INTERPEETACION DE LOS FACTORES

When we propose to create something, there is the feeling that we are only a subcreator, since everything we use has already been brought into being by God or nature. This has uncomfortable ramifications.

Can we, then, aspire to make ourselves? We try to find out about this by looking at the work we do with our hands and eyes. Do we bring something into being? Unlike Allah, who simply commands Kun/ (Be) and it is, we have to go through a process if we are to make something.

In this process, can we go beyond the assembly of bits and pieces into the realm of being?

Octaves of Achievement

An a i m h a s the promise of its fulfillment; an idea has the potential to be realized; and a seed contains the fully developed plant. There is an analogy here with properties of the musical octave: when any note is sounded on an instrument, the equivalent note of the octave above also sounds (though less strongly). We know, however, that the actual realiza­

tion of an aim, or the growth of a plant from a seed, is not something guaranteed. We have to water the seed, keep the weeds away, guard against bugs and slugs, and have it in the right soil and light. GurdjiefF’s account of the octave puts these facts of life into their most general form, and this form is built, with some modifications, into the enneagram.

Let us think, for example, of an artist starting with a blank canvas, an idea in mind, and a set of paints. These components have to be brought into a coalescence in which a value is realized. The finished work of art

54

has, to use a phrase of Bennett’s, a greater “inner togetherness” than the state of affairs with which the artist began.

The transition from the starting point to the end point has many stages and does not happen all at once. If we have in mind that the completion of the process is not guaranteed, then we may think of there being certain critical stages at which, if the right thing is not done, the enterprise fails.

Gurdjieff said that there were two such critical stages. In these, there is a change in the relation between inner and outer rather than anything happening in time.

The octave description is set against a backdrop in which there is a series of distinct levels, or degrees, of inner togetherness. In making the transition from beginning to end, there is an overall change in level. This change of level does not arise all at once, nor does it arise continuousl)^, it occurs in definite increments. For example, in making a painting, it is possible to see at one point the general form of the picture emerging or, at another point, the colors coming into a definitive harmony. Of course, the changes in level may not occur in the same sequences as the changes taking place in time. The process takes place within a matrix composed of levels of inner togetherness and of sequences in time. This nonlinearity explains why Gurdjieff had to introduce discontinuities as focal crossover points. (See fig. 4.1.)

The matrix is rather akin to the game of snakes and ladders, in which there is a movement along the sequence of squares but also discontinuous jumps from one level to another.* In general, what we call “doing things”

is like moving from one square to the next. The transition from one level to another appears more to happen by itself, or to emerge. It is like a change in perception, in what we see. Functionally, all the things that we

4.1. Changes in level and time.

do are much of a kind. The painter paints—^though he may also prepare

Gurdjieff supposed that there were measurable gradations of inner to­

getherness. His steps involve both visible and invisible change, outer and inner alterations. The measure of the gradation of inner togetherness re­

lies on something like the property of consciousness. In GurdjiefF’s scheme, consciousness has a set of values in an objective fi'amework.

There is something beyond our subjective evaluations. The perception involved in the making of something meaningfiil has an objective role in gradations of awareness. This terminology emphasizes Gurdjieff’s claim of objectivity and flies in the face of current attitudes toward art.

To take a familiar example; it is like saying that the very material of

fact, or the spiritual and the material. The fundamental action is always the actualization of the middle. What is made by the potter out of clay is both a material object with definite properties and also an artifact which has a meaning in the human world.

The basic action of making, in which the human and the material world blend together, is actualized in a series of steps. These steps serve to link together what first appears as quite disparate. At each of these steps, the density of the higher and the lower, or the intentional and the causal, must be close enough together to blend. However, there have to be two critical transitions. In the one, the action of making is set free from the laws of the mechanical world from which it starts. In the other, it is made an integral part of the purposeful world in which it ends.

As the potter works on the clay spinning on the wheel, he gives it shape. The work proceeds from the simplest forms to the more subtle ones. However, a point is inevitably reached where no more can be done in this way. The clay must be removed from the wheel in order for the work of adorning the surface to be done. Fingers are now replaced by tools. The object is being turned into something to be looked at. It has moved from the world of things into the world of perception. This marks the first kind of transition. It is striking that, in this example, the transition is marked so clearly: at the point when the potter uses his wire to separate the pot from the wheel. The pot has changed firom an amorphous state as a lump of clay indistinguishable from any other lump of clay, to a definite shape, capable of further transformation. There are intriguing parallels with our own prospects of transformation!^ It is sometimes said that at this point something of the soul of the potter can enter into the pot he is making.

After decorating and glazing the pot, giving it over to the furnace might first appear as the end of the potter’s active involvement. But there is more to it than that. The pot is often left to dry out before subjecting it to the extreme heat of the kiln. We also need to keep in mind the pecuHar role that fire plays. It alters the molecular structure of the surface, produc­

ing the final colors and quality of glaze. It is part of the decorating proc­

ess, though on a deeper level. Just when the potter has no apparent physical contact with the pot, he or she—that is, as an intention is hav­

ing the most profound effect.

After being fired, the most sensitive pots require a carefiil cooling

be-fore the work is complete. At the end the pot has to be brushed and cleaned, checked for faults, and put on the shelf. It is this final set of operations which bring it into the human world as a meaningful object that can be sold or displayed. In relative terms, this brings the pot into

“eternity”’ and marks the second kind of transition.

My outline of the process of making a pot (see fig. 4.2) is the barest sketch of one of the most ancient and interesting of all crafts. Through the entire process, a lump of clay has acquired a beauty and a permanence that it did not have before. We say that it has evolved. We note that, if the first critical step is not made correctly, the whole inadequate pot will have to be squashed and returned to the clay store. If there is failure at the second critical step, then the pot will not be saleable.

Here is a way of thinking that takes a given whole—as symbolized by the octave—and produces fractions of the whole where each fraction plays a unique role in the whole. However, each of the fractions of the whole is still a whole, a fractal, because all of them are concerned with the overall action of blending the human and material worlds.^ The shape or character of each stage reflects, in its own unique way, the shape or char­

acter of the total transition. It follows that when it comes to relating this symbolism of the octave to any actual situation, we have to identify the different parts in relation to the whole—and this is not something cut and dried.

In respect to Gurdjieff’s treatment of form within sequence in particu­

lar, or the octave, Bennett came to the view that the universe was not only structured, but through and through dramatic.^ This is because the more significant the process of change, the more hazardous become the critical points. Change—in our sense of a change in level—is not me­

chanically guaranteed.®

58 The Frame of Transformation

saleable pot

...2nd transition decorating, glazing, firing, cooling, and finishing ...1st transition

throwing, shaping, and surfacing

4.2. Patterns of transformation in pot-making.

Shocks or Enablement

At the critical points something else must enter, or the process deviates or falters. This something else must be provided for, intentionally or me­

chanically, from outside the process itself Gurdjieff’s idea was that such things had been provided for in the creation and evolution of the uni­

verse, but that they were only partially developed. Humanity is a part of the incomplete interventions. These interventions at the critical points can also be taken to be points of maximum significance for intelligence.

They create conditions in which evolution is possible.

In the first critical transition, there is a change in the relation of the potter to his pot. In the previous stages, his connection was through his hands. Now it comes more through his eyes. His powers of perception and his powers of manipulation are able to meet in a new way. He begins to see the pot as it will be seen by a customer. Thereafter, the pot begins to have a being of its own. In Judeo-Christian mythology, as a parallel, we have the notion that God “breathed spirit” into the clay from which the human being was fashioned to make it into His own image.

Gurdjieff referred to what enters at this critical point as a shock. What is a shock? First of ail, it is a discontinuity. It is as if the process starts again, but from another point. Secondly, it is characterized by the meet­

ing between two independent forces. At the beginning of the making of the pot, the potter vrith his hands on the clay is almost part of the clay:

he is his hands, and what is operating is simply the intelligence of his hands. He could form the pot with his eyes closed. At the critical point, when the pot is taken from the wheel, he is separated from the pot. He can look at it instead of feel it. Because of this separation, something new is possible: another kind of intelligence.

Gurdjieff says that this first shock comes from outside the process. This simply means that it does not follow on what was begun but constitutes a new beginning. It appears that there is nothing “from outside” coming in at aU when the potter removes the pot from the wheel; however, a new factor belonging to the potter “kicks in,” and the process can take ^ new direction, because the potter has to look at the outside of the pot instead of working inside it.

Gurdjieff distinguishes two types of shock: the “higher” and the “low­

er.” Through the use of the symbolism of the diatonic scale (see fig. 4.3),

DO

60 The Frame of Transformation

4.3. Diagram of shocks.

both of the critical points are placed where there is shortened interval, a semitone, between the notes; however, GurdjiefF said that they appear differently according to whether there is an ascending or a descending octave:

In an ascending octave the first “interval” comes between mi and fa. If corresponding additional energy enters at this point the octave will de­

velop without hindrance to si, but between si and do it needs a much stronger “additional shock” for its right development than between mi and fa, because the vibrations of the octave at this point are of a consid­

erably higher pitch and to overcome a check in the development of the octave a greater intensity is needed.

In a descending octave, on the other hand, the greatest “interval”

occurs at the very beginning of the octave, immediately after the first do, and the material for filling it is very often found either in the do itself or in the lateral vibrations evoked by do. For this reason, a de­

scending octave develops much more easily than an ascending octave and in passing beyond si reaches fa without hindrance; here an “addi­

tional shock” is necessary, though considerably less strong than the first

“shock” between do and si. (i s m, pp. 131-2).

Both of the two kinds of shock mark a discontinuity in the vray of working. They are called shocks from the idea that such discontinuities must have some kind of cause. More generally, however, they are brought about by a change in the functioning of the system—that is, an alteration

in the way in which its various components are linked together and how it is coupled to its environment. The crucial factor, therefore, is a change in the relation between the inside and the outside of the system. Like many of Gurdjieff’s terms, the word shock draws on strong psychological experiences. In particular, this term draws on the fairly common and striking experience of “waking up” when subject to a strong emotional disturbance or sudden change in the sphere of perception.

Gurdjieff was to elaborate and modify his description of the two kinds of shock during the course of his teaching. For example, he later spoke of the first shock (between mi and fa) as coming “from outside” the main process, and of the second (between si and do) as coming from “inside”

the do. The latter idea comes from the concept that the second do, which represents the completed state, has an extended realm of influence that encompasses the si-do interval. In this sense, there is the suggestion that the ascending process has tc come within the sphere of influence of the final state itself in order to be made complete. In theological terms, this would mean that man cannot complete his self-realization “from below”

(this would require energy of cosmic intensity) but requires the assistance of the Divine itself. For all that can be attained through works only grace can finally “save us.”

The final stage, then, cannot be any kind of “making”; it is a pure act of will in which nothing is done but everything is accomplished. In the biblical story of Moses, after all his dramatic endeavors, God still decides that he will not enter the promised land. In the case of the potter, the final step concerns whether or not the pot is acceptable to a given market or customer.

I have introduced the idea of ascending and descending octaves with­

out explanation. In the example of the potter, we were dealing with an ascending octave, which begins from an intention or aim. It is a response to value. The reverse kind of octave is sometimes referred to by Gurdjieff as “creation.” This can lead to confusion, since we also tend to identify what the potter is doing as creation. The descending octave of pottery starts with the market. It is the market that makes it possible for the potter to pursue his craft. It is the market that says: “Let there be potters, and let them make these sort of things.” Naturally enough, the market is not a person and has no single voice. What the market does have, how­

ever, is authority, though we must understand that such authority acts

only within the domain of factJ The market creates the possibilities for craftspeople by determining the availability of resources. This can be seen, from one vantage point, as exerting a pressure; but from another, it is exerting a pull. In this latter sense the market is dynamic and changing.

The potter who fails to keep up with the market goes out of business.

It is from this special standpoint that we can say that it is the market (or customer) who “creates.” But the market does not create any thing, any pot, as such. What it does is to activate the possibility of pots being made. Looking at the situation in this way, we can even picture to our­

selves that the potter making the pot is performing the structural equiva­

lent of an act of worship with regard to a creator figure. This would apply whether we regard the market as satanic or as divine!

We only see the descending octave if we have gone through an ascend­

ing one. The experience of going through an ascent provides us with data on the series of levels which have been generated “from above.” Gurd- jieff’s descending octaves “go by themselves” without any particular aim.

They automatically produce stages of lesser and lesser degrees of freedom.

The various stages thus produced constitute “stages” in another sense:

the theatrical meaning of stage, or sets of conditions in which different kinds of action are possible. This is why Gurdjieff quoted with approval the hermetic phrase “The way up is at the same time the way down”

(i s m, p. 207). Gurdjieff’s view of creation is incomprehensible without the experience of the structure of realization. We come to know the higher levels by realizing them through our own achievements. It is this, and only this, which can enable us to read the signs of a higher intelli­

gence working within the sphere of human life. Once we do this, this same higher intelligence can begin to play an active part in what we do.

In practical affairs, such as making pots, we know that some of us can tune in to the dynamics of the market and become more successful. This is much the same as coming to “know the will of God.” Gurdjieff’s depic­

In practical affairs, such as making pots, we know that some of us can tune in to the dynamics of the market and become more successful. This is much the same as coming to “know the will of God.” Gurdjieff’s depic­