The Gospel According to Orage

94 Pages·2016·0.6 MB·English

by  A.R. Orage Alfred Richard

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ORAGE 1

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ORAGE

Private Publication.
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INTRODUCTION
In 1924 Gurdjieff arrived in New York City for a series of public presentations at the
Neighborhood Playhouse, Carnegie Hall and others.
In the succeeding Autumn of that year Orage presented a series of informal talks on
the ideas. These meetings continued on and off until 1931, when the final crisis came and
Gurdjieff denounced Orage’s presentation of the ideas, insisting that everyone study
instead his more obscure version of the same ideas, couched in allegory, via the
manuscript of Beelzebub, which could only be interpreted by Gurdjieff’s special initiates.
Until then, Orage had presented the material which had formed part of the
curriculum of the Institute at Fontainbleu.
With Orage’s death in 1934 the groups were largely dissolved although some
continued on their own to try to work with the material presented through Beelzebub’s
Tales.
It was felt that Orage’s data should be preserved for the future in the event that the
keys to Beelzebub should, dependent as they are on person-to-person initiation and the
vagaries of caprice, be preserved for the future use of those interested in the application
of the ideas.
In no way was this intended to replace competent instruction, but to provide data
otherwise unavailable for the use of serious students of the Fourth Way.
These formulations are the collected notations of talks given by Orage. They were
written not after the fact, but during the talks, and are presented in a collated and slightly
edited format, but otherwise intact, containing his own formulations, and where these
formulations conflict with Gurdjieff’s or Ouspensky’s or Nicoll’s, Orage’s formulation
was chosen as preferred for this volume, although it may or may not be in agreement with
Gurdjieff’s own views.
THE EDITORS
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THE ORGANISM AND ITS FUNCTION
No modern investigation of psychology has defined the nature of human psychology
to any satisfactory degree. All modern psychology cunningly avoids any serious
consideration of the fundamental problem of the nature of consciousness, thus the science
of psychology fails to present the most elementary foundation of its premise.
Psychology holds no common aim in its investigations. All too often its aim is to
find a grip on human consciousness and goals and divert them to a political or social aim.
If we exclude the cults of analysis, psychological “testing,” statistics and social
workers, we can assemble some more or less consistent idea of the legitimate aim of
psychology.
For many years we have known that the human neurological system is divided into
three primary sections: central nervous system which is composed of
the head brain
the spinal cord and
the autonomic nervous system originating in the basal gangliar portion of the head
brain and spreading through the sympathetic system of nerve-nodes scattered throughout
the upper trunk of the body.
A triple division marks each of these fundamental sections, the head brain consisting
of the cerebrum, cerebellum and basal ganglia, and the cerebrum containing sensory,
motor and associative portions. The cerebellum is divided anatomically into two lateral
lobes and a middle lobe.
The interesting point about it is that with the exception of a very few minor reflex
activities related to equilibrium and posture, it is nonfunctional in human beings. Two
thirds of the enormous nerve-impulse output of the cerebrum goes into the cerebellum but
nothing comes out.
Some psychologists can be forced to admit the existence of consciousness in itself,
beyond the simple neurological function. Once this has been accepted, the outcome is
clear.
Strictly interpreting this idea, it must be that subjective experience must be a post-
facto event. Neural phenomena occur within Brodmann’s area 17 and then a sensation
occurs.
In the same way, the neural phenomena of the frontal lobe must determine the mental
experience based upon them, and the emotional experience must be determined by the
function of the opposite parts of the nervous systems.
Thus, when a man thinks he thinks, his response is actually a subjective awareness of
an already existing neural event which is taking place within the frontal lobes.
The whole notion of subjective control, whether mental, emotional or habitual , is in
fact a delusion.
This view is able to explain one of the most serious errors in modern psychology, the
failure to distinguish between consciousness and the content of consciousness.
A person unable to distinguish in himself the faculty of pure awareness and
subjective neural phenomena is plainly unable to determine whether his experience is
objective or subjective. He cannot know whether he is perceiving an external object or
his own neural prototype representing that object.
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All this is only another instance of the absurd, although common, assumption that the
human being is some sort of intruder in this universe when in fact he is manifestly part of
it.
We must reach the conclusion when studying the functions of human consciousness
that man’s access to the external realty is indirect. His awareness is actually directed
upon the end-products of his neural functioning and his internal neural reality is the only
reality of which he can be directly aware.
Many of these internal products of neural functioning refer to external phenomena,
but he cannot under ordinary circumstances bypass his neural function in order to directly
perceive the external reality.
Other neural phenomena represent the current condition of the organism, and thus
“he,” whoever he thinks he is, can be in some sort of indirect contact with his body, for
his body, so far as he can perceive it, is very much a part of his external world, since
information from it comes through the same neural network as the phenomena coming
from the external world.
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THE REAL PICTURE OF MAN
There is a simile which G. has used to furnish us with an idea of the nature of man.
This parable is called “the equipage” and consists of a horse carriage, coachman and
passenger.
The driver is Center number three, thinking center; the horse is center number two,
the feeling center; the carriage is center number one, what is usually called the body, but
which we usually call the moving-instinctive center. The passenger we can call “I.”
Connecting these various parts of the Equipage we find shafts between the horse and
the carriage, reins between the coachman and the horse, speech between the passenger
and the coachman.
Under normal conditions this would be a workable arrangement, for the passenger
should be able to tell the coachman where he wishes to be taken, the coachman should be
able to guide the horse with the reins, and the carriage should be adequately lubricated
that it does not fall apart whenever it starts up.
The actual picture of man is quite different, however. We find the passenger lying
unconscious in the carriage, the coachman dead-drunk on the box, the horse rampaging in
hysteria and rage, and the carriage, which has been equipped with a cleverly designed
self-greasing mechanism which is only activated on rough roads, creaking along with
burned axles because it has only been driven on the smooth artificial roads of the city’s
amusement center. The intelligent thing to do is not deny this picture but investigate it to
see if it is accurate and then do something about it.
The passenger “I” is an empty word. We can call him a prince in exile who has been
deprived of his birthright , spending his whole existence outlawed from his homeland, the
organism, while a succession of usurpers assume control in turn.
When he awakens he will find his throne and his country ravished. How can he
possibly gather his scattered forces and eject the counterfeit rulers, regaining his rightful
place as legitimate ruler of his own domains? He needs a “Merlin” and desperately.
“Merlin” in this case represents knowledge only accessible through the Method and a
school.
Do these parables apply to us? Let us gather every ounce of sincerity we are able,
and ask ourselves if we fit into this picture of man as he really is. If we are very sincere
we may be able to glimpse ourselves for a moment as others see us; if we can be even a
little impartial toward ourselves for a moment or two we shall doubt no longer.
To be sure, a change is demanded, a very radical change, but we must not obey our
instincts founded on desperation or despair. Change just for the sake of change will not
avail us; improvement will have the opposite of the effect we wish and we will be even
worse off than before.
This dilemma is not something we can solve quickly or easily. It is not a very cosmic
quest; in fact it is uniquely personal. The universe is not concerned with our problem
because, just as we are—mechanical, disrupted and impotent to take any authentic, self-
directed action—we serve our intended function in the universe quite well enough for
nature.
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LEVELS OF CONSCIOUSNESS
Man, as we find him, is only partly conscious. Psychology recognizes only two chief
functions of consciousness, sleep and waking.
Regarding sleep, psychology has developed its own varieties of the age-old practices
of dream interpretation, the most widely recognized being the process of analysis, an
almost exact analogue of the emotional technique known as “voodoo.”
Actually the latter, having a considerable longer history, has achieved a far greater
complexity with many forms representing various levels of consciousness and domains of
natural phenomena.
With regard to the waking state, psychology of the ordinary type confuses mental
introspection with consciousness, thus it is not surprising that as man wanders in his
maze of conditioning reinforced by his completely passive waking consciousness whose
role is lethargic registration of already past neural events, his mechanical efforts lead him
in variously widening and contracting circles to the same point from which he always sets
out. His destination and his staring point are the same.
Despite this vicious “magic circle” which encloses him from all sides, he still serves
nature’s purpose quite well. That his purpose in life is nature’s and not his own or to his
best interest does not alter the fact that he is a slave to nature and to organic life in
particular.
Man has entered many wars, almost always after delay and full debate. Man never
accomplishes what he sets out to do; he is fortunate if failure is his only result and he
does not end up by producing an effect precisely opposite of his intentions.
Though his own purposes are plainly not served, it is undeniable that he serves other
functions of nature whose exact intention is unknowable to him as he is.
There have always been hints and fables describing the existence of such dilemma
for humanity. Parables and allegory are the means adopted by schools for passing on such
concealed data.
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THE BLACK SHEEP STORY

An acquaintance with one of these ancient tales is not unusual today even among
ordinary men; it is the myth of the Black Sheep.
This story is a genuine myth, and not, as ordinary man supposes, just a fairy tale for
the entertainment of children. It contains many elements of authentic school knowledge,
concealed in the story only in that we are not directly told in the story itself to whom the
story refers.
The tale relates of a shepherd and his flock of sheep, to whom the shepherd takes on
the aspect of a magnificently beneficent being, indeed, he is to them like a god, because
everything he does seems to relate directly to their welfare.
He employs for these purposes what can only seem to them supernatural and
unimaginable means to assure their safety and rescue any of their number who may have
the misfortune to wander away and become lost or to fall into some other jeopardy.
He leads them to shelter against the cold and provides them with food and other
requirements necessary for their existence. He takes very good care of them; far better
then they could assure for themselves if left to their own devices.
It is then no surprise that they should view his actions as entirely concerned with
their welfare, entertaining towards him exclusively feelings of gratitude and awe.
The shepherd himself, however, has other purposes toward the sheep, purposes
which would astonish the sheep should they actually become aware of them.
The sheep have seriously mistaken the shepherd’s motives, for his care of them is
occasioned primarily by considerations that their wool be thick and useful for human
protection and that the meat on their bodies be well-nourished and tender when it is
finally brought to the market.
These values held by the shepherd and which are the real causes of his concern for
the sheep, relate to matters entirely beyond the knowledge or comprehension of ordinary
sheep.
Ordinary sheep, as can be seen at a glance, are white. They are as alike as so many
peas in a pod, making up the vast majority of the sheep population. But very occasionally
at long intervals there appears an unusual sort of sheep whose presence can also be noted
at a glance, for his wool is black, unusable for the shepherd’s purposes.
The black sheep is more skeptical and far more clever than the ordinary member of
the flock, and while taking care to present an appearance of conformity in his daily
sheeplike behavior, he is continually directing his internal attention toward little
paradoxes which his companions do not seem to notice and which totally contradict the
general view of life held by them.
The annual shearing, for instance, is certainly done at a time of year when the sheep
will be least discommoded by it, and yet it really seems a strange proceeding and, upon
serious reflection, can scarcely be thought of as for the complete benefit of the sheep.
The black sheep also speculates upon the problem raised by the unaccountable
disappearance of some of his fellow sheep just when they have manifestly reached their
prime of life. He develops various hypotheses to explain to himself these and other
peculiar data he has noticed.
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Many black sheep never arrive at any satisfactory conclusions before their own turn
comes at the butcher block, but occasionally some clever specimen manages to see what
he should not see and hear what he was not expected to hear.
We may imagine his state as the truth becomes known to him. The secret he learns
about himself and his fellow sheep is not only a shock, it is so contrary to all his
established beliefs and convictions as to completely overturn them.
Every seriously held life-view concerning sheephood is destroyed at a stroke, if he
can confront this knowledge. Supposing him to feel some brotherhood toward the others,
we may imagine his concern to share with them the data he has discovered regarding
these desperate circumstances.
A large proportion of black sheep who have by chance reached this position never
proceed beyond it. To blurt out this dreadful secret not only arouses the disapproving
incredulity and fear of the other sheep, but is calculated to bring matters to the direct
attention of the shepherd whose method of quashing such subversive activity is to bring
the offender for a premature trip to the slaughterhouse, inevitable later in any case for this
remarkable sheep who is both too clever and yet not quite clever enough.
Still, at even longer intervals, an occasional black sheep avoids this pitfall and is
thrown back upon the most sober considerations.
Such a sheep has lost forever his peace of mind and will soon come to realize that he
has no choice but to add an equal amount of courage to the intelligence resourcefulness
which has brought him to the present pass.
To remain where he is and as he is is certain death, even a sort of deliberate suicide.
But what then is he to do? It would be difficult enough to escape the watchful eye of the
shepherd and, even if he could accomplish it, where could he find fodder and safety to
keep himself alive, and shelter from the winter which he knows will surely come? All is
life all these necessities have been provided for him; he lacks any data as to how to obtain
them.
Maybe it would be best to simply forget the whole affair; to enjoy a life in many
respects obviously suited to his formation as a sheep, and to resign himself to that fate
which will, in any case, overtake him sooner or later.
And so, we can imagine in what straits our black sheep struggles with these
alternatives.
This myth is said to have been put into public circulation by that school which
flourished in medieval Europe during the period when the great cathedrals were being
built. The name of the school which stood behind these activities is not disclosed.
Certain points about this allegory are evident enough. The sheep, of course,
correspond to the human race of which we are, voluntarily or not, members.
The black sheep is that extraordinary person whose pronouncements are too difficult,
demanding or unpleasant to our tastes to be acceptable, should we experience the
profound unlikelihood of ever meeting with him.
But what is the “hidden terror” of the situation he is trying to communicate to us?
Why cannot the majority of his fellow humans understand him? What are the “wool” and
“mutton” of the fable, and who is the shepherd?
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These are questions which the myth is designed to arouse in certain persons who by
chance happen to possess what is called a “magnetic center.” It does indeed stimulate
those queries, but in its public form, is careful not to answer them.
Here we have the questions, no longer veiled or speculative. The black sheep’s secret
is that our lives have nothing whatever to do with our personal aspirations for ourselves;
we are born and live only because death follows life and by our death we provide a kind
of food required in the cosmic harmony of the universe. The wool and mutton of the
myth are our literal physical substances, energies and bodies, in which during life purely
physical substances are accumulated quite unconsciously on our part, and at our deaths
are automatically released for the use of another quite powerful being who has desperate
need of this special energy.
But who is the shepherd? In the myth he did not represent mankind in general in
relation to the sheep; he was a specific entity. In the same way, the tale dealt not with all
sheep, but with a specific flock of sheep.
Mankind on this planet is not the entire human race, or we would never have known
a Buddha or a Christ, who by their own accounts were not messengers from heaven, but
from elsewhere in the universe.
Just as the sheep could see the shepherd well enough but did not understand what he
was, so we also see our shepherd almost every day without the slightest recognition of his
real significance in our lives.
He is not an abstraction; he is a real and concrete part of nature, and he is most
definitely, in a way unknown to ordinary man, alive. The shepherd of this planet is the
Moon. And because the Moon is specific to this planet, the black sheep’s secret is also
specific to this planet.
It will not do to consider the Moon as a kind of devil, however. If there is a devil, it
is “Mother” nature, who is not a mother to us at all. If anything, she is our evil
stepmother who exiles us from our natural destiny for her own purposes.
Nature here is to be considered in the most general aspects, not just those aspects of
the mechanicality of the universe which contribute to man’s mechanicality.
The immediate manifestation of this aspect of nature on the Earth is the presence of
our shepherd, the Moon.
The usual modern cosmogony looks upon the universe as dying, attempting to
support this view by reference to the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
The Moon is dead, the Earth is dying, the Sun is gradually cooling off. Although the
time is far distant in the future, and we need not concern ourselves personally with it, the
final result will be, according to this view, a dead-level state in which the smallest energy
transfer becomes a contradiction and all differentiated forms of matter have been reduced
to homogenous uniformity.
The view held by this Method is far different. The derivation is from above to below,
from top to bottom, complex to simple. At this point we need consider it only in brief.
We begin with the universe as a whole, then from the universe are derived the
galaxies, within which are suns and solar systems. From suns, planets are derived, from
planets their satellites or moons. The direction of transformation of energy is downward
and more diluted in the sense of progressively slower rates of vibration as the process
spreads downward from the Sun-Absolute to the newly-born satellites.
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Such digression is not uniform; it proceeds through what are called “intervals,”
downward as well as upward. A single succession of this kind would comprise the line
from Sun-Absolute to galaxies, to Milky Way, to Sun, to Earth, to Moon.
This succession is an octave and furthermore each separate stage in it is also a
complete octave within itself. The whole series of energy transformation comprises a
very complicated train of octaves of the whole universe.
In this immense extension, a special term is attached to the path from Sun-Absolute
to any given individual moon; such a specific path is called a “Cosmic Ray.”
Each of these countless cosmic rays is considered not only as a path of energy
transformation but as a line of growth.
They represent the more and more intricate branchings out of the limbs from the
parent trunk the farther they recede from the source.
The one in which we find ourselves concludes with the Moon; that satellite is the
“growing end” of our own cosmic ray.
The Moon shall some time become a planet of similar formation to that of the
present Earth, while the latter will eventually, it is hoped, attain the status of a Sun, the
center of numerous surrounding planets developed from satellites yet to be born as
planets, of which our Moon is one.
****graphic #1****
These new planets will in turn develop other satellites of their own and thus the
growth process will be carried on. It is therefore shown that an immense energy output is
required along the path of the cosmic ray, since growth must also be provided for in
addition to the maintenance of what has already grown, and in the transformation of this
energy human beings play a rather large, if unconscious, part.
Our involuntary contribution to this process is of paramount importance; so much so
that any failure on our part to provide these energies in the amount needed could
seriously disrupt the arrangement of cosmic harmony throughout the universe.
Although this destiny is the normal one for satellites and planets, its successful
outcome is by no means guaranteed. All life and growth is in part an unpredictable
adventure and if, for instance, the human portion of the organic Kingdom on Earth should
succeed in destroying itself in the blind prosecutions of its blind antagonisms, the supply
of that particular energy which it furnishes to the natural economy of the Moon would be
cut off.
This provides the human race with a certain importance, although not at all the kind
of importance with which it customarily supposes itself to possess.
Another way to explain this would be to point out that in the octave along the line of
a cosmic ray two inherent intervals exist at which an extraneous influence must be
introduced so that the required energy transformation can pass the interval.
The first of these is at the neighborhood of the note “fa,” which bears upon the
present point. To make this clear we will set out the full cosmic octave, although many of
its relations will not be understood as yet:

DO --- Positive Absolute
SI --- ¤ Galaxies