Knowledge is material

G has this idea that knowledge is material. There is only so much knowledge, and if some people gain knowledge, others cannot get it.

Certainly seems like one of the kookier ideas. However, we should remember that this is G’s idea as recorded by Ouspensky. Therefore it completely loses the tonality and context in which G said it. Many of G’s ideas given to Ouspenky and his students were thoroughly “mixed bags”, i.e. they were composed of intentionaly truths, half truths, and falsehoods.

This corresponds with the theme of his magical show in which he demonstrated “tricks, half tricks, and real magic”, and also his concept of the three types of knowledge “Science, Religion, and Moonshine”. Tricks used by magicians are composed of a real knowledge of human psychology and are thus scientific in a certain sense. Religion utilizes the same kind of suggestibility used by magicians, but in a mostly unconscious way, although in the case of faith healers and other stage magicians it is conscious.

In other words, this idea is not found explicitly in G’s writings (his own exposition of his teaching) and only found in Ouspenky’s version. The way this is portrayed in G’s writings gives a much better sense of how G meant this idea, and proves how Ouspensky tended to take G too literally, or at least failed at times to show the kind of discrimination G was looking for.

In G’s writings we find ideas given out through metaphors according to the theosophical addition method. One story, composed of many different metaphors, eventually collapses into a unity in which all the various metaphors, appearing separate at first, turn out to represent one thing, i.e. one core metaphor. The core metaphor may then be elaborated back out into multiple meanings once again. We see this reduction of numbers in theosophical additon back to the base numbers 1-9, which nonetheless contain all possible other mathematical computations based on the decimal system. So the numbers 1-9 are both the core to which everything may be reduced, while at the same time the numbers beyond 9 must be played out in order to show many other mathematical principles which cannot be demonstrated with the numbers 1-9. For instnace, the Fibonnaci sequence cannot be shown with only the numbers 1-9, but requires many more numbers.

In the same way G’s writings contain symbols which, when interpreted, can be reduced to a few core psychological objects, even though the manifestation of those fundamental objects into multifarious outer verisons is nonetheless necessary for the full elaboration of his ideas.

So, Ouspenky’s rendering of G’s idea of “knowledge is material”, and therefore fixed in quantity, is a poor interpretation of the core idea. He did not connect this idea to Laws, Unity, and other realities in the way Gurdjieff does in his writings.

Numerous types of examples need to be made to solidify this idea, and across as many scales as possible.

One important idea of Gurdjieff’s is that of superficial or specious progress. He criticized western “civilization” for having apparently progressed through technology, while at the same time lacking strong connection to Being-technologies like those in the East. For the most part, western civilization seemed to him to have mostly multiplied the ways in which human beings can kill each other. The productions made possible by industry, railways, etc were powerful but distracted from the question of the level of Being human beings had. Gurdjieff lived through countless revolutions and wars throughout his whole life, so he saw the irony of the progress of technology alongside the vast numbers of humans being ground up in war, including his own family members. The World Wars in the second half of his life were a wake up call to many in the era.

Human death through war has dropped significantly since World War II. It is uncertain if this trend will continue with the advent of de-globalization, demographic collapse, water scarcity, environmental issues, and other crisis on the horizon, but at present large scale direct warfare between large nations is rare. On the other hand, we witness the affect of powerful technologies sweeping through societies and drastically altering the information ecology, culture, and personal time management. Everybody has a personal assistant in the form of a smart phone. We are awash in more information, in more knowledge than humans have ever experienced.

And yet we have displayed little ability to assimilate all this information at a macro level. Many Western countries’ political conversations are deteriorating, especially America. The fabric of society seems to be coming apart. Depression and anxiety are on the rise, social media incentivizes and platforms dark-traid traits and views (Machiavelian, narcissistic, and psychopathy). The culture’s Being does not correspond to its level of knowledge in precisely the way Gurdjieff would have predicted would be problematic. This time, it is not so much the presence of weapons in wars which humans tend toward, but the diluting of the individual human psyche through casino-style slot machine social media apps. Almost certainly, humans will make it through, and these technologies will not wipe us out, but whether this is through a growth of Being or other, less desirable outcomes remains unclear.

So the prevelance of free, egalitarian information today, per Gurdjieff’s prediction, has not led to human flourishing of understanding, but due to our lack of Being as a society, has led to more mutual misunderstanding, and even less Being than before.

But this has more to do with the relation of Being and Knowledge, the sum of which Gurdjieff called Understanding. What about his idea that knowledge is material and therefore finite?

I believe this is where a useful distinction can be made to help understand G’s idea. Gurdjieff was not so much speaking of the quantity of knowledge, but its application and deployment in reality. He wasn’t saying that we can only know so much information, or that there is only so much information to be had in reality. This is obviously not true. Knowledge as far as we know is infinite quantitatively. Rather, he was pointing to the fact that knowledge inevitably serves the level of Being of the person who acquires it.

For instance, take any ordinary form of psychological knowledge, such the idea of Projection. The idea of Projection has many different forms it can take, but for our purposes we will define it as assuming other people think the way we do. We each have a unique history, genetic markers, and personality type. I personally use the enneagram personality types as a starting place. The study of personality types demonstrates well the various lenses through which humans interpret situations and events in terms of their own psychodyanimics. If we try to place ourselves in others shoes, we immediately imagine how we would feel, while in fact others would almost certainly experience it quite differently.

So the study of Projection can be taken from the point of view of self development. We can study projection as a way to understand ourselves and others better. This can gradually lead to a conscious use of language, gesture, and other behaviors to communicate our needs and objectively recognize those of others.

On the other hand, marketers understanding Projection cynically devise Ads and market campaigns, to elicit a desired response from viewers. So rather than use words and imagery into which only a few personality types can Project, they will deploy more general imagery and words into which the most number of people can pour their subjectivity.

Foreign governments will create loads of bots and pour them into Western democratic open internet channels to stir up controversy, driving a wedge between groups on every conceivable front, from political to religious to cultural to racial.

So we see that the idea of Projection ultimately as a form of knowledge will be deployed based on the aims and worldview of the entity using it.

But this does not give us the whole idea yet. Really the core of this idea is that knowledge in its essence and what it can mean for a human being’s fundamental feeling of well being is like a rubberband which may stretch but cannot ultimately gain mass.

The primary requirement for human transformation is in the heart. The heart can certainly delight in the acquisition of knowledge, status, or other psychological goods, but this always takes place on top of or removed from the heart. It is ultimately a change in the emotions of a person which brings about a real sense of personal change. This is why for almost all the enneagram personality types there is a core paradox in which something is chased which ultimately undermines the persons ability to fully acquire the object of their desire.

For type four, there is a need, like the others in the heart triad, type 2 and 3, for connection. Unlike the 2, who tries to be needed, or the 3, who tries to be outstanding in their achievements to gain validity and therefore connection with others, the type 4, as a withdrawn type, removes themselves, creating a void, to test if others will seek them out. This is not necessarily through literal physical withdrawal, although this is sometimes also the case (type fours, especially if they have an 8 component, may make a fiery and histrionic withdrawl from the room to make a statement), it is often a more subtle withdrawal from social norms. The wearing of an earing, a piece of clothing, or other dress items, all serve to indicate a kind of withdrawal from certain social norms, as a way of individuating themselves. Often the deviation from norms is subtle and not necessarily noisy, because they want other people to notice, and the harder the item is to notice, the more value the four can give to the noticing.

The need for connection, and the use of withdrawal to elecit it, inevitably backfires. Other types don’t notice the four has withdrawn or don’t understand the significance of it for the four. They don’t see that the gesture of withdrawal is communicating something very specific. If no one pursues the four’s withdrawal, they will need to modify it to make it more overt. They may storm out of the room instead of leaving it more quietly, or their dress may get more extreme and noticeable, shifting from a small earing to a dangling earing.

If the withdrawal is overt enough, other types will pursue the four. This may make the four feel loved momentarily, but very quickly the feeling of inadequacy returns, and the four once again needs to withdraw in order to verify their importance.

All of this creates a paradox and a self-fulfilling, self-reinforcing cycle in the direction of involution. Withdrawl will serve to entice other types for a time, but as it becomes more extreme and histrionic, other types will tend to start avoiding the four, which then pushes the four to become more extreme yet again until they cannot not be noticed. From another aspect, the four experiences a dynamic where they can never fully accept love, and must always paradoxically avoid love and connection as a way to achieve it.

For a person of this type, any acquisition of knowledge, possessions, and status will funnel into this dynamic. All situations will only serve as grist for the wheel of desire for connection, withdrawal, and only small, short-lived experiences of the true connection they are seeking. They will experience this underlying emotional dynamic in high school, their job, their friendships, partnership, and with their children, and it will lurk as the invisible architecture of all the qualities they experience moving through universal human life events.

Only the intentional alteration of the underlying dynamic will produce a genuine felt-sense of transformation for the type four. Because it is not a fundamentally intellectual dyanmic, that is, it is an emotional process which attaches itself to any intellectual object which arises in the minds eye of the type four, it does not matter how much information, status, material wealth, physical appearance, or other outward condition is acheived. Only the inner dynamic in the psychological perception of the four creates the relationship of those psychological objects to each other in order to form a meaninful pattern in their thoughts, emotions, and sensations.

Therefore it is not the particular knowledge the four has which produces their transformation or real change, but changing the machinery of perception through which the environment is processed and assimilated. Because much of this machinery is based ultimately in the physiology of the person, only hard work over time to recondition the reflex movements in different parts of the process can create lasting change.

Mathematically this can be expressed through theosophical addition and modular systems like the mod 9 system of the enneagram. One plays out the numbers 1-9, and the second time one goes around the circle, one continues counting (10 where 1 was, 11 where 2 was, etc). Symbolically speaking, the change in number on the second pass around the circle represents outwardness, while the continuation of the inner circle represents the inward fundamentals. In terms of personality types, the dyanmic within the personality type represents the numbers 1-9 with its core emotional impulses and intellectual perceptions, while the outward environment projected onto by the personality type represents numbers beyond 9. The type moves through an infinite numbers of circumstances and outward combinations, but inwardly only ever experiences their own small circle of personal impulses and emotions.

This false progression explains why so many people get caught in fad diets, cults, and various pseudo-transformation techniques and models. Anything that doesn’t fundmentally touch and transform the essence underlying the personality type will have no lasting affects, and give a person the feeling of ending up right back where they started. The flux of outward events, the ever-changing nature of outer life processes, may dazzle us enough to feel a sense of temporary newness, and evoke the start of our personal perceptual cycle, our individual samsara, but the end result will be always the same.

Gurdjieff did not mean that knowledge is literally finite. No, the outward expressions of human technology, the depth of scientific inquiry into any aspect of nature or the universe, is limitless. But the Being of any individual human, as expressed through their underlying interior energetic dynamic, defines the true effect and meaning this outward knowledge may have. It is the experience of pushing one’s limits spiritually, only to end up right back where one started, to end up stuck at the same point once again, that leads to an understanding of the meaninglessness of knowledge and even outer circumstance, and the importance of one’s own state of mind as the fundmental set point of one’s Being.

Taking the set point of an individual human’s Being, defined as the average of all their fluctuating states, and summing this across a society, gives the total Being of the human group. Only a ground-up integrity from the individual human going on up to the macro level can produce the collective cosmogenisis which is needed. Understanding the importance of Being as a fundmental ingredient to be developed and maintained at sufficient levels alongside the ingredient of knowledge gives the wisdom to make collective choices regarding our culture as well as our political and educational systems.

How does this idea show up in G’s writings? Once we have established this, we can then compare the idea to Ouspenky’s version to demonstrate just how misleading it can be.

In Gurdjieff’s writings he has filtered one and the same idea through many different guises. To understand how this works we have to return to basic dynamics of metaphors.

Because a metaphor is the representing of one thing by another, a metaphor can be used to represent more than one thing. Conversely, something may be represented through more than one metaphor.

As a result, one thing can be represented through multiple metaphors, and those metaphors, because they are technically separate from the fundamental object, can then interact as though they were separate.

In the ship systems chapters of BT, there is a metaphorical chain of ship systems. One interpretation of this chain is that of an evolution, a stepwise progression. Saint V’s ship displaces previous ones and is displaced by that of Archangel Hariton. This literal interpretation is as far as most readers get.

However, G gives us the material we need in Ch 3 to interpret the old and new ship systems as representing Ahoon and Hassin, which in turn allows us to connect them to the inner and outer views of the Young Beelzebub. The young beelzebub, in being promoted, believes he has his own will, but in reality, is being played by ENDLESSNESS. Just as King Appolis in the first descent ultimately profits from the overly confident, revolutionary young kinsmen, we are able to infer that ENDLESSNESS did not naively promote Beelzebub only to have a megalocosmic revolution on his hands. Rather, we are led to reinterpret Beelzebub’s promotion and banishment as being two views of one situation. Beelzebub believes he is going to “Sun Absolute” (notice quotation marks), while in reality he is going to solar system Ors (solar system ass?). This explains the contradiction that Beelzebub, on being promoted, finds something wrong in the government of the World.

Ultimately, a picture is painted in which the Young B thinks he “has his own battery”, but in fact is being manipulated “from outside”. His view of himself (Im in control) is represnted by Saint Venoma’s ship system, which has its own central battery and needs nothing from outside (in fact, destroys everything outside). The many contradictions surrounding Saint V’s ship show that inspite of its promise, it in fact does not work at all. Only because it is approved by Archangel Addossia (false, assumed authority) and hailed and extolled does it spread, when in fact it becomes quite obvious it fails to overcome the very thing it was supposed to (the atmospheres of planets are the chief obstacles for it, despite its having been creating specifically because it could destroy those atmospheres). This is a picture of the ego.

The reality is that he is taking impressions in from outside, having automatic and unconscious perceptions which produce force that ultimately expresses itself through unconscious behavior. This is the pressurization of Archangel Hariton’s cylinder barrel, also shown through the young kinsmen’s inability to refrain from expressing his indignation at the government of King Appolis.

So the two ship systems represent, on one side, the self-view as well as the outer reality, of Beelzebub (who is also presented in the guises of Venoma, Hariton, Looisos, the young kinsmen, and other characters).

The initial impression of the reader is to take all of these elements in without much assimilation, and basically conclude Gurdjieff is describing some kind of actual ship system, or, if realizing at least semi-consciously that they are metaphorical, to generally fail to know how to interpret their inner meaning. As a result, the reader leaves with the false impression there has been a linear progression from an original ship system to a new ship system to yet another ship system.

Having really thought about the material, and developed some language harvesting ability (which will help with word harvesting in real life), the reader is gradually forced to interpret these ship systems as different views of one and the same character. Gurdjieff is able to psychologically build out the false self conception of beelzebub (student, reader, etc) alongside an accurate , and not particularly flattering, outward view of the teacher (ENDLESSNESS, King Appolis, the author, Gurdjieff, etc.). This underlying psychological dynamic is developed within an outward appearance of evolution by means of the metaphor of one ship system displacing another. This allows Gurdjieff to simultaneously give the false idea of outward progression alonside the idea of non-development or inward stasis. The outward progression represents Beelzebub’s false sense of his own progression (he thinks hes being promoted from his own planet to Sun Absolute but he is actually heading to Ors, hence his surprise when he arrives on “Sun Absolute” in quotation marks!). The inward version represents the aspects of his psychology that ultimately underpin his behavior and make him predictable enough (mechanical enough) to be manipulated in that way. The two aspects of him (self-perception and outer-reality) are present at each stage.

Going back to our initial theme, we can see that the outer version is that of difference. The story of Beelzebub and ENDLESSNESS in Ch 2 is separate from the stories of Saint V and Hariton. The metaphors have changed, sometimes being different characters, sometimes changing from being a character to a mechanical device. Each metaphorical guise brings out new and useful aspects to understanding the total situation, and are correspondingly adapted to form interconnections amongst themselves as the reader’s integration of the text progresses. But the fundamental subject, Beelzebub, never changes.

Speaking in terms of Theosophical Addition, the lack of inner change represents the numbers 1-9 on the enneagram. No matter how many times one goes around the circle, one will always count 1-9. Outwardly speaking however, each new story Gurdjieff tells evolves a new set of metaphorical trappings. Doing a little legwork, the reader discovers, to their shock, that what they thought were separate ship systems, were in fact nothing other than the original character. The reader’s experience of shock as the metaphors collapse back into a unity parallels Beelzebub shock in discovering he has not in fact been promoted to Sun Absolute, but in fact has arrived in Solar System Ors! This parallel of the reader’s perception and the perception of the characters in the story is brilliant on G’s part.

In sum, it is in the assimilation of the content in G’s book that he tries to impart to the understanding of the reader an experience of scratching down to the base elements underlying a false outer experience. The reader inevitably misperceives the allegory in the text, and must exercise the same muscles of discernment to overcome Gurdjieff’s obstacles which would be used to consider the patterns of one’s own life, to ulitmately arrive at the base impulses, emotions, and self-perceptions that undergird a false sense of self in the world. In reality, we create our own sense of self, afterwards populating our relationships, jobs, and life experiences with people who correspond surprisingly well in their signifance to members of our internal family. Beelzebub’s Tales is uniquely suited to aid the reader (by their own efforts) in developing the insight to see right to the very bottom of things. Part and parcel of this is the gradual realization that one’s knowledge, status, and other outward measures of success feed into a highly personalized dynamic which is fixed in quantity. Only by working with this inner material can it be stretched, made more elasitic, or expanded so as to invite genuinely new aspects of reality into our Being.

The caveat…? The reader must really work for it!

The other place this shows up is in G’s cosmology in regards to the “prime source substance” Etherokrlino, from which everything in the Universe is crystallized. It is in Arch Absurd where he points out that owing to Etherokrilno Objective Science calls everything in the universe material. It is this move to call everything in the Universe material because everything is composed of Ehterokrlino that allows G to say that things are also fixed in quantity. The exploration of the outpouring of crystallizations, even Omnipresent Okidanokh, from this fundamental substance Etherokrilno, what was otherwise known as the Ray of Creation, is explored in other places, but always remains a commentary on the arising of objects in human perception. In this way it corresponds to concepts or experiences like Buddha nature in Buddhism, where reality is felt as a kind of limitless field in which experiences arise.

The actual experience of Etherokrilno or Buddha nature is extremely rarified and depend on a high degree of concentration and insight into the nature of Reality. There are more commonplace experiences of life that lead to the intution that there is a limit to one’s personal experience.

For instance, being on one or the other side of a relationship, responsibility, or other major life commtment or entangelement. If one studies one’s subjective round of positive and negative experiences while in a particular relationship or career path, one may notice that at times one likes and other times dislikes that relationship or career path. One may start to question and dream about what life would be like in a different career. The ups and downs in a given job or relationship, if studied deeply, may be sensed or felt as a whole. One can see over time the natural ups and downs associated with one’s perception of the job or relationship. One can also see the nature of one’s dreams about a different state of affairs. If however, the job or relationship is lost, and one finds onself on the other side of that divide, experiencing a lack of relationship or job, for instance, immediately a new round of ups and downs ensues. If at this very moment one has the wherewithall and the curiosity to take in and study one’s perceptions, that is, to compare the totality of one’s perceptions on both sides of a relationship or career, one may notice a certain equality or symmetry. Whether in a relationship or out of a relationship, there are positvies and negatives associated with both conditions. It is this comparison of perceptions across different phases of one’s life that can release a profoundly different sense of the equality of all human experiences, and a realzation that whatever the conditions of one’s life currently, life will always be fundemtanlly undergirded by the same physiological fluctations of happiness and unhappiness. This is not to say some human circumstances are not objectively more or less difficult than others. After all, to grow up in a war zone is objectively more difficult and full of suffering than to grow up during peace. However, we have the false conviction that we can avoid the round of positive and negative states altogether, only experiencing the positive, and as a result avoid negative experiences for which we are physiologically destined by our all too limited hormonal systems.

We have cultural sayings which reflect an awarenes of this. “The grass is always greener on the other side” refers to seeing grass across a fence as greener. When one goes to the other side fo the fence, once again the grass in the field in which one just was now looks greener. This refers precisely to this experience of being in and out of relationships, in and out of jobs, healthy and unheathy physical conditions, and any other states a human being can experience. In terms of relationships: “You can’t live with her and you can’t live without her” refers to this dynamic in relationships.

It is the fundamental elasticity of human emotions, the fluctuation of positve and negative experiences, what Gurdjieff calls the two ends of the stick in his famous Preface to Beelzebubs Tales, and learning to see into the nature of them as they occur in time across the phases of one’s life, that releases a deeper wisdom.