The "Rational Male and Female"? - Biology and Programs in Relationships

[gottathink]

Colognero who writes the blog Gornahoor.net is also a very good resource if one enquiring about the spiritual nature of make and female relationships. He is an academic,philosopher and spiritual practitioner of Gnosis.

 

[Joe]

If the other can not be forgotten through all attempts by both individuals they can unite to pursue a meaningful project as their contribution to the world. Or perhaps their meeting will simply propel them to improve themselves and give to others around them. For this to happen each is driven to self work as the only thing that can relieve the distress of the meeting and realisation of the separation that has occurred.

The authenticity of the polar couple can only be assessed as real if certain conditions are met: both are driven to self work, both feel and experience the connection through dreams and feeling of the others emotions (which must be confirmed by the other for it to be considered as evidence) complete honesty with each other, a sharp increase in creativity occurs, and of course any physical relationship must be sacrificed—which is difficult as the attraction is very intense. If these things arise it is reasonable to consider this as evidence that they are a polar couple, however only at final transition to 4D could this be confirmed.

ok, it sounds like you're saying polar couples are higher level beings who, while in 3D, and if they find each other, must try to act out a kind of 'higher level' love that is not really of this world. As you say, that's a pretty difficult task, and doesn't really seem to be within the capacities of most people, including, I'd say, pretty much everyone on this forum. I suppose that would explain why they are so rare, and therefore I'd say the concept itself is not something we should really bother ourselves with, other than in the form of theoretical musings.

 

[Joe]

I found this to be a useful perspective -written by my first teacher -- it might have more of a resonance to the material of G and M as well as Bennett and Ouspenksy as he was on the tail end of that particular era.

Chapter 17 Male and Female

While some of that appears to contain valid observations, it's a bit too "new agey" for me and, as with most texts that leave that impression on me, too vague and open to subjective projection. While his thesis, as I understand it, is that both men and women should try to unite the male and female in them, I think he goes a bit too far in that respect. For example, in the quote below, he seems to be suggesting that both men and women should focus on the feminine in them.

The female aspect is at its most positive when reaching out mentally to externals and expressing caring compassion through intellect. The male aspect is at its most positive when turning inwards mentally to the intuitive, caring feminine aspect and penetrating its own nature.

In the quote below, he strays very close to modern 'transgender' ideas of there being no such thing as gender "someone who happens to be biologically born with male physical characteristics".

If there is the idea that someone who happens to be biologically born with male physical characteristics is all male, then the objects, events and people in whom identity is invested, will be of a particular kind; that maleness or structuring characteristic will be self-focused and self-centred and will believe its maleness, whether intellectually, psychologically or sexually, to be the most important aspect.

This is usually what produces the problems in male sexuality, because ultimately what has to be understood is that the thing that makes a man a good lover is not his masculinity but his femininity – how else could he understand woman?

If we are to take the above as true, can we then infer that "the thing that makes a woman a good lover is not her femininity but her masculinity - how else could she understand men?"

These two things, the beautiful and the ugly, the right and the wrong, the pleasant and the unpleasant, are in fact air and earth and fire and water revolving in space. Essentially we see no difference, and that means within us there is no difference, which means that we are clear and calm.

Eh...straying pretty close to new agey "all is one" thinking, that implies "loving everything", the dark and the light etc.

The right-sided aspect of the male contains both the macho and the structuring, logical mind. The left side includes the little boy, and of course the homosexual factor. Sometimes these two sides never really meet.

Eh....

 

[Wandering Star]

If we are to take the above as true, can we then infer that "the thing that makes a woman a good lover is not her femininity but her masculinity - how else could she understand men?"

This has made me laugh a lot.

Thanks Joe.

 

[Joe]

The idea that men should "get in touch with their emotions" is today generally condemned (in the 'manosphere') as toxic feminist ideology attempting to corrupt and weaken men and masculinity. When I suggested that general idea that men should "get in touch with their emotions" to another man once, I had barely uttered the words before he reacted badly (he was deep into the 'manosphere' and all things related). As a result, what I didn't get to say was that my understanding of that need is based on my observations of some men (myself included) having problems with expressing emotions in a healthy way, to their own detriment and the detriment of their relationships of all kinds. I'm sure we can all think of (or have experience of) examples of that and how it happens.

So when I suggest that men "get in touch with their emotions" (or those men who need to) I don't mean get in touch with their "feminine" emotions or become more like women etc. but rather to "get in touch" i.e. recognize and learn to express their own, natural, specific-to-them emotions in an honest way, in an effort to prevent these emotions from manifesting in aberrant and unhelpful ways that impoverish their own life experiences and those of others. Basically, as a man, get in touch with your manly emotions, not with womanly ones which, by definition, you don't actually have.

 

[Wandering Star]

So when I suggest that men "get in touch with their emotions" (or those men who need to) I don't mean get in touch with their "feminine" emotions or become more like women etc. but rather to "get in touch" i.e. recognize and learn to express their own, natural, specific-to-them emotions in an honest way, in an effort to prevent these emotions from manifesting in aberrant and unhelpful ways.

This could be like putting the cards that we have had to play in the game face up, showing them.

I think I remember that it was in Carla's Law of One, in which it was said that this was the way to win the game.

 

[Glenn]

This could be like putting the cards that we have had to play in the game face up, showing them.

I think I remember that it was in Carla's Law of One, in which it was said that this was the way to win the game.

I think part of the reference to having the cards face up, thus showing them, was referring to why it is necessary for the veiling, or the forgetting in 3D. This is the challenge, to play the lifetime card game gathering enough knowledge (love), to be able to play it properly and wisely.

Here is the excerpt:

50.7 Questioner: Thank you. Can you expand on the concept which is this: that it is necessary for an entity to, during incarnation in the physical as we call it, become polarized or interact properly with other entities and why this isn’t possible in between incarnations when he is aware of what he wants to do, but why must he come into an incarnation and lose memory, conscious memory of what he wants to do and then act in a way that he hopes to act? Could you expand on that please?


Ra: I am Ra. Let us give the example of the man who sees all the poker hands. He then knows the game. It is but child’s play to gamble, for it is no risk. The other hands are known. The possibilities are known and the hand will be played correctly but with no interest.

Let us re-examine this metaphor and multiply it into the longest poker game you can imagine, a lifetime. The cards are love, dislike, limitation, unhappiness, pleasure, etc. They are dealt and re-dealt and re-dealt continuously. You may, during this incarnation begin — and we stress begin — to know your own cards. You may begin to find the love within you. You may begin to balance your pleasure, your limitations, etc. However, your only indication of other-selves’ cards is to look into the eyes.

You cannot remember your hand, their hands, perhaps even the rules of this game. This game can only be won by those who lose their cards in the melting influence of love; can only be won by those who lay their pleasures, their limitations, their all upon the table face up and say inwardly: “All, all of you players, each other-self, whatever your hand, I love you.” This is the game: to know, to accept, to forgive, to balance, and to open the self in love. This cannot be done without the forgetting, for it would carry no weight in the life of the mind/body/spirit beingness totality.

 

[EmeraldR]

Interesting. Who is this author/teacher?

Interesting. Who is this author/teacher?

John Garrie - he died 1998​

 

[EmeraldR]

While some of that appears to contain valid observations, it's a bit too "new agey" for me and, as with most texts that leave that impression on me, too vague and open to subjective projection. While his thesis, as I understand it, is that both men and women should try to unite the male and female in them, I think he goes a bit too far in that respect. For example, in the quote below, he seems to be suggesting that both men and women should focus on the feminine in them.



In the quote below, he strays very close to modern 'transgender' ideas of there being no such thing as gender "someone who happens to be biologically born with male physical characteristics".





If we are to take the above as true, can we then infer that "the thing that makes a woman a good lover is not her femininity but her masculinity - how else could she understand men?"



Eh...straying pretty close to new agey "all is one" thinking, that implies "loving everything", the dark and the light etc.



Eh....

point taken - i personally found some of it useful but not al of it ! what you shared are fair observations .

 

[Wandering Star]

This is the challenge, to play the lifetime card game gathering enough knowledge (love), to be able to play it properly and wisely.

And as always, on paper it seems easy.

 

[gottathink]

I suppose that would explain why they are so rare, and therefore I'd say the concept itself is not something we should really bother ourselves with, other than in the form of theoretical musings.

I think the concept is worth meditating on as either way (polar couples or individuals considering the concept) the necessity is to pursue the work.

People long for the type of love connection that is described as a polar couple, this may be our spiritual destiny. It is written about by great minds through the ages and is not frivolous at all.

The best advice I read was that people should pursue the work (Gnosis) and act in a way that their current partner is their polar opposite. This is because any genuine pursuit of this knowledge will move you towards your polar opposite [what ever lifetime that may be].

 

[benkostka]

I think the concept is worth meditating on as either way (polar couples or individuals considering the concept) the necessity is to pursue the work.

People long for the type of love connection that is described as a polar couple, this may be our spiritual destiny. It is written about by great minds through the ages and is not frivolous at all.

The best advice I read was that people should pursue the work (Gnosis) and act in a way that their current partner is their polar opposite. This is because any genuine pursuit of this knowledge will move you towards your polar opposite [what ever lifetime that may be].

That’s essentially what’s stated in the Gnosis series, that ultimately there’s a point in the spiritual progression of both a man and a woman where they’ll have to come together in order to continue doing the work. He also states that those polar couples could be examples in the future.

And I agree with your thoughts on it, if that’s the best type of relationship you can have with a partner, then it’s something you should pursue, whether it happens in this lifetime or not. Ultimately the work will be worth it.

 

[gottathink]

I thought this was a good summary of all other sources I have read to date.

An Introduction by Lillian Delevoryas​

Prepared as an introduction for a proposed book on the Fifth Way, Lillian wrote here for students of Robin Amis, who first brought the translation of Mouravieff’s 3 volumes of ‘Gnosis’ to the English-speaking world in 1990.
The part of Mouravieff’s original teaching that appealed most to us was the idea of the Fifth Way and the Polar Being – it was the first time we came across a theory about the two sexes that made any sense. Apart from lust, procreation and romance there didn’t seem to be any other options – and all these were transient ‘passions’ that, when they disappeared, love also disappeared. In fact, M. quotes the folk saying that ‘marriage is the graveyard of love.’
So, faced with these alternatives, the idea that there was something more to be achieved when man meets woman was a huge revelation – and 30 years later, although we can’t claim to have penetrated the essence of this teaching, it still makes the most sense to us, as it will for countless others, and bringing it out into the world for young people who are just beginning their adult life seems a good counterbalance to the trivialisation and vulgarisation of sex that has become endemic in modern society.
Thirty years ago, when we first published Gnosis in English, there was a flurry of seekers who were taken completely by this concept – to the point where they left their existing marriages in search of their ‘Polar Other’. At this point Robin stopped featuring it in his talks, and began to downplay it in general. It obviously wasn’t the right time. Annie Lou Staveley, a wise old woman who had studied with Gurdjieff in Paris, advised her Fourth Way group in Oregon to ‘treat your common or garden variety husband (or wife) as your polar being – just use the idea to act ‘as if’ you were’ – and that seemed as good an instruction as any.
In the meantime, time has moved on, and even though (according to M’s students) the teaching on the Polar Being was a teaching for the Age to Come – it would seem that this age is already upon us – or at least the transition into it has begun. The idea itself has ‘taken’, and judging from several websites, there are a number of students of Gnosis who have pursued this idea and taken it further. One of these is Cynthia Bourgeault, particularly in her books The Meaning of Mary Magdalene and Love is Stronger than Death. Cynthia was a student of Robin’s for a short time and has had a solid grounding in Fourth Way Work – so as an exponent of the Fifth Way, she understands the necessity of first beginning with Work on Oneself (in the realm of inner work, or ‘purification’ as it’s referred to in the church) before one can progress further.
At the same time, M. himself stated that working as a couple is considerably more efficient than working alone – and that in future this will be the preferred way – protected, as it were (he states elsewhere that in the past monasticism was the prevalent way where one could work under the protection of a monastery). He uses the same word ‘protected’ to refer to the Fifth Way in future – and also states that monasticism as a ‘way’ will be replaced by ‘working on oneself’ in life – which would embrace the idea of marriage, and a relationship with another. This would relate to the idea of the 3 stages in the Work: the work begins with work on oneself, then progresses to work with others, and finally working for the Work itself. In each stage one expands to include more and more – from the selfish concern of one’s own development, one moves on to include another, and from there, opens out into a larger whole.
When one goes into the Polar Being teaching more deeply, the concept exists that when two people (man and woman) effect their transformation as a couple, between themselves they create another (as John Donne puts it) ‘abler soul’ between them. But it doesn’t stop there. That is the point where they become truly useful to the work and it is this newly created being that is involved in the evolution of mankind.
But we mustn’t digress and go into speculation. It is our aim here to present the doctrine as Mouravieff presents it in his 3 volumes of Gnosis, enlarged upon by other teachings, as well as those Russian philosophers of the 19th Century who helped shape his thinking on the subject (Soloviev, Berdyaev, etc.) To do this we have extracted from his 3 volumes all the references to the Fifth Way, and have presented them here as they were written, so that the reader can see clearly M’s viewpoint.
By doing this we will try to establish that, as this teaching has become disseminated at large, it was M’s original formulation in the mid twentieth century that set the stage in the next century for implementing it in the world. We will try to fill in the gaps with excerpts from his own unfinished novel Initiation, which is a description of his own experience of the Fifth Way. Other texts that have been useful are Vladimir Soloviev’s The Meaning of Love, Philip Sherrard’s Christianity and Eros, and Paul Evdokimov’s The Sacrament of Love.
In no way do we, as students of Robin Amis and Mouravieff, claim to have the key or have all the answers to the questions that this magnificent teaching poses. Our aim is to bring it out into a world which appears to be ready for it at this crucial junction in history – where things seem to be disintegrating as quickly as they are built up. The greatest disaster area in modern times seems to be that of the relation between man and woman – the question of sexuality – of gender confusion – all these – leading to the deterioration of marriage and the family as a unit – would point to the need for a radical re-thinking of the role of the sexes in the Age to Come. Because it is such a novel idea, those who embrace it will have to use it in their own lives to fathom its meaning – and we are all in this boat together. Those brave souls who make it their own will no doubt contribute to the knowledge and awareness of the teaching as it finds its way into more general circulation.
This exposition is dedicated to the youth of today – growing up in a ‘virtual’ reality, enveloped by instant networking, cybercrime, etc – and who have highly developed motor skills and intellect, which can be put to better use in order to save themselves and mankind in the future, if only the emotional centre could be developed to the same degree.
The book is addressed to three specific groups, as was the original publication of Mouravieff’s Gnosis, formulated by Robin as follows:
1: Fourth Way students who have reached the point of ‘what next?” Individual evolution is a lonely beast and now the ‘why’ has become as important as the ‘how’
2: Christian seekers – who no longer can buy what the non-comprehending clergy have to tell them about sex and relationships between man and woman – (largely gleaned from centuries of monastic sources).
3: Emerging young people, from developing countries who have venerated the ideals of the west – especially American – the dream of a ‘car in every garage’, etc. – which have been shattered by the ultimate triumph of banality with Donald Duck who has cast a pall of ultimate mediocrity over the land and the noble aspirations of the founding fathers lie bleeding in the dust.
What next indeed? The answer may lie in the totally unexpected – so simple and yet so powerful – the instinctive attraction between man and woman – up to now put to the service of procreation or pleasure – which can turn into the possibility that through this basic ‘given’ in the universe they may become mirror images of the Divine.
It is to the young people who at heart are feeling a desperation, who have practically given up and stopped looking for what used to be termed ‘Mr. Right’ – who have succumbed to the law of mediocrity and to settled for ‘second best’ – accepting that everything noble and wonderful runs its course and turns into its opposite – that the promise of the early romance between lovers soon disappears and the search keeps them moving on to find something (someone) new.
This new idea of the relation between sex and sacrifice is one that hasn’t yet been introduced into the equation – or at least one not in popular favour – since one has to be willing to aim high and sacrifice all for it. Ultimately there is nothing higher than love (St Paul’s ‘The Greatest of these is love’), or ‘Greater love hath no man, except to lay down his life for his neighbour.
The book aims to make this idea of the polar being more than a mere conceit or a dry intellectual theory, but presents it as a real possibility – the alpha and omega of our existence, if we truly understand it. We have tried to present it all together – illustrating it with Mouravieff’s private correspondence on the subject, as well as by his unfinished and unpublished novel Initiation, and interspersing it with relevant references to some of his formative influences from 19th century Russia. The book will also show how more contemporary writers link these ideas with prevailing echoes in more advanced orthodox thought, making it more accessible to modern readers, using concepts that make more sense than antiquated and outmoded 3rd and 4th hand precepts that no longer have credibility.
Lillian Delevoryas, July 2017

The Polar Being​

Fifth Way | The Artwork of Lillian Delevoryas

Read out what Lillian wrote for students of Robin Amis, who first bought the translation of Mouravieff's. Get more knowldege of Fifth Way and the Polar Being.

lilliandelevoryas.net

 

[Joe]

People long for the type of love connection that is described as a polar couple, this may be our spiritual destiny. It is written about by great minds through the ages and is not frivolous at all.

The best advice I read was that people should pursue the work (Gnosis) and act in a way that their current partner is their polar opposite. This is because any genuine pursuit of this knowledge will move you towards your polar opposite [what ever lifetime that may be].

I suppose my problem with it is the airy-fairy language that goes with it, and how that isn't really useful as practical advice for people in this world. The text you cited above states that "the teaching on the Polar Being was a teaching for the Age to Come", which might be a relevant point. We've often talked on this forum about the problem of people getting carried away with ideas of what humans can be that do not reflect what and where they ARE, and the lessons before them. It's all to easy to avoid dealing with the difficult "nuts and bolts" of our condition by dreaming we are already beyond such things. Practical advice and insights that help us to make sense of where we are and how to move towards an ideal are obviously much more useful for the average person than tales of the ideal alone.

 

[gottathink]

Practical advice and insights that help us to make sense of where we are and how to move towards an ideal are obviously much more useful for the average person than tales of the ideal alone.

That is exactly what the literature on polar beings says also. That the work on self must be undertaken in a very practical sense. So IMO your understanding I think was incomplete in that it did not acknowledge aspect of the literature.