Archive for the ‘JOSEPH AZIZE PAGE’ Category
MRS ADIE: from a GROUP MEETING OF MARCH 1983
This question and answer, simple, but I think all the more valuable for that, comes from a group meeting of 3 March 1983. The first question to Mrs Adie came from Mitt.
“Mrs Adie, I’ve mentioned before an attitude, particularly at work, of wanting to belong, sort of seeking approval, and wanting to be the centre of activity. And I realised today that I’d been taking this matter too lightly. I’d been brushing it as just an attitude I have. And I believe that I am in fact jealous, and that it is very negative, and it is a serious thing.”
“So what is your approach to that?”
“It’s something I was pondering upon, and at first I couldn’t see any way out. It seemed to be my state when I was at work. But this evening I felt strongly a reminder to remember myself.”
“At what point was that?”
“This evening, when I arrived here. And the moment that I came to myself, I saw for the first time, that this wasn’t really me, this state. It was just another ‘I’, and that gave me a lot of hope as to the importance of self-remembering. It was …”
“Yes, but the difficulty is you get caught, and you go to sleep. Can you tie it down to particular situations where this comes upon you? That kind of thing could be part of your line of work. Everybody has it, to a greater or lesser degree, in their personality. I am sure everyone would agree, unless they’ve not seen it.”
After a pause, Helen continued: “Now the thing is how to approach that? How to use that as material for your work?”
“It is connected with particular people, and there are definite times when I know the pull, that the attraction of the crowd is strongest. When I think of that now, I remember those times.”
“You can’t expect it to stop immediately. It’s been doing this for 20 to 30 years. But you can have an attitude towards it if it’s strong in your mind, if you really care about it, and you think of that as material.”
“There are hundreds of similar things one can think of, but that is something very specific, and that can be material for your work. If you can, choose a person or a time or a situation, where you try just to be present to yourself. You don’t try to change anything directly, externally. You don’t decide to act in this way or that way. Nothing at all will come from that. But you try to be. It’s very difficult of course, but if you can, as specifically as you can, plan at a certain moment that you will be present to yourself when you meet that person. And you let the impressions come in, whatever takes place, you don’t deliberately try and alter something; but you cannot act in the same way if you are present to yourself.”
“Of course you can’t maintain it: that is a difficulty. But with exercise, with practice, doing it more often, I don’t fall in the same way. And the point is, if it is material, that is something specific. It’s a manifestation of sleep, it is considering, which, apart from the fact that it is all based on imagination … and dreams … also takes my energy.”
“I have to be satisfied to be as I am, because falling into this imagination doesn’t really change anything at all.”
“You feel your own inner strength”, Helen continued, allowing these last two words a certain weight. “You can feel something strong in you. Try it that way, anyway. Of course, it has to be maintained for a little while, otherwise I’m asleep and it all comes out as usual. It’s a question of practice: the more I do it, the more I can do. The more I try to maintain it, the more I can maintain it, and the more likely I am to be awakened by the thing itself. I feel the taste of this thing appearing. I really realise it now.”
“And it’s very fortunate to see something like that. People often have not the slightest idea. You can describe that, if you like, as one of your weaknesses – it’s a weakness that nearly everyone has – one of your obstacles, something which you can definitely use as material. It will come and go: one minute you’ll believe in it again, but then with practice it loses its power.”
“So try to be practical about that. Do you think that clarifies it?”
Perhaps Mitt signalled a silent assent. After a space Mrs Adie asked: “Does it actually make you behave in a different matter, or does it occupy your dreams alone?”
“It mostly affects my dreaming. One of the main examples of it is when I hear a conversation and I can’t resist going in.”
“Yes, you’ve mentioned that before. Well, in that case you could just not join in. Sometimes I can just go against it in that way. But you must know why you that at the time. You must be present to yourself.”
“That is what is meant by going against the denying part. This is mentioned in Beelzebub quite often. It was in the last reading.”
I find the exchange interesting not only for Mrs Adie simplicity which contains everything one needs, but for the simple observation that there are certain manifestations which one can just stop. Too often, perhaps, we forget that we don’t have to be childish. We may not be able to do in the full sense of the word, but we can do something.
[You might also be interested in two other Helen Adie related posts:
HELEN ADIE: A SORT OF SENSATION STOLEN FROM EMOTIONAL CENTRE
and
HELEN ADIE ON FEELING http://gurdjieffbooks.wordpress.com/2008/12/07/helen-adie-on-feeling/ ]
29 October 2012
JOSEPH AZIZE has published in ancient history, law and Gurdjieff studies. His first book The Phoenician Solar Theology treated ancient Phoenician religion as possessing a spiritual depth comparative with Neoplatonism, to which it contributed through Iamblichos. The second book, “Gilgamesh and the World of Assyria”, was jointly edited with Noel Weeks. It includes his article arguing that the Carthaginians did not practice child sacrifice.
The third book, ‘George Mountford Adie: A Gurdjieff Pupil in Australia’ represents his attempt to present his teacher (a direct pupil of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky) to an international audience.The fourth book, edited and written with Peter El Khouri and Ed Finnane, is a new edition of Britts Civil Precedents. He recommends it to anyone planning to bring proceedings in an Australian court of law.
“Maronites” is pp.279-282 of “The Encyclopedia of Religion in Australia” published by Cambridge University Press and edited by James Jupp.
“Maronites” is pp.279-282 of “The Encyclopedia of Religion in Australia” published by Cambridge University Press and edited by James Jupp.
Joseph Azize: on Elton John and Leon Russell’s ‘I Should Have Sent Roses’
I Should Have Sent Roses
Sublime, poignant, elegiac: the first words to spring to mind when I think of this melody from the album The Union, by Elton John and Leon Russell. In Gurdjieff influenced terms, I would say that the person who wrote this had to be in a heightened state of emotional self-consciousness. He had to be present to the workings of his feeling centre to allow this lyrical and sensitive melody to emerge without constricting it. Some melodies owe more to moving centre, others owe more to emotional or intellectual centre, and some, such as this, are products of the higher emotional centre. But you can tell straight away that this was written from somewhere essential. (For an explanation of the centres, see Sophia Wellbeloved, Gurdjieff: The Key Concepts, 133-5; and for “essence”, see 71-3.)
Leon Russell, who has produced some of the most lyrical melodies of the last fifty years (e.g. “This Masquerade” and “Superstar”), reaches new heights with this masterpiece. I would place it almost on a par with the melody of Lennon’s “Jealous Guy”. And yet Leon Russell did not create it: no one but God can create. However, it is to Leon Russell’s credit that he could arrange the melody which arose from somewhere within his “common presence”. What happens in such work, and how we can recognize the operation are matters I shall address on another occasion.
While my response is, and must be subjective, I feel that the melody perfectly matches the lyrics by Bernie Taupin, which tell the story of a lost love from the point of view of the man who has lost. The boy knows that the girl has gone, and that he bears responsibility. When he was with her, he took her for granted. Ambivalently, he goes on to say both that he would treat her better now, and that she deserves someone more thoughtful. He addresses her with understanding and self-deprecation:
Are you standing outside?
Looking up at the sky, cursing a wandering star?
Well, if I were you, I’d throw rocks at the moon
And I’d say, “Damn you wherever you are!”
This is so apt that it’s almost humorous. A “wandering star” because, perhaps, he did not fit into his place in the order of things. Throwing stones at the moon, maybe because the moon is for lovers and lunatics: she being the lover and he the lunatic.
I don’t know where to start,
This cage round my heart locked up what I meant to say,
What I felt all along the way,
Just wondering how come I couldn’t take your breath away.
At various times we all feel something like this expression of mixed confidence, self-doubt and exasperation – at the same time that he believes she should have been overwhelmed by him, he confesses that he is confounded that she was not. Like Russell, we often feel that we have long wished to express something but that we could not, just could not, because of a sort of emotional tightness. It is as if we would choke were we to try and say it.
‘Cause I never sent roses. I never did enough.
I didn’t know how to love you, though I loved you so much.
And I should have sent roses when you crossed my mind,
For no other reason than the fact you were mine.
This is strange but true: we often feel that we love but do not know how to put that love into action. And of course, there are two errors: to think that an overt action is always needed, and to forget that actions are often needed. It is only people who are thinking philosophically who imagine that no action is needed. If you have read In Search of the Miraculous, it is fatal to take the idea that we “cannot do” in a formatory way to mean that we cannot therefore do anything at all.
Looking back on my life,
If fate should decide to let me do it all over again,
I’d build no more walls.
I’d stay true and recall the fragrance of you on the wind
This is the paradox which Ouspensky paints in unforgettable terms in The Strange Life of Ivan Osokin. We make a mistake, we forget ourselves and our higher aims. Then we believe that if we had the opportunity again we would not fall into the same trap. But should the occasion arise again, we would make exactly the same error: we would forget at exactly the same place. And yet, there is a way to escape from the curse, and that is to remember oneself, hence the importance of Gurdjieff’s ideas and method to religions and religious systems.
The reference to fate is especially interesting to me, because it is a topic which is exercising me at the moment. Fate acts only upon essence, and this song, as I have said, is an essence-song. It is only when we are closer to essence that we can start to have any sense at all of what our destiny or fate is: that is, what it is that we are called to above and beyond the vicissitudes of life. If there is a “law of accident”, there is also a “law of destiny” which works itself out despite whatever other causal connections and chains may be playing themselves out and, I would suggest a “law of miracles” (see “Fate” at 80, “Law of Accident” at 115-6 and “miracle” at 144).
You’ll do better than me.
Someone who can see,
Right from the start give you all that you need
And I’ll slip away, knowing I’m half the man I should be.
There is genuine love here: for love seeks what is best for the beloved irrespective of the cost to oneself. Also, love brings impartiality, and the statement, “knowing I’m half the man I should be”, is a good impartial description of each one of us.
The topic of “lost loves” is a significant one: a person who never wonders about past friendships and romances and why they ended, to use a neutral term, is quite possibly incapable of reflection. I have published on this blog one of the most important pieces I ever transcribed from Mr Adie’s diaries, just on that topic. Bernie Taupin is also responsible for one of the most touching songs Elton John ever wrote, the much under-appreciated “I Feel like a Bullet in the Gun of Robert Ford”. And in each case, “Robert Ford” and “I Should Have Sent Roses”, Taupin was working with one of the greatest songwriters of his generation, and each result has been a masterpiece.
And that brings me, briefly, to the topic of Leon Russell. There is no doubt of his uncanny talent at playing the piano and song writing. As I have already said, I feel that he produced some of the greatest songs of our time. For my money, his piano playing is better even than that of Elton John, and I am an Elton John fan. I remember, in the 70s, thinking that Leon Russell would go on to conquer the world, as they say. But then something happened. What? To an extent, perhaps, he sabotaged his own career. It was never the same with him after the 1975 album Will O’The Wisp. Then, Elton John enticed him to The Union in 2010 (Elton did not have to seduce very hard, it would appear), and Russell’s own account of the production of that album is found on “In the Hands of Angels”.
I have carefully praised the melody and the lyrics rather than the track. I feel that the production is too heavy. Very often, a beautiful melody is obscured by too much backing. If you do listen to this track, try and imaginatively screen out the brass. My own guess is that T-Bone Burnett sensed the beauty of the melody, and tried to raise it to prominence with the trumpets and trombones. But I don’t think it’s worked.
Still, while the arrangement is rather more heavy than I would like, it is extraordinary that after so long out of the public eye, this artist of astounding abilities would return and reveal so much about himself. I think that took strength: the sort of strength which this remarkable song reveals.
8 July 2012
JOSEPH AZIZE has published in ancient history, law and Gurdjieff studies. His first book The Phoenician Solar Theology treated ancient Phoenician religion as possessing a spiritual depth comparative with Neoplatonism, to which it contributed through Iamblichos. The second book, “Gilgamesh and the World of Assyria”, was jointly edited with Noel Weeks. It includes his article arguing that the Carthaginians did not practice child sacrifice.
The third book, ‘George Mountford Adie: A Gurdjieff Pupil in Australia’ represents his attempt to present his teacher (a direct pupil of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky) to an international audience.The fourth book, edited and written with Peter El Khouri and Ed Finnane, is a new edition of Britts Civil Precedents. He recommends it to anyone planning to bring proceedings in an Australian court of law.
“Maronites” is pp.279-282 of “The Encyclopedia of Religion in Australia” published by Cambridge University Press and edited by James Jupp.
HELEN ADIE: A SORT OF SENSATION STOLEN FROM EMOTIONAL CENTRE
“Anger” from Hieronymus Bosch, The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things
“A Sort of Sensation Stolen from Emotional Centre”
On Tuesday, 30 October 1979, Helen Adie took a question from Vera, a young woman who had had an argument at work. She didn’t explain herself terribly clearly, and Mrs Adie had to put some time into sorting out what had happened, yet, much of the exchange is, I think, deep and of wider application for students of Gurdjieff’s methods and ideas.
“Today,” Vera said, “I was annoyed with a particular person because they didn’t do what I had asked them to do … and, I, felt the situation was very valuable to try and forgive that person and just forget, and I managed to stop the negative thoughts, but, when I looked at the person, I just … I just couldn’t feel anything, and I felt, still, slightly intimidated inside.”
“Nothing’s permanent”, replied Mrs Adie. “Everything is moving all the time. That you don’t feel it once doesn’t mean that it isn’t present.”
“I just, no matter how much I tried …”
“You tried, but you couldn’t feel anything?”
“No”, Vera firmly replied. “I couldn’t feel for him.”
“No. You can’t try to feel something for people, you can’t try to care for people. You wouldn’t recognize it. Maybe you do in fact have some feeling in respect of other people, but you don’t recognize it because you have an idea about feeling for people. And it’s generally a rather sentimental idea. I have a sort of picture of what feeling for somebody is. But that isn’t real feeling.”
“ You can’t try to feel something. But you can feel your own presence, and you can, from that, you regard that person. I don’t mean stare at them, but you take them into your experience: you’re aware of their existence. And you often don’t know whether you feel something for them or not. You may without recognising it.”
Mrs Adie paused a little before continuing: “Generally speaking, when we think we care about someone, it means we cling to them in a certain way … are dependent on them, or feel they’re dependent on us. It’s very often not the real thing. We’re looking on the wrong side of ourselves for it.”
“Real feeling is something we have yet to learn to recognize. It’s a question of being free, and making a space for it. The place is there, but there’s something which we still have to understand very much about feeling. We can’t force it. It cannot be forced. You either feel it or you don’t.”
“But you can make it possible to feel, and a very important step in this is to become, little by little, free of all sorts of dreams about feeling.”
“I just wanted to forgive,” Vera said.
“Yes, you wanted to accept.”
“Yes, that’s what it was. Accept. I just cried. I couldn’t do it.”
“You still had that feeling of resentment.”
“I did Mrs Adie. The thoughts weren’t there so much. It was just a tension.”
“The physical aspect of can remain. It doesn’t go just immediately, that’s true. But a very important step to stopping the tension is stopping the daydreaming about it. This daydreaming, these revolving thoughts only add fuel to the resentment. It makes it, gives it a form.”
“Yes, you can’t expect physical sensations to go in five minutes. They may or may not: it depends on the strength of the stimulus. But if some resentment or grudge is established in your body, you can take a great deal of the force away from it by not making it go through your mind, not dwelling on it. And in time it will go, but in itself it doesn’t matter. There’s an energy there which you can begin to learn to take to yourself. You can even begin, eventually, to learn transform it. What we’re discussing is the beginning of this transformation. But now, you were aware that you had that feeling of resentment: so what did you try to do?
“ I just tried to be aware of myself, with that person, and … I don’t know how I tried to feel … I just tried to see that person, really, and … why it stayed stuck there, I don’t know.”
“Yes, that’s quite right, but it’s because you’re expecting a result. That inhibits it, you know. Yet, the effort is in quite the right direction. You face that person, you look at that person, and you try to not feel for that person, but to feel your presence there, in a sort of free, detached way.”
“And then you have to be ready to try different things. That’s where you have to use your head a little bit. Be careful. From what you’ve been saying recently you should know that the sour grapes feeling may come in. But that, and most of what we know, are not real feelings: they are a sort of sensation stolen from emotional centre, if you like to put it that way. But feeling can come. It’s possible for people to feel themselves in relation to others. It comes in different periods of their work, but it happens. It’s possible.”
To me, this is quite enlightening. The distinction between feelings (real and permanent) and emotions (partial and ephemeral) is not new. Gurdjieff made it, and several of his pupils remembered something of what he had said about this. I dealt with it in the book George Adie: A Gurdjieff Pupil. But I was struck by the elegant simplicity of Mrs Adie’s thought. And her statement that these emotions are a “sort of sensation stolen from emotional centre” addresses the emotion/knowledge paradox. That is the paradox that despite our knowledge we are taken by these emotions time and time again. We believe in them while realising that they distort everything in us and almost our entire process of perception. Something in us is identified with these distorting agents. Mrs Adie here explains why: it isn’t that they have no relation at all to feeling, but they are stolen from it and so are cut off from the higher energy of that centre. Also, it isn’t that they have no reality, they are sensations, they’re in the body, so they have that degree of reality. But that is not the reality for which they are made. Feelings serve knowledge and understanding, but only when sited in the right place of the alchemical laboratory which we are. This material is almost endlessly deep. Don’t be distracted by my lubrications. Go to the mistress, and make what she has said your own.
Joseph.Azize@gmail.com
Joseph Azize is presently an Honorary Associate with the Dept. of Religious Studies at the University of Sydney. In April, he will be delivering a paper there on J.G. Bennett as a student of mysticism. He has published academically in ancient Near Eastern history, in law, and in religious studies. His latest effort, an article on Gurdjieff’s sacred movements and dances, will be published later this year in a Brill volume edited by Carole Cusack and others.
Music of Georges I. Gurdjieff: Joseph Azize Review
Levon Eskenian
Gurdjieff’s Armenian Face
Introduction
Music of Georges I. Gurdjieff, a new recording of a selection from Gurdjieff’s music, is played by the Gurdjieff Folk Instruments Ensemble, directed by Levon Eskenian. Issued in 2011 by ECM, # 2236, it takes an honourable place in the contemporary trend for Armenians and Russians to show serious interest in Gurdjieff’s legacy. Gurdjieff’s writings and music are very often understood and interpreted as if they were Western European. This is hardly surprising. The last 27 or so years of his life were spent there and in the USA (with perhaps a short trip to the East), and at the time of his death he was, for most part, surrounded by persons of West European background. But just as the Bible bears many resonances and meanings only apparent to someone familiar with the ancient Middle East, so too, Gurdjieff’s music – or at least these more folkloric examples of it – come alive when treated as they are on authentic Eastern instruments by authentic Eastern musicians.
To my ear, this is the pre-eminent selection and recording of Gurdjieff’s Songs and Rhythms from Asia and Sayyid Dances. I wonder how Eskenian’s approach would work when applied to the Sacred Hymns, and especially the Hymns from a Truly Great Temple. I’m optimistic, and I do hope this CD will be succeeded by others from the Gurdjieff Folk Instruments Ensemble. Before coming to deeper issues, I deal with it track by track below, and the reader will see that while I am not much affected by some pieces, yet, the album as a whole has to be considered as something of a triumph. I would unhesitatingly pronounce it as superior, for purposes of attentive listening, to any of the piano recordings I have heard, de Hartmann’s and Rosenthal and company not excluded.
This Recording: Track by Track
The opening track, “Chant from a Holy Book”, may be the most powerful piece on the entire album. The duduk is the chief instrument here. As Eskenian notes, its “warm sound closely resembles the human voice”. The playing is influenced by Eskenian’s view that the piece, as Gurdjieff wrote it, is in the style of the “tagh”, a sacred Armenian style of pre-Christian origin. As occurs so often on this CD, the use of different instruments adds a sustained dimensionality to the work which no other recordings have ever, in my opinion, captured. The scoring is such that one can clearly and distinctly hear and hold in one’s attention the several instruments and their diverse contributions.
The “Kurd Shepherd Melody”, is played on the blul, also known as the bilur or nayy, and accompanied on the saz, wind and string instruments, respectively. These instruments are actually used by Kurdish shepherds, and their use rendered the piece totally new for me. However, it strikes me as being chiefly of folkloric, not spiritual, interest. Yet, it is of interest.
By contrast, the “Prayer”, played on “kanon”, an instrument much loved in the Middle East, has both elements. I have heard a lot of kanon in my time, and although I could be quite wrong, it seems to me that the playing and the recording provide a virtuoso crispness and clarity. Yet, despite its technical brilliance and intrinsic charm, the recording lacks a certain impact. I would have to make much the same comments about the first two minutes of track 4, “Sayyid Chant and Dance no. 10”. However, when the “chant” gives way to the “rhythmic dance” (to use Eskenian’s terms), sparks erupt. The kanon seems capable of delivering a vivid sense of the folk tradition, but the more solemn pieces somehow elude it.
“Sayyid Chant and Dance no. 29” relies upon the nayy before the kanon and other instruments enter for the dance, and the effect is quite different. The entire piece has a nobility and grace, and the kanon does indeed deliver some poignant passages.
I was struck by Eskenian’s comments that the “Armenian Song” was in the manner of a love song, because if it is, it bridges secular and divine love, such is the impact it made on me. Again, it features the plaintive sound of the duduk.
When I read the notes about the different styles of “Bayaty”, and how their first passages were improvised, it struck me that perhaps when Gurdjieff demonstrated pieces like this to de Hartmann, he too, was improvising. This could account for the some of the difficulty of transcription which de Hartmann encountered. This was the first playing I have ever heard of this or similar pieces where I had the sense that the players were improvising as they played Gurdjieff’s music. Here, it is the oud which complements the virtuoso kanon playing.
It is difficult to record the oud well, but the engineers, Armen Yeganyan and Khatchig Khatchadourian, have pulled the rabbit from the hat, and enticed these delicate sounds to dwell in the digital. The rhythmic dance which follows that passage possesses a sweeping elegance.
Why, I don’t know, but “Sayyid Chant and Dance no. 9” fell a little flat for me. It isn’t that the playing is mediocre. It is perhaps that it follows several similar pieces with improvisation-like passages followed by dances.
“No. 11” from the Asian Songs is a welcome change. Eskenian rightly refers to its “mysterious” melody. The enigmatic ending, almost a fade out, is masterfully managed.
I had never liked the “Caucasian Dance” which is track 10 on this CD. But when it is rendered as ‘a version of a Shalakho dance” which leads into “the graceful, emotive solo dance, called siuzma”, the effect is utterly fresh. Having heard this, I now realise that the piano rendition had a flatness, almost a black and white quality. But this rendition uses a bright palette of tones and colours to make a fascinating piece. To me, this is not really a spiritual piece, but, still, it has brio and zest.
The next three pieces are, to use an already overused word, awesome. “No. 40”, again, from the Asian Songs, is a dream. This is one of those which I had never heard before the Schott edition. I was intrigued by the piano music, but this recording, with an Armenian ensemble is rather sublime. Also powerful, is the strange “Trinity” piece, played as an Armenian trio might, on “tar, sandtur and dap” (a drum also known as the “daf”). The more I have listened to this CD, the more this piece keeps at me: there is something in its insistent rhythm and graceful melody which reminds me of the music Gurdjieff produced for the Enneagram movement of the early 1920s, as if saying that the spiritual reality to which it points is ever-present, ever-flowing.
Then follows the “Assyrian Women Mourners”. The use of duduks and a dap is inspired. They combine solemnity, grief and dignity. The final note is sublime.
As with the “Caucasian Dance”, I had not liked “Atarnakh, Kurd Song”, the “Arabian Dance” or “Ancient Greek Melody” before hearing this recording, but I have been converted. The piano simply does not do justice to the music, but here they come alive. “Atarnakh” has a simple, graceful, almost hypnotic sway. I can now understand how it could have been written to be played before a reading from Beelzebub. It is transporting. The “Arabian” and the “Ancient Greek Dance” aren’t so strong, meaning that the music doesn’t have the same power for me, yet, they’ve been rediscovered and revived, so to speak. Of these three, “Atarnakh” is by far the stronger for me.
Finally, the “Duduki” is one of the highlights, with the “Reading”, “Trinity”, “No. 40”, “Mourners” and “Atarnakh”. This double reed instrument all but speaks. Whoever the master musician is, his assured playing provides a fitting end to the album, allowing it to close, as it opened, with a powerful spiritual statement.
Presentation
The CD is very nicely presented. It comes in a cardboard cover. Both the cover and the CD itself feature a good reproduction of that picture from Gurdjieff’s lsat years where he’s sitting on a bench by what is probably a Paris building, and a large tree shadow falls across the pavement and ground floor window. The back cover of the booklet, not the cardboard, quite appropriately shows Gurdjieff’s house in Gyumri, while inside the booklet, is an evocative picture of the roof and spires of the Sanahin monastery in Armenia. It’s a fascinating complex: one could fill one’s spare time with worse things than checking it out at this Armenian wiki site:
http://www.armeniapedia.org/index.php?title=Sanahin_Monastery
Closing Comments
The number of CD releases of recordings of Gurdjieff’s music has increased quite substantially, undoubtedly occasioned by the release of four volumes of much, but not all, of Gurdjieff’s piano music. Some of these recordings have used diverse instruments, and some have added words and singing of the interpreting artist’s own device. However, in my view, none of them, not excepting the soundtrack of the Meetings movie, have used Eastern instruments with the authority and success that Eskenian’s team does.
If I had to sum it up in one phrase, I would say that this album takes the Gurdjieff music out of the polite salons of Europe and North America, and rediscovers them in the distant, rocky and mystical East. I cannot help but feel that this is something Eskenian and his crew can be proud of. And I feel, if one can venture such a comment, that Gurdjieff too, would be proud, for he tried to link East and West by new lines of understanding. Eskenian is clearly sympathetic to Gurdjieff and his work. As the recording makes clear, he does not interpret Gurdjieff in a narrow Armenian manner, but is quite aware and respectful of Gurdjieff’s broader influences.
There is no point in repeating the many sound points which Eskenian makes in his liner notes. But one of them is critical, and presents an objective reason for interpreting Gurdjieff’s music using an Eastern ensemble:
… these indigenous Eastern instruments are capable of producing microtonal intervals, rhythms and other nuances that are essential parts of Eastern music.
I will not go into it here, but for me, these elements are all crucial in understanding Gurdjieff’s work. He was almost an engineer of the laws of the spiritual world. These laws are such that to us they are not laws as the laws of physics and chemistry are, but partake more of the nature of art, or even magic. However, this is an opportunity to provide some important material about Gurdjieff which is not readily available. Below I copy my transcription of some comments made by Thomas de Hartmann in an undated recording.
Thomas de Hartmann: At certain points in space, where the emanations of the earth encounter the emanations of the Sun Absolute, that means, the emanations of the Almighty, at these points is a reflection, an image – a something which can be seen, assumed, felt, from the Almighty. And, for earth people, with concentration, it is possible to visualise, to see in a certain manner, inner, the emanations of the Almighty.
Of course, for this, a very great deep concentration is wanted. Here we understand why Gurjivanch put always a great weight on music. He himself played and he also composed, and he wrote down things, and so on.
If we compare the music of all the religions, we can see that music plays a great role, a great part in – so to say – religious service. but after the work of Gurdjivanch we can understand it more, that music helps to concentrate oneself, to bring oneself to an inner state when we can ?assume with greatest possible emanations. That is why music is just the thing which helps you to see higher.
Levon Eskenian- Artistic Director
Biography
Levon Eskenian is an Armenian composer and pianist who was born in Lebanon in 1978. In 1996 he moved to Armenia where he currently lives. In 2005 he graduated from Yerevan Komitas State Conservatory with a Master’s degree in piano (class of professor Robert Shugarov). In 2007 he obtained his postgraduate degree from the class of Professor Willy Sargsyan. He has also studied composition, organ and improvisation classes at the Conservatory and harpsichord in Austria and Italy with the English organist and harpsichordist Christopher Stembridge.
Joseph Azize, 10 January 2012
Joseph.Azize@gmail.com
Joseph Azize is presently an Honorary Associate with the Dept. of Religious Studies at the University of Sydney. In April, he will be delivering a paper there on J.G. Bennett as a student of mysticism. He has published academically in ancient Near Eastern history, in law, and in religious studies. His latest effort, an article on Gurdjieff’s sacred movements and dances, will be published later this year in a Brill volume edited by Carole Cusack and others.
JOHN LENNON: Essence and Reality: Part 20: “STRAWBERRY FIELDS FOREVER”
John Lennon: Essence and Reality
“Strawberry Fields Forever”
Off the edge of memory, rationality and time: Lennon invites us to accompany him. “Let me take you down, ‘cos I’m going to Strawberry Fields, nothing is real … Strawberry Fields forever!” As other commentators routinely say, this song, released as a single in February 1967, does indeed deal with nostalgia and childhood and fame. But these themes are only the platforms of departure. Our destination is floating and dreamlike; we land in meadows which have something of paradise about them: “Nothing is real, and nothing to get hung about! Strawberry Fields forever!”
I cannot think of any song from the rock and roll era which goes deeper. Lennon’s lyrics move in many directions at once, searching for what is real in himself, his identity, reason and art. Lennon probes his own depths: what is the significance of his innocent childhood? What is this faith he has that somewhere there exists an endless bliss? Who am I to be in relation with you, and who are you to be in relation to me? What is the truth about us?
There is a wondering questioning here: a perception of reality always awakes innocent surprise. Relationship with others and relationship within myself go together, because they each depend upon me as an individual – upon my central “I”, to the extent that I can be said to have one central “I”. This takes us to the eternal question of ultimate human identity: the mystery of our souls, or of our essences, to use a term from Gurdjieff’s system.
“Essence”, lest we forget, derives from the Latin root esse, “to be”. It is the pure being of a living organism – whatever form that life may take.Behind Lennon’s search is the understanding that a nothing cannot be related – it is superfluous. That he might in fact be a nothing, that he might not be needed was, I think, Lennon’s greatest fear. So deep a fear was it that even Lennon could not name it. Perhaps very, very few of us are different from Lennon in this respect: we share this unnameable anxiety. That, I suspect, is why, so far as I can see, writers have missed the significance of the five words: “let me take you down”. They are words not only of movement, but also of a desired relationship. Lennon offers to assume the role of guide, and, of course, a guide is in relation, he is accompanied by his charges:
Let me take you down, ‘cos I’m going to …
Strawberry Fields …
Nothing is real …
And nothing to get hung about.
Strawberry Fields Forever!
Living is easy with eyes closed,
Misunderstanding all you see.
It’s getting hard to be someone
but it all works out –
It doesn’t matter much to me.
No one, I think, is in my tree,
I mean it must be high or low
That you can’t, you know, tune in,
But it’s alright,
That is, I think it’s not too bad.
Let me take you down, etc.
Always, no, sometimes think it’s me
but it’s all wrong,
That is, I think I disagree.
Let me take you down, etc.
The music is masterly. When Lennon says “let me take you down”, I almost feel drawn into a secret opening beneath my feet. There is a firm pressure on that word “down”. The singer is in transit to another world, and through the sympathetic power of listening, we find ourselves drawn into his gravity. Lennon is the psychopomp, or soul-guide of this Elysian realm. On Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,the psychedelic Lucy sprang from his head to play the role of guide (“follow her down …”). “Strawberry Fields” and “Penny Lane” had been the first two recordings for that album, but when they were released as singles, it was decided not to include them on the album. It is striking then, that when he speaks in his own name on this song, he stakes his authority in a way that never happens on “Lucy”.
Speaking in the first person also makes “Strawberry Fields” more personal. The tone of the invitation is enfolded within the music and the singing: it is gentle and undemonstrative. The tones of the mellotron, which open the song (courtesy of Paul McCartney), prime the canvas in warm, hazy tones, almost speaking with a voice like blended strings and woodwinds. There is something other-worldly about it, yet, I would not call it dreamy. It is more as we are withdrawing from the earth. In these respects, “Strawberry Fields” builds on “I’m Only Sleeping”, released not long before on the Revolver album. In that song, Lennon lays in bed; Lucy’s cosmos is in the sky’; and in “Strawberry Fields” he takes us down. They’re all part of a consistent pattern of exploration which lifts Lennon’s work beyond the merely haphazard.
The image of Strawberry Fields is at once quite plain, and perfectly elusive. In his 1980 interview with Playboy magazine, Lennon said: “Strawberry Fields is a real place. After I stopped living at Penny Lane, I moved in with my auntie who lived in the suburbs in a nice semidetached place with a small garden … Near that home was Strawberry Fields, a house near a boys’ reformatory where I used to go to garden parties as a kid with my friends Nigel and Pete we would go there and hang out and sell lemonade bottles for a penny. We always had fun at Strawberry Fields. So that’s where I got the name. But I used it as an image. Strawberry Fields forever.”
“Strawberry Fields” evokes a definite place, but it’s used in an indefinite way to open the doors to something which goes beyond the one site. What Strawberry Fields stands for is actually a joyous and carefree childhood. It is significant that it is strawberry fields, as in the succulent forest fruit. In Lennon’s time, few children would not have had the experience of hunkering close down and searching among the leaves of the short bush for its delicious fruit. Nowadays, we can go to the supermarket, buy a punnet, and consume them without a thought. But, for kids, a strawberry they’ve found themselves in the garden is a treat.
However, the most important thing Lennon says, or more precisely, sings about these fields is “forever”. This word could simply be an expression of affection, it could also be the echo of a prayer, and, like any real prayer, it also takes us out of time. It reminds me of the posthumously released “Grow Old With Me” (see blog 4), with its doxology: “World without end, world without end.” The same prayer is offered in Strawberry Fields. “Forever” is almost the perfect petition: it is fiat or “let it be”. In “Grow Old”, Lennon sings: “whatever fate decrees, we will see it through.” This is an attitude to aspire to: I may not understand this portion of the journey, but I affirm. Adie said that deep down, we all love of life. But life brings sufferings. Only when we arrive at our final destination are all our difficulties, and all our failings along the way reconciled, because only at the end is there an Absolute reality in which they find their final shape and complete meaning. The real world, the divine world, appears to us, we are told, as a transfiguration.
And this, I think, is the secret of “Strawberry Fields Forever”: it is the transfiguration of our lives, a mystery which Lennon had some intimation of. Thus, when Lennon says “nothing is real”, the first thing he means, I think, is that nothing is real as we see it. And this has a certain element of truth. I shall not pursue it here, but briefly, we see only a portion, and even that we only perceive in dim outline. But the dim outline is real, it’s just that we cannot see the whole reality.
The second thing which, it seems to me, Lennon means, is that especially in Strawberry Fields everything is transformed. Strawberry fields is a blessed realm: its reality is not that of our day to day reality. I doubt that he meant nothing whatsoever is real: after all, he says later in this song “you know I know when it’s a dream”.
Apparently, the phrase “nothing to get hung about” alludes to Lennon’s youthful reply to his aunt’s directives not to jump the fence into Strawberry Fields: “They can’t hang you for it.” In the song it’s more positive: it means that there is no sorrow there.
The way is not an easy one: Lennon does not hide this; some of the lyrics reflect being misunderstood. Lennon once said of the song that: “The second line goes, ‘No one I think is in my tree.’ Well, what I was trying to say in that line is, ‘Nobody seems to be as hip as me, therefore I must be crazy or a genius.’” A person sitting in the branches of a tree is high up. Lennon felt that by his art he was elevated above the mediocre. But did he deserve this exaltation? He wasn’t sure of that, but he was sure that there are standards: “it must be high or low”. He also experienced it as lonely: “…you can’t, you know, tune in.” Was this bad? Maybe, maybe not: “But it’s alright, That is, I think it’s not too bad.”
Lennon expresses the same sentiments in the next verse: he starts to say that he always “think it’s me”, when he changes his mind mid-sentence, “no, sometimes”. In other words, when his false ego is there, it seems there’s nothing else and never has been. That’s why at those moments he could believe that he is an eternal megalomaniac. But as soon as he starts to examine this, he realises that this is not the whole of the truth. While we are in one “I”, as it were, we can see nothing else. But as it loses its hold, other “I”s appear, and we experience this to-and-fro as doubt and confusion: “…but it’s all wrong, that is, I think I disagree.”
Before leaving this, it’s worth mentioning that in the version Lennon made at his home in Weybridge, released on the Beatles Anthology vol. 2, he sang not “let me take you down” but “let me take you back”. This confirms the line I have taken here, that Lennon is, in his mind, returning to his childhood, folding the folds of time into one fabric. It is a remembrance not of facts but of the self wherein the line between the present and the past disappears. We are granted a moment when we have an instinctive feeling of truth, and suddenly we sense a relationship with others which is so close, and so self-less, that we experience our lives as woven into a vital unity. Community is not amalgamation; the whole is made up of parts which have integrity. But there is no integrity without some form of inner unity.
In this song, Lennon reveals perhaps his most sacred belief: that in the end it all comes out right. This optimism is why, in the final analysis, so many people invested so much of their hope in Lennon.
© Joseph Azize, 2011
JOSEPH AZIZE has published in ancient history, law and Gurdjieff studies. His first book The Phoenician Solar Theology treated ancient Phoenician religion as possessing a spiritual depth comparative with Neoplatonism, to which it contributed through Iamblichos. The second book, “Gilgamesh and the World of Assyria”, was jointly edited with Noel Weeks. It includes his article arguing that the Carthaginians did not practice child sacrifice.
The third book, ‘George Mountford Adie: A Gurdjieff Pupil in Australia’ represents his attempt to present his teacher (a direct pupil of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky) to an international audience.The fourth book, edited and written with Peter El Khouri and Ed Finnane, is a new edition of Britts Civil Precedents. He recommends it to anyone planning to bring proceedings in an Australian court of law.
“Maronites” is pp.279-282 of “The Encyclopedia of Religion in Australia” published by Cambridge University Press and edited by James Jupp.
The ideas presented in this article were much influenced by what the author learned of the Gurdjieff system through George Adie, a personal pupil of Gurdjieff. Something of Adie’s approach to Gurdjieff’s ideas and methods can be found in George Adie: A Gurdjieff Pupil in Australia, G. Adie and J. Azize, Lighthouse Editions, available from By the Way Books.
This is the final article in the series, Lennon: Essence and Reality.
John Lennon: Part 19: “How?” and “Borrowed Time”
THE JOSEPH AZIZE PAGE
Joseph.Azize@gmail.com
John Lennon: Essence and Reality
Part 19: “How?” and “Borrowed Time”
This blog is subtitled “Essence and Reality”, because Lennon’s artistic work embodies a movement towards truth. The quest for truth about himself (essence) and about the world (reality) bewitched him with a sort of wondering enchantment. Of course, these two poles of reality, essence and reality, are part of a triad. We shall discuss the third term in this triad in the next blog, when we consider “Strawberry Fields Forever”. But for now, we’ll see how both development and continuity are visible over the course of the ten years which separated “How?” (1970) from “Borrowed Time” (1980). Simply put, the continuity between these two gems is in Lennon’s search for real values, a search which was guided by a goal that he could feel but not articulate. In “How?” from the Imagine album, he sings:
How can I go forward when I don’t know which way I’m facing?
How can I go forward when I don’t know which way to turn?
How can I go forward into something I’m not sure of? Oh no. Oh no.
We feel the questioning in Lennon’s voice, the melody line and the arrangement. A person with no English whatsoever could sense from the sound alone that this is a song of searching. There is also a subtle irony here: although Lennon sings about going forward, the tune is gently but firmly descending. The emphasis, slight but all the more poignant for that, is on the first word: “how?” The question is elegantly but firmly put. The gentleness of the music suggests what the a sensitive reading of the lyrics confirms: that Lennon is not doubting that it is possible to go forward. No, Lennon is asking how it is possible to go forward when he does not know which way that is. Implicitly, he realises that he can go backwards, but does not wish to. The first verse does not disclose what his desired direction is, but only that he aches because he does not know. His suffering comes from his unsureness. The second verse takes the querying even deeper:
How can I have feeling when I don’t know if it’s a feeling?
How can I feel something if I just don’t know how to feel?
How can I have feelings when my feelings have always been denied? Oh no.
Even more than with the first verse, there is a quiet urgency about the music. The drum both marks time and treads time: it’s suggestive of a clock telling that time is passing but all the while nothing is happening. In the third line, the words “feelings” is accented and a little anguished. But we now know, at least, that he wants not just intellectual realisation and certainty but the sense of “sureness” which comes with feeling (and, we might add, specifically of the feeling of oneself as living here and now). And Lennon knows something else, too, he knows what he does not know, he knows what he lacks. This is the key which Socrates found: that it is wisdom of realising whereof we are ignorant. As Gurdjieff said:
… most sleeping people will say that they have an aim and that they are going somewhere. The realisation of the fact that he has no aim and that he is not going anywhere is the first sign of the approaching awakening of a man or of awakening becoming really possible for him. Awakening begins when a man realises that he is going nowhere and does not know where to go. (In Search of the Miraculous, 158).
The other impressive aspect here is that Lennon realises that he confuses his feelings with ideas. We all do, and we get especially confused over ideas of what we should or should not be feeling. The result is that as we perceive our emotions, an internal and intellectual judge appears and may rebuke or praise ourselves for the emotion. This happens time and time again, and becomes automatic. When our internalised voice is critical of our emotions, especially those which are pleasurable, it often induces a sort of paralysis. Emotion is an impulse, but this judge is another impulse which condemns the first one or otherwise denies it. So it is that two internal antagonistic forces stand in electric opposition, while something very small but also very real is stricken with a sort of fear or horror. The song continues:
You know, life can be long, and you’ve got to be so strong.
And the world is so tough, sometimes I feel I’ve had enough.
The music heralds a change in mood. It is not exactly that it becomes gentler: the song already exemplifies the union of gentleness and strength which can only come from compassion. It is more that Lennon pauses for a moment in his search to consider his position, and how far he has yet to go along a difficult road. That is, at this point, the song’s centre of focus shifts from deep inside. Lennon opens his eyes and heart, and looks around. This larger perspective reappears in the next verse:
How can I give love when I don’t know what it is I’m giving?
How can I give love when I just don’t know how to give?
How can I give love when love is something I ain’t ever had? Oh no.
Again, there is not any doubt except that there is such a reality as love, or that he wants to feel it and to share it. But, he states, he has never felt love, and does not know how to share that or anything else of himself, for that matter. Could this really be true? It depends, I think, on which one means by love. Here, the love he feels in its absence is something which fills the spaces between people. When he comes to the reprise again, Lennon makes an artistically perfect swerve:
You know, life can be long, and you’ve got to be so strong
And the world she is tough, sometimes I feel I’ve had enough.
There is an almost transcendent poignancy in the way that Lennon sings “And the world, she is tough.” It isn’t whinging, it isn’t even complaining. It is objective, sympathetic and supportive all at once. When I think of the song, it’s usually this phrase which first comes to mind. Lennon then repeats the first verse, and the song is done. It has a clean, clear finish. No fade out, just a long closing chord which ends the piece on an upwards note.
“How?” is, to my mind, one of Lennon’s greatest “primal” songs. Arthur Janov, author of the Primal Scream, told Lennon that a resolution of our suffering is possible by experiencing one’s own pain, and releasing it in a cathartic scream. It was a version of “getting it out of your system”. Lennon had been pursuing, among other things, the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s Transcendental Meditation, and left wing political causes. But he had become disillusioned with the Maharishi, and had even turned to hard drugs. Someone sent him a copy of Janov’s book, and this turned his attention, once more, to internal factors as being decisive in our situation.
Lennon had always had an intuition that the prime arena for our struggles is inside. This surfaced in early in his career, for example, in 1963’s “There’s a Place”(see part 7 of this series) and 1968’s “Revolution”, where he sings:
You say you’ll change the constitution … we want to change your head.
You tell me it’s the institution … you better free your mind instead.
This being Lennon’s basic position, Janov’s thesis met a receptive audience. The idea that all that was needed was medical therapy must also have been appealing. Lennon and Ono entered into treatment with Janov. However after a relatively short but intense period, they left. Lennon had become sceptical of Janov as a person, and came to feel that Janov was exploiting their celebrity, which was probably quite true. However, my reading is that they had benefitted from Janov’s therapy as much as they ever would. And having taken what they could, Lennon went off in his individual way, as was his wont. As often happens, however, we often can’t move on until there has been some sort of personal falling out (and we even engineer such quarrels, more or less unconsciously, when it’s time to go).
Janov’s psychiatric approach worked to a certain extent, but not, I think, because his thesis was correct. In fact, I think it’s wrong. To the extent that it does work, I suspect that it’s because it brings consciousness to our situation. The John Lennon / Plastic Ono Band album captures Lennon’s raw awareness of his situation after the Janov experience (see postings 5, 8 and 15). It is not enough, however, simply to know that I have a problem, as the self-pity on some of those tracks, such as “Isolation” would suggest. Yet, if I know my suffering deeply enough, an implicit intelligence in me (the higher part of the brains or centres, to use Gurdjieff’s terms) will often deal with the issue. That is, generally, we only think in terms of backing one of two sides: we either refuse to continue in denial and to feel guilty, or else we suppress the original emotion which the censor in us condemns. But the higher parts of our intellectual and emotional brains tacitly understand that there is no future in this conflict, and slowly, or even sometimes suddenly, our attitude changes under this new influence. How did Lennon change? This is revealed, to some extent, in the posthumously released “Borrowed Time”. Recorded in 1980, it was not released until 1984 on the Milk and Honey album.
When I was younger, ha-ha.
Living confusion and deep despair.
When I was younger, a-ha.
Living illusion of freedom and power.
When I was younger, a-ha.
Full of ideals and broken dreams, my friends.
When I was younger, a-ha.
Everything simple, but not so clear.
Living on borrowed time without a thought for tomorrow.
Now I am older, a-huh.
The more that I see, the less that I know for sure.
Now I am older, a-ha.
The future is brighter and now is the hour.
Living on borrowed time without a thought for tomorrow.
Illusions, ideals, and broken dreams. The bouncy reggae influence in the music belies the rawness of the confession. Yet, it all works. That Lennon used reggae here is not surprising given not only Lennon’s love of the genre, but also that the title words apparently were suggested to Lennon by a Bob Marley song. The music is not Lennon’s greatest achievement, but it serves the lyrics, and nicely supports the positive message, and the message beneath the words is that time, the time of our lives, is valuable. The music adds to the sagely impartiality of the lyrics. There then follows the last verse and refrain, and Lennon’s comic remarks in the fade out:
Good to be older, a-huh.
Would not exchange a single day or a year.
Good to be older, a-ha.
Less complication and everything clear.
Living on borrowed time without a thought for tomorrow.
Oh yes, it all seemed so bloody easy then.
You know, like what to wear, very serious like.
How am I going to get rid of the pimples?
Does she really love me?
And all that crap!
But now I don’t bother about that shit no more,
I know she loves me!
All I got to bother about is standing up.
I don’t wish to lose sight of what is really critical in this song, and that is the affirmation that our lives are truly valuable. Some things are good, and our time is one of them, so let’s not waste it by thoughtlessness. “Now is the hour! Use it!”, this philosopher is saying. Lennon’s sense of paradox is as sharp as ever: he says that when he was young it seemed that everything was simple, and that it was more complicated. How can this be? When we’re young, we’re cocksure, that makes our outlook on the world both pretentious and simplistic. But we don’t know how to get the hundreds of things we want, and that produces clashing waves of complexity. Now that Lennon is older, he sees more clearly. Seeing more clearly, he knows that he has been prone to over-dramatise matters, a very common failing. We all of us lose perspective at some point or other, hence the line, “what to wear, very serious like”. Also, the simplicity of youth is, to an extent, the result of the illusions, ideals and dreams. When I am totally identified with an ideal or a fantasy everything seems straightforward. Too straightforward, Lennon is saying now. Remove the distorting effect of that over-simplification, and shades of grey start to appear.
Another paradox is that at, one and the same time, Lennon can sing “now is the hour”, and yet he is aware that he was deficient in not giving a thought to tomorrow. Only to the extent that I am present now, can I see what my situation is, and anticipate the needs of myself and of those around me. Again, the artistic touch is far more satisfying and makes the point more sharply than the didactic approach. Another benefit of Lennon’s ironies is that they leave something to the listener. Yoko Ono was always trying to have the audience involved in the art. The idea was good, but I don’t think the intellectual approach to it worked. Lennon shared in her interest, but did it more traditionally and more effectively. Lennon gives you something to tease out for yourself.
And, of course, another factor in his new life is the happiness Lennon has found in family life with Yoko and Sean (see parts 3, 4 and 12). He can now relax in the love he has found, instead of torturing himself with insecurities and doubts. With this, then, we have a clear and engaging picture of how far he had come in only ten years. Lennon had, at this point of his life, engaged in radical questioning of himself, his aims and his values. This song shows the public a man, wiser and older, who has found in his life a basis to meet whatever challenges may lie ahead of him. So, despite my regard for Gary Tillery’s book, I cannot agree that Lennon was a cynical idealist. However disappointed he may have been, he always believed with an intestinal fervour that there was a way forward and that his time did mean something.
Lennon’s career was extraordinary in that, in a very short period, he experienced so much so intensely, but was always groping, even with eyes shut, for what he truly was. Just when he seemed to have been lost himself, to have drowned in narcotics, or left-wing politics, or avant-garde art, Lennon came out on the other side. It’s also telling that, so far as I can see, Lennon was never addicted to probably the most prevalent drug in the modern world: materialism. David Kherdian once said something which I could paraphrase as follows: if a person is not totally identified with success in their field, then that very success can teach them the important lesson that success is not everything. What really counts is was we make for ourselves inside.
Joseph.Azize@gmail.com
JOSEPH AZIZE has published in ancient history, law and Gurdjieff studies. His first book The Phoenician Solar Theology treated ancient Phoenician religion as possessing a spiritual depth comparative with Neoplatonism, to which it contributed through Iamblichos. The second book, “Gilgamesh and the World of Assyria”, was jointly edited with Noel Weeks. It includes his article arguing that the Carthaginians did not practice child sacrifice.
The third book, ‘George Mountford Adie: A Gurdjieff Pupil in Australia’ represents his attempt to present his teacher (a direct pupil of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky) to an international audience.The fourth book, edited and written with Peter El Khouri and Ed Finnane, is a new edition of Britts Civil Precedents. He recommends it to anyone planning to bring proceedings in an Australian court of law.
“Maronites” is pp.279-282 of “The Encyclopedia of Religion in Australia” published by Cambridge University Press and edited by James Jupp.
EFFORTS TO CHANGE: AN EXCHANGE WITH GEORGE ADIE
THE JOSEPH AZIZE PAGE
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Joseph.Azize@gmail.com
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Efforts to Change: An Exchange with George Adie,
29 November 1979
[It is possible to actually come to a point of change. The only questions are when and how. Too frequently, we’re needlessly passive before our denying factors. But it is a fact: progress is possible.]
Sam opened: “Last week, Mr Adie, I’ve experienced a lot of loneliness, what I call a feeling of despair, and self-pity, and thoughts about myself being on my own. I’ve tried, with what feels like some success, to work against this by choosing one person in the day for external consideration; to consider one person in the day, particularly, to shift the focus from myself. And … along with these observations, I’ve had a lot of thoughts about where it comes from.”
“Where the depression comes from? What have you come to?”
“Well, the events in my life are that there’s a family living with me at the moment, and they’ve bought their own house, and are going to move out. And I’m anticipating missing them. And I think that also connects with other events in my past. Two questions come from that. One is, how am I to understand this experience, and what attitude should I have to it? And the other question is, how should I work with it?”
“You try to confront it. That is, you try to be quiet, balanced, and then produce this to yourself. Really, to be separate from it.”
“Yes, I’ve tried after the preparation.”
“It’s part of the preparation, in a way”, replied Adie. The preparation is the morning exercise Adie learnt from Gurdjieff, referred to in his book. “You’re in this state of stillness, apart from external interferences. You try to understand it. You be patient, you be present to the question. You expect to just sort of turn up a thought and then, in a flick, just find an answer: but you can’t like that. The answer has to come in different terms altogether. For instance, you say to have external rather than internal consideration for a person.”
“No, what I said was to have external consideration for someone else and to shift my focus from on my own self-pity, to have concern for someone other than myself.”
“Yes, but you’ve got to do the shifting of yourself first. Then external consideration can take place. To what extent it can take place will depend upon your being there. If you really confront it, or try to think about what these things really are, you will see that you’re weaving a web of nothing, creating a big mountain out of almost nothing.”
“It’s just an associative sort of dreaming”, continued Adie, “what’s going to happen? You don’t know what’s going to happen at all. Don’t you see that you’re passive, you give in to it? You have to use it to come more deeply to yourself. I can speak about centralizing myself, but I’m still working peripherally … I’m still in the head and not really strongly centred in my sensation. I want more emphatic sensation. Definite. Now, what do I think? All else is this shifting peas, trivial, lightweight … almost nothing … What is the reality?
“Then you speak of the feeling of loneliness. That can be extremely useful. But it is very much necessary to change it from loneliness into being alone. I need to be alone. Who am I going to take with me when the time comes? I can take no one, I can take nothing. At that time, everything, my imagination, my perceived loneliness, will be all blotted out.”
“That’s from one point of view: that’s as far as my desire to not be lonely. But in fact I should take the benefit of all that unconfronted, misunderstanding within me. That is my past, in some lower form. You can’t destroy the thing. It’s pretty horrible, so I can’t afford to give in to any negativeness. But your past also yields a higher form. You are one of Mr Gurdjieff’s pupils by second stage – that’s not nothing. That’s not nothing. Now you come very much in touch with it. That’s very substantial.” As a final comment, he added: “There’s a lot of sort of dodgy stuff about it, you know, it’s very artistic.”
“I see the helplessness of it,” agreed Sam.
“This is the lower element, but don’t lend yourself too much to this side. There’s no need to be lonely – you can have yourself. If you have yourself then you’re anything but lonely. This loneliness means that something in me is seeking an external prop. So, let me stop seeking external props. I need a meal, I need some recreation, so let me go and have it, but, to sit moaning for props? So, be active, innerly active. Your hope is based on your immediate presence. Very definite.”
“Then you can have some hope, otherwise, no hope. And to live without hope is not very good, but it’s all based on now. Now. There’s no future hope. All hope is present. Obviously what is to come depends upon now. Don’t want it to change. Use it, find it useful. Kick against the pricks. be interested, otherwise you’ll weave a sort of miserable gloom and you won’t see what happens when they leave.”
The next question, from Mick, again related to what Adie had said about “producing to yourself” the negative emotion, and confronting it with a quiet presence.
“Mr Adie, I’ve found a clear voice within me that leads me into dissatisfaction and considerings. A form of personality: a fantasy voice that comes up and says “that doesn’t sound too good”, or it says “this would sound better”.”
“Supposing you give an illustration, Mick, or an experience of it. What you say is clear enough, but give an example of it if you have one.”
“Well last weekend I saw an a position in a newspaper for a job that seemed to be a better job than the one I have, even though it’s a good job. This is the instance when I first noticed this voice, the voice said this job sounds better, it would sound better to say.”
“That you would be a sergeant rather than a corporal?”
“Yes, and during the week I noticed that voice, and realised that it had been there a long time, but I had never noticed it at all, or confronted it, but I enjoyed it, and I remember daydreaming with it, playing with it. I’d like to know how to get a handle to eliminate it.”
“Welcome it!” replied Adie. “Open the door! Say: “Please come in!” It will hate it if you’re there. The difficulty will be to get it to come in: it will wait until you’ve gone to sleep, and then it will come along. This is where the flash comes in: our work goes in flashes, and in a flash you can be quicker, and confront it before it can disappear. Use it, be present to it, every time it comes trotting along, medals out and all the rest, you begin to hear it coming.”
“But I’ve tried that this week.”
“You tried it like that? How have you tried it?”
“Well, I haven’t been present to it or welcomed it.” At this, everyone laughed.
“Ah. So you haven’t had the idea of welcoming it. I’ve got to be a bit quiet inside. All this takes place inside, the corporals and sergeants and all that. I have to be very quiet, I have to take my work more deeply, relax more. But that’s a good observation, and it’s the same for everybody, there’s nobody here hasn’t got dreams and hasn’t had dreams. It’s very familiar, it couldn’t be otherwise. Couldn’t be otherwise. Everybody wants to be something, to achieve something, and things around that. Dreams of success, dreams of profit, dreams of glory. It starts very early. Look at how hero worship is educated into young children. They’re encouraged, they stimulate it with books and films. Chaps that have got long legs and can run a bit faster, they give them prizes for it, and make them into heroes. Is it clearer?”
“I’m not sure what you said about taking it a little deeper.”
“Be more present, be deeper inside. Don’t be satisfied with your old degree of sincerity. Just be a bit quieter and confront this thing. See the stupidity of it. Didn’t you follow what we were discussing with Sam? It relates to you, doesn’t it, although you haven’t got exactly the same conditions.”
“I take my work seriously, and the only thing that is up to it is my inner centre of discrimination, but if I only discriminate in my head, it’s no good. You know how it is said that nothing can exist without three forces, active and passive and neutralising. And here are three forces, instinctive and moving force, emotional force and intellectual force – broadly – and they all have to all take part. Well. they’re not centred in the toes. if anything they’re centred here, you see. And I need that sense of myself before anything.” Adie must have gestured to a part of his body when he said “centred here”.
“Love and attraction is very, very powerful. It generally comes from same central place which moves the whole of you, but when we think of something, our head takes centre-stage, the body is asleep, and the head goes dodging about, looking through queer holes, and understanding nothing.”
“Mr Adie, I mentioned it a long time ago”, said Ida, “about how when my husband comes home, and he criticises me for something in the house that not’s right, or about me, I get defensive and react. When I first started to try and work on it, I saw that if I was criticised I saw a need to hit back and retaliate. Now I find that I don’t retaliate.”
“Not in the same form. What form does it take now?”
“It’s a sullen silence.”
“In a way, that’s worse from his point of view.”
“Yes, because when I tended to hit back quickly, it was over and done with, but now it tends to smoulder.”
“Well now, if you relate that situation to what we’ve just been saying, then you can transform that … something more is possible.”
“I see the energy that’s wasted.”
“Yes, and you could have that for yourself. There’s nothing that won’t feed me if I can be in the right place. More and more we try and understand what alchemy is. Alchemy is the transformation of one kind of energy into another, negative into positive; the transformation of coarse metal into fine: gold. It is always said of the alchemist that before he can do that, he has to have some gold to start with. This gold is our presence, this is the gold that we need to bring, our presence. This will transform, so that you have more energy. Well, that is a picture, but it needs confrontation. You need to compare that, that marvellous reality, with this dubious and horrible alternative.”
“You can’t expect him to change, but if you change yourself, it would help him. He would be in the presence of a different process. Of course, in that connection, you’ve got to be prepared for him to be more annoyed because you don’t react quite in the same way. But, if you have your presence, you won’t offend. If you merely disdainfully put him away or close into yourself, it’s more offensive than coming out fighting. It has to be done in the presence of.”
“You can’t cut off from it: you’re right in the thick of it, you wake up inside it, and then you make your transformation. This extraordinary invocation in the Bible, “thou preparest a table before me in the presence of my enemies.” What does that mean? One repeats it, but what does it mean? Here is one’s enemy, very clearly, isn’t it? Enemies of my being, and here is the table. If I eat it, if I take it, I get my food, my feast. Try and think like that, think how, and of course I have to be practical, too. Try and be practical.”
“This is my inner work, it’s not concerned so much with my comfort. Things will get better if I work that way, but I want to make this alchemy the key of my effort. All the other efforts are sort of partial efforts, they’re conditional upon my getting some satisfactions and all the rest. This is the only pure, unmixed effort. If I can make a pure effort, I certainly can get the energy, no doubt, but it’s difficult, it means swallowing things which in the usual way I could never swallow. And it isn’t swallowing to take them swallow them slowly and painfully. I’ve got to take them almost gladly, and that’s hell.”
I have not included the next question. The one after was brought by Stan. “ I’ve been trying to look at my dreams in my tense state. I’ve noticed the types of dreams that have been going on supporting this state.”
“Part of it,” replied Adie. “They’re together. The dreams encourage the state, the state makes ground for the dreams.”
“That’s really my question. I’ll give you some examples. One dream I can remember very clearly, I sat down, I imagined very vividly, and with my whole emotions, that I was having an argument with my boss, but behind that there seemed to be a certain attitude. I was in the commanding position. But I could feel all my emotional force being drawn out through this.”
“Negative imagination: a definite kind of process.”
“Will I give a few more examples?”
“Well, what about this example? Maybe the other examples are different: what about the question here?”
“First thing I noticed about it, there was a certain satisfaction in it. There was a tense state about it.”
“Yes. We’ve already been told that from our childhood we have enjoyed our negative emotions, very difficult, everybody would have said at the beginning, oh, of course I hate my negativity, I don’t like it. But as you truly say there’s a certain satisfaction: there’s some dog rather liking its bone, dog in me who finds there’s something there. This thing likes the fight it’s winning. This is an imaginary I, part of false personality enjoying itself at your expense, the expense of your blood, and not only that, but of your Kesdjan blood.”
“I think that as soon as I see this dangerous negative imagination, obviously I should try and change my state, because it can go on and on, and I can bleed. I have seen what my state is now, and now, directly, I want to put a stop in. Give it a shock. Register what it is, that I need to move, and change my posture, take a breath, go for a walk. Whatever helps. I can surely take that as a point to begin work. The difficult part is that I have to somehow keep on, but eventually it will slow down. It’s only got to be unguarded, and it will go again, you see?”
“So, my effort is more to stop dreaming?”
“Certainly, but you described dreaming mixed with negative imagination. This emotionalism has to be stopped. But how do you stop?”
There was a pause in the conversation, before Adie continued: “You take your energy away, take it to yourself. You don’t have anything to do with this poison at all. You see, if you start to hang onto it you can destroy yourself. You go to yourself. You go and take the energy in.”
“What of the attitude, Mr Adie?”
“The attitude? The attitude gradually changes. What attitude can I have other than that I’m being sucked dead, and soon there will be only a corpse. I’m a compulsed, forced nothing, Immediately there’s a different attitude possible, based on finer matter, move. And then I can have an attitude, an intentional attitude. The attitude I want is based on choice. I choose not to waste my force like that, so I have an attitude grounded centrally: an attitude which can look up as well as down, an attitude which is open and not closed. An attitude which can move, which is mobile. How do you understand “attitude”? It isn’t only a mental thing. It’s everything, it’s my feeling and my thought, of course, but the thought has to be connected with feeling and sense, otherwise it’s a dead thought. People commit horrible crimes when they’re cut off from feeling and sensation. If they had feeling and sensation it would be entirely different.”
“I find that my whole day is a system of dreams,” Stan continued: “not all as emotional as that, but all different things, coming all the time.”
“Good, you’re finding that out. Then, what is your plan for work? Now, according to what you’ve seen, according to what you’ve received, you make a plan. If you make a plan, perhaps you don’t carry it out: but you see why you didn’t. You’re still learning something. Or maybe you do carry it out for a little bit: it’s a whole process of becoming born, and being created, or awakening, which is gradual, gradual, gradual, depending on your self-impulse, and the exercise of your own small degree of will. The more you observe yourself, the more you relax, the more you will see what your state is by the set of your face, the direction of your eyes, and it will tell you about your inner state, and again you will make small adjustments. And now that probably covers all your other illustrations, but if it doesn’t, bring the other examples.”
“In my efforts, I would have to try and stop dreaming all the time, wouldn’t I?”
“But you can’t do it all the time”, Adie replied. “You do it some time, by intention. Nobody can make effort all the time. But you can make efforts occasionally, when you get called. Every now and then, you come up, otherwise you couldn’t make these observations. But you don’t observe yourself all the time.”
“You see that you’re manifesting like this, and become despairing. But you only conclude that it’s like that all the time, because these are the things you see when you start to awaken. When you say it goes on all day, it sounds hopeless, but choose certain moments and don’t worry about the rest. These moments when you’re called are the moments when you can make effort. If you relate this to your preparation, and plan with it, you find more light each time, you have more connection with your intention when the time comes. I have to have intent, otherwise I have no power of action, and then everything goes automatically. The whole essence of what I’m trying to say is that we really have this will-potential in us, we have this possibility. This is what I have to bring into my work – at points – and I plan to allow this to be touched as often as possible. You can prepare to make use of your periodic fits of madness, because there’s something definite. That’s the practical way to work.”
Half way through the next question, unfortunately, the tape ran out.
edited Joseph Azize, 12 June 2011
JOSEPH AZIZE has published in ancient history, law and Gurdjieff studies. His first book The Phoenician Solar Theology treated ancient Phoenician religion as possessing a spiritual depth comparative with Neoplatonism, to which it contributed through Iamblichos. The second book, “Gilgamesh and the World of Assyria”, was jointly edited with Noel Weeks. It includes his article arguing that the Carthaginians did not practice child sacrifice.
The third book, ‘George Mountford Adie: A Gurdjieff Pupil in Australia’ represents his attempt to present his teacher (a direct pupil of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky) to an international audience.The fourth book, edited and written with Peter El Khouri and Ed Finnane, is a new edition of Britts Civil Precedents. He recommends it to anyone planning to bring proceedings in an Australian court of law.
“Maronites” is pp.279-282 of “The Encyclopedia of Religion in Australia” published by Cambridge University Press and edited by James Jupp.
The book
George Adie: A Gurdjieff Pupil in Australia
is available from By the Way Books.
How Can I Make Better Observations?
The Joseph Azize Page
How Can I Make Better Observations?
{Editor’s note: Very few recordings survive from Mr Adie’s groups in 1979. He told me that he thought the better material was on tapes from later years, and so that is what those of us who worked on the material started with. Recently, however, I have been listening to some of these old tapes, and I now think that this resource has a special value. Some of this material, produced when Mr Adie was stronger, is probably clearer and more direct. I was immediately struck by what I received as its power. This group had been established two years before, so it was young enough for Mr Adie to be explaining matters with the attention to first principles that is appropriate for beginners. However, the group had been going long enough for him to be able to paint his answer on a broad canvas, opening large vistas. Here I transcribe the first question asked in the Cedar group on Thursday 11 October 1979. It was asked by a young American lady who must have left groups before I joined.}
“Mr Adie”, she asked, “over the weekend, you said to me that I don’t know how to observe: that I don’t observe. How can I learn to make observations? How can I learn to make better observations? I find it very difficult.”
“That is absolutely vital for us.” He paused for a little, and then started a little further out from the spot where’d she’d pitched her question. “ The function of the mind is critical here. One thing I think we particularly need is to study the functions again: we talk, sometimes rather glibly, about being too much in the head or too much in emotions, but we don’t really appreciate what that is. We talk about dreams and stopping dreams and the fact that we can’t, but we aren’t always so clear on what this practically means. And now that the work has advanced, and people are trying to observe, I need to know and understand with my head.”
“The function of the head is the mind, the reason: how to work something out consciously, how to make a choice. The mind has a certain power of discrimination between ideas. An animal doesn’t have ideas. Only man has ideas. Ideas are the concern of the mind. Feelings and sensations do not directly have this capacity, although they can warn me if my state is unbalanced. Feeling is the concern of the feeling centre, and it brings force, because the mind by itself can’t do anything. The sensation, the body, is our basic reality, the root of our existence. And clarity in each of these centres is different.”
“Clarity brings us back to your question: how to observe. It’s obvious that if I am in dreams I cannot observe. At that point I have to remember about sleep and waking. When I’m asleep, anything is possible. I can dream any rubbish: we all know that. It’s just empty words if I talk about observing and don’t take into account that I have to be awake for it. And waking means some activity of the head: discrimination of the true mind.”
“Mind has levels. The lowest, or most basic, is what is called formatory centre. Formatory centre is aware of something: it has some relationship to fact, it has some degree of reason. Formatory centre, if there’s any attention there at all, can discriminate between one pigeon hole and another; it can discriminate between where some impulse or another comes from. In fact, I need my formatory centre, it’s very valuable to me. If I had to work out from new everything that formatory centre has learned, my life in the world would stall.”
“But at the same time, formatory centre is not the thing which I shall use to observe myself. It does not have the requisite degree of perspective and subtlety. So how can I observe my own functions?”
“If there is any general rule, it’s that observation can proceed only if the head is awake. If I am asleep I can’t observe. A sleeping man will experience something in dreams: he’ll moan and he’ll turn over. If it’s bad enough, the dream wakes him up, a little. To observe I must be awake, that’s the first thing. Now what does that mean? That’s a big thing, to be awake, at any rate, to be a bit more awake – at that point we go to our body, because if we are floating about really not aware of the earth we’re standing on, we’re liable, at any second, to go into dreams again.”
“So, we have some attention on our bodily sensation. That’s why I said the body is the root basis. If I wish to observe, I must have a reference in my sensation as a check: “Yes, it’s alright, I’m here”. I can rely on my observations a little bit if I know I am here. But if I have forgotten that my feet are on the ground, don’t sense that my feet are on the ground, if I have no sense of being here, then my observation is a very partial, dubious thing. So, for the possibility of a more real observation, all these different parts have to be partially conscious, partially connected. There has to be interconnection. Each centre has its separate clarity; they’re not all muddled up and playing each other’s roles. I have begun from the mind, but it’s now included in a greater reality. Each centre provides its unique impression without my thinking about them.”
“Now, if what I’ve said so far sounds reasonable to you, then we can feel little bit more relaxed about the fact that our observations are very little understood so far, and observation seem to be very difficult at times.”
“Well then, to add to that, nothing is ever achieved consciously unless there’s a wish. How would it be possible unless there were an impulse? That impulse has to have some intention, some wish to observe. I need to want to do it. I need to want to, which is the most important thing about what you were saying. You really wanted to find about this: you really wanted to find out why observation seems so difficult. I remain with that need to understand. So that effort has proved to yourself that you have a wish. You wish.”
“What I shall see is therefore very unusual, maybe even strange or unsettling for me, because I haven’t been at all accustomed to this simultaneous awareness of attention in my three centres. And I certainly haven’t been capable of maintaining presence to the three centres while remaining in operation. I used to think that I was in charge of this organism, but I begin to find out that I wasn’t at all, I was a machine.”
“Now if the so-called observation is to be a true one, if I am to receive a relatively true perception, I cannot be too unbalanced. An opening to impressions will help to bring me into balance, but if I am too very swayed by emotion, if my thought is too trammelled, if I have forgotten all about my body, the perceptions will be mangled; they’ll be distorted before I even try to use them or reason about them. The images and the colours will be wrong, the magnitudes will be wrong. You see how critical the work with each of the three centres is?”
“If I am going to observe, it’s an act. It has to be an act, and that can only last for a second or two with that fine degree of conscious intention. It’s so unaccustomed, as we’ve already more or less proved in this sequence of argument, that I’m unprepared for the kind of thing that I experience, if in fact I observe.”
“I see then that when I came here I had a fantastic idea of what an observation might be. To me it was something striking that I could formulate and write down in a book, something that would make for good reading or comparisons. Now I see that this isn’t observation at all. An observation for us now is an experience. To parlay it into words too soon and too easily is to lose it. I want the taste of it first, and the taste of it is so new I cannot recognize it. This is why so many people say: “Oh, when I saw myself, there was no feeling. I came to and there was nothing. I was empty, and it was awful.” And they become discouraged.”
“But the conclusion is not reliable. I have too little to compare with a state of consciousness. How do I know it’s empty of feeling? Certainly, I may be free of my accustomed emotions. What a relief! If in fact I have come to, that is all that is necessary. What sort of content is my moment of consciousness supposed to be filled with? I have to be impartial to everything. I have to be impartial to everything. I am aware, more or less of an intention, what is taking place. I accept what I see, I wish to accept what I see.”
“It’s an experience, and until I learn to support that experience without interference, I will simply weave a network of misunderstanding, confusion, thought taking the place of feeling, and so on.”
“All this gives me some sort of connection in my mind with these very still, very refined figures that one sometimes sees: a Buddha or a yogi. One feels that there’s a master there … they’re extremely alert, they’re completely composed. Such art begins to have meaning. I see that this is a representation of a very active moment.”
“And of course, what is absent when I’m at the beginning of a process is “I”. There is something of it there. I shall observe. I have to have the posture of a man, the posture of a woman. I previously assumed that I could observe, but I never thought about my posture really. And I don’t need to think about it as such, it has to be with me, a sense of my posture. The body begins to be the body of a conscious man. The feeling of a conscious man. Even the thought of a conscious man. Of course it can’t last for long, but the experience can lead to further related experiences, always fresh.”
“Then the observation that ensures in that condition and with that amount of understanding can be so extremely interesting, it’s so different from anything I’ve had before. The experience that accompanies it – you can’t put it into words. How could one put into words this three centred awareness of combined working at different speeds which presents this conscious moment? It wouldn’t be possible, but this is what we’re working towards: those conscious moments.”
{Note the reference to “three centred awareness of combined working at different speeds”. Those who have ears to hear … For me, the sign that this is the pure Gurdjieff tradition is the naked demand for three-centred understanding which Mr Adie makes, advising and demonstrating in himself that it is both heroically difficult and heroically possible. If you would like to know more about Mr Adie, Gurdjieff his teacher, in what Gurdjieff’s ideas consist, and how Mr Adie gave them practice application in Australia, the well-illustrated book, George Adie: A Gurdjieff Pupil in Australia (Lighthouse Editions) is available from By The Way Books. Joseph.Azize@gmail.com
JOSEPH AZIZE has published in ancient history, law and Gurdjieff studies. His first book The Phoenician Solar Theology treated ancient Phoenician religion as possessing a spiritual depth comparative with Neoplatonism, to which it contributed through Iamblichos. The second book, “Gilgamesh and the World of Assyria”, was jointly edited with Noel Weeks. It includes his article arguing that the Carthaginians did not practice child sacrifice.
The third book, ‘George Mountford Adie: A Gurdjieff Pupil in Australia’ represents his attempt to present his teacher (a direct pupil of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky) to an international audience.The fourth book, edited and written with Peter El Khouri and Ed Finnane, is a new edition of Britts Civil Precedents. He recommends it to anyone planning to bring proceedings in an Australian court of law.
“Maronites” is pp.279-282 of “The Encyclopedia of Religion in Australia” published by Cambridge University Press and edited by James Jupp.
John Lennon: Essence and Reality – Part 18: Jealous Guy
John Lennon: Essence and Reality
Part 18: Jealous Guy
It is, of course, subjective to say this, but to me, the melody of, “Jealous Guy” is one of the truly haunting creations in music, even though it is only a four minute creation. No other tune I have ever heard falls on my inner ear with such graceful and poignant movement. I hear in it a steady, calm motion, and behind that, the pain and the love of a great soul. There is a noble measure in its stately progression from verse to chorus; each of which speaks with poise and symmetry as the melody modulates, alternately making a statement (“I was swallowing my pain”) and then raising it to a higher pitch (“I was swallowing my pain”). After 40 years, I still receive its impact.
The arrangement is simplicity itself. Captained by a gentle but insistent piano, naked, unaffected feeling is acknowledged, uttered, and ordered in lapping ripples of sound. Mere sentimentality finds no entry here. The moment is too serious for play-acting. “I didn’t mean to hurt you, I didn’t want to make you cry … I’m just a jealous guy.” Lennon’s admission of cruelty-inspired-by-jealousy is balanced by his courage in making this confession without any shadow of evasion, and by his declaration of love-made-tender-by-compunction.
The words arrive directly and clearly, forming a clean stage for the music and the whistling which wordlessly add a level of higher meaning. Because this dimension is wordless, there can be no argument about it: you hear it or you don’t. And, as we shall see, “Jealous Guy” affords a very rare instance where we can objectively test my opinion about the sublime in modern music. But first, let’s take the song itself. Lennon’s opening words are almost confronting in their honesty:
I was dreaming of the past, and my heart was beating fast.
I began to lose control. I began to lose control.
(Chorus) I didn’t mean to hurt you. I’m sorry that I made you cry.
Oh, now. I didn’t want to hurt you … I’m just a jealous guy.
I was feeling insecure: you might not love me any more.
I was shivering inside. I was shivering inside. (Chorus)
I trying to catch your eye, thought that you was trying to hide.
I was swallowing my pain. I was swallowing my pain. (Chorus)
The very first line displays Lennon’s acute facility for naming comon, everyday aspects of human behaviour that everyone else has also noticed, but few of us have pondered. As an aside, Lennon was terribly intelligent, but many people are yet brighter. However, few of us are as willing to accept the reality of what we see: intelligent as we are, we often employ our cleverness in avoiding or excusing the unpalatable. If Lennon was a genius, it was in artistic rather than purely intellectual power, but his emotional courage allowed his intellect more substantial food to work with, and so facilitated his magnificent intellectual insights.
The first insight here is that we don’t just remember the past, we dream of it, reviving it in a tortured melange of thoughts and feelings which acknowledge no logic but that of emotional intensity. Lennon is absolutely spot on about the desperate physical dimension. Here he mentions a change in heart-rate, and, employing imagery, that he was shivering inside and swallowing his pain. To relive our insecurity, our selfishness and our cruelties is to project a nightmare of acute emotional and physical engagement – unless, of course, I can be present to these dreams. If the real essential I is present, or exerting its influence, then I can bear the impression of myself. If I am not present, at least to some degree, these sufferings can unseat my reason, even if only briefly. Lennon did not have this presence when he was “dreaming of the past”. He found it, however, in his fashioning of this song.
It seems to me that in his music-making, Lennon could often touch this higher, essential part of himself. It is this which gave him the strength to face his demons in song. Although, as we all know, he did not always live up to his standards, he had approached them, imagined them, pictured them, made them visible, and even made them present in his music. And this was more than just a start to living his values. This touching of the sublime in music-making, something I believe Elton John also achieves to an extraordinary degree, is what it is because it is a dynamic process. Music is a life process, and music of the calibre of “Jealous Guy” evidences a sublime life process.
The assured line of the melody supports this tale of a man who has suffered from an insecurity which he has overcome, at least within the circumference of the song, because, by his music, he draws a circle of power around his fears. When I listen to it, the artistic union of strength and sensitivity puts me in mind of a fine Chinese “jade carriage” I once saw in Sydney. “Jealous Guy” turns out to have a special significance for me: it lends serious support to my ideas on the sublime in music. In my words, the sublime is: “a feeling of myself as if on the cusp of touching the mystery of eternity.” As I said in the first Elton John blog:
Does the music really speak as I hear it? Yes, I say that it does, because I feel it. My feeling is of myself in whatever state I happen to be in. My feeling is how my individuality is disclosed to me. It is therefore impossible to prove to another that the sublime exists where I feel its existence, because I cannot deliver my individuality to anyone else as if it were a package. … (The sublime) can only be brought down to earth by an alchemical process which takes place between the music and myself.
Of course, not everyone will agree, or more precisely, not everyone senses sublimity in the same place. And it is impossible that they should, because the experience of the sublime necessarily depends on one’s state. Let us take, for example, someone speaking English. We will understand the speaker according to the mix of (a) that person’s capacity to articulate intelligibly at the time of speaking, (b) our grasp of the English language, and (c) any number of accidental circumstances, e.g. whether there is background noise, whether we are tired, sober, distracted, and so on. But also, our familiarity with the with the topic will be an important feature. So, if a person is entirely ignorant of English, even the most celebrated passages from Shakespeare will leave them unmoved. The greater one’s acquaintance with English, the higher the chance that they can possibly be touched by expression in it.
This, as many readers will recognize, is based on Gurdjieff’s insight into subjective and objective art. Objective art will always produce the same impression, even on different people, “presuming, of course, people on one level.” (In Search of the Miraculous, p. 27, emphasis added.) I shall not go into that topic here, but I raise it because of the fact, to my mind extraordinary, that I held these views on “Jealous Guy” more or less explicitly, when I came across unlooked corroboration. The melody of the song had already been worked out while Lennon was still with the Beatles. However, the lyrics were entirely different. Not only different, but of another order altogether, directly addressing the sublime. Apparently they were written while Lennon was at Rishikesh before his disillusionment with the Maharishi. They were inspired by a talk the Maharishi had given about being a child of nature:
On the road to Rishikesh
I was dreaming more or less
And the dream I had was true
Yes, the dream I had was true
I’m just a child of nature
I don’t need much to set me free
— Sunlight shining in your eyes
As I face the desert skies
And my thoughts return to home
Yes, my thoughts return to home
… Underneath the mountain ranges
Where the wind that never changes
Touch the windows of my soul
Touch the windows of my soul
The song was, if the available information is true, meant for the album The Beatles (“the White Album”), but was left off because it was felt to be too close to “Mother Nature’s Son” which Paul had written after being touched by the same lecture. What is almost astounding for me is that I had sensed the presence of the sublime in the melody of “Jealous Guy” before I had the least clue of what Lennon’s original words had been. In other words, there was something objective about the quality of the music Lennon created for this masterpiece.
© Joseph Azize, Joseph.Azize@gmail.com
Some of the ideas in this article, especially those relating to presence, are dealt with in further detail in George Adie: A Gurdjieff Pupil in Australia, George Adie and Joseph Azize, Lighthouse Press, available from By The Way Books, USA.
JOSEPH AZIZE has published in ancient history, law and Gurdjieff studies. His first book The Phoenician Solar Theology treated ancient Phoenician religion as possessing a spiritual depth comparative with Neoplatonism, to which it contributed through Iamblichos. The second book, “Gilgamesh and the World of Assyria”, was jointly edited with Noel Weeks. It includes his article arguing that the Carthaginians did not practice child sacrifice.
The third book, George Mountford Adie: A Gurdjieff Pupil in Australia represents his attempt to present his teacher (a direct pupil of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky) to an international audience.The fourth book, edited and written with Peter El Khouri and Ed Finnane, is a new edition of Britts Civil Precedents. He recommends it to anyone planning to bring proceedings in an Australian court of law.
“Maronites” is pp.279-282 of “The Encyclopedia of Religion in Australia” published by Cambridge University Press and edited by James Jupp.
John Lennon: Essence and Reality
Jospeh Azize page
John Lennon: Essence and Reality
Part 17: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is the world; the experience of living in modern times. Sgt. Pepper’s captured, affirmed, and infused with a poignant affection, the culture of that entire pre-digital generation, with its beauty and ugliness, caring and neglect, altruism and selfishness, grace and sordidness. Life as lived on 1 June 1967 was photographed and pressed into one disc, in all its diversity and emotional tones, and displayed on one album cover; yet the record sounds and looks relaxed, effortless and endlessly expansive. Every human relationship is sung on that record: the love of man and woman, the infatuation of boy for girl, the connections between parents and children, friends, casual acquaintances, strangers, celebrities and nobodies, performers and audiences, preachers and congregations. It also intimated, as George Harrison said, that: “… individual love is just a little of universal love.” That is why I would unhesitatingly say that it is the greatest record of the era of records.
You could believe that on its cover you see every face you have known and can ever know, including your own. You have to actually hold and look at the L.P. record, not the CD, to really understand the justice of what I am saying, for Pepper’s spoke through Peter Blake’s artwork and packaging as much as it did through its music. But Blake’s efforts would have counted for nothing if the four figures in the middle had been anyone but the Beatles, or, even then, if the music had disappointed all expectations. You could have had the Rolling Stones, or the Beach Boys, or made up a quartet of Bob Dylan, Elvis Presley, Queen Elizabeth and the Pope for that cover, but it would not have worked. The Beatles were the only group, of any type, where each member was instantly and globally recognizable, and was a valued, essential part of the whole. The cover primed us for music that only the Beatles could have produced. It set the context for that music in a way that perhaps no other cover ever has.
The impact of that celebrated collage on the front of the sleeve comes, in part, from the diversity of the faces which make up the assemblage: they cross all lines of country, race and age. The idea of arranging them as an ensemble is preposterous, and yet they merge into one cultural mosaic which works because the music corresponded. Neither music nor artwork could really be called eclectic, yet both eloquently blend diversities and harmonize differences. This visual unity-in-diversity is strengthened by the interplay of blue, red and yellow on the cover. The clear sky above the panoply of characters is drawn into the middle of the scene by the bright blue of Paul McCartney’s uniform; while the red of the word “Beatles” is resumed in Ringo’s and George’s costumes. One colour infuses from the top down, while the other rises from the foreground upwards, while the centre is grounded by holds of bold optimistic yellow, for example, in Lennon’s clothes, sparks of which are found on various hats and Sonny Liston’s robe.
The cover was governed by the concept of the album: that we’re at a concert performed by Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The Beatles adopted personas, as it were, and the figures in the mosaic were people who had just heard the performance and were the sorts of celebrities the Band may have appreciated, hence George’s selection of several Indian sages. Blake thought that it might be interesting if the Beatles had also attended the concert, and so he had the wax figures included. But while they can be explained in the context of the album’s concept, those four images extended it tremendously, because to very many people, including myself, they looked as if they were privately at a funeral. The feeling it conveys is more than simply that the past is dead. The sense which I, at any rate, receive, is that the album embraces awareness of life and its passing. And this is not just hype: the grand finale of “A Day in the Life” shows that the Beatles felt something similar and had it in mind. Some writers, such as Timothy Riley, speak of a grave on the cover (Tell Me Why, pp.212-3), but there is no grave, and the flowers which some thought to be a wreath were intended only as a floral guitar. This is not just a detail, I suspect that Riley’s perhaps overly critical comments are occasioned by this misconception. On Sgt. Pepper’s, death is acknowledged, but there is nothing morbid: on the contrary, life is affirmed in the face of passing away.
For all this, the music is and always was primary. It includes some of the Beatles’ greatest songs (I would single out “A Day in the Life” and “With a Little Help from my Friends”). It also boasts the most artistically perfect sound of any record to that time and probably since. Unlike some efforts to jazz up the production with sound-effects, it is not overburdened with forced straining at cleverness (a fault which in my view mars Dark Side of the Moon, witness the pointless tape loops on side 1 and the cash registers on side 2). On Pepper’s, the effects are never an end in themselves; they add interest without stealing attention from the melodies, and pass away almost as soon as they appear. Had the contents of the record been flat, it would not have had the effect that it did.
We now live in a different age, where society seems, more than ever, to be a statistician’s abstraction made up of diverse micro-communities which have few values in common, and frequently do not even communicate without expressing suspicion if not hostility. This has the upshot that not only has there never been anything like Sgt. Pepper’s, but I am minded to think that there never will be. People who are older than I am, tell me that at the time of release Sgt. Pepper’s seemed to be everywhere. Wherever you went, it was being played. Many have commented that this record seemed to have united the Western world for the course of that one splendid summer. And this has a lot of truth in it, but then we should remember that in those days the world could be drawn together. Today, most people have no idea of the music being listened to outside of their own mini-societies. Back then, even bitter, reactionary conservatives knew of the phenomenon that was Pepper’s, and they knew that it was important, even if they saw it as negative. I recall that as late as the early 1970’s, a right wing rag said that previous civilizations had been destroyed by barbarians from without, but ours would be destroyed by barbarians from within, and to illustrate the modern Mongols, had a picture of the Beatles from the Pepper’s epoch on the cover! They hated the Beatles with a passion, but they knew who they were, and, it is so clear now, feared their power and their music. Today, there is no one in youth culture let alone music that commands anything like this recognition. (A good summary of the good Sergeant’s reception is found in Steven Stark’s Meet the Beatles. For example, Kenneth Tynan is quoted as saying that the record was “a decisive moment in the history of Western civilization”, p.199).
Pepper’s is unique in sound and content. Even the magnificent Rubber Soul and Revolver, which glory in melodies perhaps even more consistently memorable than those on Pepper, do not possess this quality of both defining and transcending their age. No other album, by the Beatles or anyone else, could have dared and succeeded in capturing what it is to live “A Day in the Life”. And that song worked partly because its message flows in the sound, not being washed up on a coast of words.
The Beatles were remarkable, truly remarkable, for the consistency of the records they made during an intense period, effectively from 1963 to 1969. This should be remembered when they are compared to other acts, such as Elvis Presley who released many times more records over a longer period. In that short period, the Beatles only recorded one dud album: Beatles for Sale. That was followed by Help! While that was, for most people, not as strong as their first three landmark albums (Please, Please Me, then With the Beatles and Hard Day’s Night), Help! was a significant advance on Beatles for Sale, and included two tremendous standards: Lennon’s “Help!” and McCartney’s justly celebrated “Yesterday”. But, for all this, Help!, was a bunch of songs that had to be lumped together in a sequence for want of any other method of getting them onto the vinyl.
The next album, Rubber Soul, showed substantial progress in almost every respect. Although no single song on Rubber Soul is as compelling as the two immortals from Help! (at least not to my ears) the record as a whole hangs together as having an atmosphere, and conveys a mellow mood; mellow but also committed and engaged. The first time I heard it all, many years after its release, I felt: “So that’s what London was like then.” Perhaps I was wrong, but I still hear an organic consistency running through the songs. Not least, Rubber Soul shines with the much under-estimated “Girl” (see part 7 of this series). In a word, the Beatles’ music as a whole had, on this album, matured to a point where the long playing record was more than the sum of its parts. The process of maturing and deepening continued on Revolver, an album which presents some brilliant astoundingly direct music (“Eleanor Rigby”, “For No One” and “Tomorrow Never Knows”). Most critics consider Revolver their best album. It is subjective, I know, but musically, I find little to choose between Rubber Soul, Revolver and Sgt. Pepper’s. Further, I have a soft spot for Abbey Road and Paul’s tremendous achievement in writing the perfect summation of the Beatles’ career: “and, in the end, the love you take is equal to the love … you make.”
The Beatles had intended that Sgt. Pepper’s include “Strawberry Fields” and “Penny Lane”. Had those tracks been on that record, and had “64” which McCartney had written many years before been omitted, it would have more flatteringly reflected their craft at the time of production. Briefly, the weak spot on Pepper’s is side two. It opens with George’s contribution, “Within You, Without You” which has only one flaw, but a serious one: it meanders on for too long. As stated, I am not at all fond of the next two tracks, “64” and “Rita”, which to me are merely Paul being merely clever. Imagine what Sgt. Pepper’s would sound like if “Within You” were shortened, and we had “Strawberry Fields” and “Penny Lane” instead of that pair.
John’s song-writing contribution is limited to five tracks: “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”, “Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite”, “Good Morning Good Morning”, “A Day in the Life”, and – with Paul – “A Little Help from my Friends”.
“Lucy” was not written to induce drug taking. Both Julian Lennon and Pete Shotton corroborated Lennon’s story about his drawing a girl from school named Lucy, in an airplane, with diamonds. But of course, this does not mean that John did not surreptitiously use the child’s drawing a cover for drug advocacy. Many people disbelieved Lennon when he said that he was unaware that the first letters of the three nouns spelled “LSD”. But anyone who believes that Lennon would regularly deny drug references when he had admitted and even sung about his drug use on so many other occasions, has no business offering an opinion on Lennon, full stop.
Of course Lennon was under the influence of drugs during the recording of Sgt. Pepper’s and for some time before and after. He never made any bones about this. But he did not write “Lucy” as a pro-drugs song. It is one of those Lennon songs which questions the nature of reality. This questioning came under the influence of many things: the natural sense of wonder we have, especially as children, drugs, and in the case of this song, his reading of Lewis Carroll, who, not incidentally, is on the cover. This questioning was present before Lennon even used marijuana, let alone LSD (see part 7, on “There’s A Place”). I do not believe that Lennon took LSD to escape reality. It seems to me overwhelming that he took LSD because he wanted more reality of a higher order.
As I see it, in songs like “Lucy”, “Rain”, “Tomorrow Never Knows” and “I Am the Walrus”, Lennon was implicitly asking: “is the fantasy of this song not as real to your imagination as most what happens to you in your life”? “Are there not other dimensions of reality that we do not experience?” “Why do we not experience the fullness of reality?” Such questions open many avenues for exploration. I have mentioned some of these in previous blogs. In addition, where Lennon’s signature tune features the instruction “imagine …”, “Lucy” twice invites us to “picture yourself …”. In one, we see “all the people living life in peace”, while in the other “everyone smiles as you drift by the flowers …”. I, for one, don’t see any great gulf between “Lucy” and “Imagine”, although “Imagine” is much the greater song (for example, the chorus in “Lucy” is intruded into the song).
What all of these “reality” songs, and others such as “Across the Universe” have in common is that they draw their magic from Lennon’s belief in the power of the mind, or, if you prefer, of creative imagination. Lennon was deep: he was not just exploring the relationship between the intellectual world and the practical world, as many others, including philosophers and economists do all the time. He was inquiring into the nexus between life as we live and experience it, and our imaginations, meaning here the working of all our projections from within, conscious and unconscious, onto the world outside of us. And this, I think is a vastly more noble and significant enterprise than anything in Western philosophy. In a future blog, I shall deal with Western philosophy, but I think that the point is too important not to avert to it here.
Lennon was not looking for rational foundations for his first principles, which is perhaps not an unfair way to characterize the aim of Western philosophy. Lennon started from where he was, and tried to make it better. He found that many things about his world had been projected there from within, so he starved those projections of some of their psychic oxygen by fashioning new manifestations from within himself in interaction with his surroundings. I am maybe simplifying, but I think it’s a fair simplification. (I think that something much the same can be said for Paul McCartney, and perhaps especially for “Fixing a Hole”, and I may yet explore this if I get to writing about Paul.)
This search of Lennon’s is, I think, the secret of “Being for Benefit of Mr Kite”. “Kite”, like “Lucy”, is a song of a different reality, one engineered by art. Lennon accidentally came across a striking Victorian circus poster. He fashioned from the words of the advertisement a melody that moves in the whimsical way of kites, to the sound of a carnival steam organ. As you listen, you can all but see the kite as it flies, dips, soars, quirkily changes direction and, finally, ascends to the uttermost height of the big top. It has the off-beat but real warmth of the Addams Family. The whole thing seems bizarre, but the actors in this curious spectacle are innocent of any clue that there might be something a little freakish about them. And because they are affectionately innocent, there is not.
“Mr Kite” ends side one of this album perfectly. Not only does the kite soar in the air, far above the earth, but the song is a song of community: “The Hendersons will all be there, late of Pablo Fanques’ Fair. … The Hendersons will dance and sing as Mr Kite flies through the ring. Don’t be late! … A splendid time is guaranteed for all.” When Lennon announces, “And tonight, Mr Kite, is topping the bill!”, the song explodes in aural fireworks, as if a flaming torch had been lit to a box of sky-rockets and catherine wheels. (Some critics find something sinister in “Kite”. All you have to do is look at the expression on Lennon’s face in any of the shoots for the record, more of which have been made available in the 2009 enhanced-CD release. Does he look even remotely sinister?)
By fabricating something crisp, fresh and entertaining, “Mr Kite” removes the slightly maudlin after-taste of Paul’s ballad “She’s Leaving Home” (I find Leander’s orchestration to be heavy handed). The original intention had, apparently, been to end side 1 with “Leaving Home”. Thank heavens for small mercies. If one song on the album resonates with the exuberant magic of Blake’s cover art, it is “Mr Kite”.
Before leaving that, it must be said that sometimes Lennon’s element of cynicism worked like a pinch of cinnamon. In Paul’s “Getting Better”, John chips in from the background: “it couldn’t get any worse”, and so sharpens an edge to the song. But then, that song is a deceptive one. It has a rawness which, many commentators seem to miss, because, I think, it is Paul’s and so they project into it what they think of Paul anyway. Even Riley writes that: “It’s a silly love song, but it’s (Paul’s) most refreshing … What it lacks in sweep it makes up for with infectious lyricism.” I can’t see this at all. On this track, Paul sings: “I used to be cruel to my woman, I beat her and kept her apart from the things that she loved. Man I was mean but I’m changing my scene …”. Now that doesn’t really qualify as a “silly love song” as that phrase is generally taken. It is painful, and one can object that this is Paul’s persona, not Paul. Maybe so, but one can make the effort to absorb what Paul is saying of his alter-ego: he was violent and played power games with his girl-friend. It is neither infectious nor lyrical.
Lennon also contributed to “With a Little Help from my Friends”, an understated song, and also an under-appreciated one, even though it’s generally considered to be a very strong song. It is the only song I know of that deals with the question of loneliness and friendship within the context of an established relationship. “What do I do when my love is away?” Billy Shears (borrowing Ringo’s voice) asks, and then the chorus queries him: “Does it worry you to be alone?” No, he answers, “I get by with a little help from my friends.” So Billy has a “love”, and yet, he feels as if he could be lonely but for his friends, and but for something else – his self. This, I think, is what lies behind the wonderful lines where the chorus ask: “What do you see when you turn out the light?”, setting up Shears’ reply: “I can’t tell you but I know that it’s mine.” This could be a pretty good description of the ineffable feeling of self-in-mystery that comes with “remembering myself”, to use Gurdjieff’s potent phrase. If I recall correctly, Paul, who wrote that line, was unsure of it, but John said words to the effect of: “Keep it in. We don’t know what it means, but we do.”
“Good Morning Good Morning” may have been occasioned by an ad for a yellow food-substitute that generations of hapless consumers have been mis-educated into thinking is a breakfast cereal, but reflects John’s antecedent meditations on the world. Its true soul-mate is Paul’s “Penny Lane”. Like that song, it is a mosaic (that word again) of snapshots from the world. It’s a mosaic and not a congeries of photographs because it bears the overall message of the album: “Yes. Despite everything you can say against it, I say Yes!”. Because the song hangs together as a consistent whole, without breaks in rhythm or melody line, it is harder to spot its picaresque character, but it’s there right before us. The poor man and woman who are objects of the first line are not the objects of the balance of the song: “Nothing to do to save his life, call his wife in”. The very next line is addressed to someone else: “How’s your boy been?” Truthfully, Lennon declares, “I’ve got nothing to say, but it’s okay, good morning, good morning.” While the greetings are perfunctory and even robotic, the point is that there is a real person behind them: “Somebody needs to know the time, glad that I’m here.” Habits, grim as they may become, have a sense, have a purpose.
At times, “everyone you see is half asleep”, but later that same day, “everyone you see is full of life.” It’s not just that Lennon found the going hard in the morning, although I believe he did. His final words are “I’ve got nothing to say, but it’s okay, good morning, good morning.” As with “#9 Dream”, he admits that words fail him right now. But he’s not just talking, he’s making music, and the song doesn’t close there. There is a galloping explosion of sounds, similar to that on “Mr Kite” in that both produce an illusion of stored energy being gloriously released. Both songs end with special effects that extend the words and music into humorously managed chaos. I know that some people find a bad humour here, but I have never felt that. My conjecture is that these souls are projecting what they think they know of Lennon into the song. Listening to the brass works and the flair with which Ringo bangs the drums, how could the affirmation of the song as a whole be missed? This is the John Lennon who in that same year was positively impressed by Yoko Ono’s “piece”, where he climbed a ladder to grasp a magnifying glass and read the single word: “Yes”.
John also contributed the bulk of “A Day in the Life”. It may not be a coincidence that the two strongest songs on the record, at least in my opinion, are the two he worked on with Paul: “Life” and “With a Little Help”. The haunting pentatonic melody Lennon produced for the verses rivals, to my ear, the tune of “Yesterday”. However, the contents of the lyrics don’t appeal to cabaret acts, at least not powerfully, and so it isn’t widely covered. I recall, when I was young, some people, then in their late 20s, but who would have been in their late teens in 1967, standing around a piano while someone played this song. When it came to the two transitions from John’s verses to Paul’s snatch of a mini-song (“Woke up. Got out of bed.”), the playing floundered. They had to make-believe that the song flowed (the sole weakness of the song is that it relies too heavily on those two bridges). But whenever they came to the words “I’d love to turn you on”, they did turn on. The sound, the exuberance, the feeling flowing from this little coterie all cranked up. They were, so to speak, turned on. And that is how I always understood those words. Was Lennon referring to drugs? To sex? To human sympathy, or to all of them? Lennon may not have known, or more accurately, may have considered the question a non-question. But, for me, that memory of the “adults” around a piano represents in one vignette the power of this song, and is a reliable key to how to read it and Lennon’s contribution to this extraordinary album.
I have little else to say, but for me, the strength of John’s contribution to this album is not that he balanced Paul’s sweetness (although, as we saw in “Getting Better”, Paul’s sweetness is not so syrupy as one might always think). No, it is that Lennon consistently, on four songs, continued his exploration of the relationship between reality and perception, and, in the end, the results of his search were positive. And, in doing so, he made vivid what so many have said anyway, but few have communicated so well, that consciousness is not apart from reality, but that with one’s attitude, the three form a whole that cannot be broken down into mundane facts on the one hand and sensible opinions (or, when rebuking, not so sensible opinions) on the other.
I have said a lot about context. I think that the importance of context and background is part of the unfathomable nature of associations which Gurdjieff referred to. The power of context is show in one matter which struck me when I was pondering George’s contribution to this record. A lot of George’s credibility came from his being a Beatle. Preachy songs like “Within You, Without You” were received less critically than they would have been without the implied imprimatur of the other Beatles. Context and credibility is why Lennon’s voice is the standout counterpoint on “She’s Leaving Home”. When John sings “We never thought of ourselves, never a thought for ourselves”, you receive the full force of John’s unhappiness with middle-class complacency and its mercantile attitude to affection (I changed your nappies and so you must “love” me). Had George or anyone else sung those words they would have been delivered as a statement of fact. To my mind, apart from the subjective question of whether the melodies and lyrics were any good, those who critique Sgt. Pepper’s too often do so without stepping back and looking at the record as a whole, in its breathing context. Some people analyse it in such fine detail that they lack perspective on what is before them.
In the end, then, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is the word “Yes”, spoken with full knowledge of and despite the reality of “No”. It delivered the positive message that life is worthwhile in and through the entire roller-coaster ride of highs and lows, and all the sorrow, pain, joy and delight. Your experience of reality, it says, is at least in part a function of your consciousness. And you have some influence over that.
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“For those interested in learning more about the philosophy behind this blog, and Gurdjieff, whose ideas are referred to here, the book ‘George Adie: A Gurdjieff Pupil in Australia’ by George Adie and Joseph Azize (author of this blog) is available at www.bythewaybooks.com“
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JOSEPH AZIZE has published in ancient history, law and Gurdjieff studies. His first book The Phoenician Solar Theology treated ancient Phoenician religion as possessing a spiritual depth comparative with Neoplatonism, to which it contributed through Iamblichos. The second book, “Gilgamesh and the World of Assyria”, was jointly edited with Noel Weeks. It includes his article arguing that the Carthaginians did not practice child sacrifice.
The third book, George Mountford Adie: A Gurdjieff Pupil in Australia represents his attempt to present his teacher (a direct pupil of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky) to an international audience.The fourth book, edited and written with Peter El Khouri and Ed Finnane, is a new edition of Britts Civil Precedents. He recommends it to anyone planning to bring proceedings in an Australian court of law.
“Maronites” is pp.279-282 of “The Encyclopedia of Religion in Australia” published by Cambridge University Press and edited by James Jupp.
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