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No Illusions – No Enlightment
The Way of IncarnationThousands of people have heard some instances of the message of Agnes Hidveghy through private consultations or lectures and seminars or read about it in her book Weihnachten or other shorter writings. Where is the beginning? We are in the prison of linear thinking: the causes are in the past, the effects are later in time. Why did I get these parents, why was I protected, but lonely, in my childhood? Why did I understand the Christian ideas in this way and not the same way as so many others? Why did I meet people when I was 14 who gave me books by Vivekananda and Paul Brunton? Why all the other possibilities for inner growth? I can give you only one true answer to this question: “The reasons are not necessarily the answer. Since the cause is the effect of its own effect" (Reshad Feild). I was impressed by the phenomenon Gurdjieff from the very moment I heard of it. I read All and Everything in German within four days the first time - I was then in bed with fever. I participated 15 years in a Gurdjieff group started originally by Dr. Maurice Nicoll together with Gabi Patak, who run a group in Zürich and had contact with Beryl Pogson. To-day the group is connected with the Gurdjieff Society of London and their contact people in London are Sam Copley's son in law and his daughter. We also met Mrs. Oldham and had a further contact with the Amersfort group in England. I also met Sam Copley in Amersfort. My "work-history" is a long one, with many colours and impossible unexpected turns. At the end of the seventies and beginning of the eighties we had contact with Mr. Paul Beidler from America, who had Swiss ancestry. He knew Gurdieff personally and studied some 20 years in the East. Mr. Beidler was a teacher and had his center near New York. It exists today and is called The Search at Northeon Forest (www.endlesssearch.co.uk - a web site by Ian MacFarlane). But my wish to go there could not be realised. In the early eighties Mrs. Louise March visited my one-week seminar, which was on Astrology as a cosmological system. Mrs. March was Gurdjieff’s secretary, who translated All and Everything into German and established a Work-farm, The Rochester Folk Art Guild, in the USA. She was then 82 and even though she was very ill, she was present every minute of the rather hard program. According to Astrology as cosmological system one of the subjects was also then the expression of Astrology in Objective Art, especially in the frescoes of Villa of the Mysteries in Pompeii. By the way - a new insight came to me recently about Gurdjieff’s work. The question arose in me again, what was his task? And I saw it in connection of the gap between the two cycles of ages. First of all he destroyed the old structures. This he expressed in many ways. But the consequences of it are not understood by many of his followers. He did not leave a “school” with a mission. He had to do a “dirty” job, a very difficult one. Now we can not go that same way, the way he went, the way he showed us. We have to use the possibility of being without structures and working on building up the new structures of the future. That needs creative human beings with knowledge and a kind of inner development, with inner independence. He left us ideas and tools that are necessary in building these new structures. It is not possible for me to make any judgement on the moral side and the intentions behind Gurdjieff’s teaching. I do not have the knowledge and understanding to do it. What I know is that I can not use Gurdjieff as an example for myself. Neither do I think that when I meet a person who drinks Armagnac and smokes that this person really understood Gurdjieff. A teacher is not an example to be imitated in the details of his or her personality, and Gurdjieff’s was a very strong one. What is important is what comes out and takes place in the individuals. You know a tree by its fruits. Mrs. March was a person in whom I saw something of the direct influence of Gurdjieff. For her he was the expression and influence of a real man. What I definitely can not accept is to manipulate the emotional world in oneself. This means for me to deny an aspect of Unity. To be free for me is to create an independent place in oneself, and take part in what is going on. With a picture: not to hold on a pendulum, but climb up to the point where it is hanged on. Become the whole pendulum. There is enough “reminding factor” in it! His artificial inner war is also something I have difficulty with. If we are fully engaged in life it gives us this war whether we want it or not. There is another possibility: to involve energy by other means than struggle. My way is to hold the opposites in mind and ask for the reconciling third force; to endure the tension and not to look for any synthesis. It does work. It is very simple. Another formulation of it is: to live with an open Question: to look for a question and not for the answers. I know this is encouraged in at least some groups. It took years for me to be able put questions at all. I was drilled by my intellectual family background to “know without having a question at all”. This way is to let the third force work directly by being the witness. I studied Christian mysticism, holy geometry, Jewish mysticism, C. G. Jung, Greek myths, art and philosophy, and Astrology (as a cosmological system). In all these works is to be found the same reality, knowledge and cosmology that was also expressed by Gurdjieff in a different way and for our time. And then I was prepared to meet a living teacher. Now I see that my life was from the very beginning already planned to prepare me for a very definite task. Now it is time to begin to fulfil it. I went through a training in the Sufi tradition, with Reshad Field, for about ten years. During this time I have been a consultant in and around Zürich for life crises and inner work for about 45 years. I work with astrology and lead seminars and give talks on spirituality. 2003 I started a project called “ars sacra” with a group of friends. One of the main aims of this project is the study of the knowledge that is expressed in Objective Art. One of the objects of my study for the past 25 years is the Altar of Isenheim. It is a good example of how I understand the concept “Objective Art”. I think this work is perhaps the most perfect and most extensive manifestation of Objective Art in Europe. The basic idea of the perfection of man is in this masterpiece expressed by the means of the Enneagram, which contains the Law of Seven (the Octave) and the Law of Three (Trinity). The universal knowledge is in a brilliant way planned as concept and realised in every detail by the genius of the artist, who is now known as Grünewald. The work entails cosmic laws and their relations to each other, the main stations of the Way and the way of fulfilling the task of a perfect man; the idea of man in creation and the way of the individual realisation of it. The first volume I wrote on it for publication is waiting to be published in German. English translation is in preparation. The Enneagram and the Law of the Octave are put into the concept of the Last Supper of Leonardo da Vinci and in the frescoes of villa dei Mysteri in Pompei, a work which I studied for many years. The effect of Objective Art is a direct, deep and subjective one shortcutting the head. It can have a deep effect even without any of the knowledge contained in it. To understand it is necessary to know the objective cosmic structures and laws. In any other way any study remains a subjective interpretation. For example without knowing what the Enneagram is about, it remains very interesting intellectual information, but gives no help for the inner Way. The way to become able to recognise an Idea (in sense of Plato) is long and there is a distinction between an Idea and a concept made by our cloudy brains. It is not enough to study Gurdjieff and his environment. It is necessary to find the essence of his teachings. It will remain second hand knowledge as long as we can not formulate it for our time in our own way and express it in our own time so that other people can understand it. Nevertheless, the images work on you in a very similar way. Every comparison destroys - there is no need to compare -- they are different cross-sections of the one real world. For example: icons have their own language. If they are “written” then it is necessary to learn to read this kind of script. Anyway here in the West it is necessary to learn the language of pictures. A mental analysis is only a veil on the direct communication between the icons (or any other pictures) and the inherent knowledge of the heart. In the Orthodox Iconography they build the link between Greek mythological figures and Western Christianity. For example John the Baptist is developed of Pan, the “goat-god”. The most important figure is Dionysos, the only God, who knows death and transformation. He is called “the three times born”. The knowledge of mythology and the understanding of its pictures on the inner level is needed and necessary. A very exact formulation is important for me. It is necessary to communicate as precisely and exactly as possible. This is the way of passing on teachings in the new age of Aquarius. The collective channel of communication in the next 2000 years is an intellectual one. I want to say something about expressions. After a while - beginning already in the second generation - the terms expressed of genuine experiences do not work any more. They are analysed, and interpreted. Therefore I don’t use often the generally used expressions neither of Gurdjieff nor Jungian psychology or any other system. I try to express things in my own way, in the language of today as I know it. My dear Teacher, Reshad Feild said once - and it became of a great importance on my way - “Creation is made of love. In order to connect everything, God implanted a need in everything that is created.” (my own free formulation). He also said often: “Love reaches you just like a knife". It is always LOVE which makes every contact to whatever is possible. The presence of a teacher has another effect than a study of the ideas he left behind. The presence of a teacher transmits always a substance, which enables the pupil to understand and to work in the right way. In German there is an expression for giving birth: ‘auf die Welt bringen’, to ‘bring into the world’. Only a woman can bring a man into the world. However, this is only possible if the man is bound through a commitment. But men do not like to commit themselves. That is why women often say: “I do not understand. He opened himself and exactly when he had done so, he left me.” The teachers in Tibet know that there are more perfect women than men, but they do not need to be known. Back to Sufism: I met it for the first time on a four day retreat with Pir Vilayat Khan in the beginning of the eighties. It was like fresh water from a spring! My being opened and I thought: I am a Sufi from my birth. The same happened when I met Irina Tweedie on a weekend seminar. They were totally different from each other, individual, but both living in and out of the Truth. Then came Reshad, a well educated Englishman. It was the same as with Gurdjieff, with the difference that he was, and is, a living person. He knew always what was going on with some 70 people around him. His visions are in the Christian form and his methods are the Sufi methods. He uses the tools that are available. His strength in God and weakness as a human being were never separate. If he shouted with his mighty voice I only felt the direct trasfer of Love. It was not important why he was shouting and if he was right or not. He did not try to hide his problems. Things were as they were. In each moment in his “Living School” I was aware of the extraordinary happening that I took part in. I paid my own way: I brought to him all the people I prepared or was connected with through my work. My whole practice, buildt over 25 years, broke down. I am grateful to Gurdjieff for the sacrifice of his life, what he did for us, for the sake of the coming world. We can’t really estimate it - he was bigger than us. His Conscious Labour and his Intentional Suffering remains a secret between him and God.
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