I read and quite enjoyed the book Gurdjieff: Mysticism, Contemplation, and Exercises by Joseph Azize, who had appeared in a couple of interesting interviews on Mind Matters. As far as Gurdjieff studies go, this book is noteworthy for compiling and discussing the variety of internal exercises that Gurdjieff taught to his students, possible sources of the exercises, as well as how and why Gurdjieff developed them within the scope of his aims and practices based on the type of work he was engaged in at certain times in his teaching career. I feel like this added context did provide an extra dimension of understanding, and did line up with some of my own observations while reading other biographical materials about Gurdjieff from Ouspensky, William Patrick Patterson, and others related anecdotes sprinkled throughout the forum here.
PART ONE lays the foundation for discussing Gurdjieff's teaching periods and the personal influences working on and through him. He brings up what is called Transformed Contemplation, which is a term used to describe Gurdjieff's active internal contemplative exercises. He uses the adjective to distinguish it from regular contemplation, which for Gurdjieff had a lot of associations with idleness, imbalance in the centers, imagination, etc which spurred Gurdjieff to eschew these types of exercises for a portion of his teaching career.
Chapter One gives a biographical sketch of Gurdjieff, detailing as much as was known from his life before his work with Ouspensky in Russia, his early teaching career in Russia, France, Britain, and eventually the United States. A.R. Orage and his role in the US school was gone into detail as well. The falling-out Gurdjieff had with both Ouspensky and Orage are mentioned, and Azize offers speculation as to some of the causes of it. His later work with de Salzmann and the movements was also described. As much detail as this section had, one could easily fill an entire book with Gurdjieff's biography (and many have). Some may find this recap helpful to see what Azize picks out as relevant information with respect to how and why Gurdjieff promulgated some of the exercises and disciplines he practiced.
Chapter Two gives an overview of Gurdjieff's teachings on cosmology and anthropology. The holistic, unified nature of all reality from the microcosmos to the macro is discussed, as well as the materiality of thought and emotion in the scale of hydrogens. This cosmology is related directly to the function of the human organism, qualifying that in our fallen state we are dived into various i's and only unified in the sense that we are all asleep. Sleep is contrasted with doing in terms of the centers, especially with respect to self-remembering and reaching an awareness of the operation of all 3 of our lower centers. The food factory and diagram showing the evolution of hydrogens in the human body and psyche is elaborated on. While speaking about consciousness, Azize also devotes time to discussing the importance of conscience (i.e. wakefulness in the higher emotional center and awareness of all our emotions at once). All of this information is tied back into cosmology by his notions of Duty and Intentional Suffer to "pay for our existence."
A section devoted to religiosity in G's work brings together biographical details to show Gurdjieff's somewhat ambivalent relationship with Christianity, the Gospels, and priests. In spite this, and the decidedly un-Christian notion that God (or the Absolute, depending on how Gurdjieff wished to frame it) could not listen to human prayers directly, Gudjieff's writings did have a respect for the religiosity of the normal everyday human beings, which can help someone become an obyvatel or at least provide a decent foundation for the Work. His music was also evidenced to be influenced heavily by Christianity, Sufism, and Lamaism (of Tibet).
Chapter Three is about Gurdjieff's relationship with the mystical tradition in religious thought. Azize expounds on Gurdjieff's definition of mystical experience, which is described in a much more technical manner than most mystical scholars would, which tend to focus on the nature of the experience. Gurdjieff defines mystical experience as an incident in which the lower emotional or intellectual center make contact with the higher emotional or intellectual center, which function perfectly well all the time but due to the fragmented nature of the lower centers almost never make contact. Such a contact is experienced as a rush of information from higher sources that the lower centers cannot digest or comprehend fully, resulting in often little of the experience being consciously remembered except during the start and end of the experience.
Looking for parallels in Gurdjieff's thought and other mystical traditions, what I found most remarkable about this section is that Azize found very strong corollaries in Gurdjieff's own backyard: in the traditions of Neoplatonism and the Athonite monastic tradition (of Eastern Orthodoxy), most notably the Prayer of the Heart or Hesychastic tradition; both of which are Greek.
The specific Neoplatonic thinkers whose words echo G's own technical understanding of mysticism are Iambachus and Plotinus, which while being distinct enough from Gurdjieff for him not to be considered Neoplatonic would have more than likely thinkers Gurdjieff would have become acquainted with either first or second hand in his early life, and likely influenced his outlook.
The Orthodox hesychastic tradition is one which Gurdjieff has claimed to be indebted, especially with respect to the "I am" spiritual exercise Gurdjieff shared, which seemed to come more or less directly from the "Ego" exercise of Mt Athos, which was a monastic tradition and institution which became the foremost center of Hesychasm, or the Prayer of the Heart. One central tenet of this tradition is that it takes VERY SERIOUSLY St Paul's exhortation to "pray unceasingly," and much of their exercises center around bringing the prayerful state a monk attains in his cell into the everyday existence and activities of life.
This in some way is an answer to G's criticism of the physical, emotional, and mental spiritual schools, which require retirement from the world to refine oneself. G's criticism was that people would attain something, but then return to the world only to lose what they gained and fall back into their earlier habits (and as we shall see this did come to have an overpowering influence on G's teaching methodologies in Russia and France in the early years, until G's relationship with Orage developed and withered. Gurdjieff eschewed internal, contemplative exercises in favor of disciplines involving working out in the world, among the shocks necessary to wake one up. Gurdjieff later in his teaching career reversed this position, stating that "work in the quiet" (as de Salzmann would call it) was necessary to develop some internal resources in order to remember oneself when the shocks did come later in life.
The Philokalia (a book on the monastic and ascetic tradition of the early Church fathers with particular attention to the Greek) was a collection of Athonite hesychastic traditions compiled at the start of the 18th century which made its way into Russian in the 19th Century and later into English in the 20th century by the work of Ouspensky's wife. The material therein played a great role in the monastic religious revival in Russia in the 19th century, and was something both Gurdjieff and Ouspensky would have had familiarity. The writings bearing the most resemblance would be those of Nicephorus the Solitary (or the Monk), who was known for A Most Profitable Discourse on Sobriety and the Guarding of the Heart:
The last sentence notably has been used more or less verbatim by both Gurdjieff and his mouthpiece Beelzebub.
Many principles of hesychastic prayer were introduced also through the anonymously-written monastic memoir The Way of a Pilgrim, which made its way from Mt Athos to Russia by way of Kazan. Therein a religious seeker learns from a monk about using a rosary or chaplet to guide and focus the mind on the Jesus Prayer (moving a bead between the fingers with each prayer sung, being instructed to say it 3000 times a day (just to start off).
This book was extremely popular in Russia after its publication in 1881, and was referenced directly by Ouspensky, (and some would say indirectly by Gurdjieff), comparing it to Bhakti Yoga in A New Model of the Universe.
Ouspensky then recommended counting the prayer on rosary beads or chaplets. He also said that, once a prayer passed to the moving center and no longer required attention was brought consciously to attention, it could pass into the emotional and mental centers, and from there reach the higher emotional and higher mental center with sufficient training. On the latter, Ouspensky says fasting, prayer, and many types of burdens on the body (intentional suffering) are required.
I know I've devoted a ton of information disproportionately to this chapter, but for myself it was one of the most interesting chapters and was educational in terms of the religious milieu Ouspensky and Gurdjieff were working with in Russia in the early years of G's western mission. That and I generally enjoy reading about Eastern Orthodox monastic and ascetic traditions and practices. The recent interview on MindMatters of Gary Lachman also has many interesting things to say about this time period in Russia.
PART TWO is entitled "Gurdjieff's contemplative exercises," and chronologically goes through the periods of Gurdjieff's life in the west and the exercises and disciplines he either brought from elsewhere or developed for his pupils.
Chapter Four covers the exercises Gurdjieff either mentioned or taught during this time in Russia with Ouspensky. Those who read In Search of the Miraculous will have been acquainted with some of these exercises, if only in name.
It is here that Gurdjieff makes the first mention of the Ego Exercise in passing that was in practice in the monasteries of Mt Athos. It wasn't clear from the writing if this practice was taught to Ouspensky and the other early students or if it was only mentioned briefly to illustrate how a person's I of the moment may have different loci in or around the body.
One thing Gurdjieff stressed consistently throughout his teaching was the importance of relaxation, and to reduce the amount of energy expended passively through unnecessarily tense postures. Many of these types of exercises were performed with body scanning, where a person would try and sense a body party and relax it, then move to different body parts and relax those, etc.
These relaxation exercises ended up being a foundation for more complex movement activities that would occupy both the mind and body extensively. One pupil at this time mentioned: "The complexity of the Movements meant that the sensations and feelings could not be imaginary." This exercise would come back repeatedly in some guise, especially in the exercise The Preparation, and to a lesser extent in the Stop Exercise (which Azize defined more as a discipline since it was accomplished in groups and was more on the side of work "in life."
The Stop Exercise uses an announced pre-determined signal which causes everyone to freeze their posture for a certain amount of time. A pupil would attempt to remember themselves and track their feelings and thoughts while adopting the enforced frozen posture. One of the intended outcomes of this was to teach people the influence that postures can have on their way of thinking and feeling.
Gurdjieff evidently had hesitations about contemplative exercises for self-development, as he and Ouspensky both related this was an advanced technique that only those who were capable of self-remembering could undergo, and to jump ahead and meditate without remembering oneself simply led to increased imagination and departure from the real. This is what Gurdjieff admonished as a "philosophizing" active mentation: "You must not forget you are a body. You must always remember your body. You have not yet an "I," no "me." Do not forget it. Thus only can you have a future."
As alternatives to this Gurdjieff invited a person to wash their head in cold water, or hold out their arms for ten or twenty minutes while repeating "I am." Attention is directed toward the body, which is what adds "weight" to the mental states one may achieve (what a lot of us today would call "groundedness.") In an anecdote related by Orage, Gurdjieff said that in his travels in Tibet he "did not discover one single being with universal (i.e. balanced in all centers) development - only monsters."
Azize summarizes the reasons Gurdjieff initially eschewed contemplative exercises because chiefly (1) they were from the first three ways, and therefore required a withdrawal from the world Gurdjieff saw as counterproductive to growing a will in the world, (2) meditation without balance in the emotional and motor center only led to malformations due to a lack of control over imagination, (3) there is also a chance Gurdjieff wanted to keep his teaching strictly secular in nature and so break away from any specific exercises (eg, hesychasm) which may be linked to a concrete and accessible tradition that may cause an indiscriminate pupil to "mix-and-match" exercises like a dilettante instead of a serious student of the forth way and the exercises and disciplines Gurdjieff laid out purposefully for his student. I myself also offer a fourth possible reason, dovetailing with reason (3), which was that he was still attempting to study the effects of certain techniques and exercises on his students, and wished to eliminate as many uncontrolled variables as possible.
Whatever the reasons, they did not remain fixed over the duration of G's mission in the west, and things began to change especially in the forties.
Chapter Five covers Gurdjieff in the early thirties, the exercises and tasks used France at the Prieure, and how they made their way into Orage's techniques and groups as psychological exercises. The majority of these consisted as mental tasks to work the intellectual center. An example of this would be to substitute names for numbers and carry out mathematical operations (eg, "16 minus 9 equals 7" becomes "Lily-Marie minus Anna equals Nina"). The honing of thinking, perception, and memory were all learning outcomes. These types of exercises were a fascination for Orage, although Gurdjieff was angry at him for developing his own and teaching them to students (in spite of the fact that such activities were never hid from G).
Another example of an exercise Orage gave would have been to recite the numbers 1 to 100 ascending or descending, substituting numbers divisible by 3 for "John", and 4 for "Dick" and 5 for "Harry" respectively. Other exercises were mirror writing, reciting dictation, or reading or spelling passages backwards. Details of how the emotions were worked on were included in an essay called "The Control of Temper," which stressed the Gurdjieffian notion that all negative emotion is disease.; the recommended remedy for which was not to think or feel through the anger, but to just strictly SENSE it in the body.
One exercise which received a lot of attention in this section is "On Dying Daily." This was an exercises practiced before bed. You would establish a rhythmic count, and through this rhythm recall every single event that transpired to you today, like a reel of film unraveling. This in essence was the practice of Recapitulation, and the practice of making a habit of nightly review improve our memory of daily activities, which can be used to identify our patterns and habits. It also caused one to be more attentive during the day so as to recall information correctly later on. The name of the exercise "Dying Daily" was inspired by near-death experiences wherein people described that they would see their live flashing before their eyes or unraveling like film; the goal of the exercise was for one to become more familiar with what the critical moment of death would be like, so we could through preparation become more well prepared for it.
This chapter also described the publication of The Herald of the Coming Good, which received unambiguously negative reception, such that Gurdjieff rescinded its publication, ordered his pupils' students to destroy their copies, and delayed publication of the First Series of All and Everything. Herald was meant to stir up interest in Gurdjieff's upcoming series that was under preparation; but instead the opaque and seemingly monomaniacal writing and unguarded comments about using his students as "guinea pigs" for psychological experiments drove many students to leave the Gurdjieff groups. Gurdjieff's vow in 1912 never to use his techniques of hypnosis to fix people in The Work was also revealed.
In spite of this, Azize does derive information from G's more lucid passages in Herald, one piece of which was the phrase "transformed contemplation," which seemed to be chiefly concerned with the absorption of finer impressions (the one type of food of the three Gurdjieff talks about) we are capable of receiving:
Confrontation, or conflict between the centers, is Gurdjieff's definition of suffering. So the mixture and balance of impressions in conflict during the sustained awareness and contact of the three main lower centers (mental, emotional, physical) is the essence of transformed contemplation. This is corroborated by G's criticism of techniques for "self-training and self-development" that recommended "definite methods and processes, such as various physical exercises, exercises in meditation and concentration, breather exercises, various systems of diet." I suppose he saw all these as distractions from the chief focus which is self-remembering. And in a way I personally can see what he meant. All the things he criticized were chiefly about improving (using G's terminology) the quality of the lower hydrogens that food, air, and impressions could produce. But Gurdjieff's aim was the alchemy itself of producing the higher hydrogens, and it doesn't matter how high quality the fuel source is, if the machine parts (i.e. our thinking, feeling, and sensing faculties) aren't working properly together the energy just gets wasted.
Azize uses the above to infer that Herald discloses some belief of Gurdjieff's that contemplative exercises while self-remembering (using all the centers) would be necessary, although they would need to be adapted to each individual's functioning to instill the correct internal transformations in awareness.
Chapter Six covers information pertaining to exercises in Beezebub's Tales to his Grandson. In this section Azize discusses the guise that transformed contemplation takes in the First Series, the importance of air in exercises, and the Genuine Being Duty Exercise.
"Aiësiritoorassian" contemplation is never defined in B's Ts, and was absent form the 1931 version. Azize seems to think it is simply a placeholder for something qualitatively different from regular contemplation (as discussed with respect to transformed contemplation before).
Azize has five takeaways from the above section:
1. there are substances in air used to form a "higher body,"
2. the pores of the skin are one avenue for reception of these substances,
3. substances must not only be absorbed but transformed,
4. the transformation of substances is effected by "the cognized intention on the part of all their spiritualized independent parts," and
5. Aiësiritoorassian" contemplation is the means toward that end.
The assimilation of air was a point of importance that Gurdjieff mentioned in passing several times, with the characters receiving "second being foods" (i.e. air) from a kind of "monastic refectory." In Beelzebub's Tales it is mentioned that, in addition to the lungs, the pores of the skin also are a means by which air may be assimilated. With this information came high accolades for the practice of inducing sweating via saunas to clear the pores out. Technical information about substances in air aside, the suggestion to breathe together is given as a potential discipline and practice for those who understand what they are doing.
In ISOTM Gurdjieff says to Ouspensky,
The exercises in which Gurdjieff teaches the proper assimilation of air are in a roundabout way contrasted here with the types of breathing techniques popular in ashrams and other spiritual schools Gurdjieff would have been acquainted with in his travels: where a mechanical technique is taught to the moving center on how to breathe. Contrasting this Gurdjieff emphasizes that self-remembering and having one's centers functioning in unison with a purposeful attention is the only way to make proper use of the air we breathe for the aforementioned necessary transformations. Azize connects this type of practice to various types of contemplative exercises discussed further on in the book (eg, the First Assisting Exercise).
The Genuine Being Duty Exercise is Azize's name for the advice given by Beelzebub to his grandson in Chapter 7 of Beelzebub's Tales, in response to Hassein's realization of the conscious labors carried out by multitudes of past beings and his concern over what his responsibility to existence was in light of benefiting from those actions. Beelzebub gives this advice:
This practice of getting in touch with your unconscious parts in a state of repose and persuade them to cooperate with the greater whole of you is the first truly contemplative exercise Gurdjieff spells out for his students. It bears resemblances to other exercises such as "Make Strong! Not Easy Thing" later on. In terms of other modern practices it bears some resemblance to family systems therapy and (to a lesser extent) self-spirit release therapy.
In Azize's words, "[the] exercise is no mere afterthought. It is deceptively simple, for it assumes that the unconscious apparatus (including the body) is capable of entering into a quasi-conscious relationship with the mind, and, in some fashion, understanding concepts such as "good,"... and being able to pay for one's birth and existence.... Gurdjieff returned to this type of exercise... when a member of one of his groups said that she wished to be liberated from a "haunting image":
The Sixth Chapter focuses entirely on The Soil Preparing Exercise from the Third Series. Azize opens the chapter discussing the publication of the Third Series: Life is Only Real Then, When I Am. Published in 1975, after Gurdjieff last put pen to paper on it in 1935, it ends in mid-sentence in spite of being intended to fill four books. Since Gurdjieff lost Orange's assistance after dismissing him from his school he had to be less ambitious. Many think the cliff-hanger it was left on, just prior to giving a preamble for a contemplative exercise, was intentional, and demanded that people dig further for the exercises either in his work or receive the teaching specifically orally. It was reported that the talks recorded by Gurdjieff were, according to some witnesses there, not conducted as written, which suggests they too were serving another purpose over and above simply recording events.
Chapter Seven discusses the Soil Preparing Exercise, which was given in the third talk:
The goal of the soil-preparing exercises is seemingly to teach one to distinguish the functioning of the 3 different centers, and to attempt to become aware of all three simultaneous "heterogenous" functions in oneself. With reference to the counting portion Azize links this portion of the exercise back to Gurdjieff's associate Pogosian from Meetings with Remarkable Men, who, when idle, would often count with his hands or fingers or do some kind of exercise, believing that no conscious work of any kind is wasted. The counting also bears similarities to hesychastic prayer using a chaplet from The Way of a Pilgrim, where the narrator was instructed to pray three thousand times a day (working up to twelve thousand). Gurdjieff himself gave his students in his women's group The Rope chaplets for "special sensing exercises," citing their historical use among many cultures Gurdjieff was acquainted with to train one's concentration.
Chapter Eight is about what was called the First Assisting Exercise in the fifth talk of the Third Series, dated to 1930.
In this talk, after Gurdjieff makes positive reference to one's human capacity for "self-deceptive imaginativeness" to inculcate "in his subconsciousness some reasonable indication grasped by his ordinary consciousness and not contradictory to his instinct." Azize seems to tie this role that imaginative visualization may play in developing an actual sensitivity to something real and not at all imaginative to one of Gurdjieff's motivations for withholding a number of these types of exercises: because very often imagination is uncontrolled and subject to all kinds of self-deception and self-hypnosis and can lead people into deeper blink alleys than their ordinary sleep.
I highlighted the bolded comment just to observe that at the forefront of even an exercise in visualization there is an imperative to embody, and concentrate mentally one's attention and intention, without which the exercise has "no significance."
Azize reminds the reader that this was merely a preparatory exercise, the training of sufficient competency in which laid the groundwork for other activities for achieving "more definite results," i.e. for producing the real impulses "I can" and "I wish."
Azize discusses the process further on, linking "divine impulse" to a form of dialogical mysticism (a form of mysticism in which one experiences the divine but loses no corresponding sense of self). Even when one catches an experience of the divine in the phrase "I am" it is contextualized within a body, although one which has been trained to operate at a level where communication with the parts of us which are "perpetually turned towards the divine" is possible.
Chapter Nine covers the Second Assisting Exercise. This is an exercise given in the fifth talk of the Third Series. One of the chief aims of this exercise was in fact to still the automatic, mechanical thinking part of the mind (i.e. the formatory apparatus) through focusing on the effects of breathing while self-remembering. Azize discusses the word "constatation," and the important of the specificity of its use in Gurdjieff's vocabulary (meaning "to verify").
Azize notes that, while one may notice the effects of the air developing in oneself, they accumulate in the head and upon self-remembering, develop and in doing so move down to the solar plexus. This is in line with the development of hydrogens Gurdjieff has expounded upon in detail. The act of self-remembering (Do 48 i.e. impressions) stimulates the Mi 48 (the highest product of air with no shock, experienced as thinking) to develop to Fa 24 and then Sol 12, which is the fuel of the higher emotional center. From this perspective it seems like the purpose of the Second Assisting Exercise is to teach one to sense the effects of self-remembering one one's breathing, which has been called the First Conscious Shock.
Azize writes in details about potential antecedents to this exercise in the Philokalia. He links this to the hesychastic practice The Prayer of the Heart, in Nicephorus' text On Sobriety. Their main overlaps are (1) involve attention on breathing (2) with attention to the feeling of how the air is retained; (3) the intellect is focused and the mind is concentrated on the breast.
On Azize's website he quotes Nicephorus here:
It seems like the first exercise has most in common with the Second Assisting Exercise and the second most in common with the First. Azize's thesis that the Christian monastic tradition has had a deep influence on Fourth Way teaching becomes more compelling in this light.
Chapter Ten covers exercises introduced by Gurdjieff in the late 30's, and also reviews a number of the conditions he was working under. Azize characterized it as a period of diminished public profile and lack or higher organization direction.
The first exercise mentioned was a phrase to a student of his, who was trying to quit smoking: "I wish the result of this, my suffering, to be my own, for Being." This is in the vein of the conviction that no conscious effort is wasted, and with the right intention can even direct these energies and friction more constructively toward increasing being, or awareness.
The second exercise in this chapter was given to a pupil who in distress confided that she had no energy to carry out an aim. The instructions provided by Gurdjieff according to Azize, appear to be the first recorded method of Transformed Contemplation (excluding the Genuine Being Duty Exercise, which was only conveyed literarily). The gist of the instruction was to sit for an hour alone, relaxing all muscles. Loose mental associations are permitted to flow but must not be identified with (remembering oneself). The practitioner speaks to these associations, saying "If you will let me do my business now, I will later grant you your wishes." At the end of the hour you write your aim down in paper, and keep it on your person for the rest of the day, making that sheet of paper your God. Throughout the rest of the day you remove it and read it whenever you have a spare moment, so that eventually the written words "become a part of you". This has a lot of overlap with the Genuine Being Duty Exercise, and the last portion about allowing the words to become part of you relates to the First Assisting Exercise and Jesus Prayer, where one assimilates information in one center and repeats it such that it can pass on to another center, and then another.
The third exercise was more exemplary, talking about "the two parts of air": the evolving and the involving part. The evolving was the physical, "planetary" part of air, and the involving was the property which originates from the absolute, and which can be used to grow higher bodies but which cannot be utilized unless one self-remembers. The practitioner either in the quiet or about their day in life attempts to take full cognizance of their "insignificance" and mortality, and also that of their neighbors; the goal is to arouse compassion and Christian pity. This state was contrasted with the everyday state, most of which was "suffering in vain" (i.e. in self-importance, identification, consideration, etc.) This practice of minding our mortality was to counteract this and over time develop an unconscious overcoming of this negative habit of thought:
I find this reference to the Theological Virtues (Faith, Hope, and Love) to be fascinating, especially since Gurdjieff was always very particular about "Love," and how heavily polluted a concept it is in everyday word use, and needing to be something that is cultivated carefully with growth in knowledge and being. The structure of the phrase suggests that other virtues can be cultivated the same way. But why does this connect to assimilating a special part of air? My own hypothesis was that it may have to do with the hydrogen table, and how the highest part of air (La 6) functions as a "carbon or active force" (i.e. it is 2 octaves up from the "nitrogen or passive force" H24 of the instinctive center or negative emotions and can raise the vibration of one of them 1 octave to H12 of the higher emotional center as the "oxygen or reconciling/neutralizing force"). With respect to this, this "two parts to air exercise" almost seems like it is training wheels attempting to train people to facilitate the Second Conscious Shock: the transmutation of negative emotions into positive emotions. Who knows? This chemical factory concept is certainly something Gurdjieff took for granted as fact and it would have informed his understanding of the exercises, especially Transformed Contemplation, which is all about assimilating and transforming substances. Azize himself does not venture too much into this type of technical theorizing though.
The fourth exercise given in the chapter was "Make Strong! Not Easy Thing." from a manuscript recorded in 1939. To me this simply seems like another implementation of the First Assisting Exercise. After relaxing for fifteen minutes ("breaking the tempo of life") one practices the I Am Exercise, affirming with all 3 centers ("Make strong! Not easy thing"). Gurdjieff mentions affirming that we keep the extra substances in the air (the involving part) through using a property in the blood (animal magnetism?), without which we must work one month for a result, and that we must remember ourselves throughout this or the substances obtained evaporate and have no use. The "one month" required when one does not know what one is doing seems to hearken back to Gurdjieff's store of the Fakir, who would perform a certain act for a month to obtain a result, versus a yogi who could accomplish the preparation for obtaining results in a day. As per usual, Gurdjieff never gives instructions on how to breathe, saying the breath will change naturally if the right intention and internal posture is adopted. What was unique about this exercise vs the First Assisting Exercise was the invitation to imagine the breath entering the body and moving to a corresponding location based on the state of the individual. For this exercise no conscious direction is given to the product of the breath (Gurdjieff provides instruction on this in later exercises).
The chapter concludes with a review of Gurdjieff's activities in the late 30's, and how his car accident forced him to reconsider numerous things, one of which (Azize surmises) that the methods of working totally in the business of life and not in the quiet were insufficient for western individuals. Orage's aptitude for the exercises at the Prieure in France and encouragement form Gurdjieff to develop psychological exercises may have spurred him to introduce contemplative exercises into his teaching methods. In spite of his critiques of meditation in Herald of the Coming Good he did apparently see value in exercises of transformed contemplation. In this later milieu Gurdjieff penned the chapters of Life is Real in which he describes the Soil Preparing Exercise and the First and Second Assisting Exercises, which taught the functioning of centers, the affirming of I AM in the body, and the moving of substances of the air octave around the body as they developed. The "Make Strong!" Exercise combined all of these, adding the intent and wish to keep the substances acquired for coating higher being bodies.
Chapter Eleven discuses Gurdjief exercises from the Transcripts of 1941 - 1946. In this period Gurdjieff had several groups which ran at different days of the week at different levels of advancement. Across the board both contemplative exercises and movements were used to train people. Both objective (i.e. suitable for everyone) and subjective (i.e. suitable for one person due to certain idiosyncratic characteristics) were employed. When a women was given a counting exercise (similar to the Soil Preparing Exercise), Gurdjieff advised that something else be tried, since it did not correspond to her subjectivity. The emphasis on relaxing the muscles of the body before a serious exercise continues to be pervasive as part of the focus on conserving one's energy and on also offering foundational bodily awareness.
One subjective exercise Gurdjieff gave to a woman who wanted to experience emotions more. Gurdjieff advised that she collect herself and focus her attention on the four points that her limbs connected to her torso, and then engaging the I AM exercise. Because this exercise was given to her and no one else and is subjective it may be of limited use to other people.
An exercise for sensing I AM in the body more involved sensing sensation in both one's arm and the solar plexus at the same time while the head concentrates and observes what is going on while saying "I am". Azize comments the exercise seems to train an individual towards experiencing the sensation of "I am" anywhere in the body. A reference to an Athonite exercise from earlier in the book is made.
One objective exercise Azize devotes a lot of time to discussing is The Atmosphere Exercise. After a period of relaxation and "quieting your associations" you visualize to yourself that you are surrounded by an atmosphere 1-1.5m in radius, which produces waves in response to associations and moves in the direction of your thoughts. You attempt to concentrate in such a way that the atmosphere contracts closer to your body. When the waves are quiet and thought is more still, you draw the atmosphere further into yourself. One one has succeeded at this one should feel in a good state, and the sensation of "I am" is far stronger. When a practitioner said to Gurdjieff the exercise strengthened "I am" but only temporarily, and afterwards it diminished. To this Gurdjieff responded:
Azize comments this is the first instance in which a personal atmosphere is mentioned, and becomes more important in later exercises, and that the exercise must be practiced many times with full attention or the results are "less than useless." When one student told Gurdjieff that s/he became intoxicated by the results, he said that she could not expect results yet; all she could do was play the exercise, like someone practicing the piano... such works preparation for a future where the QUALITY of work changes and you become a pianist.
Other comments are made about other accounts of the "I Am" exercises various other students have recorded. One record contained a reference to Jeanne de Salzmann, who said that one must do the work in a special state of attention and self-awareness (such as that the "I Am" exercise provides), before it can be successful in everyday social life. This is in agreement with Azize's own speculations about Gurdjieff's motivations for introducing more contemplative exercises: namely that the conditions of ordinary life can often be too difficult for some to generate the precise stresses and internal composure simultaneously for crystallization, the formation of higher hydrogens, etc.
Filling Up Exercise. After relaxing enough, the "I am" exercise was done. If one has practiced it enough the sense of "I Am" is distinct and one can sense a reverberation of sorts. This moves around like an echo back and forth between the legs, arms, thorax, abdomen, and finally once in the head. Someone who began to experience nervous contractions in this exercise was advised by Gurdjieff to establish a clearer bodily rhythm, and breathe more steadily and regularly. As with the soil preparing exercise, rhythm of a sort within the body seems to play a role, and is something a visualized rhythm could become entrained to.
On exercise that emphasizes a more social dimension was the Web Exercise. This was a discipline done in groups and depends on an understanding of atmosphere once again. The overlap of atmospheres and their waves in people with a common aim aids an amplifies a practice and its results. Also emphasized is the importance of a common aim or WISH that animates the group and forms the focus of group efforts.
In the section called "The Exercise of IAM, breathing, and external considering" several anecdotes of teachable moments between Gurdjieff and his students working group are shared. In one anecdote it is even suggested that self-remembering with family may positively influence them. The idea of attempting to change others is extremely rare in Gurdjieff that it was worth making a note of. At the forefront of all work in a social setting with some people who are not doing the work was the importance of remembering oneself and developing an attitude of love and hope in one's interactions with them.
Some stoic philosophy has made it into Gurdjieff, in the guise of what he called "Active Reasoning." The most basic example given is for dealing with negative emotions. Eg, someone calls you a fool. Is this individual wise? If not why care if he called you a fool since it's not true. On the other hand if he is wise, and you were acting a fool, you should be thanking them for helping you along to fulfilling your aim. Some of this was explained alongside the more subconscious forms of suggestion (as in the Genuine Being Duty Exercise) one was to give and explain to oneself, "as if to a stranger."
This itself shares a lot of similarities with the Orthodox monastic tradition.
Latter sections includes other exercises, one of which was reminiscent of the exercise in Chapter 10 for will and energy, and also which was a counting exercise similar to one made my Orage. Counting to fifty then back seven times, after which one relaxes and state, "I am, I wish to be, I can be." I think part of this exercise was to show pupils how hard it was to remember oneself long enough to count up and down seven times for a very long period...
{To be continued.}
PART ONE lays the foundation for discussing Gurdjieff's teaching periods and the personal influences working on and through him. He brings up what is called Transformed Contemplation, which is a term used to describe Gurdjieff's active internal contemplative exercises. He uses the adjective to distinguish it from regular contemplation, which for Gurdjieff had a lot of associations with idleness, imbalance in the centers, imagination, etc which spurred Gurdjieff to eschew these types of exercises for a portion of his teaching career.
Chapter One gives a biographical sketch of Gurdjieff, detailing as much as was known from his life before his work with Ouspensky in Russia, his early teaching career in Russia, France, Britain, and eventually the United States. A.R. Orage and his role in the US school was gone into detail as well. The falling-out Gurdjieff had with both Ouspensky and Orage are mentioned, and Azize offers speculation as to some of the causes of it. His later work with de Salzmann and the movements was also described. As much detail as this section had, one could easily fill an entire book with Gurdjieff's biography (and many have). Some may find this recap helpful to see what Azize picks out as relevant information with respect to how and why Gurdjieff promulgated some of the exercises and disciplines he practiced.
Chapter Two gives an overview of Gurdjieff's teachings on cosmology and anthropology. The holistic, unified nature of all reality from the microcosmos to the macro is discussed, as well as the materiality of thought and emotion in the scale of hydrogens. This cosmology is related directly to the function of the human organism, qualifying that in our fallen state we are dived into various i's and only unified in the sense that we are all asleep. Sleep is contrasted with doing in terms of the centers, especially with respect to self-remembering and reaching an awareness of the operation of all 3 of our lower centers. The food factory and diagram showing the evolution of hydrogens in the human body and psyche is elaborated on. While speaking about consciousness, Azize also devotes time to discussing the importance of conscience (i.e. wakefulness in the higher emotional center and awareness of all our emotions at once). All of this information is tied back into cosmology by his notions of Duty and Intentional Suffer to "pay for our existence."
A section devoted to religiosity in G's work brings together biographical details to show Gurdjieff's somewhat ambivalent relationship with Christianity, the Gospels, and priests. In spite this, and the decidedly un-Christian notion that God (or the Absolute, depending on how Gurdjieff wished to frame it) could not listen to human prayers directly, Gudjieff's writings did have a respect for the religiosity of the normal everyday human beings, which can help someone become an obyvatel or at least provide a decent foundation for the Work. His music was also evidenced to be influenced heavily by Christianity, Sufism, and Lamaism (of Tibet).
Chapter Three is about Gurdjieff's relationship with the mystical tradition in religious thought. Azize expounds on Gurdjieff's definition of mystical experience, which is described in a much more technical manner than most mystical scholars would, which tend to focus on the nature of the experience. Gurdjieff defines mystical experience as an incident in which the lower emotional or intellectual center make contact with the higher emotional or intellectual center, which function perfectly well all the time but due to the fragmented nature of the lower centers almost never make contact. Such a contact is experienced as a rush of information from higher sources that the lower centers cannot digest or comprehend fully, resulting in often little of the experience being consciously remembered except during the start and end of the experience.
Looking for parallels in Gurdjieff's thought and other mystical traditions, what I found most remarkable about this section is that Azize found very strong corollaries in Gurdjieff's own backyard: in the traditions of Neoplatonism and the Athonite monastic tradition (of Eastern Orthodoxy), most notably the Prayer of the Heart or Hesychastic tradition; both of which are Greek.
The specific Neoplatonic thinkers whose words echo G's own technical understanding of mysticism are Iambachus and Plotinus, which while being distinct enough from Gurdjieff for him not to be considered Neoplatonic would have more than likely thinkers Gurdjieff would have become acquainted with either first or second hand in his early life, and likely influenced his outlook.
The Orthodox hesychastic tradition is one which Gurdjieff has claimed to be indebted, especially with respect to the "I am" spiritual exercise Gurdjieff shared, which seemed to come more or less directly from the "Ego" exercise of Mt Athos, which was a monastic tradition and institution which became the foremost center of Hesychasm, or the Prayer of the Heart. One central tenet of this tradition is that it takes VERY SERIOUSLY St Paul's exhortation to "pray unceasingly," and much of their exercises center around bringing the prayerful state a monk attains in his cell into the everyday existence and activities of life.
This in some way is an answer to G's criticism of the physical, emotional, and mental spiritual schools, which require retirement from the world to refine oneself. G's criticism was that people would attain something, but then return to the world only to lose what they gained and fall back into their earlier habits (and as we shall see this did come to have an overpowering influence on G's teaching methodologies in Russia and France in the early years, until G's relationship with Orage developed and withered. Gurdjieff eschewed internal, contemplative exercises in favor of disciplines involving working out in the world, among the shocks necessary to wake one up. Gurdjieff later in his teaching career reversed this position, stating that "work in the quiet" (as de Salzmann would call it) was necessary to develop some internal resources in order to remember oneself when the shocks did come later in life.
The Philokalia (a book on the monastic and ascetic tradition of the early Church fathers with particular attention to the Greek) was a collection of Athonite hesychastic traditions compiled at the start of the 18th century which made its way into Russian in the 19th Century and later into English in the 20th century by the work of Ouspensky's wife. The material therein played a great role in the monastic religious revival in Russia in the 19th century, and was something both Gurdjieff and Ouspensky would have had familiarity. The writings bearing the most resemblance would be those of Nicephorus the Solitary (or the Monk), who was known for A Most Profitable Discourse on Sobriety and the Guarding of the Heart:
The last sentence notably has been used more or less verbatim by both Gurdjieff and his mouthpiece Beelzebub.
Many principles of hesychastic prayer were introduced also through the anonymously-written monastic memoir The Way of a Pilgrim, which made its way from Mt Athos to Russia by way of Kazan. Therein a religious seeker learns from a monk about using a rosary or chaplet to guide and focus the mind on the Jesus Prayer (moving a bead between the fingers with each prayer sung, being instructed to say it 3000 times a day (just to start off).
This book was extremely popular in Russia after its publication in 1881, and was referenced directly by Ouspensky, (and some would say indirectly by Gurdjieff), comparing it to Bhakti Yoga in A New Model of the Universe.
Ouspensky then recommended counting the prayer on rosary beads or chaplets. He also said that, once a prayer passed to the moving center and no longer required attention was brought consciously to attention, it could pass into the emotional and mental centers, and from there reach the higher emotional and higher mental center with sufficient training. On the latter, Ouspensky says fasting, prayer, and many types of burdens on the body (intentional suffering) are required.
I know I've devoted a ton of information disproportionately to this chapter, but for myself it was one of the most interesting chapters and was educational in terms of the religious milieu Ouspensky and Gurdjieff were working with in Russia in the early years of G's western mission. That and I generally enjoy reading about Eastern Orthodox monastic and ascetic traditions and practices. The recent interview on MindMatters of Gary Lachman also has many interesting things to say about this time period in Russia.
PART TWO is entitled "Gurdjieff's contemplative exercises," and chronologically goes through the periods of Gurdjieff's life in the west and the exercises and disciplines he either brought from elsewhere or developed for his pupils.
Chapter Four covers the exercises Gurdjieff either mentioned or taught during this time in Russia with Ouspensky. Those who read In Search of the Miraculous will have been acquainted with some of these exercises, if only in name.
It is here that Gurdjieff makes the first mention of the Ego Exercise in passing that was in practice in the monasteries of Mt Athos. It wasn't clear from the writing if this practice was taught to Ouspensky and the other early students or if it was only mentioned briefly to illustrate how a person's I of the moment may have different loci in or around the body.
One thing Gurdjieff stressed consistently throughout his teaching was the importance of relaxation, and to reduce the amount of energy expended passively through unnecessarily tense postures. Many of these types of exercises were performed with body scanning, where a person would try and sense a body party and relax it, then move to different body parts and relax those, etc.
These relaxation exercises ended up being a foundation for more complex movement activities that would occupy both the mind and body extensively. One pupil at this time mentioned: "The complexity of the Movements meant that the sensations and feelings could not be imaginary." This exercise would come back repeatedly in some guise, especially in the exercise The Preparation, and to a lesser extent in the Stop Exercise (which Azize defined more as a discipline since it was accomplished in groups and was more on the side of work "in life."
The Stop Exercise uses an announced pre-determined signal which causes everyone to freeze their posture for a certain amount of time. A pupil would attempt to remember themselves and track their feelings and thoughts while adopting the enforced frozen posture. One of the intended outcomes of this was to teach people the influence that postures can have on their way of thinking and feeling.
Gurdjieff evidently had hesitations about contemplative exercises for self-development, as he and Ouspensky both related this was an advanced technique that only those who were capable of self-remembering could undergo, and to jump ahead and meditate without remembering oneself simply led to increased imagination and departure from the real. This is what Gurdjieff admonished as a "philosophizing" active mentation: "You must not forget you are a body. You must always remember your body. You have not yet an "I," no "me." Do not forget it. Thus only can you have a future."
As alternatives to this Gurdjieff invited a person to wash their head in cold water, or hold out their arms for ten or twenty minutes while repeating "I am." Attention is directed toward the body, which is what adds "weight" to the mental states one may achieve (what a lot of us today would call "groundedness.") In an anecdote related by Orage, Gurdjieff said that in his travels in Tibet he "did not discover one single being with universal (i.e. balanced in all centers) development - only monsters."
Azize summarizes the reasons Gurdjieff initially eschewed contemplative exercises because chiefly (1) they were from the first three ways, and therefore required a withdrawal from the world Gurdjieff saw as counterproductive to growing a will in the world, (2) meditation without balance in the emotional and motor center only led to malformations due to a lack of control over imagination, (3) there is also a chance Gurdjieff wanted to keep his teaching strictly secular in nature and so break away from any specific exercises (eg, hesychasm) which may be linked to a concrete and accessible tradition that may cause an indiscriminate pupil to "mix-and-match" exercises like a dilettante instead of a serious student of the forth way and the exercises and disciplines Gurdjieff laid out purposefully for his student. I myself also offer a fourth possible reason, dovetailing with reason (3), which was that he was still attempting to study the effects of certain techniques and exercises on his students, and wished to eliminate as many uncontrolled variables as possible.
Whatever the reasons, they did not remain fixed over the duration of G's mission in the west, and things began to change especially in the forties.
Chapter Five covers Gurdjieff in the early thirties, the exercises and tasks used France at the Prieure, and how they made their way into Orage's techniques and groups as psychological exercises. The majority of these consisted as mental tasks to work the intellectual center. An example of this would be to substitute names for numbers and carry out mathematical operations (eg, "16 minus 9 equals 7" becomes "Lily-Marie minus Anna equals Nina"). The honing of thinking, perception, and memory were all learning outcomes. These types of exercises were a fascination for Orage, although Gurdjieff was angry at him for developing his own and teaching them to students (in spite of the fact that such activities were never hid from G).
Another example of an exercise Orage gave would have been to recite the numbers 1 to 100 ascending or descending, substituting numbers divisible by 3 for "John", and 4 for "Dick" and 5 for "Harry" respectively. Other exercises were mirror writing, reciting dictation, or reading or spelling passages backwards. Details of how the emotions were worked on were included in an essay called "The Control of Temper," which stressed the Gurdjieffian notion that all negative emotion is disease.; the recommended remedy for which was not to think or feel through the anger, but to just strictly SENSE it in the body.
One exercise which received a lot of attention in this section is "On Dying Daily." This was an exercises practiced before bed. You would establish a rhythmic count, and through this rhythm recall every single event that transpired to you today, like a reel of film unraveling. This in essence was the practice of Recapitulation, and the practice of making a habit of nightly review improve our memory of daily activities, which can be used to identify our patterns and habits. It also caused one to be more attentive during the day so as to recall information correctly later on. The name of the exercise "Dying Daily" was inspired by near-death experiences wherein people described that they would see their live flashing before their eyes or unraveling like film; the goal of the exercise was for one to become more familiar with what the critical moment of death would be like, so we could through preparation become more well prepared for it.
This chapter also described the publication of The Herald of the Coming Good, which received unambiguously negative reception, such that Gurdjieff rescinded its publication, ordered his pupils' students to destroy their copies, and delayed publication of the First Series of All and Everything. Herald was meant to stir up interest in Gurdjieff's upcoming series that was under preparation; but instead the opaque and seemingly monomaniacal writing and unguarded comments about using his students as "guinea pigs" for psychological experiments drove many students to leave the Gurdjieff groups. Gurdjieff's vow in 1912 never to use his techniques of hypnosis to fix people in The Work was also revealed.
In spite of this, Azize does derive information from G's more lucid passages in Herald, one piece of which was the phrase "transformed contemplation," which seemed to be chiefly concerned with the absorption of finer impressions (the one type of food of the three Gurdjieff talks about) we are capable of receiving:
Confrontation, or conflict between the centers, is Gurdjieff's definition of suffering. So the mixture and balance of impressions in conflict during the sustained awareness and contact of the three main lower centers (mental, emotional, physical) is the essence of transformed contemplation. This is corroborated by G's criticism of techniques for "self-training and self-development" that recommended "definite methods and processes, such as various physical exercises, exercises in meditation and concentration, breather exercises, various systems of diet." I suppose he saw all these as distractions from the chief focus which is self-remembering. And in a way I personally can see what he meant. All the things he criticized were chiefly about improving (using G's terminology) the quality of the lower hydrogens that food, air, and impressions could produce. But Gurdjieff's aim was the alchemy itself of producing the higher hydrogens, and it doesn't matter how high quality the fuel source is, if the machine parts (i.e. our thinking, feeling, and sensing faculties) aren't working properly together the energy just gets wasted.
Azize uses the above to infer that Herald discloses some belief of Gurdjieff's that contemplative exercises while self-remembering (using all the centers) would be necessary, although they would need to be adapted to each individual's functioning to instill the correct internal transformations in awareness.
Chapter Six covers information pertaining to exercises in Beezebub's Tales to his Grandson. In this section Azize discusses the guise that transformed contemplation takes in the First Series, the importance of air in exercises, and the Genuine Being Duty Exercise.
"Aiësiritoorassian" contemplation is never defined in B's Ts, and was absent form the 1931 version. Azize seems to think it is simply a placeholder for something qualitatively different from regular contemplation (as discussed with respect to transformed contemplation before).
Azize has five takeaways from the above section:
1. there are substances in air used to form a "higher body,"
2. the pores of the skin are one avenue for reception of these substances,
3. substances must not only be absorbed but transformed,
4. the transformation of substances is effected by "the cognized intention on the part of all their spiritualized independent parts," and
5. Aiësiritoorassian" contemplation is the means toward that end.
The assimilation of air was a point of importance that Gurdjieff mentioned in passing several times, with the characters receiving "second being foods" (i.e. air) from a kind of "monastic refectory." In Beelzebub's Tales it is mentioned that, in addition to the lungs, the pores of the skin also are a means by which air may be assimilated. With this information came high accolades for the practice of inducing sweating via saunas to clear the pores out. Technical information about substances in air aside, the suggestion to breathe together is given as a potential discipline and practice for those who understand what they are doing.
In ISOTM Gurdjieff says to Ouspensky,
The exercises in which Gurdjieff teaches the proper assimilation of air are in a roundabout way contrasted here with the types of breathing techniques popular in ashrams and other spiritual schools Gurdjieff would have been acquainted with in his travels: where a mechanical technique is taught to the moving center on how to breathe. Contrasting this Gurdjieff emphasizes that self-remembering and having one's centers functioning in unison with a purposeful attention is the only way to make proper use of the air we breathe for the aforementioned necessary transformations. Azize connects this type of practice to various types of contemplative exercises discussed further on in the book (eg, the First Assisting Exercise).
The Genuine Being Duty Exercise is Azize's name for the advice given by Beelzebub to his grandson in Chapter 7 of Beelzebub's Tales, in response to Hassein's realization of the conscious labors carried out by multitudes of past beings and his concern over what his responsibility to existence was in light of benefiting from those actions. Beelzebub gives this advice:
This practice of getting in touch with your unconscious parts in a state of repose and persuade them to cooperate with the greater whole of you is the first truly contemplative exercise Gurdjieff spells out for his students. It bears resemblances to other exercises such as "Make Strong! Not Easy Thing" later on. In terms of other modern practices it bears some resemblance to family systems therapy and (to a lesser extent) self-spirit release therapy.
In Azize's words, "[the] exercise is no mere afterthought. It is deceptively simple, for it assumes that the unconscious apparatus (including the body) is capable of entering into a quasi-conscious relationship with the mind, and, in some fashion, understanding concepts such as "good,"... and being able to pay for one's birth and existence.... Gurdjieff returned to this type of exercise... when a member of one of his groups said that she wished to be liberated from a "haunting image":
The Sixth Chapter focuses entirely on The Soil Preparing Exercise from the Third Series. Azize opens the chapter discussing the publication of the Third Series: Life is Only Real Then, When I Am. Published in 1975, after Gurdjieff last put pen to paper on it in 1935, it ends in mid-sentence in spite of being intended to fill four books. Since Gurdjieff lost Orange's assistance after dismissing him from his school he had to be less ambitious. Many think the cliff-hanger it was left on, just prior to giving a preamble for a contemplative exercise, was intentional, and demanded that people dig further for the exercises either in his work or receive the teaching specifically orally. It was reported that the talks recorded by Gurdjieff were, according to some witnesses there, not conducted as written, which suggests they too were serving another purpose over and above simply recording events.
Chapter Seven discusses the Soil Preparing Exercise, which was given in the third talk:
The goal of the soil-preparing exercises is seemingly to teach one to distinguish the functioning of the 3 different centers, and to attempt to become aware of all three simultaneous "heterogenous" functions in oneself. With reference to the counting portion Azize links this portion of the exercise back to Gurdjieff's associate Pogosian from Meetings with Remarkable Men, who, when idle, would often count with his hands or fingers or do some kind of exercise, believing that no conscious work of any kind is wasted. The counting also bears similarities to hesychastic prayer using a chaplet from The Way of a Pilgrim, where the narrator was instructed to pray three thousand times a day (working up to twelve thousand). Gurdjieff himself gave his students in his women's group The Rope chaplets for "special sensing exercises," citing their historical use among many cultures Gurdjieff was acquainted with to train one's concentration.
Chapter Eight is about what was called the First Assisting Exercise in the fifth talk of the Third Series, dated to 1930.
In this talk, after Gurdjieff makes positive reference to one's human capacity for "self-deceptive imaginativeness" to inculcate "in his subconsciousness some reasonable indication grasped by his ordinary consciousness and not contradictory to his instinct." Azize seems to tie this role that imaginative visualization may play in developing an actual sensitivity to something real and not at all imaginative to one of Gurdjieff's motivations for withholding a number of these types of exercises: because very often imagination is uncontrolled and subject to all kinds of self-deception and self-hypnosis and can lead people into deeper blink alleys than their ordinary sleep.
I highlighted the bolded comment just to observe that at the forefront of even an exercise in visualization there is an imperative to embody, and concentrate mentally one's attention and intention, without which the exercise has "no significance."
Azize reminds the reader that this was merely a preparatory exercise, the training of sufficient competency in which laid the groundwork for other activities for achieving "more definite results," i.e. for producing the real impulses "I can" and "I wish."
Azize discusses the process further on, linking "divine impulse" to a form of dialogical mysticism (a form of mysticism in which one experiences the divine but loses no corresponding sense of self). Even when one catches an experience of the divine in the phrase "I am" it is contextualized within a body, although one which has been trained to operate at a level where communication with the parts of us which are "perpetually turned towards the divine" is possible.
Chapter Nine covers the Second Assisting Exercise. This is an exercise given in the fifth talk of the Third Series. One of the chief aims of this exercise was in fact to still the automatic, mechanical thinking part of the mind (i.e. the formatory apparatus) through focusing on the effects of breathing while self-remembering. Azize discusses the word "constatation," and the important of the specificity of its use in Gurdjieff's vocabulary (meaning "to verify").
Azize notes that, while one may notice the effects of the air developing in oneself, they accumulate in the head and upon self-remembering, develop and in doing so move down to the solar plexus. This is in line with the development of hydrogens Gurdjieff has expounded upon in detail. The act of self-remembering (Do 48 i.e. impressions) stimulates the Mi 48 (the highest product of air with no shock, experienced as thinking) to develop to Fa 24 and then Sol 12, which is the fuel of the higher emotional center. From this perspective it seems like the purpose of the Second Assisting Exercise is to teach one to sense the effects of self-remembering one one's breathing, which has been called the First Conscious Shock.
Azize writes in details about potential antecedents to this exercise in the Philokalia. He links this to the hesychastic practice The Prayer of the Heart, in Nicephorus' text On Sobriety. Their main overlaps are (1) involve attention on breathing (2) with attention to the feeling of how the air is retained; (3) the intellect is focused and the mind is concentrated on the breast.
On Azize's website he quotes Nicephorus here:
It seems like the first exercise has most in common with the Second Assisting Exercise and the second most in common with the First. Azize's thesis that the Christian monastic tradition has had a deep influence on Fourth Way teaching becomes more compelling in this light.
Chapter Ten covers exercises introduced by Gurdjieff in the late 30's, and also reviews a number of the conditions he was working under. Azize characterized it as a period of diminished public profile and lack or higher organization direction.
The first exercise mentioned was a phrase to a student of his, who was trying to quit smoking: "I wish the result of this, my suffering, to be my own, for Being." This is in the vein of the conviction that no conscious effort is wasted, and with the right intention can even direct these energies and friction more constructively toward increasing being, or awareness.
The second exercise in this chapter was given to a pupil who in distress confided that she had no energy to carry out an aim. The instructions provided by Gurdjieff according to Azize, appear to be the first recorded method of Transformed Contemplation (excluding the Genuine Being Duty Exercise, which was only conveyed literarily). The gist of the instruction was to sit for an hour alone, relaxing all muscles. Loose mental associations are permitted to flow but must not be identified with (remembering oneself). The practitioner speaks to these associations, saying "If you will let me do my business now, I will later grant you your wishes." At the end of the hour you write your aim down in paper, and keep it on your person for the rest of the day, making that sheet of paper your God. Throughout the rest of the day you remove it and read it whenever you have a spare moment, so that eventually the written words "become a part of you". This has a lot of overlap with the Genuine Being Duty Exercise, and the last portion about allowing the words to become part of you relates to the First Assisting Exercise and Jesus Prayer, where one assimilates information in one center and repeats it such that it can pass on to another center, and then another.
The third exercise was more exemplary, talking about "the two parts of air": the evolving and the involving part. The evolving was the physical, "planetary" part of air, and the involving was the property which originates from the absolute, and which can be used to grow higher bodies but which cannot be utilized unless one self-remembers. The practitioner either in the quiet or about their day in life attempts to take full cognizance of their "insignificance" and mortality, and also that of their neighbors; the goal is to arouse compassion and Christian pity. This state was contrasted with the everyday state, most of which was "suffering in vain" (i.e. in self-importance, identification, consideration, etc.) This practice of minding our mortality was to counteract this and over time develop an unconscious overcoming of this negative habit of thought:
I find this reference to the Theological Virtues (Faith, Hope, and Love) to be fascinating, especially since Gurdjieff was always very particular about "Love," and how heavily polluted a concept it is in everyday word use, and needing to be something that is cultivated carefully with growth in knowledge and being. The structure of the phrase suggests that other virtues can be cultivated the same way. But why does this connect to assimilating a special part of air? My own hypothesis was that it may have to do with the hydrogen table, and how the highest part of air (La 6) functions as a "carbon or active force" (i.e. it is 2 octaves up from the "nitrogen or passive force" H24 of the instinctive center or negative emotions and can raise the vibration of one of them 1 octave to H12 of the higher emotional center as the "oxygen or reconciling/neutralizing force"). With respect to this, this "two parts to air exercise" almost seems like it is training wheels attempting to train people to facilitate the Second Conscious Shock: the transmutation of negative emotions into positive emotions. Who knows? This chemical factory concept is certainly something Gurdjieff took for granted as fact and it would have informed his understanding of the exercises, especially Transformed Contemplation, which is all about assimilating and transforming substances. Azize himself does not venture too much into this type of technical theorizing though.
The fourth exercise given in the chapter was "Make Strong! Not Easy Thing." from a manuscript recorded in 1939. To me this simply seems like another implementation of the First Assisting Exercise. After relaxing for fifteen minutes ("breaking the tempo of life") one practices the I Am Exercise, affirming with all 3 centers ("Make strong! Not easy thing"). Gurdjieff mentions affirming that we keep the extra substances in the air (the involving part) through using a property in the blood (animal magnetism?), without which we must work one month for a result, and that we must remember ourselves throughout this or the substances obtained evaporate and have no use. The "one month" required when one does not know what one is doing seems to hearken back to Gurdjieff's store of the Fakir, who would perform a certain act for a month to obtain a result, versus a yogi who could accomplish the preparation for obtaining results in a day. As per usual, Gurdjieff never gives instructions on how to breathe, saying the breath will change naturally if the right intention and internal posture is adopted. What was unique about this exercise vs the First Assisting Exercise was the invitation to imagine the breath entering the body and moving to a corresponding location based on the state of the individual. For this exercise no conscious direction is given to the product of the breath (Gurdjieff provides instruction on this in later exercises).
The chapter concludes with a review of Gurdjieff's activities in the late 30's, and how his car accident forced him to reconsider numerous things, one of which (Azize surmises) that the methods of working totally in the business of life and not in the quiet were insufficient for western individuals. Orage's aptitude for the exercises at the Prieure in France and encouragement form Gurdjieff to develop psychological exercises may have spurred him to introduce contemplative exercises into his teaching methods. In spite of his critiques of meditation in Herald of the Coming Good he did apparently see value in exercises of transformed contemplation. In this later milieu Gurdjieff penned the chapters of Life is Real in which he describes the Soil Preparing Exercise and the First and Second Assisting Exercises, which taught the functioning of centers, the affirming of I AM in the body, and the moving of substances of the air octave around the body as they developed. The "Make Strong!" Exercise combined all of these, adding the intent and wish to keep the substances acquired for coating higher being bodies.
Chapter Eleven discuses Gurdjief exercises from the Transcripts of 1941 - 1946. In this period Gurdjieff had several groups which ran at different days of the week at different levels of advancement. Across the board both contemplative exercises and movements were used to train people. Both objective (i.e. suitable for everyone) and subjective (i.e. suitable for one person due to certain idiosyncratic characteristics) were employed. When a women was given a counting exercise (similar to the Soil Preparing Exercise), Gurdjieff advised that something else be tried, since it did not correspond to her subjectivity. The emphasis on relaxing the muscles of the body before a serious exercise continues to be pervasive as part of the focus on conserving one's energy and on also offering foundational bodily awareness.
One subjective exercise Gurdjieff gave to a woman who wanted to experience emotions more. Gurdjieff advised that she collect herself and focus her attention on the four points that her limbs connected to her torso, and then engaging the I AM exercise. Because this exercise was given to her and no one else and is subjective it may be of limited use to other people.
An exercise for sensing I AM in the body more involved sensing sensation in both one's arm and the solar plexus at the same time while the head concentrates and observes what is going on while saying "I am". Azize comments the exercise seems to train an individual towards experiencing the sensation of "I am" anywhere in the body. A reference to an Athonite exercise from earlier in the book is made.
One objective exercise Azize devotes a lot of time to discussing is The Atmosphere Exercise. After a period of relaxation and "quieting your associations" you visualize to yourself that you are surrounded by an atmosphere 1-1.5m in radius, which produces waves in response to associations and moves in the direction of your thoughts. You attempt to concentrate in such a way that the atmosphere contracts closer to your body. When the waves are quiet and thought is more still, you draw the atmosphere further into yourself. One one has succeeded at this one should feel in a good state, and the sensation of "I am" is far stronger. When a practitioner said to Gurdjieff the exercise strengthened "I am" but only temporarily, and afterwards it diminished. To this Gurdjieff responded:
Azize comments this is the first instance in which a personal atmosphere is mentioned, and becomes more important in later exercises, and that the exercise must be practiced many times with full attention or the results are "less than useless." When one student told Gurdjieff that s/he became intoxicated by the results, he said that she could not expect results yet; all she could do was play the exercise, like someone practicing the piano... such works preparation for a future where the QUALITY of work changes and you become a pianist.
Other comments are made about other accounts of the "I Am" exercises various other students have recorded. One record contained a reference to Jeanne de Salzmann, who said that one must do the work in a special state of attention and self-awareness (such as that the "I Am" exercise provides), before it can be successful in everyday social life. This is in agreement with Azize's own speculations about Gurdjieff's motivations for introducing more contemplative exercises: namely that the conditions of ordinary life can often be too difficult for some to generate the precise stresses and internal composure simultaneously for crystallization, the formation of higher hydrogens, etc.
Filling Up Exercise. After relaxing enough, the "I am" exercise was done. If one has practiced it enough the sense of "I Am" is distinct and one can sense a reverberation of sorts. This moves around like an echo back and forth between the legs, arms, thorax, abdomen, and finally once in the head. Someone who began to experience nervous contractions in this exercise was advised by Gurdjieff to establish a clearer bodily rhythm, and breathe more steadily and regularly. As with the soil preparing exercise, rhythm of a sort within the body seems to play a role, and is something a visualized rhythm could become entrained to.
On exercise that emphasizes a more social dimension was the Web Exercise. This was a discipline done in groups and depends on an understanding of atmosphere once again. The overlap of atmospheres and their waves in people with a common aim aids an amplifies a practice and its results. Also emphasized is the importance of a common aim or WISH that animates the group and forms the focus of group efforts.
In the section called "The Exercise of IAM, breathing, and external considering" several anecdotes of teachable moments between Gurdjieff and his students working group are shared. In one anecdote it is even suggested that self-remembering with family may positively influence them. The idea of attempting to change others is extremely rare in Gurdjieff that it was worth making a note of. At the forefront of all work in a social setting with some people who are not doing the work was the importance of remembering oneself and developing an attitude of love and hope in one's interactions with them.
Some stoic philosophy has made it into Gurdjieff, in the guise of what he called "Active Reasoning." The most basic example given is for dealing with negative emotions. Eg, someone calls you a fool. Is this individual wise? If not why care if he called you a fool since it's not true. On the other hand if he is wise, and you were acting a fool, you should be thanking them for helping you along to fulfilling your aim. Some of this was explained alongside the more subconscious forms of suggestion (as in the Genuine Being Duty Exercise) one was to give and explain to oneself, "as if to a stranger."
This itself shares a lot of similarities with the Orthodox monastic tradition.
Latter sections includes other exercises, one of which was reminiscent of the exercise in Chapter 10 for will and energy, and also which was a counting exercise similar to one made my Orage. Counting to fifty then back seven times, after which one relaxes and state, "I am, I wish to be, I can be." I think part of this exercise was to show pupils how hard it was to remember oneself long enough to count up and down seven times for a very long period...
{To be continued.}
