by Bob Fergeson
In the struggle for understanding and Self-knowledge, we can see definite stages in our journey. At every turn we find a new challenge or difficulty. These challenges can be found to be exciting and stimulating at the first stages, but later we find we may have stopped moving, perhaps for months or years, and cannot seem to find the true cause or block. Let’s take a look at these stages and in particular the gap that must be bridged between the third and fourth, where this journey or Work can become stagnant.
Gurdjieff taught that our becoming was subject to the law of the octave, or law of seven. This closely parallels numerology and the musical scale. The following list gives a framework for understanding the first three general stages we encounter in the Work.
Do, or #1 = Evaluation of the Work ideas, state of knowledge.
Re, or #2 = Application of the Work ideas to oneself, state of bringing the knowledge into the practical.
Mi, or #3 = Realization of personal difficulties, state of completion – spiritual, mental, practical.
Gap or chasm = The missing semi-tone, place of shock.
Fa, or #4 = Place of understanding, dealing with the practical.
When we first come into contact with esoteric ideas through a teacher or friend, from intuition, or a need to escape misery, the information comes to us via the intellect. If this first note is struck hard enough, the ringing of our bell can carry us to sound the second note, and so on. Thus becoming inspired, we can begin reading and listening, and perhaps think we have a grasp of the Work in a real way. We have gained a positive, yet passive, evaluation of the idea of working on oneself. We have come to hear the Work and agree to it in an intellectual manner. But soon concrete action is needed, if we are to advance and sound the second note. The ideas of self-inquiry must be taken to heart, and acted upon. This undertaking can move us up a step, or note, to actually applying these ideas to ourselves in everyday life. Finding it much harder to act on our thinking than to just speculate and dream, we must begin to put forth energy in an active manner. We may find we have joined a group or begun meditating regularly, and are practicing what was at first only believed. This is the stage where discipline and commitment start to pay off.
Time and energy spent in the active pursuit of self-knowledge can lead us to the next stage, the realization of personal difficulties. A great deal of impartial observation is necessary here, plus a degree of humility and self-honesty, for all of our hard work and newly acquired self-knowledge lead us seemingly into a dead end. We have become aware not only of our patterns, but that as a personality we are strictly mechanical, a robot. An accidental associative reaction pattern cannot change itself, and we are left in a quandary. We see we have set patterns of personality, mood, states of mind, body type, metabolism, habits, talents, obsessions, even addictions, that are all mechanical, and more importantly, are not us. We realize we cannot do, but yet something must be done. Courage is needed here, for we must accept this fact and at the same time turn our focus inward and face the unknown. We have become an observer of our mechanical nature, but still have no experience of our Final Self.
To bridge the gap between the third and fourth notes, a surrender is needed, a recognition of Grace. At this point an inner change must occur, a dying to our former self. A discarding of the hope that the person we once thought ourselves to be, will be forever. This gives us the shock needed to drop the ego, if only for an instant. A turning towards the unknown because there is nowhere else to go. A listening, a turning to the silence within, only now valued because all other avenues are lost. This might bring us a strange surprise. We might find something is trying to reach us, has always been trying to reach us, and that by giving up we find contact with something greater, and that through this gate of silence, everything is possible.