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Esoteric Writing

Anthony Blake

I had decided with the contents of the first series of books to achieve the destruction, in the consciousness and feelings of people, of deeprooted convictions which in my opinion are false and quite contradictory to reality.

With the contents of the second series of books to prove that there exist other ways of perceiving reality, and to indicate their direction.

With the contents of the third series of books to share the possibilities which I had discovered of touching reality and, if so desired, even merging with it. Gurdjieff, Third Series, p. 4.

My talk owes its origin to my recent experience of finishing the recording of the Three Series of Writings by Gurdjieff (plus Herald and a few other items). The experience was traumatic, and I have written about it elsewhere …

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(http://www.anthonyblake.co.uk/ReadingAloud.html). It also blended with data already formed in me drawn from thinking about ancient literature, art, science and psychology which might, in general, be classified under the heading of 'information theory'. I have no answers as to what Gurdjieff 'meant' and am not even sure what that could mean. Part of the puzzle of esoteric writing is what we expect or imagine esoteric knowledge to look like. Would we even register it as such if it appeared to us in neon lights?

The question of hidden meanings has two sides: it concerns not only the writer but also the reader. I imagine they should end up communicating with each other and suspect that this should never be a one-way process from Mount Sinai as it were but more a meeting of minds. I consider reading to be a rare and precious thing. This is against the common view of people who imagine they can read and that's that. For me, reading is akin to consciousness and we know that Gurdjieff often pointed out that most people believe they are conscious so never bother to become conscious. This is what he said about reading, as reported in In Search of the Miraculous (p. 20).

"A great deal can be found by reading. For instance, take yourself: you might already know a great deal if you knew how to read. I mean that, if you understood everything you have read in your life, you would already know what you are looking for now. If you understood everything you have written in your own book, what is it called?" – he made something altogether impossible out of the words 'Tertium Organum' – "I should come and bow down to you and beg you to teach me. But you do not understand either what you read or what you write. You do not even understand what the word 'understand' means. Yet understanding is essential, and reading can be useful only if you understand what you read."

I am going to look at the act of writing and reading from many angles. There is nothing original in what I am going to say. I hope it will serve to stimulate your uncertainties and confusions and deepen into burning questions. But I must confess to being in the grip of a strong idea of the word. There is something in the word that cannot be derived from experience. This is difficult for most people to even entertain these days when traditional authority has faded into the background and the emotion of democracy has come to dominate instead: if it is every man for himself then it is his experience that rules him. The word 'authority' of course is akin to 'author' and it is no accident that the great religions as we call them were based on the written word, which reached a peak in Islam. Most of us will also recall the opening words of the Gospel of John: "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God ...," and we should not forget the subtle links between the word, meaning, the logos and Jesus Christ. So I am allowing myself the idea that words give something that nothing else can. When we come to Gurdjieff we might expect he would be active in making use of words in a way that corresponds to our times (though it might be already out of date!). I am very acutely aware of the shift in collective mind over the last century in particular that has taken us from certain accepted norms into uncharted territory.

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My talk will be looking at the theme of esoteric writing under six main headings, chosen simply for their convenience. The purpose of my brief remarks under these various headings is simply to serve your own questioning and insights. In the short time I have I can scarcely address any one of the thirty or forty ideas I will mention. You may well be grateful that I do not have time to inflict on you a 1,001 tales like Scheherazade!

The very idea of esoteric writing suggests some important properties. We know it is somewhat hidden and may also suspect that it is robust and capable of Darwinian survival. A. There must be at least two levels of meaning. This can be called surface and depth, apparent and real, outer and inner, or any such pairing of terms. As a duality, the two levels or kinds are closely linked. This possibility opens many lines of thought. In one of them we can think of something that surpasses the common assumption that the outer form is arbitrary (as people say the running of software does not depend on the matter of the hardware). I am reminded of Gurdjieff's division of humanity into two streams with only tenuous possibilities of passing from one to the other, which Bennett later added to by his concept of the 'psychokinetic' group who lived in the hazardous condition 'between'. The implications of esoteric and its opposite 'exoteric' taken together as dyad in which they are complementary are wide-ranging.

Here of course I am taking the word 'esoteric' rather in the common way it is used today and not as Gurdjieff often used it in conjunction with the 'mesoteric' and 'exoteric' as part of humanity beyond life. We should ask ourselves what we mean by 'esoteric'. I remember Aristotle being quoted as defining the word as "that which has been long known but not understood."

I want to mention two historical examples of having two independent 'messages' in the same material. In early astronomy it has been suggested that it was a usual routine to have one 'story' as it were for the ordinary people and another for the ones in the know. A case in point is the sequence of the days of the week. Far from being arbitrary, it stems from taking the inner lines, which con-nect the seven 'planets' of antiquity when they are

arranged around a circle in order of apparent velocity. Another example is drawn from ring composition (cf. my presentation Beelzebub in a Ring at the All and Everything Conference 2008). It is being increasingly recognised that writings from Homer through the Bible to Sufism followed a similar pattern in which an outer sequence of stories, events or teachings were inwardly linked in such a way that

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they could carry another message. We can think of the outer sequence as conveying the linear meaning and the inner connections as conveying a structural or holistic meaning. The diagrams here show an analysis of the Gathas (hymns) attributed to Zoroaster. The outer sequence is shown by the numbers 1, 2, 3, etc. The inner form is shown by connecting lines. The scholar suggests that Zoroaster implanted his new teachings in the inner form where they could be read by the sophisticated scholars or theologians of the time.

The very idea of an inner and outer message conveyed by use of the same elements is most powerful and suggestive. It even relates to the feeling-sense most of us have about the way in which something is said conveys a meaning equally strong to what is said. It also relates to dramatic art in which there is sub-text 'beneath' the obvious text. B. It will make use of popular media. Contrary to the idea of esoteric knowledge being locked up somewhere out of sight, this suggests that it must be spread widely and be available everywhere. Of course, this means that it is all around but not noticed! I often cite the example of the man in ancient Rome who could dance the Pythagorean doctrine but neither he nor his audience could see what it meant even if they could tell if he got it wrong.

Use of popular media relates to redundancy in the information. By having multiple channels it makes it more possible for the meaning to be preserved. I remember reading years ago (I no longer have the reference) of an engineer recognising the wisdom of having two versions of the creation in Genesis: one can imagine putting one on top the other looking for what is the same, or using them rather as Farzin Deravi suggested in his poster presentation (Autostereograms and the "creation of images without words," All and Everything Conference 2013) as autostereograms, in combination. But the use of popular media simply increases the chance of the esoteric message surviving over the ages. René Guénon and Martin Lings speak about the characteristic conservatism of popular lore. There is of course the remarkable example Gurdjieff himself gives in Meetings (presuming it is true which we cannot truly know) of his father, an Ashokh or bard, reciting the story of Gilgamesh exactly as it was later deciphered from a clay tablet at the end of the nineteenth century.

"Some might argue that, without writing, the same beliefs could not have prevailed over such a long period of time, but in reality, oral traditions are far more faithfully passed on than the written word. A written account can be open to multiple interpretations, distortions, and transformations, depending on the time and situation, economic imperatives, or the whims of political or religious leaders. Orally transmitted traditions, in contrast, must be rigorously and accurately passed on in order to survive in all their subtlety, and in the smallest of details. Furthermore, the written word, thought to be the surer and safer means of communication, is not only less reliable but also more permeable to outside aggression than are the more secret codes of an oral system. During the time of the Roman Empire, for instance, the fact that the Celts were still 'prehistoric'—meaning that they hadn't recorded their history, ways, and beliefs— made it much harder for the conquering Romans to devise an appropriate

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strategy to subjugate them" (Desdemaines-Hugon, Stepping-Stones. A Journey Through the Ice Age Caves of the Dordogne [2010] 75).

Ouspensky himself writes about the Tarot as a form of transmission of esoteric wisdom. Certainly, building meanings into games seems a powerful way of making sure they are carried on. This is not to limit or specify in any way how this might work. There are some superficial examples such as the way the game of snakes and ladders was adopted to teach children about virtue and sin, or chess to teach generals about strategy.

The role of stories is ubiquitous. I am using the word 'story' in a very wide sense, to include not only amusing tales but also koans for example. This is because I believe that interesting things can be woven into stories through paradox and contradiction. Idries Shah hints that his Sufi teaching stories stem from a higher logic and can do something to one's mind if one sustains and opens to contradiction rather than resolving it into some 'moral' or other. My friend the novelist and thinker William

Pensinger argues that what we often take as mere 'decoration' in traditional cultures actually embodies profound teachings on identity and transformation. It is a nice thought that we might wrap the teachings around us as decorated cloths. C. Closely related to the previous point is the 'ableness-to-be' of esoteric writing, its capacity to survive. I must mention a way of preserving special knowledge by way of a strict tradition of transmission in which possibly just one person takes on the role of holding and preserving it. The present holder has to find and train someone for the job, and may fail, when the knowledge dies also. This line of thought tempts me into various arcane directions which we have no time for. It is enough to emphasise the importance of having mechanisms in place to ensure the safe passage of what is of value. This can include the injunction not to 'put pearls before swine' and prevent access to the material by the general population by some means or other. The 'worthiness' of the recipient is crucial and we must not forget the power associated with holding onto knowledge that most people do not have. It is often acknowledged in folklore that the 'keeper' of the knowledge becomes the person who least understands it and serves only to prevent it reaching those who might benefit.

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I want to make a link between ancient and modern information know-how: things familiar to us like compact discs not only contain data such as a song but also code that checks whether the data is correctly formed, but I propose that much the same was in place in ancient texts. Some of the numerical patterns that obsess those gone over-board about ancient wisdom concern calculations that can be made to verify the validity of the copy in hand. This is a big subject. I once read of some Cabbalistic scholars who in dispute over a text had one of them declare, "Let us go and calculate". Some modern scholars studying the texts of Plato have arrived at principles of their musical structure that enable them to count lines and check for certain numbers which will support authenticity. I must emphasise that such calculations do not of themselves convey the deeper meaning but largely serve to verify accuracy.

In passing I can also remark that modern scholars follow the principle lectio difficilior potior—"the harder reading is stronger"—which roughly means that the more obscure or unusual a word is the more likely it is to have come from the original. Scribes and translators will always tend towards making the text easier to understand and it takes severe discipline not to do this. D. One of the ways in which esoteric writing brings itself to our notice is when the writing we have does not appear to make sense. This is closely connected with the importance of realising that one does not understand. Only such a realisation can give the possibility of a 'new reading'. It is the sense we give ourselves of understanding that prevents from understanding. When we are in front of a text that evidently does not make sense we have a choice whether to consider this an inadequacy on the part of the author or on ours. It is also akin to scientific enquiry where we can come to feel that something does not make sense yet it should.

In contemporary culture frustration—like boredom—is barely tolerated yet they are an integral part of coming to understand. A smooth ride can only take us downhill. There is something instinctive in us that is aware of this. I remember that when I was reading Grimm's stories to my children the one they liked best was the one none of us understood. There must be some inbuilt attraction to the esoteric in a basic sense of the affect curiosity, the promise of something new, anticipating the unexpected.

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In the West, obscure and arcane writing has been associated with alchemy. This has been associated with the idea that such things as it spoke of should be hidden from the ordinary people, an idea that has two faces at least. In one, the perspective was to protect people from dangerous information, which might even lead them into the hands of the devil. In the other, it was simply to keep 'commercial secrets' because of the quest to make gold. But the obscurity and difficulty of certain writings may actually be for the sake of the reader, who can only understand such texts—in a real sense of understanding—if he goes through what we might label 'work on himself'. Here we touch upon the idea that the esoteric text not only transmits information in some form but also provides the means for processing it.

The Scholar said, these words I understand not. The Master answered, I must necessarily hide the Secrets of Secrets of the naturall art, as other Natural Masters have done, for it is not with this art as it is with others. Hence it is said, whatsoever is written, is written for our Learning, that through patience and comfort of the holy ghost, wee may have the Scripture. Amen. A Chymicall treatise of the Ancient and highly illuminated Philosopher, Devine and Physitian, Arnoldus de Nova Villa who lived 400 years agoe, never seene in print before, but now by a Lover of the Spagyrick art made publick for the use of Learners, printed in the year 1611.

E. Following on from what we have said already a possible characteristic of esoteric writing is that it requires some special ability or state on the part of the reader to be intelligible. To mention a prosaic and maybe amusing anecdote, I was in California some years ago talking with a Jesuit who was working in the 'enneagram of fixations' with a friend of mine (incidentally this was before Risso and all those who exploited this work) and we got onto the subject of understanding the Beatitudes in the Gospels. He told me that his mentor or confessor had advised him to first have an orgasm and then meditate on them!

There is in Sufism I believe an understanding of understanding as fusing together a psychological state with corresponding information, described in the terms hal and ilm respectively. I will be saying more about this later when I come to discuss the contribution of the reader. At this stage I will simply draw your attention to the phenomenon you must have experienced that one day you see what something means and then the next it is gone! I suppose that Gurdjieff's terminology of 'crystallisation of data' refers to a more enduring state of understanding, as when we say it is 'known in our very bones'. It may even be that there is some fundamental biochemistry at work. To come back to Gurdjieff again, he often spoke of the need to balance knowledge with being. I do not want to stop and attempt to explain these and other terms because one thing is pretty certain and that is that explanations or definitions of terms leads to nothing: it is rather like attempting to short circuit a process that requires us to 'suffer' in the old sense of the word.

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F. Finally, a crucial point about esoteric writing I want to suggest, is that it has a purpose. This means it is for someone and maybe even for a particular time. Otherwise the whole sense of esoteric writing is that of an indulgence. We have to ask, so I say, what is the purpose of enlightenment? There is something at stake that is more than our entertainment or subjective satisfaction. Can we entertain the idea that esoteric knowledge is vouchsafed to people only because they have a job to do, a task? There may be a type of knowledge that is a 'doing' knowledge or, to use one of my favourite terms, an enablement. This is 'need to know' in a spiritual sense (of performing a task of value).

I was fascinated to learn that in Tibet there is a tradition of the termas or 'treasures' that are hidden for future use by initiates called tetrons. The treasures may be in the form of a scripture but might also be a dance or vision, and some commentators say it can be lodged somehow in the chitta or mind stuff (which for the sake of some explanation we might associated with the collective unconscious). I turn to Wikipedia for a convenient summary:

Tradition holds that terma may be a physical object such as a text or ritual implement that is buried in the ground (or earth), hidden in a rock or crystal, secreted in a herb, or a tree, hidden in a lake (or water), or hidden in the sky (space). Though a literal understanding of terma is "hidden treasure", and sometimes objects are hidden away, the teachings associated should be understood as being 'concealed within the mind of the guru', that is, the true place of concealment is in the terton's mindstream. If the concealed or encoded teaching or object is a text, it is often written in dakini script: a non-human type of code or writing.

The termas are brought out only at an auspicious time (cf. the Greek term for this kairos) or when they are needed. They serve, therefore, as a kind of continuing revelation from a different perspective than that of, say, Islam where there was even a declaration that revelation had finished! Even more intriguingly, the Tibetan Buddhist way highlights time in a way that might remind us of Gurdjieff's Third Series of Writings.

2. TECHNICAL PROPERTIES This section has a presumptuous title in so far as it suggests I know the 'science' of it and am about to lay it out. I do not have the science, if there is one, and can only make tentative suggestions. I will say at the start, however, that I do not divorce the so-called 'higher' esoteric writings from ordinary information theory. Whatever we do it is with the same apparatus. Everyone walks, breaths, speaks, reads, etc. We all have biochemical brains and have evolved with life. Wherever there is a proper science it addresses what is common everywhere and at all times. What makes something 'esoteric' may be our own attitude?

A. David Bohm spoke of intelligence in terms of the etymology 'to read between'.

About intelligence, I always like to look up the origin of a word as well as its meaning. It is very interesting; it comes from inter and legere which means "To read between.”

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So it seems to me that you could say that thought is like the information in a book and that intelligence has to read it, the meaning of it.

We all know the metaphor of 'reading between the lines' but it has an origin in history. In the 17th century codes were all the rage and people used such devices as invisible ink to write literally between the lines. In Victorian times it was common to write in two perpendicular directions. An earlier illustration concerns the triliteral languages such as Hebrew and Arabic where only consonants are written in standard text. The Greeks in adopting the same Phoenician alphabet as Jews and Arabs introduced explicit signs for vowels, but they are lacking in Semitic languages. This sometimes gives rise to ambiguities of meaning. So sometimes, marks were put under the standard text to indicate the vowels, which are of course the key to pronunciation. There is a whole mystical tradition to do with the qualitative difference between consonants and vowels which I cannot go into here.

I vividly remember when I re-corded the chapter “Arousing of Thought”, my first in the long drawn out saga of recording the whole of Beelzebub's Tales and, as I struggled to render the text in its meaning, it seemed to me that there was a kind of 'score' un-derlying the written words which designated the 'music' on which it was constructed. There is some-thing very profound in the speaking aloud or pronunciation of a text.

Incidentally, in the studies of language which some of us did with Bennett, we accepted that speech brought being into language as the written word cannot. B. Structure is most important. Quite a number of people go rather crazy about patterns and numbers in regard to ancient text, which verges into the fantasies and obsessions of numerology. Yet structure is obviously important. I return again to the idea of there being two kinds of message, or always some kind of duality. Now I want to speak of 'deep' and 'surface' structure. These are relative terms which are used in a variety of ways in different disciplines.

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For example, it is crucial in music. Here is a score of great complexity and we know that most of us, in listening to the piece played, would hardly begin to discriminate or 'hear' all the different elements. But the idea goes further. Behind the written score may be quite a simple pattern from which the complexity derives. We are used these days to the fact that great complexity can derive from very simple elements. Incidentally, one of the most important con-cepts used in musical analysis, composition and appreciation is that of the triad. This It is not anything Gurdjieffian but stems from the very nature of music beginning with the physics of overtones. In the fifteenth century, the English composer (and astrologer!), John Dunstable introduced the extensive use of triads in music which now distinguishes western music. Speaking of music, I must mention the work of the remarkable scholar (now 96!), Ernest McClain who established the idea that ancient texts were nearly all written according to harmonic theory. Pythagoras was somewhat of a late comer in this regard, though Plato was a supreme artist in its usage. It is now thought for example that the Socratic Dialogues are structured according to the twelve-tone scale. McClain's work is rooted in Sumerian literature, when the gods were given numbers that fitted into a diatonic scale. C. I must make some mention of information theory and its beginnings. As you will know, the brilliant engineer Claude Shannon working in Bell Telephone in the late 1940s came up with the modern conception of information through studying the problem of noise in communication networks. This study gives information a quantitative basis but even at the time some wanted to have a broader and more qualitative conception as well. I believe it was a scientist called Marshall who wanted to link the meaning of a communication with its structure. Speaking loosely, it is in the structure of a communication that we are likely to find indications of its intent. I return to purpose as integral to what an esoteric message means.

I find it useful to bear in mind three questions: "What is being said? How is it being said? Why is it being said?" The issue of what can be said is even deeper. D. I must of course mention Gurdjieff's idea of Legominism. In brief, this is that wise people could insert into some work–such as a story, dance, ritual, etc., a special piece of knowledge by placing it at some point where or when something other would be expected. To say this is to suppose we can regard what Gurdjieff calls 'inexactitude' as unexpected, the confrontation with which he

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elsewhere states as the beginning of objective reason. I suppose that it follows that 'ordinary' people would regard it as a mistake or flaw but 'special' people would look into it as the most important thing. This then leads to the idea of 'initiates' who would be able to read the meaning of deliberate messages inserted into works of art. Gurdjieff cited Leonardo da Vinci and the monk 'who built Mont St. Michel' as examples.

In all the productions which we shall intentionally create on the basis of this Law for the purpose of transmitting to remote generations, we shall intentionally introduce certain also lawful inexactitudes, and in these lawful inexactitudes we shall place, by means available to us, the contents of some true knowledge or other which is already in the possession of men of the present time. First Series (1950) pp. 461-62

The obvious property of a Legominism as Gurdjieff describes it is simply that it sticks out because it is not expected. In a way this is pretty trivial and a common feature of everything that might be called 'art': if everything is totally expected it is boring but if everything is unexpected it is chaotic. But it is important to recognise the significance of using what appears to be 'wrong' to say something unusual. E. The idea of another message alongside or inside a surface message resonates with the concept of a 'carrier wave' that might be modulated to convey information. This was brilliantly conceived in the book and movie Contact by Carl Sagan, where a signal coming from an alien source is gradually unveiled: first as a series of digits, then as a recorded TV broadcast and then as a blueprint for building a machine to travel to the stars and 'make contact'. Science fiction is only fiction but we might remember Gurdjieff uses it for his message. In a speculative manner I can suggest that, as the text of Beelzebub's Tales speaks of space-ships and travel amongst 'cosmic concentrations', so the book itself is a vehicle for travel into 'other worlds'. Another line of speculation is that we might have a wave in the form of information which carries a signal of feeling. The word 'feeling' is vague perhaps, but serves to indicate another kind of information. We are not used to regarding feeling as at all cognitive, but I think we should. For example: our feelings have to do with how we relate to ourselves and we might suppose that esoteric texts are written to evoke responses in us that are then possible to read. In other words, what is to be 'read' at the deeper level is an encounter with ourselves. I will be saying a bit more about this later but want to emphasise here that we should not think of the 'esoteric' content of a text as simply what is 'out there' in the printed words; it may concern what is 'in here' which the text helps us to see because of our reactions to it.

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F. Are there any general 'laws' of esoteric writing? A Traditionalist such as René Guénon says there are and one of them is what he calls 'inversion'. Simply put, information about higher things has to be read 'upside-down' to information about lower things. One should not extrapolate from the lower to the higher.

For René Guénon art is above all knowledge and understanding, rather than merely a matter of sensitivity. Similarly, the symbolism has a conceptual vastness "not exclusive to a mathematical rigor":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Gu%C3%A9non - cite_note-97symbolism is before all a science, and it is based, in its most general signification on "connections that exist between different levels of reality ". And, in particular, the analogy itself, understood following a formula used in Hermeticism as the "relation of what is down with what is above" is likely to be symbolized: there are symbols of the analogy (but every symbol is not necessarily the expression of an analogy, because there are correspondences that are not analogical). The analogical relation essentially involves the consideration of an "inverse direction of its two terms", and symbols of the analogy, which are generally built on the consideration of the primitive six-spoke wheel, also called the chrism in the Christian iconography, indicate clearly the consideration of these "inverse directions"; in the symbol of the Solomon's seal, the two triangles in opposition represent two opposing ternaries, one of which is like a reflection or mirror image the other and this is where this symbol is an exact representation of analogy. This consideration of a "reverse meaning" allows René Guénon to propose an explana-tion of some artistic depictions, such as that reported by Ananda Coomaraswamy in his study "The inverted tree": some images of the "World Tree", a symbol of universal Manifestation, represent the tree with its roots up and its branches down: the corresponding positions correspond to two complementary points of view that can be contemplated: point of view of the manifestation and of the Principle. This consideration of "reverse meaning" is one of the elements of a "science of symbolism" in which Guénon refers to, and used by him in many occasions. Wikipedia

You will no doubt recall here that Gurdjieff himself was prone to 'the otherwise' and I would say that he embodies the same understanding as Guénon about speaking of 'esoteric' or 'higher' matters but in a more visceral way. It is possible that even his concept of Kundabuffer—the organ which made people see reality reflected in their attention upside-down—is a comment on how we are almost organically disposed to see higher things in an upside-down way. It is, in this view, a mistake to think about higher things as we would lower things but then we are faced with a dilemma and many people say we should not think at all and stay silent (distant echoes of Wittgenstein's "Of that whereof we cannot speak, we must be silent thereof"). But both Guénon and Gurdjieff maintain that the higher worlds are not a matter of vague feeling but of a precision even more acute than that of our ordinary experience. This was given a memorable imagery by C S Lewis in his book The Great Divorce in which people of weak souls find that the grass in

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heaven cuts their feet as they walk on it and is so unbearable they flee to lower levels. The principle of inversion, then, has deep implications for esoteric writing. 3. CONTRIBUTION OF THE READER I have said that there are two sides to the communication of esoteric meaning. There might even be, as I will discuss later, three sides. One thing is sure, the esoteric meaning will not just come across unless the reader does or 'is' something special; or at least is not automatic. A. First off I must assert that reading is now quite rare. I believe that people are less able to read than they were a century or so ago. What this statement means requires an extensive discussion which I do not have space or time for. While with John Bennett some of us spent quite some time on research into reading and did real time experiments; out of which eventually came the cognitive technique of information processing called 'Structural Communication' which I and some colleagues later developed into LogoVisual Technology (LVT). The basic point is that there are levels of reading and the 'higher' content can only be registered by a 'higher' reading. For instance, in our work with Bennett some of us felt that it would be possible to actually meet the author, but only at a conscious level (here I amusing Bennett's terminology of the energies—see his Energies, Material, Vital, Cosmic—and not the usual sense). At a creative level one could generate a meaning superior to the given text. This was given a colourful analogy by a leading Indonesian follower of Pak Subuh who, when asked why he went to the cinema so often, said that he "saw past the screen to the Source"! It is a fun exercise to see through a movie to the better one that should have been made.

I quoted Gurdjieff's remarks on reading at the beginning of my talk. It is quite hard for most people to entertain the idea that they hardly ever truly read. What I would call 'reading' must involve consciousness. Interestingly enough, Bennett once remarked that we need conscious energy to understand each other and to share meanings between us. I later took this up in my passion for dialogue, where one of the tasks is to learn to speak together which, again, is something that most people believe they can already do every day.

It is likely that most of you have had the experience of reading something and then suddenly realising that you had substituted so to say different words for those on the page. For me this first hit me once in reading Plato when I realised that I had inserted a 'not' into sentence that completely reversed its meaning. I can only say that awareness of how we are mis-reading (shades of Hilary Clinton's 'I mis-spoke'!) is crucial to developing capacity to read. Ultimately, as Gurdjieff often said, we only begin to understand when we realise we do not understand.

I see lack of reading as closely linked to lack of the art and practice of visualisation. Visualisation does not have to mean 'making pictures in the mind': it means any form of internal making by which we can see. Visualisation has played a major role in physics, as in Einstein's gedanken or 'thought experiments' or Bragg's development of crystallography. What is not so well known is that musicians use visualisation to create their music or perform it. But our children get no exposure to it. They are fed just with words. They hardly ever have a chance to encounter anything concrete.

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Many years ago I spent some time working in the Kingston Polytechnic with science students. My main thing was to discuss scientific concepts and explanations with them and then insist that they bring out of themselves so-to-say the 'images' or forms that lay behind their words. I asked them what were they seeing as they formulated some definition or explanation. Of course, they may not have been aware of what was going on under the surface of words at first; it was something that developed. It was also true that what emerged into something clear enough they could describe (to me and to each other) changed what might have been 'there' originally. What mattered was to cultivate an awareness of the inner imagery or forms side by side with verbal behaviour. This makes for a two-channel communication in which people can share in something that is there even though they have different words for it or see it from different perspectives. As you all know, Gurdjieff draws attention to the importance of images. I believe that my simple explorations with students count as experiments in combining 'mentation by word' and 'mentation by form'. B. I want to return to the alchemical reference I made earlier. I start with a quote:

"This text is remarkably clear when put into the right order, and quite obscure in the order it presents itself. But note that the order itself is clearly indicated in the text. That is part of what makes it a masterpiece of esoteric writing."

I was by that time fairly exasperated from the countless hours I had spent on this seemingly futile project.

"But what is the sense of communicating something by putting it into the most obtuse form possible!"

''But you don't understand, the only usefulness of the text is its obscurity." I admitted that I did not understand.

"To penetrate a good alchemical text takes the same kind of effort needed to penetrate the natural phenomenon. The text is set up for that purpose. I will gladly give you a hand, but what I tell you must not go any further, il ne faut pas que ça aille plus loin." I wasn't sure I had understood correctly.

"You mean you do not want me to repeat what you will tell me?" Andre VandenBroeck, Al-Kemi, Hermetic, Occult, Political, and Private Aspects of R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz, New York, Lindisfarne Press, 1987, p.84

"Some kind of effort" is the crucial phrase. There is a sense in which it is just repeated effort and failure to understand, over and over again, in which regard there is a close link with what is usually called 'creative thinking': it is only when all ordinary efforts are exhausted that something new can appear. There is a prospect however that this is the most primitive approach. Just for the hell of it we might entertain an analogy with Gurdjieff's explanation of the 'pill of the sly man' in which the fakir takes month to get somewhere, the monk a week, the yogi a day while the sly man just takes a pill!

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But this should not detract from the significance of frustration and failure. Simone Weil cites the case of the Cure d'Ars who struggled to learn Latin for sixteen years without success but who, maybe through this 'failure', developed a capacity for attention that enabled him to have a transformative effect on those who confessed to him. To be able to listen is no small thing. Since I have mentioned Simone Weil I will draw attention to her most well known book Waiting on God which contains a profound essay on learning and attention centred on her understanding of 'waiting'. I would say that a deeper approach to getting the message than accumulated frustration is in this waiting. I relate it to the receptive will.

In the book I put together of Bennett's reflections on the Sevenfold Work, he speaks a great deal about the character of will complementary to the active type. For example, in discussing 'help' he emphasised that we must be willing to be helped. "Ask and you shall receive; knock and it shall be opened to you"—but we have to ask. One of the crucial forms of receptive will manifests in the question. There is an issue of what makes a 'real' question, one perhaps like Gurdjieff's 'burning question'. Besides such a question must come a discrimination that turns aside any easy answer that comes. A question is like a vacuum and Nature, according to Aristotle, 'abhors a vacuum'. We could understand much but, unfortunately, we are already much too full to be able to take anything new in. You might remember Gurdjieff's picture of our minds as akin to dustbins filled to over-flowing with scraps of second-hand trash.

I had a friend who understood much about the power of the absence or vacuum. He would be searching for a particular book for example and just hold the absence of the book in his mind and walk into a bookstore to put his hand on it almost straight away.

It would be impossible for me to over-emphasise the importance of creating a kind of 'structured space' in us; almost a kind of longing. Yes, perhaps very much like that: we look for the beloved.

I have moved rapidly through effort and frustration, being sly, waiting on what is higher, receptive will, creating a question and seeking the beloved. All this and more might be deemed the alchemy of reading. C. When icon painters were to make a painting they fasted and prayed. This was to build up an ableness. I was very struck when Bennett explained the phrase in the Bible of 'going up into a mountain' as referring to a mountain or summit of feeling. We have mentioned feeling more than once before but this idea of 'summit' adds something more. The reference to height is important and can mean greater intensity (as in the intensive scale of temperature in regard to heat for example) but can also mean higher quality.

Consideration of feeling leads me to the emotional centre and Gurdjieff's basic psychology that speaks of the independent cultivation or 'spiritualisation' of three centres, of which the emotional is one, and their subsequent fusion into a creative unity or 'I'. Understanding, for Gurdjieff, requires all three centres working in harmony together. If one does not think, feel and sense something one cannot understand it. Having in operation one of them is total misunderstanding; two of them is

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partial understanding. About the significance of these centres Hadji Asvatz Troov (in Beelzebub's Tales) says, pp. 904-5:

" 'It must be remarked that among men, especially men of recent times, very many are to be met with who have not even as great a number of vibrations in the subjective chord of vibrations of their common presence as the number shown by the presence of this dog.

" 'This has come about because in most of these people I have just mentioned, one function for instance, and, namely, the function of emotion, which actualizes the main quantity of subjective vibrations, is already almost completely atrophied, and therefore the sum total of vibrations in them proves to be less than in this dog.

Gurdjieff speaks about the necessity for involvement of the emotional centre in the chapter 'Religion' in Beelzebub's Tales, pp. 738-39:

" . . .at that period 'being-mentation' among the beings of this planet was still nearer to that normal mentation, which in general is proper to be present among three-brained beings, and that at that time the transmission of ideas and thoughts was in consequence still what is called 'Podobnisirnian,' or, as it is still otherwise said 'allegorical'.

"In other words, in order to explain to themselves, or to any others, some act or other, the three-brained beings of the planet Earth then referred to the understanding of similar acts which had already formerly occurred among them.

"But, meanwhile, this also now proceeds in them according to the principle called 'Chainonizironness'.

"And this first proceeded there because, thanks always to the same abnormally established conditions of ordinary existence, their being-mentation began to proceed without any participation of the functioning of their what are called 'localizations of feeling' or according to their terminology 'feeling center,' chiefly in consequence of which this mentation of theirs finally became automatized."

To return to the concept of 'ableness' I will just remark this is addressed by Gurdjieff in terms of what he calls 'being-partkdolg duty' as in the following (p. 738):

"And such a nonsensical 'literal' understanding proceeds in them, of course, always owing to the fact that they have entirely ceased to produce in their common presences Partkdolg-duty, which should be actualized by being efforts, which in their turn, alone crystallize in the three-brained beings data for the capacity of genuine being-pondering."

And draw your attention, in passing, to the close affiliation of ableness, partkdolg-duty and localization of feeling. D. Now I have to raise the question of the 'subconscious', something that Gurdjieff makes much of but also resonates with very recent trends in psychology. Gurdjieff asserted that the subconsciousness is our 'true' consciousness. This is a startling and amazing thing to say and it is also astonishing that nowadays it is almost taken for granted that intelligence is mainly a property

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of our unconscious (I will not stop to consider the interchangeability of the two terms for what is not conscious). I would like to add to the picture Gurdjieff's early teachings—as reported in In Search of the Miraculous—about the two higher centres of thinking and emotion which, so he says, are already working in us perfectly, even though 'we' are not aware of them. Gurdjieff says (p. 195): ". . . we fail to hear within us the voices which are speaking and calling to us from the higher emotional centre." As for the higher thinking centre, it connects us with everything we know all at once. Gurdjieff comments, "In most cases where accidental contact with the higher thinking centre takes place a man becomes unconscious. The mind refuses to take in the flood of thoughts, emotions, images, and ideas which suddenly burst into it." He concludes (ibid): "In order to obtain a correct and permanent connection between the lower and higher centres, it is necessary to regulate and quicken the work of the lower centres". The picture of our psychological condition, which modern psychology now shares with Gurdjieff, is one in which our so-called conscious acts are a small part of our whole. I now think of intelligence as beyond the scope of what we call consciousness. This is confirmed in Bennett's idea that intelligence is a fusion of consciousness and creativity, so is intrinsically beyond the 'mind'. Even so, what is done by our conscious mind (which is in Bennett's terminology a fusion of sensitivity and consciousness) matters; in this we are responsible. Perhaps it is there that we work on ourselves to allow ourselves to be worked upon. The main point to feel I would say is that the 'real thing' is already in progress. That may be why Gurdjieff ends his Third Series with a dis-cussion of longevity: we have to live 'long enough' for what is always working in us to come to fruition. In regard to this action 'we' are merely shadows. As I have put it just now, our task is to come to allow this inner process to take hold of us entirely. In the quote about the Third Series I gave at the beginning Gurdjieff speaks of touching reality and, if so desired, even merging with it. Many people have remarked that reading All and Everything requires the participation of the subconsciousness. In a manner of speaking, the subconscious can understand the text better than our minds can. There is even the idea that Gurdjieff's texts are designed specifically to stimulate a right connection between the higher and lower centres. This I think becomes most comprehensible when one reads them aloud, as I shall speak about later. E. In parallel with speaking about the subconscious I want to speak about now widely-known concept of the 'two sides of the brain'. This came to the fore in the 60s and was taken up by the American psychologist Robert Ornstein, a follower of Idries Shah. It rapidly was turned into nonsense through popularisation but has emerged again much strengthened. Briefly the idea is that there are two kinds of 'mind' one associated with the left side of the brain and the other with the right. The left is good at language, calculations and abstractions; the right is

Amerindian Dreamcatcher

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good at new impressions, images and feelings. You may guess that there might be a close correspondence between these two sides of the brain and Gurdjieff's two types of mentation. The two sides are connected by the corpus callosum, more so in women than in men. The thing is that they can only do their own kind of work if to some degree separated from the other, while any creative work or understanding requires them to co-operate. In The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World by Iain McGilchrist he speaks of how the relation between the two sides of the brain change through history and gives an account of how in the modern Western world the left brain has come to have almost complete domination over the right. Speaking personally I believe that reading such books as McGilchrist's can help us in a practical sense by giving us a sense of what the right brain is like, and growing to feel and listen to its workings. One can cultivate a better balance between the two. It is important to garner some appreciation of the right brain by whatever means just because it affords a way of access to the experience of two kinds of reading taking place simultaneously. We need the left brain to give us abilities with abstractions that is crucial for grasping symbols; but as is well known, it can block access to the right brain by insisting on fixated logic or systems. Whatever system of thinking we have it will inevitably do something to block new thinking. It is only the right brain that has the capacity for new experience—or new 'impressions' one might say. The left brain never has anything new of its own. Again, the writing of All and Everything seems to me excellently suited to educate us in better communication between the two sides of our brains. F. Perhaps the most important point to make about the contribution of the reader concerns necessity. I love the quote from Rumi that says: "Evolution comes from necessity. Increase therefore your necessity!" All real things come from need. There is nothing higher in us! I might even say—and only slightly as a joke—that our main contribution to the cosmic whole is our desperate need. In relation to this I have witnessed how a child with Down's syndrome, for example, by her very helplessness, inspires the greatest love. I see us humans as like this poor child, before the universe. Surely it is just common sense to see that if one reads a text while full of one's own wisdom and intelligence that one will learn nothing. I say that real need cannot be gainsaid. Nothing not even God, can stand unmoved by it. It is not the sublimity of what is On High that makes for evolution but the desperation and longing at the heart of creatures. I seem to remember there is a saying in the Gospels like, "Feed my sheep". The content of esoteric texts is not to justify the glory of its writers—though that must always be a temptation—but to give sustenance to the needy. It is a charity and a mercy and requires of us an admission, to use Gurdjieff's terms, of our utter nothingness and helplessness. As long as we put our faith in the creaturely we cannot receive the grace of God. To move away from religious language, I will simply say we must be love-sick or desperate to understand. In using the phrase

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'love-sick' I am bearing in mind the ancient image of us as spirits taken away from our place with God and cast down into the world where we languish (as Gurdjieff speaks of in his chapter on France in Beelzebub's Tales). There is a widespread and fascinating corpus of literature on this topic, which extends into Gnosticism and its portrayal of us rather as 'strangers in a strange land'. Which leads me to speak of 'recollection', we all know the phrase 'self-remembering' and may have wondered about the use of the word 'remember'—why did he not use 'awareness' for example? I think it highly likely that Gurdjieff is tapping into the field of meanings that included the sense that we 'already know' what is important but have forgotten it. To 'understand' then is to remember what one has forgotten. This was brought out by Plato in his dialogue Meno in which Socrates elicits a proof of Pythagoras's theorem from Meno's slave by getting him to 'remember' it. G. The idea of recollection connects with my final point in this category of the reader's contribution. I start with the story of the Sixth Patriarch Hui Neng (8th century). As a youth he lived with his poor mother. One day while collecting wood he heard a monk recite from the Diamond Sutra, and realised he was enlightened (the story is more complex and probably apocryphal but serves my purpose);

When he came to the passage, "to use the mind yet be free from any attachment," Huineng came to great awakening. He exclaimed,

How amazing that the self nature is originally pure! How amazing that the self nature is unborn and undying! How amazing that the self nature is inherently complete! How amazing that the self nature neither moves nor stays! How amazing that all dharmas come from this self nature!

The Gnostic story of The Pearl (a great favourite of mine) tells how the divine prince is sent down into Egypt (the lower world) to regain the 'pearl', the heavenly treasure. Living in the lower world, the prince forgets who he is. Foreseeing this, his divine Mother and Father send to him a bird who whispers in his ear the truth of his birth, so that he awakens and is able to complete the task and bring the pearl back into heaven, with much rejoicing. I think there is something in Dante's Divine Comedy which speaks to this (though I must admit to not being able to find it of late—but that is a clue to our quest also). When Dante has left Virgil and encountered Beatrice in Paradise he becomes doubtful and wonders whether he can really be in Paradise. A voice tells him to speak of the nature of Paradise and he finds himself able to do so. The realisation then is that he can only be able to do so because he is really there and can see! This story, whether I am reporting it accurately or not, has profound implications because it hints that it is our own speech or saying that is the guarantee to us of authenticity. In a crude but honest way I say: we only understand something when we can recreate it in our own words. Repeating the words of the text is not enough. They must be our own words. Another person may not see how they are the same. This picture of the meaning passing in and through us

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is very vivid for me. It fits together with having a knowledge that has got into our very bones, or is totally organic, but also highlights how we cannot hold onto it as we might imagine. The profound meaning is in us only when it moves through us. I rather liked it when many many years ago I said to my then girl friend I was wondering if I had a soul and she replied that, at that moment of speaking, I had. I may be mistaken in presenting such an image of transience as it were. But it is rather like a remark Bennett once made to some of us years ago (while he was working with us in his colourful underpants!) that "maybe, I am a holy man" and went to explain that a holy man would be one capable to passing into higher worlds at will. This did not mean that he would be in them all the time! As, on another occasion when answering a question, he denied being 'conscious' all the time and said he would be so only if it was needed. He was pointing not to knowledge or a state but to an 'ableness' that, in his terminology, he would name hyparxis. Earlier I referred to Gurdjieff's idea that the deeper meaning of ancient artefacts—including books I suppose—would only be accessible to what he called initiates. I cannot pretend to do more than guess at what he means by 'initiate' but suppose that it means someone who has gone through something that has changed what he is. Guénon speaks of initiation in an interesting way, radically distinguishing it from what he calls 'mysticism':

In the case of mysticism the individual simply limits himself to what is presented to him and to the manner in which it is presented, having himself no say in the matter ... In the case of initiation, on the contrary, the individual is the source of initiative towards 'realization', pursued methodically under rigorous and unremitting control, and normal reaching beyond the very possibilities of the individual as such. … ultimately one has to go back beyond the very origin of humanity, and this is why a question such as an "historical" origin of initiation appears to be devoid of the least signification. (Perspectives on Initiation, Chap. xxxix: Greater Mysteries and Lesser Mysteries)

You will no doubt remember that Gurdjieff insisted that true initiation was always self-initiation. This relates to finding the voice from within oneself and raises the question of whether such initiation can ever be of a general kind. Surely it must always have an individual character. We might shun such an idea as threatening us with horrid 'subjectivity' but, as Hubert Benoit pointed out in his book on the subject. Surely true enlightenment cannot come through imitation of anybody else? 4. HIDDEN KNOWLEDGE AS UNDERSTOOD IN CULTURAL TERMS In this section I want to cast a different light on the meaning of the esoteric as it manifests in various cultural disguises as 'hidden knowledge'. I think it will be enough to deal with some possibilities briefly.

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A. To begin with I want to draw your attention to the strange phenomenon in ancient times of literally burying from sight important artefacts such as quite massive megalithic constructions. One of the oldest examples we know is Gobekli Teppe in southern Turkey. This amazing site is up to 12,500 years old and contains series of trilithons carved in relief with images of animals and abstractions of standing figures.

The site is exactly where the wild form of wheat that first became cultivated grew and is likely to have been the centre and origin of the agricultural revolution. About three thousand years after it was built the whole site, covering many acres, was deliberately buried. It was only found again after six thousand years in 1994. Why? We do not know. Similarly, in the massive megalithic complex at Carnac in Brittany, France, the superbly carved stones of the com-

plex built on the small island of Gavrinis were also buried by intention. Strangely, so it is said this construction was only reopened in the 14th century by Knights Templar.

B. I now make a big jump to the hidden knowledge that prevails inside totalitarian regimes. For example, under the Soviets it was impossible or dangerous to produce works of art that did not conform to a set ideology. It then became an art form of its own to produce works that would be passed by the censors and allowed to the public but which contained a subversive message to

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those who could understand. Typically, the censors would be those almost incapable of reading what I referred to earlier as 'deeper structure'. When Shostakovich was criticised and denounced for his music he wrote his fifth symphony as a response.

With the Fifth Symphony, Shostakovich gained an unprecedented triumph, with the music appealing equally—and remarkably—to both the public and official critics, though the overwhelming public response to the work initially aroused suspicions among certain officials. The then head of the Leningrad Philharmonic, Mikhail Chulaki, recalls that certain authorities bristled at Mravinsky's gesture of lifting the score above his head to the cheering audience, and a subsequent performance was attended by two plainly hostile officials, V.N. Surin and Boris M. Yarustovsky, who tried to claim in the face of the vociferous ovation given the symphony that the audience was made up of "hand-picked" Shostakovich supporters. Yet the authorities in due course claimed that they found everything they had demanded of Shostakovich restored in the symphony. Meanwhile the public heard it as an expression of the suffering to which it had been subjected by Stalin. The same work was essentially received two different ways. Wikipedia [author’s italics]

In a lesser but similar way painters found ways of using 'socialist realism' for their own meanings.

C. From art we move to science. Science and mathematics have become of critical importance to the survival of nations. It is now well known how the 'boffins' who worked at Bletchley Park during the Second World War saved Britain from defeat and possibly shortened the war by two years saving up to seventeen million lives. Their task was to learn how to read German military commu-nications, in particular, the transmissions received from the 'Enigma' machines the Germans used. To this end they employed deepest aspects of statistics and probability theory available to them. Amongst them was the scientist who became the father of the computer, Alan Turing. Knowledge of this work was kept secret for more than thirty years after the war; out of some 4,000 people there was hardly one who told of it. From the work done at Bletchley

came the construction of six computers but, on the command of Churchill they were not disposed to the public and only in recent times were two retrieved from obscurity. Churchill was fearful of the Russians learning of British know-how in cryptography because he planned to use it against them. This move cost the British their lead in computer science, a science that had been created by Turing in the first place. It was another 'burial'.

It may be a stretch to associate esoteric knowledge with industrial and military secrets but the knowledge Turing and his associates developed was truly esoteric in the sense of known by few. This was knowledge that would change the world. Perhaps the most widely-known exemplar of such knowledge is symbolised in the equation E = Mc2, which announced the era of atomic

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energy. Even more extraordinary was Dirac's conclusion of the existence of anti-matter years before it was actually discovered in the laboratory.

The topic is vast and complex. I simply want to mark that mathematical physics, which merges with the foundations of information theory, is capable of generating powerful insights into measureable reality.

There is also a way of thinking that deals with probabilities that engages deeply with the nature of mind. This is called Bayesian statistics and takes into account the beliefs we start from and how evidence may be weighed for and against our beliefs. Such thinking played a major role at Bletchley Park.

Forgive me for not explaining what I am after in simple terms. I barely grasp it myself. I am concerned to say that in the hard sciences especially as they engage with material reality there is a potency that far exceeds any supposed occult knowledge. In Gurdjieff we find references to fundamental cosmic laws but little has ever been made of them. It is hard to see what they are for.

Interestingly enough the rather maverick mathematician George Spencer Brown, who I will mention again later, claimed to have reached enlightenment in the 1980s and explained 'enlightenment' as grasping the laws of creation. This is intriguing and may shed light on Gurdjieff, especially his striving: "the conscious striving to know ever more and more concerning the laws of World-creation and World-maintenance". The laws of creation are what Bennett might have called the demiurgic power.

In general it is little understood how much of the working of the world the optimisation of logistics (how many things are transported to many places) can be said to 'rule the world'. This might be taken as an example of world maintenance. Understanding such things is beholden to but a few.

D. To stir the pot even more I want to bring into our discussion the avant-garde, especially the kind of art Gurdjieff would have despised. Speaking for myself, I often consider Finnegan's Wake in the same purview as Beelzebub's Tales. Both are extraordinary works of language. James Joyce used to say: "We are striving to awake from the nightmare that is history" which could well be adopted as a slogan for Beelzebub. Just as with Gurdjieff, an appreciation of Joyce's later works demands some familiarity with several languages as well as myths and legends. Finnegan's Wake is a reflection of the metaphysics of Giambattista Vico which raises the prospect that intelligence is in language and not in people.

The idea of art for most people conjures up the feeling that it is subjective, personal, emotional and so on; in other words NOT objective, universal, intellectual, etc. Most people would not even begin to think that art could convey a 'deep knowledge'. But that is precisely what it might do. As Beethoven said, music is greater than any philosophy and some would accord Shakespeare the title of the greatest English philosopher. Picasso wanted to paint something of equivalent objectivity to relativity theory.

In the twentieth century, just when Gurdjieff was venturing into Europe and exploring ways of conveying to people what he wanted to 'say', there was an explosion of creativity in which old

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forms were destroyed and new ones born in a Shiva-like dance. From this perspective, Gurdjieff was not more or less than one of a myriad of new voices—like the new sounds being created in music or the new images being created in painting—experimenting with new ways of expressing the human condition. Language itself becomes important. It is a mystery. We do not know the 'laws of language' in spite of linguistics and have no idea how it began. In some way or other, writers including Gurdjieff seem to be about starting all over again to say something true about being human that necessarily includes language itself.

Finnegan's Wake starts with the second half a sentence and ends with the first half of that sentence. Here is the beginning:

riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.

Sir Tristram, violer d'amores, fr'over the short sea, had passen-core rearrived from North Armorica on this side the scraggy isthmus of Europe Minor to wielderfight his penisolate war: nor had topsawyer's rocks by the stream Oconee exaggerated themselse to Laurens County's gorgios while they went doublin their mumper all the time: nor avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe to tauftauf thuartpeatrick: not yet, though venissoon after, had a kidscad buttended a bland old isaac: not yet, though all's fair in vanessy, were sosie sesthers wroth with twone nathandjoe. Rot a peck of pa's malt had Jhem or Shen brewed by arclight and rory end to the regginbrow was to be seen ringsome on the aquaface.

The fall (bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonner-ronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthur-nuk!) of a once wallstrait oldparr is retaled early in bed and later on life down through all christian minstrelsy. The great fall of the offwall entailed at such short notice the pftjschute of Finnegan, erse solid man, that the humptyhillhead of humself prumptly sends an unquiring one well to the west in quest of his tumptytumtoes: and their upturnpikepointandplace is at the knock out in the park where oranges have been laid to rust upon the green since devlinsfirst loved livvy.

You may dismiss this as just garbage but still have to recognise the similarities with Gurdjieff's writing. It comes over better in being spoken. The novel contains themes of exile and return just as Beelzebub's Tales does. And we do well to remember Gurdjieff's remark that he hoped his book would serve as stimulus to future artists, writers and so on; he was not adverse to artistic experiment. E. Like any professional grouping artists speak a special language amongst themselves. They often say something that only people like them can understand though there is usually some element of pleasing an audience as well. This has certainly been true of traditional bards who vied with each to play with puns, riddles and forms of speech to show their supremacy. Gurdjieff speaks of the ashokhs in such terms, amongst who was his own father.

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Music has often been used to embody or code messages. The Baroque composers were fond of doing this. Any elite will develop its own language. One has to achieve a certain mastery in the field before one can 'read' the special messages.

F. Speaking of special language reminds me of the case of what is sometimes called women's language. Because of the suppression and ill-treatment of women in the East it is said that in many

cultures they developed their own secret language that the men could not read. An example in China was the nushu script, supposed to be the only example of a written form of women-only language. The alphabet was often embroidered into cloth or painted on fans, which were then exchanged between female relatives and friends. Many nushu characters (there are about 1,000 in all) come from embroidery patterns, along with a few elements of Chinese characters probably picked up from watching boys take lessons. Men would suppose the script was 'just patterns' or doodles.

In Greek myth we find the story of Philomena who was raped by her sister's husband Tereus. To hide what he had done Tereus cut out her tongue and kept her hidden, but Philomena wove an embroidery that told her story to her sister who then took revenge.

There was brilliant development of the idea of a secret women's language in the science fiction novel written by the feminist Suzette Elgin Native Tongue, which adds to the concept by having infant children used as means of communication with alien species by virtue of their lack of linguistic conditioning. The idea of some deeply hidden and now almost inaccessible language that preceded the ones we now speak may seem rank speculation but it is a Sumerian idea picked up by the Jews in their story of the Tower of Babel and postulates the existence of a language that is capable of carrying direct experience. This has been regarded as the 'mother tongue' and an interesting point is that it had to be suppressed in order for our more modern type of languages to appear. Please note however that 'suppression' need not mean a deliberate plot.

Remember that a 'secret language' comes about because for whatever reason some things cannot be said openly. It is an attempt to deal with things that cannot be said without some kind of danger to either writer or reader or both. When they are not dealt with as is often the case for example within families wherein traumas fester they grow in the 'shadow' side.

G. Speaking of special languages we cannot avoid the case of mathematics. It is difficult to imagine how the mathematical capacity for abstraction evolved. In a way it is more mysterious than verbal language. For one thing, it cannot be spoken except in a clumsy way. It has to be written. In mathematical texts one will find many words but the prospect is that mathematics can say something that words cannot. This is a hard thing to swallow since for many people mathematics is an alien tongue. It is not so much its complexity as its abstraction. The mechanics of

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mathematics is one thing, which might be done now by computers, but the reasoning or 'seeing' of mathematics is another. The example shown here derives from the calculus of Spencer Brown and contains, intriguingly, some empty spaces. Nothingness is crucial in mathematics and its symbolism stems from the Hindus influenced by Buddhism passed to Europe through the Arabs. Since that time, nothingness has blossomed into something very important indeed.

It is fairly obvious that we have another kind of language in mathematics. Bennett in his magnum opus The Dramatic Universe distinguishes three kinds of language which we can think of here, in simple terms, as words, images and forms (though I must mention that the latter included for him gestures). It is quite difficult to speak mathematics and it contains material that goes beyond any possible picture.

This point of going beyond any picture is important. Speaking of just very ordinary mathematics of probabilities, there are patterns which most people cannot picture or represent to themselves at all. So they are often surprised by things that happen and are then led into mystical fantasies as they seek for some 'miraculous' explanation. This is because they do not understand how to calculate what might happen. This has a bearing I would say on why still so many people cannot accept natural selection in evolution and persist in looking for some higher explanation.

In other words, a large part of ordinary reality is hidden for many people because they do not have the language of mathematics. This makes them vulnerable to all sorts of superstitions and beliefs leading into delusions (as the British illusionist Derren Brown often illustrates in his shows on television).

On a deeper level still it may well be that certain things just cannot be understood without mathematics. Please bear in mind that many people engaged in the pursuit of esoteric knowledge have to use some kind of computation. But this is rarely of more than an elementary level. Just to throw something at you consider this formula:

I read this as 'the proposition of self-remembering'. The 'I' in its three places is and is not the same. It codifies the following statements made by a leading cybernetician of the 60s Heinz von Foerster

...a brain is required to write a theory of a brain. From this follows that a theory of the brain, that has any aspirations for completeness, has to account for the writing of this theory. And even more fascinating, the writer of this theory has to account for her or himself. Translated into the domain of cybernetics; the cybernetician, by entering his own domain, has to account for his or her own activity. Cybernetics then becomes cybernetics of cybernetics, or second-order cybernetics, Wikipedia. 'Second-Order Cybernetics'.

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He translated this into a 'psychological' statement: I am the observer of I observing myself. This is obviously a proposition of self-remembering. I sometimes call it the Moses Equation, since on being asked God says to Moses: "I Am that I Am". Mathematics was never far behind when early theologians wrestled with the concept of the Trinity. Mathematics takes us to the edge of reason. It is possible that some things can only be said by mathematics. H. Finally, in this section, I will briefly mention archaic language. In time, the terminology of one period becomes opaque to later generations. A prime example concerns what is known as 'Plato's Nuptial Number', something that appears in The Republic (545D):

Now for a divine creature there is a period which is comprehended by a number that is final, and for a human the number is the first in which multiplications of root by square, having laid hold on three distances, with four limits, of that which maketh like and unlike and waxeth and waneth, have rendered all things conversable and rational with one another: whereof the base, containing the ratio of four to three, yoked with five, furnishes two harmonies when thrice increased: the one equal an equal number of times, so many times a hundred, the other of equal lengths one way, the other way unequal; on the one side, of one hundred squares rising from rational diameters of five diminished by one each, or if from irrational diameters by two; on the other, of one hundred cubes of three. The sum of these, a number measuring the earth, is lord of better and worse births, which not knowing, when your guardians marry brides to bridegrooms out of season, children of ill nature and ill fortune will be born: whereof the best their predecessors will indeed make rulers; nevertheless, being unworthy, when they have succeeded to their fathers' offices of power, us they will first begin to heed not though they are our guardians, having set too little store by music first and second by gymnastic, and so our children will grow up without us.

So as to put you out of your misery, in case you try and fathom it out, the answer is: 3600 squared = 4800 x 2700 = 12,960,000. This was finally worked out at the beginning of the twentieth century after more than a thousand years of puzzlement (actually there are several proposed solutions but we will leave it there). What was required was simply looking into how the Greeks described numbers and calculations, which had been lost track of. It is like losing the requisite software, something that resonates with the present day predicament of storing data through programmes and machines that cease to exist. Much once recorded data can no longer be accessed because of this.

Archaic forms of language are sometimes used as a trick to convince people of the age and provenance of what they want people to accept. Simon Weightman, once Head of Religious Studies at SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies, London University) and a pupil of Bennett explained to me that the scriptures of any religion are written (a) when the direct experience of the source event has faded, and (b) in a dialect or language that has largely gone out of use. It is obviously desirable for the founders of a religion to claim that their fundamental text is coincident in time (or nearly so) with the actual source of the religion. Gurdjieff simply claims he

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is translating from some ancient text but never even bothers to show any such texts. Kabbalah claims its texts were written more than thousand years before they were (in the 12th century).

In time it is inevitable we lose track of the way in which people spoke, even if we have their words. This can be recovered. Thus it has been with classical Greek, as we have seen, and in another way with the re-discovery of ring composition. But going back before what we would recognise as written texts we despair of ever unearthing what the early geniuses of the Ice Age meant by their wonderful creations. 5. READING GURDJIEFF I am not going to dwell on this section very much since I have covered much of the ground in my essay on reading Gurdjieff I referenced at the beginning. What follows is just a brief summary of some main points.

A. Of all oriental literature I suppose that the 1,001 Nights must have influenced Gurdjieff as a writer most. In the chapter “My Father” he makes it very clear that he was steeped in the story-telling cultures of the Middle East from a young child. At one time I thought that the Mathnawi of Rumi must have been his model but am now not so sure. Though he reports himself as a voracious reader he rarely if ever tells us what he actually read. I have speculated that he did come across stories by Rudyard Kipling—especially The Man Who Would Be King—and perhaps H. G. Wells' First Men in the Moon. In my Introduction to Bennett's Talks on Beelzebub's Tales I mention other possible precedents. One thing that is pretty sure is his resonance with Scheherazade (who is actually mentioned in Beelzebub's Tales) with the form of stories within stories within stories. B. 'Orientalism' is the name given to how the West projected an image of eastern culture. Gurdjieff makes use of this and even seems to have played it up, representing himself as a figure from the mysterious East. As Ouspensky reports, the Russian intelligentsia of the time were fascinated by the Orient. In a way 'West' and 'East' represent the two sides of our brain. However, I think it necessary to take what Gurdjieff says about the Orient with a grain of salt. Just as he invents 'ancient manuscripts' so he may be inventing 'Eastern monasteries' and the like. From the point of view of the story-telling cultures of the East getting the facts straight is a minor thing! C. Not only did he exploit the sense of the mysterious East but he also made use of the myth of 'ancient wisdom'. Of course, one of the basic ways of presenting something new is to claim that it comes from something very ancient. Gurdjieff was progressive in insisting on the high intelligence of ancient cultures, coming as he did out of the nineteenth century with its crude linear ideas of progress and disdain for primitive peoples. As he cries out in Beelzebub, "who cares what ancient savages thought!" Now, a hundred years later, it is becoming widely accepted that our ancestors were certainly as intelligent as us and accomplished remarkable things. This is sometimes taken to extremes as with people who want to claim that Neanderthal man was spiritually superior to homo sapiens sapiens (an intriguing thought now that it has been established we have some Neanderthal genes in us).

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At times Gurdjieff appears very close to those called Traditionalist with a capital T, such as René Guénon who have the view that human culture has declined over the historical period (last five thousand years). The postulate of very high moments of culture (spiritual) in the past is most important for Gurdjieff's message. He writes within the fold of the revealed religions and the kind of history first established by the Jews, with the actual intervention of God in human time. This makes his role enigmatic. Was he a prophet? Was he 'sent from Above' to help mankind? He writes his own story, maybe like Zoroaster. D. His legacy includes music and dances. I often refer to the corpus of dances he created up to his death called the 'Series of the 39' as his main 'unpublished book' since he himself claimed that his dances or sacred gymnastics were of a kind with ancient works that served as books conveying information. His descriptions of the 'movements' as they are now generally called are tantalising in that they seem to promise that they do contain information that can be 'read' but there has never been any indication of how to do so or of anyone having done so.

It is pure speculation to say this, but maybe we should consider the music, movements and writings together. Over the years many of us have felt that these embody, respectively, feeling, sensing and thinking, so should seek a unity. We know that Gurdjieff had music played before a reading from his books. He said that the enneagram could not be understood without doing the corresponding movements.

There are some valuable hints to be found in the small book by physicist David Bohm Thought as a System. Bohm looks at what is called 'proprioception'—the sense of where our body is in space and what our various limbs are doing—and seeks to expand it into what is ordinarily called 'thought'. He is asking whether we can see our thinking just as we can see our physical movements.

For myself, I have adopted the idea of gymnastics as a generic term for the purposive exercise with awareness of anything we do, whether in thought, feeling or sensation and movement. Orage spoke of 'life as gymnastics'. This idea shifts our attention from considering what something 'says' to what it can 'work' in us. The crucial principle of 'work on oneself' comes to the fore again: in

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order to understand we must go through something that even, one might say quite literally, has a physical effect upon us.

In our contemporary culture we somehow imagine that we can have words or thoughts incorporeally. Such things would have no substance, no effect and no value. So I believe a message of substance must not only awaken our feelings but also penetrate into our very flesh and blood. E. Nothing comes without passion. As I have reported elsewhere, in reading Gurdjieff's last two series of writings I became enraged and even loathed him at times. He struck me as obnoxious. I valued these emotions and attitudes arising in me. I felt that they were essential to my understanding. I reasoned with myself that if there is something of deep meaning in Gurdjieff's writings then almost inevitably I would find them distressing, even revolting, rather than pleasing and soothing. The raw experience of the readings is: "Wake the f--- up!" F. I have had the experience a few times of entering into another world or really seeing something unfold before me or becoming part of a reality just by reading. I am here seeking to say that something might work in us just from reading Gurdjieff (and others) without us being aware of it and it is just occasionally that what is happening surfaces so that we see or feel it happening to us.

One occasion was when reading Beelzebub's Tales in the bookshop (because I could not afford to buy it)—in the chapter “The Arousing of Thought” —and I was aware of actually 'touching' the inner processes Gurdjieff was describing and knowing it was really like that, without doubt. It was like looking inside the workings of the brain in that very moment. I can still see, after more than fifty years, myself standing in that bookshop.

Another occasion was with the book by Simone Weil Waiting on God. I had had the book for some time, purchased because I thought she was a Catholic and I wanted as part of my reading programme to get outside my conditioning to read something of that persuasion. In an idle moment while in the kitchen of a friend's house, I began to read in it. I stayed transfixed for more than an hour. I was filled with a presence of immediate meaning. 'Spell-bound' one might say but really awakened.

Probably most of you at some time have been awakened and drawn into another world, a deeper meaning, just through reading something. Maybe it is just unfamiliarity—but at least it means we are receiving some new impressions instead of re-running the old ones—but I believe can be something more, a real communication that I would label indeed a communion. In my few experiences I can say that something is really there: it has the very essence of objectivity. It is an objectivity that has to be deeply felt.

Finally, in this section, I recall a dream I had while still in my teens in which I was reading Beelzebub's Tales and said to myself in the dream, "There really is objective science". Of course I was aware, even at the time, that I could not actually read any words on the pages on which I felt this science was displayed. Over the years I have often been estranged by Gurdjieff's use of this term and his disdain for modern western science. But the dream I had so many years continues to

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have an effect on me. It is as if something in me accepts that I have to be able to enter into a different world in order to understand the words 'objective science'.

In a chapter on Gurdjieff's ideas I wrote for the recent book Handbook of New Religions and Cultural Productions (Brill, 2012) I made the theme of 'objective reason' my main thread of discussion.

I deeply feel an attraction towards the ancient societies and brotherhoods he describes in his books, people capable of being able to investigate reality and share discoveries with each other. One of my heroes is Belcultassi who starts from suspecting that something is not quite right in

himself! The stories Gurdjieff weaves about the ancient scientists complements his representation of the prophets or messengers of religion. Many people now talk glibly about 'sacred science' but was there ever such a thing as 'objective science' and what might have it looked like?

This is for me at the heart of esoteric writing, even just as conveying a conviction that such a science ever existed, which then serves to help us strive for realising it in our time. It is not widely realised that the early modern scientists of our 17th century were filled with stories of ancient science, and scientists such as Noah and Enoch and the Chaldeans that made them feel that long ago there had existed science on earth and, if then it was so, then such a science is possible to create again.

6. SPIRITUAL VIEW In this last section I want to draw back to take a wider view and locate the theme of esoteric writing within the general history of human thought. A. I begin with a quotation from the literary critic George Steiner taken from his book Real Presences (p. 3):

Where God clings to our culture, to our routines of discourse, He is a phantom of grammar, a fossil embedded in the childhood of rational speech. So Nietzsche (and many after him).

This essay argues the reverse.

It proposes that any coherent understanding of what language is and how language performs, that any coherent account of the capacity of human speech to communicate meaning and feeling is, in the final analysis, underwritten by the assumption of God's presence. I will put forward the argument that the experience of aesthetic meaning in particular, that of literature, of the arts, of musical form, infers the necessary possibility of this 'real presence'.

Beltcultassi drawn by Bob Jefferson

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The idea that literature itself can carry the presence of God is accepted inside a religion such as Islam but rarely in the secular world. But it is not only Steiner who makes this claim. The Italian writer Roberto Calasso in his book Literature and the Gods speaks clearly about the transition from literature which speaks about the gods to literature that 'contains' them. Steiner's word 'presence' is important. This kind of presence is as something there if we see that it is there. In other words such a presence comes to presence through the reader.

It has been remarked of twentieth century literature that it has not so much been about innova-tions in writing as in innovations in reading.

I am also reminded of a conversation I had with Bennett when I returned to Coombe Springs after attending the world premier of Britten's War Requiem at Liverpool cathedral. He asked how I had found it and I remarked that it did not seem very religious to me. His response was to speak about how something done rightly with quality is the essence of the religious. I would now speak of in it terms of spirituality and have come to have the conviction that anything really spiritual has ultimate precision and execution. To quote Steiner further (p.4):

“This study will contend that the wager on the meaning of meaning, on the potential of insight and response when one human voice addresses another, when we come face to face with the text and work of art or music, which is to say when we encounter the other in its condition of freedom, is a wager on transcendence.”

This wager—it is that of Descartes, of Kant and of every poet, artist, composer of whom we have explicit record—predicates the pre-sence of a realness, of a 'substantiation' (the theological reach of this word is obvious) within language and form. It supposes a passage, beyond the Active or the purely pragmatic, from meaning to meaningful-lness. The conjecture is that 'God' is, not because our grammar is outworn; but that grammar lives and generates worlds because there is the wager on God. I love the idea of a wager on God..

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B. I cannot leave out of the discussion the all-important role played by the writers of scriptures, though I have mentioned them before a few times already. I often puzzle and ask myself; "Who were these people?" Some of them have created whole cultures. One has only to think of the importance of the Kalavela for the creation of Finnish identity or the part played by the Arthurian legends in the evolution of Britain.

As far as writers go I must first remark that there are known writers, such as Milton, say, unknown writers such as the producers of the Qu'ran, anonymous writers such as those of the 1,001 Nights or folk legends, problematic writers such as Homer, disguised writers such as some claim Shakespeare to be, and so on. I rather like Denis Saurat's picture (in his book Gods of the People) of a stream of human thought passing largely unnoticed through largely inarticulate populations with occasionally a little piece poking up such as the poetry of William Blake.

The composition of the Bible is interesting partly because we know that many books were rejected of which hardly any remain. It has been astonishing of course to see so many Gospels thought lost appear in recent times. Amongst these I note the Gospel of Judas which is very close in spirit to Gurdjieff's account of this disciple in his alternative view of the Last Supper.

The writers of scriptures are of course people just like us but they exhibit awe-inspiring skills in structuring information and developing new forms of writing (in the case of the Qur'an even new forms of script were created). The writers make the religion. They are usually unknown and almost have to be because of the belief system in which sacred texts have to 'come from God' (as in this illustration of Moses receiving the tablets of the Commandments) or at least dictated by an Angel.

How the writers learn their craft we do not know. Rather like the masons who travelled widely with their skills throughout Europe and beyond writers may also have travelled or had contacts over a wide area. It seems that their writing involves considerable knowledge of earlier literature and has to assimilate and transform it. They also have to write in such a way that there is a simple outward message and more sophisticated inner ones. I will take an example from the Qur'an, and the 'Medina Suras' which were the later ones. By and large a westerner, like myself, finds the text tedious and aggressive, hammering home the need to believe and obey. However, at the very heart of some of the suras is a much wider message of diversity and tolerance. A case in point is sura 2: 147-48:

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The truth is from your Lord, so don't be among the doubtful. And each one has a direction towards which he turns, so strive to be first in good works. Wherever you are, God brings you together; God is powerful over everything.

These lines occur at the very centre of the sura. It is now thought that the writers were using, as was usual, ring composition in which, as scholar Mary Douglas put it, 'the meaning is in the middle'. All the most tolerant and open-minded statements are located in the middle parts. C. We have literature as having the presence of God and writings that are supposed to have been handed down from God but there is another aspect that involves the reader. I heard of this from a talk given by the Master of the Temple in London, the church dating back to the Knights Templar that featured in the book and film The Da Vinci Code (a best-seller written by Dan Brown). In his talk the Master gently deconstructed Brown's sensationalist fantasies and led up to his own view about the meaning of the Gospels, or what one might call their 'secret message'. He took in particular the Gospel of St John and asked what it was about. His answer was that it was about the reader. We are the people in the Gospel but it might even be that we are the Gospel.

Those of you who watch and enjoy movies may have seen the film called Circle of Iron in the USA and Silent Flute in the UK. The hero faces many challenges and dangers, including martial art combats, to attain access to a secret book. On the way he meets a blind flute-player who acts as his guide but taunts him for his lack of understanding. Eventually the hero reaches the sacred island where the book is kept. There the Keeper of the Book tries to dissuade him from reading it; but he persists. And lo! on opening the book he finds it is nothing but a series of mirrors in which he can see only himself!

D. This leads me to suggest that an important feature of esoteric writing is that it transcends narrative. Perhaps Gurdjieff's erratic dating of events is precisely to bring this to our attention. We are ordinarily operating and thinking inside a framework of linear time, yet nearly all spiritual traditions, whether long-standing or just cultish, propose higher worlds in which linear time no longer obtains. The psychoanalyst Matte-Blanco wrote about this from the psychoanalytical viewpoint in terms of the interfacing between our conscious and unconscious minds. It even features in physics as the issue of whether time travel is possible.

Recent studies have shown that the 'self' is constructed out of narrative and it is relatively easy to observe how we are constantly telling ourselves stories about what has happened to explain reality to ourselves in a way that confirms our belief in ourselves. This kind of story telling needs to stop, if we are to understand anything real. How to do this appears almost impossible. The very structure of our experience must change. That is why it is essential to realise that any genuine (apologies for use of this adjective) esoteric know-ledge cannot be obtained by and contained in our present state of 'mind'. We are a story we tell ourselves. When this stops it can be terrifying. E. I am moving towards the notion that esoteric writing revolves around some deep questions.

What am I looking for? What would really make a difference? What could change me? What do I really want to see?

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Who is writing? This is closely connected with who is reading. Why? Because, in reality, the writing and reading are not separate. There is an act of communication.

In yoga and other traditions there is a deep discipline of enquiry. It is this that can open the mind and save us from its prison. It has no end.

Let us return to the first quotation from Gurdjieff, outlining his plan for the Three Series of Writings in Life is real only then, when “I am.”

I had decided with the contents of the first series of books to achieve the destruction, in the consciousness and feelings of people, of deep-rooted convictions which in my opinion are false and quite contradictory to reality.

With the contents of the second series of books to prove that there exist other ways of perceiving reality, and to indicate their direction.

With the contents of the third series of books to share the possibilities which I had discovered of touching reality and, if so desired, even merging with it. (author’s emphasis)

Using Bennett's terminology without embarking on explanations, I want to indicate that there is an hyparxis of reading and end with the scholar's principle for discriminating what is genuine Lectio difficilior potior: the harder reading is stronger.

What we are called upon to do is read what is actually on the page. Not what is 'behind' it. Not what it 'means' but what is actually said. I do not believe there is anything hidden in Gurdjieff's writings. The task is simply to read, just as Gabriel said to Muhammad. Gurdjieff says it like it is. Amen!

Anthony Blake: tony@toutley.demon.co.uk, His DuVersity site is at www.duversity.org and his personal web site is at www.anthonyblake.co.uk

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Esoteric Writing - Questions & Answers Participant 1: A lot of traditions put text within the text. But Mr. Gurdjieff said that what is most important is inexactitudes because these are the signals for us….so that we know that we are on the right track. These are the dolmens that he puts throughout the texts so that we know we are on the right way. AGEB: Great, yes. Participant 2: I just wonder if you would please just say something about this last image.

I = (I(I))

AGEB: Of course, you leave yourself open if you say, ‘Say something about.’ Yes I am going to preface it with a quote from another one of my heroes Heinz von Foerster, who was one of the 60’s leading cyberneticians, an extraordinary man, and then I’ll comment.

A brain is required to write a theory of a brain. From this follows that a theory of the brain that has any aspirations for completeness has to account for the writing of this theory. And even more fascinating is that the writer of this theory has to account for her- or himself. Translated into the domain of cybernetics, a cybernetician by entering his own domain has to account for his or her own activity. Cybernetics then becomes cybernetics of cybernetics, or second order cybernetics.

Now, what’s this got to do with the price of beans? Actually this is one mathenatical statement of von Foerster’s ideas. The technical term for this is an eigenform of an infinite process, and it deals with the question of remembering oneself. And all I can say is, it appeals to me greatly, and I don’t guarantee that it will mean a fig to anybody else, but I love it. So there was I going along happily in life [hums Peter and the Wolf]. Then, observe, I am going along singing Peter and the Wolf, you see, and you get self-observation, where you get this double nature of I, both as subject and object. And then you get this further I. And this came out in a definition of von Foerster: ‘I am the observation of myself observing I.’ Observation of the observation. And so you move from self-observation to self-remembering. You can also treat these in, depending what system you have, and change your terminology, in Bennett’s scheme it is automatic energy, sensitive energy, conscious energy, but this self-reflective power which comes into a form is the point of it. And it’s curious to me; I wanted to say something about mathematics, because mathematics has a power of representing what are called reflective processes, things which reflect on themselves, rather than simply external behaviour which you look at, where you are involved in the making of what you see. This is now the main thrust of modern thought. So this is it. Then it’s so interesting that you can turn I into a blank and then it collapses into two brackets together, and this refers to a mathematical scheme by Spenser-Brown called The laws of Form, and it turns out to be nothing or blank. So it conveys something about the underlying nothingness of I. But probably this is no help to you whatsoever.

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I was talking to a friend of mine, also interested in the work, and mathematics, and she’s grappling with it too, you see when you get this language of self-observation where you talk about it, it’s sometimes twisting us. Because in our culture we’re used to dealing with things, and being outside of things, and doing things, even in our language, about doing, all of it, our language is saturated with a world view that prevents us from understanding deeply what I-ness is. This curious non-objective object I. So they’re developing a language for it. And in the traditional world they had to rely more on imagery. I wonder if any of you know the remarkable Hamlet’s Mill by Santillana? There was a period where there seems to have been a global understanding of astronomical structures. And there’s a wonderful passage where he says there was a time when they had these thought forms thinking themselves, but later they got translated into stories. And so the writings of all cultures as stories, legends, religions and all the rest of it, are in this view treated as echoes of a very extraordinary, almost abstract, understanding of patterns. But again they were put into these forms so that they could be propagated. So now I struggle along myself with people like Ernest McClain who is decoding some of this stuff, and giving this totally different view. It’s not primitive superstition at all, but actually an expressive artistic representation of mathematical structure, which of course is the same for ever.

And I’ll just add that, it was really brought home to me, I went three times to the exhibition in the British Museum on Ice Age art, each time completely overwhelmed and gobsmacked by it. You just look at this stuff and you go. Gurdjieff’s right, there is no progress whatsoever. This is astonishingly deep felt, skilful, grasping, forty thousand years ago. And you see a flute, imagine somebody playing it. Forty thousand years ago! Almost as soon as people could do something. So what happened then? I don’t know. So we’re all, and this has to do with history and narrative, and I’ll probably just finish this little diatribe with a reference to James Joyce who said, ‘History is a nightmare from which we’re trying to wake up.’ Participant 3: So what happened in between? Where did everyone go? Why don’t we know about them? AGEB: Because it was bloody cold. Participant 4: You mentioned earlier that you were going to share something about your experience of recording the reading of Gurdjieff’s writings, and I just wanted to say that having listened, not entirely to your whole reading of the Tales, what I have listened to, I very much appreciate it. AGEB: Thanks very much. As I went on I found it harder and harder. The Third Series, I recorded twice. The first time I was so alienated that I had to throw the whole recording away and start again. It was extremely hard to get through it. Gurdjieff certainly pushed on my corns, you know, I just wanted to kill the bugger in the end, reading that stuff. I hated him. And I thought, why on earth would he write like that to totally alienate everybody? Every kind of comment, everything he says is crap, in a way. There’s no sense in it whatsoever. And I think, what is it? He’s bringing you into this, I think it can be argued, that he is bringing you into this realm, I pause a moment when I say, you see it goes back for me, you see the first time I read All and Everything was when

All & Everything Conference 2013

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I was a student. I couldn’t afford to buy the book. I used to go to the university bookshop in the lunch hour and read it. I still remember reading the first part, The Arousing of Thought, where he’s dealing with observations of his own mental phenomena so to speak, and I was reading this, and I was completely into it, I thought this is completely factual, this is exactly how it is. And somebody mentioned dreams, I had a dream about the same time and I was reading All and Everything in this dream and on the page there was objective science. Of course there was nothing in the dream on the page, but I just knew there was objective science. So you get that direct contact with him, he’s actually there in the moment, and so he’s very deeply connected with time. And another occasion in my life, this deep emotion, each of you may have a corresponding experience, this was when I was younger and I wanted not to be conditioned so I tried to get books of quite different points of view, including what I thought was a Catholic book by Simone Weil, the famous Waiting on God, I just thought from reading the blurb on the back that she was a Catholic, but that was not strictly true of course, she was a Jew, a sister of the famous mathematician André Weil, and she aspired to be a Christian, but would never allow herself to be a Christian. But finally after six months in a friend’s house in their kitchen, half-reclining, I started reading this book, and I was stuck there for an hour, unmoving, and I was just taken into this world. So it does happen. There’s a lot that’s not officially esoteric, but which really is esoteric. I remember a comment read to me about the mathematician Rudi Rucker, who is also a science fiction writer, he said that there is this incredible machine which can take you into different worlds, and it only costs a few dollars. He meant a typewriter. And you go back to possibly when you were children and you read these books and you drowned in them, you swum in these books. This is what it is. So this is what Gurdjieff has become for me. In a way I am no longer at all interested myself in explaining anything about Gurdjieff, because he gets me so riled up. But the doing of it, I felt yes, reading these books, this is my interpretation: it’s the way I emphasise, pause, because it’s a communication with his reality, and something is happening, because you have to do something in this world. You really have to create something in order to belong. You have to find the price for the admission ticket, your drop of Kesdjan blood. You have to spill some blood. Like Nietzsche said, Write with spirit, and I will find their blood. Because Nietzsche was very influential on Gurdjieff, don’t forget. One final point, just as an image, it’s a film in America Circle of Iron. In England it had the title The Silent Flute, with David Carradine martial arts actor – you need movies to get an education – it’s about a search for ‘The Book’ and the heroes have to undergo various ordeals and trials and battles, they face death, and temptations. One finally gets to the island, and finds the keeper of the book. And this guy has been through so many battles, so he says, 'Okay when do we fight?' And the keeper says, ‘Fight? I’ll show you the book. But are you sure you want to see the book. I didn’t see the book, then I became guardian of the book. But I’ve never read the book.' And the stalwart character says, 'I want to read the book'. So it’s brought out to him, and he opens it, and then he begins to laugh, because it’s composed of mirrors, and the book is him.