Work on self has never been easy, certainly isn’t warm and fuzzy, sweet and frothy, sparkly and beautiful. It will never be everyone’s cup of tea, or a welcome dose of medicine. However, for those who want to work, this is a way I know works, and there is a deep, essential satisfaction in that, apart from all the disturbance, the sweat, the uncertainties involved.
Chapter 1 Awakening The Machine
The sleeping machine does not—and cannot—produce transformation. A change in Being is obtained only through intense efforts and struggle against our tendency to fall into a state of identification with the machine’s sleep.
We must, in short, deliver an intentional shock; a tangible personal experience in which we see for ourselves that all this is not just some sort of interesting philosophy concocted for our amusement. We must somehow see, feel and sense for ourselves that the machine is really asleep; we may even see it as actually dead in the grimmest sense of the word.
Four definite forms of consciousness are possible to us: Horizontal Sleep Walking Sleep The Awakened State Transformation of the Being
but we must find the courage to realize where we actually stand, and then begin from there, if we are not to fall into imaginary work.
Ordinary activities of the machine do not require our attention or presence even to the smallest degree. When we first come to the Work, we are more animal than spiritual, because we have sacrificed real consciousness for a state in which we are carried along by the routine mechanical activities of the machine as it marches its habitual treadmill to oblivion.
And because the nonphenomenal part of ourselves, through the hypnotic influence of sensation and mental distractions and seductions, falls into identification with the machine’s sleep, we will also someday die along with the sleeping machine, never having experienced what it really means to be alive in the machine.
Because we have no will of our own until our will has been intentionally developed, our attention is captivated by the activities and interests which originate within the machine, which is also the source of all negative emotion, all associative mental processes and all negative manifestations.
This subtle activity seems like nothing, but just the fact that we are observing the machine awakens it a little, and our active observation has the effect, although only over a long period of time, of actually altering what is being observed.
Life, as we will come to understand it, is not a progression from the past to the future; it is an Eternal Return, an endless series of passages through, and at right-angles to, the life of the machine, in an effort to perfect it as a transformational apparatus by repeating this passage, eventually repairing it as a whole, higher-dimensional transformational apparatus by awakening the machine from conception to death.
We must understand that it is not the world which is an illusion, but our identification with the phenomenal world, maintained by The Three Great Enemies—wandering attention, distractions, and seductions.
Sooner or later Nature will make a mistake—if we do not make one first—and we will be allowed to pass from the influences of the lower dimensions to the influences of the higher dimensions.
Identification is not just a simple emotional attachment, a desire to be with someone or something. It is actually the state of falling into the same state as whatever it is that we identify ourselves with, such as the human biological machine.
The yogi has learned to transcend the machine, but he is really no better off than any other human being because he has not learned to awaken the machine, allowing it to perform its function as a transformational apparatus upon the Being.
Even a sleeping machine can be used to overcome its own sleep because it has sensations; we can use these sensations to sense the sleep of the machine.
we can see for ourselves, in our own experience, several important factors:
That “the Work” is very real indeed and not just an amusing mental philosophy. That our time in the machine which we could be using for our possible evolution slips away very quickly and, once lost, cannot be regained. That there is a definite deadline for our work, and if we miss this opportunity now, we may not be able to make these efforts later.
Trying to awaken the machine for five full minutes by the clock can demonstrate to us the tangible fact of the sleeping machine, the rumor of which comes to us ordinarily only in mythical tales such as Sleeping Beauty and Snow White, and also at the same time indicates the real possibility of awakening and transformation.
because we are hypnotized, an utter slave to that imaginary self which speaks of itself in “first person”, calls itself “I” without truth, and has a name which gives the illusion of continuity and unity.
thus forming a Bridge between our world and the higher dimensions in which the Being can continue its existence and its work on behalf of the Absolute. We cannot really call the life of the machine our life; since our will and attention are completely subjugated to the will of the sleeping machine, it is the machine’s story which we are helplessly compelled to live. When the machine is asleep, we look like monkeys, falling into every external attraction, fascinated by all the glitter and flash.
One method for the awakening of the machine is to intentionally concentrate the fullest possible attention of the source of attention upon the machine’s activities.
If we hope to develop a brain which is capable of real mentation, attention and will for awakening the machine and which has all-parts-blended unity, and a clear uninterrupted vision of the non-phenomenal world, the machine must be turned rightside-up. As it is now, the centrums are upside-down. The thinking centrum is in the headbrain and the moving centrum is in the tailbrain; the exact reverse of the true three-brained being called Man.
that the headbrain could function as a moving centrum, beginning with simple observation, gradually increasing this function by deeper and deeper involvement with intricate movement, following each minute movement of the machine, allowing no detail to escape the headbrain-attention. After a while, it can be noticed that, if the whole attention of the headbrain is engulfed in the various subtleties of movement of the machine as a whole, parts of the machine, and parts of parts of the machine, the whole process can become a monstrous circus of complexity in which so much attention is demanded that the headbrain is finally forced to automatize its attention on movement, taking responsibility for the movements of the machine, and assuming its role as the true moving centrum of the human organism.
When the brains are upside-down, the emotional centrum functions as a like-dislike governor, directing the machine and forming habits and moods according to artificial feelings of attraction and repulsion.
The newly liberated tailbrain becomes the observing platform for the source of attention which, now that it is free to observe without interference, also provides the all-important force necessary for the invocation of presence.
The very first exercise in a work community is the observation of the moving activities of the machine with the ordinary attention of the headbrain. This observation should be refined to even the smallest detail, being certain not to alter the manifestations of the machine as a result of these observations.
When we accomplish the headbrain-tailbrain transference, as indicated in this diagram of the psychic operation discovered by Solomon—which gave him total authority over those localized fragmentary identities which Solomon decided to call the djinn, or lesser demons—all three lower centrums begin to function properly, and more or less in harmony and balance.
Lift the attention from its ordinary fixation on the associative flow of passing thoughts and internal dialogue, and place it strictly upon the moving activities of the machine. This is an especially good inner exercise when performing physical labor… digging ditches, painting, sanding, building, washing dishes, doing childcare… For example, say your machine happens at this moment to be using the right arm to lift the cup to drink coffee; observe at the same time how the machine stands on the left leg, right leg slightly lifted; now the machine is smiling, and shifting its weight to the right leg. In short, use the usual form of attention, but in this case the subject of attention is now exclusively the posture and movements of the machine observed exclusive of any psycho-emotional significance.
Different muscular combinations produce varying movements. Not just the hand but everything in the machine is somewhat affected by reverberations. Eventually we should be able to place our attention firmly on all that our machine does. Where is the tension resting when the machine is at rest? Sense the centrum of gravity in the body as it changes.
CHAPTER TWO THE POND The machine has no real emotion. What we call “emotions” in ourselves are just automatic reflexes of the mental centrum in response to the motor centrum’s organic reverberations. Removing the effects of these reverberations eliminates in ourselves the larger part of our negativity and mechanical suffering.
As various shocks and impressions impact themselves upon the machine, because we, meaning the nonphenomenal self, have no will over the machine, we are helpless to stop the corresponding organic shocks from radiating outward from each centrum, spreading and reverberating throughout the entire organic system including bone, lymphatic gland system, muscle tissue, organs of ingestion and elimination, blood stream, upper brain, and nervous systems.
Think of the biological machine as a calm pool of water and the shock of impressions as a pebble. In this case, the ripples would represent organic reverberations of negative emotions. As we would expect, certain types of pebbles produce greater organic shock than others. When some disturbance makes an impact on the motor-reflexive centrum, it is like a pebble when dropped into the pond; ripples radiate through the machine as a result of the pseudo-emotional impact.
This is the way of the monk, who secludes himself from lower organic influences, hoping that he can remain receptive only to those influences which come from higher dimensions. But this does not help him in the long run, nor will it help us. In ordinary life we cannot stop these pebbles from falling. We have no authority over these “pebbles”, by which is meant external or internal shocks, nor do we wish to.
But what? If we hope to eliminate these involuntary reflexive organic reverberations in the machine we must take authority over the machine, not in the ordinary way, but in a very special way. We can learn to “open the water” before the pebble so that the biological machine offers no resistance to the pebble and reverberations do not occur. In this way, the negative emotion will at most be only momentary. This exercise is recorded in the Western tradition as The Parting of the Red Sea.
Perhaps the sensation originates in the stomach, maybe a tightening in the chest, or a catch in the throat, ringing in the ears or stinging in the eyes.
Shortly after these secondary reverberations begin to manifest themselves throughout the machine, we ought to notice that the mental centrum has decided that—because the sensations usually associated with one or another emotional state are present in the machine—some emotional state must also be proceeding in the machine. And this is the totality of what we dare to call in ourselves “emotion”. We are unable to distinguish real moods of the emotional centrum from the mental shocks reverberating from ordinary sensations originating in the motor centrum, wrongly identified by the mental centrum as emotions.
Real emotion is not a personal-subjective mood but a means of emotional communication. In addition, because real emotions are communicated by the outward radiation of the mood, originating in the awakened emotional centrum, having no reverberational effects in other parts of the machine, it is not necessary to verbally communicate the emotion.
Those who can produce real emotions in themselves never communicate about emotional states in mental centrum language; they just radiate the emotions produced in their machines by the non-phenomenal self, allowing the emotion to speak for itself. Real emotions strike a corresponding spark of empathy in the receiver.
Negative emotion is useless and destructive. We do not need it for our survival, and, although without negative emotion everyone on Earth would just stand barefoot in the grass and stare blankly at the moon, still, we would be better off without it. Without negative emotion, we can be and do anything, because we are free from our automatic reflexive slavery to the bondage of negativity. Without negative emotion, we can place all our force, will and attention on any aim.
we would eliminate in ourselves the larger part of our negativity and the suffering to our non-phenomenal selves caused by our identification with the human biological machine.
The biological machine can, just acting under these conditioned reflexes, perform every task and even carry off successfully a serious philosophical discussion at a cocktail party without the participation of a source of attention and consciousness.
Trying to change the machine directly is like trying to change the course of a speeding train with our bare hands. We can use these organic reverberations for our own evolution by containing the outward expression, just as we would contain the steam in a pressure-cooker. This process of containment of negativity can be viewed as a process of controlled alchemical fusion, a method of containing and magnifying the natural chemical and electrical reactions produced by automatic organic reverberations. If we allowed the machine to express these openly, the force for our work would just be dissipated.
we can begin to take authority over these inner states, because we know the real origin of these emotions, which is to say, the mental centrum’s reaction to the muscular system.
From childhood, we are taught to be acutely aware of the impression we make upon others, and to manifest ourselves whenever possible in a way which would please our audience, in order to win admiration from them. Our whole preparatory life, if we came from ordinary systems of education, consists in learning how to win admiration or to produce in ourselves by mimicry the manifestations of those who do manage to win admiration.
because everyone in mechanical life spends at least some part of each day worrying whether others have seen him at his worst. Mechanical man chooses to be aware of only those manifestations which suit his self-love and vanity, rejecting all other manifestations which eventually become for him invisible parts of his outer world. This rejection of certain manifestations and acceptance of others produces a separation, a definite mental-emotional membrane isolating manifestation into two distinct categories, thus creating inner conflict.
The nonphenomenal self is electrical by
nature. All higher bodies are also electrical and produce electrical effects and fields.
CHAPTER THREE NEGATIVE MANIFESTATION Almost everything we say and do is some form of negative emotion, whether we recognize it as such or not. Posture, gesture and facial mask are all inexhaustible sources of negative manifestations.
When we see an aristocratic lady in a department store, we can, if our attention is sufficiently strong and our own machine is awake, actually see her dreams pass across her facial mask, registered in the facial muscles. And even if we are not skilled enough to see her dreams, we can at least see that she is asleep and that her attention is distracted, seduced by fascination with all the glitter and flash of the department store, and moreover, that she is completely unaware of her sleep.
Occasionally she may become somewhat agitated should the machine awaken slightly, just momentarily, when the machine happens to stop for a moment in some posture she finds displeasing to her vanity, which is itself a mask for personal insecurity. She does not and cannot know how ugly she is when the machine is in sleep, and if she happened to accidentally discover this, she would be driven into insanity before her personal insecurity became too powerful. At the same time, her machine is so deeply asleep that she is aware only of her own subjective dreams about herself.
The personality of the machine, which is to say, its sense of personal identity, is a complex formation of automatically proceeding categorical associations of each of the three lower centrums, the results of organic and psychological conditioning, which became necessary for survival because the machine was asleep from the very beginning. The real master of the machine, the non-phenomenal self, which is the real source of attention and presence, is very different from the complex personal identity of the machine. It is a simple presence with no particular identity, no particular qualities—although it may take on itself the qualities of its host machine for a short period of time. Unlike the personal identity of the machine, the real self has no need for embellishment or personal enhancement, because although it is in this world, it is not of it…
The machine seems to have a virtually inexhaustible repertoire of postures, gestures and facial masks which can, without actually saying anything, subtly express negative emotions.
In this way we can begin to exert our own true will—that is, the will of attention of the non-phenomenal self—over the will of the machine, by observing the manifestations of the machine, which has two primary effects: First, that which is observed is changed slightly just by the presence of the observer. Second, the act of observation of the machine calls for the activation of the source of attention, automatically activating the higher centrums which eventually form the core of the higher bodies within which we are able to exist in higher dimensions.
Between seeing, sensing and feeling, we should be able to produce a very effective alarm clock which can alert our attention whenever this particular manifestation occurs spontaneously in the machine. To Keep Oneself by restraining all expressions of negative emotion manifestations can be work-productive in several ways. Remember the ancient saying, “Never do anything you wouldn’t want to do again.” We must not forget as we observe the machine that we are destined to pass this way again, not just once or twice, but eternally. And eventually we will want to wake the machine not just in later life, but throughout its life from conception to death.
We see how difficult it is to awaken the machine under the best of conditions…just imagine what it would be like to awaken the machine during a period of raging mayhem or hysteria!
The containment of expressions of negative emotion of the machine means that, before we can really sacrifice anything else, we must sacrifice our own suffering.
We may complain about money, whether too little or too much. Our biological machine discomforts may be a source of conversation, or our serious world-shaking problems with those who happen not to conform exactly to our standards of behavior and beliefs. We might launch into a nonstop monologue about our pet likes and dislikes. Maybe we hear the machine, to our utter surprise, mention casually the miserable state of public transportation.
We have no authority over our not-overly-domesticated dogs. To cease to be a helpless slave to our emotional dogs is the very beginning of personal work, and must be mastered before we can take even one step toward voluntary evolution.
We will call the repertoire of all these negative manifestations of the machine taken as a whole, The Crocodile. You are to actively study this strange creature from now on, completely, closely, in every little detail, exactly as a scientist would study a newly discovered species.
This little manifestation, as small and unimportant as it is, nevertheless appears many thousands of times each day and is your most customary posture. Taken as a fulcrum to give us leverage for the observation of the human biological machine, it is called the Chief Weakness.
CHAPTER FOUR BOOBY DU JOUR Ordinary man is a slave to involuntary restless movements which prove that he has no authority over his biological machine.
Embarrassment about the machine’s activities indicates deep identification with the machine. Impartial observing means we must be prepared to see ourselves as others see us, from outside, not so subjectively. Eventually we will undoubtedly see many psychological and emotional features about the machine which are not at all pleasing, and may even be horrifying, to our observing selves. Unconscious actions continually irritate and annoy others, and even if they are too asleep themselves to know exactly the cause of their displeasure, they feel an immediate automatic reflex-of-hatred toward these manifestations.
In our observation of the biological machine for the purpose of this exercise, we are particularly interested in those manifestations which indicate that the machine is restless, and that our attention has begun to wander, was distracted or seduced, or the machine’s will to sleep is greater than our own will to awaken it. We should for the moment confine our observations to these ordinary restless mechanicalities, which we can call our Booby du Jour.
The resulting sensations of frustration, and the remorse engendered by our utter failure to influence the machine even slightly, can serve as the negative force necessary for the awakening of the machine.
To really be able to observe the inner workings and organization of the biological machine one must be able to awaken the machine at will, which is to say, by the exertion of the will of the non-phenomenal source of attention over the will of the machine to remain asleep.
This presence, although subtle and seemingly powerless, is the precise factor which causes the machine to change from a pleasure machine into a transformational apparatus according to the Heisenberg Principle, the law which tells us that the act of observation seriously alters that which is being observed.
We must learn to take these higher mental apparatus photographs of the biological machine at different times and in different states—not just of small details but of whole actions and in particular of the spasmodic restless movements which we call fidgeting.
The observation of mechanicalities of the machine organizes our attention and keeps us on guard, watchful for any sign of something unusual which we can use for more advanced exercises of our will and subtle influence over the machine. We must come to understand that the machine is not a real Being, and that we need not feel shame for its activities in sleep but, at the same time, we are responsible for allowing them to continue.
The biological machine may say and do a thousand stupid things which we never would do if given a choice. We notice helplessly that it becomes restless in one centrum, does something terribly self-destructive, and then to escape the consequences of its actions, shifts quickly to another centrum, then to another… and so it goes. These stupid, destructive and wasteful little mechanicalities of the motor centrum should indicate to us, as if we needed this additional demonstration, that the machine is definitely sleeping and that it is the motor centrum which is the source of the majority of our manifestations.
How can we manifest the beauty of Truth-Absolute when—in the middle of the aesthetic crescendo—the biological machine unaccountably and without our permission, happens to idly pick its nose in public?
We will undoubtedly discover to our horror the real terror of the situation—that our precious force for work is robbed by the continual foot-tapping, scratching and fidgeting—after which, what remains for our own needs?
we must not allow ourselves to be carried away by the unconscious yearning for comfort to the degree that we seek refuge—even temporarily—from the evolutionary journey. In our beginning work, we must be able to accept that, from now on, we will have no place to rest our weary selves, no permanent home, no safe, secure pillow on which to lay our busily chattering heads.
When manifesting a particularly active “state”, if you happen to catch yourself in it—especially if it is very dramatic—suddenly shout Cut! and stop the action, like a film director. Then voluntarily begin the action again, loudly shouting, “Lights! Camera! Action!” Repeat this several times for each dramatic manifestation until it becomes “part of your voluntary”. You are now all “movie directors” for the remainder of your personal drama. Now, then… “Lights! Camera! Action!” Repeat this voluntary performance many times until you can “authorize” its appearance—in the sense of being an author of a story as well as allowing it to occur—and its disappearance.
see the machine as an actor playing an artificial role. Take mastery, be firm. Cut to a fine edge the obedience of the actor, then dismiss the character from the stage and use it only when you wish.
as the conversation ranged into the rarefied atmosphere of pure speculation, we all began to be swept away by the momentum.
CHAPTER FIVE WORK WISH We can begin to unify ourselves by creating a special centrum of gravity called our “work wish”. In the ordinary unevolved human biological machine, because its sense of itself is a vague concatenation of all its isolated fragmentary identities, there is no unity which always feels the same about every issue. Sometimes we feel one way about something, and the very next moment we feel entirely different about it. Our lack of unity produces in us a corresponding lack of will.
For the purpose of this experiment it is necessary that we learn to do everything only in relation to this special artificial work-wish.
we would drift helplessly and aimlessly toward the quick brown fox of ordinary death like lazy dogs. We survive only so long as we have the ability-to-wish.
If we could see the personality of the machine dissected into its primary component parts, we would see a complex inner disorganization of many fragmentary identities, each with its own power, thoughts, feelings, beliefs and, in particular, its own manifestations.
Before this experiment, and before any experiment from now on, we should always remember to wish that our efforts be for the benefit of all Beings everywhere, to make a wish of greater force than just wishing for ourselves. The effectiveness of our wish depends on whether we are able to collect the force of necessity. This “wishing-for-all” made inside ourselves can connect us someday with the Mystical Body of Christ which always exists outside time itself through all ages, including long before the man called Jesus lived and died.
The Sly Man may or may not have this or that attainment, but one thing is certain: by himself because he has attained impartiality even toward his own aims, he has no necessity of his own. Yet at the same time he may have a soul which suffers unutterably each additional day he is forced to spend in exile.
The Sly Man has learned that only by wishing for something greater than himself can anything of value be attained for himself.
We must learn to put others before ourselves, serve their needs before our own in order to fully take advantage of this technique by forming study circles and giving them what we learn.
But the human being who is all machine believes himself to be very powerful, to have free will and the ability to do anything he decides to do, except take out the garbage, flush the toilet and remember to mail a letter. He is so powerful that he is only a slave to sex, drugs, alcohol, tobacco, coffee, candy, sports and a vague sense of political issues.
Ultimately we must learn to make a work-wish from everything we do in life, to make all our activities work-significant and give them force by wishing that the results of all our efforts be used for the greater good of all beings everywhere.
When making the sacrifice of anything for your work, such as one lower emotion, one cigarette, or one drink of “booze”, say with the fullest possible force of your inner self, “I wish the results of this small sacrifice to be used for the benefit of all Beings everywhere,” and make this wish reverberate in your solar plexus.
You wish for a higher existence without even pondering for a moment what it might mean to be a higher Being, what the responsibilities and obligations might be that go along with it.
Chapter Six Struggle Of The Sorcerers
Ordinarily the war of the forces of darkness and of light just happens mechanically within the machine. It is uncontrolled and wasted. We must find a way to organize it and make it profitable to our work.
Science will one day come to discover that every single cell in the muscular system of the machine can function as a storage sector for moods, ideas, manifestations and memories. These are stored at random, without regard to logic or reason because there is no presence of attention which is able to correctly categorize each impression as it enters the biological machine.
The human biological machine is directed by the machine’s simulation of intelligence, not the real intelligence which could be provided by the presence of the nonphenomenal self in the awakened machine.
By telling the real life history of the machine and not some fragmentary fantasy composed for the protection of the vanity of the machine, thus blending these contradictions, we can repair the past and redeem the machine as a transformational apparatus. To blend these contradictions it is only necessary to remove the buffers which have been placed between them, which is accomplished by the gentle art of exposure to the light of confession.
We can force our biological machines to work at a different tempo than usual; we can refuse to express pleasure or displeasure in the usual ways; we can intentionally keep company with someone who ordinarily repels us, especially one whose chemistry repels us. To force conflicting ideas to reconcile we must be able to, if necessary, lie down and at the same time convince ourselves that we are standing.
No matter which side wins, it comes to the same end, because both roles are played by the same actor—the empty struggling against the void.
Chapter Seven The Search For Dr. Livingstone
When we have no real identity we can become anything suggested to us by inner and outer influences; we believe ourselves to be whatever we fall into.
The point is that we see ourselves in one light, and yet underneath it all, we are savages. The machine cannot be trusted to be the same today as it was tomorrow, nor can we hold ourselves really above the machine.
The real identity never changes. Imaginary identities continually change. We believe ourselves to be whatever we fall into, just like children at play who eventually come to believe in their fantasy.
This station for the impartial observation of the machine is often referred to as the “third eye”.
Identification with the changing self produced by states of the machine distorts our understanding of the Real World.
“I am not that,” “I am not that,” rejecting all those identities which are not eternal and unchanging, trying to discover in ourselves that one true identity which does not and cannot change.
CHAPTER EIGHT HARMLESS WHIM To gratify a harmless whim can be a beginning method of accumulating the will to awaken the machine.
Those who knew us before may consider us less interesting than we were before, because our machines no longer manifest so easily, but this is the price we pay. When exerting an effort to invoke our presence and to contain negative emotions and manifestations of the machine, why should we worry about the impression we make on others? After all, they will all be dead soon anyway, if they aren’t already.
When it is voluntary, we are able to manifest it or not, as we choose. Involuntary habits cannot be activated intentionally, or stopped at will. A first step in the attainment of will is to voluntarize every habit.
To compel the machine to do one small thing not desired by our organism or personality and also not automatic in the conditioning of the organism gives us a taste of Real Will on a small scale. The Transformed Being stands on the edge of Creation, facing the unknown, the not-yet-manifested. The sleeping machine is enslaved by the past and can only re-enact what has been.
CHAPTER NINE ONE SMALL HABIT As we struggle with the machine, beginning with one small habit, we can produce an “alchemical fire” in the machine’s chemical factory, which will gradually transform our Being.
CHAPTER TEN MENTATION Mentation is the force of collected attention which activates the Higher Mental Body.
The machine cannot imagine thought which occurs independently of the process of automatic mental associations.
This little, but powerful, ingredient of “collected attention” is to mentation what the fulcrum was to Archimedes.
Depending on type, we may fall subject to one thought which reverberates as a major theme, then catch a second which reverberates as a secondary theme, then a third which reverberates as a tertiary theme, and then weave these together into the orchestration of what humans of this little planet call thought.
Personality can have many states at once because each part of personality is buffered from the other parts, but Being—because it has unity—can only have one state at a time. This should provide a major clue for us about the difference between the human biological machine and the Being, the non-phenomenal self.
“State” means the full potential of a moment, the whole scale of our present cosmic attention. Mentation is a transspace ship which can transport us from one ordinary state to another, while mood can take us from a lower state to a higher if we know how to fly it.
and one day to construct and, in addition, can only be constructed on the actual surface of the Holy Planet Purgatory. We must never actually dare to land on the Holy Planet Purgatory until we know that we are definitely able to return from exile, which is to say, we are able to complete the process of deep contemplation on the question of conscience and, without the artificial exertion of personal will to do so, emerge from the depths of deep mentation. The Holy Planet Purgatory has two other names, which are Remorse-of-Conscience and The Cave.
But do you happen to also know the two private names for the Solar-Absolute? They are: Having-A-Wonderful-Time-Wish-You-Were-Here and I-Am, But-I-Forget-Just-What!
Chapter Eleven Centrum Of Gravity Question
A centrum of gravity question is an essential question which we use to create slight discomfort, to keep ourselves off-balance in relation to the machine’s ordinary mechanical state of self-oblivion.
it must be an essential question, one that really is important to us, so our thirst cannot be easily quenched.
To really make a question mean more than just monkey-curiosity we must not seek a quick end to our restless inquiry.
Serious questioning of a particular type, along with exact efforts to awaken the machine, will result in interior perturbations which show us that the machine is definitely protecting something which it does not want us to see.
When the machine is in agreement with the higher aspirations, which can only be the result of the mental centrum operating in the tailbrain apparatus, we say that the machine has become purified or, as it was said by the first schools in ancient civilizations, we have become virtuous, meaning that the machine truthfully reflects the higher aims and aspirations.
Make this question your temporary inner god. Not only will this produce something for your later life, but it will also give your actual inner-evil-god a much deserved holiday.
What does it mean to sacrifice the suffering of the machine? Who exactly within us desires change and what kind of change is really wished for?
Why is it necessary to “force destiny”? Why can’t we just wait for our evolution to happen by itself?
If the operation of centrums is like a “one-armed bandit”, a slot machine in a gambling casino, what makes the organic centrums spin? What makes them stop spinning? What combinations of centrums are possible? Is there a way to use this data for our work to awaken the machine?
Does the Absolute really suffer? How could we possibly work to alleviate this suffering, if it is true? How can we make ourselves useful to higher beings, or “Laws”? Are there really such beings? Why do they need such as we? Why must our work be performed invisibly under ordinary life conditions?
What exactly is the difference between “sensing” and “feeling”? What exactly is the difference between “attention” and “awareness”? Why is gratitude a necessity in work? To whom or what should we feel gratitude? Why?
Of what importance is humor in the Work? How can we be sure we really have a sense of humor and not just more automatic defenses of the machine?
CHAPTER TWELVE SENSING Through sensing we can follow the momentary concentrations of forces in our organisms, where inner tensions of forces occur, when they shift and at what tempo.
In this effort an inanimate helper such as prayer beads or a special rosary can help, following the formula one-and-four, four-and-two, two-and-eight, eight-and-five, five-and-seven, and back full circle to the tension of forces represented as seven-and-one, representing the tension between any of two points in the organism.
When we sense, we do so with the whole attention, so much so that, for the moment, nothing exists for us except the sensation upon which the attention is fixated. When we take a sip of water in this way we do not at the same time allow the attention to wander off in side thoughts of what we had for lunch.
One must learn to distinguish between thinking, feeling and sensing, and then use all three in work.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN THINKING BY FORM A Being who has fallen into identification with the sleep of the machine is forced to involuntarily accept impressions from every source. Impartial man is able to categorically select impressions.
We assume that we understand all the things we read, see, and hear because they evoke in the machine those automatic associations which seem, for some unaccountable reason, somehow familiar, and therefore beyond question.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN REMORSE OF CONSCIENCE The organ “conscience” is in ordinary man atrophied from disuse and isolation. Remorse of conscience can repair our past—no matter what we may have done.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN DOORWAYS The practice of remembering ourselves, “invoking our presences”, having the continual presence of “I” makes a “vibration of Being” which gradually forms a relatively permanent crystallization called “Gradation of Evolution”.
Each stage of transformation of the Being produced by the awakened machine is called “Gradation of Evolution”. We can separate the process of transformation governed by the human biological machine into twenty-one definite Gradations of Evolution, each slightly more objective than the previous gradation in the sense of existing in higher and higher dimensions as we scale upward toward the Absolute. Under no circumstance is it possible for us to attain the three highest forms of existence, the highest of which is the Absolute itself, pure Being.
Even the nonphenomenal source of attention eventually dies if it has existed without transformation, but the Being which has become a permanent crystallization can never die. Perhaps we ought to first taste what it means never to die…maybe we would prefer to just fall into annihilation and forget everything. No two Beings have exactly the same frequency of vibration. Frequencies are limited in number because they are, as is everything, material.
The stable Gradation of Evolution several times removed from the ordinary state of a human being, when taken in relation to a successful transference of identity from the nonphenomenal source of attention to the Being, can be called “Objective Consciousness” when developed.
we will have attention, presence, Being, and an unshakeable work-habit. Only then will we taste of death and not feel its sting.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN RED-FACED DONKEY We have much to gain from manifesting without considering, without fear for self, without desire to protect our vanity and self-love; we must free ourselves from the opinion of others.
We must never become the time-conscious, neurotic, eager-to-please White Rabbit which is the machine at its worst. Now we must consider! Just what are we to make trivial? What should we make important? We could make trivial: Opinions, relationships—for instance, our associate’s pecking order—diet, routines, speed or tempo of work, our attachment to various social activities, the machine’s automatically generated negative feelings about the manifestations of others or critical feelings about the environment, feelings of personal hurt, self-righteousness, making others wrong, the desire to do whatever we prefer to do upon rising in the morning instead of trying to awaken the machine, the manner of getting out of bed, the feelings of resentment which result from disagreement or disapproval, boredom, the automatic desire to manifest in a particularly sincere or earnest fashion, to appear to others that way.
We could make important: To change the tempo of the machine’s actions, to have the hair brushed and neat all day, to have shoes on at all times, even in bed, to make sure to lead with the right foot while going through doorways, or stepping off curbs, to wash the dishes as soon as the meal is over, to dress or undress in a particular order, to read everything twice, to walk around with eggs in the right-hand pocket. This little exercise is based on the idea that what the machine finds offensive to its vanity will force it to awaken just a little. Whenever possible without really becoming offensive or obnoxious about it, take a totally undefendable, utterly untenable, completely ridiculous position about something, against all rationality, especially at the risk of your personal vanity and reputation as a reasonable and intelligent human being.
Maintain this posture just like the red-faced donkey you really are, regardless of how disgusted others become with you, no matter what they call you or how they consider you from then on. Soon you ought to be a total social disaster and a pariah, an outcast. Do not be a slave to the opinions of others, be free of what others think of you and, in addition, be free of your own opinion of your machine’s manifestations.
The machine cannot be a donkey in the eyes of itself and others, but the Being feels no humiliation.
The first time the machine feels the pain of rejection it feels hurt, but by the fifth time it actually likes to be a donkey, feeling nothing where there was once a little pain. Dare to manifest without the fear of humiliation. This exercise of intentional humiliation, along with the repair of the heart by following the moving manifestations of the machine during manual labor, and the ascension onto the Cross, the intersection of time and space, by contemplation upon—and psychoemotional identification with—the sensations and emotions of the Man on the Cross, is the Western monk’s great secret.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN CHIEF WEAKNESS We must see what we ought to do and know the weakness which makes us unable to do it. This weakness is called Chief Feature. We usually think of this weakness as the best and nicest part of ourselves.
When it comes to protecting itself from observation, the machine is very clever; we will never be able to observe the Chief Weakness if we try to look for it directly. Therefore, we must find a way to observe it indirectly, to observe the traces of its activities, because when the Chief Weakness is active, that is to say, during periods of deep sleep of the machine, our attention is prevented by the machine’s density from observing the Chief Weakness actually at work.
We must not be too much in love with the moods, thoughts and sensations of the machine to observe impartially, remembering that it provides these distractions and seductions only for its own smug satisfaction. Our work just begins when we can see exactly what it is that we must struggle against. But what is our enemy now can also be our greatest ally in the Work. One big part of work is to learn how to turn these involuntary enemies into friends for work.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN REPAIRING THE PAST Out of habit, ordinary man lives in one centrum only. When it is burned out, the centrum dies and becomes useless. At that point, a man can no longer work because he is already one-third dead.
Out of habit, we use one single centrum until it is useless and then, when it has burned out, we move like a gypsy into another camp. If we lived like this in an ordinary house, we would not bother to replace a lightbulb when it burned out; we would simply move to another room.
But with fantasy and imagination we can make ourselves feel almost as comfortable as we were in our previous habitation.
At the end of each day, review impartially everything you did, along with everything that happened to you, but do not review these in the ordinary way. You are to make three separate and distinct passes through these events, reviewing each event through one of the three main lenses: sensing, feeling and thinking, one lens at a time. For the purpose of this exercise, you should keep three separate journals, one for each centrum, each journal in the subjective language of its own unique centrum.
CHAPTER NINETEEN WALKING BETWEEN RAINDROPS Posture is mother to mood; tempo of work is mother to organic and psychic tempo; self-initiated voluntary manifestation is mother to death with presence.
Do anything necessary, even throw the machine off balance, to avoid sinking into these “resting places”. Jump, walk in a zig-zag, dodge and twist like a football player, as if walking between raindrops. If your attention is distracted, begin again. Habitual postures of the motor centrum can be present in the form of utterances, expressions of the facial mask, hand gestures, rolling of eyeballs heavenward.
CHAPTER TWENTY CENTRUM OF COSMOS Man has no real place in the cosmic octave. He is nothing and less than nothing in the big scheme of things, but he has significance in another octave not concentrated in the Great Cosmic Octave.
Creation was not slowly made over a long period of time. As a matter of fact, the Creation did not appear in time. It is time… exactly one moment, which in the objective sense is the same thing as saying eternity.
Once existing, always existing, because the Creation is not a flow of events but a living, eternal mathematical equation, expressing itself as matter, which is energy viewed below the speed of light, and energy, which is matter viewed at or above the speed of light. In a way, the Creation is an eternal light in infinite extension, folded in upon itself in the form of a Klein Bottle, a solid form of the Moebius Strip.
but he has significance in another octave not evident within the Great Cosmic Octave. It is in this hidden octave that he can try to become more than is possible for him in the ordinary course of evolution.
While the Being is under the Law of Three, the machine is inexorably under the Law of Seven. If we really understand this idea, we have a very powerful tool for work. It would be beneficial in this respect to study deeply the laws of the octave. Parables are the speech of conscious Beings, blended for multi-dimensional significance, to conform to their vision of life as they see, hear, feel, sense and understand it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE NEW DAY EVERY DAY The machine has the disease of “tomorrow”. Tomorrow is the only day which—just perhaps—could be that not-quite-attainable day of “roses, roses”. In work, however, we can take nothing for granted.
If the human biological machine knows that it will die soon, its mental centrum will begin to consider very differently about tomorrow. The machine will have a strong desire to live even one more hour, and hopefully even one more day, unless it is in very bad pain.
Death, no matter when it comes, will always seem to the machine to come at just the wrong moment, just when everything is about to go right.
Each day the machine happens to live on is due mostly to blind luck. So many things can happen… If we should happen to wake up in the machine tomorrow morning, we should, at the first glimpse of a new day, fall on our knees with gratitude for another chance to accomplish what we failed to accomplish with the machine yesterday. Maybe we will have a whole day to work on self, maybe only the time to brush our hair and comb our teeth. Each night as we lay down with the machine, we should strive to see sleep as a kind of death, understanding that there exists a very real possibility that we may not for one reason or another awaken in the morning.
When we wake in the morning, besides jumping out of bed like a jungle animal, eyes open and at full all-centrums-alert, we should spend the first five minutes doing nothing but trying to awaken the machine.
In this experiment we must try to see ourselves as a complete stranger to the machine and to this world, exiled from our familiar surroundings, living a life totally uncustomary to our habitual experience. We can observe, making no assumptions that we understand what we see, knowing nothing about the significance-of-it-all. We must learn to think, feel and sense ourselves in exile from the planet “Yesterday” with only the vague possibility of arriving at the planet “Today”, where we are like newborns who know nothing of what may be in store for us.
We must rearrange our idea of the world to see that each new day is really a new world and that those things which appear the same really are not the same.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO “I” CAN DO ANYTHING Whereas I can do anything, the machine is a congenital bungler.
It must be quite clear in our minds that if we refuse work, we refuse help. We must understand that it is sleep which is our enemy, not those who prepare us for evolution. Pretend that you have discovered some substance which we will call Luckium. Whenever you carry this “Luckium” in your pocket or as a charm on a chain around your neck you feel absurdly, even stupidly, optimistic about everything, estimating your abilities and willingness far beyond your ordinary limits.
you immediately express abject glee, agreeing immediately and unquestioningly to perform the task regardless of any dislike you may have toward it. You should cheerfully grin like a village idiot, and reply, “Sure! I can do anything!” Just be sure when you say this that I is really speaking, because, while I really can do anything, the machine happens to be a congenital bungler. This “insane optimism” and amiable willingness to do almost anything at all should soon make us very popular among our lazy friends.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE RADIATION OF PAIN Sensations of pain and pleasure can be used as reminding factors; they can provide the force for the awakening of the machine.
Even slight discomfort such as an itching sensation can be radiated in this way, providing the force for the awakening of the machine.
Now, perhaps you can see how small, relatively unimportant pains can help you in your work, by providing your attention with a specific field of gravitational attraction. A strong or unusual sensation in the machine can become a tiny Sun-Absolute from which radiates the force for attention to follow sensation through the machine.
must then remember what it feels like when the limb awakens. We begin to feel sharp, uncomfortable sensations which we commonly call “pins-and-needles”.
Encourage these sensations, because they can bring on the sensations of awakening. Any unpleasant sensation at all will serve this function, but particularly one which is characterized by a tingling reminiscent of the discomfort first felt when a limb has fallen asleep.
The sensations of awakening are nothing to be afraid of; just a natural and harmless process which is not particularly pleasant, but if we do not fall back into sleep to avoid the discomfort, these unpleasant sensations soon pass and the machine will naturally awaken. The whole world may seem sluggish and dead as we begin to sense the machine’s sleep, but we must find the courage to continue through the strange sensations, the fears, the apprehensions, the anxieties which may arise. All this is perfectly normal; after all, we are so accustomed to the numbing anesthetic of sleep! Allow yourself to feel anxious, admit to yourself that you feel frightened, anxious, even revolted at the idea of finding yourself in a dead body. These first feelings will pass. If we allow ourselves to backslide, it will be ten times harder to approach it again. So be brave, be courageous. You will experience your imprisonment in a dead body, but soon the dead body will begin to awaken. Then the situation will take a new turn; people around you will seem dead—but not everybody—as you look around, you will see some whose eyes are a little bit open or very much open. Work with your pains, using them to reawaken the circulation in this lifeless body, this sleeping machine.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR LAST HOUR OF LIFE To know how to settle accounts every hour is something every man should have learned in school, just as to learn to breathe, to eat, to move, and to awaken the machine should be part of any genuine curriculum of education.
What would you appreciate suddenly, that you had never really appreciated—maybe never even noticed—before this moment?