Jeanne de Salzmann repeatedly tells us, in
The Reality of Being, that we must stand between two places.
Between the inner and the outer; between the higher and the lower.
In the last post, we explored the fact that the material is manifest through the inflow of higher energies, forces, and influences. Furthermore, everything that is manifest is continuously affected by the inflow of higher energies and their quality. So in living organisms, especially man, the inflow of higher influences is what determines the quality of manifestation.
What I mean by this is that the way things are is determined by the expression of the higher within life. Mankind is designed to serve as a conduit or mediator between the higher and the lower, and only his conscious intelligence can effectively move higher or divine influences from their esoteric center, from the higher level from which they emanate, out into the world.
Nothing good can come of a man who does for, or of, himself. Many things can happen; but all of them will be subject to the full 48 laws on this level. That is to say, things will be accidental, random, violent, and uncontrollable, because material by itself, uninformed by the divine, exists without an objective morality. Things just happen any old way. This is obvious and proven, yet by a means of collective agreement that we will lie to one another, the world doesn't admit it.
Only the influence of the inner, the essential, the truth and the good, the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom of the Higher, can what is good be achieved. So if men do not participate in the receipt and transmission of the Holy Spirit, of higher energies, and their
force into ordinary life, ordinary life will be Hell. It cannot organize itself any other way without better influences guiding it.
You probably think you know what some better or higher influences are. So do I. This is part of the problem. We think up a million different things that we think are better than this or better than that, but none of them emanate from higher levels. We try to apply them to life, and although things may go rightly for a time, they always collapse. They don't have the right kind of energies supporting them. Gurdjieff explained this in some rather technical terms with the law of octaves, deflections, and so on, but the simple way of understanding it is that man does not take in right energy from his inner part, that spark of the divine that is meant to receive, and if he doesn't take right energy in, it won't come out and express itself anywhere.
It's kind of like expecting water to come out of a hose when it's not attached to a faucet. Sure, a little water that was left over in the hose may trickle out; but that's it.
Because of this condition, men have an objective responsibility to do the work, the inner work, that is necessary to open themselves to divine influences. When they turn towards the material, in the pursuit of the material, these divine influences are weak, if they are present at all, and none of them can reach the individual, the society, or the planets, the solar system, in order to create a rightly ordered condition.
We have this Divine part, this Essence, this spark of Divinity, within us. Our material being itself is formed around this core of heavenly emanation. Gurdjieff openly grappled with and
illustrated this principle in his third series.
But if we don't open to it, there can't be any good results.
The literal understandings based around human action and morality that we see from fundamentalists in every religion are clearly useless; they not only result in dogma and rigidity, they ultimately intensify violence. Only
real inner work can change our outer conditions. And yet this definitely isn't understood. Even by those of us who think we know what it means.
It is above all essential to seek constantly, as Mme. de Salzmann advises us, to become open to a higher energy. This changes everything in us; the nonsense ends once that begins.
May your soul be filled with light.