Fairly extravagant claims are made by Gurdjieff for the enneagram in Search. In my youthful naivete, I absorbed a profound desire to someday master its secrets, and indeed, have felt plagued by a sense of impenetrability for many years. It as only after I discovered threads of connection in Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophy - which must be sifted for in the wealth of all of the material Rudolf Steiner has contributed - and made connection with the broader stream of speculative music, largely through the good offices of Joscelyn Godwin's great work in this area; and had the benefit of Russell Smith's excellent work on the enneagram, did I feel I finally had the enneagram in a rich enough soup of nutrients to begin to see it unfold itself intelligibly to me. My sketchy, but I am convinced, significant contribution to the understanding of the inner hexagram is the first concrete product of this; these thoughts are further notes and indications, intended primarily for the similarly perplexed (or cursed) who have already devoted some study to it.
In attempting this I want to state my conviction that all symbols, or systems, ideas or representations attempting to encompass the full reality of man and the world in body, soul, and spirit, can do nothing better than present a cross-section, revealing some of the inner contours of reality. Different symbols and systems may present pictures that can be satisfying in their comprehensive scope; but it is all too easy to encounter other systems, seeming related or unrelated as may be, that fail to dovetail but yet lay claim to our attention by virtue of sense of "rightness" or application. Where these can be made to dovetail, our sense of reality can be greatly deepened and our appreciation for the respective symbols, systems or ideas enhanced. But unfortunately, it is not a question as simple as generating a three dimensional picture from various two dimensional "cross sections," because the underlying reality in question is anything but three dimensional. This dovetailing or integration is part of what will be attempted here, but any conclusive picture will only be possible if it is remembered that each perspective is just that, a perspective - including any 'final' perspective that may result from our considerations. As Gurdjieff said "…systems can serve as a means of transmitting the idea of unity…a symbol can never be taken in a final and definite meaning. In expressing the laws of the unity of endless diversity a symbol itself possesses an endless number of aspects from which it can be examined, and it demands from a man approaching it the ability to see it simultaneously from different points of view."
In piecing together various fragments from distinct bodies of doctrine, I am working on the assumption that each of them possess their own fragmentary reflection of truth, of reality. Such knowledge of reality is holographic: just as a film holograph, when cut in two, reveals two smaller and less distinct copies of the original image, my aim here is to reverse the process, and join together different fragments - themselves holographic images of reality - and form aspects of an image that is more distinct (yet nonetheless, of course, still fragmentary). To do this requires that the edges of these different pictures are assembled correctly; that the pieces fit like a jigsaw to allow the knowledge embedded in them to align to create the original image. The process is of course uncertain, and many joinings are tentative fits. It is hoped that result is not merely a Franksteinish pastiche.
Times being what they were, thirty-plus years ago, I was soon exposed to the enneagram again, from a different direction: in the publicity and teachings of the Arica Institute, which I subsequently spent about two years in close association with. I participated in the "Boston 1" 40 day training, the second teacher training in New York, and the "Rainbow Eye" indications. This was 1973 - 74. One of things I hope to do here is show how the Ichazo enneagram, popularized today, and the Gurdjieff teaching, do and don't correspond. To do this will require a broad survey of differing viewpoints and aspects of the enneagram. In my thinking I am also including a third perspective, that of some of the ideas of Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophy, particularly as they relate to how number, vibration, and musical interval are part of a comprehensive view of spiritual man in a spiritual cosmos. In the end I hope to have somewhat "deepened our sense of reality" through the coordinated understanding of these ideas.
I had been exposed to Arica first via John Lilly's Psychology Today interview with Sam Keene, and then, immediately upon publication in 1971, Lilly's The Center of the Cyclone. As a footnote to this, I'll comment that I had been experimenting with LSD since I was 15. Originally it was simply a peer-influenced post-Woodstock thrill seeking behavior; but after my initial dive into it, followed by a "sabbatical" of almost a year, I was re-activating my interest in (and use of) it, wanting to explore the deeper side of it -- what did it mean, how far could it take you? (More on this elsewhere.) Before entering the Arica training a year and a half later, I had likewise read Sam Keene's subsequent interview with Oscar Ichazo, founder of Arica. This includes one of the first reasonably complete synopses of the basic Arica teaching. The enneagram itself is barely discussed, although several of the enneagram figures, including the enneagram of fixations, were included with the article. (This along with the Lilly interview and other Same Keen interviews were reprinted in Voices and Visions, unfortunately no longer in print). At any rate, the enneagram (aka, in Arica-speak, the enneagon) was presented in a completely different manner than Ouspensky's presentation of Gurdjieff's teaching. In fact, there was little really said about the enneagram as such.
Which was disappointing, as, more than anything else, my passion was to understand "the go of it," to quote James Clerk Maxwell, formulator of the mathematics underlying our understanding of electromagnetic field phenomenon. If this really is an underlying law of reality, then it should be in some way conformable to other intelligible aspects of reality.
The immediate impression, in my naive understanding of these things, produced on me when first encountering Ichazo's teaching, was that this was the next step in the transmission of an esoteric teaching first brought through Gurdjieff. At the time, I was very much convinced that, along the lines Ouspenky particularly asserted, that there was a bona fide, card carrying inner esoteric school - of which, from a 4th Way snobbery point of view, organizations such as Freemasonry and Theosophy, for example, were merely shadow caricatures.
At the time (early seventies), the Sufis in particular were getting good PR as perhaps lead contenders as the representatives of this school (cf. Idries Shah, reputed author of Teachers of Gurdjieff). In response to all this now, I will just say that there is an 'inner circle of humanity' that exists and is represented by both all of us in our higher natures, and the sangha of realized beings, the communion of saints, even the "Great White Brotherhood" if you fancy that talk; when we greet each other with Namaste, or "when two or three are gathered in my name". And there are many associations of dharma brothers and sisters who have greater or lesser skill and purity and realization, and various missions, just as each of us has a mission. Most if not all such enterprises seem to have the inevitable shadow side as well; how they pull off their relation to it is another thing.
At this stage, I can't say I know to what extent the use of the enneagram, Oscar's reputed Sufi connection, (which seems to have been hyped up in particular by Claudio Naranjo) and so on, was simply, as it were, marketing hype, and to what extent it was a reflection of his sincere synthesis of his realization of the many teachings he had encountered. My gut feel is, both. Oscar was surrounded by a cadre of powerful new age "young turks" (and not so young) that had highly eclectic influences already in their blood that were, quite impressively I will add, organized and inspired by Oscar to create a powerful environment for people to encounter their spiritual path. I'm pretty sure that the Arica teaching could have come through without using the Gurdjieff enneagram as such.
All of this is by way of background to the central question, can we meaningfully interpret Ichazo's enneagram as relating to Gurdjieff's teaching? In order to do this, I will have to make clear what I believe the scope of each teaching is.
Ichazo's use of the enneagram, in my opinion, is in reality a completely straightforward scheme of a "three by three" analysis of the psyche. In the Arica system, there are three primary "instincts" (personally, I prefer "tropisms", but then, that's my misreading). These have been characterized variously as conservation (e. g., relating to survival), relationship (i. e. interpersonal relationships), and "syntony" (relating to harmony with environment, peers, being in tune). These correspond to the psychic domains of being, living, and doing; they are also related variously to different psychic centers -vital, emotional, mental (there precise point of relationship can change depending on the perspective; typically, syntony relates to the vital center, but in a higher sense, relates to the mental). These "instincts" and centers can readily been seen to correspond somewhat with the centers as provided by Gurdjieff - moving, emotional, mental; or again, to the functions of thinking, feeling, and willing, as for example found in Steiner. Each "fixation" or "ennea-type" (Naranjo) is formed through a distortion of one of the three basic instincts. The ninefold wheel of types simply reflects a threefold subdivision within each type; each fixation expressing either the primary form of the distortion, or else tending more or less towards one of the other two.
In this regard, the enneagram would be much more straightforward, easier to understand, and perhaps quite a bit less mysterious and arresting, if it were depicted simply as three equilateral triangles formed against nine equidistant points on a circle:
And in fact, this is how the enneagram is often explained, explicitly or otherwise, as for example in A. H. Almas Facets of Unity, a very creditable survey of Ichazo's Holy Ideas as applied to the enneagram.
The "flow" along the inner lines is briefly discussed by the fixationists and is explained in terms of the natural psychological dynamism that exists between the different points or fixations. However, there seems to be no sense of how or why it is so that our psyches can be seen to conform to this peculiar arrangement. For when described as an "inner flow" it can simply be understood as a circulation - that is, traversal of a circle - rather than as the complex meander that the inner hexagram represents when depicted relative to outer circle. Ichazo also uses nine-sided "star" forms in addition to the Gurdjieffian enneagram as part of his protoanalysis teaching.
What we do know from Gurdjieff is that these lines announce the significance of the enneagram as a symbol representing the working together of the law of three and the law of seven (or the law of the octave), as the inner lines are formed by connecting the numbered points in the series formed when calculating 1/7 as a decimal fraction: .142857… -- that is, it points to a significance beyond the 3 by 3 aspect.
Ichazo's enneagrams are best understood as a three by three system. What I believe a deeper study of the enneagram suggests, however, is that there is always a correspondence between any intelligible ninefold, that is, three by three, system, and the law of seven or the law of the octave, even if this relationship is secondary or apparently non obvious. And this is simply out of the nature of the threefold.
I will also add here that, in my experience (which did include a week of evening lectures with Ichazo during the teacher training) is that Ichazo is actually "pretty deep in" with Kabbalah and Taoist yoga; the Gurdjieff stuff in the Arica work is, in many respects, fairly superficial. But Oscar's teaching is deserving of study because of the psychology of the imbalanced instincts. To me it is fairly consonant with my understanding of the psychology underlying Gurdjieff's work, while at the same time provides an element of structure that, if properly used and understood, can add something to the precision with which we talk about ourselves. It can of course also be used clumsily.
Before continuing further with the enneagram, let me provide an illustration of how a ninefold (three by three) system can be related to the sevenfold. This is found in Rudolf Steiner's characterization of the ninefold membering of the human being. In essence, he expands the division of body, soul and spirit into finer gradations: physical body, etheric body, astral body; sentient soul, intellectual soul, consciousness soul; and sprit self, life spirt, and spirit man (or, alternatively, manas, buddhi, and atman). The definitions of each of these terms is left for a footnote; the point under consideration is that, having defined them in threefold terms, he proceeds to re-cast them as a sevenfold structure, by merging the adjacent members of the body/soul and soul/spirt boundaries, yielding: physical body, etheric body, sentient soul body, "I", sprit-filled consciousness soul, sprit self (buddhi) spirit man, (atman). Even more interestingly from the point of view of understanding the dynamics of three, seven, and nine, he describes how the higher members can be understood as transformations of the lower, via the agency of the central member, the "I" or ego. The "I" in one sense is the essential being of man, but from another perspective, simply a proxy agent for the Self that is necessary for the process of transformation, but outside of the process of transformation, is just a phase of the soul-nature. (Manas is transformed astral body; Buddhi transformed etheric; Atman, transformed physical body.)
When the Gurdjieff enneagram is studied, it is noted at once that the "vibrational levels" of the "shock" points, when analyzed against the "food diagram" as found in In Search of the Miraculous, correspond to the adjacent "non-shock" points - in other words, the nine points of the enneagram, when viewed as an octave, collapse into seven by merging adjacent values.
Another image, also from an anthroposophical writer (Wilhem Pelikan) in The Secrets of Metals , is of circle with seven equidistant points on the circumference. Three isosceles triangles are inscribed within the circle. The apex of each triangle is found at the three topmost points (assume a point is found at the top center of the circle) with the base of each triangle formed by the two points opposite. In this figure, the two base points of the center triangle are shared with one base point of each of the other two triangles. His use of the symbol is also intriguing when one understands how the enneagram generates a series of seven-pointed stars as the inner lines are 'progressed,' as described in my article Tone Constellations of the Enneagram. The metals reveal how different qualities in a sevenfold series can be inter-related in different, ordered constellations.
Suggestive as this figure (we'll refer to it as the heptagram) alone is, it is further intriguing to observe that the outline of the inner hexagram of the enneagram can be found within the intersecting lines of the three triangles. This figure is used in the text to illustrate the manifold relationships between the properties of the cardinal metals (corresponding to the planets): lead, tin, iron, gold, copper, mercury, silver.
A contemplation of these properties and relationships alongside Russell Smith's Cosmic Secrets, where he generates the periodic table of the elements from the octave, is again suggestive.
Before exiting, for the present, this anthroposophical digression, it is also interesting to note the scheme of seven soul types described by Max Stibbe, (Seven Soul Types) another anthroposophical writer. These are discerned by dividing two soul modes - active and passive - into three subtypes, reflecting the balance between inner and outer. The three active types are: the self-conscious type (inner world primary); the dominant type (inner and outer worlds balance); and the aggressive type (outer world primary). The three passive types are: the romantic type (inner world primary); the mobile type (inner and outer worlds balance); and aesthetic type (outer world primary). The seventh is the ideal, or radiant type: activity and passivity are in harmony, as are inner and outer world.
For the moment, we will leave it as an 'exercise for the reader' to see if a link can (or should) reasonably be attempted between these seven types and the nine ennea types. I will comment that for my way of thinking, these soul types are stand out more as of the nature of different "notes" of the soul's expression, that is, more musical, than the ennea types. This is in keeping with the sevenfoldness, I believe.
Yet another way to think about the enneagram as integrating "threefoldness" and "sevenfoldness" is to consider the musical scale. The simplest way to understand the generation of the musical scale is to see that it can be created by a series of "fifths" - the fifth being the musical interval formed by ratio 2:3. (An example of a fifth in music would be the interval between C and G.) The "circle of fifths" is a concept familiar to musicians, and all of the notes of the scale can be generated by stepping a fifth at a time, and then "compressing" the notes back into the range of a single octave. A scale can also be generated from a series of triads, however. In music, triads are composed of a major third and a minor third (together creating the interval of the fifth); by successively progressing by thirds, triad-wise, you again generate the seven notes of the scale. But in this instance, the end of one and the beginning of the next triad coincide, compressing the nine notes into seven. (Albeit now spanning two octaves.)
What I am aiming at most in all this is development of fluidity in thinking about the enneagram, or more importantly, in the laws that it symbolizes, and hopefully inspiring contemplation of the nature of the relationships of three, nine, and seven.
Let us jump now to Gurdjieff's exposition of the "law of the octave" as found in Search. In the initial exposition, Gurdjieff begins by bringing attention to the way in which the musical scale is composed, pointing out that, when the scale is considered as composed of seven whole tones, there are also found the five half-tones of the chromatic scale; in this scale, it appears that there are semi-tones "missing" between mi and fa and si and do. And indeed, this is evident looking at the five black keys of the piano.
Gurdjieff here introduces a rather peculiar idea, which as far as I am aware, has been little observed or commented upon. He has begun by saying that "the frequency of vibrations does not increase uniformly", continuing to characterize the points of the "missing" semi-tones as points where the acceleration, or rate of increase is "retarded". Gurdjieff then makes use of this idea to explain "why there are no straight lines in nature and also why we can neither think nor do, why everything with us is thought, why everything happens with and happens usually in a way opposed to what we want or expect…What precisely does happen at the moment of the retardation of vibrations? A deviation from the original direction takes place."
In the ensuing paragraphs, diagrams are drawn showing the direction of an impulse starting in a straight line, but then deviating at an angle when the mi-fa phase is reached; then again at si-do, and so on in successive octaves until "the line of octaves may turn completely round and proceed in a direction opposite to the original direction." In this sense, we speak of something becoming its own opposite.
Gurdjieff proceeds to describe how this explains all of the deviations, inversions and distortions of history and of our own lives. Moving on, he says that "right development" of an octave can occur, that is, deviations be avoided, if at the right time another octave "going parallel to the given octave, intersecting or meeting it, in some way or another fill up its 'intervals' and make it possible for the vibrations of the given octave to develop in freedom and without checks.
Before going further with Gurdjieff description of the law of the octave as recounted by Ouspensky, some fundamental questions need to be asked and tentatively answered, or else it is possible to quickly go astray.
One question that must soon be asked in the context of the study of 'vibrations' in relation to the enneagram and the law of the octave as Gurdjieff applies it further in his "Ray of Creation" and his "Three octaves of radiation" which becomes the foundation for his view of both man and the world. This question is: vibrations of what are being discussed? In the view of materialistic science, of course, one can resolve the entire universe of phenomenon to electromagnetic vibrations. Starting from here, one can crudely extend all that Gurdjieff says about matter and vibrations - "We are more material than the materialists" - to yield the idea that all 'higher levels' aspired to in the Gurdjieffian cosmos are simply more rarified analogs of the material universe that our naïve sense of reality still tends to resolve, despite our knowledge of quantum physics, into a mere agglomeration of moving - but ultimately inert from the point of view of possessing intrinsic life - particles. "Vibration" is then merely the mechanical oscillation of matter in some media.
Or one can start from a different perspective - for example, that of the St. John's Gospel, which states "In the beginning was the word." Indeed, it is clear that it is in this sense that this is the sense in which Gurdjieff understands it, but you really have to stretch for this in Ouspensky's work; indeed, Ouspensky delights in combinations, calculations and extrapolations about "higher reality" which are projections of an earth-bound thinking onto "higher reality." (I am referring to his analysis of "breath" "day and night" and "life" of cosmoses found in pages 329-340 of Search, which was the starting off point for Rodney Collin's Theory of Celestial Influence, which eventually brings us back to Ichazo's enneagram. But I get ahead of myself.)
Gurdjieff clearly had in mind the doctrine of the Logos in Beelzebub's Tales to his Grandson, where he describes the creation of the world by the "Theomertmalogos" or word-God.
In considering, then, the world as a whole, and - man as a microcosm, or image of the world - as an expression of the divine creative logos, we touch on the idea of the complete octave - for such is his "Ray of Creation" as being a representation of the full expression of the Logos. I mean this idea to be a very different starting place than the idea of the octave being a series of steps proceeding in time. In this sense, each of the various notes or intervals of an octave may or may not be expressed in a series in time. They are better understood as being different echoes or reverberations of a given logos. Gurdjieff describes each whole or completed process as having an octave; in my sense, each whole or completed process expresses a given logos.
The power of sound, spiritually conceived, to create form is understood through the experiment of the Chladni figures, in which particles of fine powder are made to spontaneously arrange themselves into complex geometrical shapes under the influence of standing waves of sound generated by vibrating a metal plate strewn with powder. This idea underlies Rudolf Steiner's idea of a tone ether, which is active in the fluid element and determines chemical effects; it is also called the number ether, as it is also expressed in laws of proportion and ratio.
The linear description of 'deflections' of the octave at the mi-fa and si-do intervals seems awkward and strained, although I believe I understand the method in Gurdjieff's approach. My chief difficulty, I suppose, is I cannot imagine in any way that I can make meaningful to me, an "octave" going forth as an initial "DO" that has a vector, that is, that is oriented towards a specific end. Pitches and tones, at least in the physical world, are without movement of their own (they do, of course, generate overtones as part of their vibrational 'field") towards another pitch. Of course, in music the idea of "motion" from one note to the next is what the whole idea of music is about, and we anticipate, psychologically, the motion of a melody. In this sense a musical interval is the perception of a motion from one tone to another; and indeed, this motion towards the octave as tones ascend or descend through the scale is in fact a mysterious motion as if in a circle, where from moving away from the fundamental, a transition is experienced where tones are experienced as moving toward the octave.
This sense of motion could be projected onto discrete events or phases as part of a "complete octave" only if there is some underlying idea of the whole, of the logos of the octave in question. The stages or phases of an octave then become, not causally linked "accelerations" of pitch that can be "deflected," but simply the natural points of unfoldment of the total reality or process in question.
The necessity for introducing "shocks" at the points of the so-called "missing intervals" is not a question of, as may be crudely imagined, a matter of calculating the right angle with which to hit the cue ball so that the eight ball makes it into the corner pocket. In reality, the "motion" across intervals is not a question of progression from state to state, with the momentum of the previous state creating the impetus for the next. It is rather the fact that every complete idea or logos has naturally available to it the different phases of being that the different intervals represent. These may or may not be expressed 'sequentially' in time along the scale; much more interestingly, they are presented melodically.
So what is this all about? I believe the teaching of "missing semi-tones" does point to a reality that I would like to try and indicate by other means. Simply stated, it suggests that first, all reality is threefold - that is, expressing body, soul, and spirit - and that neither the body, nor soul, nor spirit can express itself completely - can express its true logos - without the attunement of each to each. In other words, for example, no embodied thing can express its true nature without relation to the soul-spiritual element; and it is the enneagram that serves as an indicator of how this attunement may be achieved. This is by the alignment of proper aspects of, for example, an octave (or logos) of a body being brought into proper "alignment" with an octave (or logos) of soul as suggested by the placement of the "start" of the second octave at whatever expresses the mi tone. (Please note that I am unavoidably lapsing into a time series mode of expression myself even though the reality of this process may not necessarily be sequential.)
By characterizing three aspects of reality - body, soul, and spirit - with corresponding octaves, the immediate question is: how are these discontinuous natures yet made to resonate - for this is the nature of the 'attunement' at the mi-fa and si-do intervals?
For guidance here, let's contemplate the picture found in my article The Enneagram and the Tree of Life. Here, eleven points of the "fully-elaborated" octave are depicted, in correspondence with the traditional sefiroth of the Kabbalah. In this scheme, we have the sequence: Kether - do, Hochma - re, Binah - mi, Daath - 'interval', Chesed - fa, Gevura - sol, Tifereth - 'premature shock', Netzah - la, Hod - si, Yesod - 'actual interval', Malkut - do.
Here, in addition to the mi-fa interval, corresponding to "Daath", and the "actual interval" corresponding to the si-do interval, we have at Tifereth what I describe as the "premature shock". This is described on page 291 of Search where Gurdjieff, discussing the "shock points" of the enneagram, says: "… and the other between sol and la, where it is not necessary. The apparent placing of the interval in its wrong place itself shows to those who are able to read the symbol what kind of "shock" is required for the passage of si to do."
When one aligns the Kabbalsitic tree of life, as is traditionally done, placing a new "Kether" of a lower tree (logos, octave) at the Tifereth of the higher tree, the Kabbalistic symbolism becomes suggestive. (This kind of alignment corresponds to the way Ouspensky projects the "food diagram" from Search onto the enneagram, (cf. page 377 of Search, further to Gurdjieff's earlier statement about the enneagram that "All that has been said about the octaves of radiation and about the food octaves in the human organism has a direct connection with the symbol consisting of a circle divided into nine parts.")
It is the alignment of the mi-fa interval at the point of Daath that is arresting. Daath corresponds, in the tradition of the Kabbalah, to the cosmic abyss that separates the threefold higher divine essence (kether-hochma-binah) from the lower seven creative sephiroth. (Note that here we have a different ordering of the three and seven relationship.) An alternative characterization of the abyss is the Void, suggesting the "empty-fullness" of the pleroma (the all) or the emptiness of sunyata.
In the context of the "alignment" of a lower octave to a higher, I am here suggesting that there is indeed a threshold between the "lower aspects" of, in this example, the 'body' octave, and its own higher aspects, that is, those that align with the next higher octave (the "soul" octave in this case). And by considering the alignment of octaves in the Tree of Life, we find the suggestion that the transition across the mi-fa interval is an encounter with the void; it is a boundary between the structuring, creative and determining forces active at the current level and a surrender to the determining triad of a higher level.
Parallels from Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophy are also useful and intriguing, especially as they relate to the example par excellence of the functioning of the enneagram in a series of three inter-related octaves is presented in what is described as the "food diagram" introduced in Search beginning on page 181.
The "food diagram" represents a picture of the functioning of the human organism as transformer of the energies of food, air, and sense impressions. Each of these three "foods" enters the organism as the "do" of a new "octave of energy" (again, we must be very careful about what we understand by a phrase such as this); as each octave is elaborated in the organism - that is, as the elements encounter and blend with higher elements present within the organism, successively transforming themselves into further "higher elements" at 'notes' corresponding to the successive notes of the octave. At point where an octave encounters its mi-fa interval, the "do" of the next higher food octave is sounded; that is, a new, higher food enters the organism, and the energy of its impulse helps the lower octave continue in its further progression of ascent into higher, more refined energies. These higher, more refined energies are the source of soul-life or vivification; without them, we lack the inner substance with which to meet higher forms of experience, to experience higher impressions, that is, higher cognitions or higher states of consciousness and being.
When the octave of impressions is discussed, it is made clear that while the alignment of the octave of breath and the octave of food happens automatically, unconsciously through our nature, the octave of impressions - one could almost say, the octave of consciousness or self-awareness - does not develop automatically; it requires intentional effort on the part of man. The nature of these efforts is represented, in part, in the substance of Gurdjieff's teaching and practice; it is primarily represented by the practice known as "self-remembering".
Alongside of this picture, (very tersely summarized above), consider how Steiner speaks also of sense-impressions as food: "While the function of the eye - and this can be said about each of the external senses - is perception, it also has another more subtle function. This other function must be brought to consciousness before we can know that through the experience of brightness or darkness something takes place in us which is not so obvious, or radical and pronounced, as the lungs' intake of oxygen. Man is aware of what he owes to the lungs' intake of oxygen because it is a robust and strongly vitalizing process, whereas what he receives through the eye, in addition to actual sight, is a more intimate, more subtle vitalizing process. So we can say: What is strongly pronounced in an organ like the lung is only indicated in a subtle way in the case of a sense organ like the eye." (From The Human Soul in Relation to Evolution, page 13.)
Or elsewhere: "…what comes from the air and the rest of our surrounding is taken in through the head - our nerve-sense system - and then streams downward to build up the organs of our digestive system or our limbs." (From Agriculture, pages 11-12.)
And: "Indeed, a process similar to breathing .. goes on in all our sense perceptions." (From The Mission of the Archangel Michael, page 181.) These and other indications are indications of what is described as the cosmic nutrition stream.
The correspondences between Gurdjieff and Steiner's idea of sense impressions providing "the chief inlet of soul in this age" (William Blake) are important and worthy of their own study. I bring them into the discussion here in order to reinforce my idea of the transition across the mi-fa interval being an encounter with the void, by further relating what Steiner says about the process of digestion - he's discussing food, but it could equally apply to air or impressions. He says that the food that we eat must first be destroyed, that the life in it must be reduced to nothing, and then re-enlivened by our own life forces before it can be further transformed in the substance of a human being. If we can consider that Steiner and Gurdjieff both had access to special knowledge of (or special insight into) the spiritual side of the transformation of food and energies in the human being, and can place these concepts side by side, I see that it again indicates something of the nature of the discontinuity that occurs at the mi-fa (and si-do) interval.
But for me the insight here is that, at the interval, when it aligns with the higher octave, the nature of the process changes completely. And in reality, it is not a question of the original "do", conceived as a starting impulse, being "corrected" by a deflection back to the original aim (cf. all of Bennett's ideas on hazard relative to the enneagram.) Rather, it is simply that the lower now is aligned with the aims, purposes, intentions of the higher. The food for the body becomes transformed into something higher: the energy of a human being, of a human soul. Without achieving resonance with the soul-breath octave, the substances of the body are simply yet another form of dust. Yet in its structure, it is a very special form of dust, one capable of serving as the instrument both for the expression of the spirit and the cultivation of the individual human soul. It is only when the total logos of the "do" as both the beginning and the end of the vibratory phenomenon are grasped as existing all at once, rather than in time series; and where this lower octave is conceived as existing to serve the transformation to something higher, does it start to make sense. The mi-fa "shock" is really the boundary point of alignment of the higher and the lower. The 1 - 1 - 1 - ½ higher steps of the lower must align with the 1 - 1- 1 - ½ lower steps of the higher; then there is congruence, alignment, resonance. This boundary point is a membrane, a threshold, a barrier; to pass through it is to pass "through the eye of a needle".
The membrane of the "first conscious shock" as described in Search is not really a "conscious shock" - something 'administered' to the system - but simply a transition that must take place "in consciousness". When we are consciously present to the I-spirit octave, our entire life becomes a process of alignment with the higher energies of spirit. When we perceive the spiritual that is both hidden and indicated by the sense appearances, we begin to 'grow' in new organs of knowledge and perception, which are the conscious life of the spirit. We begin to learn that the pulsation of the spirit is in all things.
The "hydrogens" of the food octave (Gurdjieff's term for the substances formed at each note of the octaves of transformation) - the various energies of the body-soul-spirit complex that exists while man is in incarnation - are each complex, multidimensional fields of energy. Each such a hydrogen as found in the three octaves of the food diagram is, as it were, an entire world or body unto itself, pulsating, living and dying, and always transforming. To "possess" higher hydrogens is to learn to allow the impulses of the lower to align with the impulses of the higher.
Returning to Ichazo and Arica: we have in John Lilly's The Center of the Cyclone another Ichazo-inspired borrowing from Gurdjieff; one that seems to have been left by the wayside in the wave of the enneagram fashion that Ichazo spawned. This is the use of the "Gurdjieff vibrational numbers" to denote states of consciousness. Quickly summarized, Lilly described states of consciousness which he denoted as "48" "+24" "+12" "+6" and "+3". He described his experiences, primarily achieved through the effects of LSD, of these various states and develops a rough characterization of the hallmarks of each state. 48 is the "neutral biocomputer state" - facts are weighed and reasoned dispassionately; the body is neutral as a source of energetic input into thoughts and behavior. This is the state of being grounded in earthly reality. Note that in the Gurdjieff teaching "48" corresponds to the "vibrational level" of the planet earth, and it is with "hydrogen 48" that the formative part of the intellectual center functions. Dry, unexciting impressions. "24" "12" "6" and three would correspond, in the Gurdjieff parlance, to I suppose "balanced functioning centered in the moving/instinctive center" "higher emotional center" and "higher intellectual center" respectively.
This map can be made to fit very well for someone who has had any sort of "far out" psychedelic experiences along the lines of Lilly. In my two years of training, there was some reference made to this 'scale of realization' but in general the aim of the training was to allow people to achieve "permanent 24" - balanced instincts, no "ego", no negative states. It is towards this end, I believe, that Ichazo and Arica made use of the enneagram of protoanalysis and fixations.
A truly fluid understanding of the laws of three and seven represented by the enneagram make it possible to see that a "horizontal" enneagram - that is neither ascending nor descending, like the ennea-types - makes just as much sense as thinking of ascending and descending octaves. In music we speak of "higher" or "lower" notes of a scale, and of motion up or down. But when we consider, for example, chord progressions, it is no longer strictly accurate to speak of "higher" and "lower". The meaning of a chord is its position relative to the root chord; but chords may be inverted, for example, and the still retain their meaning in the chord structure.
The enneagram pictures the alignment of the three with seven. Seven is only aligned with three, not when it is divided evenly - 1/7 - but when it becomes a diatonic scale. It forms this scale, with its peculiar ratio, when the series of fifths - the most perfect consonance besides the unity, or its analog, the octave - is stepped through until the octave is again experienced. This produces the 12 notes of the chromatic scale (I am leaving all of the minutiae of tuning - Pythagorean, just, even, mean, etc. - out of the discussion for the minute) - the seven white and five black notes of the piano, reflecting the 'missing semitones" at mi-fa and si-do.
In my opinion, the Gurdjieff purists would do well to embrace the thinking and realization behind Ichazo's exposition; recognize the points of contact of the enneagram symbol with other thinking, while at the same time deepening their understanding of the teaching as Gurdjieff presented it. He clearly intended it be fragmentary, and more than anything, a goad to our ponderings. Gurdjieff talked about the study of the enneagram as the prelude to "great doing". Ichazo, conversely, stressed the Taoist concept of wu-wei, effortless effort. Contemplating the whole, we can see that if it is possible to find the way of alignment of the higher with the lower, it is not so much a question of "shocks" and "super efforts" than of surrender. And indeed, the needle that Gurdjieff tried to push his pupils through was just the very realization of their nullity; that outside the sphere of harmony with what is higher, all is mechanical and meaningless. Rudolf Steiner, in my view, provides us with pictures of what the being of spiritual world is like, allowing us to align our thinking and perception, step by step, in this direction. The more baggage we can throw away, Gurdjieff-style, the better; the more balance we can achive in the vital/instinctive side of our personality, the better as well.
In the interests of transformation through understanding.
July 2002Copyright © 2002 David Eyes
