Theme for this weeks topic:

The theme leading up to this weeks topic is to consider this question: Can I see the moment that an intention or a process "goes off"?

Example 1: You plan to have a nice calm conversation with your teenager, and it ends up in a shouting match.

Example 2: You decide to clean up a few old files on your hard drive, only to discover that now your computer won't boot up.

Example 3: Iraq

Example 4: One nice fall day you decide that all the stuff piled along the walls of your garage make it hard to get out of your car. In late February you are still parking your car outside.


Exercise for the week:

The exercise for this week is to find a piano or a keyboard instrument, play a full octave on it, and listen to the individual notes as you play them. See if you can identify the specific qualities of DO, RE, MI, FA, SOL, LA, SI, and the higher DO.

 

 

Session 7: Octaves and the Law of Sevenfoldness
February 17th

Last week we studied the law of threefoldness. This week we will look at the other great cosmic law, the law of sevenfoldness, or the law of octaves.

Whether we recognize it or not we see this law in operation around us everywhere, all the time. Ouspensky describes this law in detail in his book, "In Search of the Miraculous" (see PDF below). However, he emphasizes only one way of looking at this great law; as a sequence, with one step leading to another along with shocks, deflections, lateral octaves and so on.

J. G. Bennett, on the other hand, stressed the importance of understanding the seven qualities of any process, for example the seven colors of the rainbow or the qualities of the seven notes of the octave. Sequence, he said, is a secondary aspect.

He also had this to say...

"It is a mistake to try and understand the law of heptaparaparshinokh from the outside. Heptaparaparshinokh is not something we can look at as an object of study, it is really something which looks out from us and experiences itself in us. That is why it is the taste that matters.

The taste of salt is something very different from anything we can know about salt. Noting that can be said about a rose can give the smell of a rose. It is the same with heptaparaparshinokh. One has to go through it and experience it strongly enough, often enough, in large and small ways to find out what each of the stopinders tastes like."



Readings:

Gurdjieff on the Law of Octaves... from In Search of the Miraculous (PDF) 21 pages
Gurdjieff on Octaves... Views from the Real World (PDF) 12 pages
The Food Diagram... from In Search of the Miraculous (PDF) 20 pages

Beelzebub's Tales... Chapter 40 Heptaparaparshinok (PDF) 57 pages

J. G. Bennett on The Law of Sevenfoldness   (PDF) 4 pages

Ouspensky on Octaves and the Ray of Creation... from The Fourth Way (PDF) 7 pages

Recordings:

J. G. Bennett on Heptaparapashinok and Purgatory from Beelzebub's Tales. (MP3) 45 min.