Application To Processes
According to Gurdjieff as quoted by Ouspensky in In Search of the Miraculous the enneagram figure is a symbol said to represent the "law of seven" and the "law of three" (the two fundamental universal laws in Gurdjieff's system) and, therefore according to this view, the figure can be used to describe any natural whole phenomenon, cosmos, process in life or any other piece of knowledge. The figure is the central organizing glyph of the Fourth Way's view of the material world which Gurdjieff is quoted by Ouspensky as relating to alchemy.
The most detailed example of how this is said to work given in In Search of the Miraculous is an explanation of how Gurdjieff believed inputs to the human body ("Food", "Air" and "Impressions", collectively regarded as types of food) are processed into the so-called "higher substances" necessary for higher consciousness to function. One proposition of Gurdjieff's alchemical view of matter, essential to follow is that "everything is material"; consciousness and spirit are to be regarded as aspects of matter, although more refined or of a "higher vibration" than perceptible aspects. This proposition is an essential basis for Gurdjieff's view of the evolution of food into "higher substances"; briefly summarized below from the account in In Search of the Miraculous:
As ordinary food (beginning as "Do") is eaten and enters the body at point 9, it is said to be processed in the mouth and stomach as "Re" at point 1 and then in the small intestine as "Mi" at point 2. Here food can't evolve on its own any further, and it needs an external "push". This "push" in the given case is "Air", seen as another type of food which enters at point 3 as a new "Do", joining the evolving food in the bloodstream at point 4, "Fa" for the octave of ordinary food and Re for the Air octave. At this point we lose touch with clear correspondences to scientific physiology but point 5 involves the substances or energies used in thought; point 6 being where "Impressions", regarded as a type of food, are said to enter the body. "Impressions" will serve as a shock if they are intensified by some such means as the exercise of "self-remembering" taught by Gurdjieff, thus allowing the Air and Impressions octaves to proceed through point 7 to point 8. Otherwise only the ordinary food octave proceeds to point 8. "La" at point 7 represents emotional and other energies and at point 8, the "Si" at the end of the first "ordinary food" octave represents the sexual energies; which are the "highest substance" according to Gurdjieff which the body produces naturally without conscious intervention. A desire to conserve this "higher substances" for esoteric use is said to be the original reason for religious celibacy. With the conscious intervention at point 6 of "self remembering" further and more useful "higher substances" are created, represented by the air octave's Sol at point 8 and the Impression octave's Mi at point 8. (Ouspensky makes some further remarks on the nature of this Mi 8 and Sol 8 in his book Fourth Way) A further conscious shock, requiring "a special type of control over the emotions" at point 9 would enable a new "higher" or spiritual body to begin to grow, this is represented by Gurdjieff as the aim of his and other esoteric traditions.
It will be seen that by this view emotions depend on "higher substances" than thought and sexual feeling on "higher substances" still. The creation of the universe is also described in In Search of the Miraculous in terms of an octave, the Ray of Creation and therefore implicitly in terms of an enneagram.
Read more about this topic: Fourth Way Enneagram
Famous quotes containing the words application to, application and/or processes:
“The receipt to make a speaker, and an applauded one too, is short and easy.—Take of common sense quantum sufficit, add a little application to the rules and orders of the House, throw obvious thoughts in a new light, and make up the whole with a large quantity of purity, correctness, and elegancy of style.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“Science is intimately integrated with the whole social structure and cultural tradition. They mutually support one other—only in certain types of society can science flourish, and conversely without a continuous and healthy development and application of science such a society cannot function properly.”
—Talcott Parsons (1902–1979)
“The higher processes are all processes of simplification. The novelist must learn to write, and then he must unlearn it; just as the modern painter learns to draw, and then learns when utterly to disregard his accomplishment, when to subordinate it to a higher and truer effect.”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)