I Made Clear to My Reason...

2015-02-14

One of the references to Reason that I pulled out of Beelzebub’s Tales yesterday caught my attention because it spoke about Reason in a very peculiar way.  It came out of the chapter, “Religion” where Beelzebub is relating the tragic circumstances of a small group of Tibetans whose chief was killed before an important initiation ceremony could be performed. Gurdjieff is quoted as saying that this referred to an actual historical event when a very high Lama was killed by a stray bullet from the British Younghusband expedition to Tibet around the year 1902. Some references suggest that this was the last individual who understood the full ancient knowledge, and that he helped maintain certain energetic balances on the planet … with the resulting imbalance precipitating WWI. The veracity of these claims is well beyond my pay grade, so I’ll move on to the quote and what caught my attention.

Beginning on page 725…

“Among the beings of this small group there existed a rule, which, by the way, they kept very strictly, in accordance with which certain secret instructions of Saint Lama concerning the beings of their group were transmitted from generation to generation through their chief alone, and he could initiate into these secrets the other six, only after certain attainments on their part.

“That is just why all the six members of this small organization, all of whom had already merited and were ready to be accepted for initiation in the near future, were so horrified, as I have said, when they learned about the destruction of their chief. With the destruction of this, at that time, sole initiate, there was lost to them forever the possibility of becoming initiated into these secret instructions of Saint Lama.

“Owing to the fact that the destruction of their chief proceeded so unexpectedly, that sole remaining possibility became even doubtful for them ‘of receiving these instructions’ by communicating with the Reason of the destroyed chief by means of the process, the ‘sacred Almznoshinoo,’ for the existence of which they not only knew the possibilities, but they also had in themselves all the data required for such an actualization.

“You, probably, my dear boy, know nothing yet about this sacred process?

“That process is called the sacred Almznoshinoo by means of which three-centered beings who have themselves already had time to coat and to bring their own body Kesdjan up to completed functioning and to a definite degree of Reason, intentionally produce the coating or, as it is otherwise said, the ‘materialization’ of the body Kesdjan of any being already entirely destroyed, to such a density that this body acquires again for a certain time the possibility of manifesting in certain of its functions proper to its former planetary body.

“This sacred process can be produced upon the body Kesdjan of that being who also during his existence had brought his higher being-body up to the completed functioning, and in whom, in addition, the Reason of this body had been brought up to the degree called the sacred ’being-Mirozinoo.’

The part that caught my attention was the phrase: “that sole remaining possibility became even doubtful for them ‘of receiving these instructions’ by communicating with the Reason of the destroyed chief by means of the process, the ‘sacred Almznoshinoo,’”

This suggests a certain capacity and independent status for Reason. As to whether this only applies to a reason developed to this high level, or whether this characteristic is common to all levels of Reason isn’t clear.  However the oft repeated expression formulated something like, “he made clear to his Reason…” seems to refer to Reason as a quasi-independent feature of our existence.

I’m not trying to suggest that Reason is some kind of separate “center” or “body”, but all of these references (all 312) point to something that has some kind of autonomous role in our personal situations.