/lit/ - Literature

A student’s account of meeting Gurdjieff:

Underneath this latter collection, on the floor against the wall, lay a long row of big cushions covered with a single carpet. In the left-hand corner, at the end of the row, was a Dutch stove draped with an embroidered cloth. The corner on the right was decorated with a particularly fine color combination; in it hung an ikon of St. George the Victor, set with precious stones. Beneath it stood a cabinet in which were several small ivory statues of different sizes; I recognized Christ, Buddha, Moses and Mahomet; the rest I could not see very well.

Another low ottoman stood against the right-hand wall. On either side of it were two small carved ebony tables and on one was a coffee-pot with a heating lamp. Several cushions and hassocks were strewn about the room in careful disorder. All the furniture was adorned with tassels, gold embroidery and gems. As a whole, the room produced a strangely cosy impression which was enhanced by a delicate scent that mingled agreeably with an aroma of tobacco.

Having examined the room, I turned my eyes to Mr. Gurdjieff. He looked at me, and I had the distinct impression that he took me in the palm of his hand and weighed me. I smiled involuntarily, and he looked away from me calmly and without haste. Glancing at A., he said something to him. He did not look at me again in this way and the impression was not repeated.

https://www.gurdjieff.org/views2.htm

>>17681191
>But then there are the chapters with the numerology and astrological stuff, and my eyes just fucking glazed over. Have I been filtered?
Nah, those parts are pretty dense and I actually barely understood them, mostly skimmed through them on a first read. Of course, to most people this entire thing sounds too schizophrenic for them to consider anyway, but I have to admit (for anyone who can benefit by it) that on re-reads those parts clicked a lot more.

The gist of Gurdjieff’s cosmology (as you probably remember) is the Hermetic fractal teaching (“As above, so below”), combined with the law of triads and the law of sevens/the octave, and he claims he’s revealing these ancient traditions from a primordial teaching which split itself up and was dispersed into several other cultures.

The law of triads is supposedly represented in traditions like the Hindu trimurti (Brahma, Vishnu, Siva — creating, preserving, destroying) and the Christian Trinity. Another relevant tradition about the law of threes he doesn’t explicitly mention is yin and yang making up the yinyang.

The octave/7 teaching was supposedly transmitted through the musical system of the octave itself (seven notes in the octave), through the tradition of God creating the world in 7 days (whence we get the 7 day week), all the sevens in the Bible in general (as well as multipliers like 77, seventy times seven, etc), the tradition of the baby Prince Sakyamuni Buddha taking 7 steps as a newborn and a lotus opening up in every footprint, 7 chakras (corresponding to his 7 centers of the human being), etc. Also in the physical fact that there’s 7 colors in the rainbow (where interestingly the line between warm and cold colors comes at exactly the same spot in the octave where there’s an interval between mi and fa. In other words ROY | GBIV, DO RE MI | FA SOL LA SI).

So overall he claims the universal octave goes in a descending octave as such, which he calls the Ray of Creation:

The Absolute — Do
[interval filled by the will of the Absolute]
All galaxies — Si
All suns (in a galaxy) — La
Sun — Sol
All planets (contained in a single solar system) — Fa
[interval filled by organic life on a planet]
One planet — Mi
Satellite of a planet (moon) — Re
“Do” again — submatter, primordial matter, “the dark side of the moon,” lowest point of the ray of creation

Again, this is all already too far outside the worldview of most people, but the basic gist of G.’s cosmology is that changes in the Earth’s organic life and human civilization are the result of planetary, solar, stellar, and galactic influences, and that we ourselves have the same relationship to the cells and atoms making up our bodies. A similar idea is found in the Hwa Yen Garland Sutra with its teaching of recursion, and the Third Zen patriarch’s saying, “Big things are as little as little things can be and little things as big as big things can be.”