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ELTON JOHN: The Songs of Self-Knowledge (Part 1)

ccwe — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:56:48 +0000

JOSEPH AZIZE PAGE

Joseph.Azize@googlemail.com

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Bernie Taupin and Elton John

“It is on your own self-knowledge and experience that the knowledge and experience of everything else depend.”So spoke the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing more than 600 years ago, in what is the greatest work of mysticism in the English tongue known to me (see ch 43 of Clifton Wolters’ translation). As I said in the first Elton John blog, it is through knowledge of this life and our selves that we come to knowledge of a higher life and, once more, our selves. But, of course, our experience of our selves on that other level is quite different.

And so it is that I return to Elton John, because I sense that sometimes something sublime comes from beyond and can be felt through the songs Of all their work, perhaps John and Taupin touch the sublime most often on these songs of self-knowledge, such as “Someone Saved my Life Tonight”, “We All Fall in Love Sometimes” and “The Sweetest Addiction”.

Other than John Lennon, I can think of no other artistes of their era like Elton John and Bernie Taupin for excelling in what I might call “songs of self-knowledge” or perhaps “songs of reflective biography “. Certainly, I do not know of anyone else in popular music who has developed such a sustained corpus of work over a period of 30 years. I think that Taupin’s work is marked by an impartiality and even fearlessness as much as Lennon’s was. After all, Taupin is writing lyrics for another person to set to music and perform, and not just anyone, but Elton John.

Meditating on the Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy album led me to a discovery which really should have been apparent before, but had somehow escaped me. And that is that although we exclusively think of Taupin as someone who writes the words, he is in a very real way, a musician. His instrument just happens to be his words, an instrument few can master, and his great achievement is that he developed his art to the lofty degree where his words sing on the page with an unheard melody. Incidentally, much as I respect Dylan’s achievements, I don’t hear that much self-knowledge in his songs, although there is certainly tremendous insight and his lyrics often have the musicality I find in Taupin’s. But in the end, Dylan seems to me to hide behind his presentation, while John and Taupin reveal, and so whatever self-understanding he has remains in obscurity. Only outside of popular music, for example with Gerard Hopkins, do I find even more self-knowledge and musicality combined than I do in Taupin.

However, we must come back to this fundamentally important question of the search for self-knowledge. If one has been touched by the search, then the questions “Who am I?” and “What am I?” always demand a response, although – and perhaps even because – they can never be answered once and for all. If we speak of self-knowledge, then because it is self-knowledge, we can take no one else’s word for it. Self-discovery is only possible because a higher part of us is impartial. When I see myself, the lower self becomes transparent to a higher part in myself, and that higher part operates under entirely different rules, and has different powers.

Even if I am alone in my room, yet all of my learning takes place within a socially-constructed world, and I am forever learning from and with others. It is not just that we can compare ourselves to others, find similarities and draw distinctions. Neither is it just that we can get good ideas, or follow other people’s methods. We can also, to an extent, recognize ourselves in others. This doesn’t mean seeing that the details of our loves are identical, although this can occur. More deeply, it means seeing the human condition beneath the accidental facts and biographical details; seeing that we all share in this common humanity, and that we make it what it is in all its inexhaustible variety.

The essential self may be approximately described in words, and we can even figure out some things about ourselves with our intellects, but it’s only discovered through feeling, and, of course, there are levels of feeling and hence of self-knowledge. But affirmation of the goodness of life is a feeling impulse which will bring impartiality. This entails seeing myself without undue self-appreciation or self-hatred. Full and complete impartiality, however, is a function of the essential self, the soul. The soul brings something trans-personal in self-knowledge, an awareness of a call, a memory of something always just forgotten.

When I speak of songs of self-knowledge I am not speaking of narcissism. “My Way” is narcissistic and self-congratulatory, but as we shall see, the music I’m discussing is not. It is not spiritual, either, and yet it isn’t divorced from the spirit. Perhaps the first striking feature of these “songs of self-knowledge” is their quantity: John and Taupin entered the field in a convincing way with 1975’s Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy, and updated this tour de force on 2006’s The Captain and the Kid. These were albums completely devoted to reflection on their own history as artistes. In addition, there are many songs of this genre on The Fox, Made in England, Songs from the West Coast, and Peachtree Road. The theme clearly means a great deal to them, and has meant more as they grow older, having both more material and more leisure for reflection. To really understand what I am writing about, you will need to hear the music, beginning with Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy, which for my money (and I’m not alone in this) is their greatest achievement, surpassing even the magnificent Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. In the discussion, I’ll be referring to the tracks as they were on the record, five tracks on each of its two sides. We shall see why a little later.

The first track, the title track, is a good example of Elton John’s originality: it sounds like no song you’ve ever heard before. Until the chorus, it has no almost melody, although it has a sound and a rhythm, and the effect of the song seems perhaps even stronger for all that. You know that this song was not produced in a hit factory, because small clusters of words are broken into islands of sense by a jagged phrasing and oddly placed emphasis: “Captain Fan-tastic … raised and regimented … hardly a hero … Just someone his mother might know.” This works, partly, I think, because he’s telling a story, and an achingly beautiful tune like that of “Your Song” might distract from the narrative, while the strength of the lyrics is quite sufficient to hold our attention and interest. “Raised and regimented”: it is hard to imagine that any three less assuming words could be found to say so much about what in a later song they would describe as a “repressed” youth.

Elton, of course, is Captain Fantastic, while Taupin is the Brown Dirt Cowboy, turning brown in his ‘saddle’ even as the precocious Captain inhabits the stimulating but artificial city. They are painted not quite as opposites, but as contrasts united by a common aspiration for the “honey the hive could be holding”. In a wonderful expression, their pursuit of their art takes them “from the end of the world to your town”. After all, wherever they are seems to them to be the end of the world, while wherever you are, and no matter how small a target, they are infallibly delivered to you through the electronic media. And yet, for them, their careers have been a ‘long and lonely climb’, which they also describe as walking on a wire and as ‘stepping in the ring’.

In an artistic touch of considerable finesse, these two characters, our hosts in this autobiography-for-two, are distinguished by their food. The Captain has cornflakes and tea with sugar: the Cowboy eats “sweet chocolate biscuits, and red rosy apples in summer”. Later in the song, when they are struggling to establish themselves in their chosen careers, they share the same food, “cheap easy meals”, which as Taupin wryly notes, “are hardly a home on the range”. I am fairly certain that readers will be able to point me to many examples of autobiography rock, hitherto unknown to me. And I’m quite sure that some of these will prove to be considerable achievements. But I’ll be very surprised if any of these use simple references to differences in diet with anything like the symbolic force that Taupin does.

There is a lot of history in these lines: one couplet juxtaposes the ‘City Slick Captain’ with the ‘still green and growing’ Cowboy. Then we’re told of “weak winged young sparrows that starve in the winter” and “broken young children on the wheels of the winners”. The Captain and the Kid must have seen a lot of callousness and even bastardry. The lyrics for a song called “Dogs in the Kitchen” were printed with the lyrics, although the song is not on the album, if it was ever recorded. The sentiments seem so raw that if Elton did them justice, the product may not have been a palatable release for the average record company. The very first line is: “All our innocence gave way to lust”. And that was the sweetener:

Poor boys fight to stay alive …
Uncage us, we’re restless, snarled the dogs in the kitchen.
Howling in the heatwave, riding all the bitchin’ ladies.
Who got the first bite in on the greasy bone?
… the vultures belch in their swivel chairs,
And the vampires all wear ties.

It is unnerving to think of writers being likened to greasy bones and quarrelled over by cannibalistic entrepreneurs. This gives us a gritty perspective on the title track, where Elton sings: “We’ve thrown in the towel too many times, our for the count when we’re down”. This is why I say that this is fundamentally a universe apart, and two dimensions deeper than Sinatra’s “regrets, I’ve had a few, but then again …”.

However, even the most powerful missiles need to be launched and guided, and it’s the music which delivers these words. The real magic, for me, is in the combination. To start with, the simplicity of the title track is like innocence made audible. Then, at about 1’ 46” when Elton begins to sing about the Brown Dirt Cowboy, the music picks up. Steady country and western strumming effortlessly evokes an air of ‘childhood at home’ feel, but becomes ‘rockier’ as the song proceeds. This musical development naturally bridges the twin worlds of town and country, the passage from youth to adolescence, the fall from fruit to fat, and the journey from the idyllic woods to wherever we are. The important connection, of course, is between John and Taupin: “hand in hand went music and the rhyme”. One of the odd things is that while Elton is the city-slicker and is significantly called ‘the Captain’, he was, in some ways more vulnerable and innocent than Taupin: one has the feeling that the Cowboy was canny enough for the two of them. This masterly track nicely sets the stage, and introduces its heroes to the challenging world at the same time as it introduces them to us.

The very next track is the knowing “Tower of Babel”. Its first sounds are as ominous and resonant as two tolls on an undertaker’s bell: “Snow – cement – “ and we are immediately submerged in a world of barely speakable cynicism:

Were the darlings on the sideline
Dreaming up such cherished lies
To whisper in your ears before you die?

As with the title track, Taupin is not saying that their early years were tough. He is saying that they were facing starvation, and even the prospect of death. There is not much here about knowing yourself, but knowledge is demonstrated. Too often, we lie to ourselves about the past: we paint it in pictures either too black or too white. In each case we’re really trying to project an image of ourselves (“I understand and forgive all”, or the opposite). But there is no honesty without fearlessness. If someone was a bastard, why not say so? Here, someone has learned a lesson and tells the truth, let the chips fall where they may. Had he said it in those words, it would have sounded indulgent. But Taupin just tells it as it was, so we can take it or leave it. Then we’re into the chorus:

It’s party time for the guys in the Tower of Babel
Sodom meet Gomorrah, Cain meet Abel. …
Watch them dig their graves,
‘Cos Jesus don’t save the guys in the Tower of Babel.

The Biblical terms add a surprising solemnity, and universalise the experience of these two young men. Taupin will open his bible again, for example, on “Just like Noah’s Ark”, from The Captain and the Kid. It’s funny how often non-believers quote the Bible and appeal to Jesus and salvation. It’s also an odd image because the point of the Tower is that it was never completed. The ‘Babel’ here is both the ‘Babylon’ of John’s Apocalypse, the city of the harlot and unspeakable sin, and the Tower which is cast down and has became a symbol of false pride and arrogance. And it also fits the skyscrapers where the captains of industry lurk as if it were designed for them. So, even if it’s a rather anomalous metaphor, it’s nonetheless evocative and multi-dimensional. The crudity of their money-chase is underscored by the fact that, as even more than with the title track, there is no tuneful melodic line : it is as if the omen-like intensity of the words breaks their symphonic chains. But that changes at the chorus “It’s party time for the guys in the Tower of Babel. Sodom meet Gomorrah! Cain, meet Abel!”

So “Babel” is one raw and fiery song. The significance of its first black statement, the stark single word ‘Snow’, is obvious. The second verse opens with the knell of two words ‘Junk – Angel’, and takes us down beneath the floorboards into the company of cockroaches, where the dealers in the basement are “filling your prescription for a brand new heart attack”.

On track three, the tone softens with the beguilingly musical: “Bitter Fingers”. It opens in the voice of an entertainer addressing the songwriters:

I’m going on the circuit, doing all the pubs,
And I really need a song, boys, to stir those workers up,
And get their wives to sing it with me …

It isn’t that the entertainer is insincere, he’s just selfish, insensitive and second-rate. He’s been deeply dyed in the industry. After two bouncing verses of this blarney, the gears crunch, and Elton snarls:

It’s hard to write a song with bitter fingers,
So much to prove, so few to tell you why.
Those old die-hards in Denmark Street start laughing
At the keyboard player’s hollow haunted eyes …
No more long days hocking hunks of garbage.
Bitter fingers never swung on swinging stars.

I had to cite those last two lines if not just for the alliteration. Although it is the first track on side two, I shall deal here with “Meal Ticket”. It covers something of the same ground as “Tower of Babel” and “Bitter Fingers”, but this time, it directly reveals what “Fingers” had only implied: that the songwriters could themselves be mercenary. I take it that, in the very first line, Elton is aggressively addressing music industry power brokers:

I can hound you if I need to,
Sip your brandy from a crystal shoe …
While the others climb reaching dizzy heights,
The world’s in front of me in black and white:
I’m on the bottom line, I’m on the bottom line.

… While the Diamond Jims
And the Kings Road pimps
Breathe heavy in their brand new clothes.

So here are both sides: the boys’ desperation, and the cynical, selfish parasitism which has driven them where they never thought to go. We’re now removed from the innocence of the title track by a margin that can be crossed but not measured:

And I gotta get a meal ticket.
To survive you need a meal ticket,
To stay alive you need a meal ticket.
Feel no pain, no pain; no regret, no regret.
When the line’s been signed you’re someone else.

I took this song out of turn because these last three songs, like “Dogs in the Kitchen”, deal directly with an important issue: how we relate to being abused. Here the abuse is bloodsucking by professionals in suits and ties, but in life we find countless other examples. The starting point is to see it for what it is. Of course we have been taught to love our enemies, but this does not mean to pretend that they are not your enemies or have not harmed you. One can aspire to say “Forgive them for they know not what they do”, although to be candid, one can know that but yet be incapable of feeling anything which corresponds to it. As the late George Adie said, that sentiment is the ultimate in impartiality. We are still learning to be impartial for short moments. The ultimate is not yet within grasp, though we must not give up on that account.

What I like about these three songs, indeed, what I respect, is that Taupin states his disgust in all its bare ugliness without excuse, apology or evasion. He does not indulge in hatred, he just paints what he saw and felt. It isn’t pretty, but it is arresting. It has, to my mind, something of the quality of some of Tennessee Williams’ work, which is noteworthy, because Taupin mentions him at least twice, on “Lies” from Made in England, and on “Old Sixty Seven” from The Captain and the Kid. Of course, Taupin was attracted to Williams’ work because of a pre-existing similarity of disposition, just as Lennon was. You could, perhaps, call it a thirst for the truth, accepting that someone may be hurt. And I have to add here that I just don’t believe people who urge ‘love’ as if it were as accessible to the heart as money to the hand. This is one area where Taupin has never, from what I can presently recall, slipped in syrup. Even on an early piece like “Border Song” on the Elton John album, he is aware that the love which ends enmities must be sweated and prayed for. Perhaps I shall come to that in a future article. For now, we have the powerful and almost transcendent close of side one: “Tell me when the Whistle Blows” and “Someone Saved my Life Tonight”.

“Whistle Blows” is a story of the country boy going back home for a visit: “And I still feel the need of your apron strings once in a while”. The London railway is seedy, and he himself feels like “a black sheep going home”. Yet, he’s drawn back, and wonders whether the “street kids (will) remember”, whether he can still play pool like he used to, and whether “this country kid (has) still got his soul”. I hear something big in the music, rather as if Elton John also related to it, although it’s really Bernie’s story. What I hear in it, and in its inspired string arrangement, is “moving on to the moment of truth”, if I can put it that way. Has he changed? Who is he now? How will others, his family and his peers receive him? What it comes down to, perhaps, is this: has he been true to himself?

Perhaps questioning yourself is always the first step to seeing yourself, and thus to self-knowledge. This song is Taupin’s record of questioning himself. Great as this song is, it’s greatest value perhaps, is to set the stage and open the curtain for what may be the strongest song this duo ever produced: “Someone Saved my Life Tonight”. On the record, this track closes side 1 with the closure of a red curtain at intermission; and these two tracks are balanced by the last two tracks on side 2, which reprise them in a different emotional key. If “Whistle Blows” is a story of going back home, “Someone” is the same story, but in tragic-triumphant tones, of returning home, to light from darkness. Just quickly, the loss of the two-side album has not only spelled the effective end of the art of record covers, but has robbed the artiste and their audience of the dramatic opportunity to close one side and open another. This is why the record is different from, and superior to the CD.

The piano and cymbals of “Someone Saved my Life Tonight” take us to a world far from that the black sheep waiting at the station, however near it may be in miles: “When I think of those East End lights, muggy nights, curtains drawn in the little room downstairs.”It is not innocent, and its stolid respectability is barely skin deep. The woman Elton almost married is hardly painted in flattering terms: “Prima donna, lord, you really should have been there; sitting like a princess perched in her electric chair”. He gets drunk so that he can’t hear her, and his friends are as legless as he is. We know that this is all true, and that to escape a marriage he felt he could not disavow, he tried to gas himself, but was saved by Long John Baldry. This is the song of the man who came through:

And someone saved my life tonight, sugar bear.
… You nearly had me roped and tied,
Altar bound, hypnotised.
Sweet freedom whispered in my ear,
You’re a butterfly, and butterflies are free to fly,
Fly away, high away … bye, bye!

The lyrics are almost stunning in places: “A slip noose hanging in my darkest dreams. … Just a pawn outplayed by a dominating queen. … Saved in time, thank God my music’s still alive.”

This last line is the key to the album, that music equals life. Yet, as we shall see, there’s more. There is an odd kind of contemplative interlude, where he says “I would have walked head on into the deep end of the river”, almost as if he is somewhere above his body, watching it move. The same disembodied calm possesses the line “They’re coming in the morning with a truck to take me home”, the line which formally links this to “Whistle Blows”. Then the music swells until it is would be too intense to bear but for the band’s masterly restraint: “Someone saved my life tonight, so save your strength and run the field you play alone”.

Bear in mind that this is the man whom Bernie Taupin calls ‘The Captain’. And after Taupin wrote him these lyrics, he set them to music of singular potency and sang them. Somewhere or other, I came across that when it was being recorded, Gus Dudgeon asked Elton to put more emotion into his voice, until Davey Johnstone told him to let up: “he’s singing about an attempted suicide”, or words to that effect. That the Captain should submit himself to the ordeal is significant. It had a life purpose, it was written and recorded for a purpose, for fulfilment, not for money.

This is one of those songs where I feel that although the spirit is never mentioned, yet the music bears within itself something of the sublime. In the first blog, I wrote: “I call the ‘sublime’ that precious, subtle feeling of myself as if on the cusp of touching the mystery of eternity. It is the life of what Gurdjieff called the “higher emotional centre”, and its music is, as it were, music delivered through the flesh, but heard by the ears of the soul. … For example, when I listen, with quiet attention, to Elton John’s “Someone Saved My Life Tonight” or “Funeral for a Friend”, I feel that there is something majestic swelling in and above the music, which calls me on and upwards.” And I’m not alone in that.

Now, as mentioned, side two opens with the visceral “Meal Ticket”, but from there, the mood of the record changes. Track two is the startlingly original “Better Off Dead”. Driven by the piano, Elton sounds almost derring-do. If a song were to be written for the Scarlet Pimpernel, this could be it. It’s early morning in the grimy city, people are being arrested as the fag end of the night plays itself out: there’s vandalism, and there’s trouble. And yet, here is life! As in “Someone Saved”, music and life are linked:

‘Cause the steam’s in the boiler, the coal’s in the fire!
If you ask how I am, then I’ll just say ‘inspired’!
If the thorn of the rose is the fire in your side,
Then you’re better off dead and you haven’t yet died.

Life is acknowledged, accepted and affirmed with its thorns and all. The means to affirmation is the music, or to be more precise, the feeling of self which comes through their music. This feeling comes through clearly and warmly on the next track: “Writing”:

Inspiration for navigation of our new found craft.
… Will the things we wrote today sound as good tomorrow?
Will we still be writing in approaching years?
… Don’t disturb us if you hear us trying
To instigate the structure of another line or two,
‘Cause writing’s lightin’ up,
And I like life enough to see it through.

I don’t think the music of this song is particularly wonderful, but it’s pleasant, and it allows one a nice breathing space between the precocity of “Better Off Dead” and the symphonic triumph of “We All Fall in Love Sometimes” and “Curtains”, which really form one sustained statement. Here, the love we all happen to fall for is their music. Now not everyone writes music, but music here is a symbol of realising one’s potential, and love for what we have made of ourselves.

This is, I think, the manifesto of the album, if it has one. If the music is alive (not prostituted to the highest bidder), if it is your music, and you are true to yourself, everything life sends you can be accepted. We have seen how the preceding songs have provided the material of this ‘manifesto’, and it all comes together now on “We All Fall in Love Sometimes” and “Curtains”

The song opens with some simple descending piano lines. It’s as if someone has walked into the room. Then Elton starts singing, describing the two of them, late at night on a subway station, tired and aching, but believing that “it’s all worth it, we all fall in love sometimes”. Accidentally or not, Elton’s accent falls equally on the three words “all – worth – it”. Exactly what it conveys, beyond the intuition that ‘it’ is something special, is hard to say; yet I feel meaning in it. Now comes the romance:

Full moon’s bright, starlight filled the evening,
We wrote it, and I played it,
Something’s happened,
It’s so strange this feeling.
Naive notions that were childish,
Simple tunes that tried to hide it.
When it comes, we all fall in love sometime.

The melody is simple, and has a subtle sway which comes more to the fore in the chorus: “Did we, didn’t we, should we, could we …”. The evocation of close-of-day fatigue married with the discovery of the wonders of their “newfound craft”, is as accomplished as it is – to my best knowledge – unique. In a funny way, such is the achievement of this song that there I have very little to say about it. To my ear, at least, these songs of self-knowledge are amongst the greatest songs of the last hundred years, and “We All Fall” is perhaps the jewel in the crown. It segues straight into “Curtains”, once more, a strikingly original song in melody, lyrics and format. Like the total track, it practically has no tunefulness, and yet, as chimes softly toll, its slowly paced incantation gives the lyrics an almost oracular status:

I used to know this old scarecrow,
He was my song, my joy and sorrow.
Cast alone between the furrows
Of a field no longer sown by anyone.

As with the previous song, there are no illusions that everything they wrote was brilliant. Yet, the old scarecrow is not disowned, and in one concise phrase we have a generous spectrum of feeling: “He was my song, my joy and sorrow”. The next words are given poignancy by the bells which have been unobtrusively sounding:

I held a dandelion that said the time had come,
To leave upon the wind, never to return,
When summer burned the earth again.
Cultivate the freshest flower
This garden ever grew.
In between these branches
I once wrote such childish words for you.

We have seen these motifs above, the country imagery, and the naivety of some of their earliest songs. But the themes are now drawn together and bring a coherent, almost convincing power, as Taupin refigures them. We have come now from summers in the saddle to summers which will never be repeated, from aspiration to achieving. Yes, the lyrics were naive:

But that’s okay, there’s treasure children always seek to find,
And just like us, you must have had A Once Upon A Time.

This is an important insight: we can punish ourselves for the mistakes of childhood and adolescence, but we were learning and, we can punish ourselves beyond any sane reason for our ignorance. This understanding is allowed its full weight by the evenly chanted spell which Elton John casts. Finally, there is a lengthy “outro” in which Elton and the vocalists compete in bursts of “o-o-o-o-o” and “lum-de-dum-de-day-do” while the drums rumble and the bells ring. No wonder Elton John’s output went into a slump after this. Where else could he go? If it is a law that every force has an equal and opposite reaction, then the law applies to output (which makes me think of how the Beatle’s greatest triumphs, Rubber Soul, Revolver and Sgt Pepper were followed by the mediocre Magical Mystery Tour, and the splendid John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band and Imagine by the barely listenable Some Time in New York City).

Captains Fantastic is the most perfectly executed concept album I have ever heard, forming a satisfying thematically unified whole. I mean that it makes a better album because, being integrated, it leaves one with a sense of the whole which rounds out any uneven spots along the way. It’s as if the weak points are effaced by the strengths, because after the title track, no song is beginning from zero point. There is a building, an accumulation, and it’s all gathered and harvested in the almost spectacularly brilliant “We All Fall in Love Sometimes” and “Curtains”, two limbs of one musical statement.

More than I can recall in popular music, John and Taupin demonstrate the continuity between childhood and adulthood, acknowledge it, and understand that with the development there come also lawful changes. It is an album of metamorphosis. Although it’s never stated, there is something of the story of the Ugly Duckling here about Elton John: the nerd who grows up to reveal a soul of heroic steel.

The album is a statement of metamorphosis: the album cover, the work of Alan Aldridge and Harry Willcock, but conceived by Taupin, I believe, evokes a world of chimeras, unearthly combinations and familiar monstrosities. Once again, I have reason to mourn the passing of the album cover. Perhaps if CDs could be released within record sleeves? It is a manifesto of metamorphosis, because the message is that only if you are true to yourself and do not compromise on the music inside you (whatever form that music takes) can you realise your potential. This message is rather more explicitly developed on The Captain and the Kid, so I’m fortunate to have the advantage of hearing that music in my head as I consider this one.

While Captain Fantastic is about the lives of John and Taupin, it is also of almost universal relevance: it deals with ambition, love of life, sacrifice, great sadness, triumph, realism, creation, manipulation, excess, generosity of spirit, perseverance, and human existence. Ultimately, everyone can relate to its forceful artistic statement that life is worth living, despite the pain. And the statement is put all the more powerfully for not being put directly. If you let the music in, the enlightenment rises upon you, in all its splendour, and lives inside your feeling. Considering Captain Fantastic from that perspective, it’s clear why it is, at least in conception, superior to Yellow Brick Road.

But that’s not all. When I said that the message is that life is worth living, despite the pain, I think that there’s something else implied. And that is that you have to make it worth living. I would say that an aim is needed, and in Gurdjieff’s terms, this would be an aim to discover and develop your essential individuality. In Taupin’s terms, speaking about Elton and himself, it was the development of their musicianship. When he said “thank God my music’s still alive”, what was his highest gratitude for: himself or his muse? And yet, perhaps the two come down to the same thing.

Elton John and Bernie Taupin

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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.

Joseph.Azize@googlemail.com

John Lennon: Essence & Reality Part 14: “Tennessee” and “Real Love”

ccwe — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 14:54:25 +0000

JOSEPH AZIZE PAGE

Joseph.Azize@googlemail.com

John Lennon

Tennessee Williams

Lennon took a rather high view of the artist’s role and mission in society. He not only preached it, he indulged himself (and his second wife) in living the life of the socially-conscious avant-garde artist, and living it rather expansively. There was a rationale, if not an ideology behind it. One could conceive Lennon producing a manifesto to the effect that the role of the artist is to animate people by mediating a cultural influence, and, in rare cases, at the tip of the flower of culture, a spiritual influence. This influence comes through in the artist’s work, but as the Lennons saw “art” as a river without banks, it also flowed through their lives. If artists have the privilege of being opinion makers, leaders and teachers, there are also responsibilities and prices. Artists are responsible to use their public profile to spread a positive message. But this profile exacts a price, the notorious down-side of living in the public eye, and being vulnerable to misunderstanding and abuse, especially from the jackals of the media.

As one would expect, Lennon’s relationship with his public and journalists was highly charged and strongly polarised in both directions – attraction and repulsion. He wanted people to love not just his work but also himself. Sometimes this was manifested in absurd extremes of self-importance, as, for example, when returning his MBE in protest to the Palace, he cited as one of his reasons that “Cold Turkey” had slipped down the charts. Even if this was meant to be humorous, it was a significant humour, because it is spun out of nothing but vanity. I doubt that it would occur to the average person to suppose that Her Majesty, or even the government of the UK, could have done anything about chart performance of 45 rpm records, let alone be rebuked for not having taken measures to ensure that “Cold Turkey” peaked at the metaphorical Everest. Much as I admire Lennon, he himself was the only butt of that joke, if indeed it was a joke. It was egoism to a delusional degree; and part of the reason I do admire him is because eventually took himself in hand and become humbler.

This conception of the artist’s noble social calling is a contributing explanation of many if not most of Lennon’s more bizarre actions in the late 1960s and early 1970s, such as the bed-ins. They said that they knew that they were going to get publicity whatever they did, and decided to use it in a manner which they saw as positive. We all see the point they were trying to make: the desire for peace should be a major value in everyone’s real life, and not just a camouflage for a profound apathy, or a tonic to placate the last remaining vestiges of conscience while engaging in war. At the time, important nations in the Western world were fighting the war in Vietnam, which, for everything I can see, was not a just war. Those who resisted the war must have felt frustrated to a point of madness. However, the self-importance and extremity of John and Yoko’s actions were of doubtful value, they were perhaps even counter-productive. A more measured protest, I suspect, would have been more effective. I think that, at that point and until his 1975 reunion with her, John and Yoko were so addicted to publicity and preaching that they did not consider that the wrong type of publicity could do damage to their causes.

After the tour de force of raw revelation which was the John Lennon / Plastic Ono Band album, Lennon cut the Imagine album. He once described the title track, his hymn for a believing atheism, as “sugar-coated”. After its critically acclaimed predecessor, yes “Imagine” does sound rather tailored for radio. And its sales far surpassed the previous one’s, which will not have displeased Lennon. It is
possible to entertain and spread a positive message at the same time. In itself that is not a serious problem: from what I can hear the very best music is played over radio together with everything else. Having fame and solo success, Lennon wanted to use it, and he and Yoko reverted to their favoured style: aggressive and preachy. And so they came to produce the disastrous Some Time in New York City album. Its chart and sales failure deeply upset Lennon, who was always competing with other musicians, especially, of course, Paul McCartney. I never heard, however, that he had acknowledged the record’s patent artistic failure.

But Lennon, being Lennon, could not sit still for long. Three years later, if you can credit it, these are lyrics Lennon was working on in the mid-70s, for a song in honour of Tennessee Williams, which showed how far he had come from the strident days of Some Time in New York City:

Tennessee, O Tennessee, what you’ve shown to me:1
Your words like water, pure and clear.
The sadness of your soul reveals the music of this sphere,
Conceal it behind your spirit mind, your poet’s love and feel.2

If I hadn’t heard Lennon singing these words, I wouldn’t have believed that he had written them, because nothing I’ve read about Lennon (and I’ve read whatever I can get my hands on) discloses the least reason to think that Lennon entertained such an exalted opinion of Williams. Lennon never finished this song, although he spent a lot of time working on it. When Lennon writes about “your words like water, pure and clear”, it is hard not to think of this of a case as one soul calling to another like soul, because Lennon too, aimed at clarity and directness.

On one take of “Tennessee”, the one I’ve most often heard, the opening verse is:

America, America, your heroes are alive.
Your faded men and glory will survive.
The madness of your soul supplies the all-consuming fire,
Beneath your spreaded chestnut lies A Streetcar Named Desire.

As with “Instant Karma!”, the writing is so intense, it is difficult to digest it. The final verse is no less compressed:

Tennessee, O Tennessee, your southern bell will ring.
Music travelled far from New Orleans.
Sling an arrowed mirror in the magic of your dreams
Reflect echoed harmony of the naked human being.
Reflect echoed harmony of the cold and lonely naked human being.

I am indebted to Peter Van Schie’s “Between the Lines” page for the lyrics. I must admit I could not make them all out from the recording. I have also heard another version of the song, where Lennon sings “Memory, O memory, release me from your spell”, and says that “today is really all I need to know”. I wonder whether Lennon wasn’t concerned that a song of homage to Tennessee Williams (who was then still alive and being covered in glory) would sound a little strange, and tried to find other lyrics. But these words, in homage to Williams and to the USA, are the only ones which work for me.

And they do work. The sentiments are so strange and almost forced as to be unsettling: what does it mean to sling an arrowed mirror, let alone to do the slinging in the magic of someone’s dreams? Yet, the anthemic quality of the music, the solemn almost gospel piano, and the patent unforced sincerity in his voice produce, in my opinion, one of Lennon’s greatest achievements. If Yoko Ono is reading this blog, it is the ideal moment for her to release every available version of this jewel, and in return I shall see to it that masses are offered for her and her intentions in every cathedral where I can have incense burned.

One of the important points here is that he seems to have learned something from Tennessee Williams: remember, Lennon’s opening sentiment is “Tennessee, O Tennessee, what you’ve shown to me” (my emphasis). What I think he learnt is that it is possible for the artist to be a poet, and to have a “spirit mind”, and to show people what their lives are like, without hopelessly antagonizing them and ridiculing himself as a fool.

Of course, in the past, Tennessee Williams had suffered more than his fair share of muck-throwing, and Lennon doubtless knew this. But by the mid 70s, Williams had come through, and his star had risen, fixed to if not in the constellation of the revered Marlon Brando (who had starred in the famous film version of A Streetcar Named Desire) and many other major stars with real credibility (e.g. Orson Welles) who had appeared in film versions of his plays. In his ability, in his mastery of his craft, his public penetration, in his history as a subject of abuse, and in his hoped for rehabilitation as an American icon, Lennon partly identified with Williams. Why else would he twice speak of Williams as producing “music”? One can wonder, too, whether Williams’ homosexuality and consequent outsider status may not also have appealed to Lennon.

But I think that the almost startling intensity of this song, and perhaps the fact that it was never completed and released, is eloquent of Lennon’s personal life in the last six years of his life. The significant elements are that Lennon sings of William’s words being “like water, pure and clear”, of the sadness of his soul, that this sadness reveals the “music of this sphere” (which I take to mean that as an artist he had access to higher level of insight), and that Williams could “conceal” the raw perception by virtue of his spirit mind of the love and feeling of a poet. All of these points are important. Lennon stated in one of his last interviews that many people were discomfited when he sang about himself, but if he made it a third person saga, such as Tommy, Ziggy Stardust or Sadie Schmuck (so it sounded to me), that could be accepted.

Could it be that at this point of his life, Lennon was starting to realise that sugar coating could be quite a useful commodity for a pill-maker? Sometimes I think that the vital fact is that both Williams and Lennon were appealing to America. Williams seems to me to have cherished an almost idolatrous love of the USA, after all, he changed his first name to “Tennessee”. But, it is also reasonable to suggest that Lennon’s reference to the country cannot be lightly dismissed. Lennon calls America by name, twice, almost like Elijah summoning the dead to rise. He boldly declares, prophet-like, that “your faded men and glory will survive.” By now the Vietnam war had been lost, and I think that this is Lennon’s theme. But he is not hooting in triumph: did he not mean that although he had opposed the war, he had never opposed the country and its people? He adored America, and he worshipped it partly because “the madness of (its) soul supplies (an) all-consuming fire,” and Lennon wanted fire (as perhaps we all do at some deep level). Be that as it may, the song abounds with soul, love and the value of honesty.

In these lyrics, Lennon see humanity on the slab, as it were, and declares that what Williams “reflects” and “echoes” is accurate. Lennon endorses Williams’ vision that on the marble is “the cold and lonely naked human being”. Can there be any doubt that Lennon saw himself and everyone he knew in Williams’ lines?

Incidentally, two images from this song were also found on the Walls and Bridges album. First, the liquid image (“all we need is water … cool … clear … water!) also recurs in “Old Dirt Road”, which he co-wrote with Nilsson not long before he began working on this song. Second, the “mirror in the magic of your dreams” reminds me of “# 9 Dream”, and the line “through the mirror go round”. Indeed, that song with its references to magic and spirits is close to “Tennessee”, in that both are visionary recitals.

This leads me, at last!, to the chief point of this blog, and that is this: while it is easy to criticise Lennon for not living his philosophy of love, he was, in my view, trying to transfer what he felt deeply as a reality in one state to his life when in another state. The higher, and truer state was, for Lennon, the one he experienced making and writing music. And yet he did not despise the world. Consider these words from the matchless “Real Love”, which he was working on about the same time as “Tennessee”:

All my little plans and schemes pass like some forgotten dream.
Seems that all I really was doing was waiting for you.
Just like little girls and boys playing with their little toys.
Seems like all we really were doing was waiting for love.
No need to be alone, no need to be alone.
It’s ree-yal love, it’s re-e-e-e-eal, yes it’s ree-yal love, it’s re-e-e-e-eal.
… No need to be afraid, no need to be afraid.
Thought I’d been in love before, but in my heart I wanted more …

Like “Tennessee”, the piano version has the simple dignified quality of the best of church music. The film “John Lennon: Imagine” opens with him playing it on acoustic guitar. Each has a disarming directness about it, and the Beatles’ edition from the third volume of the Anthology has an energy which adds an endearing vim, redolent to me of the early classics “I Want to Hold your Hand”, “She Loves You”, “I Feel Fine”, and so on. “Real Love” could, I think, well have fitted onto Rubber Soul or Revolver.

These lyrics, seemingly so naive, yet reveal so much: his plans and schemes have vanished like the merest of dreams. The occupations with which he kept himself so terribly busy were the pleasant bubbles of childhood. By stressing as he does that he has found real love, he is stating that there is an unreal love. He had always known it was possible, he says. It is as if he had been fooling himself. But no more. Beyond shadows to realities, as so many have said in different ways.

This, I think, is the key to both songs. Lennon was questing for the road to reality, and sometimes he found his feet on it. The way to the road lay, for him, through art and through love. So Lennon had had glimpses of this, but how to make it a part of his life? In a way, I feel that this was the theme of Lennon’s life and striving. What he wanted was reality.

Sometimes Lennon knew that reality lies not in personalities (as he sang in “God”), or in occupations or callings (such to the avant-garde), but in a change our internal states. As he sang in “Revolution” to all those agitating for political change, “you better free your mind instead”. But precocious as this understanding was, Lennon often forgot it. In fact, even when he wrote “Revolution” a part of him was not convinced of it.

One of Gurdjieff’s great insights was that we can know the truth, but the level of truth we can know depends upon our state. We cannot really speak of ourselves in an absolute way: to be more precise, and so freer of illusion, there is myself in this state, and myself in any one of the endless number of states we move from. Our state is always changing, but the range through which it changes can be higher or lower. The speed with which our state can fall is so bewildering that it can lead to despair. But with time, one can learn to raise one’s state just as quickly. And with time, too, our state will cease to fall so low as to sink into danger.

So that was John Lennon: he knew that there were certain states where love was real. That is what he wrote of in “Real Love”, and it supplied the fire that he then projected onto the USA and one of its greatest playwrights. The tragedy was that he was murdered while he was learning to bring something of this state to all the rest of his life, and to spread “The Word”, as he sang on Rubber Soul.

Note: Since I wrote the piece on “Imagine”, I have come to see one important matter: the song is actually addressed to believers. The famous opening words “Imagine there’s no heaven” can only make sense if spoken to those who believe in the existence of a heaven. “Heaven” is often a way of referring to “God”, just as “the White House” can often mean the President of the USA. Throughout the addresses those who also believe in hell and religion. Lennon does not outright invited us to imagine no God, but it comes to the same thing.

So what follows from this? To my mind it strengthens the impression that “the song aspires to ideals usually associated exclusively with religion.” Lennon was correct to say in 1980 that he was a religious person. It strengthens my sense that a spiritual or even mystic interpretation of Lennon’s life and work is fitting, and is potentially productive of good clear light.

Joseph.Azize@googlemail.com
27 September 2009

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.

Keith A. Buzzell: Man – A Three Brained Being

ccwe — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 18:47:59 +0000

JOSEPH AZIZE BOOK REVIEWS

Joseph.Azize@googlemail.com

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Dr Keith A. Buzzell

Review
Keith A. Buzzell, Man – A Three Brained Being (Resonant Aspects of Modern Science and the Gurdjieff Teaching), 2nd edition, edited by John Amaral, Marlena Buzzell, Bonnie Phillips and Toddy Smyth, Fifth Press, Salt Lake City, 2007

139 pages, including a glossary of specialist terms, full colour llustrations and a coloured book mark.

Overview
This book is unique in the Gurdjieff tradition. It is an original contribution to the study of man, and a stepping stone to further study. The quality of thought displayed is so high as to itself provide a subtle and powerful impression. It could have been subtitled “how and why the brains in man form images, what those images do, and how this can be done in either a healthy or an unhealthy way”.

Dr Buzzell’s avowed aim is to “blend a scientific perspective on the physical Universe and on human biology with a perspective on the possibility of self-transformation as taught by G.I. Gurdjieff.” (p.131) These two domains, physical science and Gurdjieff’s teaching (perhaps a species of metaphysical science), have both practical and theoretical applications. It is Dr Buzzell’s privilege (hereafter
“Buzzell”) to explore and relate the practical and the theoretical aspects of each. Buzzell was educated and trained as a physician, musician and scientist, and has put his good fortune to good use, understanding as he does that “the broad spectrum of human experiences that must be lived …” (p. 131, all italics in quotes are found in the original).

Buzzell invites the reader to “probe deeper”; not just to study his (i.e. Buzzell’s own ideas) but to individually apply what they understand in the light of their own lived experiences. His vision is one where many individuals will strive to apply Gurdjieff’s system and method in the groups or alone. Then, on the basis of that experience, they come into relation with each other to “share, to commune with, to support and to come into abiding relationship with each other.” (p.131)

Art and Illustrations
The cover is thicker than is usual with paperbacks. On the front, a blue netting design stretches over a light grey background. The centre is filled by a diagram in thin white lines, being a large circle with a slightly smaller circle concentrically inside it, filled with an set of interlocking triangles. The three corners of the largest upright triangle are each marked by a blue cluster, roughly circular, but with soft edges. It is as if the blue netting of the background is gathered into the white outlined circles and concentrated at these three corners. The design is redolent of space/time not being uniform, but concentrated by massy objects. We sense harmony, geometry, law, manifestation and peaceful transition in its imagery of simple forms meeting to cause more complex forms and concentrations to arise.

The page before the table of contents bears one of many full colour illustrations. Below it lies the dedication “For All Our Children and Grandchildren”. The ideas in this book are links in a chain which began even before Gurdjieff. The book as a whole fills a place in, and carries forward, a broad tradition which flows down from a great horizon. In a deft manner, the illustrations for this book, but especially the front cover, reflect the insight that both the perspectives of modern science and Gurdjieff’s ideas “herald a startlingly new view of our Universe.” (p. 3).

The book is organized into an introduction and four chapters. Each of these is preceded by a page bearing a few short quotations. Each of those pages is grey with a geometric figure, perhaps one could call it an unfolded triangle, ghosted in white lines. Numerous diagrams, some in colour, are provided. One has only to open the volume to see that the publisher does not just keep a commercial eye on the packaging: as one can fairly say of most presses. Rather, the press, its artists,
editors, author and staff, have collaborated in an endeavour at once
scientific, artistic and crafted.

Contents
The introduction asks: what is new since the time of Gurdjieff? The answer is found in the “technological application of the principles of relativity and quantum mechanics”, what Buzzell calls “new motions” (pp.3-4). This makes possible, among other things, the new imaging technologies of television, computer terminals, video games, internet and so on. These pump out images which the brain must take as real (pp.5-6), and present reality in a manner and at a speed which is not natural to our three brains. One result is that seeing everything available we want everything now (as stated at p.6). I had already thought that the “entertainment” industry, compressing the events of days, weeks and even years into an “action-packed” 90 minutes has had a part in making us impatient of process (e.g. in
learning). Gurdjieff made similar observations in his chapter on “Art”, but the situation has deteriorated since his time, and Buzzell illustrates how and why. As he states, the ideal or natural “time-of-relationship” for people is slower than what we presently allow (p.7). As Buzzell indicates, the possibility of personal transformation depends upon how the brains intentionally digest the images they form (p.8). And like every process, this has a time. If we squander it, if that time is not respected, nature does not give us that period over again. For example, if the fingers of the developing foetus are not differentiated in time, the body “continues its surge towards overall completion and makes compromises around uncompleted parts”, and each brain does the same (p. 6).

Chapter 1 is titled “New Concepts”. In 1915 Gurdjieff’s idea of man as a three-brained being was, “revolutionary”(p.11). In the 1950s, the idea of the triune brain was independently introduced to contemporary science by MacLean, who used the term “mentation” for “a brained process”, just as Gurdjieff did. However, MacLean’s work is not influential in today’s neuroscience (p. 12). The appearance of “brained” beings represents “the Great Turning” (p. 13):

This turning consisted of the evolution of biological mechanisms (one-brained beings) which could construct sensory images of a resonant portion of the forms and energies of the world external to itself. (p. 13)

Both Gurdjieff’s theory of “hydrogens” and modern chemistry recognize the significance of electromagnetic bonding energies in holding “states of matter” together (p. 14). As Buzzell correctly notes, the existence of other galaxies was not recognized until the late 1920s (p. 15), yet other galaxies are acknowledged in the Ray of Creation (e.g. Miraculous p. 80). I agree with him that these anticipations of
modern science are extraordinary. Buzzell takes the study of hydrogens further than I have elsewhere seen, and explains how H48 and 24, can now be seen to represent neural impulses and associative neural nets, respectively, unknown substances in 1915 (pp.16-7). With H12:

… the procreative (or germinative) matter/energy enters. It can also be understood as the first of Gurdjieff’s “spiritual” matters. … At the physical body level of procreation, it is the higher force at the essentially solar level of new creation – in the new, hydrogen-bonded linkages of our DNA. (p. 17)

The role of H12 in the development of individuality gives an objective basis for the analogy between sun and “real I”. It also provides a startlingly concrete dimension to Gurdjieff’s concept, passed on orally, of “creating sun in oneself.” A table of matters on p. 18 shows how each hydrogen relates to the substances known to science,
for example, H6 corresponds to galactic “cloud” interaction, and H12 to the state of plasma. My study of the ancient solar theology had already shown me that Gurdjieff’s many references to the sun were intended literally as well as metaphorically.

Buzzell also studies one of the most sadly neglected aspects of the ideas, the triads. In particular, he has an illuminating passage about the triad of transformation, 2-1-3 (pp.24-5). I have been collating the diverse indications on the triads, and Buzzell’s exposition absolutely confirms and extends what I have been able to piece together. His insight that “presence has a distinct and unique quality within each of the three forces of the triad …” explains something which is missing in Ouspensky’s account, and which I sensed had to be missing – but I could not see where the gap was. Now I can. This ends chapter 1.

Chapter 2 deals with “The Triune Brain”. Buzzell brings a new perspective to faith and hope, explains “wholing” (pp.30-1), images and resonance (pp.32-3), and while he does not refer to Gurdjieff here, his comments on vision (p. 34) elucidate why Gurdjieff privileged sight (Beelzebub at pp. 468-75, the white ray of light corresponds to the ‘common-integral vibration of all sources of actualizing’, etc). Buzzell goes on to deal with the other senses, both outer and inner, and his treatment of smell is particularly fascinating (pp. 36 and 43). He writes of the “sense of I”, the Great Traditions and their ossification, and the scientific method, summing up the chapter with “life” (p. 59).

Chapter 3, “Consciousness as the Coalescence of Images” shows how “awareness of various aspects of the world at and beyond the body surface is the most elemental or simple conscious state” (p. 70). In doing so, Buzzell adds further layers to what he has written about the brain and the senses; noting the sense of smell at p. 66. This chapter brings one to a sense of wonder at the image-making capacities of brained beings, the workings of association, memory, time, and the development of language. Buzzell’s pregnant comments on language at p.75 open new vistas on Gurdjieff’s remarks in Beelzebub and Remarkable Men. Over several pages, Buzzell describes how each brain receives impressions, forms images and associations, contributes to a different experience of time and to the development of human capacities. Then,
at pp. 78-9, he shows how although PET and MRI can show how different parts of the brain act when listening, nonetheless, we are not aware of that process but of the “coalescence of image”. When that image is one of lawfulness in the external world, the scientific method is possible (pp. 79 and 81, and illustrations 8 and 10). At the end of the chapter, Buzzell treats of “attention” and “will”, of which he says:

The Will, when understood as a truly independent source of decisioning … is higher (in potency) than impulse, image, consciousness or attention. We assign the potency of the Will to the em-force itself. (p. 87)

One has the feeling by now, that the black and white outline of the Ray of Creation we know from Ouspensky is being coloured in. Chapter 4 is headed: “The Digestion of Food, Air and Impressions: A Metaphor for Human Transformation.” Perhaps the nub of the book is here. Buzzell stresses that Gurdjieff’s discussion of these topics is metaphorical, and that even the Ray must be understood in such a way. I received a
shock for my understanding when I read Buzzell’s comment on the note SI, “freedom from the past, blending of outer and inner” (p. 94). Then follows an important elaboration of In Search of the Miraculous. First, the magnificent colour diagram on p. 96 does something I should have done for myself long ago, and charts the development of the air and impressions octaves beyond what is in Miraculous. The lengthy treatment of the foods, the processes to which they correspond, and which cosmic phenomena relate to the hydrogens at each level is, to my mind, an essential direction for anyone trying to make Gurdjieff’s ideas practical for themselves. What Buzzell does is clothe the abstract black and white lines of the food diagram from Miraculous in flesh, blood, oxygen, vitamins, hormones, and other things besides.
The treatment of impressions as food probably does not say so much which many of us have not already suspected: but it is put together and explained concisely and with authority.

This last chapter includes some interesting points and quotations, such as one from Tracol (p. 108). It holds together rather nicely, while covering many aspects of food ingestion and digestion, and relating it to the conscious evolution of man, this triune-brained being. One thing which I think might supplement the treatment of breathing (p. 112) is a reference to the subtle pauses in breathing. These pauses, and indeed, the entire rhythm of the breath, are important in the digestion of the air, one’s emotional state and indeed the tempo and state of one’s body. Further, Buzzell appreciates
the importance of Gurdjieff’s exercises (see pp. 112-3 for details). One will not persevere with the exercises, even if one has the good fortune to receive them, unless one knows of their significance and so values them.

Once the three foods have entered the body (and I suspect that the ingestion of impressions actually begins in the atmosphere of the body) the digestive products of the three foods are blended within the body’s inner circulation (pp. 116-7, pointing directly to Gurdjieff’s “blending” exercises). The three food octaves can, with the aid of the first conscious shock, come to the triad RE24, FA24, LA24 (p. 118). Conscious images are made of H24, once can even say that for us H24 is conscious images (extrapolating from pp.119-20). With this shock and its conscious images, there appears a presence or inner witness (p. 119). This leads to the critical point:

The effort to maintain the separation of a presence from the created images is the key to the potency inherent in self-remembering. If one loses this state of separation, identification with the image instantly takes place … (p. 119)

Without this separation, the Sacred Dances, which Buzzell says can represent “attentioned movement” (p. 121) would be gymnastics. The book then moves on to what may be the most important part, the treatment of the second conscious shock.

Corrigenda
Of course, there are some typographical errors, but not many. The contents reads “coalition” for “coalescence”; p. 55 line 6, read “in” before “vention”; p. 62 paragraph 1, place a full stop after “independently”.

Comments I consider this an important book. I think that to come to the best practical understanding of Gurdjieff’s ideas and methods possible we must engage with these issues: thus the third Being-Obligolnian-Striving. If this book is found difficult, and it is difficult in parts, that is a challenge. What would be the value of a book on this topic which was easy? Although Buzzell has qualified himself as an Oskianotsner (Beelzebub p. 1122), he cannot fulfil this role without readers who will study not just the book but develop the legacy and apply it.

Some people affect to despise theories, they say they just want practice. This is juvenile. Could one imagine any scientist, let alone a Pooloodjistius, who had never studied theory, had no maths no physic no chemistry, but said “let me loose in the laboratory”? Of course both are needed. In fact, even to dismiss theory is to create a theory as to why other theories are useless. As Chesterton said in another context, it is like declaring: “Away with diagnosis, medicines and exercise: just give me health!”

This is a book which makes connections and invites further study and research. For example, what about the role of fasting? Another interesting field lies with this idea that it is the mark of a master to be able to refrain from acting. One of Mr Adie’s former pupils has told me that physiological evidence shows that the “action” of refraining from acting aborts the processes which usually dominate our psyches, and allows new and beneficial processes to take place. Perhaps someone who is qualified shall research it. Another field for Dr Buzzell?

Postscript on the triads (26 September 2009): It is significant that the triads of psycho-transformism are 2 1 3 and 2 3 1 (P.D. Ouspensky, A Record of Meetings, 163). They each begin with 2. The involving triads of destruction are 1 3 2 and crime 3 1 2 (A Record of Meetings, 161 and 185) both end on 2. They can then repeat with great ease, because they proceed mechanically. But, at the same time, precisely
because they end with 2 they offer exactly the right opportunity for commencing one of the triads of psycho-transformism, that is, construction 2 1 3 and self-remembering 2 3 1. I think that with this insight the doctrine of the triads becomes practical, and the understanding of it can then tip the balance when struggles seem unavailing by entering as the third force.

Joseph.Azize@googlemail.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.

GEORGE ADIE on the Creator-in-me

ccwe — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 18:41:38 +0000

JOSEPH AZIZE PAGE

Joseph.Azize@googlemail.com

George Adie on the Creator-in-me

[These two pieces were read to us at a combined meeting in Newport. Mr Adie simply read them one after another, yet I feel that he sensed a connection between them. He made an ex tempore comment, which appears at the end, in quote marks. I have added the titles (Joseph Azize, Joseph.Azize@googlemail.com, 18 September 2009)]

I. The Sense of the Creator-in-me

So I go about, greatly occupied by turning thoughts. Yet, as I attend to my many duties, am I aware of the great unknowable, the infinity of the Creator-in-me?

“I waited on the Lord. He inclined unto me. He heard my complaint.”1

What can be more important than this? But for my field of consciousness to receive the ceaseless influence of this divine level, I have to be aware of my aim, of the purpose for my life on the level of the external world. I must both contribute and receive on that level also. After all, it is my life, the very life in which I must actualise my possibilities of becoming conscious.

As I go, as I work, let me not allow this awareness to be merely a background, obscured by every occurrence or influence. Let me primarily be aware of the Creator-in-me, of God-in-me. Let the Creator-in-me not be forgotten, so that I may enter the great realm of knowledge and self-certainty.

And now as I remember myself, I increasingly sense a strange self-certainty. I direct attention outwards as may be necessary in payment for my life. I voluntarily manifest this process in me with all that it implies. So let me also live and fulfil my external duties so as to benefit my fellow creatures.

This is the great life of the ceaseless sunrise of creation: may the sense of the Creator-in-me as I move leaven my being, and may my labour be also for my neighbour.
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II. Lost Loves: Repairing the Past

When I look back I see a wasteland of lost opportunities, and of repeated failures to understand life’s offerings. There have been so many moments offering possibilities for the rarest exchanges: possibilities lost through indifference, self-importance, coldness. The lost love of friends, of people who made sacrifices on my behalf. All moments of flowering love, but without response from me, so that they withered and died in pain and disappointment.

I collect myself, and I attempt to stop thought, and yet these recollections come and distract me. In the past, it seemed, I could stop thought. It seemed I could turn inside, and find myself. Then I had refreshment so as to continue, but now? How can I understand what is necessary?

Life and creation never cease. I must find my way anew, in this fresh creation of the present moment. I have often proved for myself that the way always mounts before me. It is always there and it always demands more of me, by lawful demand. And so now, more effort is necessary.

Now I have to repair these very bitter past failures which are pressed upon my consciousness in continuing process. I repair them now: now in the present.

In this state I can see and realize with an unimagined clarity that the ghostly pictures which lie behind the recurring memories, just because they still return, can be repaired now. So now I can and must recompense for the past.

At once time vanishes.

I AM, and time is no longer. All is One and I am That.

I look on the ocean, calm after endless days of storm, stretching now blue and serene to the horizon, and I hear in me the words: “Peace, be still, I AM”.2

Now I give thanks for my present pain, which awakens me and tells me just how to fill the void through reparation. I deal with present deeds in the presence of the all-merciful presence, the all-merciful present.

“You know how he spoke about the merciless Heropass? In the now, it’s merciful.”

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Editor’s Comments

Mr Adie assumes that we know both what he means and what he does when he “repairs the past”. This was a reasonable enough assumption with that audience. Besides, if someone did not understand, they could ask. These pieces can possess the power that they do only because so much background material is lift unstated. To fill it in, where necessary, only adds to one’s understanding.

I have already gathered some of his more detailed material on repairing the past for the book George Adie: A Gurdjieff Pupil in Australia. To try and put it simply, without suggesting that this is the only way to approach this mystery, I can repair the past because I am the past, although I am not just the past. The past lives on in me, but it only dominates and determines the man-machine. In so far as I am conscious, I can introduce a new element which is not utterly determined by the past into myself. So, in a way, my direct effort is to repair myself, and yet there is still this indirect result that the past is no longer as it was, because I am always emerging from it, and I am now more conscious.

I can experience states where I stay present before memories. I do not run away or “squirm” – a word Mr Adie used more than a few times, with artistic justice. I remain, and I cognize with the whole of myself, that it could not then have been different. I acted as I did because that was how I was then: less responsible, less understanding, less capable. I feel pity for those whom I have pained (pity, I would say now, is a form of love in which we share the sufferings of others through the legitimate faculty of imagination). In, through and by my presence, the pain is received consciously. Perhaps this is something of what Gurdjieff meant by being-remorse.

Even in ordinary life, past events are seen differently depending on the long-term outcome. In Shakespeare, for example, no good came from Lear’s impulsive and short-sighted actions in Act I. In Cymbeline, however, the king’s folly, and with it the past, was redeemed by the acts of true and faithful Imogen and others, who, although not on her level, yet possessed something of these virtues. They never deserted King Cymbeline’s best interests, although he thought all three of them to be his worst enemies. In repairing the past, Leonatus and Belarius, in particular, worked both for themselves and for others. Perhaps it must always be that way: so bound up are our lives with those of others.

Next, I am particularly struck by the truth of Mr Adie’s saying: “In this state I can see and realize with an unimagined clarity that the ghostly pictures which lie behind the recurring memories, just because they still return, can be repaired now.”

This, to me, is a perfect truth. Usually, I have a painful memory, and I identify with the pain. I react emotionally when I should be using my reason. But, as he says, precisely because the past recurs it can be repaired. After all, I cannot repair the past if I am oblivious of it. Perhaps one can even say that these painful past memories bring a certain “consciousness” with them. If so, okay, let me expand that consciousness. And then, as Gurdjieff said: “By as much as one is conscious, there is no more suffering.”

When Mr Adie says “… now I can and must recompense for the past”, he is referring to another truth, that I am responsible for what I have received. It is the parable of the talents.

Finally, at the Prieure, Gurdjieff taught a movement known as “Lost Loves”. Some notes of it have been preserved. The movements as drawn are very evocative. This fortifies me in the feeling which I have received from this piece that there is something in this concept which is not just silly sentimentality. It is really very hard to face this sort of personal tragedy. But the example of people like Mr Adie both urges those with sufficient understanding, and proves that it is possible.

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Joseph.Azize@googlemail.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.

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DISCOVERING GURDJIEFF: Dorothy Phillpotts 2008

ccwe — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 18:30:07 +0000

JOSEPH AZIZE BOOK REVIEWS

Joseph.Azize@googlemail.com

Discovering Gurdjieff, Dorothy Phillpotts, 2008, AuthorHouse, Central Milton Keynes, ISBN 9781434388711 (soft cover), 9781434388728 (soft cover)

Overview

This worthy addition to the Gurdjieff bookshelf is the memoire of a lady who joined Bennett’s groups during WWII, and thus had the good fortune to meet Gurdjieff in 1948, and to study with him until his death. It falls into two parts, the Bennett years, and then in Paris with Gurdjieff. Throughout, the book is full of instruction, insight and delights. Some slender biographical details hold the storyline together. However, the emphasis is placed not on her life, but on the discovery of Gurdjieff’s ideas, initially as theory with practice, and then as practice with theory.

Details

There is a dedication to her late husband, George, a portrait photograph of Gurdjieff (one of the famous set which was taken, I am told, by Michael Currer-Briggs), a page of acknowledgements, a list of photographs, then a table of contents, a two page foreword by Peter Brook, a two page preface, 239 pages of text, about 26 pages of further thoughts on topics touched in the text (‘Origins’, ‘Movements’ and ‘Behaviourism’), and reviews of three books: MacKenna’s translation of Plotinus, Man & Time by Priestley, and Icons and the Mystical Origins of Christianity, by Richard Temple. Finally, there is a short but useful bibliography which takes one beyond Gurdjieff related literature.

The volume is nicely presented. My copy is a paperback, 6 by 9 inches. The left hand side (about two fifths of the cover) depicts five Russian dolls. The lowest and smallest doll is in the clearest focus, and the top doll is largest, but is also the haziest. This wide margin is separated from the balance of the cover by a firm scarlet border which picks up the scarlet of the dolls. On the right hand side, the names of the volume and the author are clearly presented, in different colours (white for the title and a spearmint green for the author) over a rich, almost olive, green background. The back cover has a handsome photograph of Phillpotts as a young woman in the 1940s, once more, upon an olive green field. The right hand side, probably the right sixth, is plain white, once more, with a scarlet border. The spine is the same shade of white, with the title of the book in scarlet and the author’s name in olive green. It is simply and elegantly conceived.

There are some six photographs, including the splendid portrait of the author on the back cover, and at p. 240, a photograph of her shortly before her death in 2008 at the age of 92. This photograph is no less striking than the one on the back, lacking only its antiquarian charm, but compensating in conveying something not ephemeral. The book would, indeed, be a worthwhile purchase if all one did was read those two photographs taken 60 years apart.

Background

Dorothy and George Phillpotts were in Group IV in London in the early 1950s. Mr Adie was one of those who regularly sat in front of Group IV, and their names appear in some of his papers. I do not recall that he ever mentioned them to me, but he always had a special affection for the old group, and significantly, he had too much respect for them to ever speak of the group as ‘his’. Other than that, all I know of them is what appears here. The Phillpotts founded a continuing group in Bristol and Cardiff, and I gather that one of those group members greatly assisted Phillpotts over the 18 years it took her to get it to this form. Phillpotts had been a sort of secretary for Bennett before the Gurdjieff years. If I read her discrete account correctly, after Gurdjieff’s death her major contributions were to the London group. So I guess that she did not remain with Bennett, who rather shortly left the inner sanctum, let us say, of that association.

The Contents

The book opens with a question: “Who was Gurdjieff?,” and then launches into the discovery which yielded the title. Phillpotts builds from the ground up, describing Gurdjieff’s appearance, then his speech, his nationality and his background. She lightly, but correctly, stresses that he was a Greek of Asia Minor (a fact which, I think, says more about the origin of his system than is realized). Phillpotts mentions his education as “physician for the body and confessor for the soul”, and then she answers her own question: “Gurdjieff was to become a great religious teacher and healer – not in his own country, but in the countries of the West” (italics added). This is the essence of that first discovery. The balance of the book develops this illumination through the prism of her personal experience, and yet, details of her life which are not pertinent to her search and discovery are not mentioned. It is not so much that she is silent or reticent about these topics as that her perspective is focussed elsewhere.

Then follows a chronological account of how she came to discover herself, beginning with the desire for understanding of the universal issues which gripped her as a child. This second discovery, of her own true voice, is the subject of the epilogue:

One of the most difficult things Gurdjieff had brought me to, which was ultimately more useful than anything else, was the necessary capacity to doubt. … I had looked for adequate answers to partial questions, and instead I found myself facing an abyss. I leaned over, I shouted, and a voice came back from the other side. It was not another voice that came back, it was my own.

Trying to reconcile the irreconcilable, to reject and compress the parts that would not fit into my idea of an ideal life, I nearly lost what life I had. But he had turned me around. Pulling the string of my awkward perseverance sharply, and to the limit, he had then walked away for ever, secure in the certainty that I would indeed never give up until I had inherited at least an echo of his truth, of his impeccable inner life, and a fragment – infinitely small – of his unquenchable courage and daring. [239]

These simple words hearken back to chapter “Russian Easter” (of 1949), where she recounts how she first came to Gurdjieff’s apartment, and Gurdjieff remarked: “Guest here for the first time … see how she doubt, what she doubt?”[198]. On the next page, she remembers how, at that Easter, Gurdjieff said that he would give her a present (cadeau). The gift, he said, was half of what she needed, but that she must obtain the other half of it later. What happens next sheds, for me, a great light on Gurdjieff, his method and his manner of teaching:

“You come back soon, you remember. Maybe one month. Maybe one year, maybe two. You persevere. You never give up. You not satisfied till you get other half.”

It was very quiet in the room. Aware that the conversation had left me while I needed silence to accustom myself to the challenge of the cadeau, little by little I began to listen to Gurdjieff talking about Easter Mass at the Russian Cathedral. He asked a question. “Some of us would be going to the Rue Daru tomorrow? This feeling experience – such good thing … [198]

So that is, I think, the secret of this book: it is the story of how through discovering Gurdjieff she discovered her essential self.

But while this tells us about the whole of the volume, there is much to be found in the parts which make it up. For example, the texts of Bennett’s lectures on the seven brains are a revelation: as an introduction to the work of the centres I am not sure that they rank very far below Ouspensky’s, if at all. Further, Bennett included otherwise unknown quotes from Gurdjieff such as this one: “in the work of the Emotional Part, you always have the sense of discovering America.” [36] And the allegory of the election of Deputy Steward is a masterpiece, improving the one in Miraculous. Listen, if you will, to this:

It is through the Emotional Centre that the Steward appears. The Intellectual Part of the Emotional Centre is the seat of conscience. Without conscience we should never be able to work by ourselves without help. … This means that, until the Intellectual Part of the Emotional Centre wakes up, we have no infallible sense of values by which to judge ourselves as a whole. Conscience has been called by Mr Gurdjieff the voice of the Steward. The Steward speaks to us in a quiet voice, which we cannot hear amid the vociferous clamour of the many ‘I’s … [53]

Each single sentence casts a light for me on something I had seen partially, or confirms an experience which I had not fully understood. But of course, this material is the ground for the fullness of the Gurdjieff chapters, which seem to fill more than the limited space allotted to them. And I am sure that this was even truer of the role of Gurdjieff in their lives. That year and two months with Gurdjieff must have been fully a half of the plenitude of their life of awareness.

I have mentioned those chapters, and while I could go on quoting from them, I actually feel that this review has now done its work, and it is time to move on. I mean that for both of us. I could expand this review, but I would not be deepening it, and you could go on reading that expanded material, but you now have enough to decide whether the book sounds like one which you might buy.

In the end, this volume introduces us to a wonderful and wise woman, and deepens our admiration of Bennett’s almost innate understanding.

Joseph.Azize@googlemail.com
2 September 2009, corrected for accuracy on 22 September 2009.

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CARLOS CASTANEDA Recalled and Reconsidered

ccwe — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 14:52:01 +0000

The John Robert Colombo Page

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New Mexico Desert

Carlos Castaneda

Carlos Castaneda Recalled and Reconsidered

A Short Review of William Patrick Patterson’s “The Life & Teachings of Carlos Castaneda” by John Robert Colombo

Carlos Castaneda (hereinafter CC) and William Patrick Patterson (hereinafter WPP) are names well known to students of consciousness studies.

CC was a Peruvian-born American author who made a considerable reputation for himself with the publication of his first book of mystical, visionary, spiritual, or magical adventures titled “The Teachings of Don Juan.” It appeared in 1968 and was such a success that it was followed by eleven more such books, which further enhanced the author’s reputation as an apprentice of a “brujo” or sorcerer in the Mesmoamerican tradition of shamanism. The final book of this series, “The Active Side of Infinity,” appeared the year following the author’s death. CC’s vital years are 1925 and 1998. At the height of his fame he became a recluse and WPP tells us why.

WPP is an indefatigable researcher, editor, writer, author, publisher, public speaker, director and host of documentary films on the Fourth Way, and seminar leader – someone concerned with “esoteric perspectives” and “the ways of self-transformation” (to quote the pertinent words on the back cover of the current book). WPP may know more about the history of the Fourth Way than any other living writer, excepting, perhaps, Paul Beekman Taylor and James Moore. He was a student of the late Lord Pentland, who oversaw the Work in America, and the present book is dedicated to his memory (“To my don Juan”).

In my last contribution to this website, I outlined many of WPP’s accomplishments and achievements. In this review, I will focus on his book “The Life & Teachings of Carlos Castaneda.” It appeared in cloth in 2008 and in paper in 2009. Oddly, on the title page it is identified as “Volume 1.” Whatever will fill the pages of “Voume 2″?

The present volume is a handsomely produced, medium-sized trade paperback (xviii + 270 pages) with a Prologue (but no Epilogue), a Chronology, Notes, Bibliography, two Appendices (CC’s reply to R. Gordon Wasson, an academic critic; “Ouspensky on Dreams,” ten quotations from “A New Model of the Universe”), and an index. It also reprints anthropologist Daniel Brinton’s 1894 essay “Nagualism: A Study in Native American Folklore and History” (a source of some of CC’s conceptions). Brinton’s essay, about one-third the length of the book itself, remains a model of its kind.

The entire work was edited by Barbara Allen Patterson and published by Arete Communications, Publishers, Fairfax, California. (By the way, “Arete” is a word known to Aristotle. It means “inner excellence.” In English it is pronounced “A-re-tay,” and WPP regards it as “a working aim.”)

I gather that CC attended the University of California at Los Angeles where he was awarded a B.A. in Creative Writing and Journalism in 1962. Thereafter he switched his major to Anthropology and apparently that institution awarded him a Ph.D. in that discipline in 1973 for an dissertation on “A Yaqui Way of Knowledge,” which is the subtitle his first book, issued by the University of California Press, an academic imprint rather than a trade publishing house.

Thereafter the books were enthusiastically published and promoted by Simon & Schuster, a major trade publisher. (The above details appear in CC’s Wikipedia entry, and there are discrepancies between them and those that appear in WPP’s book which, on the whole, is thorough, appreciative, and non-critical. A critical biography of CC may never written; in the meantime, WPP’s is “as good as it is likely to get.”)

CC’s reputation was made by “The Teachings of Don Juan.” Is the book a work of Anthropology? Does it contribute to our knowledge of Shamanism? Or is it a work of creative writing, imaginative recreation, or “wishful thinking”? Perhaps it is both. CC says it is based on notes taken down in Spanish but the notes do not seem to have survived.

I know where I stand on what kind of book it is. I read it a year following its original appearance and had no problem concluding that it was an instance of “creative non-fiction,” rather than a contribution to field research in Anthropology, one of my minors at the University of Toronto.

CC’s book I found to be “a thrilling read,” like millions of other readers, but I also found it impossible to take it seriously – at least as seriously as I had in younger years taken Paul Brunton’s “In Search of Secret Egypt” and “In Search of Secret India.” (In passing, Brunton’s pretensions to Sanskrit scholarship were effectively and affectionately debunked by the Sanskrit scholar Jeffrey M. Masson in his memoir “My Father’s Guru.”)

CC’s work constitutes a romance of mystical thought (in this instance sorcery) in the same way that Erich von Däniken and Immanuel Velikovsky are purveyors of a science of the imagination. In no way did CC’s book resemble the Anthropology texts that I had studied. Nor have more recent contributions to the discipline begun to resemble his.

It did not surprise me that CC had opened a Pandora’s Box of insights into what he calls the “tonal” world (of ordinary reality) and the “nagual” world (of non-ordinary realities). Readers in the late 1960s were receptive to that distinction, a cornerstone concept of the New Age, and the times were ripe for a shaman (even if called a sorcerer) named Don Juan Matus, a Yaqui Indian, knowledgeable about the effects of the ingestion of psychotropic plants.

Later, I read with surprise Time magazine’s cover story on the man, “Don Juan and the Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” March 5, 1973, which referred to CC in facetious terms (“the man is an enigma wrapped in mystery in a tortilla”). Time’s editors had problems with the elusive CC, but they gave respectability to his work by granting a passing grade to his accounts of outlandish and otherworldy experiences.

No so the novelist Joyce Carol Oates, who penned a letter to “The New York Review of Books” on November 16, 1972. It was headed “Anthropology – a Fiction?” and it was followed by a flurry of critical reactions to the books as they rolled off the presses. The result was that CC retired from public life (rather like another touchy recluse, J.D. Salinger). The standards and integrity of the University of Southern California were called into question for dealing with a work of fiction as if it were a work of scholarship and even publishing it.

CC re-emerged in the 1990s, the last decade of his life, and what a life he had been leading! WWP is good on these details, which first appeared in his journal “The Gurdjieff Review,” for they describe an unconventional California lifestyle – a man driven by demons to the point of obsession – with his own coven of three witches (named Florinda, Taisha, and Muni) whom he sexually dominated. The women conducted popular seminars devoted to the practice of sorcery. Then there were seminars that promoted Tensegrity, a discipline of “magical passes” that adopts a term previously introduced by Buckminster Fuller.

At the same time CC was married to Amy Wallace, the talented daughter of the popular novelist Irving Wallace. She outlived the three witches and subsequently described CC as a “sexaholic” who near the end was afflicted with glaucoma and diabetes and died of the liver cancer that he boasted he would never have.

While he was alive, CC was adamant that there would be no Hollywood film version of the novels, as he did not relish the sight of Anthony Quinn playing the sorcerer-warrior Don Juan! CC did meet with Federico Fellini in Rome who described the author as “a smiling Sicilian.” The Italian director was intrigued and repelled by the vision offered by the novels – it was “as if I was confronted with a vision of a world dictated by a quartz! Or a green lizard!” He was not far wrong!

Why was WPP drawn to CC? “By the sheer force of his connection with intent, Castaneda brought to life and inseminated into Western culture an age-old sorceric perspective long ago rendered insensible by the modern world’s pursuit of rationality.” What I detect here is a rapidly emerging appreciation of the depths and dimensions of “magical thinking,” “as if,” “active imagination,” shamanic spirit journeys, hoaxes and hypnotism and dreaming, and the antics and adventures of the Trickster Hero of North American Native culture. Here we have “A Yaqui Way of Knowledge,” not “The Yaqui Way of Knowledge.” Indeed, it might even be said that what we have here is “A Yankee Way of Knowledge.”

WPP devotes many pages to early influences on CC: Aldous Huxley’s psychedelic trips and the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl. Then there was the person and literary effect on him of Anais Nin, the memoirist who spoke of “mensonge vital” and “déboublement.” WPP suggests “Don Juan Matus” was named after Nin’s father, Joaquín – if not after the Mateus brand of Portuguese wine so popular with beats, hippies, and New Agers!

It is assumed that Don Juan Matus (described as being born in Arizona of Yaqui and Yuma parentage) was not a single person but an amalgam of various teachers both spiritual and academic who were meaningful in CC’s life. WPP devotes ten interesting pages (pp. 65-75) to outlining the dynamic universe occupied by Don Juan and then five pages to pointing out “difficulties” with his accounts of the “sorceric” universe. Five further pages (98-103) are devoted to CC’s exchanges with Swami Muktananda with parallels between the world of sorcery and Hinduism.

There are ten pages (81-91) that measure the trace elements of Fourth Way material to be found in these books. “Awareness of the total body – this is the foundation to everything Castaneda is saying,” writes WPP. “Many of the fundamental ideas Castaneda puts forth can be seen to have a correspondence with Gurdjieff’s teaching. It is not in the province of this book to summarize it, but the following are some examples of the cross-referencing.”

Thereupon WPP offers twenty-nine instances of dynamic parallels in the sorceric and Fourth Way traditions. Here are five parallels:

* “‘Shifting the assemblage point’ is moving the specific gravity of attention so that one is in a higher stage of self-consciousness or self-remembering.”

* “‘Buzzing’ is an initial inaudible frequency which prepares for reception of the Niroonossian-World-Sound.”

* “‘Real mind’ is the higher intellectual center connected with the higher emotional center.”

*”‘Human mold’ is founded in self-love and vanity, i.e., Kundabuffer.”

*”‘Energy body’ is the Kesdjan body developed through practices of self-sensing and the impartial observation of the functioning of the physical body.”

WPP writes, “Castaneda did have an actual, as opposed to simply a theoretical, connection with the Work, as it is sometimes called. His first direct encounter was in 1970 when he attended Movements demonstrations in Los Angeles. Later, he accepted an invitation from Lord John Pentland, the man Gurdjief appointed to lead the Work in America, to spend a weekend at St. Elmo, the home of the Gurdjieff Foundation in San Francisco. There Castaneda met Kathleen Pohlman, aka Carol Tiggs, a student of Pentland’s. He is said to have also attended meetings at the Los Angeles Foundation for some time.”

Carol Tiggs played an active role in CC’s life, less so Claudio Naranjo. WPP concludes, “The teaching Gurdjieff brought is based on sacred science; what Castaneda brought is based on sorcery. Both aim to awaken one from the dream of ordinary life, but while Gurdjieff rejects working with the dream state and insists on grounding consciousness in ordinary life in order to come to real life, dreaming for Castaneda is the basis of sorceric exploration.”

WPP sees CC’s life in terms of “octaves,” but I will leave the interested reader to turn to “The Life & Teachings of Carlos Castaneda” to appreciate these phases. Overall what he finds absent from CC’s cosmology is “a spiritual appreciation and valuation of the scale of Being and the duty to serve and offer ‘help for God,’ as Gurdjieff says.”

The author concludes, interestingly but somewhat debatably, “In the end Castaneda’s significance and value rest on his ideas and sources, not the strangeness of his story.”

John Robert Colombo has yet to find any Canadian references in the work of CC or in the writings of WPP, but he keeps searching. On August 9, 2009, he delivered the academic keynote address at the Worldcon, the convention for 3,500 fans of fantastic literature held in August in Montreal. His address was called “Up! Up! And About!” For more details, check his personal website: www. colombo-plus. ca.

John Robert Colombo
Colombo & Company
42 Dell Park Avenue
Toronto M6B 2T6 Canada
vox 1(416) 782 6853
fax 1(416) 782 0285
email jrc@ca.inter.net
professional website www.colombo.ca
personal website www.colombo-plus.ca

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Osho on Reading Castandeda: first read Gurdjieff

ccwe — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 14:32:32 +0000

Castaneda in 1949

See

http://www.messagefrommasters.com/Psychic-World/carlos_castaneda.htm

Osho on Castandeda

‘First you should read ALL AND EVERYTHING of George Gurdjieff and then you can read Carlos Castaneda’s books. It is a very difficult training to read Gurdjieff; in fact no more than a few dozen people exist in the world who have read his book ALL AND EVERYTHING completely. It is difficult. It is a one thousand-page book and Gurdjieff is a master of hiding things. He goes on saying irrelevant things, useless things, spinning tales within tales — hundreds of pages and then one line of truth, but it is worth seeking, it is a diamond. A hundred pages of rubbish, but then comes a diamond — it is worth it.

If you can find the diamonds in Gurdjieff it will be a great training for you. And then you can find in Carlos Castaneda what is true and what is not true. Otherwise you can become a victim of a fiction’.

quoted from:
http://www.messagefrommasters.com/ message from masters site

See also The John Robert Colombo page for a Review of Patterson on Castaneda.

Reveiw of JANE HEAP/NOTES

ccwe — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 10:32:46 +0000

JOSEPH AZIZE PAGE

Joseph.Azize@googlemail.com

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Jane Heap

Jane Heap / Notes, Jane Heap, anonymously edited by Annie-Lou Staveley and David Kherdian, 1983 and 2002, Two Rivers Press, Aurora, ISBN 089756023X

Overview
This is an edition of the notes Jane Heap prepared before delivering her talks to her pupils in the Gurdjieff ideas and methods. They are not ‘to introduce the ideas’, but ‘towards practical application of the ideas’. Her pupils had already learned the theoretical outlines, and were now participating in groups (the Gurdjieff schools generally organize pupils into ‘groups’ for collective study of the applied methods). The fact that these notes were not written for publication makes them more valuable, because we eavesdrop, as it were, on Jane thinking to herself about how she can address the practical needs of her pupils.

Gurdjieff’s ideas can only ever be superficially understood without an attempt to apply them to oneself. One finds in this volume, to an extraordinary degree, evidence of knowledge and practice united in work – which I would define as ‘informed action directed to a constructive aim’ (see George Adie p. 28). Although written as a number of chains of thought, not as one thematic exercise, the contents of this book are probably the greatest exposition of the ‘technique of techniques’ we will ever have.

Details
There is a table of contents, a two page introduction by Michael Currer-Briggs (whom Dr Lester, Jane’s pupil and physician, described to me as Jane’s ‘right hand man’), a large number of extracts from Jane’s private notes, with minimally intrusive editing by Mrs Staveley (one of Jane’s pupils, whom Jane effectively ‘graduated’ from her group before her death), and David Kherdian (Mrs Staveley’s pupil, and an acclaimed literary talent). Pages 87-95 comprise a collection of Jane’s aphorisms. The text is organized into readings of between one and ten pages, with italic sub-headings at various points. This is good, because the presentation is intense and compressed, so the sectioned layout assists the reader to select and study integrated units of related thoughts.

The volume is an attractive hard cover, with thick paper cover and plastic protection, approx. 6 ½ by 8 inches, with oil print on the endpapers. It comprises 95 pages printed on a slightly creamy, textured, top quality paper. The original 1983 edition was handset. Except, I think, that the first edition had leather trimmings, the 2002 edition is an exact facsimile reproduction of the first. Information about Jane, her style of teaching, and the publication of these notes and others, is found on the fly-leaves. The excellent choice of the paper, print and binding were the work of David Kherdian and his wife Nonny Hogrogian, a celebrated artist. However, the entire group at Two Rivers Farm were concerned in various aspects of its compilation and printing. To see and hold it, one feels that one is in the presence of a product of respect and careful attention, even down to the good use made of the fly-leaves.

Background
At the outset, I should observe that there is another book of Jane Heap’s notes, The Notes of Jane Heap, which, although also published by Two Rivers Press, was edited by Michael Currer-Briggs and others of Jane’s London pupils, not by Mrs Staveley. That is different from the book I am reviewing, although almost everything I say about the contents of this volume would apply to it, too. There is a significant overlap between the contents of the two books. The chief difference is that the ‘London notes’ lack even the subtle editing of this volume, and that, I think, is advantageous in that the notes are even more concise, but then, sometimes they’re almost impenetrable. That volume is a nice hard cover, but as an artefact, it is not in the same league as this masterpiece.

I have seen the typed transcript of all Jane’s notes, and it’s fairly apparent from their contents that some of them, especially the “Black Book”, can only have been meant for her own purposes, and not even in preparation for addressing her groups. But this book does not include those most private notes: this volume consists of notes which Jane wrote in longhand when preparing to give talks to her groups.

In August 1973, some nine years after Jane’s death, some of her pupils, having already provided Jeanne de Salzmann with a complete copy of the typed transcripts, met with her in Switzerland to discuss what use they might make of the material. And it is fortunate that they did, because Madame challenged them to produce their best. I do not just mean that she issued a challenge: anyone can do that. De Salzmann helped them probe deeply for their truest, best effort, as is apparent from the extracts below. It must have been an intense two days for these people. The notes of the meeting with Madame de Salzmann record her as saying on the first day:

This is something none of the other books have. There is plenty published about Ideas but not about How to work. Perhaps the thing to do is to prepare a small volume on this. Then Mme Salzmann will show it to the older ones – Tracol, Mme Lannes, Deselle – to see if it would help. We must be more DYNAMIC.

The capitals are as in the notes of that meeting, provided to me by the late Dr Lester. De Salzmann went on to say:

We must remember that what we do will be for the benefit of Jane – editing and shortening – and not hold back or hold on to the old memories because we were there – were taught by her. We must remember that the book will be read by people who never knew or saw Jane. For this reason we must remember that we have to insure that the book has IMPACT. (Jane’s sayings – need to be worked up and brought on).

I am not sure whether this last sentence represents de Salzmann’s aside, or was placed there by someone else. She made the point, which I feel the London notes bear out, that unedited, these notes incline towards being too dense. Thus, while I do not know if Madame ever gave approval of Mrs Staveley’s and Kherdian’s book prior to publication, it is that one which more closely accords with her advice:

As they are – Jane’s Notes – we would have to shorten them – edit them for reading. When they were given they were spoken – they were for that group to hear – for that moment – that meeting. They were spoken to be listened to. At a meeting – when spoken – the formulation does not matter so much because of the people there – they could be explained – elaborated – questions could be answered. But for reading by other people – people on their own – at home and not in meetings or groups – it would have to be different – and very carefully formulated – absolutely right.

One can sense the high demand which de Salzmann made, and the quality of thought which she brought (I am told she used to quote Gurdjieff as having said: “Very good is not good enough”). Other of de Salzmann’s comments, as recorded in these notes, illustrate the initial impulse which went into the production of this volume:

We must remember there is never enough MENACE in ourselves – never enough hard confrontation. If there is a true confrontation there is an agony – a horror – in that moment of balance. This way or that? Whichever way we go is an escape. We have to pay. If we give up then we are lost. … We meet someone – read a book – it arouses our interest – we feel that person has something. Even at a very early age that possibility of interest is there. This arousing of interest happens in our ordinary lives. We become aware that there is a hunger in us and because of that we follow that interest – we put our energy into that and no longer just as always before on everyday things. In doing that we put our energy onto a new and different level in ourselves.

We meet someone – like you met Jane – who has something different – that meeting raises your interest to this other level – it calls you to give your interest and energy in that direction. That person remains special for you – will always remain so – has become permanent. They have altered the direction of your life. Then later you will meet something else which will do the same and again raise you to another level. Gradually something becomes your own – what you have received is available to you. And you are in danger. There is a menace for you – a trap. You do not go on – you stay there. It has become too easy and you fall down and allow life to take you away. You do not stay there with that danger, that menace. You do not find your place. If you lose that position of danger it is hard to come back again.

Then there is TIME. Gurdjieff used to give work of a certain kind, for a time only. And just when people were getting used to that work – beginning to be able to do it – to find it easy, he would sweep it away – destroy it – because of that danger – the danger of it becoming too easy. Life changes – some of the things we still hear about – read about are now old fashioned. The time has gone for them, and this is inevitable and according to Law. There is a different way to call people to work now – a way that has to be used today. This we must always be searching for – and at the same time we must remain faithful to the Work – the Ideas – as we received them.

It is easy to make grand efforts – big efforts – to work extra hard on this or that, with terrific energy. This also can be an escape – can be a danger too. But if your work is related differently – if it is not just in one part – your mind or your feelings or your body – if everything in you is related and related to that danger – that menace – so that a true confrontation can take place – a confrontation that brings you up with a jerk – then that is different.

That, then, is how Jeanne de Salzmann came to be the godmother, as it were, of this volume. Now for the two other key players. Jane Heap and Annie-Lou Staveley were two of Gurdjieff’s most accomplished, and most faithful pupils. Unfortunately, there has not yet been any study of either of these most redoubtable persons which does them justice. Jane (1887-1964) was with Gurdjieff from about 1924, I believe, although at some point he sent her to London to commence her own groups. Initially, I understand, he asked her to join Ouspensky’s London group, but he refused to accept her. If I remember correctly, Moore says that his stated reason was that she was an ‘incorrigible lesbian’. Apart from wondering what a ‘corrigible lesbian’ would look like, and how Ouspensky would go about correcting one, I would need to see some evidence before I could believe that Ouspensky had made the comment: it seems an odd thing to say knowing that it could be reported, and that she had been a pupil of Gurdjieff’s.

The Contents
This book is direct and powerful to an extent I have never seen matched: “Only what we actually experience is valuable” [page 8]. As De Salzmann said, these notes tell how to apply the Gurdjieff method. They do not expound the ideas, but they operate from the ideas in such a way that certain important ones are highlighted; and when they are, their setting, which is a practical one, illuminates them in fresh ways. For example, she says that ‘I’ is a ‘power of emanation’ [12], and that it is a ‘potentiality of essence’ [13], and so opens a new perspective on these ideas. Then, the piece “I Am my Burden” draws on the Law of Seven, and yet develops it in a direction contemplated, but not executed, in Miraculous:

To finish everything you begin! We rarely finish anything completely – always something is lacking. How to see clearly in ourselves the cause of this! I may be unable to finish because I have decided but have not understood. … Or you may take the habit of finishing – but it will not give anything because the same habit may turn into something else. [3]

From these notes we can glimpse something of the teaching, and of the ‘technique of techniques’. I first heard this phrase from George Adie: both he and Helen Adie had been close to Jane, and they perhaps learned it from her. Mr Adie used it as a description of the Gurdjieff method, a technique which is not like any other we have known. It’s a technique which comes from a higher level, so that even in its form it is under fewer rules than our ordinary methods. The heart of this ‘technique of techniques’ is the preparation, and so, the preparation itself can also be called the ‘technique of techniques’. And yet, Jane says that “Every time I have to remind myself that it has to be the first time I ever tried the exercise” [16].

Can the use of a technique and the imperative to continually reinitiate fresh efforts be reconciled? They can be, and they often are, in practice. We see this even in the world where employing techniques in trades, arts and crafts, far from inhibiting freshness, makes it more possible. The great innovators like Leonardo da Vinci and J.S. Bach devoted great attention to the fine details of their arts. They can be reconciled in theory, too, because mastering the platform skills requires that the three platform functions (intellect, feeling and organic instinct) are trained, as a vine is trained to a trellis, and harmonized at least in respect of that art, which may explain why many people who master a craft, an art, a science or a skill, come to appreciate it with something in the direction of love.

The technique of techniques is under the laws of a higher world: it is based on the understanding of higher mind. In addition, the preparation is done in quiet, away from electro-magnetic fields, in the light and air of morning, which, as Gurdjieff said, possess special properties. Very few principles are required to do the preparation, either for the contemplative part, or to complete it by making a plan for the day or, in the evening, to review it and perhaps make a sketch for the following day.

Although the preparation is made in a special environment, with special knowledge, nonetheless its fruits must be expressed in this world: which means the formulation and the fixture of plan, and the wish and resolve to keep one’s word to oneself. So there is definition and decision, and it has to be that way. To refuse to use any technique is idiocy, a recipe for delusion. This is true whether we’re speaking of carpentry, gardening, painting, music, or inner development.

This point deserves emphasis: this book presents the authentic Gurdjieff teaching of the ‘preparation’ (not the ‘sitting’), thus Jane says “All depends on your preparation” [63] , but see also pp. 10 (mentioning divided attention), 14-16, 31, 34, 38, 46, 48-9, 52, 54, 63, 69 and 81. It helps that Jane refers both to the evening preparation and to the connection between the preparation and one’s plan for the day [pp. 14, 55 and 70]. The Adies brought all of these methods, and I have concluded that they are critical to any possibility of accelerated development. I would say that I proved this to myself, because after their deaths, I gradually let those good habits run down, but I’ve returned, thankfully, to them just in accordance with the principles they gave.

The preparation is a sort of bridge between worldly and spiritual life, what Mr Adie called ‘life under the sun’ and ‘life under the stars’. Both lives go together, as Jane said: “We transport into work what we are in life. If I behave like a pig in life, I behave in the work like a pig also …” [58]. Another practical concept uniting the two lives in practices is the teaching of the good householder, whom she says is “the man who neglects nothing. The man that is faithful and accurate in small things and, at the same time, remembers that he has another life to care for and who tries to relate them” [21, see also p. 15].

So, Jane points us to a unitive discipline [39], pursued for an aim [80]. To speak of discipline, today, invites resistance. Dr Lester often said that Jane understood the importance and lawfulness of resistance. He said, for example, that if someone in their craft shop The Rocking Horse was hammering an object which was not sufficiently steady, she would call out “Not enough denying force!”. The same wisdom inhabits this book: “The No is to make the Yes remembered. No and Yes have to become more inseparable – one without the other is not profitable. … Yes without No – the angel without the devil – is impotence. … If it were not so it would not lead you to something. It would be romance – fallacious.” [10-11]. Later, we find this powerful comment: “Gurdjieff says the word ‘passive’ meant something very strong and concrete” [66].

Negative emotions can be used: hence her succinct advice: “Look over the top of being negative” [26]. And not only negative emotions: Jane understood the value of fasting, [73], something which one can harmlessly experiment with by following the traditional fasts of the Eastern Christian Churches (modern Catholic practice is arguably better than nothing, but it does not compare to the Eastern traditions).

A special feature of this volume is that Jane preserves in an organic context many sayings of Gurdjieff, some of which would otherwise have been lost. Here is my list:

“Try to be responsible for what you have understood” [19]
“We are always making requirements” [24]
“To believe is to make sheep” [36]
“Revalue your values” [40]
“Everyone has a dog in himself” [41]
“Not even an apparatus in us for negative emotions – but they use every part of us”[42]
“Your work is cheap” [44]
“You are a very naive person” [46]
“A good egoist is something very big – a man who becomes concerned for his own reality, then begins to be concerned for the reality of others” [50]
“Try to do what you do – just what you do – but do it!” [58]
“Use little reminding factors” [59]

At the end of the volume, as noted, are her powerful aphorisms. An earlier draft of this review cited some, but there were so many I ached to include that it became unworkable. So I have, instead, selected lines from the other part of the text which strike me as profound with an almost unearthly profundity: “A picture formation in the mind is one of the foods for attention. Think what is meant by this food – food for voluntary attention” [53]; “What you have lived in dreams is etched in you …” [26], and with that, “As long as you accept to feed on deception you will not be given better food” [17].

There are so many such master-teachings that I cannot do them justice. I will give a subjective list of a few: see [44] for her comments on blood and instinct, [45] on worry, [76] on death, and pp. 19, 22-23, 28-29, 32-33, 50, 69, 71 and 76-77 for her comments on reality, unity aim and cause and control. It seems to me that she gives the clue to a theoretical understanding of reality and unreality in oneself. One of Jane’s famous sayings about death is here, too [76]. Dr Lester was there when a woman, in a state of mild anxiety, asked Jane what death was like. Jane replied: “Don’t worry. You won’t notice much difference.”

Finally, the Notes of Jane Heap ends with a few extracts about death and recurrence. And that is a good way to end. But this volume ends with something I think is even better: a chapter titled ‘Here – Now’ which seems to me to sum up the entire book in a tour de force. I will end with just one sentence from that chapter:

Do not fear – it is stupid. Quieten your emotions – this is the first step – then collect a little.

Joseph.Azize@googlemail.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.

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2010 ALL & EVERYTHING CONFERENCE

ccwe — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 12:45:49 +0000

G. I. Gurdjieff (1886? – 1949)

CALL FOR PAPERS

Announcing the 15th International Humanities Conference

THE ALL & EVERYTHING CONFERENCE: WHAT IT IS AND IS NOT
The All & Everything Conference was originally conceived in 1996 as a meeting of the “Companions of the Book.” The conference has developed into a world forum that provides an open, congenial and serious atmosphere for the sharing of research and investigation of G. I. Gurdjieff’s literary legacy. The Conference seeks to keep the study of the teachings of Gurdjieff relevant to global, scientific, spiritual and sociological developments. The gathering is open to all serious students of All & Everything and is not under the auspices or sponsorship of any ‘Gurdjieff Group’ or umbrella organization. The Conference is not intended to be a ‘Group Work Event’ and thus does not include Work on Movements or Exercises that are related to personal or group Work. The Conference includes the presentation of academic papers, individual view papers, seminars on chapters and themes in All & Everything, and cultural events. The program is scheduled so as to encourage time for dialogue and the developing of personal relationships outside the structured meetings.

View the complete Conference Charter on our website:
http://www.aandeconference.org/faq.html

DATES
Wednesday, 24 March – Sunday, 28 March, 2010

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LOCATION
Hotel Pappas
Loutraki of Korinthia
Peloponnese, Greece
Tel. (0030) 27440/62782-4, 23936-8
Fax. (0030) 27440/23940
Email: pappasae@otenet.gr
Website: http://www.hotelpappas.gr/reservation.htm

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HOTEL RESERVATION INFORMATION
Bookings can be made by phone or via the Hotel website (see above).
Delegates are asked to book reservations early and directly with the hotel.

NOTE: The A&E Conference does NOT make hotel reservations for delegates.

HOTEL ROOM RATE PER DAY
Single – €55 per person per day (approximate rate on publish date: £47, US$78, CAD$84)
Double – €42 per person per day (approximate rate on publish date: £36, US$60, CAD$64)
Includes: Breakfast, Mid-Morning Coffee, Lunch, Afternoon Tea, full Dinners, and Banquet Dinner on Saturday evening.

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CONFERENCE REGISTRATION FEES
5 Day Registration Fee is £50 per person.
(approximate rate on publish date: €58, US$83, CAD$90)
The Conference Registration Fees are due by February 1, 2010.
All registrants will receive confirmation by email or post.

ONLINE REGISTRATION
You may Register on-line with a credit card at our website:
http://www.aandeconference.org/register_online.html

MAIL-IN REGISTRATION FORM
A print and post Registration Form is available to download from our website:
http://www.aandeconference.org/register2010.pdf

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DRAFT PROGRAM FOR ALL & EVERYTHING 2010
Wednesday Evening: Getting to Know You Session.
Thursday Morning: Presentation of two papers, each followed by a question and answer session.
Thursday Afternoon Seminar: Chapters 29 & 31 from Beelzebub’s Tales.
Thursday Evening: Cultural Event
Friday Morning: Presentation of two papers, each followed by a question and answer session.
Friday Afternoon Seminars: Chapters 32 & 33 from Beelzebub’s Tales.
Friday Evening: Open Social Evening
Saturday Morning: Presentation of two papers, each followed by a question and answer session.
Saturday Afternoon Seminar: Ch. 6 of Meetings with Remarkable Men.
Saturday Afternoon Seminar: TBC
Saturday Evening: Conference Banquet.
Sunday Morning Seminar: TBC
Closing Session: Where Do We Go From Here – providing direction to the Planning Committee for future conferences.

Abstracts of accepted papers and seminars will be published in advance of the conference on the conference website so that delegates can prepare questions and comments. Writers who would like on-going feedback should contact
the Reading Panel.

A PDF version of this newsletter is available on the conference website.

Keep up to date on activities and changes at the conference website:
http://www.aandeconference.org

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Examples of previous papers as an indication of the variety of topics:
1996 – James Moore, A Reflection on the Obligolnian Strivings
1997 – Paul Beekman Taylor, Deconstruction of History in the Third Series
1998 – Harry Bennett, Approaching the Neologisms of the First Series
1999 – Dr. Keith Buzzell, The Biological Foundations of the Sacred Impulses
2000 – Dr. Sophia Wellbeloved, Numbers, the Zodiac and The Tales
2001 – Wim Van Dullemen, Principles of Gurdjieff’s Movements
2002 – Ana Fragomeni, Triads and Laws
2003 – Dimitri Peretzi, On the Third Line of Work
2004 – Terje Tonne, Art and the Six Processes
2005 – Sy Ginsburg, Gurdjieff and the Study of Dreams
2006 – Prof. M. W. Thring, The Message of Ashiata Shiemash
2007 – Jose Tirado, Beelzebub’s Buddhas
2008 – Anthony Blake, Beelzebub in a Ring
2009 – James George, What Does Great Nature Now Require Of Us?

CALL FOR PAPERS
You are invited to submit a paper relevant to the study of Gurdjieff’s literary heritage for consideration for A&E 2010. Time: 1 hour – approx 30 minutes for the paper and 30 minutes for questions and answers.
Deadline for submission of an abstract is 1st November 2009.

PAPER SUBMISSION & PUBLISHING RIGHTS RELEASE FORM
The paper submission form may be downloaded from our website:
http://www.aandeconference.org/Paper_Submission_Form_2010.pdf
The form includes submission guidelines for abstracts and papers as well as style guidelines for printed copy. Please note that you will be expected to transcribe the questions and answers for inclusion in the published proceedings. An audio MP3 CD of the recorded session is provided for that purpose.

CALL FOR SEMINAR FACILITATORS
You are invited to volunteer to facilitate a seminar on one of the book chapters listed above in the Draft Program for 2010 or one seminar on Sunday morning on a topic that you suggest.
Time: 1 hour 15 minutes – approx 15 minutes for your introduction and 1 hour for open discussion.
Deadline for submission of an abstract is 1st November 2009.

SEMINAR SUBMISSION & PUBLISHING RIGHTS RELEASE FORM
The seminar submission form may be downloaded from our website:
http://www.aandeconference.org/Seminar_Submission_Form_2010.pdf
The form includes submission guidelines for seminar introductions as well as style guidelines for printed copy. Please note that you will be expected to provide a written copy of your introduction as well as to transcribe the discussion period for inclusion in the published proceedings. An audio MP3 CD of the recorded session is provided for that purpose.

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PROCEEDINGS

The Proceedings of the 14th All & Everything Conference will soon be available.
Printed copies can be purchased from: http://www.amazon.com
ISBN: 9781905578269
The downloadable PDF eBook version will be available to purchase at our website:
http://www.aandeconference.org/proceedings2009.html

Printed versions of past Proceedings are available from Amazon.com.
Ebook versions of past Proceedings are available for purchase and download at our website:
http://www.aandeconference.org/proceedings.html

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JOHN LENNON 13: Instant Karma

ccwe — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 19:05:03 +0000

JOSEPH AZIZE PAGE

Joseph.Azize@googlemail.com

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John Lennon: Essence and Reality
Part 13: “Instant Karma!”

“I’m only beginning to understand what this record was about”, said Lennon in 1972, more than two years after it had been released. I am sure that Lennon could have said the same thing in 1980, the last year of his life. “Instant Karma!” is, I feel, a song so large that it is difficult to take it in. I mean this the way that sometimes, by grace, one has a moment where one is struck with the reality of something: an animal, a person, the sky, the clouds, the wind, a reflection, or a street sign. Buddhists have referred to these illuminations as seeing the “suchness” of reality. It is a big thing when one can sense the “suchness” of one’s own reality, because to the extent that I can, I am able at will to sense myself in relation to other realities.

Such experiences need to be borne, meaning that they involve both “birth” and “bearing”: it is as if a new man is coming to birth, and an inner health or strength is needed to be able to bear the vision. When, in time, such moments have brought some quality of soul to birth, they can be supported for a longer period, so that the soul can do more than blink in the sunlight for a moment or two. The results of the experiences then work together, as Gurdjieff said, and one can even perhaps sense the face of God in creation, at once instantly immediate, yet also transcendent.

We shall return to this at the end of this piece, but I have said this much now because, grandiloquent as it may sound, I feel that some sort of experience along these lines is needed to receive the impact of “Instant Karma!”. Forget words like “heavy”, although for my money, it is far heavier than anything Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple or Judas Priest ever conceived. It may well be the most powerful song of the rock and roll era. For spiritual magnitude, the best polyphonic Western music to which I could compare it, would be the “Requiem Aeternam”, “Kyrie Eleison” and “Dies Irae” from Mozart’s Requiem, where, of course, he availed himself of words from the sacred tradition.

The secret of the power of “Instant Karma!” is not far to seek: the music and the delivery correspond with raw fidelity to its urgent message that judgment is sure, and glory is possible; that as we sow, we reap; and that we are responsible not only for our own lives but also for the lives of all those we affect and who we can affect.

The production of this song is now legendary: Lennon awoke on 27 January 1970, wrote it on the piano that morning, recorded it that evening with George Harrison (guitar), Phil Spector (producer), Klaus Voorman (bass) and Alan White (drums). On 6 February, it was available in stores, and on 11 February they performed it on Top of the Pops. For Lennon, the entire process was immediate, and this comes through in his voice and in the playing. Lennon keenly felt that he could, and even should, communicate directly with his audience. This idea was encouraged by Yoko Ono, whose own art sought, among other things, to forge an imaginative partnership between singer and audience.

Part of their thinking was that by producing topical singles like “Give Peace A Chance”, “Power to the People” and “Karma!” with a minimum of fuss, music could be as alive to the moment as a newspaper. Personally, I am not fond of “Give Peace A Chance”; to my ear it aims high but delivers low, especially in the verses, which are self-important when not meaningless. Yet, formidable critics such as Johnny Rogan relish it, so perhaps there is something in it I cannot hear. However, in the case of “Karma!”, I agree with the critics that Lennon struck gold, if not platinum. Like newspapers announcing the outbreak of war or the signing of peace, this is a bulletin of permanent value.

Two steely notes on piano into the first words, delivered by a man who sounds like he means them: “Instant Karma’s gonna get you!” This means, of course, that the results of what we have done remain with us. It means that there is justice, and that we will get our just deserts. For most of us, the outcome will be mixed. As Newman, I think, once remarked, most of us are worse than we could be but better than we might have been. And so it is that for almost each one of us, the reckoning will be bitter-sweet. As an aside, this fact of life demonstrates the sheer good sense and realism of the teaching of Purgatory – a teaching shared by Gurdjieff and mainstream Christians. This is yet another reason why, the more I study Gurdjieff, I see the main influence on him as being Greek Christianity, which holds the concept of Purgatory while rejecting that Latinate word.

This is not such a detour from Lennon as may seem, for in “Karma!”, the law of cause and effect works as a sort of Purgatory. First, in the verses, there comes the judgment, and then in the chorus, the exaltation. This, it seems to me, is how the song hangs together. The verses are chiefly, but not entirely, given over to warning and admonition, until they invite the addressees to believe that they are superstars – if they believe it:

Instant karma’s gonna get you,
Gonna knock you right on the head:
You better get yourself together,
Pretty soon you’re gonna be dead.
What in the world are you thinking of?
Laughing in the face of love!
What on earth are you trying to do?
It’s up to you – yeah you!

Instant karma’s gonna get you,
Gonna look you right in the face,
Better get yourself together, darling,
Join the human race.
How in the world are you going to see,
Laughing at fools like me?
Who on earth do you think you are?
A superstar?
Well alright, you are!

And then comes the chorus, almost deafening in its intensity:

Well, we all shine on,
Like the moon and the stars and the sun.
Well we all shine on,
Ev’ryone! come on!

The third verse adds force to the message, by declaring that we cannot possibly be here to spend our lives suffering. And then, asks Lennon, why do you limit yourself to one small place, one groove, one role, when you are made for greater things? He says:

Instant karma’s gonna get you,
Gonna knock you right off your feet
Better recognize your brothers,
Everyone you meet.
Why in the world are we here?
Surely not to live in pain and fear.
Why on earth are you there,
When you’re everywhere?
Come and get your share.

Never before have I quoted much by way of repetitions, but I do so here so that one can at least see on the printed page how the hammer strikes the anvil:

Well, we all shine on,
Like the moon and the stars and the sun.
Yeah, we all shine on,
On and on and on, on and on.
Well, we all shine on,
Like the moon and the stars and the sun.

And then, in a masterful touch, at about 2’ 56”, the song softens rather than fades out:

Like the moon and the stars and the sun.
Yeah, we all shine on,
Like the moon and the stars and the sun.
Yeah, we all shine on …

Why masterful? Because the power is not lessened. One hears the decrescendo as a controlled performance. I repeat, it does not sound to me like a gradual fade: at the word “like”, Lennon lowers his voice for the rest of the piece. To me, the effect produced is, fancifully perhaps, as if the moon and the stars did not fade so much as they withdrew further back into the deeps of the sky.

My interpretation of the song as referring to judgment, justice, and mixed deserts, at least has this to commend it: it makes sense of the otherwise inexplicable gap between the condign punishment promised in the verses, and the celebratory chant of the chorus. Otherwise, surely, it would be contradictory to hurl thunderbolts, but then announce a general human apotheosis.

Commentators have noted that the chorus is based on the “Three Blind Mice” motif of three descending notes, which Lennon favoured in some of his greatest works, such as “All You Need Is Love”, “Imagine” and the poignant “My Mummy’s Dead”. The simplicity and the endless interest of the theme seem to me to be typical of Lennon’s genius. But there are more than just tricks in this song: there is depth. As Lennon explained later on:

… it occurred to me that karma is instant, as well, as it influences your past life or your future life. There really is a reaction to what you do now. That’s what people ought to be concerned about.

This insight that our actions affect the past as well as the future is an extraordinary one, involving as it does, the understanding that in each moment, our actions not only comprise the present, they determine the future by laying down the tracks upon which it will run, and they are the ever-changing connection with the past, for one knows the past by its effect, and we are that. To try and explain this, one could take Gurdjieff’s concept of “repairing the past”. I have dealt with this in George Adie, but to give an example which may clarify things: let us say that we have a neurosis, and we can say that the neurosis can be traced back to our parents’ behaviour. One could then say, “what the parents did was bad: it caused this neurosis”. But if the neurotic is healed, so that he is no longer neurotic, or at least not such a neurotic as he was, then one could say: “what the parents did was bad, but not as bad as we first thought, because the neurosis it caused was curable.” And so on: in this way we repair our past and even our parents’ mistakes, which is, as Gurdjieff said, an honour.

And so Lennon had this tremendous insight, that by taking action now we can remedy the crimes and errors of the past and build a better future. Taken as a whole, the song is a century of thought and wisdom in three minutes and about 23 seconds. It takes us from judgment and condign punishment to justification and exaltation.

But there is one more matter to mention before leaving: karma. Is karma in fact the notion of cause and effect, that one is one’s past and cannot escape it? What karma initially was, I don’t know, but Gurdjieff had an interesting view of it, retained (so far as I know) only in Ferapontoff’s Constantinople notes. This perspective states that the doctrine of karma was originally this:

Absolute conditioning of the smallest action. You have thought so far that you can do something. You can do absolutely nothing. You must understand that you are not, that you can change nothing (p. 29).

But, as with Lennon’s admonition that instant karma will hit us right in the face, this grim perspective is not the whole of the story, because if actions are totally conditioned, understanding is not:

To understand the situation is already a great thing and it is the first necessary step. Such understanding already includes a certain freedom. … What you call inaction would have been precisely a real possibility of action. In doing one must not create a new Karmic chain. … Unity means isolation from karma (pp. 29-30).

Now this was not quite Lennon’s understanding of karma, but it is, I think, a fuller one, and corresponds more perfectly to reality. We can see how the concepts are related. If karma is the conditioning of even the smallest action, then each action is the result of the past. If some freedom from karma is achieved by not starting a new karmic chain, then there is some sense in speaking of “good karma” and “bad karma”. But it is not so simple a thing as people imagine: good karma consists in consciousness, being, and doing for an aim, without identification. Bad karma is mechanical doing. So, in the end, while Lennon may not have understood all of this, he grasped, and he felt, that we are as we act, and this is a necessary corrective to an unbalanced emphasis on “being”.

Now, to return again to where we started, I had noted that even Lennon did not understand “Instant Karma!”. He was fortunate that something very fine came through him, that he was faithful to it, and served it. Something the same is possible when we have these moments of suchness. If I can sense my presence, I can bear the moment. If I cannot, it unsettles me, which is what I think happened with Van Gogh: he did not possess the inner strength to sustain what he saw. It is not enough to express these illuminations, although that certainly will help. They must be lived. And so the question is, then, how do we live?

This is an appropriate time to stop, but I shall pursue this in the next blog, when I look at two of Lennon’s uncompleted masterpieces, “Tennessee” and “Real Love”.

Joseph.Azize@googlemail.com

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