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.

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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The John Robert Colombo Page

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New Mexico Desert

Carlos Castaneda

Carlos Castaneda Recalled and Reconsidered

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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See Also Osho on Castaneda

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Castaneda in 1949

See

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

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

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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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

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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JOSEPH AZIZE PAGE

Joseph.Azize@googlemail.com
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George Adie

Don’t Try to Escape – Wake up in it!

Don’t Try to Escape – Wake up in it!

On 29 July 2009, it will be 20 years since Mr Adie died. These extracts are from a group meeting of Tuesday 26 February 1980.

The first question was from Anne, who was pregnant: “Looking back on my work through the break, I see there’s a sort of wave like process. I go up and down. And I find that I really seem to need a practical approach. I seem to get in a slump where I don’t know; where my days are all the same, and I don’t know how to work in a practical way. I’m sort of afraid that this will continue like this, especially since I mightn’t be coming to groups for a while. I just feel there’s that continuing cycle that I can’t get out of. I need a direction, or something.”

“Well, really, you know, don’t try and get out of it. Why not, why not wake up in it? Then you could use it. We’re always trying to get out of something, you see. Something presses on us. We don’t seem to think there’s actual value in this difficulty. Try and accept this wave-like motion. If it’s truly so, it’s useful. I know I’m going down, brakes are required; I’m going up, take the brakes off. I mean, different inclinations require different types of effort, don’t they? Sometimes I need to lie down and go to sleep. Other times I need a little bit of force, I need to try and work.”

He turned to Mrs Adie: “Well, I’d like Helen to help me on this question.”

“I think you’ve covered it very completely!” she said with a humorous emphasis.

Then Mary brought her difficulty: “Mr Adie, I’ve been trying to evaluate my situation, and to find a way out of this confusion that I feel I’ve been in for quite some time. And I came to see that I don’t really know how to conduct an inner search. And quite practically, it means that somehow I don’t know how to work during the day when I make a plan. And I think that is connected with the confusion, so that my general state is rather low, and I’m so easily taken. I’ve tried to think about the meaning of the term “inner search”, what it could mean, and I’ve had some thoughts, but somehow they don’t connect.”

“You have in fact made a lot of important connections there: what you say is of good value,” replied Mr Adie. “Do you think that you’re more confused? Rather, it’s only now that you see that the confusion. It’s how you’ve always been, except that you were in it so badly that you were oblivious to it. You’ve been racing like a hare after some prey or other, or running to escape from some dog. In that chase there seems to be clarity, there’s no doubt. But all it really meant was that I’m taken, I’m going hell-bent for that one thing. I’m actually hooked. If I am fully identified all the time with one thing, I seem to know, I seem to be in no confusion. But real choice can’t exist in confusion, so immediately I approach a power of choice, it brings the awareness of confusion.

“What you say is absolutely right. But it means to say you’re seeing your confusion, and that rather sets one back – you feel less sure, you feel in query. And then you raise these very important questions which are related to it. That represents a fairly long thought, what you’ve just been saying. So you are not in that sort of absolutely hopeless situation, whatever you might seem to conclude. On the contrary, you are already beginning to pass through a gate, because you feel the need now, you see that in confusion not much is possible, and you begin to see what confusion is, you begin to experience it, there’s no doubt now. Your old certainty was more confused than the new uncertainty.”

At this point, Mr Adie turned to Adam, and asked him with [what] he was following. It was extraordinary how he would be aware of any dreaming in the groups. Adam admitted that he had been lost: he was, he said, “acutely uncomfortable”. Then, recommended Adie, “raise your eyes, and keep on with your practice of relaxing and sensing, and quietly listen.”

Adam made some movement, but it wasn’t enough. Adie prompted him: “Eyes higher still, and then relax. There’s nothing for you outside in that way, it’s all inside. Let everything come in that will come in. Try and centralise yourself. Try and cease from your tense striving. Let all that be passive, let your own central relaxed awareness be your only action, that’s the only thing that’s necessary to you, nothing else.”

Paul spoke: “I feel I’m on a plateau, and I can’t see any real way sort of up from it. I’ve been finding for some time now, my appointments during the day have been very seldom kept, and I used the stone, but now it seems to have no effect at all.” This was a reference to a task which involved moving a stone from pocket to pocket as a reminding factor.

“But that was only for a week,” said Mr Adie. “You had the right to go on a bit longer, but one goes on too long with these things. You want to go and break a window with that stone, and find something quite different.”

Paul moved on to something else: “I was talking to someone the other day, who’s not in the work, but who touched on an alternative way of looking at things. And this was, instead of looking inside, to take the concept of the universal light or the universal absolute, and looking upon myself merely as a receiver, and as a transmitter, that if one could become totally free from all the rubbish, one could then tap into any part of this universal mind.”

“Yes,” replied Adie, “but the problem about all that is this little word “if”.” People laughed at the simplicity of the comment. Paul, however, defended the concept, saying that it “seems to align with the work”.

But Adie did not agree. “In words it aligns. But you started from the fact that you don’t carry out your exercise appointments. What is going to help you do that? You say, “if I could be full of this impression”. But you’re not.”

“There’s no particular harm in what that person said, but what is their method? Looking on higher things, or what? If anybody is really working, they do what we do. There’s only one way to work. The best way is to work a little tiny bit, that’s the right way. There is no other way. If you don’t have attention, what work is possible? If you don’t awake, what work is possible? If you haven’t got some centre of cognition, what choice is possible? With no choice there’s no control. It means nothing. What we have is the eternal, absolute instructions, plus the connection with our lives. The question is work, I need to work. For that I need to relax, I need to receive impressions, I need to not identify.”

Still, Paul went in to bat for this method: “The way I was starting to work was to divest myself of the garbage, to be more free.”

“But how? How do you do that?”

“To see the rubbish, and be free of it.”

“Yes, but how do you do it? This is the question of presence, non-identification, confrontation, objectivity, all these things are necessary in order to see it. And I need to see the actual moments in my life by choice, and these are the appointments. If I don’t keep them, then I am subject only to accident when I get an odd prod from outside. What I need to do is somehow to plan a bit, a little. If I could plan very little, it would make an enormous difference. Then I would get more related, if you like, shocks or prods, or stimulus from outside.”

I will just pause here for a moment to point out the importance of what Adie said about making appointments as part of a plan for use during the day. By formulating a strategy, we exercise, in the form of exercise appropriate to a spiritual discipline, our judgment and our will. We aim to introduce an intentional current into our lives, which runs side by side with the events of the day, and then, at the decided time, we disrupt the established tempo. By consciousness, then, we come to consciousness. But to return to Mr Adie’s explanation to Paul.

“Work is work. That is the whole thing with people. Everything you read in all religions is there, but what is missing is the way to do it: have being, have love, have compassion for all people, be free, tell the truth, honour thy God. But how? And then I find I’m confused, as Mary said, which means that it’s beginning to enter into me. Directly that kind of confusion arises, as a result of seeing something, I begin to have a certain kind of discrimination. I see that this is the position at the moment. So in all this confusion, what?”

“If I understand it at all, I understand it because there is something representative in me that is capable of recognizing, not just theorizing, but actually experiencing confusion, and being present to be unable to decide … and not giving up. And if I can sustain that for a certain time, balanced, the requirement will come to me, there’s no doubt. It gives a chance for higher reason, which works very quickly, to see what is necessary.”

“Whatever you find, try it and see, and then if you find it profitable bring it, but not, not if it contradicts the work. I don’t want to take anything away from you, and if you find those concepts help you, good, then try, prove it – the work. The thing, the important point is, are any of these advices included in the work? Do they have any work in them? You started from a good point: your realisation of a lack of power, of the diminishing effect of the task, is brought about by the little bit of work you have done. None of us have worked enough, but even the little we’ve worked brings some realisation. But then I say, oh, let me find a different way.”

Paul was, apparently, put out, although I must say that he remained with Mr Adie for almost ten years, right up until Mr Adie’s death, so, at some deep level, he respected Mr Adie’s advice. But tonight he was defensive: “It was really the concept of, seemed to bring a breath of fresh air.”

“We don’t accept to resolve confusion through over-simplifications, or talking about something we cannot live. Try and have some practical experience of force in you. If you could have that, there’d be much more fulfilment. See, if I feel that I’m confused, what force can I have really? It’s a very good thing that I haven’t got any, because in confusion what would happen to it? Which way would it go? The very confusion robs me of appreciable force, but there is something of a higher quality, which can respond in a very small degree to the higher forces. If I can only contact that, then the process starts. It’s a very fine process, I need to be as much balanced as I can. I need to have my head quiet, not interfering with my body. I repeat that the head is always cut off, it’s not in control of the body at all, it’s just dreams, my head isn’t fulfilling any proper function, it just dreams, thinks of easier ways and that sort of thing, you see, but go on trying, try and come to the right reasoning yourself, you see.”

The next question, from Ellen, who was, what I believe they call a clinical psychologist, meaning that she gave/administered certain therapies or treatments to people, was rather similar: “Mr Adie, this week I’ve had two experiences which have left me in some confusion.”

“Then take them one at a time. Shortly, start with what the first one was.”

“I was reading a psychology book which presented ways of controlling one’s behaviour either by Eastern methods like meditation or Western methods of self-observation, and they presented the idea of observing one’s focus, either internal focus or external focus, and on Sunday at the work I was reminded of this when I was given a task, I was doing some ironing, and sort of got into it in my usual way, and suddenly I noticed that I was, I don’t know … sort of, probably …”

“Observation. What was the observation?”

“I suppose it would have been identified with the ironing, just rushing into it, I suppose I was lost, but … I thought … I think the idea is that I was identified with ironing, and I was reminded then of the focus, and then I tried to change that, and the next moment I found that my focus had changed to something like identified, and I was even more lost than before.”

“I think it just shows that you’re mixed up with ordinary psychology, the psychology of pathology, and the pathology of psychology and so on, and it’s all a big confusion, it’s partly what Paul was talking about, and the words are very close, meditation and internal focus and external focuses, and all that. So many words. I have to really guard. I’m sorry you’re studying books on Western psychology. In a learned way they go round and round and round and round, and when they’ve done this long circle round, they’ve forgotten where they started, and they start going on again and again.”

While Adie was saying this, people were breaking up with laughter, but he didn’t play it for laughs: “So your job to become a purveyor of psychological freedom, or of administering psychological treatment, or teaching others how to deal with psychological defects is a great danger … it’s all slightly in the realm of head-shrinking of one kind or another. All the words are there. But you see too that
the terminology about internal focus and external focus, doesn’t help you. But in trying to work, we get all sorts of reminders, connections and impressions of all sorts.”

“We don’t want to dispense with any of them, but we do need to sort them out, if we can. There’s no reason why this thought of internal and external focus really should knock me over, but first of all I have to have this experience of my inner focus, and I can talk about it without having it at all. This is the danger. If I have it, then I don’t get trapped in the words. You follow? So I need to have something going on in me that isn’t words. A word may help me tremendously: it touches something, it quickens me. At that point I need to understand the point and not go on with this word, word, word. After three repetitions, it’s gibberish. But if I can remain there, I don’t need the word: I have it, it’s transformed, it’s a force within me.”

“Take an invocation: you call. Once the call is answered, you don’t go on. You call to God, if you like. I find it’s answered. Well then, are you going to call to another God or something, or go on? No. There’s a fine contact made. If I really observe, I receive a certain living experience, very fine, very short, but in ordinary life-time, very long: now I need to be present to everything. Does it mean anything at all, what I’m saying, or does it seem an awful lot of words again?”

“It helps. I don’t let words outrun the experience. ”

“It can help now because you’re a little bit relaxed. Good. If you do a preparation, surely some of you will have had this experience, and say you manage to get a bit quiet; surely sometimes a good idea comes, you either see what you mustn’t do, or what you need to do, or how you need to be. Maybe you even realise that it’s important enough to try and make a note of it so that you don’t forget. So you go and write it down. Before you’ve finished writing it down you’ve lost it, it’s gone into words, if you’re not careful.”

“Yes, I’ve had that experience.”

“There you are. But that doesn’t mean to say you must stop writing. It means that instead of getting lured into two or three pages, we try and allow to come out what will come out while I’m present. I need to see if I’m there or not there. It means I’m continually trying, but not getting tense. Good, it’s a good question, I have to answer it for you.”

The next question was difficult to listen to and to transcribe. And yet there was a sort of serious drama about it. Tonight, Kevin, who brought the questions, contended with Mr Adie, obstructed him, answered him testily on occasions, and yet, he too, remained with him, and like Paul, was a force in the group after Adie’s death. The exchange opened up simply enough, until Kevin referred to “what I’m supposed to be doing at that time”. When Adie asked him whether he was referring to an inner work or an external doing, a very odd mantle of obtuseness fell on Kevin. He would say “I start by doing the work”, and refer to “my planned work”, but never specify which work.

Finally, in respect of this and other obscurities, Adie said: “You see, the fact that I don’t formulate clearly shows me that I don’t think clearly. I need to formulate very simply. If I mix up my inner aim with any sort of life processes, I can’t think properly. You’re inclined to mix it up, and this is what spoils an observation, but it’s good to bring it because this is how it’s straightened out.”

After much more discussion, Kevin said that he had, during the week, been in a position where he realised that he could not think or even make an internal movement. He was shocked by what seemed to him to be, I might say an extraordinary and unique seizure, an internal paralysis.

“Not unique,” said Adie, “it happens time after time. This is what Gurdjieff means by “nothingness”. It goes on more or less. all the time for all of us. What a horrible business. You were lucky, you actually had an experience of no reality at all – you couldn’t function in any way. It’s a very valuable experience. You had to struggle here to try and to say that simple thing. Well don’t leave it go, try and work on that, find out what robs, you find out what stands in the way, make appointments, try and keep them. It’s a good example.”

Kevin now asked, in what sounds to me like a rather truculent way: “My question is, is it better to try and prolong that time, or is it better to have more of them?”

Adie paused, and then replied: “Both – but you can’t do either. If you work, you will get more opportunities, and if you respond to them, they will tend in the end to get longer. But then this is words again.”

“ You see, the kind of understanding that I receive from seeing that I am absolutely fixed and have no choice, is one of these flashes which lasts for one ten thousandth of a second, but endures in my mind for weeks. It can enter into me for weeks as an influence, which I’ve received. I’ve received, let me now not let that disappear. I can’t profit by immediately identifying with that, so it helps me to be brought up to it. It’s a very subtle thing. We want to tackle it with great big spanners and hammers, but it’s not possible to do delicate things with such tools.”

Then Andy brought this: “Mr Adie, during the break period, the efforts that I have made have left me with a feeling that I lack organization, both inwardly and outwardly. The plans that I make in the morning seem to me to be, good value for me, something that I need, but it still doesn’t seem to follow a line, it seems to be scattered. Individually they’re worthwhile efforts, but as a whole, going towards something, I can’t seem to keep to an aim. I tend to go away, I never seem to be able to follow towards something.”

There is a lengthy silence on the tape. Finally, Adie spoke: “You want to go forward toward an aim. Bring it nearer. Best be practical. Remind yourself of the main direction, your main big belief, the belief you started with, that man had a possibility, that there was a path, that there was a noble life as well as an ignoble, and so on. It’s true. And what is the step now? What is the immediate requirement? I have to have these intermediate aims, because if you don’t work now, you’ll never … come to earth. How short is it necessary to make the aim? Could you make an aim for fulfilment in one hour, or half an hour? And possibly choose another moment for renewal, when the circumstances will be such that you can’t now predict. You don’t know what your state will be at lunch time, do you?”

“So, you have your immediate thought, what you’re going to try and obstruct, study, change, use transform. Try and choose something within reach, that’s important for you, and then try and have an appointment at midday, to see what kind of effort you need then. You won’t know exactly what is necessary. In principle, yes, but you won’t know the details. So in order to make it very practical, try and make a fresh near aim at lunch time. See, ideally, if we could renew our aim every five minutes, that would be a marvellous thing. In other words, we would live five minutes at a time. The trouble is that after one or twice we should immediately start to slip into a dream, and we wouldn’t even notice the end of the five minutes for which we were planning. So it’s no good trying to do a thing that we can’t. So let’s have one appointment, a little way ahead, and then an appointment to make an appointment at some time. In this way you can make it more practical, without these unfulfilled appointments and misses. There are things which you need about which you have no doubt, so what about those? And make the connections, all sorts of connections to be made with any plan.”

Now Adam spoke, in a voice I can only describe as very heavy: “I haven’t been on the search for some time. I’ve found I need to overcome negativity, evidenced in certain things that I do, recurrent situations that always trigger off absolutely predictable reactions. Right at the end of last session, the exercise that we were given gave me released energy to help me deal with these situations, but that energy was no longer forthcoming over the break.”

“Did you do the preparation?”

“You bet!” This was emphatic. “And I got more and more depressed because they were having less and less effect.” This was hammered in, and suddenly he expostulated, for no apparent reason: “No! I’m not going to speak.”

The first time I heard this, I was expecting a rebuke to issue from Mr Adie. But I should have known him better than that. He waited just a little, and in his ordinary voice, not even a particularly soft one, said: “Try, try. Just be patient. You have a chance to speak here. If I start speaking and find I’m talking rubbish, it’s a very great relief to find it is so, because then I know that that’s out anyway. Now let me open a fresh chapter and see.”

Now there was a pause, and then Adie became more direct: “You see, you stare at this point there. You’ll get nothing that way. But you could open and relax and try and receive impressions. It’s all buzzing around in you like that, you see? Or do you? Do you accept the whirligig of your own thoughts?”

Adam did open, and told a sorrowful tale of aggressive driving, losing his temper for no reason, and of how his wife was concerned that he was becoming worse, not better. He felt that she was correct. He had said to her that: “It’s stopped being a search, it’s become more like a search and destroy mission.”

“Well, you know, Adam, this search is a very real thing, but it’s a word that can lose its meaning if it’s used without presence. It’s like “wish” – you can get hooked and identified with the word “wish”, and then this sacred word doesn’t do anything for you. “Search” is a tremendous thing: search can mean a conscious presence that has faith, and looks for something higher and corresponding because of that.

“If we have a search, surely the search for us is in here, inside. It’s not going to be very encouraging at times, but that doesn’t matter: we want to come to a truth, and so we need to be open at the same time. My great difficulty is that I think I have a lot of powers and possibilities now that I don’t possess. I think I can search, but I am only capable of little searchings, yet, if I can only do that a small amount, and let the rest go, I’d have a chance. But I have big thoughts, putting the whole of my house into order, making a plan of the work, and so on. I don’t realise that it’s all very efficiently provided for, including all sorts of laws of accidents. My type is provided, my whole history has been provided. Can I alter all that? Can I alter all the people I am going to meet tomorrow, and all the accidents that are going to happen? Of course I can’t. I might as well concentrate on a small area of my being, you see?

“This is the problem,” asserted Adam, “the small things are getting less under control.”

“I’m not sure we’re talking about the same small things. I am not speaking about small outer things, but the small inner reality which is real; it is there. The high ideas and the inner response that is there. And don’t despair, or anything of this kind. But, this attitude: “I must pay attention to this”, or “It needs my determination”. What is that? Adam on the track, you see?

There was laughter at Adie’s take on Adam’s manner of speaking. “Our position is tragic-comic, there’s no question. If you could take it quietly, and put this massive fist down, and just relax it.” Adam was a large man, and probably did have a large fist.

“I hope that is something for you. And also, to take a thought on behalf of your wife helps. Think what she’s suffered. Poor woman.”

The final question of the evening came from a young woman. Her question was not so remarkable, but there was something in her way of speaking which was unusual. Adie asked her: “Do you ever hear yourself speaking, the kind of intonation? Do you hear yourself now, what kind of person is speaking?”

“I think so. I think I’m pleading with you.

“And yet, you have what you need. No plea or request or prayer can possibly be answered if I haven’t done what I myself can do. What is here will help you somewhat, in your work. And if you can listen carefully to your voice, you could hear a certain self-pitying tone about the plea, and as long as that’s there you won’t receive what you seek, because you’re sorry for yourself, and that fills the space. Yet, you haven’t got to be sorry for yourself. I have to be more there in order to get what I am asking for: then your efforts will help you. Listen to your voice, listen to how you ask.”

Finally, he turned to Adam, and made a reference to the passage in Matthew 12:43-45 and Luke 11:24-26: “You know what is said about the one who had the devil cast out of him, but after it was cast out, the devil returned with seven others worse than himself? You remember that, in the Bible? Well this is the thing: we get a moment of recollection, but then we become proud over that, and we become worse than we had been before. We don’t bring ourselves to receive it in the right way, somehow. To bring myself to it, to benefit from my experience, I have to be very simple, surely. I have to long to be humble, not puffed up. Try sometimes to come, without words to such a state, where you’re present, being, collected. It is just being: you’re not trying to sell anything, or prop your picture up. A great trouble isn’t it, propping a picture up? Well, it’s for everybody, nobody’s excluded.”

He turned to Mrs Adie: “Any advice?” he asked.

“No, no.”

“Well, goodnight.”

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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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