A Law-Conformale Sechematic

[Russell Smith]

A Law-Conformable Schematic for Awakening Higher Centers
By Russell A. Smith

Our next speaker–Russell Smith–you will remember from last year. He is an author, a teacher…and a Texan! His talk this morning will be on: “How men fell asleep. The way of the Fakir, the Monk, and the Yogi; and how to awaken higher centers.”

Good morning…it is great to be back again! Remember last year? We stretched the fabric of the Universe, created the diatonic ratios and watched the outer octaves unfold. We also got to see how the Periodic Table, Pascal’s Triangle, the Fibonacci Series, the up and down quarks, and the Universe come into being.

Today we are going to talk about the inner world of man. We are going to talk about how men fell asleep and how the three traditional ways came into existence to wake men back up. We are also going to show how this can be accomplished.

It begins with the Law of Octaves. What is an octave? An octave is something that starts at a certain point and either ascends or descends. It either doubles or halves. In addition, we will see how all octaves can be viewed as a “totality”, as a something that runs from all to nothing.

On the first paper that I have handed out, which has the numbers on it, if you will look at the left-hand side of that paper, you will see an octave represented as a totality. The octave starts at DO-1536, ALL, and goes to zero, NOTHING. (By the way, the number 1536 is arbitrary, you may use any number you wish. Ratios and proportions are always the same regardless of what number system you are using. I happen to use a number where all the math that we will do calculates out as nice whole numbers, so we do not have to deal with fractions; but, we could have made this number anything). So we start with the octave from 1536 down to nothing and we divide the totality into its diatonic ratios.

Now, what are the diatonic ratios of a totality? The diatonic ratios of a totality are the whole, 7/8 of the whole, 2/3, 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, and 1/8 of the whole. If we take an eighth of 1536, we get RE-192. MI is a quarter of 1536, 384. FA is a third of 1536, or 512. SO is a half of 1536, or 768. Two-thirds of 1536 is LA-1024. Finally, seven-eighths of 1536 is TI-1344. We will call this scale “Scale-0”.

Gurdjieff said in order to understand our place in this Universe, we have to take the Ray of Creation in an abridged form and look at it as three octaves between four fundamental points. He gave us the four fundamental points as the Absolute, the Sun, the Earth, and the Moon. When I first heard this from Ouspensky, Bennett, or other various authors, and saw their diagrams of the table of hydrogens, I saw that they had placed octaves there. However, no one seemed to have asked the question, which I asked, “Why are the Absolute (DO), the Sun (SO), the Earth (MI), and the Moon (RE) the fundamental points?” I pondered this question.

Then I realized that the diatonic division of a totality places the Absolute at 1, the Sun at 1/2, the Earth at 1/4, and the Moon at 1/8. It became obvious to me that an inner halving of vibrations was occurring within the Ray of Creation at these four points. By their own mathematical position these four fundamental points from Gurdjieff exist where an inner halving of vibrations occurs in the downward flow of the octave itself.

I then understood why radioactive material decays according to the principal of half-life. It decays an octave at a time. For example, Uranium 235, after 713 million years decays a whole octave and you lose half your Uranium 235; that has probably happened to you two or three times! In the next 713 million years, again, half decays. 713 million years later another half decays, etc. I realized that the decay of radioactive material was actually following some constant. It decayed according to octaves. The progression of inner octaves falls at the points of halving within the octave.

Now we can take the four fundamental points DO, SO, MI, and RE and we can calculate the three inner octaves that appear between them. In this scale, we start with the octave between the Absolute and the Sun–DO (1536) to the SO (768), which has a length of 768. We calculate it as an octave. We take 1/8 of 768 (96) and we add it on to 768 to get RE at 864. We take 1/4 of 768 (192) and add it on to 768, which puts MI at 960. We add 1/3 of 768 (256) to get 1024. 1/2 gives us 1152. 2/3 equals 1280. And 7/8 calculates at 1440. Next, for the octave from the Sun to the Earth we will do the same thing. It is an octave that starts at 768 and descends to 384. It has a length of 384. We divide the totality of 384 into 1/8, 1/4, 1/3, 1/2, 2/3, and 7/8 and add the answers on to 384. The bottom octave from 384 down to 192, from the Earth to the Moon, is a length of 192; we divide its length (192) into 1/8, 1/4, 1/3, 1/2, 2/3, and 7/8 and add the answers on to 192. We have now calculated the three inner octaves that occur within Scale-0. We will call it “Scale 1”.

Notice that Scale-1 is a true mathematical scale because its vibrations double or half, that is, every DO in Scale-1 doubles to the DO above it or halves to the DO below it. Every RE on the diagram doubles to the RE above it or halves to the RE below it, and so on.

Now there is something interesting about this scale. If you count the vibrations, there are exactly 22 vibrations and 21 stopinders. Perhaps the Toast of the Idiots and the twenty-one gradations of reason are nothing other than the realization of the stopinders in this inner scale, i.e., the mathematical scale of things. Perhaps the Book of Revelation in the Bible, which consists of 22 chapters, is nothing other than a representation of the vibrations in this inner scale. I suggest if you label the chapters in the Book of Revelation, DO, RE, MI, FA, SO, LA, etc., then read every chapter that is a TI, you will find they are all identical. If you read the chapters that are MI’s, you will find that they are all similar, and so on.

Many things can be understood by looking at these 22 vibrations and 21 stopinders; but that is not what I came to talk about. I came to talk about why men fell asleep and how it is possible to awake.

If, in an octave, the fundamental points–DO, SO, MI and RE–divide the octave into three inner octaves, then we must also take the DO, SO, MI and RE of these three inner octaves and establish between them another scale consisting of nine additional inner octaves. We will call this scale “Scale-2”.

The first octave is between DO-1536 and SO-1152. It is an octave with a length of 384. If we take 1/8 of 384 and add it on to 1152, we can calculate the RE of this scale. 1/4 of 384 added on to 1152 gives us MI, and so on.

In Scale-2 there are now 66 vibrations, in Scale-1 there were 22 vibrations, and in Scale-0 there were 8 vibrations. Now, if we start to examine these scales, we notice something very interesting. All the DO’s in all these scales are notes that came from fundamental points in a previous scale.

We started with two DO’s in Scale-0, the DO at the top and the DO at the bottom. In between those two DO’s six additional vibrations were created, i.e., RE, MI, FA, SO, LA and TI.

In Scale-1 we have 22 vibrations but the four DO’s of this scale were created previously as four fundamental points in Scale-0, so there are actually only 18 vibrations created in the three octaves of Scale-1, i.e., (RE, MI, FA, SO, LA, TI), (RE, MI, FA, SO, LA, TI), (and RE, MI, FA, SO, LA, TI).

In Scale-2 there are 66 vibrations (22 + 22 + 22). 12 of these vibrations are fundamental points (4 fundamental points + 4 fundamental points + 4 fundamental points) that came from Scale-1. This means that 54 vibrations are actually created in Scale-2.

When I started to study this I said, hmm, I wonder…there are 54 vibrations created in Scale-2 and there are 54 cards in a deck of playing cards counting the Jokers, is this a coincidence? Then I realized that if I took out the 36 Number cards I would have exactly 18 cards remaining, which could represent the 18 vibrations that were created in Scale-1. And if I took away the 12 Face cards, I would have 6 cards left, exactly equal to the 6 notes created in Scale-0. Finally, if I took out the 4 Aces, I would have 2 cards, the jokers, which represent the 2 DO’s that began the whole process.

When I studied the deck of cards, I realized that I had a schematic, or a symbology that exactly fit the mathematical structure of inner octaves. So I started researching cards. I called the Smithsonian. I called everybody. No one seemed to know where the deck of cards came from. Finally I heard from some fellow who said that in France, back in the 17th century, a group of people who had discovered great knowledge, designed the cards in order to conceal their discoveries.

Was the deck of cards designed to represent this inner schematic of octaves or is it just a coincidence? Either way it does not matter because they do fit the schematic perfectly; therefore, we can use them to study the inner structure of the octave. An octave has a precise mathematical inner structure–3 scales, 13 octaves, 71 vibrations, and 80 notes. We can use the 54 cards in the deck to represent the 54 vibrations in Scale-2. We can remove the 36 Number cards and use the 12 Face cards, 4 Aces, and 2 Jokers to represent the 18 vibrations in Scale-1. We can remove the 12 Face cards and use the 4 Aces and the 2 Jokers to represent the 6 vibrations in Scale-0. We can remove the 4 Aces and use the 2 Jokers to represent the 2 vibrations that began the process.

I have made a diagram of the inner octaves that shows how the deck of cards represents the 80 notes of these thirteen octaves. It is on the other page that has been handed out. In order to make it easier to see I have split the diagram into three rows. The three Scale-1 octaves each occupy a different row.

Mr. Gurdjieff tells us that each center has three parts, and each part has three parts-of-parts. In an octave, there are six cards created in Scale-0 that define the two Jokers. Three cards (RE, MI, and FA) define the bottom Joker; and three cards (SO, LA, and TI) define the top Joker. The eighteen cards created in Scale-1 define the six notes (RE, MI, FA, SO, LA, and TI) created in Scale-0. The fifty-four cards created in Scale-2 define the eighteen notes (RE’s, MI’s, FA’s, SO’s, LA’s, and TI’s) created in Scale-1. For example, In the bottom row the 2, 3 and 4 of Diamonds define the Jack; the 5, 6, and 7 of Diamonds define the Queen; and the 8, 9, and 10 of Diamonds define the King. Then we move into Clubs: the 2, 3, 4 define the Jack; the 5, 6, 7 define the Queen; and the 8, 9, 10 define the King. We do the same with the middle row and the top row. We now have a symbology of centers, of their parts, and of their parts-of-parts.

I have organized the structure, with Diamonds as the instinctive center because they have a four-fold symbology, i.e., four sides. The next progression up would be Clubs–the moving center–which have three sides. Hearts–emotional center–have two sides. And Spades–intellectual center–I envisioned as being one sided, i.e., an inverted heart with a single unified point.

Man’s centers evolve in the following order: instinctive, moving, emotional, intellectual, higher emotional, and higher mental. We all have heard of the idea that there are seven centers. I will now dispel this illusion. There are not seven centers. There are only six centers. What we forget is that the whole octave is the octave of the duplicating principle. We may envision the sex center as a separate center, but in reality, the whole octave is sex. The octave begins at the bottom DO–the duplicating principle–and it ends at the top DO–the development of higher being-bodies.

In the evolutionary process of life, everything that has come about, every new center that has been developed has been developed to enhance the octave of sex. It starts with the instinctive principle and life comes into being, i.e., single celled plants are born. They persist for millions and millions of years. They develop. They add new cards. They get more sophisticated, more organized. They reach a certain moment where another brain starts–the moving brain.

Animals begin to move on the face of the earth. Movement enhances the duplicating principle, because if you can move you can find food. You can stay alive and you have a better chance of having offspring. The result is that the simplest little microbes, insects, worms and such, come into being.

The next center that evolved to better the duplicating principle was the emotional center. Now animals begin to recognize their young. They did not have to dump a thousand babies into the stream. They could now give birth to just a few offspring. They could watch them, feed them, and bring them into life and give them a better chance of surviving and having offspring. After the emotional brain, the intellectual brain was formed.

The intellectual brain’s sexual aspect is the ability of animals to find the same place to mate year after year. It is as if they say, hey, remember me, we met at that tree last year and it worked. I will meet you again at this same tree next year! Right?! Once you find something that works, do not mess it up. Go to the same spot, find the same stream, get to the same tree, find the same hole, or rendezvous at the same cave. Intellectually they realized that if it was successful before, it may be successful again.

Then higher emotion entered the picture. And we can see this in the animal kingdom. Animals have a higher emotional brain. They have loyalty. They protect their clan, their herd, or their pack. An animal will offer itself as a target to a predator so that the rest of its herd, the rest of its colony can survive. It will sacrifice itself to make sure that its species can continue. This process took four and a half billion years to evolve: instinct, movement, emotion, intelligence, and higher emotion.

And then on one fateful day, the sixth brain began. The smallest card in the sixth brain, the most mechanical part of the mechanical part of the higher mental center, is the Jack of Spades. If you will look on your page you will see something amazing. There is another Jack of Spades on the page. That other Jack of Spades stands as the mechanical part of the intellectual center or what Mr. G called the “formatory apparatus”.

I suggest that what happened many, many years ago, before man first developed reason, is that animals had developed all of the cards up to that point. Then, at the moment that man got reason, he empowered a lower card. A lower card became more powerful than many of the cards that had been developed before it. This gave the formatory apparatus, the little mechanical part of the intellectual center, more power than all the cards that came after it…and then, Atlantis sunk!

Man began to back up. He started to lose his loyalty. He started to lose his caringness for his clan. He started to retrograde all of the great developments in centers that had been previously established. He lost his intellectual power to make pyramids and design unbelievable structures; and ended up, only a mechanical apparatus that possessed reason. He fell asleep. He was gone. He became nothing other than an automaton, manifested by an automatic part of a center with only the smallest gradation of reason.

I suggest that long ago someone understood this and realized that there must be a way to rediscover Atlantis, to re-awaken the higher emotional center, and to re-awaken a man’s conscience. Conscience that is supposed to naturally be in a man.

But before we talk about that, I want you to know some other interesting things. The left side of the diagram relates to essence. The right side of the diagram to personality. Man is born with sensation and emotion and when he reaches the age of twenty-one, he should have developed conscience. From these three essence parts of his octave he should have developed movement, intelligence, and objective consciousness.

We can see this division of essence and personality so beautifully in this structure and see how a man is born with the red suits and has to acquire the black suits. We can see that there is a duality here, i.e., what he has been born with and what he must acquire. Man should have developed the higher emotional center upon reaching maturity, but because of kundabuffer, because of our illusion, because of years of giving a higher power to a lower card, all of his higher cards have atrophied…and disappeared. This is why schools were started. Man needed to wake up what he had lost.

We all know there are three traditional ways. If you will look at the top of the diagram, at higher emotional center, you will see that it is made up of nine small cards: The Jack, Queen, and King of Diamonds; the Jack, Queen, and King of Clubs; the Jack, Queen, and King of Hearts. These cards represent the three lower centers, that is, the instinctive, moving, and emotional centers. Notice that this higher center has these nine cards in the smallest position. Gurdjieff said that if we had enough of these cards working, we would have contact with higher centers. But how many is enough?

I have developed a rule called “the rule of two-thirds”. It is based on the principle that if there are three forces and you can get any two of these forces to work together, you are always going to inundate the third. If I get two out of the three forces working together, I will overcome the force that does not wish to work. This means that to have something, you do not have to have it all, you only need to have about two-thirds. We all went to school; did anybody score a hundred on everything? The rule of two-thirds says you do not need to get a hundred to be a doctor, you do not need to get a hundred to be a lawyer, you could probably get about sixty-six percent and they would still let you get through.

If we apply this principle to the nine cards that represent the smallest parts of the higher emotional center, then how many cards do we need to awaken it? Six. To begin, I will give you, today, three Jacks. The Jacks are the mechanical parts of centers and the mechanical parts function automatically. So everybody starts with three Jacks. And if they need six cards to wake up this higher center, how many more cards do they need? Three.

I suspect that long ago, someone saw how man had backed up, how Atlantis had sunk; and they realized that they needed to get three more cards to re-illuminate this center. So the first traditional way was formed, called the way of the Fakir. The Fakir works on the instinctive center. He works on sensations. He will lie on a bed of nails. He puts his legs in ant heaps. He stands on his toes and his fingertips in front of the Temple. By trying to evoke great force out of his sensations, he may be able to pick up the Queen and King of Diamonds. That would give him five cards, and he would be only one card away from consciousness. I also suggest that a man who stands on his toes and his fingertips in front of the Temple, or who will lie on a bed of nails will also attain some development in his Queen of Clubs–in his moving center. He must have some control over moving center; otherwise, he would jump up off the bed of nails or move out of that uncomfortable posture. And so he will get, what I call, some spillage into the Queen of Clubs as a result of his force in the instinctive center. He will qualify for six cards and may re-awaken his higher emotional center. That is the first traditional way.

The second traditional way is the way of the Yogi. He does it through the moving center. He does it through asanas. He does it through postures. Gurdjieff called this work Haida Yoga. A work consisting of movements. A work that focuses on the moving center. The Yogi tries through dance, through movements, through asanas, and through postures to develop the Queen and King of Clubs. He also can attain five cards and be only one card short of consciousness. The Yogi will have spillage back into his Queen of Diamonds, because he must have some command over his sensations in order to have some development in his movements. Then he, too, may become illuminated and become conscious.

The third traditional way is the way of the Monk. The Monk does it through the emotional center. He goes into prayer. He fasts. He masters denial and obedience. Through these pressures he tries to develop the Queen and King of Hearts in order to get his five cards. Spillage from sitting on his knees for six hours scrubbing the floor will give him some prowess in sensation and his Queen of Diamonds, and he will get the six cards necessary to awaken the higher center.

The Fourth Way is the way of balance. In the Fourth Way a man tries to develop three Queens–one in each center–in order to attain six cards needed to awaken the higher center.

This is how the three traditional ways came about, and how the Fourth Way was started. Remember, when Atlantis sunk, we lost all intelligence and higher emotion. When we attained the first card of reason–the Jack of Spades–we imparted this reason to the formatory apparatus, causing it to be superior to all the cards that followed. Then slowly year after year, we lost, and we lost, and we lost, until our conscience was left buried in us.

There is something else we can realize from this study. We are told that higher centers are fully functional, that they are ready to go, and now we can see why. The higher emotional center is made up of the instinctive, moving, and emotional centers; and if they are functioning, then the higher center comes into illumination fully functional. There is nothing to develop. It is based on lower centers.

What is interesting to notice is that the Jacks, Queens, and Kings are small cards in the top row, and medium size cards in the lower rows. Do you know what that means? Something has got to die. Something has got to step down. Something has got to get out of the way for something higher to enter a man. Some great subjugation must take place.

For a higher center to come into fruition the medium size cards must give up their importance and become smaller size cards. The Bible talks of two deaths, the first death and the second death; we can find that here. The first death is when the Face cards step down to the bottom row and illuminate conscience, self-consciousness; the next death is when the Aces step down to the bottom row and awaken reason, objective consciousness. There must be two deaths that a man goes through to complete his journey on this earth; first, to awaken his buried conscience and second, to develop his consciousness. We start with instinct…from that, movement is developed. We are given emotion…from that, intelligence is developed. If we can wake up conscience…then consciousness can be developed. To me, this is a very exacting structure.

Remember…this is not just a symbolic thing that I drew down on a piece of paper. It is a replication of an exact mathematical structure that is depicted in a symbolic form. On the other page that I have given you I have printed the cards right next to the math, so you can cross reference one side to the other. In this way, you can see how this all ties together and becomes one picture.

I am very fortunate to have been given an exercise, which we do in Texas, that allows this transformation to take place. The exercise causes the Face cards to step down and take the smaller size. People are usually amazed. They stay a week. We study my book. We go through all the math. We work on their being. And by about the sixth day they are ready to do the exercise. The exercise is called April Fools. It is called April Fools because April 1, 1990 is when it was first given to me. Actually, it was given to me March 30, 1990. I had three students at the time. They had all been in the work for many years. They all made great efforts. If something happened in the world, they could take a breath, or say, “I am,” and be free from it. If somebody cut them off on the freeway, they did not try to chase the guy down like I use to do. They were pretty free. However, they all felt incomplete as if something was missing. They knew from their prolonged contact with me that I had something permanent in my carriage and they did not. And so, one by one, they would come to me and express their concern.

Then on one of my trips out of town, I was sitting in my motel room pondering on why the higher center was not permanent in these people like it was for me? The answer came. So I went back to Dallas. It happened to be Sunday, April 1st. We had our classes on Sunday since that was when I was usually in town. I told my fellow seekers the answer that came to me a couple of nights before and the exercise that I had been given. We did the exercise and they all awakened the higher center simultaneously. So to us it is a very special day, in fact they all consider it their birthday.

The other individuals who have come to Texas to work with me, and with whom I have shown the April Fools exercise, are always amazed that in 8 minutes a single exercise is capable of illuminating a higher center. Not for just a moment, nor for just a day but permanently puts a passenger in their carriage that does not leave. When they wake up in the morning, they find themselves in the third state of consciousness with a double arrow of attention–themselves manifesting and something watching them manifest. After two or three days go by, they come to me and they say, “It is still there.” A week goes by and they say, “I cannot get rid of this thing. I cannot, not remember myself. The Steward is always watching. Sometimes I feel if I turn around quick enough, I will be able to see it.”

So, it has been a pretty amazing journey. And I suggest it can be that way for you. Most men only work with their Jacks–the mechanical parts–and as we have shown, the Fourth Way depends on us developing three Queens. And the Queens–the emotional parts of centers–only functions with attention. You see, in the olden days it was easier to wake up because life required us to pay attention. In the olden days, we had to run down our dinner, not in our Mercedes, but out there in the woods somewhere. We had to develop a great attention in our moving center to do that. Life automatically provided that for us. We had to walk out of our cave or climb down from our tree and use our sensations. We had to smell everything within miles, see every little rustle in the bushes. These parts of our centers were automatically developed by the, as Gurdjieff said, bumpy roads of life. Life…kept the carriage well greased, but we got lazy. We do not chase down our dinner anymore, we walk in and order it, somebody else has chased it down, and they did not even do that, they grew it on some farm in some pen. And so we have no use for the emotional parts of our centers. We no longer have to develop our Queen of Clubs, or our Queen of Diamonds, or our Queen of Hearts. Life has become too convenient, and as a result, we have ended up as nothing other than an automatism, nothing but Jacks, nothing but automatic parts of centers that function with no attention whatsoever. But I suggest that if a man will bring attention, if a man will work hard to try and bring focus to his sensations, and his movements, and his emotions, he will develop these three cards and attain the six he needs. Then there is a possibility to find a way to have them step down and illuminate his next higher center. After which life really begins because with a permanent passenger in the carriage, there is something always there to act as a permanent, impartial observer. I know before my transformation my observer always changed; first this guy did some observation and then this part of me did some observation and then another part. These parts never got together and told each other what they saw. It was like a new discovery constantly. But once the Steward, once the permanent passenger takes his position in the carriage, then there is something constant there that observes and never gets out. That makes the work a lot easier. When some erratic I jumps in the carriage and says, “Let’s go here,” and then he looks over next to him and there sits Mr. Steward, he says, “never mind, we do not have to do that” and he politely excuses himself and gets out. So I would ask you all to make great efforts on yourself, to understand the mathematical structure of octaves in the Universe. Like Wim Van Dullemen told us the other day, and as Harry Mulisch says, “it is all octaves”; or as Gurdjieff said in the chapter The Relative Understanding of Time:

“It is necessary to notice that in the Great Universe all phenomena in general without exception wherever they arise and manifest, are simply successively law-conformable ‘Fractions’ of some whole phenomenon which has its prime arising on the ‘Most Holy Sun Absolute.’

“And in consequence, all cosmic phenomena, wherever they proceed, have a sense of ‘objectivity.’

“And these successively law-conformable ‘Fractions’ are actualized in every respect, and even in the sense of their involution and evolution, owing to the chief cosmic law, the sacred ‘Heptaparaparshinokh.’

Thank you, for your interest and attention. In closing I will add, for those who would like to learn more about the laws of World-creation and World-maintenance, or to anyone who would like to awaken higher centers, I shall see you in Texas…. Are there any questions?

Session 10, Questions and Answers and Contributions

Richard Liebow: I was thinking of the story in the second chapter of In Search of the Miraculous. Mr. Ouspensky is visiting Mr. Gurdjieff and sees him down on the floor observing this Persian carpet mender. Gurdjieff is trying to buy that special hook and the guy won’t sell it to him because it is much too valuable. It is the essence of his way of earning a living. The next day Mr. Ouspensky comes to the same place and sees Mr. Gurdjieff down on the floor and he’s fashioned a hook. He’s filed it out of the blade of an ordinary penknife, and therefore learned all the secrets of carpet mending. And God damn it Russ, I want that eight-minute exercise, and I want it now Russell, right here, right now, we will give you another eight minutes!

Russell Smith: Any other questions?

Richard Liebow: Touché!

Russell Smith: You are welcome.

Wim Van Dullemen: Russell, thank you very much, you always inspire me a lot. You have done a great job and I can tell you why I think that you have done a great job. I read an old book in which I saw, maybe the first mathematical construction of how the Universe was created. Socrates explained it to his guest, and he explains that the Creator took one piece here and then took 1/8 there, 1/64 over there. After a long explanation of how the Creator divided the Universe, even Socrates himself ends his explanation by saying, “And then, thank God, it was all over!” And I want to thank you. You take it down very precise, sir. And now comes my question. I read your book and you have based all the calculations on the divisions as given in piano tuning. That means your calculations are based on what they call the Whole Tempered Division of the Octave. Now, I don’t know if you know the book from Jamie James Music of the Spheres; he tries to recalculate the original calculations as given by Socrates in the Timaeus. He also indicates that in doing the recalculations that Socrates did, as they are explained, went wrong here and there. But I didn’t have the time to simply make all the calculations, although I wished I had had the time. I think by the way that you are more gifted than I am in this field. But I wonder one thing very strong after I read your book, that is, if one would make the calculations out of what Socrates said in the Timaeus, would they stand the same as if you make the calculations out of the diatonic division as it was formulated in the 1700’s?

Russell A Smith: That, I do not know. I have not seen those calculations. I have, however, experimented with many different systems and they all seem to indicate the same structure.

Frank Brzeski: One thing that has always interested me is sometimes he uses the word brains and sometimes centers; how do you see that? That’s one question. The second question is, how do you relate these to the bodies, if that’s relative here?

Russell Smith: Very good question Frank. First we will tackle brains and centers. Ouspensky says in The Psychology of Man’s Possible Evolution that a brain is a center. We call them brains. We call them centers. We call them functions. They are all the same. Man has six brains. He has six centers. He is divided into three stories so we can look at him as a three-leveled being. Your other question was how do the brains relate to man’s bodies. There are three being-bodies. One relates to the lower story, another to the middle story and the third to the upper story. The physical body relates to the four lower centers. The body Kesdjan or Astral body relates to the higher emotional center; and, the highest being-body or Mental body relates to the higher mental center. The completion of the Mental body gives us a fourth term–the Causal body–but it is not really a body. Remember we needed four fundamental points to define the three inner octaves. Here, too, we need four names to define three bodies. The same thing happens in an octave. There are only seven stopinders in an octave, but we need eight notes to define them. We always have to have one more point than what we are defining.

Keith Buzzell: In the perspective of the cards, what happened to Atlantis? Why did it sink?

Russell Smith: Because the Jack of Spades (the smallest card of the higher mental center) imparted to the Jack of Spades (the formatory apparatus)–reason. Reason made the formatory apparatus superior to the Queen, King and Ace of Spades in the intellectual center and all that developed in the higher emotional center. The moment that we attained the first inkling of reason, we imparted to the formatory apparatus a greater prowess than all the cards that followed it. Atlantis (the higher emotional center) slowly sunk. Previously, we had to learn to use intelligence and higher emotion, and now we did not…we had reason…even though it was only the most mechanical form of reason from the higher mental center’s smallest part.

Richard Liebow: It seems that even in today’s world we are getting worse. We are not using reason any more. Do you see a danger in the fact that we are investing our reason in computers and artificial intelligence, Russell?

Russell Smith: Yes, most definitely Richard. I have a son who, when he was in tenth grade, came home from school one day and I do not remember how the subject came up but I asked him how many days were in a year? He did not know. And I thought how could a child in tenth grade not know how many days there are in a year. So I asked him, where do Kangaroos come from? And he did not know. And I said, well how many dimes are in a dollar? And he did not know. I was ready to line up all the teachers he ever had and shoot them. People do not know how to do math anymore? If they do not have a calculator in their hand they cannot add! Fortunately, everyone here is from the older generations, we know how to do math long hand; maybe some of us had slide rules, remember those neat little inventions! They were replaced by the calculators and now by computers. You don’t even have to hand-write a letter anymore; you type it and E-mail it. So you are right Richard about the decline of reason. I want to introduce an idea about kundabuffer, which was not introduced the other day. Kundabuffer represents the fact that nature shoves everything to the most mechanical–to the bottom. That is how she survives. No matter what it is, she wants to make it as mechanical as quickly as possible. She wants to push it down to the Jacks. Today we have learned why we have got to push it back up to the Queens. We have got to go against kundabuffer. We have got to go against nature. We have got to go against God. We have got to try and push it back up, to raise Atlantis! Nature wants to make it mechanical; we must make it intentional.

Wim Van Dullemen: That is exactly the same principle as described by Harry Mulisch.

Russell Smith: Thank you, and thank Harry Mulisch.

Wim Van Dullemen: Exactly the same.

Russell Smith: So that is how I see it. Nature’s innateness is to push it down. That is good, because when I woke up this morning I did not have to learn to walk all over again. It would have been tough having to crawl to the bathroom! So I am glad nature has found a way to make things mechanical; but it does not serve this higher DO. Remember, there are two DO’s on the chart: the bottom DO and the top DO. Every animal, all evolution, up to the moment of reason serves the duplicating principle, serves sex. Do you realize that you are the only species on the face of the earth that can choose not to have sex? You are the only species that has the opportunity to serve the DO – beyond. Every species before you had no choice but to serve the bottom DO. However, you can intentionally decide to put yourself under the emanations and the possibilities of the DO which comes from above. You can push against nature and develop your own Queens…Queens that are required for illuminating higher centers…Queens that open the possibility of having a permanent passenger in your carriage…Queens that can get you into a permanent state of self-consciousness. Then, when you wake up in the morning, you will find that there are two of you–you and the observer of you. That is what this journey is all about.

Bert Sharp: As you are really saying and as Wim Van Dullemen is saying from Harry Mulisch, with the development of the intellectual mind we, because it is so powerful and so useful for our survival, no longer bother to develop feeling and even moving, right?

Russell Smith: That is correct.

Bert Sharp: And then the big tragedy, of course, is that the intellect has become so powerful it is using us and we are no longer able to use it and this is the road to the end.

Russell Smith: Yes. If we look at the mechanical part of the higher mental center, we find the intellectual center. So, for reason, intelligence is an automatic thing. Therefore, intelligence functions for reason like instinct functions for life…AUTOMATICALLY. That is tough. Because now, all we have developed in us is a reason that comes without attention. It may help us to invent computers but it does not serve us in our movement towards the final DO, thus being able to complete the octave and develop in us a something that can withstand the shock of death…so we do not die like dirty dogs.

Bert Sharp: Intellect is probably selfish, right?

Russell Smith: Yes. And I think we all know these things. I am not telling you anything new. I am just putting it into a schematic that we can look at logically, law conformably, with a mathematical tenacity that we can shake a stick at. We can say well, of course, Fakir, Yogi, and Monk–sensations, movements, and emotions. Then comes the Fourth Way, getting the six cards; finding the great subjugation, which all religions talk about. How do we get them to take the lower role? How do we subjugate them so the higher can appear? I look at it like a window. There are only three rows that can be seen in the window. You turn the dial and move the middle row down to the bottom and the row above can enter. Then you turn the dial a second time and, again, move the middle row down to the bottom and the highest row appears.

Sy Ginsburg: Your permanent passenger that you have developed through this exercise, you said is there when you wake up in the morning. You also happened to mention to me outside this room that it is there during sleep. I would relate that to lucid dreaming. My question is: Does this permanency exist during the transition from, let’s say, relative consciousness to sleep and then from sleep to relative consciousness; so that, it is not really a question of waking up in the morning and it is there, but that it is there all the time?

Russell Smith: That is a good question Sy. I would say, as I make the transition from states, there is always a moment of overlap between one to the other. There are times when I am asleep and I am not dreaming and I am not aware of the second state of consciousness, or the third. Then there are times when I dream and the passenger is not present. And, there are times when I actually control the dream. It is a weird feeling because here I am, in a dream, and I say, I do not want to dream this dream anymore. I want to dream about this over here. And it just changes. Somebody is chasing me in my dream and the higher center says, “You should chase him”…and so I do! Instead of the fear of running and being caught, all of a sudden I am trying to catch the person who was chasing me. So, sometimes it is present in my dreams and at other times it is not; but, once I go from sleep to awake, it is present. So you are probably correct. It is there all the time, but in the sleep state it is possible to not notice it.

Sy Ginsburg: I find sometimes that I find myself falling asleep, into a dream, without falling asleep; and, sometimes occasionally, I am awake in the dream, directing the dream, because that is my reality, and it is more real than real; and, I find myself waking, and I am into this reality and the dream continues, and I am in two realities at once.

Russell Smith: Yes. I get up to go to the bathroom and I say, “I like the way this dream is going, let’s keep it going.” I go back to bed, and it never misses a beat. I am following the random associations that are taking place, observing them, and allowing them to continue.

Bill Murphey: You might mention that the Fourth Way is an easier way, because it is easier to get three Queens than to get two Queens and a King.

Russell Smith: That is correct. That is why this is called the way of the sly man; because it is easier to develop three Queens than it is to get two Queens and a King. And by the way, we can see what happens along the way of the Fakir. You get the Diamonds and you get two Clubs, but you only have the Jack of Hearts, you only have the mechanical part, which does not serve you, you are lopsided. If you are the Yogi, you get the three Clubs and you get the Queen of Diamonds, but you do not have the power of the Queen of Hearts; you are a weak Yogi. And if you do it by the way of the Monk, you get the Hearts, and you get the Queen of Diamonds, but you do not have anything in the moving center, so you are a stupid Saint.

Ocke de Boer: When you are in bed and you are dreaming, or sort of half awake, and you move in your bed and you suddenly lose your dream and cannot get back to what you are dreaming…but when you go out of the bed and back from the toilet, and want to continue your dream, you never know what you would have been dreaming if you would have stayed in bed.

Russell Smith: Perhaps, but what has been happening with me is that I know I am dreaming. I know it is a dream and that is why I have a control over it, I can direct it. And so there I am and it is a pleasant dream. The Fourth Way is invading my dreams, my random associations of centers. Remember that all six centers have a constant flow of associations. They began the moment that you were born and continue until the moment you die. It is only when we go into a sleep state that one center is listening to the random associations that are going on in another center. That is what a dream is. But something higher is able to be a permanent observer of them. Instead of the observer changing from one center to another, the higher center becomes a constant observer. He sees all the associations flowing on and he sees where they are going. If he likes them he allows them; if he does not, he changes them.

Russell Smith: If there are no other questions, I implore each of you to bring attention to all that you do, develop those Queens, get your six cards…and I will see you in Texas!

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