‘Night Sky’, artwork by Kayla (Shifting Destiny at deviantart.org)

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Today’s sharing from the Blue House of Via-HYGEIA, are two texts that are about to ‘Make Moon in Ourselves‘, coming from two specific currents of the Gurdjieff Work. Text one is the last chapter of Ocke de Boer’s second book, ‘Two Souls‘, published by Beech Hill Publishing Company in 2016. From page 87 to 90. The second one is taken from Maurice Nicoll’s ‘Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky‘-the 1996 Samuel Weiser modern edition, volume 3, page 1088 to 1091. These two great texts lay the proper ground for due inner work, following the discoveries of life-changing theories & concepts that need now to be carefully digested and integrated into daily life with the help of practical work. They echo and marvelously complement Suhrawardi and Mopsik on their deep evocation of the Sakinah & Shekinah. With his two books, Ocke de Boer has offered to all those interested in individual and group work, a solid guidance, matching the quality of Maurice Nicoll’s impressive legacy with his own groups, after his time with Mister Gurdjieff.

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1. ‘Creating Moon in Oneself’, by Ocke de Boer.

November 15, 2016

In our Work it is said that the organic film around the Earth is partly feeding the Moon. This is also stated in the Upanishads:

‘And Kitra said, ‘All who depart from this World (or this body) go to the Moon. In the former (the bright) half, the Moon delights in their spirits; in the other, (the dark) half, the Moon sends them back to be born again.’ (A Max Muller translation, ‘The Upanishads’-part 1. New York: Dover Publications, 1962, page 273-274).

One of the consequences of the organ Kundabuffer is that we do not sense ourselves.  (A Via-Hygeia note: For an explanation about the organ Kundabuffer, you may go here) We do not ordinarily have more than a mental contact with our bodies.

This is exactly what we have to establish, if we wish ‘to create Moon in ourselves’: We have to learn to sense ourselves; we have to establish a new second nature, namely to feel ourselves present in a body that is able to sense itself. It is in this way that we have become free of the Moon.

Mister Gurdjieff speaks of two currents, an outer and an inner one. (‘Transcripts of Gurdjieff’s Meetings‘-1941/1946. London, Book Studio, 2009. Page 102). It is through creating Moon in ourselves, through sensing, that we will be able to balance the outer and the inner current. It is in this way that we create a third factor in ourselves.

There is for us a huge demon to conquer. Virtually anything that comes to us from the outer world can play with us as it pleases, thereby displacing our inner current. Creating Moon in oneself is not as easy as it might seem. Hence, on our invisible road, it is very important to learn non-identification through sensing.

This sensing will also help us put our feeling center in its proper place, which is the heart area, or the chest. In our sitting we have to balance the head center and the spine brain, through sensing. This will give breathing space to the feeling brain. In this way, over time, it will become easier for us to feel ourselves present in our bodies. We move against the consequences of the organ Kundabuffer in this way. The Ego will then have no chance to take over, making it possible for us to achieve a more realistic and less trivial approach to our lives.

Creating Moon in ourselves will ground us. This grounding, especially in the abdomen, is important as a basis for three-centered Work on oneself. This is why it is so important to develop an understanding of the distinction between Sensing and Feeling.

We have to establish this distinction, or else our Work will only be in our heads; it will be imaginary. We will not be able to become free from the outer current. We will get lost in opposites. To become free from the outer current is a matter of and for the moving and the feeling centers. This is why the Gurdjieff Movements are such a treasure; they command our three centers to participate together in the present moment. In doing the Movements, we are forced to become available. We are forced out of our automatic behavior. Actually, we are compelled through the action of the Movements to use each of our three center. By doing this we become ready for Feeling to incarnate in Sensing. It is at such moments that our three centers blend into one big Brain that has access to the mental place. It is this brain that can move our ordinary ‘I’ out of the way in order to be open to the higher energies we are meant or destined to receive.

In the outer parts of the centers we are dispersed, yet we are so accustomed to dwell there that we have developed the attitude that we can understand ourselves and the surrounding world through the outer parts of the centers. We do not realize that we have to become far more ‘collected’, i.e., ‘balanced’ in order to become something more real. The inner parts of the centers as well as the outer parts have to fuse. They have to become One before we can truly explore our inner and outer worlds. This is what praying is about. It is asking for help from the Higher in order to make the inner parts of ourselves fuse with the outer parts of the centers. A similar reasoning applies to the Sittings. They are efforts, just as the Movements are, towards three-centered activities. In order to come to three-centered activities, the inner and outer parts of our centers have to fuse, so that our real consciousness, the subconscious can speak to us.

It is here that the second being-Reason will start to speak to us. The foundation for this process, is to create Moon in ourselves. This is the basis for a proper incarnation of higher data in our system, if such data is there. If not, it will be the basis for extracting such data from the accumulators above our heads. This is how a second body will be formed in us.

If we stay identified through the outer parts of the centers to the three-dimentional reality, it will be very hard for an independent second body to form itself, and moreover, for it to take control over the planetary body. This potential second body and the data formed in it have differing strength in people. Our potential body will be delighted if it sees that we have learned the distinction between sensing and feeling, for the data that are already partly formed in the second body can only fully incarnate in our system when we learn this distinction.

So, the first obligation in being able to do this Work is not to satisfy our intellectual curiosities-it is to form Moon in oneself, to learn the distinction between Sensing and Feeling. This will also help us to get in touch with our true inner world. We think that our reactions to the outer world are our inner world. This is an illusion. Our inner world is in our subconscious, which has its residence deeper inside of us than the residence of our psychological reactions to the outer world. True Self-Remembering will slowly carry us back to listen to our subconscious.

This process leads to Conscience and the Law of the Equilibration of Vibrations, to our becoming really conscious of the working of the Law, that is the Law of Three and the Law of Seven, or the Law of World Creation and the Law of World Maintenance. To become initiated into these laws belongs to the region of second-being Reason. It is this Reason that can help us to see how the laws work in us. Conscience has the necessary speed to perceive the Law of Three in action. Conscience will show us those actions that are necessary to bring any present situation back in tune with Unity. Conscience will show us, through the subconscious, when to be active, when to be passive, and when to mediate.

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2. ‘Center of Gravity-Sun-Moon-Stars’-by Maurice Nicoll,

given at Great Amwell House, November 29, 1947.

A question was asked at one of the Groups recently: ‘What is Centre of Gravity? How to define it?

It is necessary to review the different senses in which this term is used in the Work. As in everything in the Work we have to distinguish between a mechanical Centre of Gravity and a conscious Centre of Gravity
in oneself.

1. Life as Centre of Gravity. Here come in the categories of Man—Man No. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. In the case of Man No. 1, Man No. 2, Man No. 3, “centre of gravity’ is used to signify the centre chiefly used in the approach to life. That is, in the case of Man No. 1, his life-centre of gravity is either in Moving Centre or in Instinctive Centre. Man No. 2 approaches everything emotionally to begin with—that is, by liking- disliking, and so his life-centre of gravity is in Emotional Centre. Similarly, Man No. 3 approaches everything theoretically, intellectually, so his life-centre of gravity is in Intellectual Centre. These are the life-centres of gravity of mechanical mankind and by reason of these differences Man cannot agree with Man. This is therefore called in the Work: “The Circle of Confusion of Tongues” or “The Circle of Babel” or simply “Life”. By contrast the Conscious Circle of Humanity—No. 5, 6 and 7—understand one another.

2. The next meaning of Centre of Gravity is used in connection with work. The passage from the mechanical to the Conscious Circle of Humanity is impossible without the help of something different from Life and its daily stresses and strains. So the Work is called a different 3rd Force from Life. Let us speak of this second meaning of Centre of Gravity which must begin with “Point in the Work”—that is, a genuine feeling that the Work is important. A point in the Work begins with evaluation.

The gravitational force of the Moon is strong enough to affect the movement of tides, etc., on the Earth. Now the Work teaches that, as we are, the “Moon” acts psychologically on us. The external Universe, represented physically by visible Sun, Moon, Stars, etc., is also within us—not physically, but psychologically. So the Work, speaking psychologically, says: “We have to make Moon in ourselves.” Man is a microcosmos—but not fully—living in a macrocosmos. The physical, visible Man and the physical, visible Universe are represented also on another scale—that is, a psychological scale—not complete in Man.

The Moon, physically, literally, is lower than the Earth; the Sun is higher; the Galaxy is higher, and so on. But this external symbol of the seen Universe is, the Work says, in us psychologically. That is, when it is said that Essence comes from the stars, it means, psychologically, that Essence comes from a high level. Can you grasp that the external, visible represents the internal invisible? As within—so without. Yes—but do you see? There are scales in the visible Universe—and scales in yourself, corresponding. If you had solar Consciousness then
you would be at the divine level of the Sun—represented outwardly, visibly, in the scalar structure of the outer world as the literal, physical Sun—but not the inner psychological Sun only present and contacted within, through inner Consciousness. I speak here of Higher Centres.

People all through the ages have worshipped the external, physical Sun. Here the difficulty arises of separation of literal and psychological, of material and spiritual, of outer and inner—a difficulty which for all who persist in holding to the Work will finally cease and a marvellous inner world of experience open up. Man is born in the vast Universe composed of myriads of Moons, Suns, and Galaxies. He is inevitably stamped by it, as by his Mother. But it is represented in him as a ladder. In the Ray of Creation, which is a ladder, is shewn how one traces down, from all other possible Rays, our Ray, our Sun, our Planets, our Earth, our Moon. An enormous machinery is apparent. But, abstracting from the physical representation, the Universe is partly in Man, as well as outside him. So the Work speaks of our Moon psychologically, as a
powerful influence in us, the influence of forming intractable habits.

“The action of the Moon,” Gurdjieff said, in so many words, “is like a weight. It controls Organic Life, which covers the surface of the Earth as a sensitive film. It is like a weight on a pendulum. Its influence is to keep everything where and as it is. It uses Organic Life as its food. From this point of view life on Earth is a pain factory.” Early in the Work, Mr. Ouspensky said to us: “It is necessary to make Moon in oneself. Try to see what is meant.” What can this mean? It means that we must make something in ourselves that will resist the influences of life. Some ancient writers called this escaping from prison. As machines we are driven by outside life. We are functions of life. We react to everything as machines do. First we have to see this is so genuinely, not extravagantly. The gradual realization of this mechanicalness of oneself is the beginning of awakening. Remember only you can awake to yourself. I cannot awaken you. If we could change our responses to daily impressions, if we could resist the customary effects of daily life upon us, we would be creating “Moon in ourselves”. We have, therefore, as it is taught, to isolate ourselves from the effects of life on us—not from life. If we do not, if we live mechanically—and by now some should really know what is meant by that and understand that one can sit in a chair doing nothing and yet think and feel mechanically—if, I said, we live mechanically, then “Moon eats us”. It takes all our energy, especially when we are negative. Notice it is your way of taking life you have to work against. That requires long self-observation.

Now you have often heard that each act of non-identification saves energy. It is anti-mechanical. And if it is accompanied by Self-Remembering it actually creates a higher kind of energy and so an increase of Consciousness. Now there are three main things which help to isolate us from the personal effects of life upon oneself—Self-Remembering, Non-Identifying, and Non-Considering. All this creates ‘Moon in oneself”. Going against habits does the same—but it is best to begin with psychological habits, such as the habit of being negative, the habit of being asleep, the habit of making inner accounts, the habit of hating, the habit of being sorry for oneself, and so on, for, of course, the more you hate, the more you feel sorry for yourself.

The Work says that Man on Earth is under many influences. The Earth is under 48 orders of laws—that is, influences playing on you like shifting spotlights. It also says that the Moon is under 96 orders of laws. To be under the Moon is to be under the greatest possible mechanical- ness and, as you know, this is the case in a man, a woman, who is fast asleep, governed by every form of negative emotion, hate, internal considering, and so on. By work on oneself one can come under fewer and better influences or laws. This is why we work on the lines laid down in the practical teaching of the Work. As a result of obeying them one rises in the “Ladder of Being” represented by the Ray of Creation.

But this rising is only possible through sacrifice. To behave as you always do, and expect to rise, is impossible. One must, to begin with, sacrifice one’s suffering. All self-pity, all self-cradling, vanity, secret, absurd fears, all self-sentimentality, all inner accounting, all pitiful pictures, all sighs, inner groans, and complaints, must be burned up in the fire of increasing Consciousness. Remember there is no justice under higher laws such as we understand justice. Higher justice, heavenly justice, is to work on yourself so that when you die you have no accounts.

The question only is then—in spite of all these difficulties you may mention: “What have you done beyond yourself?” So it is said elsewhere: “Ye shall be judged every man, every woman, according to your work.” I would add: “What situations have you transformed?” Yes, this is worth-while reflecting on, and as deeply as you can—-if you can as yet even reflect at all on this thing that you cling to and so wrongly take as “yourself” and on what it is doing to you in the way of unhappiness. Remember what has been so stressed—what you react mechanically to, what you take impressions on, is not yourself. It is the machine. It is something that is not you. Can you in the midst of a negative scene say: “This is not I?” If so, you eventually can relax to an extent that I simply cannot describe to you. Only non-identifying gives inner peace. Understand that real experiences in the Work cannot be described to another who has not reached the level of them. It is like trying to describe the taste of something lovely that another person has not tasted and perhaps can never taste.

Now in the supreme sense, when we begin to “make Moon in ourselves” we are making a Work-Centre of Gravity distinct from life. Only a third force different from the third force of life can do this for and in us. Only a psycho-spiritual force can do it, derived not from life and the dull, heavy, habit-forming mechanizing influences of the “Moon” but from those more graceful who have gone before, up the Side-Ladder to the Sun, and left us memorials of the way to follow them.

This is the first and greatest idea about forming “centre of gravity” in oneself. Only with this “centre of gravity” can a man reach that level of being called No. 4 Man—a man in whom all centres begin to work and who is given the unique insight and revelation to see that things appropriate to each centre are not contradictory any more than Autumn is a contradiction to Spring.

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