Gospel According to Orage unedited

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ORAGE


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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 co uld 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 b e 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, vo lume, 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 hu man psychology to any satisfactory degree. All modern psychology cunningly avoids any serious consideration of the fundamental problem p roblem of the nature of consciousness, thus the science of psychology fails to present the most elementary foundation o f 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 postfacto 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 opp osite 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.




























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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 end-p roducts of his neural functioning and his internal n eural 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 n umber 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 b ut 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-




























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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 co nsiderable 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 b y 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 p oint are the same. Despite this vicious “magic circle” which encloses him from all sides, he still serves nature’s purpose quite well. That his h is 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 pu rposes 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 ado pted 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 en tirely beyond the knowledge or comprehension of ord inary 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




























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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 co ntrary to all his established beliefs and convictions as to completely o verturn them. Every seriously held life-view concerning sheephood is d estroyed at a stroke, if he can confront this knowledge. Supposing him to feel some brotherhood toward the o thers, 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 T o 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 who se method of quashing such subversive activity is to bring the offender for a premature p remature trip to the slaughterhouse, inevitable later in any case f or 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, an d 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.




























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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 pub lic 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 n othing 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 uncon sciously on our part, and at our deaths are automatically released for the use of another quite powerful being who has h as 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 p lanet 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, d evil, 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 h er 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




























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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 E arth, 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 an d 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 p rovided 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 on e 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 p rosecutions of its blind antagonisms, the supply of that particular energy which it furnishes to the natural economy of the Moon would wou ld be




























LA SOL FA MI RE DO

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¤

Milky Way Sun Planetary System Earth Moon Negative Absolute

The position “fa” locates the question now at issue. Between “fa” and “mi” exists the interval which must be bridged if the energy transformations originating from the Positive Absolute are to be passed below the phenomena of Planetary Systems into the phenomena of a lower cosmos. The cosmic device adopted to this end consists in the existence of Organic Kingdoms on the surface of planets, and through the operations of these Organic Kingdoms the energies received at the planetary surface from the higher cosmoses is absorbed, transformed and again passed on in usable form to the Moon which cannot use this energy in its higher formation. This interposition of Organic Kingdoms between levels of the universe is necessary to the reciprocal feeding process of the whole. There is a reciprocal, very complicated, process of this kind which continually proceeds throughout the entire universe, keeping it in perpetual balance. It applies not only within the limits of an Organic Kingdom, within which a delicate balance is maintained among the various species, but a comparable feeding process exists throughout the whole of manifested reality. This Earth, as we know, is not overrun by certain insects for this very reason; in Bermuda, for instance, the ants are eaten by the cockroaches which in turn are devoured by the spiders; in any locality, when these balances are disrupted, very serious results ensue. Often we cannot see the ends of these trains of reciprocal feeding in either direction and assume that they are completely local phenomena. In our own case, much of the Earth’s Organic Kingdom feeds man directly or indirectly, and man in his turn feeds the Moon, as well as enriching the soil of the planet






























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The fact is, the more extraordinary such persons seem to be to ordinary man, the more abject slaves of the Moon they are, because they serve the Moon on an even larger scale. The path to development is said to be from the extraordinary through the ordinary to the normal. If one has the misfortune to be an “extraordinary man” or a “powerpossessor,” he must first become ordinary in order to be receptive to an opportunity to become normal. It is no superstition which has given the Moon’s name to what we call “lunatics,” those who have fallen so deeply under the power of negative emotion that they are unable to function in even the ordinary capacity. The Moon is the real mainspring of human life on this planet; the great pendulum imparting force to all the doings of o f semiconscious men. The greatest heroisms and most spectacular crimes are equally the outcome o utcome of their lunar-powered sleep. This is the actual situation for contemporary man in the larger picture; he is unwittingly the mechanical slave of the Moon. The more powerful the dictator, the more fanatic the religion-monger, the more famous the philosopher, the more celebrated the mathematical genius, by this very token we can know that he is the Moon’s objective slave. The potential for man is of course quite another matter.




























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THE ORGAN KUNDABUFFER First it must be understood that under no conditions, at any time or at any place, can man even potentially avoid fulfilling some cosmological function. His potentiality consists only in the remote possibility of a choice in whom he will serve. For in serving the Moon, there is no purpose of his own that he can also serve. Willy-nilly he provides wool and mutton for the nourishment of the Moon and in so doing provides no substances for his own use. No matter how shrewd his manner may seem to the casual observer, his face is nevertheless nevertheless the blank and bleating counteneance of the empty-eyed white sheep, who serves the Moon. It will be worthwhile just here to note a few of the many mechanisms that are employed by nature to keep man in his impotent bondage. That these are attributed to a higher intelligence than his own will be of interet later on, but first it is important to see exactly what they are. The first, and greatest, of these is man’s inability to see reality right-side-up. If a thing is objectively ob jectively large, he is forced to see it as small; if it is to high, to him it looks low; if any matter has a genuineeven finalimportance to him in objective fact, he sees it as a passing and trivial thing of no concern to him, and he remains complacently passive; there is no danger of his feathers getting ruffled for very long. This situation is not due to caprice or to chance, but to man’s possession possession of a certain psychological faculty which has the psychological and physical effect of reversing any




























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to escape, to provide energies for something foreign to his nature: the sustennace of the Moon. Later, the necessity for this distortion disappeared, because the period at which man could have developed automatically into a self-perfecting being as a whole race had passed, and so organic formation was reduced to atrophy. Man is now born fully normal, but the effects of Kundalini are carried forward from one generation to the next by the conditiong of successive genertions by their parents in this abnormality which they inevitably have received in exactly the same fashion from their parents and their parents’ parents. Kundalini is not a myth; it is a genuine faculty whose correct name is “Kundabuffer.” It is one-partthe diseased partof the general psychological faculty of “imagination.” This brings us to a brief b rief study of the function of imagination in its two existing forms. Imagination may be divided into two distinct faculties; Real Imagination, and Fantasy. Real Imagination is concerned with real things. One is exercising the faculty of Real Imagination if in considering a standing lamp, for example, one reflects upon the nature of the materials composing it, the methods by which those materials have b een obtained and processed, upon the theories of vision upon which the lamp has been processed, its various potential uses, uses, its place in economics as an article of merchandise in relation to the manufacture and sale of the item and its effect on the workers and salespeople and their recompense for their their labors, and upon further, perhaps more esoteric, factors too numerous to be mentioned here. Not only in moments of idleness, idleness, but during the homeliest homeliest of tasks may Real




























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No man’s life is especially easy on this abnormal planet, and everyone encounters their share of difficulties, problems, and obstacles. It is not customary to look upon u pon them as opportunity; they are instead viewed as unmerited misfortunes. “Why has this happened to me?” Avoidance becomes preferable to an authentic solution to a problem; it may require effort, and phantasy is so much easier. Fancied solutions and imaginary events projected upon the unconscious in a play of scenarios starring oneself as hero serve to ease the suffering of one’s impotence without effort on one’s own part. This T his is just one of the ways in which Kundabuffer promotes the abnormal process the abnormal process of self-calming in ordinary man. Being entirely rooted in unreality, Phantasy renders man more subject to the upsidedown view of Reality. It panders to all manner of o f abnormal weakness, both psychological and org anic, such as vanity and self-love, and self-pampering, none of which could scarcely survive for five minute without reinforcement from Phantasy. But all these matters will be said to be b e natural enough; in fact they are part of nature’s stratagems for preventing us from waking up and seeing Reality as it is; for assuring that we shall complacently continue to furnish the wool and mutton required by the Moon. Mother Nature is a calculated lie; the role of Nature is not that of affectionate mother, but of an ill-disposed wicked stepmother who forces us to serve her purp oses rather than our own.




























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on the physical level of vibration, we cease forever, having served a purpose we neither understood nor agreed to serve. Potentially we may serve higher forces, represented by the Sun, through which we can begin the development of our real Potentialities and the acquisition of certain abilities now unguessed - at but genuinely possible, even for us. Only conscious man can serve higher forces. Ordinary man, such as he is, is useless outside the realm of his local Organic Kingdom. So great an alteration in our Beings and in every other function we now manifest is difficult to understand, let alone achieve, and yet, when we understand the alternatives, we must make the attempt.






























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THE HIGHER CENTERS We have described man as a three-centered or three-brained being and have located and identified these three centers. Since they are presently presently functional in him they are actual centers. But he also possesses three additional centers which are as yet only potential for him. They are potential not because they are absent in him but because they are non-functional in his present condition. They are parts of his organic body but for all practical purposes they may as well n ot be there at all. Before trying to discover discover how they may be made to function, it will be of benefit to diagram their position in the organism and to describe their nature. ****cross section of human organism (graphic #2)****




























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the Instinctive Centers are accompanied by consciousness either fragmentarily or not at all. Center #2 manifests physically all emotional states experienced by ordinary men; hate, fear, affection, anger, sentimentality, sentimentality, desire, satisfaction, and many more. The repertoire seems large because it includes complex emotions, built up as immediate successions or simultaneous integrations of only four fundamental emotions. emotions. Actually the range of emotional phenomena possible to the Lower Emotional Center is extremely limited. The functions of Centers #4, #5, and #6 are respectively designated as In dividuality, Consciousness and Will. The Higher Intellectual Center mediates a different kind of thought-process than does the Lower; but b ut since we do not now experience this type of mental activity, it is difficult to do more than to point point towards it by means of defined terms. The general term for its function is "Constatation." "Constatation." We will use the term "Realization," to indicate that




























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love, its substitute connection with Center #2 # 2 stimulating the appetite of lust, jealousy, greed, desire and satisfaction. In the absence of real connections between Center #6 and Centers #4 and #5, abnormal connections have been established with Centers #2 and #3. They permit the latter centers to steal sex energy, and to operate with much more force fo rce than is suitable for their proper functions. Abnormal as sexual sexual perversions are, they do not constitute the real abuse of sex sex in ordinary men and women. Real abuse is the misuse misuse of sex energies through the second and third centers. In brief, then, such are the general functions of the Higher Centers in man.




























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THOUGHT FOR FOOD Most people think food and drink the ordinary totality of man’s nutritive supply. A little reflection will convince us that this view is incorrect, for if foo d is denied as nutritional intake, it is plain that much more must be included. How long can a man live without ordinary food? In the ordinary case he can do so for days if not for weeks. How long can he survive without air? Here the limit is determined within minutes. And without sensory impressions, for just 1/10,000 of a second, the temporal order of sensory propagation within the human nervous system. In the absence of all impressions man dies almost instantaneously. Now let us see where he obtains his supplies of these essential materials, for impressions also comprise a physical intake of the organism. Ordinary food and drink are taken in at the mouth, pass down through the esophagus and cardiac sphincter to the stomach, through the pyloric sphincter into the duodenum, the large and small intestines. intestines. All these preliminary processes of digestion are described in much detail in the




























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fa magnetism re magnetism mi(shock) gas do gas re liquid do solid ordinary Food Air Impressions These interrelated octaves account for the entire range of metabolic products demanded for the ordinary ord inary operation of the organism. As in any octave, that of ordinary food proceeds through its first three notes automatically; but, having reached the shockpoint immediately above the note mi, it halts. At this interval a new force is necessary from outside in order that it may evolve further and at this point air, made up of gases, is introduced by nature into the machine. It assists the first food octave to continue its evolution while at the same time commencing its own. The first food octave then automatically runs up through its own note, n ote, si, where its possibilities are exhausted. The






























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THE BOAT The Black Sheep's secret--which we call "the Method"--is divided into two main parts, the Open Secret and the Hidden Secret. The method is a rigorously defined succession of steps which are to be taken one by




























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THE OPEN SECRET The Open Secret is called "open" because it can be discovered by perfectly ordinary means, and in fact a great many people are acquainted with it. Over the main gate of the Pythagorean Institute at Cretona were carved the words,




























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But you have to live with yourself, yourself, don't you? Day after day, month after month, year after year you must live with yourself until until you die. Perhaps it would be as well to know something about this stranger you live with, this "Mr. Smith" who places you in such unexpected situations and predicaments. Why can you not accomplish what you you secretly wish, wish, what you really strive for? Is it




























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3. What does "Smith" fear most from the future? 4. What would would "Smith "Smith like to be? To know? To do? (To be: what type type would he like to incarnate? To know: what field if if only one choice but within the field of possibility of complete knowledge? To do: what primary occupation if he were free to choose seriously?)




























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middle maturity, and so on. At the end you should should have a history of Smith that really tells what kind of person he is, and what his history has shown that h e can do well, what sort of thing poorly. A real picture should should be beginning to emerge. All this may be called the "first "first step," the gathering gathering of data. Then arises the possibility of experimental confirmation which consists in checking the biographical



































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ORAGE “23. “24. “25. “26. “27. “28. “29. “30. “31. Science. “32.

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The Three Yogas. Force, Matter, Energy, Radiation, Emanation. Electricity. The Bible; and other Sacred Books. Good and Evil. Time. Incarnation and Reincarnation. Spiritualism. Objective Reason, Objective Conscience, Objective Art, Objective Laws of Association.

The complementary activities of Voluntary Suffering and Conscious Labor begin to produce the second conscious shock, the final shock which permits the food octave of impressions to complete its evolution, the result of which is the formation of the third, or mental, body. Correct Self-Observation of emotions, including negative ones, is the non-identified observation of their organic symptoms in one’s own body. Self-Observation in fact leads to the alteration of the symptoms and very shortly to the disappearance of the emotion itself. But negative emotion considered considered without reference to the particular person who may be manifesting its organic symptoms, is an objective force of finite proportion existing at a given time and place. This force must produce effects; effects; it must be expressed expressed in organic symptoms. Such expression does not diminish the quantity q uantity of negative force present just because the energies of one personal victim have been exhausted; it moves on to another whose organism can be utilized in the same same way. Over a period the quantity of negative emotion remains constant and its successive victims are in fact merely the instruments of an objective force that shakes them for a time and then passes on to another convenient tool. That the amount of negative emotion in a spatial location does indeed remain constant is to be easily seen seen in wartime, when domestic domestic conflicts sink to a feeble level and most of the anger and hatred is projected toward the common enemy; there is as much of it as ever but its victims are now manifesting it in a different direction. However, there is quite another ano ther possibility than these mechanical ones for the ordinary man and even for those who are so far only candidates for human status. SelfObservation of organic symptoms of negative emotions no t only alters the symptoms but destroys the emotional force itself. itself. Every time this is successfully successfully done by anyone, some portion of negative emotion is destroyed destroyed forever and its total quantity quantity is reduced. This was the origin of the old Scottish term, “sin-eating”, originally a technical Christian term. The conscious suppression of symptoms of negative emotion, especially in the



























THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ORAGE instructed human being can cleverly turn injurious objective phenomena of a scale far greater than himself to his own advantage. The suppression of organic symptoms of negative emotion is the beginning of Voluntary Suffering. Pondering is the beginning of Conscious Conscious Labor.

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SYMPATHY AND COMPASSION It has been said that the way to the normal is from the extraordinary through the ordinary. Let us see see what this means. Our planet is plentifully supplied with extraordinary persons-- the maestro, the prodigy of science, the ov erpowering athlete, and that greatest monstrosity of all, the dictator. But all of them, sanely considered, are monstrosities; even in the fields where their activities are entirely legitimate the intense exaggeration of one kind of ability is gained and exercised only at the expense of those other abilities whose total mutual balance is the natural characteristic of man. The geniuses, and in general all extraordinary extraordinary persons, are not superior to to ordinary men but abnormally inferior. Can we say that the ordinary person person is a normal man? man? No, this can no more be said than the same statement be made of a person of forty whose intellect, emotions and physical development are arrested at a five-year-old level. What was altogether normal at one stage is no longer normal after after that stage is passed. passed. Ordinary man is more normal than the extraordinary because there is at least a semblance of functional fun ctional balance; but the real human functions remain at an infantile stage. The ordinary man is as a candidate far the more likely to succeed for in his case the first step is already partly completed and a life-purpose of ferocious ambition need not be uprooted. Ordinary man still has far enough to go, for he experiences sympathy rather than compassion in his emotional life; he possesses possesses personality rather than individuality; in place of conscience there is a vacuum; and his behavior is determined totally by suggestibility. Although sympathy and compassion have the same philological meaning, the one being derived from Greek and the other from Latin, they should be respectively defined as “feeling-for.” Thus when one experiences sympathy toward an unfortunate or or injured companion, there is manifested manifested a high degree of identification. Incompetence is typical of sympathy. Compassion is “feeling-for” in which the attention is directed fully upon the other person. Compassion does not place oneself in the other person’s position but uses all one’s ability to remedy the situation. Sympathy is impractical, compassion is practical. Sympathy is really self-centered sentimentality, representative of the emotions of ordinary man. Conscience is one of the most misunderstood misunderstood words in our language. Its relation to the feeling of guilt is incorrect. incorrect. A feeling of guilt, guilt, or of “sin”, is not conscience; it is merely the substitute for conscience which occurs in those incapable of the authentic experience. Conscience is the simultaneous experience of all one’s emotions. It is not realized, until Self-Observation has been carried out to a considerable degree, how selfcontradictory and mutually destructive the whole of these emotions are, toward toward the same person or subject. To experience these all at the same same time would arouse an unbearable suffering that literally could not be borne, and so all sorts of organic stratagems, such as




























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connoting any human virtue, a sense of “sin” is the best evidence of human abnormality; it is also a stigma of ordinary man, for, with all his self-contradictions boiling within him he is the victim of dissident emotions and his only possibility is to keep them separated. That this cannot always be done with entire success, results in the arising of a feeling of guilt. A genuine conscience can be achieved only when we have so normally developed that we are able to experience them all simultaneously. simultaneously. That is conscience, a symptom of human normality. From personality and conscience the idea of objective dream is not very distant. distant. The Waking state, in which personality manifests is itself a dream state for only in the condition of Self-Consciousness is a man awake. All one’s experiences of everything exterior exterior come to us through the organism. organism. But in the Waking state a man is indeed even though only indirectly, in contact with the objective external reality. This distinguishes these these experiences from the nocturnal, purely subjective dream. Thus the waking state must must be characterized as, objective dream. Manifestations of personality form parts of such objective dream. So do manifestations of other persons. In the course of an abnormally restricted consciousness this presents many an opportunity for valuable work in connection with the Open Secret, for these others are not so utterly different from oneself, and in the state of objective dream they may be seen as projections of oneself, portraying now one and now another facet of one’s own personality. In this way other people create for you and objective mirror in which may be seen concretely, in the reality of objective dream, the actual portrayal of one after another of your own personalities. It requires a certain certain shrewdness and and a certain degree both of experience and of non-identified impartiality to be able to observe accurately, but there are more opportunities than you might suspect. It is not “There but for the grace of God go I”; but “There I go, one yesterday yesterday and maybe twice tomorrow.” tomorrow.” Objective dream is circular and you may be sure that it will repeat and and repeat and repeat. The ordinary man helplessly manifests his own small repertoire of automatic roles constantly, till death. Only an evolution of consciousness can alter our automatic roles by the gradual technique of changing them into conscious roles. This matter matter of objective dream demonstrates again the value of other people; a value so great that nothing else can take its place. To return to the contrast between the ordinary and the normal man, the former is continually influenced by suggestibility whereas the latter is governed by individual conviction. With an undeveloped essence essence and a personality personality formed by hazard the ordinary man lacks the possibility of his own firmly rooted realizations achieved by his own efforts alone thus he comes to to rely almost entirely entirely upon outside suggestion. suggestion. The dependency on external suggestion has been reinforced since earliest childhood by the abnormality of so-called education, in which the student is required to learn by rote all sorts of misinformation and is passed along from grade to school grade by reason of his successful repetition of this so-called learning. An instructor becomes famous if even a few of his pupils have by chance learned to




























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As to all forms of current morality, they are purely subjective, distortions of the original doctrines in every case, in short the production of the abnormalities of the undeveloped ordinary man. None of them can be a genuinely human code; for that which is good or bad at one time, is found to be alternately bad or good at another. To the other hand there is such such a thing as objective Morality, t is to this alone that a normal human being owes o wes his allegiance. This code of Objective Morality comprises comprises five moral principles. principles. The first principle of Objective Morality is this: Keep your physical physical body in its highest degree degree of health. That is the first first duty of a normal human being. being. Closely allied with this is the admonition: Do not permit your brain-systems brain-systems to be soiled. How does one soil one’s mind? The two chief chief means are through phantasy and sentimental data, for that is inevitable under our conditions and cannot be avoided; but by reinforcement of such data from within, deriving from some personal distortion of our own.






























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THE COMFORT BED No discussion of ordinary man can be complete without mention of the Comfort Bed. Legend has it that in a lost civilization far older than our own and even more fully fully equipped with gadgets the utmost triumph was the production of the “Comfort “Comfort Bed”. It could be purchased cheaply and easily and thereafter the buyer had no further worries. He simply lay down on the contrivance and from then on everything was accomplished for him: all his needs were attended to quite automatically, such such as feeding, excretion, an intermittent cleanly washing, sexual requirements and everything else that could be desired, and in the end the contraption even gave him him a decent burial. His existence was thus totally passive, without the necessity for any effort whatever, and this ingeniou s invention permitted its owner to live mechanically in the fullest sense. We can appreciate this situation the better since in our own time, although we have yet to achieve the completed device, we are already already well on the way. To add up the number of mechanical gadgets whereby our trip through life is eased would involve a considerable mathematical sum. Obviously the answer answer to all this is not some back-tonature fad whereby the machines are all to be scrapped; they are part of our present environment and the thing to do is not to destroy them but to relegate them to their proper place in our scheme of practical affairs. affairs. But the greater the number of those machines the happier is ordinary man. Of the same sort is ordinary man’s craving for security of any and every kind, so that he will no longer have to take care of himself but may rely upon someone else. Surely all this this is about as abnormal as may be. But for ordinary man the Comfort Bed is actually a serious ideal. It saves his labor. But for what? Indeed this insane exaggeration of “labor-saving” desires is far closer to death than to life. Many ordinary men are walking about dead while their physical mechanisms still still move; not only have they never developed normally either emotionally or mentally but presently in these two respects they have died in unconscious atrophy while automatic bodily habits continue to give them the the appearance of a lethargic, treadmill life. life. It is possible to die while still “alive””-- the man in whom nothing functions or remains even mechanically active except the first sub-center of his first center is literally dead though moving. The true zombies are parading in Haitian jungles, they are right in New York City, on Fifth Avenue, on Wall Street, in Harlem and the Bronx, and especially along




























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We know that we shall die but we do not know when. Do not succumb to the Disease of Tomorrow; do not put off off doing what is to to be done. Live every day as if if it were your last. last. Maybe it is. Let it not be supposed, however, that this is an invitation invitation to useless worry. Worry is one of those negative n egative emotions always around and, if the ordinary man is not worrying about something really threatening, then he does the the same with some imaginary threat. In neither case is worry justifiable, and it is a typical symptom of the ordinary and not the normal. There is a valuable exercise to try when you find yourself yourself worrying about something.. Force yourself to state the problem clearly clearly and do not permit yourself to do anything else until you have taken some some practical step to solve it. it. Both the energy saved and the satisfaction gained may come as a surprise, and also the realization of how much of both is habitually lost. Such an exercise, of course, will not accomplish the solution of a p roblem that in fact is insoluble; and there can be problems of that kind, for which no solution exists. In such a case the problem remains remains until the sentence, as it were, has been served. A person in so unfortunate a position has confronted a term of Penal Penal Servitude. Since nothing can actually be done about it, what is to be gained by worry? worry? In this case, the best response response is resolutely to dismiss any further worry about it and thus to refrain from adding a useless energy drain. The passage of time may alter the circumstances and thus a periodic review is advisable. Among the threefold functions of human beings there is a trinity possessing both normal and abnormal aspects, the latter as usual being due to premature or undeveloped activity. The names given to this triad are Faith, Hope Hope and Love; they are basic human functions and of course, along with their normality, there goes their distortion in the instance of the ordinary man. In an ancient document written by a Saint of times long past these functions are analyzed in accordance with the degree or level of their manifestation; the excerpt is part of a longer formulation entitled “The Terror of the Situation” and runs as follows-The Faith of Consciousness is Freedom The Faith of Feeling is Weakness The Faith of Body is Stupidity




























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Emotional Faith is Weakness Physical Faith is Stupidity Conscious Hope is Strength Emotional Hope is Slavery Physical Hope is Illness Conscious Love evokes Love in return Emotional Love evokes Hatred in return Physical Love is a function of physical type and electrical polarity Faith as Freedom, Hope as Strength, Reciprocal Love, these are for the nor mal, the fully developed human being. Because we are just ordinary men, all three terms are little understood by us. Even to appreciate that physical p hysical faith is credulity, is difficult difficult and of the kind of faith that is legitimate, normal and conscious we have no experience. The same may be said of hope but with love perhaps we can come to a little better understanding. It is not impossible for us to realize that the yearning to possess another’s body and our delight in such possession possession is a case of infatuation rather than of genuine love and that then the focus, as in the similar example of sympathy, is upon ourselves and not upon the other person. Here, too, we can see that the whole thing is stimulated stimulated by a mutually compatible balance of internal physical secretions that results from two or more physical organisms being attuned to each other in a complicated electro-chemical fashion. For this kind of love we shall not be surprised to learn that the Moon is a powerful ally, a fact that has been recognized in story, song and poetry for ages past. Emotional love is by no means so clearly understood; and by those who claim to be above the physical variety, love is frequently paraded as the highest of all emotions. There is a misty idea here of a conscious love, which the emotionalist is mixing in with the basic emotion importing contradiction into his idea of love. There is however no question as to the practical p ractical consequence of emotional love, for we see it before our eyes




























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Remember the man who said “I love you!” and the girl who replied, “Strange, I feel none the better for it.” it.” Women intuitively know this difference. difference. Let us consider now the nature of Objective Objective Art. Many ordinary men and women are engaged in art, either as practitioners or as gallery. gallery. What is our art/ If we would think think for a moment of the plain meaning of our words and of the roots from which they come, there would be much less less confusion on this and other other subjects. Art is the production of an effect by artificial means. Self-expression has nothing to do with art; in any but one case out of a hundredthousand self-expression is impertinence, not art. Emotion has nothing to do with art except as the arousing of emotion in the observer may be an intended aim. aim. An emotional artist is a contradiction in terms, for the legitimate purpose of art is the illumination of truth through arousal of the emotional emotional in the observer, not the artist. artist. And above all, art is not sensory tickling which, carried to a sufficient degree, becomes sensory masturbation. For humans, art must be human art; art; such as to affect affect human beings. The state of development will naturally determine the degree of effect but there must be some of the intended effect upon everyone. In order to qualify as a work of genuine art it is not enough that Mr. Jones should “appreciate” Tchaikovsky or that a portion of the inhabitants of Paris should applaud Matisse. In general any artistic production which depends for its understanding upon learning some code in connection with it, may be said said to be not genuine art. It is not necessary necessary to learn anything-- nor is it necessary to be a Chinese or a Caucasian or a Negro or an Indian, in order to realize that one has been slapped in the face. Objective Art is just just as objective as that. It now may be seen how great a human being the true artist artist must be. He must know the human organism so minutely as to be able to guarantee the effects such as will produce the emotional result he wishes; finally he must know how to re-mind his auditor or observer by these means not of some personal whim or distortion of his own which only some of them may share, but of a missed fact or a forgotten relationship that is universally and humanly true. And for that purpose purpose he must be of such stature stature as already to have realized this truth for himself. The genuine artist is much greater than the scientist, because he must have been a genuine scientist first. Real and detailed knowledge is only a prerequisite prerequisite of his profession and part of its technique; he need also be a human being so far developed as to




























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to the normal man it can present present a comprehensive review of his struggles struggles and his path. It is indeed a work of Objective Art, universal in its effect. In the creeds and the distortions of modern Christianity, lie the fragments of another work of Objective Art-- the life of Christ. Christ. According to one account the story of of Christ was and is Objective Drama, played not on a stage but in life by the Essene initiate, Jesus. This play had its origin far earlier, in ancient Egypt, as the drama of the life, death and resurrection of Ausar (Osiris), the God-in-Man; its function was to present ultimate human truths through the medium of consciously acted roles. For centuries, we are told, the Essene Brotherhood, a School deriving from Egyptian origins, had held the aim of presenting this drama in life rather than as a prescribed mystery play and for generations had trained its postulants to that end. Eventually the cast of thirteen was complete with Jesus, who had been sent to Egypt for training, and Judas, who must play the next most difficult role, that of the betrayer, was also fully prepared for his part. It is difficult for us to appreciate the magnitude magnitude of such an undertaking. The conscious actors must must not only fulfill the requirements of their own roles, but in addition they must mu st consciously affect their unconscious counterparts so that they are forced to enact their own roles. It may well be imagined what unforeseen circumstances had occurred. What consummate ability must be required in order to meet these difficulties and kept he drama upon its course! There is said to be some very ancient Chinese music of an objective kind and likewise some remnants of color-work and sculpture still surviving in the Near East; but to most of us these are inaccessible. The only survivals in our own Western civilization are again architectural: Notre Dame, Rheims, Chartres. Chartres. According to traditional genuine School planned their design, and directed the construction as a training of the postulants. The gargoyles, for example, originally had specifically descriptive reference to particular emotional distortions to be found in man, and the level of the building upon which they appeared was of objective significance. When normal development is lost, so is correct knowledge and its representation, for certainly that level of art is not produced pro duced today in a civilization regulated of, by and for abnormal man and in which normally developed man man has no part. It is not surprising surprising that our “artists” are so “sensitive” and that they raise so loudly self-approving an uproar; they are ordinary men frantically pretending to a g reatness so far beyond them that the very






























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It must be admitted that very little contemporary Prose Literature ever rises above the levels of Journalism or of Minor Prose and that any kind of Scripture is manifestly absent. LEGEND: 1. Relation of man to the universe; intellectual illumination; ecstasy of understanding. 2. Relation of man to the universe; evocation of cosmic emotion. 3. Relation of man to man; reflections. reflections. 4. Relation of man to man; sentimentality. One of the adjuncts of Objective Art is the objective symbol, in which relationships are set forth with visual directness. directness. An objective symbol is simply simply one that refers to objective fact, in contrast co ntrast to the subjective symbol referring only to subjective imagination. of the latter we have a surfeit surfeit in modern art, but there are many examples of the former that have come down to us as genuine symbols of Objective Art, even when their correct significance has long been b een lost and their correct interpretation has vanished. The art of objective o bjective symbolism begins with the posing of questions concerned with objective figures. A triangle is such such a figure whose basic basic relationships can be perceived equally by all who can perceive any relationships at all. Thus a triangle has three points:




























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fundamentally human factors, although it is still related to them as the fourth point is related to the triangle as the apex of the pyramid. Of course the figures just given are a kindergarten illustration illustration long since appreciated by designers of objective symbols. symbols. We may now proceed to two two instances, and their explanations, of objective symbols that have appeared many times in human records: Octavic symbol and its derivation. An octave may be symbolized in many different ways to show the presence of the three fundamental forces throughout each of its its steps. steps. By altering the spaces between the triangles correspondingly, it can also be made to exhibit the relationships between the intervals. Symbol and Significance.




























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universal tension engendered by the forces respectively striving toward the Positive and Negative Absolutes. There is another symbol of this kind, not ordinarily encountered, since it is part of a tradition kept secret for hundreds of years. It is of such high importance that it is said said never to have been published. This symbol provides a representation of the two primary primary laws of the Universe, the Three and the Seven, and of their interrelationships. interrelationships. It furnished the principles of design for the original and earliest medieval cathedrals, already mentioned as the products of a genuine School. This symbol is called the “enneagram.” The single lines within the circle represent the Octave and by following them from any selected point where they touch the circumference one of the recurring decimals of the fraction, 1/7, is obtained. The double lines represent represent the Triangle of Being, behind all Manifestation and they designate those special points of the octave at the two intervals that permit the reciprocal feeding process of the Universe to occur. This figure also illustrates one of the basic principles of passing on knowledge by embedding the items in anomalies. The result is accomplished accomplished by devising a figure in which some deliberate alteration has been noted and its significance appreciated, the information is thereby disclosed. The Enneagram.




























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THE MOON And finally at the bottom of it all, “ANULEOS”. Anuleos, apparently unknown to contemporary astronomers, is alleged emphatically to exist in our solar system. Moreover, below the Moon, Moon, it represents the growing end of the Cosmic Ray, toward which energies are drawn from levels above. The name “Anuleos” is indirectly derived from the word “Kemespai” which means “that-hole-of-darkness-which-never-permits-one-to-sleep-in-peace”. Each of these stages of the Primary Octave is composed of second degree octaves, and these in turn of third-degree octaves, and so on. Upon such an objective scale it is possible to identify the location of an individual man with remarkable remarkable precision. (see page 104 diagram) Nowadays it is generally agreed that the population approximates the same two billion human beings. What seems to be overlooked is the fact that throughout throughout the span of known history and for the foreseeable future the population has been and will remain the same. In the absence of any accurate census it has often been supposed that the human population of the Earth E arth can vary widely over relatively short periods of time. When, for example, the European peoples are multiplying rapidly, there must, according to cosmic law, be a corresponding decrease somewhere else, perhaps in the interior of Africa or Asia.




























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COMMON COSMIC HARMONY The first Cosmos of this Universe is God or, as Gurdjieff sometimes puts it, “His Endlessness”. We are told that, before the creation, creation, God found Himself existing existing upon the Sun Absolute. The correspondence with man is between between God and our ‘I” and between the Sun Absolute and our bodies. Behind the God of this Universe there is another, and and beyond that another, and so on, but of those we can have no understanding whatever since they are outside the only Reality we can know. Our God existing comfortably enough in the Sun Absolute, noticed that the place of His abode was gradually shrinking and that, if this continued, it would presently disappear, leaving Him, presumably, with no other manifestation. He constated that the circumstance was due to that particular aspect or quality of Time which in the end deteriorates and destroys all physical substances. He directed his full intelligence upon a solution to the problem, which turned out to be the creation of the now-existing Universe, which is essentially a gigantic reciprocalfeeding apparatus and which, due to the slight alteration effected by His End lessness in the fundamental cosmic law of Heptaparaparshinokh, the Law of the seven, by means of this reciprocal feeding can maintain indefinitely not only the Sun Absolute but also itself. the two fundamental laws of Triamazikamno, the Law of the Three and Heptaparaparshinokh, being defining characteristics of the God of our Universe, functioned on the Sun Absolute before the creation of the universe, the alteration in the latter of the two, which now permits the manifestation of the reciprocal feeding process, having been the introduction into the originally uniform octave of the two intervals existing between the notes, mi and fa, and the notes, si and the superior do.






























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Macrocosmos --- any single Galaxy; Defterocosmos --- any one Sun or star; Messacosmos --- any Planetary System; Tritocosmos --- any single Planet; Microcosmos --- any single cell; Tetartocosmos --- any organic whole, composed of of “cells.”

Having made this brief but broad b road survey we may now consider in more detail the phenomena of its operation. We have already described and discussed discussed its two basic basic laws, that of the Three applying to being and that of the Seven, which determines all phenomenal events. The results of these two fundamental laws give rise both to other derived laws and




























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THE LIVING UNIVERSE The Universe is alive and so are all all of its functioning functioning parts. Only at the final end of the scale denoted as Negative Absolute, does real deadness exist. Matter in this condition is not accessible to investigation investigation in our portion of the the Universe. Thus a sun, from the present point of view, is not an inertly flaming mass. mass. On the contrary, it is is a highly complex organism possessing possessing a high order of being and consciousness. consciousness. Similarly with a rock or a solar system system or an atom of lead: all these, and all other relatively independent units, possess not only physical characteristics but those of being an d consciousness likewise, ranging respectively from a very high to a very low degree. Only objective science can distinguish accurately between all these in respect of their different vibrationrates. The Universe is not only living living but growing. Scientific usage confines the word, “atom”, as the smallest part of any of the chemical elements which still retains all the characteristics defining it as such an element.




























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hydrogen at another. The terms denote a variable characteristic of a substance, and the hydrogen numbers identify the relative vibration-rates by which various substances are differentiated. From these considerations the Table of Hydrogens is derived. This will be presented presented only for our own Cosmic Ray, the one in which we find ourselves, but obviously, with the necessary variations similar relationships will will exist in all of them. It will be seen that a series of four overlapping triads exists between Positive and Negative Absolutes, these triads consisting of positive, negative and neutralizing elements and providing the four fundamental concentration points of the Cosmic Ray. Note that the Milky Way, a nitrogen for fo r the superior triad, becomes a carbon for fo r the inferior one. Between the four basic points are are three octaves, and it is the recurrently overlapping triads of octaves which determine the fundamental hydrogens of the Ray, distinguished in accordance with their relative vibration-rates.




























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Food Values, Products and Corresponding Development as represented in the Enneagram. It will now be seen to what an extensive range of connotations the term, hydrogen, may be applied. It has just been used used in connection with various kinds of foods and can also be employed with reference to different grades of Being and of specific beings. These two are not no t so diverse as the might appear at first for one grade of being stands to another in a “source of nutriment”. We have seen that both air and impressions constitute constitute food for man identical with that reciprocal feeding process which maintains the Universe against the deteriorating aspect of Time. T ime.




























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One use of this mantrum man trum is to assist in establishing non-identification with the first physical body but, although it consists of positive statements and although its mental, emotional and practical effect is helpful, there still remains: who am “I”? In this difficulty we may seek to discover that assistance there may be in the concept of the Cosmic Ray. It may allow us to discern the origin of “I” in ourselves and so so “discover America”. Let us disregard the diagram for a moment and take up a larger question. question. The Universe, from Galaxies through and including Moon and including also, of course, all other Cosmic Rays in addition to the one charted, can be considered God’s physical body. From such a viewpoint, then, God’s “I” originates and remains in the Positive Absolute. Moreover, the upper half of any Cosmic Ray represents represents the extend to which






























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beyond our present comprehension; but it is also plain that a beginning must be made here or nowhere; “now” or never. One of the first necessities is to establish a real non-identification with our bodies and in order to do d o so it is well to understand just where the false identification occurs which it is required to break. Actually this identification identification of “I” with “it” is cemented fast




























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significances of the verbal labels, have nothing to do with intellectual objectivity but instead are the result of merely haphazard external events. Thus the relevant associations associations are, and must mu st be, different in the cases of different persons and the co nsequences are not only a failure of correct verbal communication between them but a comparable subjectivity, a lack of proper distinctions d istinctions and a high degree of intellectual incompetence



























THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ORAGE Since objective thought is the physical output of a higher brain system, it cannot form the basis for contradictory conclusions, as may be the case when subjective conclusions are drawn only for the functioning of personally different brain systems of the two lower bodies. bodies. Objective thought is unchanging and permanent only up to the limits of the substances composing it.

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Upon an abnormal planet, nature always strives to achieve and maintain balances and in the present case the balance to be maintained is a relatively uniform human emotional output to the moon, varying within very small limits. This output is not mystical or imaginary; it is entirely chemical and the technical name of the output-substance is ASHOKIN. ASHOKIN. In accordance with a secondary or even




























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TIME Objective time comprises within itself three dimensions, not just the single on e of which we are most directly aware. This latter we will call the first dimension dimension of time, the usual verbal label for which is “duration”. The first dimension of time time can easily be





































































































































































































Gospel According to Orage unedited

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