Chapter#03

Construction of the human machine. The necessity of knowing the human machine. The “deputy steward”. Version #3

The main ideas in this chapter are: (1)The mechanicality of man. (2) The astral body. (Not everybody has an astral body. You know if you have one if you possess certain unusual capabilities. As to what are these capabilities we are not sure, Gurdjieff has never reviled it. The Astral body is also discussed in chapter #2, which is probably why there's no outline point for it in this chapter. See the Glossary for additional info on the astral body.) (3) Evolution. "Nature changes Life adapts." said Ralph Colby a one time member of our group. Also see the Glassory for the definition of Biological Evolution. (4) The method of teaching the system. The teaching is introduced by piecemeal, one idea at a time. In addition Ouspensky says at one point that he separated psychological material from the cosmological material. Off course he sould for better comprehensen. (4) The Deputy Steward (the Impartial Observer). (5) Ouspensky's question to Gurdjieff about the fakir and also the Buddhist neckles.

From Richard Liebow:"Evolution is creating the cup, but it's up to us to fill the cup." The word evolution in this context means more like transformation. "So nobody cares about your own evolution, it's up to you to figure a way out of the net." Richard here refers to the net as a metaphor for avoiding ones fate. "Some fish gets out of the net by chance, but some fights for it."
Objectives: Understand that your body is a machine. To do that you must observe your mechanicality.

Outline Points
G’s fundamental ideas concerning man. Absence of unity. Multiplicity of I’s. This is not just true for the individual, but maybe for a whole nation, more precisely it is applicable to the world. (No nation wants to give up its suvereignty.) Construction of the human machine. Psychic centers. G's method of exposition of the ideas of the system. Repetition unavoidable.This refers to some of material which could not be presented without occasionally being repeated. What the evolution of man means. Mechanical progress impossible. European idea of man’s evolution. Connectedness of everything in nature. Humanity and the moon. Advantage of individual man over masses. Necessity of knowing the human machine. Absence of permanent "I" in man. Role of small I’s. Absence of individuality and will in man. Eastern allegory of the house and its servants. The “deputy steward”. Talks about a fakir on nails and Buddhist magic.

Notes:
Lucius Annaeus Seneca (ca. 4BC – 65AD) Often known simply as Seneca, or Seneca the Younger. He was a Roman philosopher, statesman, dramatist, and in one work, humorist, of the Silver Age of Latin literature. Born in Córdoba, Spain, Seneca was the second son of Helvia and Marcus (Lucius) Annaeus Seneca, a wealthy rhetorician known as Seneca the Elder. Seneca's older brother, Gallio, became proconsul at Achaia (where he encountered the apostle Paul about AD 52). Seneca was uncle to the poet Lucan, by his younger brother, Annaeus Mela. Tradition relates that he was a sickly child, and that he was taken to Rome for schooling. He was trained in rhetoric, and was introduced into the Stoic philosophy by Attalos and Sotion. Due to his illness, Seneca stayed in Egypt from (25-31) for treatment. After his return, he established a successful career as an advocate. Around 37 he was nearly killed, as a result of a conflict with the Emperor Caligula, who only spared him because he believed the sickly Seneca 'would not live long', anyhow. In 41, Messalina, wife of the Emperor Claudius, persuaded Claudius to have Seneca banished to Corsica on a charge of adultery with Julia Livilla. He spent his exile in philosophical and natural study, and wrote the Consolations. In 49, Claudius' new wife, Agrippina, had Seneca recalled to Rome to tutor her son, L. Domitius, who was to become the emperor Nero. On Claudius' death in 54, Agrippina secured the recognition of Nero as emperor over Claudius' son, Britannicus. For the first five years, the quinquennium Neronis, Nero ruled wisely under the influence of Seneca and the praetorian prefect, Sextus Afranius Burrus. But, before long, Seneca and Burrus had lost their influence over Nero, and his reign became tyrannical. With the death of Burrus in 62, Seneca retired, and devoted his time to more study and writing. In 65, Seneca was accused of being involved in a plot to murder Nero, the Pisonian conspiracy. Without a trial, Seneca was ordered by Nero to commit suicide. Tacitus gives an account of the suicide of Seneca. His wife, Pompeia Paulina, who intended to commit suicide after Seneca's death, was forced and sentenced to live by Nero.
Imperator Caesar Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus (April 26, 121 – March 17, 180) was Roman Emperor from 161 to his death. He was born Marcus Annius Catilius Severus, and at marriage took the name Marcus Annius Verus. When he was named Emperor, he was given the name Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. He was the last of the Five Good Emperors, who governed the Roman Empire from 96 to 180 While on campaign between 170 and 180, Aurelius wrote his Meditations as a source for his own guidance and self-improvement. He had been a priest at the sacrificial altars of Roman service and was an eager patriot. He had a logical mind though his notes were representative of Stoic philosophy and spirituality. Meditations is still revered as a literary monument to a government of service and duty. It has been praised for its "exquisite accent and its infinite tenderness" and "saintliness" being called the "gospel of his life." They have been compared by John Stuart Mill in his Utility of Religion to the Sermon on the Mount. The book itself was first published in 1558 in Zurich, from a manuscript copy that is now lost. The only other surviving complete copy of the manuscript is in the Vatican library.
Plotonius (204-270 C.E.) wrote of being lifted out of his body on many occasions, Plotinus was born in Egypt, the exact location of which is unknown. In his mid-twenties Plotinus gravitated to Alexandria, where he attended the lectures of various philosophers, not finding satisfaction with any until he discovered the teacher Ammonius Saccas. He remained with Ammonius until 242, at which time he joined up with the Emperor Gordian on an expedition to Persia, for the purpose, it seems, of engaging the famed philosophers of that country in the pursuit of wisdom. The expedition never met its destination, for the Emperor was assassinated in Mesopotamia, and Plotinus returned to Rome to set up a school of philosophy. By this time, Plotinus had reached his fortieth year. He taught in Rome for twenty years before the arrival of Porphyry, who was destined to become his most famous pupil, as well as his biographer and editor. It was at this time that Plotinus, urged by Porphyry, began to collect his treatises into systematic form, and to compose new ones. These treatises were most likely composed from the material gathered from Plotinus' lectures and debates with his students. The students and attendants of Plotinus' lectures must have varied greatly in philosophical outlook and doctrine, for the Enneads are filled with refutations and corrections of the positions of Peripatetics, Stoics, Epicureans, Gnostics, and Astrologers. Although Plotinus appealed to Plato as the ultimate authority on all things philosophical, he was known to have criticized the master himself (cf. Ennead IV.8.1). We should not make the mistake of interpreting Plotinus as nothing more than a commentator on Plato, albeit a brilliant one. He was an original and profound thinker in his own right, who borrowed and re-worked all that he found useful from earlier thinkers, and even from his opponents, in order to construct the grand dialectical system presented (although in not quite systematic form) in his treatises. The great thinker died in solitude at Campania in 270 C.E. The Enneads are the complete treatises of Plotinus, edited by his student, Porphyry. Plotinus wrote these treatises in a crabbed and difficult Greek, and his failing eyesight rendered his penmanship oftentimes barely intelligible. We owe a great debt to Porphyry, for persisting in the patient and careful preservation of these writings. Porphyry divided the treatises of his master into six books of nine treatises each, sometimes arbitrarily dividing a longer work into several separate works in order to fulfill his numerical plan. The standard citation of the Enneads follows Porphyry's division into book, treatise, and chapter. Hence 'IV.8.1' refers to book (or Ennead) four, treatise eight, chapter one.
Metaphysics and Cosmology Plotinus is not a metaphysical thinker in the strict sense of the term. He is often referred to as a 'mystical' thinker, but even this designation fails to express the philosophical rigor of his thought. Jacques Derrida has remarked that the system of Plotinus represents the "closure of metaphysics" as well as the "transgression" of metaphysical thought itself (1973: p. 128 note). The cause for such a remark is that, in order to maintain the strict unity of his cosmology (which must be understood in the 'spiritual' or noetic sense, in addition to the traditional physical sense of 'cosmos') Plotinus emphasizes the displacement or deferral of presence, refusing to locate either the beginning (arkhe) or the end (telos) of existents at any determinate point in the 'chain of emanations' -- the One, the Intelligence, and the Soul -- that is the expression of his cosmological theory; for to predicate presence of his highest principle would imply, for Plotinus, that this principle is but another being among beings, even if it is superior to all beings by virtue of its status as their 'begetter'. Plotinus demands that the highest principle or existent be supremely self-sufficient, disinterested, impassive, etc. However, this highest principle must still, somehow, have a part in the generation of the Cosmos. It is this tension between Plotinus' somewhat religious demand that pure unity and self-presence be the highest form of existence in his cosmology, and the philosophical necessity of accounting for the multiplicity among existents, that animates and lends an excessive complexity and determined rigor to his thought. Since Being and Life itself, for Plotinus, is characterized by a dialectical return to origins, a process of overcoming the 'strictures' of multiplicity, a theory of the primacy of contemplation (theoria) over against any traditional theories of physically causal beginnings, like what is found in the Pre-Socratic thinkers, and especially in Aristotle's notion of the 'prime mover,' becomes necessary. Plotinus proceeds by setting himself in opposition to these earlier thinkers, and comes to align himself, more or less, with the thought of Plato. However, Plotinus employs allegory in his interpretation of Plato's Dialogues; and this leads him to a highly personal reading of the creation myth in the Timaeus (27c ff.), which serves to bolster his often excessively introspective philosophizing. Plotinus maintains that the power of the Demiurge ('craftsman' of the cosmos), in Plato's myth, is derived not from any inherent creative capacity, but rather from the power of contemplation, and the creative insight it provides (see Enneads IV.8.1-2; III.8.7-8). According to Plotinus, the Demiurge does not actually create anything; what he does is govern the purely passive nature of matter, which is pure passivity itself, by imposing a sensible form (an image of the intelligible forms contained as thoughts within the mind of the Demiurge) upon it. The form (eidos) which is the arkhe or generative or productive principle of all beings, establishes its presence in the physical or sensible realm not through any act, but by virtue of the expressive contemplation of the Demiurge, who is to be identified with the Intelligence or Mind (Nous) in Plotinus' system. Yet this Intelligence cannot be referred to as the primordial source of all existents (although it does hold the place, in Plotinus' cosmology, of first principle), for it, itself, subsists only insofar as it contemplates a prior -- this supreme prior is, according to Plotinus, the One, which is neither being nor essence, but the source, or rather, the possibility of all existence (see Ennead V.2.1). In this capacity, the One is not even a beginning, nor even an end, for it is simply the disinterested orientational 'stanchion' that permits all beings to recognize themselves as somehow other than a supreme 'I'. Indeed, for Plotinus, the Soul is the 'We' (Ennead I.1.7), that is, the separated yet communicable likeness (homoiotai) of existents to the Mind or Intelligence that contemplates the One. This highest level of contemplation -- the Intelligence contemplating the One -- gives birth to the forms (eide), which serve as the referential, contemplative basis of all further existents. The simultaneous inexhaustibility of the One as a generative power, coupled with its elusive and disinterested transcendence, makes the positing of any determinate source or point of origin of existence, in the context of Plotinus' thought, impossible. So the transgression of metaphysical thought, in Plotinus' system, owes its achievement to his grand concept of the One.
The Enneads are the complete treatises of Plotinus, edited by his student, Porphyry. Plotinus wrote these treatises in a crabbed and difficult Greek, and his failing eyesight rendered his penmanship oftentimes barely intelligible. We owe a great debt to Porphyry, for persisting in the patient and careful preservation of these writings. Porphyry divided the treatises of his master into six books of nine treatises each, sometimes arbitrarily dividing a longer work into several separate works in order to fulfill his numerical plan. The standard citation of the Enneads follows Porphyry's division into book, treatise, and chapter. Hence 'IV.8.1' refers to book (or Ennead) four, treatise eight, chapter one.

The Six Enneads is a book whose title is sometimes abbreviated to The Enneads or Enneads, and was written by the Neo-Platonist Plotinus; it was edited and compiled by his last student Porphyry, in a short period c. 253 AD, after the death of Plotinus. Plotinus was a Platonic philosopher, being possibly a 12th to 14th generation student of the Greek philosopher Plato. ...

Glossary:

Benares=Varanasi also known as Benares, Banaras, or Kashi or Kasi is a famous Hindu holy city situated on the banks of the river Ganges. Benares (Varanasi) is to Hindus what Mecca is to Muslims or Vatican to Catholics. Varanasi is the site of the holy shrine of Lord Kashi Vishwanath (an incarnation of Lord Shiva).
Celyon(Shri Lanka)=Is an island nation in South Asia, located about 19 miles off the southern coast of India. Popularly referred to as the Pearl of the Indian Ocean, it is home to around twenty million people including Clark and Ananada Coomaraswami.
Colombo=is the largest city and commercial capital of Sri Lanka. Located on the west coast of the island.
hypnosis=A trance-like state in which a person becomes more aware and focused and is more open to suggestion. An other def:Hypnosis is a relaxing, naturally occurring state of mind which happens to us every day. Each time we read a captivating novel, float off in a daydream or see an engrossing movie we are in a natural state of hypnosis.
rupees=The Indian Rupee is the official currency of India. The issuance of the currency is controlled by the Reserve Bank of India. The most commonly used symbol for the Rupee is Rs. In most parts of India, the Rupee is known as the Rupee, Rupaye, Rubai, or one of other terms derived from the Sanskrit rupyakam raupya meaning silver.
dagoba=a solid hemispherical dome enshrining religious relics or the remains of kings, or Buddhist saints.
Buddhist necklace=Possibly - Prayer beads are traditionally used to keep count of the repetitions of prayers, chants or devotions. They are used by followers of four major world religions, Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity and Islam.
astral body=The astral body is one of seven bodies each of us has, according to Madame Blavatsky. The astral body is the seat of feeling and desire and has an aura. How the physical body and the other alleged bodies interact is unknown, but it is said to be by some sort of occult force. The astral body is said to be capable of leaving the other bodies for an out-of-body experience known as astral projection. Every individual constructs his own astral body from the energies of the surrounding astral plane, a body which will be responsive to his particular note and quality, and limited to his specific point on the ladder of evolution. The astral body is usually animated by forces which can be grouped under three main headings: 1. Forces of selfish desire, 2.The second group of forces are those engendered by sexual attraction, 3. The third group of forces impelling man along the way of life is fear.
lymphatic glands=Lymph glands along the lymph vessels are small bean-shaped lymph glands or 'nodes'. You can probably feel some of your lymph nodes. The lymphatic system is a system of thin tubes that runs throughout the body. These tubes are called 'lymph vessels'. You may also hear them called 'lymphatic vessels'. The lymphatic system is like the blood circulation - the tubes branch through all parts of the body like the arteries and veins that carry blood. Except that the lymphatic system carries a colourless liquid called 'lymph'. Lymph is a clear fluid that circulates around the body tissues. It contains a high number of lymphocytes (white blood cells). Plasma leaks out of the capillaries to surround and bathe the body tissues. This then drains into the lymph vessels. The fluid, now called lymph, then flows through the lymphatic system to the biggest lymph vessel - the thoracic duct. The thoracic duct then empties back into the blood circulation.
apathetic=Void of feeling; not susceptible of deep emotion; passionless; indifferent.
fakirs' miracle=These are not miracles, they are more like contronsinists.
miracle=See Janet Norman's article on Miracle attached. (she is one of our member)
individuality=the distinct personality of an individual regarded as a persisting entity.( "you can lose your identity when you join the army".)
evolution=In the broadest sense, evolution is merely change, and so is all-pervasive; galaxies, languages, and political systems all evolve. Biological evolution ... is change in the properties of populations of organisms that transcend the lifetime of a single individual. The ontogeny of an individual is not considered evolution; individual organisms do not evolve. The changes in populations that are considered evolutionary are those that are inheritable via the genetic material from one generation to the next. Biological evolution may be slight or substantial; it embraces everything from slight changes in the proportion of different alleles within a population (such as those determining blood types) to the successive alterations that led from the earliest protoorganism to snails, bees, giraffes, and dandelions." From: - Douglas J. Futuyma in Evolutionary Biology, Sinauer Associates 1986 A shorter definition= Evolution is a process that results in heritable changes in a population spread over many generations. Gurdjieffian evolutin, however is evolution of man's consciousness and as such it can not evolve involuntarily. We must participate in this involvement consciously. It's Involution!

Questions for Chapter #3 developed by Richard Liebow:
And for our review of the content of Chapter Three we address some of these questions:

Do you sometimes sense that you are nothing but a mass of dissociated conflicting little egos?
Do you really believe that if there were more harmony, relatedness, and connectedness in your thoughts, your feelings, your actions, and your behavior that you would be moving in the direction of actualizing the highest potentialities of your own particular form of being?
Do you believe that there is any meaningful relatedness between the lives of human beings and the life of the moon?
How important is it for you to have a permanent "I", real individuality, and significant strength of will?
Is the concept of a Deputy Steward becoming more meaningful and useful to you?
Do you have any interest in developing the skills necessary to lie on a bed of nails?
Do you have any interest in Buddhist magic--or any other kind of magic?

Additional Notes: To be aware of time is to be aware of the Universe. to be aware of the Universe is to be aware of time. We have lunch in a vegetarian restaurant. Food there is sold by weight. Another day has begun. Why do humans write so much? In fact why do they write at all? Is it because they are lonely and full of regret? Or is it because by writing the mind tries to store and keep forever things it knows it has already lost. Writing is man's quest for permanence.
Ultimately we as Gurdjiffian aspirants have two duties One to take care of ourselves and Two to take care of others. Gurdjieff, however breaks it down more precisly to 5 strivings:
(1) Take care of your body and your mind. (2) Develop your highest pontentiality (i.e. live authentically)
(3)Protect youe environment and the peole around you.
(4) Help others to the best of your abilities. Comte coined the word "altruism" to refer to what he believed to be a moral obligations of individuals to serve others and place their interests above one's own. He opposed the idea of individual rights, maintaining that they were not consistent with this supposed ethical obligation (Catechisme Positiviste). As already mentioned, Comte formulated the law of three stages, one of the first theories of the social evolutionism: that human development (social progress) progresses from the theological stage, in which nature was mythically conceived and man sought the explanation of natural phenomena from supernatural beings, through metaphysical stage in which nature was conceived of as a result of obscure forces and man sought the explanation of natural phenomena from them until the final positive stage in which all abstract and obscure forces are discarded, and natural phenomena are explained by their constant relationship. This progress is forced through the development of human mind, and increasing application of thought, reasoning and logic to the understanding of world.
(5)stop taking orders from a lower level.(i.e. lose your fear).
Hey...I didn't do that bad after all! Understand the law of Octaves. A deeper understanding that everything has a beginning a middle and an end. Furthermore a project or a relationship needs a conscious shock, so it wouldn't deteriorate.