the earth and the planet Konda or Kunda. A violent shock. The earth so recently formed that the atmosphere which acts as a buffer had not had a chance to form(effect of the atmosphere on meteorites) His Endlessness was hastily informed(System of nerve communication informs the brain that a stone has fallen on the foot. This takes a time interval, from the Sun Absolute (executive brain) a commission of specialists in world existence were sent. (In certain cases definite cells dispatched, human cells at a certain stage). Emergencies, when normal methods and instinctive reflexes are not fast enough. (See later Chap. on Time) The commission landed on Mars because it was near and B. met them. B. was on a planet slightly higher than ours, and there for knew ahead of time. The commission allayed their fears. There was no danger of catastrophe.
The archangel Algematant, a personified state of intelligence Alge (Algebra), math (mathematics). A being whose components are of a nature to understand algebra and mathematics (Called in the Bible principalities. Algematant was an engineer and explained: The split off fragments lost their momentum, before leaving the spatial sphere of the Earth and did not pass the edge. According to the Law of Falling, they began to fall back. But the earth was moving and they came under the Law of Catching Up. Falling and Moving. Moving is the ellipse, they describe. Both movements have psychological parallels in us. It is desirable that the center of gravity should be moving faster, so that one part should be always catching up but£ not fall in. “I” must not fall on “It”.
Perhaps, the Method striking on it like a comet may break off “I” The falling and catching up may operate. Glory be that harmony is established.
This split off of a Moon, happened by accident. Archangel Sakaki thought that these fragments might sometime get out of their orbits and cause trouble unless some measures were taken (danger of hearing the Method and understanding it. Measures must be taken about the fragment split off)
He decided the earth must supply the fragment with special sacred vibration, which could be formed only by certain psychic organic forms of life
“Askokine” (the vibration), conscious labor and voluntary (intentional suffering). Life developing on the Moon depends on radiations from this earth, as the “Earth depends on emanations from the sum. Keep the Moon from falling. The effort that subvented the Moon is a solar and cosmic purpose.
They ask permission of His Endlessness to create the necessary organic life. His Endlessness gives permission. He does not actively bring about any change in the three centers but oversees them.
The large fragment “Lunda Pergo” changed to the Moon
the smaller fragment is Anulios. The esoteric name of the Moon is still Lunda Perga. The contemporary beings on the earth do not even know of the existence of Anulios; but the inhabitants of Atlantis knew of it and called Anulios also by a name which meant “He that never allows to sleep in peace”. Cf. “The Shaving of Shagpat” Meredith
“The Discourager of Hesitancy” who carried a scimetar.
Later we will learn what these fragments are in us. Contemporary beings do not know because it is beyond their sight— insight Prometheus was the Foreseer beyond psychological vision.
Their grandmothers never told them,
Fairy tales feed the magnetic center. But none of our fairy tales tell that there is a little moon. If anyone saw it through telescope he would pay no attention. If any one who was a psychologist or philosopher found in himself an ache for perfection (remorse, duty) he would pay no attention and think it an aerolite, not real)
But we are not likely to see it for we are in the days of mechanical interpretation. Such words as remorse, sin, unfulfilled duty have no meaning.
In us is a potential center technically called Anulios; also a partly potential center called the Moon,
Cosmic analogies. Moon Food Conscious Labor and Voluntary suffering. The Labors of Hercules. The Golden Fleece. Ulysses. To supply the Moon with a lot of Askokino. To relieve men till they are able to do so. Perseus.
The archangel Sakaki saw to it that the laws of seven and three operate independently and concurrently on the surface of the Earth, vegetation and other beings. Among the bipeds, slugs Heptapa barschinoch = Efta parabarshinoch, Seven making One Tria masikamno, Triamonia three making one of seven is the Law of Evolution Law of Three is the law of Psychology.
On this planet the two can proceed concurrently and independently.
On other planets, they are interdependent.
Sakaki had to produce an organism capable of conscious labor and voluntary suffering. Hence the gaps; and hence the psychic life here is unique.
February 7,1927
Last week was an experiment in sustained attention of imaginative understanding. Fragmentary attention fails to make up a whole, to bind isolated thoughts into a whole. Attention must be sustained. How soon did I give out?
Consider the epic quality of this setting and the beings. It is a sort of dialogue between a fully realized being and one not fully realized. B. begins in a detached position from which he observes the body of the Cosmos, as we when beginning S.O. should be detached and impartial. In all that B. says to H. it is implied always that the whole physical universe has a purpose and that he understands it. Matter is an agency. Part of it is at certain notes of the octave, such as planets, solar systems, beings, etc. have practice not mystical, not theoretical function, and each part either fulfills or does not fulfill this function.
Similarly we have a material cosmos. The first truthful thing we can say is “I have a body”. From which positions are we to observe its use? What can it do? What use can “I” make of it?
B. can look at the planets and say “I understand their use”. The implication is that the universe is logical and rational. For what purpose am I (the listener) B. speaks as “I” or mind and refers to the physical universe as a means of attaining something for himself “I” can extract from practical experiences with this body, an active understanding of its use. An objective reason. The universe is to be used for the education of souls; for beings who have attained objective reason. For those who have understood the obligation is on God – to maintain the universe. Only those who have understood this and taken their part are entitled to be called “souls”, partners or sons of God and not slaves.
H. takes interest in this planet; but it is one among millions, and not the center of life.
The singular life on this planet is the result of an accident. Our moon was not given off naturally but was the result of an accident. All planets naturally give off moons; but the earth was prematurely delivered of is moon and hence a special kind of life had to be developed to supply special radiations (see recent scientific experiments on radiations from planets)
How do we explain the fact that we who consider ourselves intelligent, if we review our life at the end of each day, find we have behaved like idiots, cowards, poltroons, idle creatures. We would condemn such lives if we judged another impartially; yet we preserve our equanimity. Why such indulgence?
Why after the end of each civilization do we fail to preserve or make use of its excellences? Egypt in art and science, India in philosophy and religion, China in personal relations. Why do not succeeding generations build on these? Why are we not in reality the “heirs of all the ages?” There has been only a broken and discontinuous movement. There seems to be a need in us for destruction. Instead of standing on the shoulders of the preceding civilizations, we have climbed up from almost nothing to a place still inferior in many sciences and arts to those of the ancient civilizations
Why do we believe and hope in “progress” when we have proof before our eyes that the race has not progressed?
Or personally, when I cannot do this (observe) now, how can I expect others to do so. Or if I am, say a reformer and observe my own fallings how can I expect my effort to be carried out?
Make an impartial survey of the world, its continents, its islands its races, its history, its languages. What impartial judgment can we make? We are growing more mechanical every day, if possible. Devote a few minutes each day to such a survey. Such effort must precede any understanding of the following chapter:
Why Man Is Not Man
What claim, do we make to be superior to the animals? In reason, we think. What is man? One who understands why he is alive (Does a sheep understand mutton, and wool? Do we understand Moon-food and Sun-Food?)
What the body is for? What Life is for? What to do with the body? How to live and what values to attain? Not one of us, in spite of all philosophy knows why he is alive. We receive body at birth to play with, and not one of us knows why or what game he is playing. The sheep can see their shepherd; but we can see no biological species superior to us. Who are they? No one employs physical force over us. We are so complacent and uncritical that we take it for granted that we fulfilling human functions. The problem of why not never presents itself to us as a real problem (emotional, intellectual) as it did to the writers of Genesis, for example. They said mythologically but intelligently that degradation came through succumbing to the temptations of the instinctive center. Put in a garden where we are expected to care for the garden; but we ceased to make effort and soon were out of Paradise. This is the psychology of Genesis.
G. gives a myth which is related to The Method, and is designed to produce a poignant realization of our state. Premature delivery of Moon-Catastrophe of the Comet (unusual state of emotion). Two pieces struck off, leaving the earth deprived of two functions for normal development. Take this personally: Why have we not the advantage of normal methods of education and development.
The nature of this planet is such that the catastrophe will always be repeated in the organic life on it. Individuals will pass through the same stage that the planet passed through. The individual repeats the history of the species, back to the original parent, the planet which had two parts struck off.
1:- Consciousness of my body
2:- Consciousness of the world in which I live. (Normal accompaniment of life, since no longer organic parts, to be reconquered by feeding i.e. each of us must make special effort, must feed these potentialities, to make them actualities). Such words as God, service of God religion, etc. have no meaning for us. On some planets there is perhaps a natural development of education, science, etc. On our planet, the sponge of oblivion is always passed over every great system. There must be always effort. Thanks to this effort B. can say “I am glad “, “I understand disease as well as health.”
B. talks to H.; These slugs had three brain systems; but due to external conditions began to develope unexpectedly mechanical reason. With mechanical reason we can for instance understand the idea that we are organic mechanisms.
When Sakaki and his commission returned a little later to see how life was coming on, he found here mechanical reason and had to decide what measures to take. If creatures will not make voluntary effort “labor or suffer” perhaps by virtue of their mechanical effort will avoid involuntary effort (to attain self consciousness and cosmic consciousness) realizing by their mechanical reason that they were mechanical slaves, used for a purpose, they do not understand, it was possible they might prefer not to live. If we realized emotionally our mechanical natures, that is without the possibility of self or cosmic consciousness as in behaviorism, suicide would follow. Sakai saw that our mechanical reason would one day discover this; and arranged to prevent these effects, i.e. we would refuse to be such slaves with a resultant upset to the cosmic equilibrium. With the arch chemist Luizas, an organ was designed to turn values upside down and provide imaginary pleasures.
The physical analogy is with the use especially in the Last at certain periods of opium or considers the limited amount of electricity in the atmosphere. Its greater mechanical use has allowed less biologically. If Will requires electricity, then as the use of electricity increases, Will diminish. Luizas must have done one of two things; either released certain elements in the atmosphere or denuded it of some.
Our Lucifer was a chemist. Superstitious notion of a special organ, all rot. Atmosphere was treated to prevent realization. We have heard of the separation of the centers, e.g., when taking ether, by drugs, or by such fatigue as induces autointoxication. But all our centers are separated from two other centers, with which they would be connected if we were normal.
a:- Emotional realization of things as they are (true emotional)
b:- Understanding of why we live (true intellectual)
We know we will die; unlike animals we are aware of our mortality yet we behave like animals. We know we are all to be butchered but we do not know when. How it possible to love? Our emotional center is separate from our mechanical knowledge. This was the work of Luizas. Imaginary pleasures. We have three groups of our activities, intellectual, emotional, physical. We know the body is mortal; perhaps the intellect is not. Obviously we should in theory live for understanding, reason, etc. Yet 99% of our effort time emotion is spent on pleasures of the body. Paraphrase ordinary talk in terms of animals.
The Forces of heredity are not mechanical (?) Saturn Luizas, both good and evil responsible for doping and for the possibility of living Kundebuffa… Sane beings but doped and therefore behaving as if not sane. The organ Kundebuffa turns values upside -down men take instinctive values as highest in face of proof to the contrary. Luizas returns satisfied that the organ will work; men will not suspect they are doped and will live in illusory satisfactions. B. will later point out to H. the results of this dislocation of centers.
B. and his kinsmen return to Mars and set up an Observatory (Mars an emotional attitude outside the range of Faith, now doped. They visited Saturn, found beings more highly developed. Saturnians rare among us. They have understanding of the First Law of Life “love all that breathes”, which is the first obligation on all, responsible beings. These people were congenial to B.
Later on gives example of Tolstoy, though not naming him, who without any real knowledge of Life or Self became regarded as the author of a modern gospel. G. knew Tolstoy, who was naive and self-ignorant. Why do we give credence to his statements, when we have no way of checking them up? Suggestibility. Do not apply reason to ideas presented to us, in certain ways. Not susceptible to ideas but to forms in which they are presented. Why will we, knowing certain authors to be fools, read their books with respect? We, knowing certain education to be bad will send children there; knowing certain ideas to be bad will act on them. Flying in the face of our knowledge. This is fundamental in man. Analyze this. Why books are written? Why do people believe Tolstoy’s gospel. Because we never verify by applying personal knowledge and effort. Why not? It involves effort of self -knowledge and consequent estrangement.
Beings on this planet differ in color according to climate and race distinctions are purely a matter of prejudice. Personal distinctions vary according to main causes, among which are heredity and conditions at conception; but the psyche is always the same, especially in suggestibility. Mass suggestion especially in relation to War. Why are we not the heirs of old civilizations? Every civilization has been destroyed by man in the madness of war fever. So long as we are susceptible to war fever so long can there be no general progress Later G. gives examples of Leagues of Nations going back to Babylon.
Take as an example the conception of the word “Hero”. B. says to H. “A hero is among us one who voluntarily undertakes some labor for the benefit of creation, the whole, not some part of it” Of the discovery and promulgation of the Method, involving effort of which we are utterly incapable. G. spent thirty years in the satisfaction of a rational curiosity. G. is a juvenile hero. On the planet earth the word hero exists and is usually applied to those who most easily fall under the war fever and slay many others. Admire those who do not fear death who do not fear those whom under suggestion, they regard as enemies. In this state of trance, we are ready to destroy or be destroyed. No gods or devils are to blame. Beings induce it in themselves and in each other.
The First Descent is the period of Atlantis. Whether Atlantis ever existed is here a matter of no interest; but that Atlantis exists in us is of great psychological interest.
Note Book #2
Bibliographical notes
Iamblichus, Life of Pythagoras, trans by Thos. Taylor
John M. Watkins, 21 Cecil, Charing Cross Road, 1926
Philosophers Book Shop
Golden verse of Pythagoras
Pythagoras, Schure, trans Rothwell, Roder and Son
Mahabharata Louis Benson
We tried last week to establish a point of view about the human race. Did this state of mind last? A little on Tuesday, less on Wed. gone on Thurs or only an intellectual memory without emotion. Great difficulty in maintaining an elevated intellectual- emotional state. It is a great deal to have experienced it for a moment. Parallel the effort to none identify with this creature who is yourself and the effort to observe and non-identify with the species. Same qualities and phenomena.
In the Book is a history of the origin of man and an objective description of him. These facts are not new; but are chaotic and disorganized within us; they are not in our consciousness. Survey your own knowledge of the species, using only information, already obtained with a view to formulating and generalizing. Consider the five main races. Try to imagine in one generalization your actual knowledge of these five main races as they are at present inhabiting the globe. Each has had a history, an you state the general characteristics, common to all the members of the human species.
Specify in detail the defects under which they labor not limited to certain races or colors, but common to all human beings, “results of the introduction of Kundebuffa”
A catastrophe split the planet; consequently every being on the plan repeats its history. There remains in us a certain objective standard by which we find these characteristics deplorable
l:- Self-love: from thinking oneself entitled to things one has
not earned by conscious effort— in extreme form Narcissism.
2:-Vanity: A belief that there are elements in our organism of which we may be proud. No matter what theory we may have about the accidental character of our qualities, we cannot help being proud.
3:-Touchiness, sensitiveness. Whether a fact is true or not.
4:-Hatred, toward those whose radiations affect us unpleasantly though we recognize it as a weakness.
5:- Egoism, in the form of believing that an organization to which I happen to be attached is superior to others. Often especially displayed in impudence in which we think that we without the qualifications are better fitted to render service than others.
These are universe faults. How does it happen we have these traits? The myth answers: because we are biological products of an abnormal planet. We are normally abnormal. We start as abnormal because these traits are abnormal to real Essence.
There are two kinds of reform:
Local
Universal
Any reform which might be brought about in conditions of civilizations, say in the U.S. at present would be local and the effect on the species microscopic. The great religious reformers have not tried to change any given culture; but to change the chemistry of the human psyche, for the whole species. The level Si-Do between mechanical and self- conscious is the level of this type of reform. The establishment of Self- Consciousness as an individual aim is the beginning of the technique of every religious reformer. All reforms take their place in the Octave.
In the following chapters will be a critique of the technique of religious reforms. The rest of the Book will attempt to evaluate method of all religious reformers, including Jesus Christ from the point of view of the transformation of human effort.
Why do all reforms die out? Why are all results temporary? The psychology must change. Given this method and the method of each religious reformer, we can institute a criterion of criticism.
The First Descent was in help of a Caritasian who had come to this planet and seeing the bad conditions had undertaken a reform. A Caritasian is such as being as we would be if we were normal. Many of us may become Caritasian’s.
This Caritasian finds people suffering injustice, sweating to pay taxes and carry our purposes which have nothing to do with their own needs. He undertakes reforms and fails. He undertook from a sense of pity to reform the world by instituting what he considered would be a humane form of government. Notice B.’s indulgently contemptuous attitude towards the futility of this type of reformer. B puts H. on guard against certain sentimental notions about the human race. Thos slugs have double natures. They talk as if butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths; but when they act are abnormal and monstrous. Hassein is destined some day to effect a change in the human psyche. The “descent” is a series of lessons in ways not to approach human beings.
0. reads the story. B. is appealed to for the Caritasian’s failure is troublesome to himself and might become so to all. A failure of a religious reformer has a very bad effect. The failure of Christianity has done much to discredit the principle of Love as a basis of religion. It should have succeeded. The principle of Love in pursuit of knowledge is indispensable, yet consider how repellent it is to many intelligent people of culture because of its association.
B. descends to earth; a parallel with Hindu literature, (Cf. Mahabharata) Krishna, the “I”, occasionally intervenes. Also there is a parallel with the steps we must take in observing, participating and experiment.
B. flew to earth on the Ship, Occasion, the appropriate moment, when the maximum of means is present.
We are seized by occasions, a self- conscious being seizes one. The home port of this ship was -Mars, which is the mood of overcoming of becoming self-conscious.
He landed on the continent Atlantis, which afterward disappeared. If we reproduce psychologically the history of the planet, what is Atlantis in us and what compares in us to its engulfing (Maeterlinck) The Buried Continent in us Essence is what we know to be truly us. We have only a few moments in our life when we act from essence mostly we are artificial. S.O. and Participation begins to disinter, to bring to the surface that burled psychology in us Historical accuracy NOT GUARANTEED.
The capital of Atlantis was Samnios. This was dominant just as to day the intellectual sub center of the instinctive center. This characterizes our civilization at present. We can chart a civilization according to its center of gravity. “Capital” in the Book refers to the center of gravity of the dominant classes.
a.
21
King Appolis, with whom B.’s “young and Inexperienced kinsman” (One who had begun to observe his organism). The human species in their chief center at Samnios had taken offense and got himself bound (identified) with King Appolis. The young Caritasian had become friendly with King Appolis (I had become friendly with it) The King needed lots of taxes. Think of a well endowed personality committed to the necessity of maintaining for its organization the status to which it is accustomed. Personal application?? Suppose S.O. should threaten your ability to do your chosen work and keep up other mechanical status, as intellectuals, philosophers, artists, etc. To maintain this; one has to put out a great effort, read books, go places, see people etc. This is comparable to the “Lab King Appolis has to exact from his subjects. In general human beings do nothing in regard to obligations, voluntarily undertaken unless some fear is induced of incurring dislike, disfavor etc. of others.
In the absence of the possibility of disagreeable consequences, we are tempted to abandon any voluntary resolution, when it becomes irksome.
We are without muscle of our own. We artificially create these disagreeable consequences and attribute them to external agencies.
King Appolis spared nothing, not even himself, nor his subject’s component cells, like a man with a passion for fame in art, literature, or anything else. He had a passion for his objective. He used threats and measures. What threats do you use to yourself? “You must do this or that”, a passion for self-discipline. We may call ourselves the arch-dodger. Has anyone with this passion ever admitted in moments of candor the tricks he has employed for keeping his organism at work when it wanted to stop?
How Orage persuaded his organism for fifteen years to keep on editing the New Age.
This seemed unjust to the Caritasian, who grew indignant at the King and told him so.
They talked it over and made a wager. By this the King was to employ one such methods as were approved by the Caritasian. Then if the citizens failed to pay the Caritasian undertook to make this good.
By -products will come; but “I” cannot guarantee any immediate advancement of values of personality. There may even be a temporary decline.
Q: – Will The Method improve my efficiency in writing, etc?
Ans:— Yes
Q:— At once?
Ans. — Cannot tell; maybe at once, certainly eventually
Q:- But suppose I cannot afford any temporary diminution?
Ans.— Then do not start The Method.
The Caritasian promised immediate improvement.
King Appolis accepted; his subjects stopped paying and began to sneak back (Organism gives up effort)
But the Caritasian’s vow was voluntary. If one finds in an involuntary vow, a mechanical reaction, and if voluntary a conscious reaction, the latter is thirty thousand times stronger.
The Caritasian paid in all he had (effort at S.O. etc.) Then his kinsmen sought stimulation (attended groups). He appealed to Mars (His kinsmen are cells in the magnetic center) He was anxious and appealed to Reason. A conference was held. This cannot help “I”. The machinery being wound up, it cannot return to its original state. The literal application of this seems to be the effect on the organism of any premature reform, an attempt to change for experimental reason any one thing, for a moral reason may have incalculable effects. Any local change may bring serious consequences which are not recognized as consequences.
King Appolis is the common sense of the world; and must not submit to an embryological, undeveloped “I”. We must not make experiments contrary to common sense although “I” is a being of a higher reason. Such an experiment is against the health of the organism. Help me return.
King Appolis retired. There was a conference of “I’s”, discussing the escapade of one of their number. They advised King Appolis to restore an inferior form of government.
The Caritasian thought the subjects would make an effort out of Love (sentimentality of modern liberalism) (idealistic anarchism) Kropotkin; They labored under the illusion that human beings are naturally just. They are so by theory in our minds but are not so in action. The “I’s” advise a return from an idealistic form of government to one tyrannical and realistic, people being what they are.
Why does the prospect, the positive hope, of increasing our conscious powers act less powerfully as a lever of effort than the fear produced by description of our diseased and abnormal state? Logic alone would make the small effort needed, very desirable. But not from a mere hope can we get the energy; but from an emotional understood realization of decadence, of approaching death, etc. A system of rewards alone is not enough it is necessary to have punishments also, e.g. a threat of staying awake till the film of the day is finished, or get up and read or go without breakfast!
A greater effort is needed now to restore; after a lapse of S.O. a much greater effort is needed.
Every organization has its own clock. The development of S.O. is like the growth of a seed; it cannot be static and must pass through phases in its allotted time or it will die.
Water need not be given every hour; but, say, once a day. A liberal amount of time but not indefinite. I must receive food appropriate to each phase or it will be impossible to go on to the next, without going back to the original state.
When beginning S.O. development takes place in a pattern and with a time-schedule; and within this time phase, the food of effort must be given; else the next time will respond anew or not at all. No one knows how many seeds there are in the magnetic center two, three, four? Limited and in general, not more than two. This is why it is dangerous to propound the Method to someone who may hear it and not be able to “keep in the seed-plot”, to keep actively in touch or may commit the Sin Against the Holy Ghost which is the only sine which may be committed Involuntarily, that is destroying in any being the last seed of potentiality.
This time is determined by each organism. We go back to the story.
There was an attempt to repair, just in time, the trouble which is had been caused. The government was restored to tyranny. Does any other method work? Inquire in yourself. King Appolis got results which the Caritasian could not. The Caritasian found this spectacle so distasteful that he returned to Mars, and later on became a good bailiff i.e. he retired to a school to learn more of himself. Apply this to sociological and personal reform.
Those are entitled to be social reformers who have experience of human beings in all states of existence, action, emotion, etc. Only such are entitled to legislate on behalf of human kind. Otherwise their opinion is based on insufficient knowledge or on insufficient time. When you have known a person, in a state of starvation, terror, panic, wealth, drunkenness etc., etc. His present state is only a temporary criterion.
Naivety of style represents naivety of “l’s” question. Complexity will give complexity of style.
Next Chapter is the Relative Understanding of Time.
G. says: “I have buried in this book certain bones, so that certain dogs with great curiosity and strong scent may dig down to them and, strange thing, when they have done so, are men” Effort is useful to Understanding.
February 21, 1927
There is an effort in the Book to see the human species as one would any other species of animal. As if one read a book on the dog, its nature and diseases. Historical, physiological etc.
The beginning of Objective Reason.. Later will speak of Divine Reason i.e., a reason contemplating the human species and observing to what extent it fulfilled or fails to fulfill its functions, a function of the being in terms of use. It is needful to understand the purpose before we can say whether the being is or is not fulfilling its function, the function of the being in terms of use.
Survey the species to make certain statements applicable to all human beings at all times, either positive or negative.
Such a survey has always shown traits regrettable, even to human reason.
These would be interpreted by
1:- religious observer, as sin
2:- philosopher as stupidity
3:- by sociologist as due to an unfavorable environment.
We do nor know what conditions accompanied the end of extinct species e.g, mastodon, perhaps the planet no longer offered favorable conditions. Perhaps this is true of the human species.
We add a personal survey: each individual finds he has behaved foolishly, stupidly, even madly. The philosopher merely notes this and says “Man is uncivilized and uncivilizable” The religious teacher is impelled to deal with this and try to effect a change. The great religious teacher is convinced that the world is as it is but is not yet convinced that it cannot be changed.
An you understand sympathetically his attitude to this problem; his efforts to find proper methods, etc?
Q:- For what does Man exist?
Ans.:- To attain within himself Objective Reason.
Half one’s time should be spent in pondering how to live in the light of the reason attained.
The preceding chapter dealt with the dangers of a premature attempt at improvement. Until a long process of self-ascertainment has been gone through an attempt to improve may produce a corresponding defect while removing the defect in question. An animal is what it can be. It has no obligation; but man is under an obligation to develope his potentialities, which have not yet been realized.
Self-improvement is an arrangement between the three centers , which an arrangement of which is already existing. Self -perfecting is a realization of potentialities not yet developed.
B.’s young kinsman was not the only one of his tribe in Atlantis. The others were not interfering by direct means, (perhaps they were teaching the Method). They might have been trying to raise the rate of vibration; for the maintenance of a higher rate is the most effective way of causing change.
Our civilization is not built on preceding civilizations. Science is really a repetition although it thinks it is finding things for the first time.
You will find it stated several times in the book (true or not) that in at least two civilizations preceding historic times, electrical inventions were carried to as high a point as in our own times.
G. claims to have taken part in an expedtion exploring the Gobi. Here twenty yards below the surface they came upon the remains of a city; below that another, then another still, present tribes have no traditions nor names for these; and this makes Egypt seem of yesterday.
Atlantis is taken as the starting point of Man; not because it was the starting point in itte form; but as a three centered being. Previous beings had form but the air octave had not yet developed.
We can assume the same quantity of intelligence in the Greeks and Romans as in ourselves; but they applied it to art, philosophy, mathematics, whereas we have applied it to mechanics. It is improbable that the Pythagorean school of mathematics was inferior to modern. Euclid was a beginners manual.
Our two handicaps: We are not on the shoulders of the past; and Life is too short to attain Consciousness, even to attain the kind which we can conceive. We start comparatively late; we can estimate that the job would take several centuries. Considered in cold blood it really does not seem worth while starting; but that it may be worth while is a different matter.
Why is our life so short? Why have we not a normal life of three or four centuries. The answer depends on two issues.
a:- a question of time
b:- a question of three centers
Under the last we are like a clock wound up with three springs, which vary according to heredity and early environment but all three are wound up to run for two or three centuries at least. What prevents them from doing so? The “regulator” is not operating properly. What is this regulator? The effort to become s self-conscious. This effort begun from the age of responsibility (l7 or 18) automatically guarantees that the organism would run that long. G. has described several people whom he had met, who had found this idea as children and profited by it.
Q:-What do we call Time?
Ans.: The duration of the unwinding of the spring.
We are familiar with the differences of time in dreams and when awake. And the experience of the man whose head was dipped in a bowl of water. What is the nature of Time in a dream? What is the relation between intense experience and an absence of awareness of the passage of time? Or of the opposite when time seems to go slow? Intense experience makes time short, absence of experience, long. Einstein said “the more that happens, the less time”.
Suppose that under your eyes a tree should be presented in successive stages of its growth, as on the movie screen. How would we feel about time?
Our period up to responsibility ordinarily passes normally, with growth which winds the springs, one by one. Infancy, childhood, adolescence; then man or woman hood. A premature adolescence is considered abnormal because we have this series in mind; but manhood now presents disordered phases, with no ordered succession. G. says that time is normal up to age of responsibility; and after that it “plays tricks”; as above. This is because the three centers act, not under supervision;but accidentally in response to accidents from without. The natural regulator is removed at the age of responsibility, when this stage is passed a new regulator should be applied by the individual.
The difference between the waking and sleeping state is that in the waking state the three centers are magnetically connected. There is a tendency for each center to imitate the other two, a mutual hypnotisme. g., an unnecessary knitting of brows etc during thought. This activity of motor centers is not needed; and there is much waste of energy through this mutual hypnotism. The lack of this hypnotism is a partial explanation of the swift passage of time during a dream.
Up to and including youth there is a winding up; then comes the running down. In early childhood the magnetic tie is not formed, it approximates our sleeping state. The child begins slowly to “wake up”, as this magnetic tie is formed. Then it is impossible to “act with childish impulsiveness”, that is from one center alone I draws in the other centers.
It is possible to break these ties by drugs etc; but effort in the instinctive center is so deleterious that it is often impossible to restore the tie or the instinctive center may perhaps be destroyed. It is preferable to use the psychological drug EFFORT.
Illus. Should this room and we in it shrink to a pin point, no change would be noticed. G. takes as an example, life in a drop of water. The Heading of this chapter is the Relative Understanding of Time.
Time is the potentiality of experience. The duration of time is is each center wound up; and Objective Time is the number of experiences potentially contained in the center in question. How many capacities of experience does each center contain? These experiences can be successive or with intervals, sequentially or simultaneously. The time of our lives will depend on the rate by which these potentialities are exhausted, by experience, that is subjectively.
By accident certain difficult experiences with people cause us to unwind in a few minutes, or days, or months, years of potential unwinding. We cannot say “our” experiences, when they happen to us and happen too fast for us to be simultaneously aware of and hence profit from them; too fast for us to use.
Time is in this sense, personal. This does not mean that if all beings had the regulator at work that unwinding would take the same time; but each would get the full benefit from it.
Example of two men, one spending one hundred and the other one thousand dollars.Each spends purposively the measure of time is not the quantify but the manner of spending, a difference in the mode of experiencing. The flow may be experienced equally and identically by all beings or cosmoses(human being, planet, sun, milky way, the universe of universes).
Motion is in terms of Space
Time is Positive — Father
Space is negative — Mother
Motion is Life
Our visualization of these three; Objects; hence three dimensional
A, present we experience abnormally because chance can at any moment exhaust our potentialities, either through movement, feeling thinking. If we in control could choose, this would mean a proper use of Time. In saying we “have very little Time”, we mean we have very few potentialities left unrealized.
Orage read Chapter.
Men use the unit of a year, the revolution of the planet about the sun. The ancients took a longer period than this. We have taken it because of the seasons. The instinctive center attaches itself to the seasons. But there are also emotional and intellectual seasons. A certain emotional season, e.g., which lasts 99 years. A period of an intellectual year extends over an age of civilization.
In what intellectual season, am I born? In what emotional season am I? The instinctive year is for children; the emotional year for artists; the intellectual year for real scientists certain ancients took seasons of more importance to them than the external ones.
It is possible to know Time, only relatively; it cannot be understood by reason, nor can it be sensed.
In different cosmoses, there are all octaves, the only difference being in sole the element of time is the same, the order of the unfolding of experience. The way in which they act is the same but the duration is different. There is no end to the octaves (in number Only Time stands alone; the Unique Subjective. The Subjective is the potentiality of experience.
Where there is process, no matter on what scale, Time will blend it self with it. For a creature in a drop of water Time “makes itself microscopic” and gives those beings the same sequence. The process of experience, the flow of time, as we or beings of other cosmoses. For beings in the drop of water there is the same harmonic relation.
The are bron, grow, marry, get sick, die, are destroyed. They have winter spring, summer.
Time never comes objectively into existence and can never be an object. It is the Infinite Potential, Subjective, the potential Objective, the realization. Time is the absolute potential of all experience.
None of us live our natural period, nor experience Time normally. This is because our three centers are not unwound normally, because they are not under a regulator. Hence we have no normal understanding of Time of those who are fully developed and who do not experience faster than they can use it.
February 28, 1927
The previous chapters are on abnormality. In this there is a certain suggestive statement of the Nature of Normal man. What should a normal human being do, be, know?
From our abnormal understanding of Time, experiences are too fast to be received into our consciousness. In this room, different colors sounds, etc affect my chemistry; but I am unaware of most of them.
B. says our lives are growing shorter; by this he means we make conscious use of fewer and fewer experiences. The title of this Chapter The Arch – Absurd.
G, is aware that what he is about to say is almost incredible. Its sub-title is Discovery according to the Tales of B. that our sun gives neither heat nor light.
B, is indignant; he is capable of pity. He makes a survey of the
planet he has left, with sympathy but in a detached way.
They live in conditions created by themselves, which are not becoming to three centered beings. “Becoming” means both fitting and that which will enable them to become. Any normal cognizance of the cosmos in which they live has disappeared from their psyche.
This is the first indication of what a normal, three centered being would be. Just as we are aware of the flora and fauna of nature and the characteristics of civilization, so three centered beings would be aware of the functions of the cosmos, those of the moon related to the sun– all the cosmic phenomena, in the midst of which we dwell.
This means a direct personal knowledge, a “being knowledge” or a personal knowledge, not just hearsay (have we any personal knowledge of the structure of the storm?) I have a personal knowledge of the difference between the city and the country. G. says that every three centered being should normally know the cosmic phenomena which affect us without our now being aware of them.
This is caused according to the myth by Kundebuffa (Some Hindus used a metaphor of mirrors.)
Kundebuffa was introduced to prevent the acquisition of such knowledge for fear of destruction.
But Kundebuffa was removed later, that is organic conditions were removed. The responsibility Is now on human beings.
Plato said his Republic could be set up only if he could have newly born children to start with; but she he would have to employ adults for their education, he regarded the problem as practically insoluble).
Fumes being no longer generated, (by_fumes education being continued). There are thousands whose intelligence is superior to their conduct; they are freed from superstition in regard to religion or morals, but teach their irrational conduct to their children. How many subscribe for others to that which they would not consider proper for themselves.
What do we know about heat, dark, light, cold? We know by personal knowledge. We assume that light and heat come directly from the sun. What would human beings do if they knew(sensed), that nothing so material as light comes from the sun and that the sun is itself cold and icy Would it send heat to their misshapen planet, which is the shame of the solar system but which eventually may redeem the whole solar system(The Ugly Duckling)This is in many fairy tales, the doctrine is often enshrined there, where they would not be suspected of propaganda. The troubadours were emissaries of an occult society.
Light and heat are not universal. They are particular to certain localities and to certain conditions(certain planets). The vegetable and animal kingdom have different perceptions than we of light and heat. We are contributing to these phenomena.
The whole of our universe(all observable phenomena) exist owing to one system: Trogo(I ate) auto(ego) ego (I) crat (government by) “I, myself eat” – I eat myself, and this is the nature of my life. The food I eat is changed into the cells of my body, I am what I have eaten and digested.
The universe is a comparable being which eats to live and lives to eat. Every part of the physical universe is the product of eating of the “I”(God). This idea ties up and throws light on many myths: certain early rites of cannibalism; the Holy Communion; the tradition of the early Christians that Christ cut off parts of his flesh and that the disciples literally drank his blood, my body eats — and is substantiated; where is “I”?
This system was created by His Endlessness, when only the Sun Absolute existed and where His All Gracious Endlessness still exists. It is impossible to explain clearly at this point. We have a body whose e every cell is accounted for; Where is “I”?
We can offer no evidence of the existence of “I”, yet we can be sure of it. Similarlyn we say “God IS”. Gurdjieff never says “lives” but “exists”;ex- out of; its, manifests, to be; that state of being which is capable of manifesting itself.
The primary fact of being is “Istence”, but the “ex” is necessary for proof, communication. This does not affect its essence.
Essence — existence
“I” —-It
It is always passing up or down the scale; all elements are undergoing change, a conflux of chemical elements, some moving up the scale of their own octave, others down, in evolution and involution. These are proceeding in accordance with two cosmic laws, (one system, two laws).
1: – Holy Triamazikamno (later Triamonia) three making one.
2: – Efta para barshinoch (later epta etc) Seven making one.
I: – is the Law by which Cosmic Substances can interblend and form the cosmos according to Law two.
Every note is three old; and the succession of notes is sevenfold. The eighth note is a repetition of the first(See Modern Physics). All elements yet discovered tend to fall into groups of seven or eight. Why is seven so common in natural phenomena?
In completing a circle, by what impulse does it return to its starting point? – Number is not subject to Kundebuffa.
An attempt to objectify what we have hitherto called “I”; to empty “I” of all objects which can be objectified. “I” can never observe”I”.
It is under the Law of Seven.
“I” is under the Law of Three.
“I” is composed of Consciousness, Individuality and Will. Can these ever be seen?
The subjective world is seven; the objective,three.
The phenomenal is seven; the noumenal, three.
“I” is a vacuum from which is excreted phenomena. See later experiment which might be reproduced of generating forms in a vacuum.
To understand this Chapter, one should have a metaphysical background and be familiar with failure. Many previous answers which have failed. One should be capable of understanding the difference between the potential and the actual. The potential exists. Read Seurat on this problem.
Before the universe was actualized, God existed on the Sun Absolute. He planned and constructed the Universe on laws of architecture, so to speak. Everything objective was three fold, everything subjective was sevenfold.
Sitting is the result of seven reciprocal thrusts. Why do certain buildings stand and others fall? Those that stand are seven fold. Why do certain sentences fail to stand alone? They are not aphorism and must have the buttress of introduction and subscription. They are not under the law of seven. Certain works of art of the ancients were built on the law of seven, so as to stand, to be a Thing Ruskin Seven Lamps was on the trail but became confused. Make a work of art on the same laws as the universe. Only those were creators who could create things which exemplified the seven fold laws of the universe. Hokusai said that when he died, he hoped to win that body of artists who drew in light and created flowers. Blake’s “Tiger, tiger etc”. The contemporary use of the word “creator” is ridiculous.
This body will wear out; we take the wrong food or the right in insufficient amount or excess. Suppose one took only the food needful to repair worn tissue. We don’t know how to do this and consequently are always taking into the body substances whose decay leads to death. We live under ignorance, hence time.
When God saw his own demise approaching, he made a survey of the laws of existence and saw that if he could establish self- feeding, absorbing only the food needful to restore wear, he could become endless. The is he could defy Time. Having assured his existence, he then could say I have Time for self-perfecting. We, as component cells have a chance to share this endlessness.
B. has great gratitude, greater than we are capable of that he exists in this endless body; but refers with slight disrespect to His Endlessness for being willing to remain in this state. B. is not convinced that it is worth it for an intelligent being. If that is to be all. This criticism is really directed at human beings who when they achieve a certain state of content, cease to strive to realize their still – undeveloped potential. Our weaknesses are the source of our striving.
Energies which should be turned into developing of new powers are diverted into producing gratifications, for the planetary body. If happiness is taken as an end, the fundamental illusion of Kundebuffa, truth, development, etc. become by-products. If our aim is Truth and Self-Perfecting, then happiness may be a by product from the actualizing of potentialities. Certain stages may sometimes be accompanied by happiness; sometimes by unhappiness. Happiness is not a criterion.
March 7, 1927
It seems presumptuous for anyone to pretend to write on this subject — The Ultimate Meaning of the Universe.
I seems presumptuous on our part to attempt to understand and yet it is often reiterated throughout the book, that the normal state of a human being is to attempt to understand this.Renan said that no man should be ashamed to be unable to answer ultimate questions,but should be ashamed not to be interested in them. Of the first Book of Genesis where God brooded over Chaos. This detached reason should be our attitude.
Suppose we are asked at Death, Nietsche’s “Well, what has been your experience of being a human being?” The question assumes that you have experimented with life and that you have brought home a report. This is the attitude of a scientific observer, who is also an experimenter.
Consider the species; he can make a series of objective statements on the race; a critique of human beings. In the preceding chapters the conclusion is reached the human beings are degenerates; that is through thousands of years they have become steadily less and less actual, with less desire to realize their potentialities. The race is still at the head of biological evolution but is deteriorating. The result is that we accept as normal, things which are abnormal. Let us suppose a race who in isolation loses interest in educating its children, developing its intellectual life etc. If none were exempt no one would be aware of the deterioration. If confronted with the works of his ancestors, he would be faced with a problem. Without any objective standard we have no way of telling whether we are degenerating — and if so, how much?
This book attempts to set up a standard for a normal being, perhaps not even in historical time. But there are certain records, e.g. it was said last week that one of the normal senses of a human being wee an awareness of the cosmos in which it is living. Our common birthright is to understand this cosmos, just as a man born on one continent is aware of the existence of another. Astrology and ancient religions were often based on personal sensations. These now become superstitions because these sensations are no longer ours. Others (below) which include certain powers for which at present we have names only.
Before coming to personal, we must have certain analogy with the universe. We cannot understand the universe unless there is a certain correspondence with us, whether we are its product or it is our projection. Otherwise, there is no contact. If we are, e.g, three centered, it must be for us to understand. This does not mean that our knowledge exhausts it; but our knowledge is conditioned by our means of coming into contact with it. One of the frequent exercises of imagination in the Book is the frequent shift from the personal to the universal.
Trogo-auto-ego-craft, Have you during the week thought of the significance of this? Man is the result of his eating; the Universe is the body of His Endlessness. Was there a Sun Absolute before the Uhlverse came into existence? What does this mean? This is unintelligible to one who has not tried to make a distinction between “I” aid It. If I have experienced this immediacy, I can understand the statement that God was before the world. The Sun Absolute in us is the highest of Reason, the brain. If our first being was threefold, every thing subsequently in creation tends to become threefold. This is called Trinity, or three- in one, or God, or Triamazikamno (triamonies). It means simply that the nature of Man is inherent in creation. There is a tendency for it to manifest itself progressively in a three fold manner. Hence we have three brains. Each brain corresponds to one of the three original forces (We repeat that our knowledge may never exhaust it). The degree of our realization is the measure of our development.
What are the three brains? What are found in each? Why do two alone produce the animal, and not human? It takes three to produce reflection. Two produce sensation and emotion.
Sensation, Emotion, Image. The animal lacks the third brain which combines sensation and emotion into the image hence it is incapable of reflection and imagination.
We see things in three. In absence of the fourth center, we have no ground for discussing what we see.
Indications in preceding as steps of evolution. Fully revealed only in a perfect product. There are no sharp lines. It shades off as in the octave; but there are notes—- although this does not destroy Continuity and the “restorials”. Continuity and discontinuity. It is impossible to say where one leaves off and the next begins (universal,vegetable, invertebrate, vertebrate and Man).
Return to daylight. Following these explanations to be neither accepted nor rejected; but first will clearly formulate and understand.
This phenomenon of daylight manifests itself to human beings by the presence in the atmosphere surrounding the planets of a chemical substance — Okidanoch, electricity.
The three forces of the world are assembled as three in only one element – Okidanoch.
Hence when it enters any planetary body, the three forces are then distributed to their respective centers and proceed to build up. It is often said in modern physics that we are the product of electric. The three forces are in themselves.
Affirming—- positive—– image making.
Denying —— negative—– sensation.
Neutralizing– reconciling— emotion.
We will later discuss the misuse of electricity.
In entering into any being there takes place a process called Aa-ee-o-u-a. Remorse, or wish to evolve. In practical terms the wish of an inferior to be like a superior when in his presence. Any rate of vibration when in the presence of a higher rate, strives to become the higher. Remorse in the elements. One of the means by which evolution is brought about,i.e., not merely by inner impulse. Mechanical progress is aided by shock, which is merely the presence of a higher rate.
Three -fold electricity; cf. atom of hydrogen: one electron, one proton; the third force is that which holds these two in relation cf. man and woman become father and mother only in relation to the child. Proton and electron are related so as to produce atom.
What is the atom in itself? It is invisible.
We care the third force. Mind. _We cannot see the group; we see only the individuals making it up. Have you ever seen a crowd? Only the individuals
proton — positive
electron — negative and the relation between them is the atom, itself. One atom of electricity consists of three forces yet is one.
When Aristotle began the section of his book on metaphysics, he meant to discuss space, time, thought, force, in light of doctrine he had received from Pythagoras; but he never got on with it.
Refer back to what happens when in presence of a higher rate of vibration, just as a given note will go sharp when a higher rate is struck – Aa-ee-o-ua
Electricity is the active or growing element in a being. It is this which responds to the higher rate of vibration.
Q. Has the rate of vibration of thought been measured?
Ana. Yes, we are constantly making this measurement but roughly.
Why do we say, a weighty thought? A light remark?
He is interrupted by some one who says what about a sweet girl.
O.: when we say this is any particular case, it gives an indication of a certain physical criterion of taste.
Electricity is not the only source of vibrations; the whole universe is their source. Our bodies are materialized sets of vibrations. We compare with the outer world as a piano with a series of players who play as passing. We can only respond to the extent of our abilities.
Electricity produces the possibility of being aware. The external world does not consist of objects; nor is our own body an object, merely temporary conglomerations of ability to respond in the presence of vibrations.
Process of physical evolution owed to one growing element of electric ity. Both Dewey and Whitehead have this idea that there are no objects; that there is nothing in the universe but forces. But how can we catch a force? Only in a temporary conglomeration.
But every constituent element is always changing. The real thing is what Whitehead and Dewey call process, change. Fixity is only relati and rough. Change of what? We say “Matter”; but matter is only a prejudice. The universe is really the actualization of forces. Mary Johnston asks: “Is this remorse of the elements, connected with Anulios?”
Ans. Yes, a higher rate than the earth.
Anulios, Earth, Moon Three centers. The earth Is between Anulios and the Moon; between higher and lower rates.
The tendency of the higher to go toward the lower, the abnormal to the normal.
Our education leaves off where very ancient education began. Between the ages of 18 and 21 “the idealistic period”, when waiting for some thing to give more meaning to life than they see demonstrated in the lives of those about them. Life is especially full of electricity at this period. There is no institution to give training. Then the most idealistic become the most disappointed and turn cynical, become cranks or commit suicide. It is the aspiring period, aspiring to a realization of potentialities. Full of Okidanoch. When in a civilization which tends to become more and more instinctive, that is food at one end and sex at the other, disillusionment is most sharp. Then roost idealists become most instinctive, sex indulgence etc.
Extreme use of electricity for mechanics means less for psychologic use. G. says two previous civilizations have gone down because of too much such mechanical use. We become very clever in the instinctive center and unable to grow after, say, 18, that is to grow psychologic. Electricity broken down, degraded to lower rate of vibration split 3. Daylight is the first response that Okidanoch makes to the higher rate of vibration reaching this planet from the sun and moon.
Emanations from the sun not in themselves with the nature of light when received directly in the atmosphere surrounding this planet produces in Okidanoch a certain aspiration or remorse which we call light because we then can see objects.
Use of ritual, music etc to produce an emotional state in which certain ideas may be understood or “seen”, not merely translated in street terms, analogy with light. When the elements are in this state we can “see” objects.
S.O. is a higher rate of vibration. When we observe, the elements of the body will themselves aspire, suffer remorse, i.e. adapt himself to “I”. ‘
This must be direct. If one merely thinks about S.0. , it is not direct but is refracted through the mind. Hence this excludes a wish to change any phenomenon observed, which would be the process of S.0. refracted through one of the other centers. Direct observation causes sunlight.
Digression.
In any being, the three systems tend to become coated making three centers. From each tends to develope a body 1; Planetary 2; Spiritual (Kesjan – astral) 3; Body of mind or Obj. Reason or Soul Corresponding to each is a form of reason
Planetary — instinctive
Spiritual — being or essential, capable of understanding formsand ideas
Mind——– divine, capable of understanding reason or why things are
1:- Things wo are accustomed to
2:- The what of the World– perhaps modern physicists at their best
3:- The Why. God created an intelligible world an also a corresponding sight.
1:- Ordinary sight
2:- Spiritual sight, not psychic but insight
3:- Gives foresight and behind sight, i.e. simultaneity of sight.
Three bodies; three forms of reason; three forms of sight– a completed human being.
But we have at present one body only (within it two other centers with cut correspon bodies).
Planetary sight and spiritual and intellectual, dreams and words– not facts.
The three brains are developed to the extent the bodies are.e.g. a good body-brain, partial spiritual, very slight mental. The cerebral is the least developed, visceral next; the instinctive, the best. 96% of our experience is instinctive; 3% emotional; 1% intellect 96% of our civilization is concerned with the body, 3% with art
1% devoted to Why. The quantity of pure research that can be carried on is limited to about 1%, Great inertia not only in individuals but in civilizations. Humanity strands on its head. The instinctive is now Positive.
Cerebral —— negative.
Emotional is neutralizing but leans toward the instinctive. All this is abnormal. We should change by opposing to the instinctive some thing in name of Reason.
The Characteristic of the instinctive center is INERTIA,that is to continue doing what it has started; habit, in the largest sense intelligence is against habit; because no two situations are really the same. Intelligence would make a new activity each time; the instinctive merely offers habit.
Breaking of habits experimentally for positive intelligence, the beginning of reason(if it is broken for utilitarian reasons, then it is merely the instinctive center) but if experimentally then it is merely observing reason. Originality and Initiative vs Repetition.
Although circumstances and our minds change this is the instinctive. We can continue to observe our natural functions and also develope our own consciousness.
Brains in any being is the place in the total organism in which are located the origins and collected results of impulses and reactions; the springs and milieu for collection of responses. Simultaneously sources and registers.
These free brains are his life and experience; his precious possession, hence the second commandment:
During ordinary existence it is commanded beings should avoid those perceptions that may injure the purity of their brains ie, the Maintenance of Reason; cf. our fear of going mad. Only beings who have lost their reason can ever admit that reason – has not the highest value.
Only three centered beings can be conscious of the possibility of becoming fully developed we. reach Divine Reason.
But in us these three possibilities exist in vain.
Beings of the earth, because of their conditions of existence have made this planet a festering wound in the Cosmos.
We have almost a sane equipment.
Brain, Affirming in the head
Brain, denying in the spine
Brain, reconciling, we have in us but it does not act as a mass as in other three centered beings. Instead of the heart have the solar plexus, a congeries of nodes, not harmonized into single systems capable of emotions. They are on varying things at the same time and hence are not capable of Will.
With the process of S.O., there begins a consolidation, a gathering of the limbs of Osiris by Isis. This reunion cannot be brought about through the instinctive center, only by the Affirming Brain with relation to the whole.
“I” is these potentialities, as yet unactualized.
March 14, 1927
The Timaeus of Plato contains the cosmogony of Pythagoras
Beelzebub’s Second descent to the Planet.
Before taking up this chapter, let us remind ourselves of the beginning of the Book, its place, time and personnel. B. represents ourselves with our potentialities realized, the normal or ideal man, His function of this planet is finished; and he has all of human experience behind him, including a critique of human nature. He is objective, without prejudice, in fact benevolent. Had been existing on this planet for some fault. This suggests that the “I” is already in exile and that we have made the error of identifying ourselves with a part of our potentialities instead of the whole. He has made use of his exile to lead a conscious life sparing no effort to develop all the technique possible.
He begins with account of life on other planets. Whether such life exists or not we need not say; but at any rate such life, if these depends on emanations or radiations from solar sources. B. and the Captain discuss trans-solar ships. Under this parable are discussed various techniques for developing super- consciousness. There are four forms of consciousness: sleeping, waking, self and cosmic.
The peculiarity of beings on this planet is due to special conditions; they are unique, especially in the nature of their reason. Why do I think that the majority of people I meet are fools? Why do the majority of people whom I meet think I am a fool? And why are we both right? Why do we all recognize the essential senselessness of people. This is taken for granted and used in all dealings with crowds. Why do we have such difficulty in behaving reasonably even in a crowd with our own standards?
In discussing Ships we encountered the “Law of Falling”, giving a psychological meaning to the law of gravitation. The tendency of a high note of vibration to fall to a lower note. In this sense, space becomes merely a difference between rates of vibration.
What is the distance between two notes? If interested in space and time read S. Alexander, a physicist. You will meet such sentences as Space is the Mother of Time.
Then discussion of ships led to perpetual Motion; and under this….
We, here, to night, are bodies, not souls; and shall probably not survive death.
In certain periods, whole civilizations have made this the touch stone of values. Is it possible to conceive a machine which would last and work in any substance. The answer is yes.
This discussion arouses in Hassein reflections on “becoming conscious of genuine duty”. On becoming adult, we enter on certain responsibilities.
Hassein thinks: I am here on this planet, among two hundred thousand
million others, surrounded by nature who supplies enjoyment etc.
How much does it cost to maintain this?
What do I owe for all I am getting? Is life of value?
Possibility for experience belongs to life.
Hassein realizes: nothing just sprang into existence; and every thing is maintained and developed by effort. Hot only nature but people labor to maintain this civilization.
Hassein is over come by this realization. We come into the world “entitled” to nothing. What entitles us even to mother-love? Nature prompts it; and ultimately we must repay in conscious effort.
But it is now entirely premature says B. to H., to consider, or even to think of repaying. It cannot be that until you understand how much you owe etc. Any attempt to repay now would be premature and even lead to greater debts. H. is only duty now, is to an increased understanding. Our morality is that of pupils.
In return for H. is display of genuine emotion, B. will tell him what he wants to know. H. asks about slugs . A slug is a one centered being which has no further potentialities; but we as three centered beings have the possibility of developing three bodies. As long as we are satisfied with one body, we are slugs in regard to our potentialities, explain.
I_ order to explain what we are, we must go back. Myth the genesis or of the Moon.
The earth was going along peacefully, when it collided with a comet and had two pieces struck off. If the planet was a whole it was left deprived.
We are organically the product of the planet and may be expected to reproduce the organic deficiencies of the planet.
All that we call nature, including ourselves is a sort of skin on the planet. This split personality is native to all life on the planet. All of us at any given moment “I” and It. Discriminate between what I do and what I would do cf, St. Paul. In the myth a commissioner is sent from the Sun Absolute, to see what must be done to preserve the equilibrium of the system, for altering one planet affects the others. E.g. if earth’s weight was reduced by one half other planets would find themselves nearer the sun; and their year shortened, with catastrophic events produced. No pebble can be thrown into a stream without affecting the balance of the earth on its axis.
Sakaki comes to investigate and finds the two fragments had not gone beyond the solar system. They had gone part way and then began to fall back; but meantime the earth had gone on in its orbit so that it was always falling and never catching up(i.e., our higher emotional and intellectual centers).
These must be supplied a certain sort of radiation from this planet
supplied only by labor and effort. Why this curse of labor,this necessity of effort? Why the apparent malevolence of God. According to the myth, this is not malevolence; but a result of necessity. No one can escape the necessity of effort. Even when idleness seems possible, men engage in various unnecessary enterprises, leaving peaceful circumstances to put themselves into action.
The substance derived from effort is called Askokin. What is it? A sort of sweat, physical, emotional and mental. This is perhaps the only service we render at present to the universe. This may be paid, either consciously or unconsciously,(as at present). If voluntary or conscious, the same substance is yielded but the individual himself profits from it. In this way, the curse itself becomes a blessing Plato said “God’s curses are opportunities”.
Sakaki undertook to farm on this planet, in order to produce this sweat. He arranged that on this planet the law of seven and the law of three should operate not interdependently but independently. Sakaki is responsible for the split personality between “I” and It.
“I” is under the Law of Three (only three functions of consciousness) “It” is under Seven, Color, sound, even processes of the body, digestion
Bodies do not help in consciousness. Why is the body not reflective of the mind? Why this unfitness between the body and consciousness? Why are we like strangers in it?
Distinguish between the three functions of consciousness within or during any one of the four states of consciousness.
Sakaki made it practically impossible for men to be men. We suffer but we are not to blame; the fact that 99% of the time we are without sense, hysterical, vain, egoistic, stupid etc is the truth. It was arranged to insure effort or suffering. A suspicion that we were used for this purpose might arise (see later) so another device was introduced.
Accident merely means, not within our possible calculation; but accident of collision between the earth anda comet is within some cosmic calculation and for some purpose.
Abnormality includes not only human nature but all nature. cf. St. Paul in Romans “the whole of creation groaneth and travaileth etc.” Earth suffers for something which happened far away. But misfortunes are also opportunities, if met and handled experimentally. If met by complaining and asking why one is picked on, one will suffer just as much if not more.
If met experimentally as an opportunity to solve a problem, there is muscle developed, of the highest use.
There is a relation between B.’s revolt and this catastrophe B. represents mind. The form of intelligence which he represents is only possible through meeting and overcoming certain difficulties. Effort is needed to convert knowledge into understanding. B. had to sweat to understand what he knew.
The organ producing this spilt was called Kundebuffa; it was the effect of certain conditions In the atmosphere, just as certain con ditions produce, say, baldness.
Sakaki and Luizas, the arch-chemist (physio) arranged that human be beings should develope a certain disease, producing certain psychological manifestations, native to the disease (as intestinal disorders produce irritability). This spinal disease produces the same effect as if one had taken opium./ We walk down the Avenue in a state of somnambulism or we undertake some job which we do not know how to undertake or carry it through in an extravagant expenditure of energy. We have the facts but we are unable to assemble them.
Kundebuffa has been removed. Its function is no longer necessary; the organ is vestigial. It once had the function of keeping us crazy. Now, we are bon sane but become insane through the influence of our elders, education, convention, desire to be like our neighbor. Education is the enemy of the human race.
Sakaki returned and B. set up and observatory. S.O. this save him additional lenses, so that he was able to observe distant planets etc. It is impossible to make an objective survey of human race as a whole which is what is required to understand the Book, without adding the lens of S.O.. We may not be able at present to see the relation between listening to the tones of ones own voice and carrying on certain imaginative acts.
War is one of the peculiarities of the beings on this planet. It is due to our conventional education. We discuss it and carry it on without realization of its horror. An inhabitant of another planet where the idea of carrying it on and killing was repugnant as some loathsome crime among us, would shrink from coming here. Then why did Sakaki and Luizas arrange this lunacy? Perhaps there had to be more blood. Cf. Scenes of early religions; evocations in fumes of blood, a crude and obvious means to strike the limited imaginations of primitive peoples. It gave them real horrors to convince them of the supernatural and create respect for the priests.
Perhaps the normal death rate was not enough; the moon cried for more. So it was given wars(See later chap, on war).
This peculiarity was not unique to certain moments of madness; but was prepared for from birth by certain trance conditions. Call a man a “hero”, who is prepared to throw away his own life.,i.e. to commit suicide in order to murder. We have only to consider what would be a reasonable line of conduct to realize that this is the acme of unreasonableness. The “hero” has been specially conditioned.
The came the First Descent to Atlantis, whether geographically correct or not is not our concern.
B. was on a mission: A aritasian reformer had come to a hasty conclu sion that the way to reform was to let people do as they wished, believing they would do the “right thing”. They had not first taken the trouble, which B. Gad taken, to understand human nature. How much will we do merely through love of The good the True, the Beautiful?
There is disillusionment of the premature reformer who does not realize that he is attacking not local, but universal problems, and must have an universal understanding. So with us, attempts to make reform without first preparing ourselves.
Time is the Unique Subjective, the essence of what we call “I”.
Experience is due to three factors: External stimulus; Organ receiving Medium of communication.
What is it that experiences? “I”. Alexander says that Time is subjectivity and Space is the field in which Time actualizes itself. The Subjectivity of Time. Our time-limit, the degree of our possible experience, in the three centers.
Time passes fastest for those whose centers are run out without our being aware of it and them, Noting our experiences as they pass is called “Making use of Time”. Next Chapter “The Arch- Absurd”.
Light and Heat local on this planet. Cf. S.O. produces no direct effect only consequential effect. The sun not light nor hot. Emanation is the influence exerted by any object or person, which does not involve any passage of matter. It is comparable to a magnetic field, surrounding a magnet. Every being exerts an emanation by its presence; even a table does this and its being is not negligible and its presence has an influence. The planets and sun of our system exert two influences on us: Radiation, Emanation. Has this some bearing on the modern doctrine of catalysis?
The sun though cold and dark by its presence within our system prod uces by its presence an effeet, a sort of shiver (As for example one goes into a room and says “I don’t like the feel of it”. It is the effect of its emanations and radiations. Electricity shivers. Remorse., wishing to be more than it is. Perhaps the origin of the growth of plants. Stimulation of awareness in presence of a higher rate. The mystery of growth is perhaps dual: Within; External stimulus.
If we fail to attain light, we only attain heat (Heat is “The light that failed”). If we make an effort to understand certain ideas and succeed, we have a sense of light; if we fail, the sense of the impossibility produces an emotion, which is heat.
Then we can understand why the image of remorse is used; this image is a snake trying to bite off its own tail, in anger and disgust with itself. One fumes “Why can’t I?”.
A human being is the product of his own digestion. “I” watches this cannibalistic process under the law of seven. Psychology functions under three. God is the same. We are the seeds of the tree Ygdrasil Acorns around an oak. What is the resemblance between an acorn and the oak? What is the resemblance between us and the Cosmos? We can only understand the world as we can come in contact with it. We are acorns and we can see the law in us. Can we see the laws in the Universe? G. says Yes.
The primordial substance is of three types or kinds. Electricity as positive, negative end neutralizing. Matter, energy, electricity, is there any difference in these terms? Modern physicists speak of these three. Can you differentiate, e.g in a hydrogen atom the proton is the nucleus and the electron the movement of the electron around the proton gives the exhibition of energy. This is a highly metaphysical concept. Close the Book.
Of these three it is electricity which contains all three. Substance
here is named etherokrilno. Cf. Doctrine of Maya in Hindu philosophy
Maya is the potentiality of matter. This etherokrilno becomes differentiated into matter, energy and electricity being the first emanation from the Sun Absolute. The Sun Absolute is “I” “who Dreams”.
Of what substance are dreams made? Of this primordial substance.
These form in our sleeping state and take shape according to our thoughts. In our waking state they move slowly but still are the result of consciousness.
Our waking state is en objective dream. Thought alone will not shapen them we must use hands, tools etc. Even in dreams the three elements are present. In consequence of this primordial three fold ness, the most developed show a three fold ness most clearly. Hence we have three brains, each manifesting one of the three forms of electricity positive, negative, neutralizing. A normal being is one in which these correspond. Cerebral is positive, instinctive, negative, and emotional is neutralizing. Yes is of the reason, No of habit and the body while the emotions reconcile these. In this sense the emotions are spoken of as The Holy Ghost.
Negative emotions are the result of the failure of Reason to overcome the inertia of habit.
When this is inverted, like Peter who was thus crucified and the inertia is greater than reason, there is the negative. The only evil is the substitution of negative for positive. B.s attempt to invert,; to restore the positive to the part positive by electrification.
Corresponding to the three bodies are the three forms of sight
1:- sight; 2:- insight; 3:- through sight, or seeing the reason of things.
One understands the How of things.
Two, the what of things.
Three, the why of things.
This presupposes three bodies. We have a good understanding of how a slight understanding of what; and no understanding of whey Nature will not help us to develope the second nor third. We are unconsciously supplying the emanations and radiations needed. We can develope the others; for while Nature has supplied the substance we squander these substances in aimless pleasures. We should use them for conscious labor and voluntary suffering.
Original meaning of the word ecstasy—– standing outside of, a non identification? To day it has an opposite meaning. .
We must continue building the second body. We cannot have objective reason without the third body. Is the Book an objective survey of humanity? If so G. must have the third body. Did Pythagoras practice the method? Blato?
How does money give roots? The Objective Attitude; the Positive attitude.
Is it possible to take a Positive attitude mechanically?
G. when he went to the East. Whenever you have a purpose, is not that purpose itself of the first body? My case, Napoleon’s ?
Attempt to imagine a normal being.
Electricity and element?
Bertrand Russell says “the way in which things behave”.
Matter, energy, electricity but if all matter is an actualization of Force.
The Second Descent
This is the second descent from Mars. Atlantis had been engulfed in the earth, not drowned. After the genesis of the Moon, the earth was revolving a little unsteadily; but soon settled into permanent equilibrium which it has since maintained. It was in this settling that Atlantis was engulfed. Consider the psychological parable However spreading of the human race took place. There were three main centers of civilization on the continent of Asia. The aboriginal continent was replaced by three centers. We are born with essence, which begins at once to be engulfed by personality, by society, by suggestion (Essence our biological potentialities). Essence, what is biologically native to us, personality is what we have become. Personality may or may not be harmonious with what we are biologically.
By the time of B.’s second descent, the race had begun to grow up, to develope personality.
The three centers located geographically where
1:- Tiklandia (Caracorum) desert in eastern Turkestan. The sand with which it now is covered was due to a planetary catastrophe.
2:- Goblandia or Maralpleisi, where is now the Gobi Desert was once a highly developed civilization. See Churchward, one city belo another.
3:- Genchania India.
The reason for the descents.
One day on Mars an etherogram was received, (by hearing). The Commission was sent from the Sun Absolute to the earth to investigate the effects of the engulfing of Atlantis and to see if any adjustments were needed in organic life. The Commission arrived. Luizas was accompanied by his retinue of angels and seraphim (incarnate powers of reason and emotion). He concluded from Mars that the catastrophe was not so terrible and an immediate visit not necessary. Luizas invited B. to undertake a commission to visit the earth and attempt to limit the custom of blood sacrifice, which was then a prominent feature of all religions. In each of these three renters blood sacrifice was on such a huge scale that the atmosphere was charged with the fumes and organic life on the Moon began to take on monstres shapes (0. speculates that perhaps the monsters of old tales were a sort of spiritualistic materialization caused by emanations of blood fumes on other planets causing abnormal experiences here). Luizas ask B. to limit or end this custom on the earth, not only because of its effects on the earth but also on the Moon. Like a good political agent, B. descends; takes the ship Occasion and reaches the Caspian Sea. He travels by river(now the Aral Sea) Amudarya, now dried up arrives at city of Conkali (Kunkali), the center of Tiklandia.
He visited local cafes. Attaches importance to a strategic point of observation from which civilization is to be viewed. He talked with the natives. After a month or so he decided to employ a local and prevalent superstition and build on it a doctrine. We must be on guard even against divine messengers, who may use prevalent superstitions for their own purposes, as B. did for benefit of the Moon. We assume that the doctrine is for the avowed purpose e.g, we assume that if Jesus taught Love it was for our good; but he might have foreseen deleterious effects to us which were good for the Cosmos.
B. found that the natives thought that the sacrifice of something dear to them was pleasing to God, and since their flocks were dear these were sacrificed. B. had merely to suggest that they sacrifice themselves instead of animals (might not be so good for human beings but if animal sacrifices diminished B. had accomplished his mission). This idea spread rapidly and soon animals became almost sacrosanct. How do we explain the attitude in India toward animals. They are regarded as holy. B.’s propaganda. The same people who once had sacrificed, now revered them.
B.’s method. Talked at great length to a prominent pulpiteer, and did not divulge the real purpose of his arguments; but they sounded plausible. He suggested that God wanted the development of reasoning and that all creation up to man presupposes Man and a fulfillment by Man of his organic functions. He exists to produce individuals capable of Objective Reason. Supply of objective by reasonable beings expected from this; planet and all Nature is for this use. He continued if you use Nature for this purpose, you are using it initially I.S. objectively because for a purpose designed.
Another argument he used. There exists a certain force called (India) “prana”, Life-Force. B. said this was a substance (will scientists be able to take it and animate a table?) or essence. It exhibits it self in a series of biological evolution and as it developes, it reveals more of its potentialities, capable of Will, Consciousness and Individuality. Life-Force in us does not differ in any respect
except maturity (quantity of experience) from the animal and vegetable kingdom. There is only one Life and we are the highest biological development. Man is more actualized, and more conscious but in Essence, the same.
The purpose of Man is to develope from this essence, a certain type of Reason, which will constitute him one of the permanent brain cells of all Life.
God is both the Creator and an evolving being. He aims at developing by developing his brain cells. As we develope will, consciousness and individuality we become more ready to take our place as one of the brain cells of the Universe. It is a necessity for the Universe taken as a whole to develope individuals having these three functions. At about the age of 25 G.B.S. had a realization that Nature aims at brains. All his paradoxes and plays flow from this mechanically. But let us define “brains” more clearly. Ponder for a moment the thought that Nature aims at individuals having Will, Consciousness and Individuality. A realization of this will draw together all other knowledge and ideas, as opposed to modern in attempt to find a unity of thought. It is like lifting a ten pole with the canvas which had before lain shapeless on the ground.
The third Argument B. used was: –
We have senses, so that we can attain the objective which God wants us to attain. They are prepared to make possible the development of that Reason which God wants.
What do I hear?
What do I see? What use should I get from my tactile sense?
These are tools for the production of consciousness. If so used then they are ethically used; if not so used then either childishly or monstrously. This hits Art. Of sensations are used for aesthetic purposes ar there is a degeneration; they are enjoyed for themselves
instead of being used to attain an objective. Self-indulgence masquerades under the name of Art. This priest took B. seriously and spread the doctrine that animals should be used instead of being sacrificed. Since B. had not given him his objective aim, they went to ridiculous lengths; sentimentalized animals, which is another self-indulgence masquerading as Humanitarianism. But other priests attacked him as an heretic and put him to death. B. buried his body and arranged for the education of his soul – “He who loseth his life etc”. B; was recalled to Mars by another etherogram, more exiles were coming from Caritas including the woman intended by the local astrologer as his wife. He had two sons; Tuluf(father of Hassein) Tulan
Third Descent.
Soon after the honeymoon, which lasted perhaps a Caritasian fortnight but an earthly half century, B. goes back to earth to Goblandia. He landed on a sea now covered by sand, the sea of Gobi, in the midst of the Gobi desert. Не proceeded up stream, that is he did not follow his inclination. Our psychological experiences follow an inclined plane and run downwards (G. has excavated and investigated in the Gobi Desert, He used a special raft, that is an artificial device for opposing bur inclinations (S.O.) This with “anticipation and experimentation are” going up stream on a raft”.
He reaches the capital; the citizens there took opium, chewed poppy seeds . The custom had spread widely and the population had degener sted. The King was a great- great- grandson of a being who had been conscious and he had inherited certain traditions, like the modern intelligenzia. He tried to stop them by legislation; forbade it and issued fines. This arouse curiosity and increased the habit of. prohibition. What is the poppy seed? What are its effects?
It made it impossible to see reality
It made people invert values.
It made it impossible for people to take tried one way of life which had not wealth or happiness
and yet would despise it and seek other things because recommended by others. Compare in our day the role of advertising and the number of things we do and obtain which yield us no satisfaction. Publicity We are dupable, open to that kind of suggestion. We chew a poppy seed.
This begins in our infancy when we take our parents and nurses serious. The obedient child is the foreordained victim of the big salesman. Effects, continued: people mistook insults for words of love and words of love for insults. If a person tells me a useful tonic truth, which helps my growth and I resent it; but if he tells me something flattery though perhaps deleterious to me, I am his friend for life O.’s story: “you are a weak minded liar; you are planning a public case Look out for yourself”.
This made people mistake a crow for a peacock. How many people who pass as celebrities as peacocks, great names; and in private we find them to be crows. H.G. Wells when rather young fell in with Hinton’s books. These were filled with extraordinary ideas. He was a good mathematician. He put these ideas in story form but was very bad story teller and remained obscure. But Wells developed Hinton’s ideas in his “Time-Machine. Hinton died obscure. The value was in Hinton, the salesmanship in Wells. We require good advertising such as Wells’ wrapping of Hinton’s ideas. We want what others are using.
Shift answered a question as what was natural Intelligence as “Seeing things in the bud”.
The original phrase which G. used wes “Time is the Unique Subjective”. That is the bud. Now, think about it, from this a whole chapter unfolds.
Ouspenaky asked why different beings and different time-perceptions
and G. said “think about it; time is breath”. This is developed in Ouspenslsy’s forthcoming book.
How many of nus could take G.’s doctrine neat?
In Goblandia, B. preached the same mission as to sacrifices he went to India. The party setting off from Goblandia to India by caravan. Comparable to forming a group for the study of Hindu philosophy (An essay by Bertrand Russell on the Freudian method of dream interpretation could be applied to waking dreams) Hypnopompic the only distinction between waking and sleeping dreams. Sometimes dream figures are visible for a moment after waking.
In relation to Self-Consciousness, our present waking state would appear to be what our sleeping state now appears to us to be. With this in view we could interpret the day at its end like a dream; but must take all motives into account, not merely sexual. It would reveal the physical nature of the being. Russell’s essay Accidents which occurs; accidents in dream. Also true to what we encounter in “real life”, equally subjective. We are deceived into thinking them objective but are the product of hypnopompic imaginat During a dream we think it real for we have no other criterion. B. passes with motivated caravan from Goblandia which was doped to India, in search of pearls. Suppose this was a dream, how would we interpret it? G. is describing an objective dream. B. joined a party which was going to study Indian philosophy. They made a conscious effort to reach a state where they could find reality.
They passed over places of enormous elevation, Himalayas, and places devoid of even the possibility of vegetation; suffered cold and hunger. Mountains are an attempt to pass from one form of idealism to reality. Can only describe great altitudes with great aridity of expression(0.’s attempt to get content into two eastern terms used by Max Mueller. Died enroute, i.e. gave up). Hard to make the passage but this party made it. Arrived at Indian philosophy and G. now gives his critique of it, a critique by a man who actually arrived and understood. We have had no one to give a western report on Indian philosophy. G. in his youth read Mmme Blavatsky From the Caves and Jungles of Hindustan and Secret Doctrine. G. went and reported that nine out of ten of her references are not based on first hand knowledge. This cost him nine years.
This party’s got to India and dissolved the myth that this was the land of wisdom. G. was the Dalai Lama’s collector of dues for the monastery and was entitled to enter every monastery in Thibet.
He discovered extraordinary elevations, abnormal developments, so called magical powers; but did not find one universal intelligence. Occult powers were developed but they differed only from western geniuses in type(scientific, literary etc). They were diversions from normal type.
He arrived in India, the third center (like the three centers of civilization in us: Tiklandia, blood sacrifice, instinctive Goblandia, poppy seed, publicity, emotional, India, Buddhism, intellectual, cf put Buddhism back earlier. Sinking of Atlantis 8000 to 4000 B. C. Local tradition in India says that Gautama was the seventh of a series. Perhaps G. means the first Buddhism. Had already degenerated. Buddha had realized that all,humanity suffer from a planetary disease, called it Kunde buffa (Buffa means reflected see life as it is in water, upside down
Buddha told certain truths, planetary disturbance, genesis of the moon etc and our planet being left lopsided. But the sinking of Atlantis the need for Kundebuffs was gone, beings were now born naturally but education is based on Kundebuffa and keeps repeating an education based on a state of things which no longer exists.
The Buddha said “I will show you a personal method by which you can return to a natural state and begin your own education”, on S.O., Participation and experience in two forms.
1:- Conscious Effort, 2:- Voluntary suffering.
He divided these: I, conscious effort
a:- S.O., the “only way”
b:- Participation
c:-Voluntary Suffering, this is not pain.
This mistake bred the dervishes etc. I is suffering in resisting a mechanical response caused by another person who is distasteful It is self-restraint in resisting inclination and forcing a contrary action. This is summed up in Jesus’ remark “Love your enemies”. Not actual pain; but psychologic. If for instance you do not return a blow, be on guard that you have not merely suppressed resentment, humiliation, etc, which would take hypocritical forms. Must take action expressing this love, this converting a negative emotion into an active one.
If you overcome these consequences by these two means, your own grow will take place, inevitably, like taking a couple of bricks off a plot where a seed is trying to sprout. If you try, directly to develope understanding and consciousness, you will fail.
Within one generation of Buddha’s death his disciples had decided i would be easier to be either alone, or with those who were also trying. They would found a monastery or institute. After group instructed by Buddha himself had passed away, these groups picked, out very inaccessible places. Great heights and they attempted to develope abnormally, Yogi powers. This was based on a misunderstand Those who go to Yogi are on the way to Thibet.
B. finds that all that Buddha had taught has been so corrupted that his most sincere followers were most sincerely mistaken. This doctrine, originally concrete, objective, normal, had become monstrous.
When you do something wholly intellectual, wholly emotional, wholly instinctive, you are sacrificing the two centered being (the other two centers). Every great intellectual genius and become so by a blood sacrifice of two centers. Blood sacrifice is the abnormal development of one center, at the expense of the other two, since animals are two- centered beings.
The doctrines of Buddha are still extant in a form intelligible to
those who knew the norm.
1:- Prana B. seized on this.
2:- K.B.
Beelzebub tried to recall to some of these degraded Buddhists, the doctrine of Prana. This is the Life-Force arid in human beings is objective reason; in animals instinctive reason.
B. tricked them into thinking that every time they killed an animal they killed a cell which might be necessary to their on development and understanding. This is true in terms of centers but is silly as they took it.
The idea took root. B. returned by way of Thibet, passed some monasteries, the Self-Tamers. They had realized that our mechanical reactions were like beasts and undertook to tame themselves, thinking they were following Buddha’s teaching.
But B. says they had to keep nightly watch in front of a ring of fire to keep off wild beasts(only at night). When we are conscious – these wild beasts of negative emotions do not appear; but when we are off guard, they can destroy.
On the way to Thibet —— Voluntary self-insurers in sentry boxes.
B. felt Pity. No one who has not been human can feel pity at sight of something so admirable and so imbecilic; tried to make up for lack of neighbors by ferocious treatment of self.
On the heights of effort no Life is possible. A distortion of Buddha doctrine of enduring manifestations of others; for he had required them to stay where they were.
Another etherogram. Louizas was on Mars and getting ready to come to earth, making a survey of earth. If he were spending a year, 389 of ours, Luizas is not yet come but may be expected any time. The earth has been giving trouble, the Himalayas have been rising (making a corresponding depression elsewhere) and the rotundity of the planet was getting uneven. This affects other planets. The height must be reduced. May be use the magnetic currents of the sun with possible quakes. B. went back to Mars to tell Luizas about the earth, he got interested in the canals on Mars. One half arid, the other water. Our brain, front half in bloom; back half empty. To get the back into communication with the front, maybe has some thing to do with Luizas plans.
In lower triangle objects presented In upper triangle objects chosen Three successive magnets; the three wishes of fairy tales, toward which one becomes positive. They must be sequential-i.e. if the first is money made, and the third involve both the proceeding.
The development of a positive attitude toward the first, not as and end but as a means for carrying out the second perhaps it will be necessary to go around this series several times e.g.G. wanted to find out certain knowledge in possession someone 4000 miles away. He took up a trade and earned money, in order to make the journey, in order to get the knowledge. This perhaps repeat, do re, mi. When positive attitude is established on this section of the scale it is impossible for any one else to present a magnet which will attract. Pass through the emptiness of fa, then choose objectives, exercising Will, to attain Objective Reason.
In do, re, ml, the aim should bo to develope the professional attitude attaining each objective with a minimum of time, effort, waste of strength etc., eliminating non- essentials and keeping body in proper health. The lower triangle then becomes a training to undertake the much more difficult, strenuous and prolonged pull in the upper triangle. Work in the upper triangle will thus be based on work in the lower triangle.
Distinction between a practical mystic and a theoretical mystic. The above was the result of asking 0.: “You have put the suggestion in my head that I should make money. In adopting this suggestion, am I not just succumbing to one more magnet, or mechanically as if I had fallen under the influence of a banker who had stimulated me te go into banking to make money?”
0.: It is a magnet; but the difference be teen making money for a purpose and making it for a career lies In the attitude; and is revealed in the use made of the money, after it is obtained. For the young banking apprentice, the career is an end in itself and the attitude is negative. If your ultimate aim lies far beyond that however, the money making becomes merely a tool and the attitude is positive.
We have always diagrammed as follows; but strictly speaking is…
At present drop back from intellect and emotion into Sex (emotional center restimulates sex; intellectual restimulates emotional and thus emotional, Sex.
Artists and philosophers are either suspended on top of Third center without root, yearning for bridge, without being able to find it; consequently they become pathological, sentimental, idealists of one form or another, anaemic, cynical; or drop into emotional and become altruistic; or into Sex.
Food. Normal return to Sex indicated by dotted line. General current of society to day to make circle up and back to Sex and Food.
Line will be drawn A————— B and all activity in this civilization go on in Sex and Food and unless artists and philosopher have sent down roots they will be cut off.
March 28, 1927
Fourth Descent
The second and third had been to stop the sacrifice of two centers to a third. We now discuss the sacrifice of one center to two. Keep in mind the proper relationship of the centers; Positive, Passive, neutralizing Male, Female, Child.
B. enjoyed completing his observatory on Mars; i.e. the Method by which the unknown part of our psychology may be observed, including “heavenly bodies” which are the higher emotional and intellectual centers.
There was a person on Saturn whose knowledge of the method, and observations were superior. As if to present these ideas to the western world he went to Tibet to find a person who was permanently in a different world on different planet. The Method is so improved that the heavenly bodies are a million times nearer; that is the Method is so improved that an ordinary being can understand it, though still far from a realization. We can now, ourselves form a notion of objective reason, playing roles, etc., without being able to actualize these ideas Cf. (addition of Book) Gornahoor hahr hahr and B. observing the earth. B. came to the earth to collect a number of apes to take them to Mars for experiment.
While tell in Hassein, this, a sailor hands B. a tablet, which when placed at his ear, enabled him to hear a message with had been received by the ether.
B. says “What a strange coincidence, this message from Mars tells me there is a great to do about this problem on earth, in America (referring to the Dayton trial) (Dates do not agree in this conversation since it is supposed to be in 21 and the Dayton trial was in 26)
Earth men have long been interested in apes, usually in one of two theories: either men are descended from apes or apes from men. In Tiklandia, 8000 B.C. it was that apes were descended from men. New, thanks to Darwin that men from apes. Note by M.E.B. This is an entire misstatement. Darwin held that apes and men were both descended from a small mammal.
But we should apply the saying: Cherchez la femme from Mullah Nasr Eddin “If there are any anomalies in Nature, examine the feminine principle”
After the sinking of Atlantis the races were scattered and often the sexes were segregated. In this condition, men satisfied themselves with homosexuality; but a woman entered into relations with male animals and the results were apes. The psychology of all apes is that of females in a hysterical mood. Physically they resemble their quadruped male ancestor. They have the psyche of the female and the body of a quadruped. G. is here referring to philosophers and priests Take a critical attitude towards the race and ask how these two classes of beings came into being, continue to maintain themselves and obtain respect.
The philosopher is a speculator who deals in words.
The priest does not even deal in words but in symbols, who’s meaning he no longer knows.
When has disappeared (Atlantis sunk), there remains personality in which the three centers are separated. Not one of us is one being. That unification is buried; and at the surface is only ——-
—-separated centers. It is possible to be highly developed in one, rudimentary in another and atrophied in the third.
In the history of the planet is our psychological history. Development of the theory; the embryo before birth repeats physiologically the history of the species. G. says that after birth, we continue to repeat.
From the point of view of breeding the positive and negative, the two important ones because the neutralizing force is a child of the first two.
Positive, male, intellect.
Negative, female, instinctive.
The emotional center is the child. Now, the intellectual center does not seek out the instinctive and does not demand a body for the intellect. The penalty is homosexuality Titivation: the attempt to make words take the place of breeding.
Consider the volumes of metaphysics, where the intellectual center is of itself trying to produce. The positive alone produces no child. Intellectualism is words and produces no effect on the emotional center. The Yogi type is self abstracted. The instinctive center is left to find some positive element, and not finding it within itself, looked for it in external stimuli (Priests and all activity into which no true intellectual element entered). The outcome is something, since there is a positive and a negative. A certain kind of emotion, but not human, apes are those active beings amongst us whose activity is directed not according to objective reason.
B. takes some of these to Mars to see if it is possible to make human beings of them (Can we, who are active apes, when this method is promulgated become human?)
He alights in the same ship on the Red Sea because near Africa. This was the first continent to be peopled by three centered beings after the sinking of Atlantis.
Three centers:
First: C enter of Africa
Second: Egypt
Third: South Africa
He decided to spend some time in Egypt, where his observatory (later a corrupted form know as a pyramid) was being built. He proceeded by the Red Sea, via Sinai (of the Moon) to Thebes and Cairo, within easy reach of Cairo was a campus with buildings devoted to the observing of the heavenly bodies.
But before describing this we must tell something of what had happened in Atlantis.
For the first time a public society had been formed to discover the nature of man. While in Egypt, he put himself into a certain state of meditation in which it was possible to read, certain thought forms left there by previous beings who had attained a certain degree of objective reason. (This may throw some light on certain phenomena of automatic writing, visions, etc. E.G. “Light on the Path” which was automatically written. Mabel Collins showed this book to Mmme. Blavatsky, who said it, was a translation of a book of which only one copy was known)
In Atlantis, there was a certain being who had attained a power of making records in “thought natter”, as I might mould clay or write on paper. These would last practically as long as the atmosphere. These were visible to B. He could put himself into a certain state of vision and become fully aware of the contents of this particularized substance, in certain forms which can be tapped and read in certain states. Thus in Egypt, B. learned of the foundation of the society of Atlantis.
Belcotasse one day realized he had made some bad blunders and was so disgusted that he reviewed his past life, impartially; he found this incident no more stupid than all the others, though this time the consequences were worse than usual. How many times have done things so foolish or stupid, that If found out would have ruined something dear. When one brings consequences it seems more stupid because more vivid.
There was no correspondence between what he had done and what he had wished and thought. A contradiction between his ability to do and his wishes and theories of what he was doing. We apply this reasoning to others and can point out their folly. Belcotasse applied this reasoning to himself and said “I must be an especial fool. Others cannot be as foolish as I for they all look so well balanced.” He decided to question his friends, confessing his folly and ask them to condemn him. But so disarming was his sincerity that the others confessed they were leading equally senseless lives. He found a few serious ones and formed a society.
Akhaldan— those who seek for an aim and sense to existence, a research society looking for the cure of a radical insanity of our being in possession of three centers, speaking different languages, “the meaning and aim of existence”, a society which takes this discovery as its aim. Begin as a small private group. Begin to meet and confess and observe. Kept diaries between meetings of observation.
I: – Undertook review of past life
2:- observation of current behavior
3: -formulation of results put before group for criticism
After some time decided they could do nothing about it unless they had access to some special knowledge. They divided into five groups for special search. Each individual must take all five to be complete.
1: -Observation outside their planet, i.e., outside physical body behavior of other people with the idea of classifying them according to type. Each of us knows hundreds of people and have enough information to set down. If we had done this seriously we would not ask “what are the types?” We would have a working knowledge.
2:-The second group was concerned with mathematics in its broadest sense. It has been suggested that thoughts vary in weight and in rapidity; feelings in intensity; muscular movements in stresses. Can you distinguish these weights, intensities, stresses?
This will be introducing measure into psychology. Modern psychology is physiology. Investigating physiological changes, applying vibrometers. But this is not psychological measurement, changes in psychological state. Who can discriminate in himself between the weight of two thoughts, e.g., in one chapter G. says “Time is the Unique Subjective”. Contrast with two volumes of Alexander on Time, Space etc. Alexander says “Time is the father of Space” in the latter, so much is implied as being understood before the sentence is understood, fanciful and yet has nothing to do with me. But G.’s phrase at once greater personal impact.
In Indian philosophy it is often said “Time is I”. This is similar to G.’s phrase; but is slightly different because it is of different weight.
Take emotions: there is a familiar saying in America “I am crazy about it, where there is really but a moderate degree of interest. Those who have had genuine emotions do not thus use superlative expressions for mediocre feelings. When genuine emotions come they drop this use of superlatives. Even when speaking of the most intense experiences yet had, if they can imagine more intense experience, they will continue to use the comparative. Distinction between stresses: can you tell the difference between seven and seven end a quarter, half pounds?
Third group: observation of the perceptions and manifestations of beings. Observe in our own manifestations and if possible in our perceptions. We receive perceptions and yield manifestations. We receive at the rate of ten thousand per sec. These undergo change of vibration and issue as behavior. Like a threefold mill. Reduction of behavior to mechanical transformations of perceptions Drastic and radical. Perceptions are always rates of vibration and depends on the vibrations present in us, whether perceptions will change up or down. If your vibrations happen to be low and in this state encounter low vibrations, behavior will become still lower. Your organism lowers the rate of vibration in atmosphere at large.
(See last week on Voluntary Suffering, an attempt to react non- mechanically, assuming a certain ability to control this mill) perceptions if run down, emerge as behavior i.e. potential perception for others of lower rates of vibrations.
It is possible in the long run by this means to determine the tone of each center. This gives collection of material for the next group.
Fourth Group
Physics and Chemistry i.e. observed changes produced in them by pass sage of perceptions. Every perception effects a change; it may only disturb one or two neurons but to that extent we are changed. I didn’t say that manifestations had changed anything “no guilty act”. Act is merely product. Can be stopped only by something done within organism, i.e., change of rates of vibration of the organism. This can only be done if the organism is insulated, that is it can only be done through self- observation. Act is merely reaction of perceptions as affected by the state of the organism. Includes opinion (thought), feelings, physical movements. May be considered physically or chemically. We speak of the “struggle within us. One force of vibration encountering another force. We call it embarrassment, etc.”
Fifth group. Engaged in a study of those phenomena which occurred within themselves, owing merely to the fact that they had three centers e.g., while reading newspaper, my lips move. When the intellectual center works, the instinctive tends to work too. Or, I observe a person in a certain state of feeling and though the perceptions which caused the feeling are outside of my field of perception, I tend to have analogous emotions.
This group studied exclusively human phenomena, human psychology. The Akhaldans discovered however that there was still further work necessary. They had done their best.
They decided to send delegates to see if any more advanced students this problem of their senseless conduct were elsewhere.
They sent first to the center of Africa.
Africa is the substitute for Atlantis – emotional.
Egypt – intellect.
S. Africa – instinctive.
Return to B. in Egypt he studies their observatory to see if they have any good technique” he had not thought of.
These ancient Egyptians, descendants of Akhaldans were seriously at work. They had a huge structure, five tubes pointing out and converging in one chamber with underground mirror, forming one image. Consider the five types of behavior, cast into one composite image. But the center of focusing was underground. When B. returned to Mars, he put the center of focusing above ground, i.e. objective. Makes focus as it were outside one self. Egyptian in the mind. In Egyptian mysteries the focus was inside. The Egyptian method only possible with the intelligenzia and developed a special hierarchy of intelligence. But anyone can employ B.’s method. In Egypt, it was never taught publicly. Other buildings in this campus; one had as its purpose the charting of winds and changing of climates. They knew how to affect weather i.e. psychologically, also externally; currents, winds observation of emotional states; changing of moods, weather. You are in a low damp state. Can you change negative to positive?
While the Egyptians were doing something psychologically, they were also affecting external changes. Called by Greeks “Masters of Dreams”
Deliberately imperfect copy of figure seen at Atlantis, when they discussed with King Appolis in center of Akhaldian Hall. This figure had the head and bust of a virgin, connected with the main body by a piece of amber; It had the legs of a lion, the body of a bull and the wings of an eagle. Thus there were four parts, of which three were connected; for amber insulates. Okidanoch of an organic kind which makes it impossible to transmit the energy from three centers to the fourth.
Meaning: In order to recover our normal state, which had been render abnormal, four things are necessary:
The laboriousness of the Bull, ability to continue working indefinite even blindly.
The legs of a lion; this labor must be executed, with self-confidence knowing every other being is unable to destroy it Wings: Bullish labor is not enough; work must be carried on with aspiration
head and breast stand for love; Insulated to Indicate that this love must not be associated with the functions of the three centers. None of the intellectual, emotional or instinctive experiences of the body as such. Breasts of the virgin indicate as yet no result only potential. Virginity is potentiality.
The same symbol, though changed was at the entrance to Thebes the name in Atlantis was Conscience; in Egypt, the Sphinx, meaning a question, an interrogation. In Egypt there were no wings; for the essence which had stimulated aspiration was now missing.
B. returns to Mars with some apes. He has to go to Saturn to be godfather to a child born of hermaphrodite.
On planets with satellites there are two sexes; the penultimate plan must differentiate energy into two sexes for satellites. 0n planets without satellites there are either one sex or three: one, hermaphrodite three, three beings required. This is to say the hermaphrodite contain two centers, positive and negative produce emotional. The three beings are the three centers which produce the fourth.
How angels are produced: At birth they already have three bodies, each subject to development but not as with us successive.
On their planet, three sexes each specialize one of the three forces (of electricity) but each was truly a sexual being. These three take part in a mystery called Immaculate Conception each goes his own way and during period of conception each thinks only of the Messiah and of its particular conception. When the Miraculous Birth draws near, the three draw together and become one being. Eventually from them emerges an infant angel. On earth only two sexes; the neutralizing force is rare and hard to come by. These two on earth produced beings who develope physically but only partially emotionally and but potentially intellectually. They are born incomplete and must work to obtain this neutralizing force. Hence Voluntary Suffering is local to this planet.
April 4, 1927
Rate of time of rational center, i/7th of l/7th shorter than the rate of time of sense perception.
Make an experiment of restating in your own terms and pondering many of the frequent statements in the Book. Reason will then serve one of its functions, i.e. shortening the time necessary for personal development, that is shorter than arriving by trial and error through the senses.
Fifth Descent
Babylon , the fifth cosmopolitan center in the world. It was between 3000 and 2000 B. C.
Tlklandia, Goblandla etc. had all been of one nationality, provincial. Babylon was metropolitan. It was the acknowledged metropolis of the whole planet; and to indicate its position on the East people wrote from right to left i.e., towards the west, towards Babylon. In the west they wrote from left to right. If north of Babylon, from top to bottom, if south from bottom to top. Present indication of historical position of ancestors.
Cause of the Fifth Descent. B., had noticed from Mars that the length of men’s life was declining. It had been from seven to ten centuries, he could not tell the cause of this from Mars, so came to earth to study.
Make effort to survey the whole species. Trace history and degeneration of species. First opportunity to observe that certain centers were no longer three but one i.e. Babylon was the first “modern” center. Ideas were current there of science, art, and religion that are still current. Until then the conception of science was based on the development of normal potentialities of normal beings. It had been assumed that to develope the second and third bodies was one of the obligations of life. This was taken for granted just as education, marriage etc. are taken for granted now. All conditions were adapted to this. A scientist from Babylonia took advantage of conditions to develop normally, art, literature, occupations, etc were subordinate.
With Babylonian times, intuitions and potentialities waning techniques, accumulations of knowledge and facts substituted, cf. certain animals and primitive individuals. As intuitions wane mechanical means were substituted; until we arrive at a “highly developed modern scientist”, who has no intuitions but an amazing command of mechanical technique.
Science is based on sense perceptions, a property of the human being as such.
Compared with science based on accumulation of knowledge, and not thu first hand sense perceptions, but by substituting technique. In Babylon, there was a congress of the new type of scientist, who had lost the sense of potentialities and thrown back on effort to discover.
Should be able to see example in elders; this example gone, intuition were so lost that we are even in doubt when we hear them stated. Let us assume them to include the development of two other bodies. Which of us can imagine that we will in this life develope emotional and intellectual potentialities, that we will become Platos or Hypatias, which in pre-Babylonian times were normal.
When we look at trees, e.g. we see them as material for our use the pre Babylonian scientist recognized their utilitarian use but also saw.
Intuition as the latent potent laities in each individual and intuition as a function of each living being.
In dealing with animals, e.g. the first intuition that they fulfill their functions in the cosmic scheme, as we fulfill ours. Man is only entitled to make use of animals in so far as he is fulfilling his own function, i.e. development of reason.
If he is using them only for his appetites or comforts, he is missing one of the natural values.
In this decline from intuition to rationalism came the idea of the decline of religions; and we owe Babylon for the origin of the idea of “good ” and “evil”. The world is an enormous apparatus for the transforming of energy up and down, with a balance maintained by reciprocal feeding of rates of vibration “Absolute Good” would be the maintenance of this equilibrium. The idea of “evil” was introduced when the individual identified himself with the whole process.
Now what appears a digression: distribution of races. After sinking of Atlantis.
Tiklandia
Goblandla
India
About 5000 B.C., due to the third cosmic misfortune, that befell this planet and continued for several years, there were winds of such intensity that the mountain peak were abraded and sand storms followed. Tiklandia and Goblandia were obliterated. There is current no plausible explanation of how so large, a part of the earth’s surface should be covered with sand. It lies in the Gobi for a depth of thirty of forty feet. G., says these sand storms were caused by the Moon, because the atmosphere of the Moon surcharged with electrical elements received by the earth fell in to a sort of friction with the earth.
Of the people of Goblandia one part went east and settled in China (old histories of China say it was settled from the west).
One part went west and settled Europe; one part South to Persia.
Babylonia became the center under the influence of the Akhaldans who made a world capital out of the city, a university center. The subjects of especial interest to these Akhaldans:
1:- Physical sciences as we know then. G. says that all we know about electricity was known then. They aimed at the accumulation of facts under the illusion that the complexity of the existing civilization produced a change in psychology. But on the contrary, to the extent one is forced to depend on external, force, technique, help etc, we measure only weakness “Knowing and Doing were developed at the expense of Being “. The inauguration of the Modern period.
2: Morality In absence of intuition of world purpose, they were forced to collect data and give the subject interpretation.
What world view have I? Pure Chance? Government by an all wise and benevolent being? Do I depend ona Kindly providence? Or do I view the Cosmos as a school where I am set to acquire a certain understanding? 0r as a penal institution? Or as a gymnasium (as some Hindus) to acquire certain powers?
Set down your conception of Life. Accidentally arrived at. 0ne of a few. Interrogate yourself.
Find that however subjective and particular heard in one of the stories heard in childhood. It is not an original but a derived conception. Originality and generation of the truth disclaimed; yet all our thinking and lives colored by this broad concept.
But in Greece, Italy, in Modern Time also we are continuing to think the thoughts which were formulated in Babylon.
One of the Scientists, Hamalinadian read a paper on the Instability of Human Reason “Skepticism of the Instrument”. Assuming the mind has been developed in evolution, in response to needs, just as the hand has. Hence the brain has been developed only for the purpose of survival and cannot be of value for the discovery of truth as such.
Second line of argument: We know the origin of our dialectics. Each of us has seen only a small part of natural phenomena, so small that we have no ground for passing judgment on the whole.
Third Line of Attack: Kant. A species of logical introspection; our structure presupposes certain (characteristics,) concepts of time and space over which we have no control and which limit. Yet each one attaches some importance to personal judgment Hamalindian was a crack scientist; had gone to all the schools including Egypt, “making thought material”
In ancient Egypt as in modern India, the highest Yogi classes materialized thought. This merely makes clearer the subjective nature of thought. Hamalindean could see thought; but this was no help in solving the problem: Does Man survive Death? Hamalindean admitted that in spite of the abundance of learning, he knew nothing by personal experience about the Soul, though he had written book on the subject which his colleagues had admired. This is our state. Does any one KNOW that man has a soul or its fate? Hamalindean invites any one who has a method he has not tried to tell him and he will try it, No offers. Hamalindean retired and became a farmer (related to first food)
0. reads: Pan-scientific congress to settle the question, is there a soul. The Tower of Babel. This is the hope that by putting together all theories, he might combine them and build a structure which would reach Heaven. Hamalindean began by the analysis of the brain. Origin of our opinions, our impressions. Analysis of current Behaviorism . As he spoke his voice began to grow, moved with realization of what he was saying, he admits that in one mood he could prove that men were just bodies and in another that they were just minds. Yet he was not a mediocre scientist but had completed the highest studies. During this congress he had followed all the conflicting theories and had agreed inwardly with all.
Tower built of theories, all plausible, yet of various consistencies and must collapse. Hamalindean left then. He is the type of the disillusioned modern scientist whose person being based on sensations is insufficient for any essential conclusions. Pause and distinguish this:
Being
Knowing
Doing, the three broadest types.
The type of Being is the rarest; and the degeneration of the species is measured by the decrease in this type
Every one here is in the first Instance a being. We are distinguished from the animal. This does not mean that we are superior but differentiates between animal and human Being.
Can you distinguish, not instinctively, not emotionally, not behaviouristically? Then what is the difference? We can only say it is self-consciousness, awareness of the state of Being. It is possible for us to classify ourselves in the order of beings. Comparison of orders. I can distinguish between a state of well being and a state of ill being. I can measure the degree in which certain faculties are more sharp in well being than in ill being. Suppose for the moment there were no external world. Close your eyes and try to be merely conscious of yourself. Can you distinguish changes taking place in your state (psychic) Can you distinguish three main forms of states: thinking, feeling moving(motor activity)?
Each of these is susceptible of many sub-states. Collect names of emotional and intellectual states
Intellectual: concentration, attention, instinct. Pain? Lightness Interrogate yourself; the beginning of technique Science and Art of Being. Aware of psychic states £s they occur.
Take illustration: anger, how many varieties? As many as shades of red: indignation, rage, spleen, vexation etc.
Some one in pursuit of knowledge would proceed by reason, based on reading would be able to define. Might say “indignation is anger and surprise” without my personal knowledge.
Some one pursuing Being might be able to distinguish shades in himself without perhaps being able to define them In current terms.
Difference between knowledge and analysis of words and understanding of self.
Babylon instituted word reasoning and put an end to the pursuit of Being. Substitution of verbal thought for trained Intuition. We come into the world educable and are corrupted by words. Knowledge is not the outcome of experience but of crystallized concepts. Possibility of the self-discovery of a means, with a series of exercises and arriving at a greater self-understanding.
We are each of us In Hamalindean. Suppose science succeeds; the disillusion: of Hamalindean awaits it. How shall we start?
Method: First Step– physical behaviour
Second step– Observation of psychic states as such attention on changes. Until now nothing on this has been said, because external behavior is a language with three meanings. Three centers simultaneously express themselves in our behavior.
Consecutive and increasingly subtle reading brings to light. (Later on in connection with our drama we will see part of training in “acting”). At present all this is premature but now giving teo distinct states.
Interrogation based on words, a useful experiment.
Morality in Babylon: two schools: Dualist or Idealist, Materialist of Atheist.
The first assumed the existence in the world of two principles: Good and Bad. We find in ourselves tendency to classify things thus, not only in relation to ourselves but absolutely. That each species should so classify things relatively i.e., in relation to its own purposes is natural.”Good for me”, conducive to my purpose. This judgment is purely relative and implies no judgment of the object itself. If I say “good in itself” I am applying my personal judgment which has nothing ethical in it (instrumental) , with cosmic meaning. This double meaning of the word “good” is the cause of most of our confusion.
This false attribution of personal to absolute values, we call morality; a universalization of which is strictly speaking personal.
There is nothing in the world which is universally good or bad In spite of the fact that this is clear, none of us can refrain from using “good end evil” and feeling that we have some claim to pass judgment, thanks to an educational system which originated in Babylonian days. Morality was instituted following the decadence of the intuition of God.
The non-moral view; was held in Babylonian days by a group who were mechanicians.
Everything in the world in a series of causes which produce effects which in turn become
The second school cane to the conclusion that there was no psychology and no being. The price that will be paid by modern technical psychology (see Watson). No psyche. In the whole preoccupation is with external behaviour. Subtler physiology. Lose sense of experience other than senses. If psychic activity is directed, outward continually the ultimate conclusion will be that nothing real exists.
Logic is based on impressions, if we collect to impressions for the psyche, logic will compel us to predicate the non existence o of the psyche. We cannot reason about the psyche with a being all of whose impressions are physiological.
Watson said: your theory cannot interest me because it is based on facts which are not of my experience. I understand you to say: collect the facts.
We cannot talk yet, can only go, do. Collection of facts begins to give ground for new judgment. A half century after Hamalindean, came St. Ashiatisheiemash. Hamalindean was the most highly intellectual scientist of his day.
April 11, 1927
Before considering Ashia- must go through the steps of viewing the human species objectively.
Each of us is the product of a long biological history; and also from the moment of conception, this biological heredity becomes subject to variations due to the particular time in the civilization in which we find ourselves.
If the environment is discouraging to normal biological purpose, hostility. If favorable, sociological materials will aid biological development.
In this critique, there are certain implications; one of these is the conception of a normal human being. It is impossible to arrive at this by taking merely the average of individuals. The species in process of degeneration may offer an average but ceases often to be normal. This distinction between average and normal is very important. This book defines the normal; and needs to be long pondered before being grasped. G. often said to 0. “What I am saying now, you will understand perhaps in a year or two years”. Altho the statement was clear.
A being, irrespective of sex, who at the age of about twenty one begins to find quite naturally in himself the development of that state of consciousness which we call self-consciousness. He becomes aware of his body in the sense of being psychologically in possession of it. This happens normally and is accompanied by devotion to certain interests. Employment of meanth.
At the age of about thirty, another crisis in which he begins to become conscious of the world in which he lives; not merely this planet but other planets and his relation to them. This varies in individuals but the character of the stage is the same. Aware of total life purpose, function, etc. At first just sensing them. Normal three centered beings on other planets. On this planet , no phases, turning points after age of planetary majority. After this dependent on external impressions received up to this time. More or less chaotic, unfolding in the possibilities of emperienne laid up.
B.’s first effort to understand why this state. He reviewed the history of the planet, as it is useful for us to review the history of our individual lives. He found a catastrophe and split; each individual repeats this planetary accident. The results are serious but not fatal. The Moon and Anulios remained within the gravitational field of the planet. This split is not ineradicable. It is possible to develope normally if only our sociological inertia which we call tradition had adapted itself.
Kundebuffa is vestigial but tradition continues it. This sociological tradition must eventually be overcome and seen through as a condition of normal development, it is impossible to develope through sociological ideas; it is not a question of eclecticism among the knowledge’s we have acquired. All this knowledge is useless in the absence of the development of essence, the biological germ. This is the origin of the insistence on “being born again”, not spiritually or occultly but be returning to the biological state before we were subject to sociology. Hence the value of reviewing life by pictures. I developes the center of observation; and “I” becomes something, as the panorama of the metamorphosis of its own body passes before it. It also leads to see in the layers or coatings and the transparence of the layers. The sociological attainments do not drop off. One sees the essential reactions due to period, place etc.
Comparing ourselves with a conscious being, aware of function asks the question which Ashia–asked himself.
He appeared in Babylon, shortly after Hamalindean. H. an intellectual had analyzed mind. Impressions are accidentally received. Are they suffice for any objective judgment.
He decided there was no salvation in cultivating the mind; and went out to grow food i.e., to collect impressions, which no one could give him. He had a abandoned reason and self-analysis, the ordinary sense of words and he was thrown back on the simple pastoral task of taking impressions of his own physical behaviour.
Ashia-, perhaps taking advantage of the wave of intellectual skepticism and disillusionment; no solution of essential questions by gathering data. He decided that and emotional awakening was needed but for the intelligenzia an emotional appeal on the instinctive center is not sufficient; it must come over an idea, from beyond reason. Hence G. speaks of Objective Reason.
Ashia- spoke of Objective Conscience.
He began by questioning his own competence to undertake a reform realizing that he also had been subjectively determined.
He set out to make the coating of education transparent. In a state of objectivity he began to formulate the means to carry out his mission; and left a document for a line of initiates, of whom today in Central Asia (Psychological as well as geographical essence)a few members remain. (Asia, essence; Europe, personality)
The steps he took; Legomonism transmitted, occult doctrine, originally fully formulated and transmitted by human means.
Title of the Document “The terror of the Situation”. Suppose it is true that all of us are abnormal, that we have never seen and never shall see a normal human being on this planet. Suppose this species is degenerating and that we can be but dimly aware of this; that we as species and as individuals are being carried inevitably down the scale of evolution. Consider efforts by Ashia, Buddha, Egyptian civilization, etc. Many attempts and all have failed.
Our stakes on Ashia’s efforts. The situation inspired him as we know. This may give us an understanding of the intensity with which Ashia went at it.
0. wishes he had the music which accompanies this section; this has the same ideas emotionally realized as intellectually realized in The Book.
His meditation, he began with the following prayer: i.e., he put himself in a definite emotional attitude, as precise as the physical or posture, an arrangement of emotions.
“In the name of the cause of my arising” , used instead of being born i.e. , we exist sensibly as a result of coating ourselves., cf. electrolyses “I” am always; periodically comes to a manifestation. Thank whatever powers that “I” has it; that we live as well as are. My aim shall always be to be just toward everything already coated and towards all originations of those existences still to be. To me, a trifling particle of the all-great Essence, it was commanded to be coated with a planetary body of the planet Earth. (And help men free themselves from the effects of Kundebuffa). Previous messengers had taken one of the three functions (Faith, Hope and Love) of three centered beings Ashia- says that these three functions are natural to three centered beings. Resident in the essence of man as such.
At first he thought ton use one of these. At seventeen he began to prepare his planetary body in order to be during the rest of his life impartial G. attaches importance to striving for impartiality.
In Babylon he observed the effect of sociological conditions on beings and began to doubt the possibility of using any one of these three functions. Had anticipated the failure of Christianity, which assumes in us enough essential Faith, Hope and Love, on which to base a religion. Observed his intellectual contemporaries. Not enough Faith, Hope and Love. The properties of Kundebuffa so crystallized that their education became a substitute for their being.
He decided to bring this planetary body to a state of emptiness of impressions received in this life. Attempt to think of consciousness blank of content but vivid. Only in this state would he begin to choose a method. Ascended the mountain of concentration, Forty days and nights and another forty days, and neither ate nor drank. Then reviewed and analyzed all the phases of experience through which he had passed. Became merely an active experience. For next forty days and nights on his knees and to maintain his relation with his planetary body, every half hour plucked out two hairs. Usual exercises of concentration cause separation of certain body, which leads him to think he leaves his planetary body. To remind himself that he is incarnated in a physical body. After these three periods he was free from physical and emotional associations.
Then he considered how to be more in order to carry out his mission. Development of Being as such. To know more is not to be more; to do more is not to be more.
It became clear to him it was already too late to use Faith, Hope and Love; these functions were degenerate. Probably due to the fact that when Kundebuffa was removed the taste for —so strong.
They have Faith, Hope and Love, but how do they love and hope and what is the nature of their Faith?
They have Faith but not independent arising from their own nature; it flows from other functions formed in them from infancy, with the result that they believe in what happens to have been presented by impressions received. No essence centers. Possible to induce in them Faith, in things of which they have no experience. Beliefs superimposed, chiefly on tickling of weaknesses.
Love: Differences in descriptions of ten different persons; but none would describe genuine Love.
1:-functions to serve as mainspring for desire for perfection and rest from labors for perfection.
2:- for sensations of bliss in the intervals which follow rest and effort.
4:- for mutual possible aid in striving to overcome the effects or Kundebuffa.
Now one loves because others give encouragement or stimulus or praise; or because features resemble one for whom he has a physical polarity. Instead become crystallized.
Hope worse than the others, in a mangled state adapted to the weakness of the psyche, consequently more and more crystallized and cannot get real Faith, Hope, Love. The artificial hope is always hoping or something unreal, a paralysis of those functions by which they might overcome the properties of Kundebuffa. The result is a nervous illness called Tomorrow. This afflicts those who by chance learn of the presence of undesirable features and the efforts necessary. They always imagine they will be better able tomorrow.
He returns to the Mountain and looks for other means. Is there anything in us worth appealing to? Reason is ineffective because we flow into subjective molds. No use preaching sanity to madmen; a mere presentation of a new truth in reasonable form is not enough. In this chapter is also a critique of the emotions. Not only our ideas, our sincerity, our faith, hope and love, our emotions which we think more profound are here questioned.
Then what is there still in essence which is not acquired nor corrupted? Our subconscious product of a few real impressions. He discovers a fourth sacred function: objective conscience, still in its primordial state because never used in ordinary life and hence not corrupted. He devoted himself to the development of conditions for a few who would aid him to rediscover and develop this function. Attempt to discover analogy in us with what he means by Objective Conscience (by function he means , psychological activity) e.g. an occasional sense that there must be some meaning to Life and that happiness is not a sufficient explanation; “sense of sin” but not in conventional sense, a curiosity with a sense of guilt, a dim sense of having a purpose. Ecstacy, delight etc. tinged with sadness. But no conscious external appeal can be made since the conscience and even the subconscious listens through three fold corrupted channels. Hence the individual must do something in strange conditions. Self-observation with self-review. Draw out from the subconscious and put into the conscious, the voice of Objective Conscience.
B. adds that during his sixth descent (l900-17) he looks for traces of Ashia’s brotherhood. Found only one tablet with sentence erected in the city of Babylonia. Texts; reminders. One of these is the treasure of a brotherhood in central Asia (Asia is our substitute for Essence) These sentences of Faith, Hope and Love.
l: – Faith with reason is Freedom; faith based on understanding the reasons why.
2:- Emotional: Faith is weakness.
3:- Instinctive; Faith Is stupidity.
4:- Love with reason evokes the same in response (emotional state with reason for being in love)
5:- Emotional love invariably evokes its opposite.
6:- Physical love depends merely on the accidents of type and polarity.
7:- Hope, a reasonable aspiration, with reason is strength.
8:-Emotional Hope is slavery.
9:-Instinctive Hope is disease.
Ashia-‘s effort from G.’s point of view is the most intelligent effort made by a human being at world reform.
He began by preparing himself; and concluded that all his Ideas opinions etc., were conditioned.
He made a review of his past life and emptied himself of all accidental impressions. Until then he could have no objective view of different methods. He came to native essential judgment which had not been conditioned towards Faith, Hope and Love. He found a native human quality not dependent on chances of environments. It was not needful to use a special vocabulary of people appealed to. He looked for something as fixed in the species as the nature of a lion or a wolf is fixed. He named this Objective Conscience and set about finding a number of people in whom this Objective Conscience was nearer the surface than in most. He chose thirty six, mostly from monasteries in the neighborhood. He does not mean buildings but independent thinkers, capable of thinking against current sociological trends. Every independent thinker “lives in a monastery” he taught cosmic truths, not yet truths to the thirty six.
A: – Ideal pattern of the potentialities of man; the relation between man and the cosmos. Octave and semi-tone as difficulty, presented as theories.
B: – Then he directed their psychological effort so as to increase their awareness (taught the method of S.O.)
C: – Taught them so as to persuade and convince one hundred others.
Two requirements: 1:- Self- understanding; 2:- Ability to persuade and convince others.
He called these thirty six, priests. These persuaded and convinced one hundred so that each of these could persuade and convince 100 others, “sons” and “grandsons” who could persuade others, initiates. 5000 to 6000 B.C. beginning of priests and initiates. Self- perpetuation Since Babylon was the metropolis of the world, all intellectuals were soon within range and in a decade all were familiar with the concept of Objective Conscience; and it became a universally accepted standard of value among intellectuals.
For about three hundred years the civilization built on this prospered. The political state, racial prejudice etc. disappeared; art, science etc. underwent change and were related to the standard of Objective Conscience. During this period of three hundred years was something approximating the Golden Age, with works of an international character with universal values. This was ended by a counter revolution whose leader Lentrohamox (Lenin- Trotzky) Hamox was being Egyptian and serving to give a mystical connotation with political significance. Form of government that eventuated from this propaganda of Ashia- and how this government was destroyed by Lentrohamox. Parallel between sociological story and individual application. In each of us there is an Ashia and a Lentrohamox comparable to these “epic motives” in the sociological story.
Appeals to Faith, Hope and Love made to us to day, have already a tone of sentimentality. An appeal made with these for a base world bring out a little revulsion. We would say: this is not logical i.e. we are intellectually on guard against it as a result of education. Same as Babylonians. We are equally civilized and equally corrupt, demanding intellectual proof.
Yet Ashia had before him the example of the world’s greatest dialectician and subtle reasoner and logician in Buddha. Acknowledged among Hindus as the greatest. Yet Buddha made himself so misunderstood that within a generation of his death his own disciples misinterpreted him. Why? Because our reason is as conditioned as our emotions. What is rational n is determined by our education. Hence a fair skepticism includes reason.
Ashia realized the way reformers before him had failed and that so would everyone after him who appealed to Faith, Hope and Love. He proposed to appeal to something we have not yet rationalized; and which few of us unless in desperate circumstances has ever had personal knowledge of.
Why is a dog always a dog? Why does it always behave like a dog? Why in certain circumstances go to its death? Why not behave, as we would say, reasonably? Behaves as it does because it is obliged to be what it is, be the outcome what it may. Indifferent to it whether rising or dropping in the scale, whether multiplying or becoming extinct. It is “innocent”; has objective conscience. Mineral, vegetable, animal, before man instinctively obey the law of their species. No need of psychological effort. A fixed species. No evil. Man is fixed externally, but psychologically has in him every species. Can on occasion be dog, mouse, lion etc. Examine yourself and others. Elasticity produces doubt as to real fixed nature. Man is note “si” in the octave in which all other notes are fixed but with potentiality of other notes. Man an elastic species with possibilities of dropping or rising psychologically. Introduces the problem of Objective Conscience as a matter of choice and responsibility. Consciousness that no other animal possesses as a possibility.
Animals are incarnate actualities; the note “si” is precarious, a responsibility. Possible ascent or descent, then realization of possibilities. Terror of the Situation, Ashia.
Objective Conscience “awareness of possibilities, latent in himself”. Where right and wrong? Among possibilities are those of growth or of degeneration, in one race (???).
At one time choice of possibilities of degenerative character, “apes”, not animals. Criterion of values between up and down. Implied that man is a free agent.
Nature as such is indifferent as to direction of which possibility actualized. Have bodies in a biological sense for either movement. Criterion within. This “right” or “wrong”, not natural, cannot be sought in biological values and biological welfare is not a criterion. Standard of right and wrong not only in biology but to what ought to be. This introduces the idea of values for outsiders. This introduces the idea which Ashia- calls “God”, i.e. a determint that each develope his potentialities in a higher direction. The species below man does not need this. In man who is the first of a biological species to occupy this critical point in the scale and to cooperate with the plan imposed on the universe by the founder evolution of the universe at Ashia-said that part of the scheme required that a certain point should appear a number of self-conscious agents, not servants who would cooperate in carrying out this arbitrary plan, i.e., no universal right and wrong.
Choice between cooperation and frustration. In every human being this ultimate criterion of value; exemplified in experiences in which one has felt that there is something one will not do, come what may. Will not and cannot – essence of essence.
Ashia- proposes to being this into consciousness and build upon it. The measure of the distance that our ordinary lives are from this consciousness is the unseriousness with which we regard the things that happen to us. We should carry a vivid sense of values into everything we did. Hence Ashia- instituted the method.
Objective Conscience means “Consciousness of our Cosmic Duty”. Trees sub serve certain cosmic functions as they change certain solar energies (emanations) into terrestrial energies. Vegetable kingdom acts as transforming agent, deposits energies chemically into planet. Human beings not possible until this had preceded us. Human bodies made from vegetable and animal substances.
We also are chemically transforming agents. We enrich the chemical composition of the planet with our bodies, energies not otherwise collectible.
There are three transforming centers; each transforms in an especial field of energies. Solar into terrestrial.
But also according to the theory of the possibility that unlike mineral, animal and vegetable this can be done and at the same time potentialities and powers be developed which will result in Individuality Consciousness and Will. (understanding, not biological but normal for human development Normal man and normal objective development by which this norm can be attained)
What is this Norm (see last week, the difference between normal and average? Between standard and statistical. What is the aim of existence?
Ashia- defines it in five items or commandments; and objective morality for pupils.
1: – Maintenance of a state of readiness of the planetary body which we happen to have inherited; this is to be interpreted in a larger sense than merely health.”Readiness” includes crystallized habits and special skills. Elasticity kept so that the body is ready for the use of intelligence.
Special skill which is obtained by the loss of elasticity is a violation of instinctive morality.
G. mentioned forty or fifty crafts he had been interested in. In none was he a specialist. He had two purposes: to give the instinctive center the feel; to be ready for potential needs.
Ancient Drama, see later destined to develop and maintain elasticity of function. A variety of roles, each role necessarily employed the body in different techniques. This had to be played physiologically.
We find in ourselves a feeling of criticism in regard to a specialist in any physiological field, e.g. gymnast. Consideration only partial but is based on up a sense that the ideal development would be in the direction of wholeness. Maintain an elastic and ever-ready state.
2:- The aim always to have an undiminishing curiosity and hunger and thirst for improving oneself in the way of being. Three main possibilities of human development; being more, knowing more, doing more. It is yet impossible to formulate methods for increasing being:”Oh yea, he knows everything but he, himself is nothing” or “oh yes, he has done all sorts of spectacular things but himself is nothing”
Our criticism implies a “conscious aim to know more and more concern in the meaning and purpose of world creation and world maintenance”
The characteristic preoccupation of moments of seriousness: what does life mean? We are only reduced to this question in moments of despair or danger; i.e., reduced to essence. Most of life spent in sociologizin and when one is indifferent to sociology, one asks this. This is of the essence. (Story of the cathode ray)
The Akhaldans in Atlantis took as their scientific objective, the discovery of the meaning and purpose of Life. This question recurs to all of us in our essential moments.
The Akhaldans the first and last scientific society to make openly its objective to answer this question. Modern science does not begin to touch the questions that arise in every man in essential moments. “Why are we alive?” If an answer to this is necessary in order to cooperate and cooperation is a conscious obligation, the interest in this becomes a practical need and not a parlor curiosity.
4:-To pay off as quickly as possible the debt we have incurred in the process of becoming conscious beings.
This introduces a sort of terror. That we are here as biological beings is a fact. At the same time, we are conscious, an individual. For individuality, plus biological existence, we are indebted to something. Not saying whether we are glad. At any rate we are psychologically and biologically experiencing through physical body and psychical mechanism of coordination.
Can I say that I owe my biological body and nature and that I owe my entity-but this already puts me in debt. I start my conscious existence in debt for the fact that I exist. Pay off? How? In order to leave myself free, in order, voluntarily to undertake real service for the Cosmos.
This is where Voluntary Effort begins, not to discharge debts but to carry forward a movement, which depends on individual initiative. Only when this Voluntary (conscious) effort begins are we in this Fourth:”to aim to pay off, quickly, the debt for one’s arising and individuality in order to lighten the burden of His Endlessness, a burden carried by a comparatively few shoulders”.
5:-In the aim always to help the speedy improvement of all beings including those like oneself and others, to self-realization, in the ability to say “I am”, with a content not dependent on external phenomena; or at least not put hindrances in their way.
These five objectives dictated by essences. Everyone in whom objective consciousness was active would find himself formulating. Our ordinary lives are far from this; we may have thought of these as ideals but not as practical obligations. What sort of morality do we have in place of it?
A lion is what it is; we are without a sense of good and bad; have right and wrong but corrupted into sense of good and evil by sociological forces yet our individual sense of right and wrong is so vague, that only in occasional moments can we formulate with assurance.
How do we come to be without this clear sense of what is proper to man?
Let us assume for the moment that these five are correct aims. Then why have we not been trained to pursue them?
Mythologized in the Book as a Split in the Planet, into essential and artificial. Sociological values are produced at the expense of essence. Restoration to the species Man of his original potentialities. Atonement-at-One-ment, a reintegration of the psyche of man. Implies that at one; point of history there is a possibility of reintegrating man who previously had been doomed to be fragmentary Habits acquired when man was necessarily fragmentary and when it impossible to develope self and cosmic consciousness, persisted in civilized forms.
All civilization has become an impediment because based on condition which no longer exists and in which self consciousness is impossible.
National distinctions, racial and caste; science and art. These began during the fragmentary period. Not one based on essence. If essence demands the development of self and cosmic consciousness, it follows that race; caste, etc. are not based on Essence.
From point of view of consciousness, e.g. an individual might be entitled to rank as superior, a High being; but from point of view of race, inferior. Sociological values are not cosmic and vice versa, superior and inferior. There are men and women honored sociologically who from point of view of the cosmos are empty of value.
How does it come that we unprejudiced as we think we are, are subtly under one or another of these prejudices, and cannot think essentially without coloring our impressions?
A can did rigid, self-review of life will lead to the answer to this question. Will discover the degree to which all essential value are colored by prejudices from race, education, profession etc. Ashia— undertakes to rouse this essential standard and leaves his disciples to their own devices. He aids by formulating a Norm. It is very important to make this review.
You will observe that you find yourself in making this review predisposed to make judgments of good and bad based on the conception of self interest. Radical critique of our existing conscious psychology which all presupposes one value: egoism.
His critique that our greatest implicit value is egoism and not voluntary cosmic service. Our individual conscience is the voice of self-interest e.g.: take simplest example, castes. Usually in three main groups:
1:- ruling- possessing
2:- fighting- professional
3:- laboring– industrial and agrarian
What is the difference? Found to be in the character of their egoism and selfishness, the character of their cunning, the presence or absence of domineering; a federation of individuals in whom selfishness is supplemented by certain vices, such as cunning, hatred and inhumanity. How did the different castes come? Not by self-interest since all are equally egoistic but by cunning.
The ruling class has selfishness plus cunning; the professional as much selfishness but with less cunning; and the manual has still less cunning. There is a contest between varying degrees of cunning. When the three combine we have a nation; when nations combine we have a race. None of them any guide to cosmic values. 0. spoke of his connection with the radical labor movement.
Egoism and cunning are sociological values while cosmic values are essence and voluntary service. Cosmic service is versus an inter play of egoisms. A crowd of individuals is equally selfish; neither proposes a greater value to which they are willing to submit. A larger number whether nation, mob or race has merely a numerical advantage.
Ashia – points to a criterion higher than both, by the degree to which objective conscience is individually realized. Ethical conflict between individuals and races reconciled. Not for human functions but for developing functions.
Special technique. S.O.; self perfecting; self expression. First step toward self realization and bringing into consciousness of objective conscience. As this is pursued awareness of purpose begins to dawn, and in the five commands begin to take on a personal meaning. They cease to be merely intellectually interesting. The individual then begins to lose his sociological coloring and sheds his sociological moralities. He grows more free and more responsible he takes on a severer morality (ordinary anti-moralist quite mechanically moral)
Lentrohamox fell under the temptation to substitute for the aim of a cosmic consciousness the aim of happiness. Happiness resulting from the discharge of a cosmic purpose is divine happiness; but happiness pursued for its own sake is the opposite.
April 25, 1927
Split personality in the case of Mrs. Piper, see account of Dr. Prince Mrs. P. subject to attacks of amnesia and perhaps a year after would turn up pursuing a different occupation. She has about nine variation of her personality. This is an extreme case of a split or multiple personality.
The diagnosis of the psychic condition of man is that he is suffering as a race from split personality. Do some of us under influence of strong emotion, drug or drink ever suffer temporary fracture, so to speak without memory? Try to imagine one of our friends attacked by amnesia. It is impossible to remind them in this state of their normal state. What means would you use to remind him of what he is? This is the problem of the religious reformer, dealing with the race to remind it of its normal condition.
It is familiar to history that people under certain emotional stress ask: “Why am I alive?” The vagaries of such are very much alike in all times and races. This is responsible for religions, folklore superstitions, etc. as well as poetry. There are occasional flashes as when Mrs. Piper says to herself who am I? There are moments of partial recollection of states of consciousness which once were. There is a Hindu story of the child who sang in the womb “Let me remember who I am” And his first cry after birth is “I have forgotten”
Lethe – education; moments of “remorse” recollection. Otherwise o
sense of meaning. At one time doctrines were concealed in fairy tales: lost doctrine and lost memory – Sleeping princess, which is each of us. If we were awake to this we would be aware. The prodigal Son (see The Hymn of a Robe of Glory). Voluntarily or on a mission we leave for a foreign country with knowledge of our mission; objective reason and objective conscience. En route we begin to forget. After a long period of feeding swine, there is a flash of recollection. We are a absorbed in our associations. Problem of Ashia– was that of any one of us who was dealing with a friend suffering from amnesia a begin by talking about things they used to be familiar with and recall memorable incidents, hoping the chance word will reawaken the memory. Or we take him back to familiar scenes; or begin to talk in terms of present reason e.g. Mrs. Piper in a shop: How do you like it? Where were you before? Or if present condition is below normal might try reproach. The Prodigal Son realized because he was living on husks the swine ate. The Method of Ashia is the same. There is nothing occult about it or supernatural. It is just commonsense.
Ashia– began with thirty six, three centered beings with possibility of development to six – Enough to start with. He began by trying to remind them of their early association i.e. by instructing them in cosmic truths, with which they were once familiar. Implications that should be childhood possessions; for it is not abnormal to be aware of our place and function in the cosmos. Our abnormality is that was a matter of guessing. Ashia – hoped that as he talked some chance word would awaken their own knowledge of these truths. Not trying to substantiate logically, but to reawaken ideas buried in the sub conscious. He supplemented talk with directions as to personal method, S.O.Ouspensky uses the Phrase, self-remembering. By attention to the organism to reawaken original identity, so that they should cease to be identified with the planetary body (the Country to which the prodigal Son had gone).
By attempting to review the past life and by doing it daily it was hoped that a detached and objective attitude would be made easier to take an objective attitude. Try reviewing your past life pictorially help in the daily review to take this attitude: these things happened to my planetary body. Wake each morning with a little more detachment. Arouse a personal sense of shame as a fulcrum for objective conscience.
Two kinds of shame; by discovering failure in some conventional duty or a sense of contrast between what you had been and what you have become. Recognition, first think of Objective Conscience. Not necessarily associated with an understanding of Objective Reason. We realize that we know nothing; we have no sense of purpose, drift we etc. but these moments may merely leave us a little more desolate.
The first difficulty encountered by Ashia– and later the came of his failure. Nevertheless this state the only sufficiently intense state to provoke the necessary energy or impetus for attaining objective reason. Not one of us will ever understand the cosmos until it become a personal problem; that is that we feel the need to end this ignorance. But how long may this Purgatory (emotion without power last?). Ashia— formulated simple rules of objective morality. If entertained will induce intensification of understanding of Objective Reason and Objective Conscience.
2:- be more, more conscious, more will more individuality.
These five even if taken only mechanically will aid other measures
for awakening objective consciousness(emotional center) and attaining Objective Reason (Intellectual center). Our present consciousness is in the instinctive center. Ashia trying to develope the two higher centers. Awakens the emotional center which gives a push to develope the intellectual.
Ashia– prepared a propagandist body, Consider the remarkable organization of the Knights Templar’s or order of Chivalry, where some of the noblemen began apprenticeship in the kitchen. Compare the energy with the effect of any propaganda now to make people forego certain comforts. Orage familiar with Ely Cathedral; before the site was a swamp occupied by wild fowl. There was no stone. A small group of people came using the name of the Christian religion. Stone was brought by the river. It was apparently a hopeless project. Those who began it must have had a high degree of will, consciousness and individuality.
Ashia– proposed: I- Unlearning, 2- reeducation, 3- with a small number of reeducated people he would reeducate the whole race. A religion reformed by purely psychological means
300 -400 years, inscriptions, doctrines , sculptures, religions, traces of world-culture about 5000 to 4000 B.C., with a ruling class in agreement as to the ends, aims and means of culture. Universa1 language of ideas and ideals. Speech in terms of value with local variations.
Reaction was incarnated by Lentro-hamox, embodying certain resistance (Lenin-Trotsky and results) Propaganda simply based; with awakening of objective conscience it unfortunately happens that objective reason does not come to life and hence for a time suffer sense of guilt without having means of coming to a rational understanding. e.g.: go somewhere with a purpose. By leaving the remembrance becomes fragmentary and the situation changes and cannot be carried out. The degree of suffering is the degree of importance once attached to the plan. Thus we have the same pang when we try to formulate whence we came for we cannot remember. This state is almost unendurable. Most people in this state will take some narcotic, such as religion, service to others, in desperation. Lentro-hamox is the personification of the unwillingness in us to tolerate any larger objective conscience without objective reason, Lentro-hamox: chooses to work on those who have not yet developed any objective reason. He started methodically. There were a small number of the dissatisfied who were beginning to think there was no hope of attaining reason in proportion to the suffering. He said there was — only one thing for us in life and that was the pursuit of happiness and happiness means not being obliged to do anything.
Freedom is the definition of man; and freedom means choice, freedom from obligation.
Ashia– had said that man had a sense of obligation to discharge the service for which he was created and would find himself evolving only to the degree he carried out this obligation. We did not choose this. Lentro-hamox critique that of a good philosopher but a pure rationalist. He said that if man was created for service he was therefore created a slave. He will repudiate this service and attain to absolute freedom. Very crafty and plausible plea. It finds us in certain moods, ready to consider it very convincing. Why should we after just escaping from the role of mutton and wool find ourselves morally obligated to take on another service? He presented this under the terms of freedom end happiness and countered the propaganda of Ashia.
Lentro-hamox was not a monster or a traitor. There was nothing diabolical in the defeat of Ashia. Already in our reason there is enough to defeat Ashia – Jesus Christ or Buddha.
Weakness of Lentro-hamoxas position. If only from urge of state to realize understanding; then without this urge such understanding is impossible. Credit God with some subtlety when Jesus said “Love your enemies” He knew the impossibility and therefore taught a method by means of which these commandments could be practiced. When undertaking the incarnation of a world God made certain emotional moral experience a pre-requisite for development of reason. Lentro-hamox figured it was possible to attain understanding without paying the price of emotional, etc. Rationally he was right; but wrong in fact. There can be no cosmic consciousness without a sense of cosmic obligation(objective conscience) Lentro-hamox left out of account the emotional element both in himself and in the world. In this sense fee becomes the forerunner of our spiritual ancestors the Greeks and Romans, the beginnings of civilization for us. Anything before them we consider “ancient”, “Barbaric”. G. says the Babylonian civilization was superior to the Greek. We date from the Greeks. G. says the Greeks descend, not from Ashia but from Lentro-hamox, the rationalist without any higher emotional urge two possible streams but we inherited this one.
A period of world culture, then revolt. We are the inheritors of the revolt. The tradition was that the followers of Ashia— withdrew into small groups. Small communities found down even to the time of Alexander the Great; but the main line of tradition was rationalism Geographically, limited, individually limited. These little caves and occult schools are our subconscious. Lentro-hamox inaugurated the modern, negative, and subjective. Transfer from cosmopolitanism to egotism. All explanations of life are now based on personal prejudice, for our preservation. We cannot formulate a philosophy except from the point of view of personal interest.
Nietzsche said I no longer ask of a philosopher, is it true?; but want was the interest for the philosopher.
Even reform movements, industrial, radical movements in England must if there is no sense of cosmic obligation become personal. Without higher emotion all philosophy becomes a matter of the head with a view to personal welfare. Subjectively colored and egotistic ally determined. Our reason being subjective is already degenerate that is egotistically determined. Our world view is subjective, i.e. the notion that the world is not an instrument formed by God for use and that he has no use for us; that God did not create the universe or any practical purpose, like a sensible being but out of sheer benevolence and only wants us to be happy, he accordingly likes chiefly those who are themselves happy or who make others happy. The implication is that it is our chief purpose to be happy and the path to happiness is to make others happy. This is a childish attitude; yet it is Schopenhauer. Another variation is: that only individual happiness counts; this is the philosophy of the ruling class, the subjective error into which Nietzsche fell, that mankind exists for the development of a few supermen. This assumption is common to certain types, the Napoleonic. The opposite is another variation: that the individual does not count. “What matters my happiness if there is a little progress?” Sociological progress may be at the expense of the individuals who make up society, resulting in a collective organization of individuals devoid of essence.
Still another variant: Modern science, which proceeds by accumulate facts in the hope that some later generation will receive understanding. Will not the habit of collecting more facts continue? Always postponing till tomorrow a habit of putting off. Tomorrow and a later generation the utilization of means which in themselves a of no use. Typical scientist.
The notion of God as a father varies with subjective experience.
Or the notion that the universe is a sort of school, where there is teaching (May be it is a school where there is learning but not teaching).
Objective Reason is not to be attained by any subjective or egoistic emotion, personal anguish. Objective conscience necessary G.’s cosmology may sound ridiculous, but in competition with the infantile concepts which are implicit in our point of view they a manly and intelligent. We think we escape the cosmology by being frightened of specific words.
It is a fact that the world has a meaning and also that we have a relation to it Ashia says: there is a method by which we can arrive at and objective understanding of what is Lentro-hamox says: there is a means of accommodating ourselves to what is, without understanding what it is.
The success of Lentro-hamox was established by Greek tradition. The Greeks were responsible for the corruption of human reason. As a result is almost impossible for an objective conscience to be developed since then. The Romans are responsible for the corruption of the organic conscience.
We had been considering the purpose of the Fifth Descent. Now the Sixth Descent to discover why the existence of three centered beings is diminishing. Recent statistics in Europe and America show en increase. Why does B. assume an decrease? Consider the parable (Exercise of the faculty which later becomes intuition, guessing in reading the parable, perhaps this indirect method of formulation is used to stimulate this faculty. Exercise patience and remain alert, reading between the lines.)
What is B. talking about when he says existence is contracting? Not directly of the body. Existence as three centered beings, exercising all functions, remaining elastic in all three centers. At about 25 or 30, the majority of men cease thinking, not mechanically but originally. At 40 cease to have originality of feeling. They continue to vegetate due to sociological hygiene but are on or two-thirds dead. Perhaps it is in the light of this that B.’s statement is to be read; as “vital statistics” of three centered existence. What is the cause of this premature death? Failure to develope in children an objective conscience, the absence of this crystallization of emotional-moral realization.
This stresses the importance of two questions in reading this book. By what can we recognize Objective conscience? Have we got it? Knowing why we were born, what is proper to me and what is not proper or becoming for me, a part from sociological right and wrong. Innate sense of what is proper to a three, centered being. This would give us a compass as a guide to what for us would be right and wrong. Also give a stimulus, what is proper is desirable, emotion leading to motion; steer to a recognized goal. This would have been a natural growth. Beings normally brought up would: l:- have had this compass and consequently would 2:- steer toward development of will consciousness and individuality.
Normal human society with normal education would have found all its members consciously arriving at development of astral and mental bodies with the objective of finally arriving at Objective Reason. To understand at first hand the reason of world origin and world maintenance.
But we have a split personality (stealing our birthright, Esau, similar allegory of a split personality)
We find substitutes for Objective Conscience, Will, Consciousness and individuality; Objective Reason , etc. We have these things by name only. Philosophy, Science, Art, Religion, Sport, health, Well-being. These are merely names, shadows like ourselves e.g. Amundsen’s airship passing over polar regions, so near that his compass pointed nowhere in particular but merely moved. He had no criterion of direction. Suppose a conference on board; it would be forced to rely on guesses. Conceive this state of mind. Any direction might be wrong. Even if we agree, this is no criterion, merely a practical unanimity (fallacy of the pragmatic school). This is our situation, our compass being gone. None of us has any clear interior sense of the direction of life. We are in space and compelled to move. The only direction in which we can move is that agreed upon by those about us. Hence the confidence in sociological: conventions, morals and ideals. It is a pragmatic agreement.
The subjective criterion is either: individual, idiosyncratic rebellious, etc. or conventional. From an objective point of view there is not a pin to choose between them. Both are subjective.
In these circumstances we fall into various sophistries e.g.
the criterion of value is adaptation(evolution). Mach of psychoanalytic ethics based on this. The whole of Jung’s school based on this “are we adapted?” Then we must be right. This might be called “hanging on or running down”. It is the posture of maximum comfort.
b) – substitution of means for ends. If one has no end one will tend to overvalue the means (and in proportion the end ceases to be realized), e.g. he end of philosophy is truth; our means is Reason. But in absence of Truth we tend to admire ingenuity of reasoning in any given school. We succumb to brilliance of process, epigram, reasoning, etc. This is worshipping the means. There is the end of arriving at Justice is the end of Law. The means of arriving at Justice is impartiality. The method of impartiality is formulated of rules applying to all. We have become legalists. We pursue legal forms and legality instead of psychological forms and justice. Also, what the end of Sex? From an objective point of view, it is twofold procreation and self creation, the creation in us of an astral and mental body. The procreation of planetary bodies; the creation of emotional and intellectual bodies. Thanks to the Romans we find ourselves using it objectlessly. We have substituted the pursuit of pleasure derived from the process for the satisfactions derived from the realization of the end. Playing with Reason; playing with Sex. Playing with forces, titillation, masturbation. Doomed to sociological standards and approval. “beware, when all men speak well of thee”, “do this to the Lord and not to men”. A warning against taking sociological criteria. We are bound to do this in the absence of objective criteria; the interior spring of action being gone. We run on three springs of a mechanical kind, which are wound up by external circumstances. Like a clock with three springs, depending on external circumstances and which cannot move, with self determining in this chapter are some details of the winding, degree, intensity and kind of winding
a) – heredity and general biological ancestry
b) – conditions and environment at the moment of conception(conditions means planetary; environment means local, circumstances.
c) – life in the complete sense, of parents and the part of the mother during period of gestation.
d) – the being manifestations of parents during period of coming of age of child “being manifestations” the behaviour which arises naturally from the being of the parents while the child is growing up.
e) – corresponding being or essential behaviour of other than parents who come into contact with the child, associates.
f) – good wishes of beings of the same blood, whether absent or near? Old wives wisdom. What is the reason for this? Celebration of birth days etc.
g) – character of effort made by a growing child to understand why he is alive. This is hard for westerners to understand. The forms this wonder takes is often embarrassing to parents. When we are asked “how was I born?” meaning why am I alive we give only direct sexual significance. If a true answer were given to a true question we would probably find ourselves telling a series of fairy tales with implicit and not explicit answers to these questions. This would satisfy the emotional craving.
These determine the potentialities of experience, which we later “live out”. Having been wound up the child goes out of this enlarged sociological womb into the world. His potentialities are fixed.
Not all thoughts may be thought by it, though later there may be an intense desire to understand certain things.
Not all emotions may be felt by it but certain emotional experiences later, at thirty or forty may be made possible by certain contacts with strangers or associates for ten minutes. Also physical.
Experience, what is it? Dewey’s problem. The release by external agencies of spring of ourselves that gives the consciousness of thought or emotion or action. Assuming that we can experience a thought or emotion or action. Will an external agency tick it off? Accident? Chance? As a rule our emotional potentiality is ticked off slowly, so that we still have reserves. In cases of shell-shock large reserves are ticked off in a short time. It also is possible for the intellectual center to be so stimulated by thought that the potentialities run out. Not through shock but through titivation reading to excess. Thinking without an objective. Following our interests. Playing with reason. In reading we respond with intellect to the thought presented and in responding the potentialities of being are checked off. He is passive and after a few years of reading is incapable of an original thought.
Art: those who pursue have as aim an object of beauty. But when the object is presented they must make an emotional response automatically. But if this continues response ceases, e.g. curators of museums. Those who make pursuit, sooner reach the point of having no more responses. They are then forced to repeat the formulation of what were once real responses, a psychopathological state. In this state they think they are now ready to enter a creative stage; that having exhausted the meaning and significance of the past they can produce. Cubism, futurism, etc. These are offspring of the aged, imaginary children Socrates begs a contemporary artist not to give birth to wind eggs. Greece is responsible for the deterioration of the intelligence, and Rome is responsible for the degradation of Organic Shame. Germany is responsible for the further subjectivity of the intellect in subordination to the emotional center. England has spread the propaganda for sport. How many times we hypnotize somebody into doing something against his own good by saying “oh, be a sport”. Why has this such influence? A phrase of black magic: “play the game” “cricket” that is effort without an object. The quantity of effort is always the same. Again we are considering the means. Intellect – titillation.
Art and the aesthetic impulse exists for the discipline and stating of beauty, which is the harmony of a being with its cause. The aesthetic sense gives a criterion of proper function. If used apart from its purpose, merely for pleasure it has psychological results, psychopathic.
Similarly ability to make effort for the development of Will. Effort apart from Will corresponds to titillation of Reason, pleasure of aesthetic etc. It is a substitution of the pleasure of the process for the satisfaction of achieving a goal.
We are wound up with potentialities to develop Will, Consciousness and Individuality. But power is mechanically ticked off and age of each r center depends upon existing circumstances. I we are merely passively responding, we remain untouched in Essence.
Is there any means of arousing our still unwound reserves? Of ceasing to be an agent? G. takes the example of a clock, which is wound for a certain period. But by changing its regulator we can change its period of unwinding. Loosened it runs faster; tightened it increases longevity. The regulator is in us, but we cannot change the winding.
But if we can control the regulator we can determine the period. We have to refuse to respond to external stimulus in a mechanical way. How? The method. S.O. automatically tightens the regulator on all three springs. Or if we can wind up we can control intellectual, emotional and physical longevity, he regulator is in us. We cannot change the winding. But why is a short life undesirable? Because it is hostile to the development of Objective Reason. No chance. Life too short. Anything that promotes the lengthening of the intellectual, emotional and physical life has this reason.
2) – There is a subordinate method. “Eransamkeep”. At present we have three centers wound up by the means described above; they have been ticked off to a certain degree; are partly unwound and exposed to the chance that one may be unwound at any moment and certainly passively. “Eransamkeep” – “I keep myself” Not giving oneself up to
the associations arising from the functions of one center only. Giving oneself up and being absorbed. “I was absorbed in my reading” or in watching a game. Often regarded as a highly desirable state, “one center only”. One should never become wholly absorbed: in processes of Reason; in love, beauty art, religion. Each of these is a necessary means toward an end but a total absorption has bad results.
3) – Associations of physical activity; craze for adventure, travel sport. “Eransamkeep”, avoiding absorption. If you are aware of your physical behaviour you cannot become absorbed. Always try to be doing two different things at the same time. I pursuing art, also reason; if reasoning, use your hands. One of the Pythagorean schools, arranged for the artist to be talked to and argued with and made to answer questions, while engaged in his work. I might have prevented him from doing good work; but in his purpose he did better. We can now see the traces of those ideas in his work.
If an American is travelling, he should think. If thinking you should also, do.
May 16, 1927
Our Objective inheritance is that we should know why we are born. To know this early in life and to be trained to carry out its functions. Natural objects fulfill this. Plants produce seeds, Frustrations delay but do not divert. There is great adaptability in the vegetable world in overcoming obstacles. So in three centered beings with three brains for Objective Conscience. But since birth, training tends to press down and conceal this germ. We are robbed of our birthright. Esau. No natural criterion. The difficulty is increased by the fact that we have no accurate knowledge as to origin or history of the planet, its geology or its races. We have speculations by scientists and geologists and ethnologists. Can anyone recall the preceding civilizations, their sequence, etc. and call himself their heir? There is only a rumor that civilizations have preceded ours. We do not even know their culture, art or philosophy; much less inherit these. There is no continuity of knowledge. As species also we have no direct contact with our origin. There are always rumors of the existence of beings who have charged themselves with continuity of knowledge, cosmic and planetary. A secret knowledge. These have regarded themselves as custodians of a Race. According to G. there has been since Atlantean times a chain of Initiates or masters who have claimed to have such knowledge. Orage says that for himself he has never met any such and so has no knowledge as whether there is any such continuity or as to whether such rumors are or are not true.
The Book:
The decline of Babylonian culture; a pan-scientific congress. A decision to adopt another means of transmission than by initiates because they had noticed that in the case of war, the best were the first sacrificed and among these were initiates. There was a club of The friends of the legomonism or the Friends of Traditional Culture (knowledge) (A word which looks like Moon. M.E.B.)
——- , Chaldean, Pythagoras. Devised method of transmitting Knowledge and Art. Wished to transmit to remote descendants, across periods of War, changes of civilization or possibly even planetary upheavals, planning for thousands of years. What material? Paper too perishable Certain works of _an into which consciousness had partly entered.: Music and Song,
religious and social ceremonies, architecture, Painting, religious and lay dance forms and movements, sculpture, drama. It was argued that wherever there was civilization these occurred. What we call Art is as natural to men as building nests to birds. These forms are indigenous and aboriginal to human beings as such. Pythagoras and the rest did not count these as anything unnatural. Another thing: a marked characteristic is conservatism and tradition. Pythagoras counted that any innovation introduced by them could be counted on to endure, e.g., religious forms, current. This “committee” proposed to introduce into art certain innovations to servo later as a reminder and perhaps a language. They rejected literature not only on account of the perish ability of paper but because literature is the most subjective of all the arts. It depends on languages which change and die. Ancient languages now? Also literature is a shape of shadows. Pythagoras wished to depend on things.
Babylon was the metropolitan’s city of the world; had museums etc. Found two types of work of which we should call Art
1)- subjective
2)- objective
Subjective works of Art are those which issue for self-expression. Common in modern art it claims that the artist merely needs to delight himself to find himself thereafter delighting others. This art is related to the subject or person or ago. This is inferior to objective art which is art devoted to an object, the transmission of a state or an idea from the artist to the beholder; a species of calculated influence; not in the sense of self-expression; but in the sense of self-conveying e.g. primitive form of begging letters, or for money or “third degree” in which it is proposed to exert upon others an influence. This is not confined to advantage for myself but for them. This is major art.
Minor art: soliloquy and money making.
Major art: effort of converging certain ideas for the benefit of the beholder e.g. The Bible, with its purpose to create a certain state of being in the reader. This not for the advantage of the writer. This “Committee” was in a position to choose the best examples of objective art. Pick best examples of natural art. Proposed to prostitute the greatest works of art of their day in order to write upon them their own doctrine. They did not intend to harm them but on the contrary to introduce a new element to make them more capable, of expressing along side of the works of art, certain ideas.
Difference between what we would consider a perfect work of art and a perfect work of art, when they got them in it.
We say: a perfect work completely satisfies our sense of harmony that is every part of our sensory, emotional and intellectual being is satisfied, a harmony of impressions.
From G.’s point of view, this ideal state of harmony is the last thing to be desired; it is not tranquility but merely a state of higher sleep. Because nothing aroused that is disharmony, “aesthetic contemplation” is a sublime sleep. Consciousness is in abeyance. But the object of this Committee was to make people remember and not forget. If without injury to a work of art, they could introduce something which would arouse a conscious question, which in turn might provoke a further curiosity in regard to the work of art itself. What is it which falls to satisfy and arouses curiosity. Something strange. Nobody says of Greek art: This is strange; what does it mean? It completely satisfies, he mind falls. It evokes no curiosity. But one looks at certain Egyptian frescoes with a feeling of something strange and wonderful which it means. We cannot despise the artist o of the work; it is clear he had the technique and was not inferior to the Greeks as a craftsmen. This strangeness in a work otherwise perfect is a device. It is aimed to disturb and not to please. But for this is required a work which otherwise would have pleased. Egyptian, Leonardo da Vinci, when examining ancient art had a question: why with such mastery obvious, did ancient artists make such and such juxtapositions. G. says that Leonardo came near to finding the answer. This third form of art the only kind to which G. gives the name of ART Summarize:
Subjective art aims to gratify the artist.
Objective art alms to satisfy the beholder.
Conscious art while stimulates the beholder to question consciousness which creates consciousness.
They allotted a day for e ach variety.
Sunday: Music and Song. We are three centered but we are not always thinking, feeling and sensing together. The ordinary work off a art happens to stimulate all three centers. We have no sense of any interior disharmony. He introduced a variety of rhythms calculated to induce in any average hearer, a variety of disharmonious responses e.g., intellect, say, sadness; in emotion, joy; in instinctive a funeral march. Simultaneously awaken grief, joy, associations of burial. On hearing such melody, impossible to give it a name; strange beauty, (as when e dog hears a piano and has its centers disharmoniously a aroused”) A hearer pulled in two or three directions would find himself uneasy. Instead of a higher state, one of unrest, yet not an unpleasant one because each of its components are beautiful. I these could be heard separately we would be pleased; but there are three separate rates of vibration. Only when there is a conflict with the three centers is there a chance of a reconciliation by a fourth. Art was used to induce in hearers the necessity of developing consciousness. We will reduce you by music to such a state that you will be forced to S.O. to free yourselves from this aesthetic misery.
Monday: Religion and social ceremonies. Consider the large number of religious ceremonies extant. What was their original purpose? For example the ringing of a bell at mass. Introduced in a ceremony which preceded Babylonian times, to break a ritual which might otherwise be soporific and then to arouse to question, why?
Lay ceremonies: coronation of kings, inauguration of presidents, masters of masons etc. Antedated Babylon but began to have new element introduced. Nudges to a sleeper. e.g., postures are often unnatural i.e., into which we would not naturally fall and which is difficult to maintain. Intended to make the question, why this, divergence from the natural. All ceremonies must include this element of the unnatural and not intended._
Tuesday: Architecture. Innovations in structure, in interior e.g. Cupola would naturally rest on four supports for the distribution of weight. Arranged to have cupola rest on three dissimilar pillars and that part of the weight of the cupola should be in itself. In St. Michel this is considered merely an oddity.
The Taj-Mahal is a classic existing example of conscious art. Competent students can read in its construction, the record made. Form and deviation from form a language.
Interior is a more subtle form of record, with different volumes of space. E.g. we can consider this room as a series of volumes of spaces two: one larger, one smaller and a third broken with beams. If these volumes were broken, we could have a series of symbols. But every interior has a different pressure of air (as in subway when passing under the river). The pressure of air in this room is different from that in a room differently shaped. It has different associations. If we know what associations with pressure of air, we could arrange pressures to produce certain desired associations. Different at the nave of a cathedral from that at the altar. Pythagoras et al proposed to use architecture as one would music and song to produce this disturbance and this query. These associations are not merely historic as we are inclined to think.
Wednesday. Painting. Latest examples of introduction of divergences in Persian of the 14th and 15 th, Cent. Again we have an agreeable disharmony, using contiguous colors in an unnatural way. After seeing one color the complementary color is formed on the retina of the eye; and this is a natural sequence for the eye. It gives pleasure for the eye to pass from one color to the complementary one through the spectrum. The Babylonians knowing the “expectation of the eye”, put next to one color an unexpected color, which required a conscious adjustment. It was pleasing but was disturbing.
Thursdays—Movements and Rhythms The rhythms were of two forms, religious and social. Varieties of dance of modern civilization. I:- Physical center— popular dances of the day.
2:- -dances of expression— Isadora Duncan
3:-Ceremony– rare in modern time
4:- Religious— Hopi Snake Dance– an invocation but of what? They have forgotten. But there is introduced an invocation of a higher center in the dancer himself. A movement if accurately done will produce a certain psychological state. Popular dances taken and variations introduced. Whoever practiced would experience. Evoke certain disturbing contrary states. We cannot find a name for the effect. These movements were not designed by G.
Friday: Sculpture
Representation of ordinary forms.
Modeling of imaginary objects: sphinx and Assyrian Bull Introduced variation in accordance with a theory now lost. According to this theory each body was constructed on the principal of Seven so that each feature is a multiple of seven in some other feature. The same is true of its details. If one feature were missing we could replace it from measurements of others. A Mathematical relation. The committee of Babylonians found this Canon of Seven taken for granted and employed no other. There were no oddities, Even a monstrosity was created according to law and not according to an idiosyncrasy of the artist.
Parallel between the foregoing and The Method
Usually works of art are stimuli to harmonious impressions and disharmonious associations in an impressions are new and memorable. First, it strikes one with surprise and then is never forgotten. Characteristic of impressions which reach the Essence Conscious works of art give new and memorable impressions to those who had experience. A designed experience the object of which is to make the life be beholden to the work of art. That is it would introduce a variation into his natural behaviour. This would tend to make him a conscious being and in proportion as he could make this sequential and objective would it exemplify a work of art. Faced with the fact of the Babylonian decline, a period of dark ages coming. How over this chaos should certain things be transmitted? How to transmit memory?
Parallel: you become to a certain degree conscious of certain ideas and certain values. Intuitions of objective consciousness of certain ideas and certain values. Intuition of objective conscience, reason, Why does It not remain? Why forget? Wars and civil wars. What are wars and civil wars in us? Emotional states of negative kind as a result of contact with others or of strife between centers. What we knew, passes from the mind and is practically impossible to recall without having recourse to the original stimulus. Oblivion of our state. Art is a constant re-stimulus. We need parallel means to these of music, architecture, etc., in our own conduct for the maintenance of certain states e.g., a man in training for a race. We have moments of consciousness and need technique to maintain a as memory, e.g. I have a body. This parallel will be made more clear in the discussion of drama.
May 23, 1927
Drama (end of first vol.)
Drama presupposes knowledge and control of the body.
Drama soul; I have a body. This proposes that the soul shall use the body. A three centered being is divided into parts:
Planetary body— three brains – three centers.
A divine mystery is associated with this conception.
The soul aspires to be the actor. There is a technique by which the soul can manipulate the body to express knowledge of and control over the instrument for living. This also presupposes a knowledge of types of people.
The number of types of planetary bodies is limited. It is there for not hopeless to expect to arrive at final conclusions, personal idiosyncrasy maybe subsumed under about 27 types. The actor never acts alone. It is necessary to recognize types. Also it presupposes that he has a conception of the role he is to play in order to function as a soul; that is he must be aware of his mission, he must know his reason for acting as he proposes to act, in cooperation with the whole cosmic plan.
Said that the ancient occult schools used the drama as exercises for behaviour in life. Putting plays onto the stage of life; today we just put plays on the stage.
The teachers had to know:
The nature of man; that he was three centered but that these centers almost never acted simultaneously from all three centers, varying in age of centers according to degree of experience. Each new stimulus evokes for each center a parallel response according to distribution of experiences already received. So we say, over intellectualized, over emotionalized. Now “over” is impossible. We mean “under” in other centers, “over intellectualized”, means “under emotionalized”. This makes impossible the perception of real drama; always melodramatic. Odd triangles, an “non-whole view” Teachers on guard against irregular responses and would train to bring about a harmonious response he can evoke discord and responses (see music, above) Types, the knowledge they were after is not occult and can be expressed mathematically relative to the three centers: or colloquially. Suppose you were asked to draw up an appropriate setting, speech, etc., for a miser. This would be inappropriate to Don Juan.
Miser, Falstaff, Don Juan, Hamlet, Micawber etc. Some novels specialize on us few types e.g. Dickens. Each of us falls into two in greater or less degree according to idiosyncrasies, a type. It is true that few of us manifest this clearly. In the occident especially the type is concealed. The divination of types beneath the idiosyncrasies is sociology. The method is practical. We often say. You have to do it, to get the feel of it. Pupils are expected to try things out to feel what it is like, become aware of manifestations. A being is one who experiences.
Experiences are physiological processes taking place when we are not aware. Changes of direction or division of streams in our blood vessels. These have psychic counterparts which we call our consciousness, while in process of experiencing.
Simultaneously the behaviour of the mechanism of tine manifestations. Manifestations are the means of communication.
Stage set: a being undergoing experiencing; manifestations the only form of communication. My subjective never becomes the spectator’s objective. We can see only my manifestations. He will understand just in the proportion in which I manifest sincerely.
Teachers wished to give control so the pupil would not just convey his experiencing but whatever he wanted to convey.
A technique of insincerity? Yes. This is a charge against a conscious actor. It is an assumption by the critic that spontaneity, a lack of ability to control a manifestation means greater sincerity. But being unaware of and unable to control manifestations 9/10 of his experiencings are beyond his perceptions and hence 9/10 of his manifestations. A fractional sincerity. A conscious actor aspires to be aware of all and to choose and arrange in reaction to the type with which he is dealing. In order to do so he must sometimes but very rarely act from one center at a time, i.e., presented as a purely intellectual problem. The tendency is for other centers to join and distort the action of the center engaged.
Actors had to learn to act in one center or they would be otherwise excluded from efficient participation in many situations. They must also learn to act simultaneously in all centers. St.Paul said, to be all things to all men. Technique of playing roles Mimicry is part of the play of children. Adults single out merely a few impulses likely to be sociologically valuable and leave others without development except in pathological channels). Guessing is the green blade of a power which if trained would develop into intuition with certainty. Children are discouraged from guessing or imagining or telling lies. Modern thought is suffering from a lack of scientific imagination Mimicry is a second neglected faculty. It is preservative of the elasticity of the planetary body. If trained it would give control and make dramatic school and mysteries unnecessary.
Method:
Pupil appeared on the stage and a play was improvised. G. says that certain of the earliest plays of the Greeks were thus and some – testimony in Plato; for he reports on improvises plays. There must be critical audience.
Pupil on stage, not thinking of plot but self interrogating as to inner state. What impulse do I feel? To shout? To go home? To write? To speak to a policeman? “I’d like to tell the cop what I think of him” Catch one of these odd little thoughts as they pass through the mind. In the wings, pupils are nervously waiting wondering what role he will be called on to play. “Hey, policeman, don’t you see those two bums fighting?” Other pupil enters he must play the role of the cop How will he behave? In order to qualify every pupil went about observing types and technique. Relation between this school and life. Older pupils had to play rarer roles. Origin of introduction in earlier plays of gods. Not intended to represent gods but men in states of ecstasy (ex-stasis) Echoes of blank verse, poetry, spoken in ecstasy. The Iliad was perhaps dictated and repeated verbally long before it was written down. In these roles the actor had to produce actual manifestations. In this sense, a dramatic school is a training for a universal life. Pythagoras committee introduced variations. What has just been describes is natural and could develop anywhere. The troubadours would improvise on demand.
Pythagorean variations.
Enneagram, a nine sided figure with seven main points and three sides of a triangle.
The body under the law of seven; the psyche under the law of three.
The “I” experiences in three; the body manifests in seven. But in the octave of seven, there are two semi-tones, necessity of an external shock. To make the mechanical law of seven correspondent to the conscious law of three requires a psychological jolt at the proper moment. Counterpoint between experiencing and manifestation. The dotted triangle in the enneagram.
Miser not conscious of his experiencings or manifestations. The intention of the schools to control experiencings in order to control manifestations. If we could control experience and act through the semitone to give manifestations a different turn could indicate conscious action.
First: actors had to pass a test of playing roles. Then he was allowed to take part in the second form: i.e. mysteries. Difference between these mysteries and play in general. Introduction in the mystery of the semi-tone in the octave. Pythagorean were scientific mystery creators. E.g., policeman on some critical occasion when manifestation was expected would act differently indicating that only policeman by role but not bound to be a policeman. Could introduce an original act, not determined by the role nor natural. In mystery is the extraordinary.
Begin by inducing in the spectators an anticipation; but then the actor became himself and illustrated what the conscious soul would do under these circumstances. The spectator might be challenged at any moment. Concentration and self – interrogation. It could not be said that the actor broke down; he had proved he could play the role perfectly. The spectator was provoked to say Why? The question led to the anticipation of something concealed of value to the spectator.
Third Form: Life. Here the pupil was expected to take any situation and play with unconscious actors but so that he could be understood.
The Christian Mystery was rehearsed first in occult schools. Then rehearsed by the Essenes. Then it was played historically, to affect thought, feeling and conduct through many generations. It is possible the Christian mystery was the final outcome of these Babylonian schools. It is logical whether there is historical continuity or not.
See “Fragments of Faith Forgotten” and see how Jesus trained his pupils to dance, play roles etc. Judas may be said to have had to play a most difficult role, certain to be misunderstood; and like the villain on the stage to be hissed by a naive audience. Playing roles assumes a knowledge of our manifestations, not critic ally but instructionally (sociological improvement is a negligible object for the soul) If you try to play up merely to improve for social praise, it is little; but if this is regarded divinely, you learn what you are and how to use it. First class of dramatic school.
Second class, types. Review pictorially people I have met. I will find they fall into two groups; then study these types in action.
Third stage; begins in pantomime.
Fourth: Intervene in role, either for personal development or to convey something important to the spectator. A significant act. The Life of Christ not the life of Jesus. Before and after Jesus. Divine mission consciously Christ.
Orage has seen G. play roles which few would condescend to, deceiving even his intimates.
What is left of the Pythagorean concept of the drama? Contrast ancient drama with the modern theater. The modern has two purposes
a) – amusement
b) – propaganda or education (Ibsen, Shaw , Galsworthy)
Not as mystery, which is impossible because it requires conscious actors. Our actors imitate not from within but from without. They merely produce an illusion in the spectator, whereas the ancient actor had illusion and also elasticity.
c) – the spectator is never challenged; he is merely stimulated to recall previously recorded experience. Pictorial associations are provoked “sympathizing with himself”. The drama today is not an experience but a re-experience— titillation. It is not an influx of new material but a stimulus which sets old material in motion. It is evocative and not representative. Procreate but not create.
Its effect is the intensification of the mechanicality of both actor and spectator.
The ship was now nearing the planet where B. was going on a mission. His hoofs moving on the surface of the deck evoked a phosphorescence thus indicating they were nearing a planet. Coming within the magnetic center of the planet began to make preparations to land.
End First Volume.
Later volumes will deal with matter on this and on other planets.
May 30, 1927
Here is a parallel with the Bible in that it opens with cosmology and cosmogony, an account of the world and why. It proceeds through a series of semi-historical episodes interwoven with myths into which eventually come clear the major and minor prophets. The reader is expected to become aware of duty to God. Compare with Ashia — After the Objective Conscience is awakened comes the New Testament, which is The Method, taught by individuals. Objective reason after Objective Conscience, proceeds by instructions assuming the method. It culminates by the elevation of the personal nature by the most diligent of disciplines.
Thus the Bible may be considered as a drama, an objective work of art. G.’s Book is perhaps a bible for the future. At any rate 0. thinks G. had some such purpose in mind.
Ships: Methods of communication within the individual, how to go to places and find forgotten things. We are also a megalocosmos with unknown parts spatially distant – time and distance. Cosmology is a concrete psychology.
Old Testament – actualities.
New Testament – potentialities.
G.’s book has text, music and exercises. It is a complete method.
First Phase; self Observation, Participation, Experiment
Second Phase: Voluntary Suffering
Third Phase: Conscious Labor.
The thesis of the Book is that we as human beings suffer and labor. This is obligatory although at times so distributed that some seem to escape; but the total tax is the same, two thousand million people annually yield this tax.
The purpose of religious reformers is to show how this tax of suffering in addition to being paid can be turned to use. There is no idea that it can be lifted (Stories at times of task masters who have taken too large a share) But a personal advantage may be derived.
From Voluntary Suffering may come Consciousness
from Conscious Labor Will
From S.O., Partic. and Exp. Individuality
Buddha’s disciples within one generation fell into error of thinking that they could surprise consciousness in other than normal circumstance. This resulted in Tibet.
Chapter on Apes. An ape is a caricature of a three centered being. An experiment to see whether man can be made to behave normally.
Visit to Egypt. A scientific theocracy. Distribution of temples, school etc. according to human patterns organs with physiologic and psychic functions Whole of Country.lt is possible to go to a spot and say Here was a temple, a school and excavate.
Fifth Descent.
An epic event. Which events in the planet stand out for me personally? Real or Imaginary. Effect on 0. when at age of fifteen he read Plato’s account of the death of Socrates, was profuse weeping. We do not know where we are. We may be lying asleep on an island the Sun Absolute. Space and Time are psychological. Experience may be second hand Intuition and divine meaning of dreams. This is historical unimportant. What is important is its effect on us Objective a subjective fact.
Hamalinadir – no personal key.
We are speculative in regard to the nature of the world, our function etc.
Our Reason.
Objective Reason.
Divine Reason.
Hamalinadir still thought that 2×2 was 4
Ashia study of human nature finds diving, forces of faith, Hope
and Love degenerated through association with purely mechanical meanings. Also no use reasoning. Appeal to Objective Conscience and memories of childhood. Platonic Doctrine of recollection, anamnesis. Already know but must be reminded, hence Socrates interrogates and does not state. Dialectic developed in this. The result of the work of Ashia was a planetary culture. At preset Babel, laboring for
a cosmopolitan culture, a belief that by introducing enough different languages and culture and values, we will find a value. Ruling classes not in agreement; not working toward the same aim. If so the effect on institutions revolutionary. Under the regime of a world state, the planet would be organized for functions.
Ireland: psychic, lines of force, magnetism.
India: philosophy
Reaction of Lentrohamox constantly happening to us. Realization becomes merely verbal, e.g. have realization of chapter on Time? Reaction. Greeks responsible for technical degeneration. The day after you read the chapter on Time, take up Alexander and engage in dialectics. Technical post mortem on a dead realization Greek dialectics.
The Romans are responsible for technical degeneration of Objective Conscience. The memory of Objective Conscience in Roman Law. Greek dialectics the degeneration of human reason, Roman Law for the degeneration of Objective Reason.
Later physiological inventions. Greeks and Romans at least corrupted on a higher plane. Later on lower.
The German spirit which has nothing to do with racial or geographical Germany. Prototypes of psychological characteristics of German type that degeneration takes the form of something physiological.
How many people whom you know have understanding. It is of two types: logical understanding based on fact and rational understanding as applied to the problem of ourselves. Why alive? What values? Understanding is neither intellect nor intuition but equally positive. Positive– father- the Intellect.
Passive, — mother— the intuition.
Neutral— the child understanding.
The creation of the neutral quality is the object of this work. Psychological systems based on: Norms and Averages.
The usual psychology is the sum of facts provided by current behavior.
Contemporary psychology measures by the average of contemporary manifestations at any one period.
Man exists for a purpose not his own; this includes all beings. The norm of man is the discharge of the design for which he was created; like a machine made to do a certain work. He was created normal.
Owing to certain circumstances this planet has developed as an abnormal machine, which no longer fulfills its design. Hence life exists on this planet by sufferance (grace).
A by-product of the fulfillment of a normal aim would have been complete happiness for us. We are no longer capable of the happiness which accompanies the fulfillment of a design. We suffer in consequence.
Defines what is considered to be a normal human being (see Bhagavad-Gita-“how does he walk?”)
Ponder the formulation of a norm. We cannot begin to develop none psychopathically except on the basis of a norm. Abnormality: self-pride, vanity, touchiness, egoism, etc.
Third Statement
There was once on the planet a race of normal men and women. Then what happened? A planetary catastrophe.
The nature of this planet is now inimical to the development of a normal man.
Renan in 1865 slid in his “Philosophic dialogues” “Nature is hostile to the development of man and desires man’s imperfections.” G.’s theory is, that this is true but not totally irremediable, though the chances area million to one with the handicap of education and the present attitude of society. This chance is strengthened by two things l)- the wish of the creator that his machines should function normally, hence messengers have been sent to point out the abnormalities and
2)- the continued existence in all, except Hasnesmusses of Conscience an inward unrest at our abnormality. In a Hasnemus, the germ of a conscience is dead; he is beyond shame. There is a striving for perfection, which is practically impossible to attain. All messengers agree on:
– the terror of the situation
– this to be overcome; degeneracy, dependence on others and absorption in current ideals; social values instead of personal. We substitute aims instead of making a good job of whatever we are doing. This for ourselves. Man exists for perfection.
The Method is Observation of self and contrast with the norm as defined by union of conscience with intellect, (intuition). The norm becomes a framework into which observation is fitted. This reveals the degree to which we are normal or abnormal; what is in contrast to what ought to be.
Here begins 0.’s review of The Book, trying to formulate ideas implied in the allegory.
Preface
There is a certain grammar of association in every mind, in two forms:
a) – association of words.
b) – association of forms. Reasoning, verbally and by ideas.
c) – Nine-tenths of what we call thought is a mechanical association of words. Say “agony” to a superficial writer and he will say “anguish”, “sweat”, “dark night of the soul” etc, as readily as a parrot.
d)- The association of form is dependent on personal experiences still an association but different from mere words.
It is the form which peasants often think; or those whom we call “understanding”. It has strict reference to experience, a grammar with people in whom the experiences exist; avenues to a language not in words (gesture, voice etc.) a strict grammar. Attempt to use language of understanding.
Man is (Norm) a being (a machine that feels) designed to encounter, to create and to overcome difficulties. Contrast this with view of man who believes that man exists for happiness, Peace, etc.
May create difficulties in field of his own choice; but make aims which require effort to attain.
Overcoming counts; Results are the test. No sentimentality, no attitude of the cricket player “well missed, old top”.
Read Milton and see he was a fighting machine and spared himself no blame for his failures. No crown for the splendid failure.
See essay by J. F. Froude on Reynard the Fox. Practical effectiveness in overcoming.
We have respect for the person who encounters great difficulties even though he did not wish to. (If he is crumpled, we pity; if he survives merely, we cannot help according him our respect. Or who voluntarily creates difficulties: i.e., who undertakes jobs which require effort (stretching himself) to achieve.
3)- Never do as others do(advice given by his Grandmother) become responsible for the way chosen and its results. That is: do things in your own way.
4) – Man is in essence, a passion for attaining a reasonable understanding of the meaning and aim of existence. It is the value of value. You may not suspect this of yourself, saying you are an humble person. Take off the onion a few more skins: all ennui’s, criticisms from dissatisfaction.
October 17, 1927
Oct.17th. 27
Ponder the sentences of last time, drawing on memory, reading association to use as pegs. Whether you accept or not does not matter. l) – Grammar in mind always operative; two kinds: a) verbal, b) forms
ideas or mental energies, b. Those who have understanding. This can be cultivated by pondering, which is an effort to think of abstract subjects (metaphysics, cosmology). There are many ideas in this book we are incapable of understanding. We assume or the contrary that if the truth is stated clearly we can understand it, but we must develop understanding, not only by direct pondering but by handling present situations practically. Relation of time to needs; money and expend it.
Normal human being, designed to encounter, create and overcome difficulties.
A psychic being consists of its appetites.
When we speak of psychology, we speak of the kind of desire which animates it. Essence is the kind of desire.
In case of human being the desire to encounter and overcome difficulties. A fighting edge for the universe. We are completely happy only when thus engaged. When diverging from this norm we are abnormal. This explains the accumulated hatred in this book for artists, scientists, poets in general. Practical men. These substitute for normal aims viz. encountering and overcoming difficulties some temporal form such as pursuit of beauty, acquiring of riches, material conquest of the planet. And as the artist influence other men the Book regards him as an evil influence. He tends to withdraw men’s interests and energy from man’s normal aim hence hostile to the great scheme.
Hasnamusses
In the essence of man in his normal state is a hunger and thirst A Biblical hunger and thirst for Objective Reason (meaning and aim of existence). Man is executively equipped to meet difficulties, emotionally, passionate for knowledge. Man is a sword bent into a scythe of interrogation.
4) – Never do as others do. Do things in your own way. If we consider we are forbidden to imitate others, we will concentrate on the situation and ask what we can do uniquely in this situation. Ponder so that the theory may be definitely our own or else be also definitely rejected.
Try and set down in your own words, the idea of life entertained by any one of your friends or by yourself.
The man on a desert island has to settle such problems himself. What is your idea of the world? Is the world merely chance? Is there design? Is there any conscious purpose? Any aim or object? The current view is that there is no aim that protoplasm formed accidentally etc. lf life were accidental were conditions of life also accidental? Materialistic hypothesis. Or any —other current point of view? Such as that God is omnipotent and all loving. The world being designed for us entirely, not us for God. Done out of benevolence and gratuitous. At no time does he need help and presides over the universe with no other idea than that his children should be happy.
That we have no obligation and no responsibility, no duty except to each other. At the same time man was commissioned with power over the inferior species; and the sacrifice of millions of the lower creatures authorized etc. All this is a replica of the attitude of the ordinary, selfish, overindulged child towards its parents. Not old enough (not in years) to realize that nothing comes to them which did not cost some body, or Nature, something. This is a wide spread attitude and is the Christian doctrine.
Cosmological View. Implicit in each person is the key to his behaviour (chief feature)
Chap. 1 is the first adumbration of this view.
That the world that is knowable, the Objective Universe, is a work of conscious creation; that it is consciously maintained and for a conscious purpose. It is like a machine created for a conscious purpose. Of drawing from the machine something which the creator of it wished. This is not merely for our delight, nor for fun but in pursuit of an aim entertained by himself. The onus of the reason is on God. The point of view may be criticized as anthropomorphic. It is also theomorphic. If it makes God in the image of man it also makes man in the image of God. Animals do not make machines; man has reason to understand the meaning of machines; and is possibly in a position to understand the meaning of a machine, vaster than any he could himself make.
Though designed to have a passion for understanding and power to develope it man has departed from the norm. Man is in a state of hypnosis. His normal understanding has been converted into abnormal. He has only glimpses, shadows of his real passion to understand and to overcome.
We cannot while the fumes of the drug remain pull ourselves together and reason. We want to be reasonable and cannot. We have a haunting conscience that we are not acting reasonably. The parable of The prodigal Son, in a far country (psyche) feeding swine and aware of it yet cannot remember his father’s country, problems to bring ourselves to realize what we know and how to waken ourselves.
There are no magical means which would not destroy the possibility of a normal awakening.
The only sure means is a dally attempt to ponder the meaning of life
and by an attempt to deal with the situation not only without complaining but spiritedly. Hera we have a taste of normal activity.
The physicists conception of the nature of energy. Solar energy is not in exhaustible. Bertrand Russell. Dissipation of energy: inhaling and exhaling breath of Brahma in the Indian tale. The solar system runs down. Not the point of view of this Book. Section devoted to the creation of a perpetual motion machine, brought into existence in Time but once made it runs. Its characteristic is that it had a beginning but no end. Though each part is subject to decay, it must be replaced. The Objective Universe is a perpetual motion machine. At one time it was brought into existence and arranged that the parts should be replaced. For this work of watching the machine and replacing the part there is great need of attention; and with an expanding universe there is need for the superintendence of the mechanism. This quite simply is G.’s cosmology: A conscious being created a perpetual motion machine, always within his power but needing constant attention (growing family of worlds) and so he prepared three-centered helpers of God. Society of Helpers, instead of being slaves, which we are in any case. But to be conscious helpers means co working and understanding.
Is there any response to that suggest ion? It may be one of negative emotion to the sense of our painful realization of our inadequacy. Realize our plight—Terror of the Situation. And yet we are within easy reach of sanity, only a thin veil of illusion separates us. We are “poverty-stricken millionaires”. Starving and no way to food by ordinary reason; and yet we have potentialities. Those who have tried to draw put of themselves with sentences are sometimes surprised at their potentialities. Think highly of this output in comparison with complete ignorance; but little in comparison with potentialities.
Everything and Nothing, a double emotion in everything real, Passion to understand aims and meaning. Fitting himself executively to overcome difficulties, and to cooperate voluntarily. His freedom is service is a paradox in all reality.
Threefold classification everywhere
I: – Sun Absolute, (will talk later about what it means) representing Reason.
II: – Any sun
III: – Any planet
Three orders of matter associated with intelligence, emotion, instinct God is conceived of as a Being whose intellectual body consists of the Sun Absolute; his emotional body of all suns; his planetary body of the planets.
The design for the three-centered beings on the planet is that they should develop; and with the pursuit of understanding etc, the other two bodies will develop. The normal life of the astral body is a passion for understanding; of the intellectual body the power to understand. By pursuing this normal development we gratify the need and create the body. There is no other way of developing normally. The pursuit of any minor aim will have the result of distorting the growth, understanding etc,
Here occurs a section entitled “Being aware of genuine Duty”
Not arbitrarily imposed. We, already, so to speak, incarnate this Duty, as the structure of a machine carries embodied in it its purpose and functions. Structure is purpose manifested. It is not a question of discovering a duty in us, not congenial to our mechanisms. Organic Duty i.e. Duty of acting according to our mechanism, organism. Distinguish the normal organism and present an abnormal state. Start by asking what you think is wrong with the human race; and try to formulate what you regard as the characteristics of a normal human being. Use imagination on one side and criticism on the other. To discover in ourselves divergences from the normal and stimulation in attempting to become normal.
Use pencil and paper and being western trained write it out. For increase in articulateness and formulation of what you understand. Pass back and forth between S.O. and thought.
Question your personal problems. Do you feel like risking having your feelings scratched? Reason is a material substance. By living constantly and actively reasoning chance making use of when inhaled, enhanced, insight, imagination, etc.
Atmosphere where monks have contemplated. Appetite for reason best exemplified in questions. Man’s reason is questioning, while his emotion is desiring.
In understanding people who are unsympathetic is a question of associations. All my words are related to my associations, he same words in the vocabulary are related to different associations. Associations much the same, words are different. Experiment with different words. Interrogative attitude; intelligent trying (sympathy is chemically determined and outside of understanding. You can hate and understand)
We are always engaged in avoiding difficulties, trying to reach a point where effort will cease. “Man is a boat, rowing in one direction and looking in another”. Freud’s discovery that whatever the explicit aim, we are really heading towards extinction.
How much do I desire this cessation? How far do I diverge from the norm?
Is there a Third Grammar?
Association of Words
Forms
Logic
Forms are manifestations of Logic. e.g.: Physicist says dissipation (i.e. in time, the unique subjective) and merging.
A creating physicist must meet the logical necessity of circumventing this process. Had no wish that it should be one form or another No forms in his mind. Merely the abstract logical use and logical possible solution
Thinking in Forms: Man is a three-brained creature. N0t the example but the idea on which built, e.g. book on botany. Plant is an ascending spiral but at certain points by line the tree is a combination of all – spirals in the vegetable kingdom.
Why the variety of forms? Why a mechanism of spirals thus formed? Still interrogating what. Answers in Objective Reason as to why Forms: Plato: the idea of a chair “the quality of a chair”, an abstraction in the concrete. This is what is meant man is in essence, a passion to understand and will to overcome. Why? Because designed to be an active cooperator Saurat. We have a wish. The wish is already an entity; you have harbored a being. It may be of the ephemerides for if not gratified it soon may die. Or if little higher, it may live as long as its energy permits. If your nature is rich, you may find desires which will last all your life. Further, you may have desires which will outlive your body. In Saurats point of view, our immortality depends on our having desires which outlast the body. This might be a passion for understanding which outlives the planetary body.
October 24, 1927
Oct. 24th.
Accidental association of words: Man who got emotional over- “vengeance is mine” “because his father who was a minister had used it in anger. Association of ideas, when trying to acquire any different technique At first we fumble; then “I’ve got the hang of it”. I understand I’ onto it.(стр.191 оригинала) Similarly get onto the idea that the universe was created and we, for a purpose of producing certain forces.
Curiosity in regard to
How: practical
What: scientific
Why: philosophical
What are they in their essences, these sentences? What is G. saying There is a verbal and a formal understanding of Death.
Try to reformulate; the effort of doing this will result in formulations crystallizing almost automatically.
The progress from one form of understanding to another, is not by extension
G. classifies scientists into real and pseudo. The real seeker want to know “what” only in order to answer question “why”
Technique for developing;
Verbal association is developed by words.
Formal association is developed by association with wiser people. Certain persons who have associations with peasants, Arabians, etc. return with developed understanding.
Logical understanding is developed only by conscious preoccupations with questions of what is the meaning and aim of existence.
Every individual has as his genuine duty the development of Objective Reason. Done by inquiry and preparing himself to inquire. Thus like an oyster, he developes his pearl.
Conscious labor is labor for consciousness
Effort is psychological effort
Positive S.O. etc.
Voluntary suffering in increasing the effort expended. Effort is painful Conscious Labor : Questioning as to why
According to G.’s psychology there are only two fundamental emotions Love of being and fear of Nonbeing.
All negative emotions can be traced to fear of none being. They threaten to contract our being. All that expands our being etc expanding our ego life, love we expand our being. Is hate and fear, we contract it.
The Book of Dzyan, a Sanskrit fragment in its opening stanzas asks these questions. Madam Blavatsky’s “secret Doctrine” is a commentary on these.
All beings are classified according to their reason. Each is a step on a ladder.
The reason of a being is the coordinated sum of his normal functions and is higher only because the elements entering into it are more complex. Since the majority of human functions are abnormal his reason is also abnormal.
Man by definition is superior to the animals, but in fact, his reason is abnormal.
Abnormality of man is summed up. The absence of fear of Non-being. A rabbit threatened with death runs; man does not run. What cosmology?
October 31, 1927
Oct. 31st. 27
Pondering for example, the phrase “creative imagination” What was intend to be meant by It by the person who coined it and to us Imagination is imagery. Can I image something which I have not seen? Which is not composed of objects I have seen? In a void? No. How does fancy differ? I, is less precise. In greater artists, we have imagination; in lesser, fancy.
What distinguishes? What gives a difference of value which we naturally assign. Come back to the word “creative” Is it fancy vs creation? Where is creation? Perhaps creative is an exaggerated word; perhaps “directed”, recollecting and recombining images. I, can be thus used for fancy is undirected. Directed imagination but must be more than in it. What did Coleridge mean by it? Perhaps the phrase is related to creator?
What effect has the faculty on a artist or thinker? Did it create something in him?
What does imagination create? In the reader an elevation of mood, tea a higher plane, a climb. But perhaps this is only a feeling. What is the evidence that I am not fooling myself? What evidence that I have climbed? I see a wider expanse and less detail.
Make imaginative exercises. Survey the Population of this planet as an exercise in directed Imagination. It produces an elevation of spirit with inability to consider details.
Normal vs average. We have never seen the normal; only average and,- abnormal. We are sub-ordinary. We must progress from abnormal through ordinary to normal ordinary. Byron was lacking in human sensibility, which makes possible the genius of his verse. But we think super ordinary. Birth. Development of “I” The birth of the body is natural. In the development of the body we can find only the pattern but stages are identical.
S.O., I, Experimentation. Youth of “I”. Voluntary Suffering. Conscious labor. The result a fully grown “I” and there for its normal life would begin. The soul has reached its responsibility and enters on its functions.
November 7, 1927
11/7 27
External phase. Classify according to type. Modern psychologists are explorers without a map. This psychology offers a map to the travel leer. There has been given to this planet a particular attention because it is abnormal, a mote in the eye of the universe.
The moon was spilt off on account of an “accident”. Perhaps to develop a certain kind of soul. Reading is a modern substitute for opinion with the same effects only on cerebral center instead of emotional Sakaki kept the passengers on a doomed ship playing poker. Just as the Enflish govt keeps the unpaid classes distracted with cinemas, races and gambling.
Kundebuffa is vestigial. The pineal gland is a vestigial eye. The appendix though still with some functions is vestigial. Customs and habits are continued by sociological causes.
Consequence: Do not people Judge by what they have for theory and hear say and not by what they know. Practically anybody can be persuaded that reading about imaginary people is a form of experience.
We also are apt to believe that experience is communicable that we can be taught by it, or that we wish rest and peace; or that to be rich is a happier state than to be poor; that people are inferior or superior accordin to their station in life or for their possession or charm or education or gifts. Such as a gift for writing, comparable to a wart or a prehensile thumb.
That national greatness is a condition of individual happiness
That amusements amuse
That distinguished company is brilliant
That inspiration can take the place of work
That other people’s praise is satisfactory or that their disapproval is debilitating. Praise acts as a sedative and disapproval provokes sharp practice and a provocative attitude.
That books, music and pictures are stimulating, a pathetic assumption that we are receiving passive impressions. That leisure without previous work is agreeable. That it is possible to do nothing.
That fame has a real value or the possession of power or success. Continue this list.
These are due to a general property of Kundebuffa. We are unable to ponder because pondering might disturb our self-calm which is a “Q” peace of mind without understanding the meaning of life. Egoism Is the substitution for right and wrong of “I like ” and “I don’t like”
“I like or do not like”
“It is good or bad”
“It is right or wrong”
Tastes are of the instinctive center
Emotional center; it is good
Intellectual center: it is right or wrong for the effect intended.
The words “I like” and “I do not like” should be left to children. Means by which the influence of the properties of Kundebuffa act: Suggestibility is sociological, born in our biological structure. Of all the impressions received we note those indicated by suggestic “Blood-stream” the continuum of biology, Suggestibility the mechanism of our psychology.
We shall never understand anything without personal effort conscious labor which is labor to understand. We do not acquire understanding by experience.
Most obligations are fulfilled because of punishments and regards.
Essentially there is no difference between man and woman. Perhaps man meets his problems with an intellectual emphasis and woman with emotional. But differentiation of sex does not arise until embryo: has passed this note in the third month of gestation Vine and the tendril. Tendril sent out by the vine to reconnoiter Sociological origin of a split personality for a child says “Billy did so and so” We teach him to use I bringing about his own identification with his planetary body. We must attain the right to use the word “I” We must be able to objectify the body consider it as a possession. .
“The kingdom of Heaven is within you and if ye know yourselves ye shall find it “. This saying was attributed to Jesus I a parchment discovered about forty years ago.
Also “Know yourselves and we shall be snare that ye are the sons of the father” date about 350 A.D.
Pondering always refers to the question ratiocination to what.
Why am I alive? Start by eliminating all the familiar answers. Find all useless. No answer is left except the craving for an answer he body can only dream “Who shall deliver me from the body of this death”? Can only escape from dreams by disidentifying. Then “I” can wake up though the body continues to sleep.
All undirected thought wastes the organism, wastes time, wastes energy (the daily ration)
In the intervals when not thinking of anything, think of something. If not pondering on these matters, think of practical problems. The material for pondering is the forms of experience. Pondering requires thinking in forms.
All verbal communications are really impossible, or at least relative. We communicate by a recognition of a similarity of experience. All experience is ineffable; but we try to formulate certain forms of thought “at which we throw words”. But the formulation is not the form. There are many possible formulations for each form.
The wish of wishes in man is the wish to understand, but this wish is broken up into a variety of wishes; a bush instead of a trunk. The variation accomplishes nothing but the fundamental wish remains.
Myths: Osiris was cut in pieces and scattered over the planet. It was the work of Isis (wisdom) to reintegrate, make whole Then Man is Man.
Section on Time.
Time is a process that cannot be sensed, felt or understood. Only phenomenal can be known but Time is the Unique Subjective never subject to be known.
I am an ability to experience; but this ability to experience is determined by the organism.
The potentials of my personal experience are conditioned by the winding of my three centers, or brains.
At the present time our three brains act according to chance.
The result is that experience teaches us nothing since the order in which such experiences occur depends on chance and not on logic or reason.
Illustration: a motor car that is run properly is subject to wear and tear; but if improperly run the rate of wear and tear is not determined by its original structure. The incidents of life are not graded in the order in which we can derive real understanding. With the development of essence, experiences would begin to flow in the right order. Coincidences begin to occur more frequently as essence develops. As if providence—————– a coincidence of octaves.
Our planetary body exists for two purposes
1) – a transforming of energies between sun, earth and moon. Like tides, To provide a soil in which a soul can develop.
At present only the cosmos in a physical sense makes use of the planetary body. In this sense, we are agents for the supply of food to the moon.
Exercises. Thought varies in weight and rapidity; emotions in intensity body in muscular stress. Try and catch a though and approximate its weight. Compare the intensity of emotions. And muscular motions in ten sic
Act as if “I” exists and it will. Say “I have a body” and you will have one. A man is responsible for all his acts except in death pains. Sleep, food etc. should be scheduled for organic needs. The body has many needs for which it has no wants.
Satisfaction of wants destroys us; satisfaction of needs builds us up. Cf. Wagner’s prose works.
There is a margin between need and want e.g. sleep.
November 28, 1927
11, 28, 27
Review of cosmogony
Planets are beings and have reactions as between people. Their forms are not round but varied. When revolving they appear to spectra as spheres. They communicate by emanations, (influence without matter). Radiations — influence with matter. E.g. two planets meet and
mingle radiations; but see one at a distance————–
from associations without power going out(catalysis)But abnormal relations between earth and moon.
A being’s Reason is the sum of his normal functions. If any are missing or abnormal, the total reason is abnormal. Basis of depreciate craze for food , sleep or any other f unction Earth and moon, sick , shivery, prematurely delivered.
Certain vibrations are needed. Askokine—effort.
Two kinds of effort
Involuntary as determined by external circumstances.
Voluntary. The first does no one any god; the second supplies will, development and energy, How make sane beings supply this Askokin they go to war and are otherwise insane. Kundebuffa Humans ceased to be able to reason from their experience. They became suggestible to slogans etc. 99% of our consciousness is in a trance subject to words.
Love all that breathes. Now there is no active pondering on this planet(perhaps a few score people)
Why do we not dare. Disagreeable consequence. It may lead us to do something which will involve discomfort. K-B is an obscuring of the faculty of pondering
Egoism is measuring other people not by their needs but by ones own preferences, our likes and dislikes.
We would despise a doctor if he gave medicine according to his likes and dislikes. Yet we praise this in ourselves. “Sincerity” is an engine for being unjust to everybody; both those we love and those we hate.
Self- Love preferring ourselves and those with whom we are associated to all others including those who are superior.
Vanity
Pride. Ignorant presumption that the qualities of the organism are due to merit., Hand over the organism to a behaviorist, calipash and calipee. Gifts and defects are due to biology and sociology.
If I pride myself upon is gifts, ignorant impertinence; similarly if I apologize. We are most of us left in an uncomfortable state of pride and some of shame in others leading to effort at self-improvement. Glorification for the organism from each of these.
Our understanding is developed only by voluntary effort and conscious labor. You know how much of each you have made. Add them up and the sum is your understanding. To the degree that you observe yourself and make psychological energy, you are entitled to understanding. All to act for the production of body and soul and all other understanding is a only verbal or formal To God K-B is peace without understanding”
Feeding K-B. The Book-reading if done consciously
petting and punishment the usual ways of provoking Justice: bribery and terrorism.
Time the Unique Subjective; the ability to experience. Subjective and Objective dreams. Each time is personal, the abil to experience. Why God became so concerned at seeing his time running short. He began S.O. he became aware of himself, of his body. When we become aware of the body we objectify it. The objectification of the body of God is this universe. Time had to support i.e. feed it, like us, But do we not eat before we Observe ourselves. Then we are eating to die. We eat, give out radiations and emanations; and when our organism is worn out, we die.
Every being has its own time.
Time is the I of I’s
Struggle to make time instead of to pass it.
Two uses of the planetary body
a) – cosmic transforming machine
b) – to make a soul. S.O. V. S. and C. Labor
The Arch- Absurd.
Beelzebub shakes his head over the plight of beings on this planet.
The Sun contains neither heat nor light. If certain substances were taken out of our atmosphere we would have neither heat nor light. Electricity in the atmosphere “feels remorse” or aspirations to equal in intensity the emanations from the Sun. When successful the result is light. When unsuccessful, heat E.g. when presented with an idea such as this book, make an effort to understand it. If successful intellectual light. If unsuccessful, emotional heat. Brain of ice, cool of foot, heart of fire.
None of the heat from the heart should escape into the instinctive center.
Okidanoch, the substance of life Scientists may make life, when they understand the neutralizing or third force of electricity. Okidanoch can be used mechanically or organically.
The continued use of electric machinery will bring a diminution of the ability to think objectively and feel normally. “Potential” is the neutralizing force.
Every being tends to become more and more particularized in its three fold ness. Key thrown out to what is known as evolution.
December 5, 1927
12/15 27
0. reads from B. Russell’s “A Free man’s worship”. B. R. is the Humalinadar of modern Europe. Another extract— Russell’s dream of happiness (cooperation instead of competition). He diagnoses to psychic causes in man which prevent cooperation. Describing consequences of the properties of the organ K-B
Contrast modern psychology and philosophy’s point of view with that of G.
make a list of ten questions which puzzle you
Second descent
Planets mutually dependent on each other’s emanations and that these emanate proceed principally from the organic kingdom on each the organic kingdom is like a thin coat of varnish on the surface of a football. A skin.
As a ray of light falls on a substance, one color being radiated and the other rays absorbed by the substance. We absorb
“On each of the planets, Nature provides conditions for souls necessary for the Creator” The Body with all its organs exists for one product which is Seed. We are reproductive, organic machines. The biologic value is our ability to reproduce. But at the same time G. says that that is to end.
In addition to reproducing, there must be producing in addition to procreation which is biologic there must be creation which is psychologic. Instead of prolonging the species through a succession of time, the prolonging of the individual and the abolition of time.
Nature provides conditions for both and is indifferent; but the creator’s motive is to produce the souls.
“On all the planets beings are graded according to their Reason” Reason is the sum of normal functions. And there is a natural relation between beings and different Reasons Relations as in physics. Standards too reasons are impartial. If beings of different reasons meet, the lower would not dispute the superiority. A man really normal would not be harmed by a normal beast. Abnormal conditions of society result in natural conditions being changed. A respected being demanded by inferior beings. Respect which to be real would be natural and inevitable men become famous because of oddities, defects etc.
The reasonable or rounded man does not attract attention; the oddity does.
Third Descent
“The whole universe exist as to its physical body for the sake of the Sun Absolute. The Sun Absolute is the Universe
The body exists that “I” may understand. The best use to which the cells of the body and the body could be put and which would give them the most satisfaction is to increase Understanding of “l” who is their God.
Analogy. Sun Absolute is soul body of God Sons.
“What is called essence (G, B, Shaw, Life Force) on certain planets.
In certain beings coats itself as a cosmic unit. In which the divine reason may exist individually in time after this.
It aspires to be come a constituent cell of his brain, a cell in the highest brain of God.
“The substance of essence is called Prana (Sometimes said to be blood and nervous system Life of the planetary body is blood. Astral body is prana.
If crystallized in any one, thereafter one must improve it ln Divine Reason or reincarnate perpetually. Current occult groups say we all reincarnate and have already done so in time. According to theosophy not in recurrence According to G. This is untrue. Reincarnation is the exception occurring only when individuality has begun. When once Prana has begun to crystallize. Then no escape; must go on while seed is gestated “Blessed is he who has a soul; blessed is he who has none; but unhappy is he who has the conception of one”
Few in relation to the rest; essence thrown into the melting pot from which new beings emerge but never the same essence. Peer Gynt and the Button Molder. Many of us have an essence, not yet crystallized and therefore not yet recognizable.
In proper conditions K-B however developed from birth gradually atrophies “What are the proper conditions? Buddha’s eightfold path of right thinking etc. When K-B is atrophied normal development begins. The souls may develop rapidly Akhaldan– seeker after the meaning and aim of existence, a pondered, members grade according to their intensity of desire. They affirm nothing they are only seekers. The bell tent and the central pole.
Aim and meaning of existence may be an impossible aim but that aim must be the tent pole.
Pursuit of this aim is religion
“Men used to live between twelve and fifteen hundred years” 0. has no idea how this is to be taken. No evidence of any literal truth, perhaps to be taken in the sense or activity in three centers. Centers run down, period of learning is over but is a creature capable of learning which has ceased to learn. May be said to be no longer a man.
The reason that certain parts of the planet become centers of intensive population and other parts become war areas is that Nature demands for those parts of the planet, vibrations only provided by congested population or by death.
Q. – “What is it to be ordinary”? A workman-like attitude to any job. If one has an extra ordinary gift, this does not mean that one must cease to exercise it but must not be with an extraordinary psychology attached to it Must regard this extraordinary gift from an ordinary point of view; not attaching too much value to what is a product of biology.
Ordinary, sub-ordinary, extra ordinary.
To become normal we must first become ordinary, in psychology. Sub ordinary and extra ordinary are identified with the lack or presence of some special gift “Ordinary” does not refer to the organism but to the psychological attitude to it. Must be none identified.
Method cannot be proven theoretically. Psyche is always active
psyche is always active and demonstratively, never passive and logical.
Potentials are only experience able but never logically demonstrable. Stretch your mind with exercises, efforts of real imagining in reality, Such as exercise of imagining total population on the planet etc. or in place of the planet on the solar system in relation to Hercules in the “Milky Way, to other Milky ways.
December 12, 1927
Fifth Descent.
A shia– . Reforms can be scaled. Which plane is it on? Speculate as to how you would begin to change the human species .
A shia– began by distrusting all his beliefs due to sociology.
He made himself capable of intellection without image content, i.e. capable of impartiality.
He concluded that the species was too far gone in subjectivity for any appeal to Love, Hope and Faith..
He settled on Objective Conscience, representative of God in the Essence, not dead but dormant. It could be brought into consciousness. Then man would have an infallible guide as to the nature of his duty man understands and cooperates into the scheme of thing fend passes from the category of a Slave into that of a Son. He taught the Method of S.O., etc.
Five points of Objective Morality
1:- Satisfaction of the Planetary Body. Satisfaction here has no connection with gratification; but means the satisfaction of Needs. There is an obligation to keep the planetary body in trim, in lean health, without excess or deficiency, without its complaining and making it answer to ones needs. The range of life is conditioned by
the Planetary Body; and it must be regarded as an instrument.
2:- To Improve ones being. What is the meaning of being? I cannot be defined in terms of the intelligence, or of ability or of the state of the Planetary Body. It is not what we Know or can Do; but what we are Ponder the meaning of the word. Have you any fear of being alone? The state of being is the only thing which grows or declines. Most things are determined by the Planetary Body and in this sense; the behaviorist is right as to 99% of life. Whether I become facile in languages in art or in earning money is due to chance. Individual growth consists in the growth of Being, Essence, not personality.
Personal attempt to say: what sort of being am I? Am I chicken-livered or do I feel some sort of dignity, apart from my external stupidity? There is only one method of improvement of being “By Effort”, Being Effort. This phrase may have many meanings if regarded by the intellect; but personally one knows what effort has been made. By Voluntary Effort, the being grows; and fails from the reverse. Review the day for Voluntary Effort. There is a feeling of strength from having performed this exercise. Life is a gymnasium. St.Paul always running in the great race.
G. says ” always in a state of puff, not excess but always a little ahead of inclination. Will feel more strong. Self consciousness passes, disappears and gives confidence. Attainment of strength. G. uses “spiritual” in the sense of “spirited”, a spiritual horse or dog.
3:-To aim always to know more and more of the world, and of its laws and of its creation and maintenance. The aim of philosophy is the understanding of life. This is not a privilege of a few but a normal function of the human being. It does not require that we give the right answer; but the dignity of man consists of his concern with the question. That he ask of the existing conditions and of his life. What is the meaning of it? One should always be curiously questioning experience. In every situation there is material for questioning. With on a faculty one is inquiring while with the other faculties one is behaving ordinarily. There is no need to be aloof or idiosyncratic.
Understanding is of the intellectual center.
An effort to ponder the meaning and aim of existence, automatically stretches all the faculties of the mind, memory, attention, imagination, concentration, etc., become enlarged, not by direct but by indirect exercise. While pondering may be seem to have no result . After a half hour there may be not a word to say. Worse than that there may be merely an increased realization of ignorance. Socrates said wisdom is realization.
G. says; the more you realize you don’t know, the more you know, as you will find.
Exercise by assembling all you know about beings on this planet; with every breath one is born and with every breath one dies “breathing this planet” (refer back to #2.)
Strength– Effort usually on two object a: – over body, b: – over feeling. It work until painful and then ‘do a little more, a little more than you feel you can do. This is the effort. When a little more painful , then stop.
Voluntarily create conditions in which you pass to your second wind #2 . Emotionally. When you feel you can’t contain yourself any long then contain yourself a little longer. That is wait a little longer before your manifestations become expressed. Look for your occasions within the bounds of common sense, e.g. difficulty in formulating questions. Difficulty in asking questions in the group. How much stronger are you than three years ago when you started attending these groups. Overcoming silly little fears.
Absence of will to make effort because of the failure to realize the necessity for it.
4:- To pay one’s debt in order to be free to serve.(duty) Wordsworth Ode to Duty. Recognition of performance and justice, generally speaking we are all of us parasites. Not one of us has discharged his debt to nature. To be alive is a unique miracle. The cost to nature, the preparation of planetary conditions and long period of civilizations. Instrumentalities. In return, the majority of us do nothing but childishly enjoy. In the family of Nature, we are self-indulgent children. Recognition of services rendered. Emerson says “Earn your Living”. May earn it by gratuitous effort if you have a thousand dollars, spend it intelligently. How dare you squander the efforts of others?
“What I cannot think is how Nature can let you live” Duty
5:- Helping others to self-individuality: service. Discriminate between gratifying the weaknesses of others in order to obtain their good opinion of ourselves and helping them to become what they really want: independent, self conscious, healthy, strong, understanding, capable of performing Duty.
Usually we merely cater to Kundebuffa.
0n the other hand we dare not be hard on others because this involver the obligation to be doubly hard on ourselves.
The only service we can render human beings is a service that will help them discharge their functions as human beings.
“Reason” is defined as the sum of normal functions. Which are to you these functions?
A normal human being has five activities or functions:
1:- health
2:- strength, (quality or force of being)
3:- Inquiring for the sake of understanding
4:- paying the cost of one’s living
5:-serice to others.
Relatively to these same values (not a question of being Christiania disposed. Not a virtue. Question of being a Man or a Woman)
Any one of these can be isolated and made an idol of, booming offensive.
These five compounded make a normal human being.
“Man is a passion, etc. He has these five processes and behind them a passion which is integral.”
Ponder the word “passion”. It is an intensification of “craze” and is lifelong and enduring.
“Holy” is wholly. A holy (wholly) passion
Every person is holy to the degree of his passion.
Question raised of recurrence and reincarnation. The aim of the tree is to produce seed. There is a difference between a seed and the leaf.
In the autumn, leaves fall; but they do not fall until they have returned to the tree trunk their sap. A certain amount of life is confided to a tree. The leaves breathe. When the season for breathing is ended, life is withdrawn from the leaf. The leaf falls, wasted. Next year there is another leaf. Leaves recur. There is no individual persistence. Life coats itself in a new leaf. But the drooping of a seed is very different. The leaf surrenders 1 its life back. But in the case of see the life passes into it. It can go anywhere and the life of the tree goes with it. To the tree, a seed is a dead loss, and yet it is what the tree exists for.
The leaf is not a dead loss.
In the Norse mythology, on the tree of life Ygdrasil, occasionally seeds appear. Gods and men. They incarnate. Having crystallized prana into seeds in themselves. We are recurrent leaves with the possibility of becoming recurrent seeds.
December 27, 1927
12/ 27 1927
Have been reading current psychology in the Atlantic Monthly, the article “The paradox of Humanism”. First serious statement after considering behaviorism; the first swallow after winter. The psyche objects to living in a fool’s paradise. Our duty to anticipate the inevitable pessimism, the breakdown of modern science, religion, ethics. Many people still imagine they have some free will. The theories in G.’s book are at present premature and useless like recommending a doctor to man who thinks himself in good health. But it is desirable that there should be a nucleus of people with certain positive ideas.
Pessimism which will reach the finest minds. Not all will escape as easily as B. Russell, who is “terribly at ease in hell” Emotionally, a child.
Prelude to chapter on Purgatory.
Last week we discussed Objective Morality. But there was presupposed the ability to distinguish between “I” and the organism, and to real; that the organism is a mechanical organ of heredity and social history and with such behaviour corresponding to that history and over which we have no control.
We cannot affect behaviour in respect either to emotion, thoughts or conduct. When one has realized this the rules of Objective Morality become obligatory.
When you realize that you cannot do, then realize that you must do. Thereafter do not act from inclination or wish but from Will. Will is “activity without wish”.
As “I” awake for a second, begins to be aware of its organism it begins to grow. That “I” is the soul.
In the present chapter, we will pass from Objective Morality back to behaviorism again, in a more detailed way than is attempted by contemporary science.
Ashia—lists seven factors which make the organism what it is.
Not a simple reason, but a number of contributing factors, divided into seven groups.
1) Heredity in general, which is the determinability of experience ability it is not one’s immediate parentage but the whole family, and behind the family the race.
Five main races, each with a peculiar psyche, history, experiences Behind the race a biological history, animal, vegetable, mineral. We can distinguish certain characteristics. The body is the result of complicated biologic history back to the appearance of organic life on this planet. At the moment of conception we start as a unicellular being. This moment includes factors of physical and psychical state of parents, including their recent history; also the geographical position, condition of air, soil, magnetic force etc. What determine? It is too complex for us to attempt to analyze this. Our life is not determined by secondary causes which we take to be primary, such as health etc., but our experience ability, which is determined by these factors just given, A machine with a series of windings. If these are favorable the experience ability is both long and rich. If fewer nothing can prolong this. If holds the same relation to our life as our dreams. We cannot control either their length or their kind.
3)-Planetary emanations, operative on us, through our mother during period of gestation. This sounds nonsensical. We know of the effect of the moon on the tides. There are subtle tides in us. It is here stated that we are affected by the planets associated with our sun. Again, this is impossible for us to have any knowledge.
4) Being-manifestations of the parents during the time that the children are arriving at adolescence. By “manifestations” is meant whatever the parents do from “essence”, genuinely. This is rare. An act of complete sincerity has an enormous effect on a child upon its character. One reason that children grow up without character is not because the parents do not have it but because they conceal it in their behaviour.
5) Nature of being existence of people with whom children are brought, into contact Modern civilization brings about all kinds of artificial behaviour, unnatural food, clothing, sleep, posture. We usually exercise one center at a time, belonging to a sedentary type, unnatural, or active type, we breathe unnaturally, artificially. We have spared ourselves fatigue and have not been compelled to take long breaths as a manual laborer does. We find thought almost spared us by reading newspapers and books. While real teaching is replaced by a mechanical exercise of memory.
Food, air, thought, children have not the advantage of copying the behaviour of normal beings; but are made artificial. This is why children brought up on a farm sometimes outstrip city children.
6) Thought waves of those of the same blood. We are not in a position even to discuss this.
7) The exertion to understand, which children up to the age of adolescence have been encouraged to make. The presumption is that they have curiosity. Our habit is to gratify this at once, thus sparing it its own effort to gratify. An appetite would exert itself but fuel heaped on a fire outs it out. Curiosity is so valuable a manifestation of life that its gratification should be delayed. The teacher instead of being anxious to teach should just encourage curiosity. G. says in the East there are no teachers there are only learners… Will carry them throughout. Life is vitally curious.
Life from adolescence has been simply unrolling an objective film corresponding to that which had been would up in us. Like a cinema our life to adolescence. This film was wound unconsciously. After adolescence it begins to unwind in the objective form or experiences we meet e.g. you choose a professions. Your fate is not determined by what you will do in it; but what you will do in it is already determined by these preceding factors. We are not living now; we are watching unfold that of which we are the unconscious victim. Our little spool. As it unwinds, we, as we say, live. This is behaviorism with a vengeance;
This says G. is why the behaviorists do not yet begin to realize
to what extent they are determined. Not actually living.
It is true accidents occur. The wound up spool may be dropped.
May have a premature unwinding three spools, one by accident unwound quickly. The result being that the individual cannot again experience in the field of that spool .E.g. Terrible experiences which to turn the hair white in a few hours or days. Shell-shock.
This may be by accident or by the unwise initiation of others.
The latter is one of the perils of civilization, as opposed to accident, about what is an “accident” it is useless to speculate; but about the other disaster it is possible to speculate.
What is it aside from “accident” which causes a premature unwinding?
Ans. Suggestion. e.g. Each of us has a fixed capacity for thought.
Suppose we act not from native wish but from invitation of others.
We find ourselves reading a great deal, attending learned lectures.
This passive titillation exhausts our potentiality without our having actively thought.
Similarly with emotions.
By association with pathological artists “devotees”, read “victims” of love of beauty find their emotions not genuine. To pursue an esthetic career not actively but appreciatively is a short cut to a loss of taste and power.
Similarly in the physical world. Sport. A premature aging of the heart from exercise not taken because one felt the need for it but because pseudo reasons of rivalry, publicity etc. If one spool is gone, the possibility in this life of a normal development is gone.
One specific against a premature running down of our spool is “eramsam keep” i.e., never to abandon oneself to the activities of one center only. Never to become specialist; never to aim at greatness intellectual, emotional or physical; but at a balance between the three cost what it may in sociological values.
Society is always creating monsters; because it is difficult to res the inducements society offers.
L. da Vinci was one of the greatest of Europeans because he refused to become a specialist although promised much money. He would throw up his contract when he felt himself becoming unbalanced. A working rule for everybody; and nothing esoteric about this. Modern schools take this into account but when the pupil leaves school he is expected to specialize.
Another method. Attempting to become self-conscious. Among the byproducts is this that it is impossible to become specialized. On may excel but cannot become identified with his pursuit. The difference between identification and non-identification is not one of efficiency; but of putting or not putting one’s life into it. This is a specific against a specialization which is real pathological. The fate that otherwise lies in wait for victims of society.
This brings us back to the definition of the final goal. We said at the outset that man is a passion for the understanding of life. This is the master, magnetic current. But we are negatively polarized.
The positive magnetic pole is the cerebral. The negative is the instinctive.
When the current is rightly passing, all functions begin to fall into proper place. But when, as in us, the current is passing from the spinal to the cerebral, and then things go wrong. We are abnormal and are crucified like Peter with head downward.
What is the positive Magnetic Current? The psychological being is a passion for understanding. Those who have had it increasingly find their functions increasingly normal. First psychologically the physiologically.
But the prime requisite is the presence of that active passion for understanding. Why? Because man was created for the purpose of soul. And a soul is defined as a being capable of Objective of producing.
Reason that is of understanding the meaning and aim of existence. To the degree to which we are suggestible in regard to Objective Reason. Reason admonitions of ideas in this Book may cooperate in developing us. This completes the circle, of the ideas in this Book from the preface.
The last effort of Ashia to introduce normal standards.
The key to the analysis of modern conditions which follows and which at first blush seems too drastically pessimistic. 0. has given us the logical order of the Book but leaves it for us to formulate it during his absence. Bearing on ethics, science what are its values? Pandering is a species of digestion of ideas. 0. recalls a new year’s Vow of two years ago: something that people wanted to do; something they really wished to do. One man to complete a book that had been rotting on the stocks; another to complete a mural etc. 0. invites us to make a vow, with the year ending at end of February and to carry it out at whatever cost to inclination and to human values and influences.
A vow is made to the Sun. An inclination is to the Moon, converting energy. To achieve something nursed and hitherto not weaned. A hair shirt or goad to the ability to make decisions.
A rehearsal of what would happen when the passion for understanding grips you. Vows are exercises. A taste of what being committed to something by a voluntary act really is. It must depend on oneself and not require cooperation from others. A vow must be personally accomplishable. To achieve something nursed but hitherto not weaned. We must not shift responsibility on others. A vow is our own. If undertaken and we fail, we forfeit any claim to consideration of our “promise”. It is an impertinence to promise, then. We believe we are “people of our word” accidentally; but let it be difficult! Because we have no free will and until we realize this, until we have buried our false idea of free will, we cannot have it. Why a as a group do we make so little progress? Because as individuals we contribute so little energy. Everyone knows it is easier to think when in certain groups than when in others. If all make a vow and all keep it there will be increased understanding. A collective atmosphere sometimes when 0. is reading his notes he is able to formulate things he has not been able to formulate before. Objective Reason is thousands of planets off; but there is only one means. A Vow is a being-effort consciously made. Negative emotions cost us years of our life, our real life. They are a drag on intellectual and instinctive energy. Emotional energy is the spendthrift of a three centered being.
A vow gives a psychological model, a working model in psychical experience of the passion of the whole being.
End of 1927. 0. goes to Fontainebleau.
March 19, 1928
March 19th. 28
Look up Swift’s Tale of a Tub. A straightforward narrative, with plausibility’s maintained an allegorical history of schisms in the Christian Church. Swift is England’s greatest prose writer, the greatest man who wrote English. This is allegorical like Beelzebub’s tales. But in G.’s narrative the story is not always fictitious. Some parts are historical and contemporary observation, as we may see in later chapters. We must have the ability to read parabolically the thought between the lines; but over the lines Needs self- training. The sixth and last time on the Planet, where he stayed fifty years. During that time three messengers, saints, appeared Jesus, Mohammed, Llama. Why does he say that all three appeared during this short time?
Each of the three left a doctrine but all three doctrines became so transformed that their authors would not recognize them. His followers first split into sects. Then they introduced doctrines which had nothing to do with the original doctrine and were often contradictory. We see from our own personal experience that idea even when clearly stated is, due to our psyche, certain to be differently interpreted, split up and changed. This has always happened and will continue to happen so long as our psyche remains as it is. Thus it is impossible for truths to be generally spread.
Followers also imported certain ideas from the doctrine of St. Moses, ideas promulgated under different conditions and times in each individual there is also a proper time for the reception of truth. If these ideas are met by a person not in the stage of effort to pass from mi to sol he may run down the scale. A certain running down may be necessary before he can become active. But the idea must be kept clear.
Shortly after the death of Christ there was a counter revolution read of old Judaism which filtered into Christianity. Instead of the relation of an Old and a New Testament the old mixed with the new.
Also the doctrine of Babylonian dualism, with Paradise and hell introduced by savants and used by the Fathers of the Church to bolster up their power. The doctrine of Heaven and hell occupied but little place in Christ’s teaching but a large place in Christianity. Influence of theology on us.
Only a small brotherhood of Essenes still know how to apply the principles of Christ to their own lives and strictly for the purpose of escaping from the properties of the organ Kundebuffa. Religion on this planet a special invention to get freedom from K-B. Not so on Normal planets. With us it is passed on by sociology and prevents the attainment of Objective Reason. We none of us grow our planetary bodies. We take its growth for granted. Why do the other two bodies not grow in the same way?
We are subjected from birth to sociological influences, resulting from the properties of the organ K-B. If this suggestion could be lifted, emotional and mental bodies would begin to develop. Religion thus is not a permanent regimen but is a cure for a specific situation. This is why Jesus is often called The Great Healer. The Essenes persevered and some actually succeeded in throwing off the influences of K-B and thereafter developed normally. Beelzebub thinks that Christianity will not continue there much longer.
B. gets etherogram from the Governor on Mars (the same young country man who once tried to inaugurate a reform on Atlantis) Recent etherogram speaks of opening a Jewish University in Jerusalem.
Previous struggles of Christian countries to make Jerusalem Christian. Many killed. But now by common consent a Jewish University is formed. A University is a furnace in which everything acquired by previous generations is burned up. So that all that is left is a fire on which to cook, the knowledge of the previous fifty years into soup. Destroy the old and prepare the new. On the spot where Jesus body was buried will soon be all the equipment of mechanical society. With the discovery of the altar will go the possibility of certain worship within.
Mohammed, hope of reconciliation but with it many such details as doctrine of Paradise. This faith also split, Sunnites and Shiites. The hostility between these sects was encouraged to prevent a political union. This is the doctrine of all imperialist states such as England and will be that of the U.S. in the future. Divide your enemies. Method by which India was conquered.
St. La ma
Thibetanism not a form of Buddhism but the religion of St. Lama who lived. For some time his discipline lasted. It is little known to us but was a cradle of religions like Christianity and Mohammedan. Its purpose was that of all religions: to free oneself from the properties of the organ K-B. This spread less widely because of geography; but entered intimately into the lives of those there especially a small group. Many of this group attained deliverance and others were on the way; but it was destroyed by war and the fulfillment of St.Lama’s aim delayed. Naive account of India’s history, Younghusband’s sounds much more realistic with its account of policies etc. But perhaps the truth is here. Only he who can penetrate to the Motive can brush aside the rationalization. In this case the greed of England’s governing classes. Heights of Tibet. Perhaps when elevated places (science etc.) are attacked by wrong motives (greed) the results are as here.
All of intellectual mysticism may be an attempt to take by violence heights which cannot be taken by these means.
(Sermon on The Mount) a heightened state of consciousness also Jesus talked in “an upper room”.
The Tibetans were sad because they saw their own school in danger. The deliberated. Analogy between possible bringing to bear of pressure against these groups; threats which have been made against The Institute. Because of dislike.
Method of defense might be dropped rocks on troops in defiles. This was decided against because all beings have an objective value to their creator; that is they exist for a certain use. Our destruction of other beings is a destruction of other values. I it does not increase our objective value it incurs a debt. Troops advanced further. One man sent down to the villages to see that there was no opposition from the villagers. Accidentally killed, he had heard of schools; his loss great. Troops arrived at Lhasa, without opposition to find the government had left. What happened was not important then after the death of the leader the doctrine became corrupted as in all other religions.
Hassein asks how did social organizations come to be on the earth? Family, Clan, Anarchy. Various methods: hereditary (essence) elective (educational) heredity and essence are the continuity of values throughout the life of the individual. Elective means the intermittency of values.
G. not interested in the history of social organization as such; but the analogy with what is important to us, that are relations between essence and personality etc. Cf. Plato:”the state is the individual writ large” It is a manifestation in social organization of individual organization of the majority composing it. The odd individual’s a may be very uncomfortable in it. They become pacifists, anarchists etc. reformers of all types.
The discord between essence and personality “what is in his essence is not in his manifestations” speech etc. and vice versa; a discrepancy between his real wishes and his conduct.
What we call the Last Supper and sacrament of the participation in the blood and flesh of Jesus Christ is explained hypothetically. In order to maintain a contact between the dead teacher and his succeeding pupils, there is something talismanic.
Before his crucifixion Christ shed blood, saturated a cloth and put in a vessel– The Holy Grail. By contact with this his surviving disciples in a certain state of consciousness established communication.
It was often claimed that he was seen by certain after his death. St. Lama had made no preparation. He was killed by accident, a fatal accident and his pupils had no way of referring to the original source.
Story of Judas: When it became known that Jesus was to be arrested though he had power to abstract himself, he refused to use force. In order to give time to Jesus and the other apostles to prepare the sacrament and give instructions and learn how to accomplish it after the crucifixion, Judas undertook to gain time and entered into an intrigue with the Romans and promised to arrange for them to take Jesus quietly. He gained perhaps 24 or 48 hours with the knowledge of Jesus. From this narrative Judas emerges as the most conscious of the disciples and the one who rendered the greatest service.
