(33.) Maurice Nicoll 1 - The Law of Seven (VIII), (IX), (X) - pp.130-135
This is number (33.) of our sequential postings from Volume 1 of Maurice Nicoll’s Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky.
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Links to each commentary will be put on the following Contents page, as we progress through the book:
Birdlip, March 2, 1942
THE LAW OF SEVEN AND THE IDEA OF SHOCK
Part VIII.—In life many things are started which turn out quite differently from what was expected of them. The starting of anything can be represented by this Note Do. The next stage of its development can be represented by the Note Re, and the next stage by the Note Mi. Now if the development of things were easy there would be no reason why any particular development should not proceed successfully to its fullest stage. That is, the octave would be completed. But two factors prevent this. First, the passage between the Notes Do and Re and Re and Mi requires effort to keep the direction of the development in right alignment with the starting-point. Let us take an example. When something is started, let us say an international society for preserving peace, or something of that kind, this starting-point sounds the Note Do. But as the development of this society proceeds, owing to misunderstandings and disagreements and many other factors, the original line is not quite adhered to. It begins to deviate to one side or the other of the original direction. Instead of developing in a straight line (Fig. 1). it starts turning its direction as in (Fig. 2).
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The result is that things in life started with one object may turn out to give completely contradictory results—e.g. a peace society may become the source of war. The second factor in preventing the full and successful development of things is the check, constriction or slowing-down point between the Notes Mi and Fa. When anything develops up to the stage Mi, the place of obstruction is encountered inevitably and unless a shock comes here from outside, the octave will not proceed. That is, the further developmental stages of that thing will not be reached. So apart from the tendency to deviation, there is also the point where a retardation or check appears, called the place of shock. Everything develops by stages, but it can only develop rightly by fulfilling the Law of Seven. Deviation is not proceeding by the Law, and to halt at the place of shock is failure. Each note must be sounded fully at each stage. For example, to speak and read and write a child must learn his letters before he learns his words. He must learn his words before he learns his phrases, and then he will get a shock from life because he is surrounded by people who are speaking and writing and reading. Then he will pass to Fa. But if he has not sounded Do properly—that is, if he has never learnt his letters—or if he has not sounded Re strongly—that is, if he has never learnt his words from his letters properly, and so on, his powers of speaking, reading or writing will be limited accordingly. You all know the amateur, who never has learnt his subject properly, and on the other hand, we can all understand what is meant by a man who is well-grounded. When a man develops his craft by proper stages, and passes, by the shock given by his master, to full craftsmanship, then you have a development proceeding in harmony with the Law of Seven and rightly knit together.
In the case of the marvellous development of a man from a single cell, shocks are given at certain points in the progressive evolution of the various parts and of the body as a whole. One cell, by dividing into two and the two into four, and the four into sixteen, until 50 stages of division are reached, in nine months, produces 100,000,000,000,000 living cells. The dividing process is due to the Law of Three. The
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ordering and arranging and integration of the whole developing man of living cells with the shocks given at certain points is controlled by the Law of Seven. The first shock in the first octave in the whole process is of course given by fertilization.
There are many ways of seeing how things reach a certain stage and cannot get further without help from outside—that is, without a shock. Have you ever thought that nature brings things to a point and stops? But Man can give a shock and take them further in their development. Think of wheat, for instance. Loaves do not grow in a wheat-field. Think of the uses Man makes of raw materials.
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SCALES
Part IX.—Let us speak for a moment about diagrams. A diagram is only a means of understanding. It is like a map. A map is a diagram of a country which gives the position and relation of things. The whole Ray of Creation including the Octave from the Sun is a map. But it is a very strange map. Ordinary maps are either on one scale or another. You can have a map of the town you live in, shewing the position of your house. Or you can have a map of the county you live in, shewing only your town but not your house. Or you can have a map of the world which shews neither your town nor your house. Or you can have a map of the solar system, in which the world appears as a mere dot. This is what is meant by different scales. But the Ray of Creation is an extraordinary map because it is not on one scale but on many different scales. Take the Note Si (which stands for Sidera or stars) in the Great Ray. This note is called: "All possible systems of starry worlds." If we take the Ray in its physical or external meaning this Note Si represents a map shewing all starry systems. The diameter of the physical Universe as shewn by the 100 in. telescope is 600 million light-years and in this vast incredible space 100 million enormous stellar systems exist each containing a hundred thousand million suns. The next Note La in our Ray is only one of these stellar systems—our Milky Way (La = Lacteal Way or Galaxy). This Note is on a far smaller scale. The next Note Sol represents only one of the thousands of million suns in our Galaxy—namely, our Sun—and so on, till our minute Moon is reached. Every Note represents a map on a different scale and this ordering of scales, at different levels, is due to the Law of Seven, which enables us to find the position of our Earth in the Universe. For this reason the Law of Seven or the Law of the Octave can be said to be the law that gives the relation of the part to the whole. But for this law the creative activities of the Three Forces would not be bound into any fixed and firm relationship and order—that is, they would not be organized but merely a heap. It must be understood that the Universe is a vast living co-ordinated Organism. And everything created is created at a certain point and on a certain scale in this vast organism, in which everything is connected and nothing is independent and isolated.
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Everything is created and knit together from the heights to the depths of the Universe by the double action of the Law of Three and the Law of Seven.
This brings us to what is meant in this Work by relative understanding. In order to understand anything rightly you must know something about the whole before you can understand the part. For example, you cannot understand the Earth by taking the Earth by itself. You must understand something of the Solar System, and then again of the Galaxy, and so on, in order to have any right understanding of the Earth. In the same way you cannot understand the town you live in, unless you know something of the country you live in, and again about the continent and finally of the world you live in. To try to understand a thing by itself, as something isolated, is impossible, for everything is connected with and depends on something else, for the whole Universe is connected. This is the basis of what is called relative understanding in the Work. You may have to know only very little about the whole in order to understand the part, about which you can know far more, but unless you think relatively your understanding will be wrong. It would be useless, for instance, to try to understand a sparking-plug unless you understood something about the car as a whole and again about electricity and about Man and his needs and so on. And this is what science is finding to-day—namely, that every domain of science is connected, and nothing can be understood separately, and this is especially the case in medicine, for every part of the body depends on another part and everything is connected to form the whole bodily Man. And when we have reached that point, we have to understand about Man himself and his significance and meaning on Earth.
The Ray of Creation with the Sun-Octave gives us a relative understanding of Man. It is a relative diagram and must be understood in that light. I have noticed that some of you seem to think there is only one Ray of Creation. This is of course quite wrong. There are an infinite number. We speak of Our Ray of Creation—the Ray we find ourselves in. By it we find our position in relation to the whole Universe. Imagine a vast tree. The undivided trunk is the Absolute. The first great branches are the Note Si—"all possible systems". You would have to conceive 100 million great branches at least. We then take our great branch—our Galaxy. Each great branch divides into 10,000 million lesser branches. These are suns. We take our Sun and so finally come to the twig where we dwell in this gigantic Tree of the World and at the end of our twig is a bud called our Moon. But you surely cannot imagine this is the only twig and bud, and that the Absolute terminates creation in our solitary Moon.
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THE SUN-OCTAVE—(continued)
Part X.—It is necessary that everyone should form some distinct conceptions in regard to the Octave from the Sun. This octave represents in the form of a diagram Man's possibilities of development. We can understand this octave literally, in physical terms, or psychologically.
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Physically, we can see for ourselves that life on the Earth depends on the heat and light of the Sun and we can, I suppose, believe that in some manner the physical visible Sun created Organic Life on Earth. We can take the three Notes La, Sol, Fa, sounded by the Sun on Earth and forming the sensitive matter on its surface, as representing perhaps mankind, animal life and vegetable life. We can take the Note Mi which passes into the Earth as the mineral débris of once living forms—the dead bodies interred in the Earth, the deposits of coal, the chalk cliffs, the coral-barriers, and so on, which were all once living things. And we can take the Note Re sounded on the Moon as some interchange of very fine energy-matters—electrons, atoms and molecules—passing between the Earth and Moon, for we know that in the case of the Earth hundreds of tons of very fine energy-matters fall on its surface from all parts of the Universe every day. But there is, apart from this literal understanding, another form of understanding called in this system psychological understanding. When it is said that Man is in the Universe and the Universe is in Man, the first phrase means that Man actually stands in the literal, external, visible Universe. And if we take the Ray in this sense we take it externally, in terms of the senses, that is, in terms of visible objects seen by the telescope. But the second phrase—the Universe is in Man—can only be understood psychologically. Just as the Universe externally is on different levels—for it is obvious that the Galaxy taken as one whole physical organism of suns stands on a higher level than any single Sun which is merely an infinitesimally small part of it—so is the Universe taken internally, as within Man, on different levels. That is, Man, having the Universe in him (approximately), has in him different levels, and these levels in him are levels of being, levels of knowledge, levels of understanding—that is, psychological things, attained only within him. A man who reaches the level of the Sun in this sense reaches to a level represented externally by the physical Sun and internally by the Intelligence belonging to this level. That is, he reaches a divine level, for the Intelligence of the Sun is divine for us. It is, for us, the Absolute, relatively speaking. At this level we must put Conscious Man—Man No. 7. At this level we must put the central theme of the Gospels—the Kingdom of Heaven—that is, Man fully evolved. And from this level we must understand that all esoteric teaching descends to Man on this Earth. For the object of all esoteric teaching is to raise Man to a higher level of himself and Man is created for this purpose. If we think of the Sun-Octave in this way—that is, psychologically—we can then understand how every note in this octave represents a possible state of Man. A man may fall or rise in this ladder reaching from the Sun to the Moon. He can be under more laws or less laws. He can sink, psychologically, to the level of the Moon, and find himself in a prison far worse than the Earth—a prison under 96 orders of laws. He can rise until he passes under 24 orders of laws, and finally under 12 orders of laws. If he is a Good Householder on Earth, he will be under 48 orders of laws. If he overcomes personality, he will be
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under planetary laws, that is, 24 orders of laws, for essence is under 24 laws. If essence develops, he will pass under 12 orders of laws and be at that level of Power, Intelligence and Being represented as the Sun.