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For the Week of October 1 - 7:  Pause and Review
Gaylene Barnes, Mandorla with Tree of Life, 2010
I … heard and saw these things,
and when I heard and saw them
I fell down to worship at the feet of the angel
who showed them to me.
But he said to me,
"Don't! I am a fellow servant of yours
and of your brothers and sisters the prophets
and of those who keep the message of this book.
Worship God. … "
Amen.
- Revelation, Epilogue 8-9
 
"We gaze directly from within time into eternity,
And see the flame of the universal sun.
Motionless upon roses of fire,
Fumes the living altar of universal creation;
In its smoke, as in creative reveries,
All power trembles, all eternity is concealed.
And all that rushes over the chasms of ether,
And every ray, corporeal or incorporeal,
Is only thy reflection, O sun of the world …"
- A. A. Fet, poem cited in Divine Humanity by Vladimir Solovyov
 
And so, we come to the end – for now – of our sojourn through the vast reaches of the Work's cosmology. We have gazed with wonder these past eight weeks on the cosmic maps, orderings, relationships and laws according to the teachings of the Work. We now take a deep breath and review highlights of Part 3 of our year's curriculum: Cosmology.
 
The Ray of Creation
 
The great teaching of the Ray of Creation is Gurdjieff's schema and way of expressing creation as ordered and embedded with layers of meaning – a map on many scales.  Studying a map like this – just as taking in the impression of an image of a nebula or perhaps the image in today's email – can be a means of Self-remembering through first conscious shock, because we are looking at ourselves and creation in a whole new way. 
Kathleen Speeth in The Gurdjieff Work explains, "Out of the Absolute come a very great number, perhaps an infinite number of Rays of Creation. Looking down one of these, [our own], we see that out of the Absolute emanate all possible systems or worlds, and from all worlds come all suns, our sun, the planets in our solar system, our planet, the earth, and finally, the moon.  These steps in the Ray of Creation differ in the number of laws under which they operate. At the level of the Absolute there is only one law, the unity of the will of creation; in the next world there are three orders of laws; in the next, six; in the next, twelve. On our earth there are 48 orders of laws under which we must live. The only place in the Ray of Creation in which it would be more difficult to strive for liberation would be the moon, which is governed by 96 orders of laws."
 
Maurice Nicoll notes the significance of these orders of laws, "What it is necessary to grasp is that creation necessarily implies laws … There can be no creation without laws and this means that every created thing is inevitably under laws – that is, nothing created is free. … [W]e can see that if we could ascend [the Ray], we would pass under fewer and fewer laws – that is, we would gain more and more freedom. Whereas if we were to descend, we would pass under more and more restrictions and so be less and less free. … Man, as he is, is at a certain level in the Ray. But he is created in such a way that he can change his level upwards or downwards and so pass under fewer laws or more laws." (Commentaries, "The Law of Three, Part V," Vol 1, pp. 116-117)
 
The Law of Three and The Law of Seven

Two important and universal laws, grand in their scope and practical in their application, are the Law of Three and the Law of Seven. Stated briefly:
 
"The Law of Three is the Law of the Three Forces of Creation. … Every manifestation in the Universe is a result of the combination of three forces:
 
                        - Active force or first force or Holy Affirming
                        - Passive force or second force or Holy Denying
                        - Neutralizing force or third force or Holy Reconciling
 
"First force can be defined as initiating force, second force as force of resistance and third force as balancing or relating principle or connecting force or point of application."
- Maurice Nicoll, Commentaries, "Law of Three," January 25, 1942, Vol. 1, pp. 108-109
 
Also known as the Law of Order or Law of Manifestation or the Law of Octave, the Law of Seven describes how manifestation or action happens in time. It recognizes that creation unfolds in some order. At the same time, order imposes certain restrictions and conditions to creation. At these points of constriction, a shock must be applied to move through the "narrow place."
 
Octaves may be descending, such as the Ray of Creation, wherein the movement is "downward" from idea or possibility to manifestation, creation, multiplicity. Or, octaves may be ascending, beginning with wish and moving to an unknown state of being. 
 
All projects we undertake – from cooking a meal, to embarking on the spiritual journey – can be mapped and understood in terms of octave relationships.
 
The Side-Octave
 
This is a fractal universe, in which the patterns of the macrocosm are found in the microcosm – "as above, so below" – where divine DNA infuses every particle, and evolution is creation unfolding into fullness.
 
Humanity isn't mentioned in the Great Ray, so where is the hope, aim and possibility of humankind contained in the cosmology of the Work? The side or lateral octave is Gurdjieff's profound conception that reveals and evolves religious and esoteric teaching about the Christic nature of the universe and the Christic process – incarnation, passion, death and resurrection – a transformative process meant for all humanity.
"Man is a special creation within the Ray. … In creating the small octave, the Sun is not merely creating on behalf of the Ray itself … It is here that the possibilities of Man are found. … The intelligence of the Sun wants something for itself in creating Man on earth, quite apart from the necessities of the Great Ray. What does it want?
 
"It wants Man to ascend from the level of the earth to the level of the Sun. … It is in this sense that Man is said in the Work to be a self-developing organism. … If you will … really try to understand the meaning of the Ray of Creation and the Octave from the Sun, many inexplicable and apparently irreconcilable things will become clear to your mind. …[Y]ou will be able to begin to think rightly about life on earth and … your own situation."
- Maurice Nicoll, Commentaries, "The Law of Seven: The Sun Octave," Vol. 1, pp. 125-127
 
Scale, Time and Eternity
 
"Everything in the Universe, visible and invisible, known and unknown, is at some point in this vertical line. Everything is inevitably at some point in this vertical scale, for everything finds its own level in it, according, as it were, to its density … All evolution, in a real sense, is to pass from one point to a higher point in this scale. Scale means ladder. In all the diagrams …, this idea of the Universe as a ladder or scale is found, and that is why it is so necessary to gain some preliminary conception of the significance of this vertical direction, that does not lie ahead of us, in the future of time, in next year or the next century, that does not lie either in space or in time, but lies in another dimension – namely, above us. In a limited way, we all know of the existence of this vertical line, for we all know better and worse states of ourselves. …
 
"Man is born as a self-evolving organism. He can rise from one level to another in this vertical scale. And that is why there is such a thing as esoteric teaching. All the knowledge belonging to this system is about the possibility of man's undergoing an inner transformation and rising in the scale of being." (Maurice Nicoll, Commentaries, "Commentary on Effort," January 12, 1942, Vol. 1, pp. 102, 104)
 
Impressions and Influences
 
The Work invites us to wake up and uncritically observe what ideas we choose to ponder, what influences we choose to consume (or are consuming us) and begin to make conscious choices about the food of impressions we regularly engage.. We don't negate or denigrate A influences from life and life events; we can simply choose the stream of Living Water found in B and C influences from the Conscious Circle of Humanity, from the vertical 5th dimension.
 
The Principle of Reciprocal Maintenance
 
"Gurdjieff makes the tremendous claim that our Creator looks to Man for 'help in the administration of the enlarging world.' … There is an ineffable mystery in the doctrine of liberation. For ordinary thinking, freedom is 'from' some state of constraint. Essential liberation is the annihilation of conditions, but not the abandonment of obligations. … When all limitations are transcended, nothing remains but the One Will which is I." (J.G. Bennett, Gurdjieff Making a New World, "Appendix 2," p. 18)
 
“[T]heology, like philosophy, is not a particular science. 
It is related to the whole. This is to say that the very name of God is a cosmological notion. God is God for the world, the Creator is creator of the creation . . . God has a cosmological aspect just as the cosmos has a divine aspect. In short, a theology without cosmology is a mere abstraction of a non-existent God; and a cosmology without theology is just a mirage. 
Cosmology and theology are intrinsically knit together."
- Raimon Panikkar, Rhythm of Being, pp. 187-188
 
Meditations
 
"How we live in ongoing actualization of personal identity is how we live as interrelated systems of life.  … Nature is oriented toward the wholeness of life because living entities work better together than apart, and it is precisely the communal nature of life that makes wholeness foundational for flourishing life."
- Ilia Delia, Omega Center Newsletter, September 2020
 
The law of unity is all-embracing.
Everything in the universe is One,

the difference is only of scale;
in the infinitely small we shall find
the same laws as in the infinitely great.

As above, so below.
 - G.I. Gurdjieff
 
Homework

- Reflect and listen for any idea that comes to meet you, perhaps returning to the in-depth exploration of the original email. Study the diagrams; gaze upon the images, taking in their impressions, allowing them to enliven your emotional center. Rest. Give gratitude for this precious life in all its wondrous, evolving, infinitely great and infinitely small expressions.

- The complete email archive may be found here.

- The glossary of terms may be found here.

Open forum Invitation: As we close the segment of our curriculum on cosmology, you are invited to attend an “open forum” with The Journey School faculty in an unstructured time to bring any questions for a time of sharing and conversation. This is especially oriented for those who are new to this Work and haven’t quite found the forum in which to explore the Work ideas on cosmology. Join the conversation this Saturday, October 3, 10:00-11:00 AM CDT by clicking on the link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/9961019778?pwd=aVFLZVQwNGZSNkQ4TDRTUW9yU1Ywdz09. Or enter Zoom and use 996-101-9778, passcode CCH.

Attend tonight's class: 7pm Central Time via Zoom only. 
  1. Click on this link and Zoom should open automatically on your laptop or tablet, or
  2. Open Zoom, click on Join Meeting and enter this meeting ID: 996-101-9778. When prompted for a Passcode, enter: CCH.
  The class content archive is organized by class and class date and includes free mp3 recordings of each class. 
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