18 nicolescu g-philos-nat 2004-07-03

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Gu rdjieff's Philosophy of NatureBasarab N icolescu

A particle-physicist’s b old, rigorous ex ploration of therelationship between Gurdjieff’s cosm ological mythosand leading theories in physics and cosmology.

It is becoming very fashionable almost everywhere to nd parallels betweenmodern science a nd this o r t hat t eaching, this o r t hat p hilosophical system, thisor t hat religion. The m ore o r l ess hi dden sociological root of such a tendency isquite obvious: the con temporary al l-powerful "god" of technoscience i s evoked asevidence of the "seriousness" of another eld of knowledge.

Even if the intentions o f certain seekers ( and I include here those few who are

drawn toward the re lationship between science an d the Gurdjieff teaching) arenot tied to this so ciological motivation, there i s st ill a huge misunderstanding.The methodology and perspective of a teaching, a system of p hilosophy, or areligion are very different from the methodology and aim of modern science. Tocompare r esults o r i deas j udged to be si milar can only lead to the w orst illusions,to analogies t hat ar e soft and devoid of m eaning, and, in the best of c ases, toresonances t hat are f elt as " poetic."

Nevertheless, the searc h for a real relationship between science an d such elds o fstudy would, in our opinion, be worthwhile. Such a relationship could be

established if t he teaching, the philosophical system, or t he religion in questionderives f rom a p hilosophy of nature. 1

The f act that Gurdjieff's t eaching contains a p hilosophy of nature i s o bvious, andthe present s tudy will attempt to support that affirmation. The hypothesis o f acorrespondence between man and nature is formulated without ambiguity byGurdjieff:

Gurdjieff’s Philosophy of Nature © 1997, 2003 Basarab Nicolescuwww.Gurdjieff-Bibliograph .co!

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It is impossible to study a system of t he u niverse w ithout studying man. Atthe sam e time, it is impossible to study man without studying the universe.Man is an image of the world. He was created by the same laws which createdthe whole of the world. By knowing and understanding h imself, he will knowand understand the whole world, all the laws that create and govern theworld. And at the same time, by studying the world and the laws that governthe world, he w ill learn and understand the laws w hich govern h im. . . . Thestudy of the w orld and the st udy of man must therefore r un parallel, the o nehelping t he ot her. 2

The comparison between modern science and this type of philosophy goes beyond an intellectual exercise

have been guided by ideas f rom a philosophy of nat ure. For exam ple, the rolethat German Naturphilosophie played in the d iscovery of electromagnetism in 1820

by Oersted is well known. Such cases are number, that i s highly signicant. These cases show that t here is an intrinsicrelationship, which is n ot d evoid of m eaning, between nature and a "realistic"philosophy of nature.

A second aspect seems still more i mportant. The ab sence of meaning, above al lthe ab sence o f a v alue sy stem guiding technoscience, is p erhaps t he ch aracteristictrait of our epoch. It is just in this con text that we a re g oing to examine G urdjieff's

philosophy of nature.

THE PRINCIPLE OF DISCONTINUITY AND QUANTUM DISCONTINUITY

One of t he most surprising aspects o f Gurdjieff's philosophy of n ature is t hecentral rol e which it g ives to discontinuity, with a direct cr itical ref erence,moreover, to contemporary physics.

Indeed, with rare exceptions, continuity is a constant i n human thought. It i sprobably based on the ev idence p rovided by our s ense o rgans: continuity of our

own body, continuity of the en vironment, continuity of memory. It belongs t o thevisible d omain, to the d omain of constant forms (or f orms evol ving in a con stantway), to the d omain of objects. Death, natural cataclysms, mutations w ere, until

just recently, considered more as manifestations of acimpenetrable mystery. Science needs a mathematical apparatus for itsdevelopment. Newton and Leibniz discovered such a tool based on continuity:


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innitesimal calculus. For centuries, scientic thought has b een nourished by theidea of continuity.

Gurdjieff, however, clearly affirms t he essen tial role o f discontinuity in nature:

It is necessary to regard the universe as consisting of v ibrations . Thesevibrations p roceed in all kinds, aspects, and densities o f the matter w hichconstitutes t he u niverse, from the nest to the co arsest . . . . So that one o f thefundamental propositions of our physics is the continuity of vibrations ,although this h as n ever been precisely formulated because i t has n ever beenopposed. In certain of the newest theories t his p roposition is b eginning to beshaken.

In this instance the view of ancient knowledge is opposed to that ofcontemporary sci ence, because at the base of the u nderstanding of vibrations

ancient knowledge p laces t he p rinciple o f the discontinuity of vibrati ons .The principle of the discontinuity of vibrations means the denite andnecessary characteristic of al l vi brations in nature, whether ascending ordescending, to develop not u niformly but w ith periodical accelerations an dretardations. 3

These considerations o f Gurdjieff's w ere formulated in about 1915, in front of aSt. Petersburg group. The d ate i s i mportant. *

Gurdjieff himself was aw are o f these sci entic d iscoveries, or at least one of thenumerous intellectuals among his groups in Moscow and St. Petersburg—Ouspensky in all likelihood—had informed him of the existence of thesediscoveries. The a llusion in these t exts t o "certain most recent theories" may thus

be explained. According to this hypothescience," would have b een referring rather t o what we w ould today call "classicalscience." But beyond questions of vocabulary, what seems i mportant to us i s t hatGurdjieff sees the epistemological and philosophical stake of science indiscontinuity. 4

In evoking this work developed in 1900, Max Planck w rites: "After a few weeks,which were cer tainly lled by the m ost intense work of my life, I had a ash oflight in the darkness in which I was debating with myself, and unexpectedperspectives w ere o pened." 5 This "ash of light in the d arkness" revealed to him aconcept—the elementary quantum of action ("action" is a physical quantitycorresponding to energy multiplied by time)—which was go ing to revolutionizeall of ph ysics and profoundly change our vi sion of the world. This qu antum is


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expressed by a universal constant (the "Planck constant") which has a well-determined value an d occurs by i nteger m ultiples.

The Planck quantum introduces a discrete, discontinuous st ructure of en ergy.Planck w as f ully conscious t hat in breaking down the o ld all-powerful concept ofcontinuity, the very foundation of classical r ealism was thus being put inquestion: "This qu antum represented.… something absolutely new, unsuspecteduntil then, and seemed destined to revolutionize a theoretical physics ba sed oncontinuity, inherent i n all causal relations since the discovery of innitesimalcalculus by Leibniz an d Newton." 6

It is important to take into account that t he "discontinuity" we are sp eaking of(whether in regard to quantum theory or i n regard to the cos mology of Gurdjieff)is a pu re and rm discontinuity which has no thing in common with the p opularusage of t his w ord (the fork of a road, for example). To try to grasp the fullstrangeness of the idea o f discontinuity, let us imagine a b ird jumping from one

branch to another without passing through any as if the bird were to suddenly materialize on one branch, then on another.Evidently, confronting such a possibility, our h abitual imagination is b locked. Butmathematics can treat this sort of situation rigorously.

Quantum discontinuity is an innitely less r ich concept than discontinuity in thesense i n which it is u sed in the co smology of G urdjieff. There i t is p resented asthe fundamental aspect of on e o f the two laws r egulating all worlds ( the law of

seven). The "obligatory-gap-aspects-of-the-unbroken-owing-of-the-whole"7

conditions t he interpenetration of the d ifferent worlds, one w ithin another. It isdiscontinuity which permits u nity to exist in diversity and diversity within unity.It i s d iscontinuity which permits ev olution and involution. It i s d iscontinuitywhich permits t he co existence o f global causality and local causality. And, in theend, it is d iscontinuity which assures t he d ignity of m an and gives m eaning tohis l ife. We are t herefore v ery f ar f rom quantum discontinuity.

MATTER AND DEGREES OF MATERIALITY

Gurdjieff affirms unambiguously the materialistic character of his teaching:"Everything in the Universe is material: therefore the Great K nowledge is morematerialistic than materialism ." 8 And he ad ds: "Everything in this universe can beweighed and measured. The Absolute is as material, as weighable andmeasurable, as the moon, or as man." 9 Here is something to scandalize a g ood


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many spiritualists and devotees of Tr adition and something to placate somescientists ( let us forget for the m oment the w ord "Absolute").

This t renchant affirmation, however, reveals i ts full meaning only at the m omentGurdjieff introduces t he d istinction between "matter" and "degree o f materiality."Like every man of science, Gurdjieff is convinced that " matter is ever ywhere thesame.…" 10 But he introduces t he notion of the degree of materiality, linked toenergy: "It i s true that m atter is the same, but m ateriality is different. A nddifferent degrees o f materiality depend directly upon the q ualities an d propertiesof the en ergy manifested at a g iven point." 11

For a physicist of t he nineteenth century, the idea of "degrees of m ateriality"would not have m eant very much. It takes on real substance w ith the d iscovery ofthe quantum world, where laws are radically different from those of themacrophysical world. It is t he st udy of the i nnitely small which reveals a d egreeof materiality different from that of the m acrophysical world.

This is not t he place t o discuss q uantum laws. But al low us to cite briey arelevant example.

Classical p hysics recognizes two kinds of objects that are quite distinct:corpuscles ** a nd waves. Classical corpuscles a re d iscrete e ntities, clearly localizedin space an d characterized, from a dynamic point of vi ew, by their ener gy andtheir m omentum. Corpuscles cou ld easily be v isualized as b illiard-balls t ravelingcontinuously in space a nd time, and describing a very precise t rajectory. As forwaves, they were conceived as occupying all of space, in a continuum. A wavephenomenon can be described as a superpositioning of periodic wavescharacterized by a sp atial period (wave-length) and by a t emporal period. In thesame way, a wave can be characterized by its "frequencies": a "frequency ofvibration" (the inverse of t he period of o scillation) an d a "wave number" ( theinverse o f the w ave-length). Waves can thus be readily visualized.

Quantum mechanics brought about t he complete overturning of this view.Quantum particles are corpuscles and waves at the same time. Their dy namiccharacteristics ar e co nnected by the formulas o f Einstein-Planck (1900–1905) andde Broglie (1924): the energy is p roportional t o the temporal f requency (theEinstein-Planck formula), and the momentum is proportional to the wavenumber ( the de Broglie formula). The factor o f p roportionality, in both cases, isprecisely Planck's co nstant.

This r epresentation of a quantum particle dees al l attempts t o represent i t byforms in space a nd time, for it is o bviously impossible to represent s omething


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mentally that would be simultaneously corpuscle and wave. At the same time,the energy is chan ging in a discontinuous w ay. The concepts o f continuity anddiscontinuity are r eunited by nature.

It must be well understood that the quantum particle is a com pletely new entitythat cannot be red uced to classical representations; the q uantum particle i s n ot asimple j uxtaposition of corpuscle an d wave.

We can understand the quantum particle as bei ng a unity of contradictories. Itwould be more cor rect to affirm that this p article is neither a corpuscle nor awave. The unity of contradictories i s m ore than the simple sum of i ts cl assicalparts, a su mmation which is contradictory (from the cl assical point of view) andapproximate (from the qu antum point of view).

When Gurdjieff affirms, "The w orld consists of vibrations and matter, or of matterin a state o f vibration, of vibrating matter," 12 and when we remember the role hegives t o the frequency of vibrations, to energy, to discontinuity, it is t empting tothink of the n ew quantum entities. Let us be ver y clear: we ar e n ot affirming thatquantum particles can be identied with the "vibrations" Gurdjieff speaks abo ut(which would in any case be absurd), but that they appear to be theirmaterialization in the quantum world. At the same time, it is i ndisputable that

the d iscovery of the q uantum world gives rat ional, scientic sen se t o the n otionof "degree of materiality." Gurdjieff associates t he neness of m atter w ith thefrequency of vibrations: "The expression 'density of vibrations' corresponds to'frequency of v ibrations' and is used as the opposite of ' density of m atter'.…Therefore the nest matter co rresponds t o the greatest 'density of vibrations.'" 13

Indeed, what c onceivable relation is t here between a chair an d a neutrino (aparticle with no mass and no electrical charge which penetrates ourmacrophysical matter w ithout impediment)? I t is cl ear t hat it is a question of twodifferent worlds—of two different levels o f reality, governed by different laws—and that the d egree of neness of matter is ver y different when passing from onelevel to another.

The existence of d ifferent d egrees o f matter al lows us to see that t here aredifferent kinds o f matter, dened exactly in terms o f their d egree of materiality.Gurdjieff is not the only contemporary thinker who has conceived of theexistence of several kinds of matter. Stephane Lupasco (1900–1988), whose


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philosophy takes q uantum mechanics as its p oint of d eparture, deduced, as aconsequence o f his l ogic of energetic an tagonism, three t ypes of matter-energy. 14

With regard to the number of types of matter, Gurdjieff made two apparentlycontradictory affirmations. In the co llection of his t alks rec alled by his st udents,Views From the Real World , he say s, "Unity consists o f three m atters," 15 whereas in

In Search of the Miraculous , he affi rms t hat there are t welve categories of matter." 16

In fact, there is n o contradiction. When Gurdjieff, like Lupasco, speaks o f threetypes o f matter, he i s ref erring explicitly to the law of three, which gives st ructureto all the p henomena of reality. In this sen se, there i s n o question of a coincidence

between the numbers advanced by Gurdjieff and Lupasco; to the degree thatLupasco's conclusion is based on a ternary logic—the included middle—thecorrespondence w ith the l aw of three i s o bvious. Finally, considering the i dea ofmateriality in relation to the structure of the universe, Gurdjieff, in his

cosmology, deduced that t here must necessarily be twelve categories o f matter.This w ill give sci entists w ork for several centuries.

The existence of two matters—macrophysical matter and microphysical matter—even if it is n ot un animously accepted (or r ecognized as such ) does n ot un leasherce opposition either. On the other h and, to speak of "biological matter" or"psychic m atter" is en ough to bring to a boil a scientic w orld still dominated byreductionism. Likewise, not everyone is r eady as yet to accept the affi rmation ofLupasco (who, as w e w ill see, is cl ose t o the i deas o f Gurdjieff) that every systemincludes an aspect that is, at one a nd the sam e t ime, macrophysical, biological,and psychic.

For Gurdjieff, there is nothing completely inert in nature; everything is inmovement: "The sp eed of vi brations of a m atter shows the d egree o f intelligenceof the given matter. You must remember t hat there is no thing dead or i nanimatein nature. Everything in its own way is alive, everything in its own way isintelligent and conscious." 17

Though this asser tion is, at rst sight, astonishing, it is i n accord with what w eobserve at t he scale of the innitely small. "Inert m atter" is a n expression of

classical science which has been completely emptied of meaning today.Microphysical matter i s eve rything but "inert matter." At the l evel of the i nnitelysmall, there is a boiling activity, an innite number o f p rocesses, a perpetualtransformation between energy and matter, a co ntinuous creation of particles an danti-particles. The st upefying quantity of information and the i ncreasing densityof energy that on e nds in the quantum world show that i t is practicallyimpossible t o trace a boundary between the l iving and the n on-living. It is q uite


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conceivable that a quantum particle possesses its own subjectivity, its ownintelligence, in complex relations of p erpetual combat and of continual creationand annihilation taking place w ith all the o ther p articles.

Gurdjieff often comes b ack to the problem of t he intelligence of m atter: "Inaddition to its cosmic properties, ever y substance also possesses psychicproperties, that i s, a certain degree of i ntelligence." 18 This exp lains w hy certainsubstances can contribute t o the ev olution of man, an evolution which is, after al l,at the v ery heart of the G urdjieff teaching.

For G urdjieff, there i s no separation among matters: "The ner m atters p ermeatethe coarser o nes." 19 A n example o f this i s m icrophysical matter, which penetratesmacrophysical matter. Protons, neutrons, electrons, the quantum vacuum are inus, even if our behavior is far f rom being identical to that of the q uantum world.

Gurdjieff goes even further i n affirming that all the matters of the u niverse arefound in man: "We h ave i n us t he m atter of all other w orlds. Man is, in the fullsense of the t erm, a 'miniature u niverse'; in him are all the matters o f which theuniverse consists;" 20 We can interpret this as meaning that what is beingdescribed is the Gurdjieffian version of the m ystery of the Eucharist.

As w e can see, the m aterialism of the Gurdjieff teaching is ver y complex, and wehave only touched on the most supercial fringe of i t—its relation to modernscience. But make no mistake about it: Gurdjieff's "matters" have multipleaspects, most of w hich totally escape the m ethodology of m odern science s incethey concern, rather, the i nner alchemy of man.

THE LAW OF THREE AND THE NECESSITY FOR A NEW LOGIC

Since the dawn of t ime, binary thought, that of "yes" and "no," has d ominatedman's a ctivity. Aristotelian logic h as reigned for cen turies and continues to thisday. Certain traditional t eachings ( and in particular, Christian theology) h ad thepotential for a n ew logic, but the p otential stayed in the h ands of a sm all numberof i nitiates. Gurdjieff's t eaching on the law of t hree is rel ated to this n ew logic,

which also m anifests i tself in quantum physics.According to Gurdjieff, the law of t hree is "the fundamental law that creates al lphenomena i n all the d iversity of unity of all universes."

This is t he "Law of Three" or t he law of the three p rinciples or the three f orce s . Itconsists of the fact that every p henomenon.… is t he r esult of the com binationor t he meeting of three d ifferent and opposing forces. Contemporary thought


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realizes the existence of t wo forces an d the necessity of t hese t wo forces f orthe production of a phenomenon.… No question has ever been raised as tothe t hird, or i f it has b een raised it has scar cely been heard.… The rst forcemay be called active or p ositive; the second, passive or n egative; t he third,

neutralizing. But t hese are merely names , for in reality all t hree forces areequally active and appear a s act ive, passive, and neutralizing, only at t heirmeeting points, that is t o say, only in relation to on e an other at a g iven moment . 21

Before d iscussing the sp ecial character of the t hird principle, let us, for a m oment,emphasize the character of the opposition (or as Lupasco calls it, the"antagonistic contradiction") b etween the three principles, to which Gurdjieffconstantly returns. In eel!e"u"#s $ales to %is Grandson , he describes t he law ofthree as "a law which always ows into a con sequence and becomes the cause ofsubsequent consequences, and always functions by t hree independent and quiteopposite charact eristic m anifestations, laten t within it, in properties n either see nnor sensed." 22 This other aspect is worth mentioning: the latent cha racter,invisible and ungraspable, of t he three principles. Manifestation can only takeplace by means of the interaction between the law of three an d the law of seven.

The opposition between the three principles i s a veritable "contradiction," in thephilosophical sense of t he term: something which, f ar from self-destructing,

builds itself through antagonis

It is rel atively easy to imagine a contradiction between two terms, but practicallyimpossible (except b y a formal m athematical construction) to conceive of acontradiction between three t erms. Two of three t erms lose, by the i nclusion of athird term, their ow n identity. In this sen se, we can understand the expression"included middle." Pa radoxically, in the l ogic o f the "i ncluded middle," no tions o f"true" and "false," far from losing their value, are considerably expanded,embracing a number of phenomena which are much more important than thoseof binary logic.

An example taken from quantum physics w ill illustrate the preceding pointssimply.

In an experiment m ade, quite obviously, in the world of macrophysics, aquantum particle m anifests ei ther as w ave or as corpuscle, that is t o say as o ne o ftwo contradictory and antagonistic en tities. If we want to use the usual word"complementarity," it is more the expression "antagonistic complementarity"which governs, because the properties o f waves and corpuscles ar e mutually


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exclusive. Now, at its p roper l evel of reality in the q uantum world, the q uantumparticle appears as a third term, neither w ave nor cor puscle, but which, at t hemacrophysical level, is cap able of manifesting as a wave or a co rpuscle. In thissense, it is a reconciling force b etween the wave and the corpuscle. But, at t he

same t ime, being neither wave n or corpuscle an d manifesting at another level ofreality, it is cl early in contradiction with the w ave o r t he co rpuscle.

It should be noted that Ouspensky—one of the most famous disciples ofGurdjieff—in his book Tertium Organum , published in 1912 in Russia, 23 was therst modern thinker to have affirmed the importance of the principle of theincluded middle as the fundamental logic of the new science. Deeply enamoredat the sam e time by both science an d tradition, Ouspensky wrote other book sinspired by science, of which The Fourth Dimension , which a ppeared in 1909 in St.Petersburg, had, among others, a con siderable inuence u pon Russian futurism,

and Malevitch.Earlier I gave as an example of t he third term the quantum particle in its ow nworld: the quantum world. But do we really see this p article? H ave we a directaccess to the quantum world? Our ways of measuring are always macrophysicaland we do not really see the quantum particle. In our accelerators we willreconstruct it, for ex ample, by its t races. Our o wn macrophysical constitutionprevents u s from traveling freely in the quantum world and from going to "see"what happens there.

To understand this t hird term would require a conceptual revolution. A relativelyrecent development in particle p hysics t hrows an unexpected light on the t hirdforce. The unication of al l the physical interactions seem s t o require a space-time whose number of dimensions goes far beyond the number of dimensions ofour ow n space-time (three d imensions of s pace and one d imension of time). Itdoesn't m atter t hat t his unication could happen only at fabulous levels ofenergy, never ach ievable in our accel erators. What m atters is t hat s uch a largenumber of dimensions could be reunited by the coh erence of physical laws. Is themanifestation of the t hird force t his l arge space-time? W ould this t hird force b ethe so urce o f discontinuity, of nonseparability and of nonlocality?

In relation to this l arge space-time, we, poor bei ngs l iving in four d imensions, area bit like the t wo-dimensional beings of E dward A. Abbott's con ceptual universe,Flatland 24 , in relation to the miraculous beings coming from a world of threedimensions. But we can understand this third force p recisely if we, as G urdjieffsaid, go beyond the l imitations of " the fundamental categories o f our p erceptionof the w orld of phenomena," that is t o say, if we g o beyond our sensation of space


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and time. Gurdjieff's insistence, in his p hilosophy of n ature, on the scienticnotions o f "dimensions" an d "space" an d "time" seems t o us n either acc identalnor a si mple co quettishness of l anguage. In particular, to distinguish the d ifferentcosmoses by the different number of their dimensions of space-time 25 is

extremely signicant.The "Okidanokh" is a marvelous Gurdjieffian symbol of the ternary dynamicsand of its m anifestation. It is con ceived as t he "O mnipresent-Active-Element," 26 asthe "'Unique-Active-Element' the particularities o f which are t he chief c ause o feverything existing in the Universe". 27 It "obtains its p rime arising.… from thethree H oly sources of t he sac red Theomertmalogos, that is, from the em anationof the Most Holy Sun Absolute.… [It is] the fundamental cause of most of thecosmic phenomena." 28

Directly linked to the three principles o f the law of three, it is t hus n ormal that"no results of any kind normally obtained from the p rocesses occ urring throughthis Omnipresent World-substance can ever be perceived by beings o r sensed bythem." 29 But how to reconcile t he u ngraspable ch aracter of the t hree p rinciples ofthe law of t hree with the fact that the Okidanokh is, all the sam e, a substancecapable of penetrating all cosmic formations? Indeed, "immediately on enteringas a whole into any cosmic unit, there immediately occurs in it what is cal led'Djartklom,' that i s t o say, it is d ispersed into the t hree f undamental sources f romwhich it ob tained its p rime arising." 30 The t hree principles a re thus u niversallypresent. But what is i t that confers on the O kidanokh the ch aracter of substance?It is certainly not the three principles. So Gurdjieff invents a symbol ofetherokri lno , "that prime-source substance w ith which t he w hole Universe is lled,and.… is t he basis for the ari sing and maintenance of everything existing" 31 . It isexactly this fourth element of O kidanokh which confers o n it t he character ofsubstance "the proportion of the pure—that is, absolutely unblended—Etherokrilno, w hich unfailingly enters into all cosmic formations and thereserves, as i t were, for con necting all the active elements o f these f ormations; andafterwards w hen its t hree fundamental parts r eblend then the sai d proportion ofEtherokrilno is re- established." 32

The symbol of O kidanokh, let i t be said in passing, creates an interestingrelationship between the "three" an d the "four": the "three" r epresents t he latentinvisible and ungraspable characteristic of the three principles, whereas the"four" represents t he m anifestation of the t hree p rinciples o n the p lane o f matter-energy.


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A phonetic resemblance can make us think of a possible relation between"etherokrilno" an d "ether," esp ecially as Gurdjieff speaks o f "the prime-sourcesubstance w ith which the whole Universe is lled." But there is no such truerelationship. Ether i s a so rt of reference a bsolute, unmovable, a u niversal system

of reference. Etherokrilno, in its r elation with Okidanokh, is linked to movement,to transformation, to energet ic t ransmission.

We can imagine Okidanokh as a eld lling all the cosmoses and whosevibrations w ill transmute the law of three in material m anifestations. If the"natural" m an seems sen sitive t o duality, the universe, as f ar as it is co ncerned,certainly needs t he t hree.

NATURE: UNITY IN DIVERSITY

For Gurdjieff, God was c onstrained to cr eate the world:There came to our Creator All-Maintainer the forced need to create ourpresent exi sting Megalocosmos, i.e., our World.… Our Creator O mnipotentonce ascertained that this same Sun Absolute.… was, although almostimperceptibly yet n evertheless gradually, diminishing in volume.… [The]cause of this gradual diminishing of the volume of the Sun Absolute wasmerely the H eropass, that is, the ow of time i tself. 33

Such an assertion might ap pear, at rst gl ance, a manifestation of Gurdjieff'scelebrated humor. But the r ole at tributed to time i s i ntriguing and makes u s t hinkof a similar idea w hich ap peared in the cosmology of Jakob Boehme (1575–1624).With Boehme, God also created the u niverse by constraint—that of his imperiousdesire to know himself. Thus, he dies to himself in order to be born, bysubmitting himself to the cycle of time. The "birth of God" is a fundamentalaspect of Boehme's d octrine.

A number of important resemblances can be found between the philosophy ofGurdjieff and that of Boehme 34 : the law of three an d the law of seven as t he b asisof their cosmologies, the role of discontinuity, the universal excha nge of

substances, living nature. With Gurdjieff, as with Boehme, there are twomeanings of t he w ord "nature": a "creaturely nature" and a "divine n ature". Theidea o f nature—which encompasses bot h divine n ature an d creaturely nature—refers t o the interaction among all levels o f r eality. So, with Gurdjieff as withBoehme, materialism and spiritualism are t wo faces of one an d the sam e r eality.


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It is striking that, from among the innumerable books an d studies d edicated tothe teaching of Gurdjieff, no one has studied these resemblances betweenBoehme's and Gurdjieff's ideas. This is not to su ggest that Gurdjieff took the workof Boehme as h is sou rce o f inspiration. Their p hilosophies o f nature are cl early

different and there are ev en differences i n their s imilarities ( for exam ple, in thedynamic functioning of the law of three an d the law of seven.) But what is clear isthe persistence a cross t he centuries o f certain fundamental ideas i n the differentphilosophies of nature, a fact which seems to us to be most important to notetoday, to the d egree t hat the w orld is i n search of a n ew philosophy of nature, inharmony with the d iscoveries of modern science.

At any rate, to return to Gurdjieff's v iew of Creation: it was n ecessary to save t hedivine world from the action of time. Thus, the universe was created, anunending chain of systems bo und by universal interdependence, which escapes

the a ction of time i n this w ay. Gurdjieff calls t his u niversal interdependence "t heMost Great cosmic Trogoautoegocrat.… the true Savior from the law-conformable action of the merciless Heropass," 35 or "the Trogoautoegocraticprocess.… in order t hat.… "the exchange of sub stances" or the "Reciprocalfeeding" of everything that exists, might proceed in the U niverse an d thereby thatthe merciless "Heropass" might not h ave its malecent effect on the SunAbsolute." 36

The Trogoautoegocratic Process and Bootstrap : The principle of universalinterdependence is certainly not found only in the teaching of Gurdjieff. Itappears in many traditional t eachings. But h is convincing exposition of i t i sindisputably original.

A generalized nonseparability characterizes the universe of Gurdjieff:"Everything is d ependent on everything else, everything is connected, nothing isseparate." 37

Systems on different scales have their own autonomy, for according to theterminology of Gurdjieff, the Absolute only intervenes d irectly at the creation ofthe rst cosmos. The o ther c osmoses f ormed themselves f reely by self-organizing

principles—always, however, in submission to the law of three an d the law ofseven. In this w ay the d iversity of the u niverse i s ass ured. On the o ther h and, theinteraction of the different cos moses by means of the universal exchange ofenergy-substances assures unity in diversity. L ife itself appears not as anaccident, but as a necessity in this universe of u niversal i nterdependence. InGurdjieff's account, a "learned being" named Atarnakh put forward the followinghypothesis: "In all p robability, there exists in the World some law of the


13



reciprocal maintenance o f everything existing. Obviously our l ives ser ve also f ormaintaining something great or s mall in the World." 38

Gurdjieff's u niverse i s no t a st atic u niverse, but a u niverse i n perpetual movementand change, not only on the p hysical plane, but also o n the b iological and psychicplanes. Evolution and involution are al ways at work in the d ifferent worlds. Andwhen we consider the important nu mber of different m atters characterized bydifferent d egrees o f materiality, we can understand the essential r ole of t heuniversal exchange of substances in evolution and involution:

Thanks just to these p rocesses o f "evolution" and "involution" inherent in thesacred Heptaparaparshinokh, there also began to be crystallized anddecrystallized in the presences of all the greatest an d smallest cosm icconcentrations, al l k inds of denite cosmic substances with their owninherent subjective properties, an d which objective science calls "activeelements." And all the results of the "evolution" an d "involution" of theseactive elements, actualizing the Trogoautoegocratic principle of exi stence ofeverything existing in the Universe by means of reciprocal feeding andmaintaining each other's exi stence, produce the sai d common-cosmic process"Iraniranumange", or, as I have already said, what o bjective science calls"common-cosmic-exchange-of-substances." 39

The trogoautoegocratic process of Gurdjieff presents a remarkablecorrespondence t o the "bootstrap" principle formulated in physics ar ound 1960

by the American physicist, Geoffrey Chew.40

This w ord "bootstrap" al so implies"to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps." The closest equ ivalent i n thescientic co ntext would be "self-consistency."

The bootstrap theory appeared as a natural reaction to classical realism and tothe i dea closely associated with it of the n ecessity for m otion equations i n space-time. In proposing the radical renunciation of al l motion equations, bootstraptheory implies the absence of al l fundamental "building blocks" of p hysicalreality. According to bootstrap, the quantum particle has t hree different roles: (1)a role as con stituent of compound wholes, (2) a rol e as m ediator of t he force

responsible for the cohesion of the compound whole, and (3) a r ole as thecompound system.

So, in the bootstrap theory, the p art appears at the sam e t ime as t he w hole. Whatis p ut in question in bootstrap theory is t he very notion of a particle's i dentity: itsubstitutes instead the notion of t he relationship between "events." It i s therelations bet ween events which are responsible for t he ap pearance of w hat we


1"



call a particle. There is n o object i n itself, possessing its o wn identity, that w ecould dene in a sep arate o r d istinct manner f rom the o ther p articles. A particleis w hat i t is b ecause a ll the other p articles ex ist at t he same t ime: the attributes o fa determined physical entity are the results of interactions with all the other

particles. According to bootstrap, there r eally is a " law of reciprocal maintenance"of all quantum particles. Also, as i n the t rogoautoegocratic p rocess, a sy stem iswhat it is b ecause al l the other s ystems exi st at t he same time. The role o f self-consistency in the construction of reality should be emphasized—a self-consistency w hich assures t he coh erence of the A ll.

There are different d egrees o f gen erality in the formulation of t he bootstrapprinciple. So the English physicist, Paul Davies, does n ot hesitate t o speak of a"cosmic b ootstrap." 41

Under t his gen eral form, bootstrap theory tries t o respond to the question: Howdoes the universe work? Is it a sort of machine, certainly marvelous, bu tnonetheless a machine, made up of practically independent systems,mechanically interrelated? Or rather does there exist a n underlying unity,maintained by a d ynamic intelligence, in permanent evolution, at work at everylevel of nature? Is a level of nature w hat i t is b ecause a ll the other l evels ex ist atthe same time? Are there laws which apply to all levels of nature (particles,atoms, planets), immutable laws which, however, as Gurdjieff had thought,produce d ifferent effects acc ording to the level on which they act? In other words,is there a sort o f "reciprocal f eeding" or "reciprocal m aintenance" b etweendifferent levels o f nature? O r, rather, is t he u niverse a sad machine, where ea chlevel is d estined, by the co ntinual growth of disorder, of entropy, for d estructionand death?

A universe seems capable of sel f-creation and self-organization, without an y"external" intervention. It is p recisely the w hole p rocess o f self-creat ion and self-organization of the u niverse w hich P aul Davies bap tized "cosmic bo otstrap": "Theuniverse lls i tself exclusively from within its o wn physical nature with all theenergy necessary to cr eate an d animate m atter, thus channeling its own explosiveorigin. That i s cosm ic bootstrap. We owe our ow n existence to its ast onishingpower." 42 It seems evident that sel f-creation and self-organization only havemeaning in a universe made up of an innite chain of systems regulated byuniversal interdependence. Unity in diversity and diversity through unity are t heconditions f or sel f-creation and self-organization. Otherwise t here i s n othing butthe law of accident which can act.


1#



Finally, it is l ogically conceivable to postulate a still more g eneral form than the bootstrap principle, which would include

world, t he universe, l ife, and consciousness. In this very general f orm, t he bootstrap principle, in the present

nonscientic character. W hatever the destiny of bootstrap theory in particlephysics (the re igning theory in the d ecade of 1960–70 but now replaced by thequantum eld theory), its m ethodological and epistemological interest remainsconsiderable. More than a new thêma in physics, it is r ather a m atter of a sy mbol—a sym bol determining the em ergence of a v ision of the u nity of the world. Thissymbol, while remaining precise, is inexhaustible. Its richness includesmanifestation in the domain of natural systems. Indeed, there is a "total

bootstrap," which constitutes a viswhich co rresponds to a sci entic theory. The on e w ithout the ot her remains po orand, in the en d, sterile. The d ouble aspect of the bootstrap principle as symboland scientic notion explains why it allows a p rofound rapprochement betweenscience an d the p hilosophy of nature.

Cosmic Dimensions and the Unication of Physical Interact ions : Let us come back to the notion of "dimensions" and

nature i s cent ered on the i dea of "cosmoses": "Science an d philosophy, in the t ruemeaning of these terms, begin with the idea o f cosmoses." 43 "The ra y of creation"includes seven cosmoses contained one within the other: the Absolute, AllWorlds, All Suns (the Milky Way), the Sun, All Planets, Earth, Moon. The names

given to these worlds m ust not d istract us. For exam ple, the heavenly bodiespossess, apart from their h abitual p hysical properties, other p roperties whichexplain why the number of dimensions of space is d ifferent from the number ofdimensions of our world:

Each cosmos i s a living being which lives, breathes, thinks, feels, is b orn, anddies. All cosmoses r esult from the action of the same forces an d the samelaws. Laws are the same everywhere. But they manifest themselves in adifferent, or at least, in not qu ite the same way on different planes o f theuniverse, that is, on different levels. 44

It is interesting to mention the way in which Gurdjieff conceives t he notion of"All Worlds":

We may say that "All Worlds" must form some, for us, incomprehensible andunknown Whole or One .… This Whole, or One, or All , which m ay b e called the"Absolute" or t he "I ndependent" becau se, including everything within itself, itis n ot d ependent upon anything, is " world" for " all worlds." 45


1$



Here we have a good example of contradictory thought, which alone canintroduce u s t o the w orld of symbols. It is al so i nterest ing to note t hat, accordingto Gurdjieff, "Man lives i n all these w orlds, but in different ways. This m eans t hathe is rst of all inuenced by the nearest world, the one immediate to him, of

which he forms a part."46

In other w ords, in spite of h is three-dimensionalstructure, man potentially has difficult, but not impossible, access to otherdimensions.

But what is t he sense of " seven independent di mensions" 47 (of space, of course, because in the Gurdjieffian cosmology there is only one en

the word "dimension" used, as we have been led to understand, in itsmathematical, scientic sense (of a space-time dimension), or does it r atherconvey a vague and ambiguous meaning, closer to that of ordinary language?The a nswer s eems u nequivocal: it is t he sci entic sen se t hat Gurdjieff uses. First

of all, Ouspensky presented Gurdjieff with an interpretation of t he con sequencesof these seven dimensions, based on the scientic meaning of the worddimension, and Gurdjieff agreed with it. 48 On the other hand, Gurdjieff himselfmade several clear re ections on this subject. He says, for example: "Theinterrelation of t he co smoses i s p ermanent and always t he sam e. That is to say,one cosm os is r elated to another as zero to innity .49 But the rel ation between "zeroand innity" is exact ly that which characterizes t he rel ation between a sp ace o f acertain number of dimensions and a space of a higher number of dimensions (forexample, the relation of a point to a line, of a line t o a surface). It is ex actly this

relation of "zero to innity" which inspired Edwin Abbott in his w onderful bookFlatland, where he describes the joys and the sufferings of two-dimensional beings confronted by the strangeness and the mir

world. Further, this brings to mind a remark of Gurdjieff concerning mysticalexperience and ecstatic states: the intellectual, emotional, and moving centers"transmit in worldly three-dimensional forms things which pass completely

beyond the limits of worldly measurements." 50 The fact t hat i t i s th e scienticmeaning of the word "dimension" which is used here ap pears clear.

The u niverse of Gurdjieff possesses a g reat number of dimensions in its totality.

But as t he d ifferent worlds h ave n ot on ly physical properties, does i t not meanthat the p hysical universe i tself must be d escribed by a sp ace-time w ith a largenumber of dimensions?

Certain theories of unication make reference to a sp ace i n which the n umber ofdimensions i s l arger t han that of the w orld in which we l ive. Evidently, it is n otpossible to visualize additional dimensions o f space, because o ur se nse o rgans


17



are b uilt to correspond to a t hree-dimensional reality. However, the u nication ofall t he interactions appears t o require the physical exi stence of t hese strangespaces. In a certain sense, the symmetries l eading to unication are associ atedwith seven additional dimensions of space. These seven dimensions were

probably "compacted" at 10-43

secon ds af ter t he Big Bang; i.e., they were h idden inan extremely small region of space ( 10 -33 centimeters). The unication of all thephysical i nteractions, the additional d imensions o f s pace, the necessary relation

between the particle and the universe they just happen to coincide with the implications of Gurdjieff's p hilosophy ofnature?

The Quantum Vacuum and the Nothing : I w ould like to close this d iscussionwith a t heoretical speculation which could appear qu estionable.

For Gurdjieff, the r ay of creation ends w ith Nothing. Up to that point, this i s no t aremarkable idea because, after al l, it is n ormal to link an "end" w ith "Nothing."But things becom e complicated when we learn that according to him, "Nothing"means the Absolute u nder its aspect of "Holy t he Firm":

Between All and Nothing passes the ray of creation. You know the prayer"Holy God, Holy the Firm, Holy the Immortal." … Holy God means the

Absolute or All. Holy the Firm also means the Absolute or N othing. Holy theImmortal signies t hat which is be tween them, that is, the si x notes o f the rayof creation, with organic l ife. All three taken together m ake one. This i s t he

coexistent and indivisible T rinity.51

In the light of what we have com e to up to now, it is tempting to establish arelation between "Nothing" and the quantum vacuum. So I would certainly notwish to affirm a relation of identity between "Nothing" and the qu antum vacuum(that would be ri diculous), but to su ggest that the qu antum vacuum could be, onthe physical plane, one of the facets of "Nothing." The plausibility of such arelation is justied by the a ffirmation of Gurdjieff himself. His d escription of theray of creation gives t he impression that, in descending, matter becom es m oreand more d ense, less an d less intelligent, subject to more an d more l aws. And

here, then, at the end of the ray of creation, we nd the A bsolute, thus r ejoiningthe v ery beginning of this r ay. The a pparently linear asp ect of the ray of creationis transformed into a circle. The universe becomes a loop enclosing anindeterminate number o f systems in perpetual interaction. So we understand

better the meaning of the trogoautoegoc


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The "quantum vacuum" is that w hich is furthest from the accepted meaning ofthe word vacuum in current usage. When we study a sm aller and smaller regionof space w e nd a g reater and greater activity, a si gn of perpetual movement. Thekey for understanding this p aradoxical situation is p rovided by Heisenberg's

uncertainty principle. A very small region of space co rresponds, by denition, toa v ery short time, and thus, conforming to Heisenberg's p rinciple, to a very widespectrum of energy. So the "quantum uctuations of the vacuu m determine thesudden appearance o f "virtual" p article-antiparticle pairs w hich then annihilateeach other reci procally, this p rocess t aking place in very short i ntervals o f t ime.Everything is vi bration: according to quantum physics, we can not conceive of asingle point in the world which is inert, immobile, and not animated bymovement. At the quantum level the vacuum is full; it is t he seat of spontaneouscreation and annihilation of particles an d anti-particles. Quantum particles h avea certain mass an d so, according to the theory of r elativity, they need a certainenergy to materialize. In furnishing the en ergy to the quantum vacuum, we canhelp it to materialize these potentialities. It is ex actly what w e do in constructingparticle accelerators (an amusing dialectic between the "visible" and the"invisible" i s t hus set up: in order t o detect innitesimal particles w e h ave t o buildimmense accelerators).

The f ull quantum vacuum contains i n itself potentially all particles, whether t heyhave already been observed or not. It is we who have drawn most existingparticles f rom nothingness i n building our acc elerators a nd other exp erimental

apparatuses, whereas t he "natural" world is m uch m ore "economical": the p roton,the n eutron, and the el ectron are su fficient for con structing almost the w hole o four " visible" u niverse. We are, in this sen se a lso, participants i n a reality whichembraces u s, our p articles, and our u niverse.

The quantum vacuum is, then, a marvelous facet of reality. The quanta, thevibrations, be t hey real or virtual, are ev erywhere. The v oid is f ull of vibrations. Itcontains p otentially all reality. The entire universe i s p erhaps b eing drawn fromnothingness by a "gigantic uctuation of the void, which we know today underthe n ame o f 'big bang.'" 52 So, would there n ot be a r elation between the quantum

vacuum and Nothing, in its character as H oly the Firm?

LIFE, GAIA, AND THE ANTHROPIC PRINCIPLE

With rare except ions, contemporary philosophy considers that life an d man areaccidents, the p roducts of chance. It is by chance t hat we ap peared one d ay on asmall planet in orbit around a certain star, in the remote suburbs o f a g alaxy


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which is nothing out of t he ordinary. This sad and dismal vision is p ropagatedwith joy and conviction by our philosophers.

Gurdjieff's point of vi ew in regard to this is com pletely opposed to that ofcontemporary philosophy. For him, life and man are products of a cosmicnecessity—life cannot exi st w ithout t he universe and the universe cannot exi stwithout life: "Thus o rganic l ife i s an indispensable l ink in the chain of the w orldswhich cannot exist without it just as i t cannot exist without them." 53 According tothe Gurdjieffian cosmology, life a ppeared as a necessary discontinuity to ll, inconformity with the law of seven, one of the intervals o f a cosmic octave: "Theconditions to insure the passage of forces ar e created by the arrangement of aspecial m echanical contrivance between the planets and the earth. Thismechanical con trivance, this 'transmitting station of forces' is organic life onearth ." 54

This p oint of view on the necessity of life i s p aradoxically being reinforced, not by philosophy, but by science. Here we wi

principle" ("anthropic" comes from the Greek w ord anthropos , which means man).There e xists a very rich literature o n this su bject. 55 We shall limit ou rselves todiscussing a f ew of its asp ects i n relation to Gurdjieff's cosm ology.

The anthropic principle was i ntroduced by Robert H. Dicke in 1961. Its u tilitywas being d emonstrated by the works of Brandon Carter, Stephen Hawking, JohnBarrow, Frank Tipler, and other researchers.

The a nthropic p rinciple i s p resented today under d ifferent formulations. In spiteof this di versity, we can recognize a com mon idea w hich goes t hrough them all:the existence of a correlation between the appearance of m an, "intelligent" l ife inthe co smos—and so on earth, our on ly point of reference f or t his " intelligent" l ife—and the p hysical conditions w hich regulate t he evo lution of our u niverse. Thiscorrelation seems to be under v ery strong constraints: if the value of certainphysical constants o r t hat of p arameters appearing in certain laws varies ev enslightly, then the p hysical, chemical, and biological conditions w hich permit theappearance of man on earth are no longer brou ght together. "The big surprise,"

writes H ubert Reeves, "is t hat t he quasi-totality of ctional universes t hat can beelaborated on computers by physicists w ill be extremely different f rom our ow n.In particular, they will be absolutely unsuited to engender living beings [of

biochemical structure]." 56 Brandon Carter has u nderlined the importance of thegravitational cou pling constant, w hich must b e close to the experimentallyobserved value so that p lanets can exist for a sufficiently long time t hat l ife canappear on them. Too strong or t oo weak a g ravitation leads ei ther to ephemeral


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planets o r qu ite si mply to the impossibility of their bei ng formed. The co uplingconstant characterizing strong interactions—acting in the quantum world—ishere a gain, very precise: "If the f orce w as a little b it less st rong than it is.… therewould be n o more hy drogen available to form stars of the rst importance.… If,

on the contrary, it were much weaker, complex atoms like carbon could notexist. " 57

A vast self-consistency thus seem s t o regulate the evolution of the u niverse, self-consistency concerning physical interactions as well as the phenomena of l ife.Galaxies, stars, planets, man, atom, the quantum world thus seem united by oneand the same self-consistency. In this sense, the anthropic principle can beconsidered as a special case of bootstrap and as an illustration of thetrogoautoegocratic p rocess.

We sh ould not confuse t he sel f-consistency of the an thropic p rinciple w ith simplecoherence. We co uld think that, from the si mple fact that the u niverse exi sts, thatit "stands," i t must necessari ly be co herent, and that, in this sen se, the a nthropicprinciple is o nly a trivial affirmation. But the coherence o f our u niverse is o f avery sp ecial nature. From the p oint of view of physics, nothing prevents t he samephysical laws, by varying the constants an d the parameters ap plicable to theselaws, from creating different u niverses w here life would be present. Now theextraordinary fact sho wn by astrophysical s tudies is that, in order for life toappear, the numerical values of t hese constants an d of these parameters m ustpass through extremely narrow windows. The anthropic principle, therefore,implicitly poses t he d izzying question of the u niqueness of this w orld.

In any case, the fact t hat, for l ife to appear o n a little planet, an entire g alaxy atleast had to be created, opens l arge perspectives on the philosophic an d poeticplane. In his g roups i n St. Petersburg and Moscow, Gurdjieff insisted on the factthat l ife did not ap pear by the accidental creation on earth of certain molecularstructures, but t hat i t came from "Above," from the world of cel estial bo dies.Ouspensky comments: "Organic life.… began in the sun . This last was the mostimportant point because once m ore.… it contradicted the u sual modern idea o flife h aving originated so to speak from below. In his exp lanations l ife cam e fromabove." 58 This p oint of view is completely in accord with the an thropic p rinciple:at l east a galaxy had to be present f or l ife to appear, so in this sen se, life has acelestial origin. We a re t he ch ildren of the st ars.

If the origin of life is ce lesti al, it is i nteresting to clarify the relationship betweenlife a nd the e arth. For Gurdjieff, life i s " the e arth's o rgan of percep tion." 59 For himas for Kepler, the earth is a living being. 60 He even speaks of t he "degree of


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intelligence" w hich the e arth possesses. 61 On the sci entic p lane, such a p oint ofview may appear co mpletely unrealistic (if not su rrealistic). But h ere too thesurprise comes from science itself. After thorough research, t he very seriousscientist James L ovelock formulated the Gaia hypothesis 62 : the e arth operates l ike

a l iving organism. So the b iosphere ap pears as a sel f-regulating entity, controllingthe p hysical and chemical environment so a s t o insure t he co nditions of l ife. (Thename of Gaia—goddess of the earth among the Greeks—given to this hypothesis,was s uggested by the w riter William Golding.)

Even if the notions o f "life" o r " intelligence" o f the earth are ri cher i n meaning inGurdjieff's p hilosophy of nature than in the Gaia hypothesis, a rel ation betweenthem can nevertheless be es tablished.

Gurdjieff's p hilosophy of na ture, by the relation that i t es tablishes between lifeand the earth, succeeds in linking two scientic hypotheses w hich are quitedifferent and which appear i n very different d omains: the an thropic principleand the G aia h ypothesis.

GURDJIEFF AND SYSTEMS THEORY

A surprising kinship also can b e found between Gurdjieff's thought and systemstheory, which was b orn some decades af ter t he formulation of h is t eaching. Itshould be noted, incidentally, that t he word "system" appears in Gurdjieff'svocabulary when he speaks of the "Common-system-harmonious-movement" 63 ,

"common-system-harmony," 64 or the "common systematic movement." 65

Contemporary sy stems theory appeared as a r ejection of classical realism, whichwas not in conformity with the data of modern science, and as an attempt to

bring about order in the complexity which and, in particular, p hysics. Systems approaches derive from such diversedomains as bi ology, economics, chemistry, ecology and physics. Of course, we arenot r eferring here to the technical or mathematical aspects of the differentsystems t heories bu t to systems t heory as a v ision of the w orld.

Implicitly, we h ave made a llusion to the p arallels b etween Gurdjieff's p hilosophyof nature an d systems theory.

Let us sum up these p arallels, before b roaching the d ifferences, which are j ust asinterest ing:

1. We can conceive o f the u niverse as a g reat whole, a vast cosmic matrix whereeverything is in perpetual movement an d energetic formation. This All is


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regulated by universal interdependence. With Gurdjieff, this interdependence is brought about by the action of discont

or the law of the octave: "The law of octaves con nects all proc esses of theUniverse." 66 This unity is not st atic; i t i mplies differentiation, d iversity, t he

appearance o f hierarchical levels, of relatively independent systems, of "objects"taken as local congurations of en ergy. With Gurdjieff, it is the existence ofdifferent matter-energies an d the a ction of the l aw of three, with its l ogic of theincluded middle, which assures t he em ergence of these p roperties.

2. It is the opening of the system, by interaction with other syst ems, whichprevents i ts d egeneration, its d eath, through the i nevitable d egradation of energy,through increasing disorder. The "system of systems" could thus be soconstituted as t o establish the d iversity of the w orld, in a perpetual and universalenergetic exch ange, in a v ast and unceasing nonseparability, a v eritable saf eguard

of the "life" of systems. In the cosmology of Gurdjieff, as presented byOuspensky, the opening is created by the com plex act ion of the law of seven. Wenote simply two characteristics bo und to opening: (1) "Any note of any octavemay at the sam e time be an y note of any other octave p assing through it" 67 ; and(2) "Each note of any octave can be regarded as an octave o n another plane. Eachnote o f these i nner oct aves ag ain contains a w hole o ctave." 68 This second propertygives t he ch ain of systems a t ree-like ch aract er.

3. As distinct from reductionism, which explains diversity by a substancecommon to different systems, systems t heory, like Gurdjieff's t hought, envisagesa com mon organization. This common organization is of an energetic n ature, theenergy appearing as a unifying concept of "substance"—a "crystallized" form ofenergy—and to "information"—a "coded" form of energy. In Gurdjieff'scosmology, the com mon organization is d ue t o the joint action of the l aw of threeand the l aw of seven. These l aws ass ure t he i nvariance o f the en ergetic st ructureand by the sam e t oken, the st ability of natural systems.

4. Natural systems ar e formed from themselves; they create themselves i n time.Natural systems avo id an equilibrium which is equ ivalent t o degeneration anddeath, by choosing, through opening toward other s ystems, stability in a st ate o fdisequilibrium. So uctuations beco me t he sou rce o f evolution and creation. Self-organization and self-creativity of natural systems a re the indubitable signs o ffreedom, but t his freedom operates w ithin the limits of its co nformity, of itscompatibility with the n ecessary dynamics of the All.

These cha racteristics ar e found also i n the cosm ology of Gurdjieff. Determinismand indeterminism coexist in the universe of G urdjieff. The d ifferent cycles of


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seven can evolve o r involve; they can interconnect with themselves i n many ways.Self-organization and self-creativity of different systems depend on theseinterconnections. So systems can "rise" o r "fall" in relation to other systems.Finally, the ro le o f uctuations i s ex plicitly evoked:

The law of octaves explains many phenomena in our lives which areincomprehensible. First is t he principle of t he deviation of forces. Second isthe fact that nothing in the w orld stays at t he sam e p lace, or r emains w hat itwas, everything moves, everything is going somewhere, is changing, andinevitably either d evelops o r go es d own, weakens o r d egenerates, that i s t osay, it moves al ong either an ascending or d escending line of oct aves. Andthird, that in the act ual development itself of both ascending and descendingoctaves, uctuations, rises an d falls a re constantly taking place. 69

As w e h ave al ready stated, if the p arallels bet ween systems t heory and Gurdjieff'sthought are i nterest ing, their d ifferences a re also highly instructive:

1. If systems t heory is f ascinating in many respects, it nevertheless r emains va gueand ambiguous when it comes to the dynamic description of unity in diversity,and of d iversity in unity, which it al lows. On the other h and, according toGurdjieff, "The n umber of fundamental laws w hich govern all processes bot h inthe world and in man is very small." 70 This hypothetico-deductive method,foreshadowed by Kepler, is found in science even today. We p ostulate a certainnumber of laws, often very abstract, mathematical, and therefore far from

directly observable reality; we deduce t he co nsequences of these laws an d thenwe com pare t hese con sequences to the exp erimental data. The fundamental lawsof t he universe, in Gurdjieff's cosm ology, are the law of three and the law ofseven (or of octaves). Th ese laws confer a truly axiomatic character on hisphilosophy of nat ure. The different w ritings of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky bearwitness t o the f ruitfulness of such an approach. It is t he a bsence of an axiomaticcharacter w hich remains, in our op inion, the main weakness of c ontemporarysystems t heory.

2. When systems theory speaks of exchange" (of substance, energy, or

information), it very obviously means a horizontal exchange which takes p lace between systems belonging to one and the same level

human level, the level of planets). But in the Gurdjieffian universe, the verticalexchange which takes place between systems belonging to different l evels isequally conceivable, because t hese levels p ossess com mon matter-energy; thereexist not o ne but several m atter-energies. The fact t hat t he laws governingdifferent levels are d ifferent explains w hy vertical exchanges are, nevertheless, so


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rare an d why they a re ass ociated with results of extreme neness. We can rep lacethe word "level" with the word "cosmos" and propose the same considerations, inadding to it the notion of supplementary dimension of space. But systems theorydoes n ot envisage t he exi stence o f several cosmoses.

3. For s ystems t heory, time h as n o charact eristic w hich is sp ecial in relation to itsusual p hysical p roperties, w hereas Gurdjieff introduces a subtle distinction

between time and space. For him, time is the "Ideally-Unique-SubjecPhenomenon":

Time in itself d oes n ot exist; there i s o nly the totality of the results en suingfrom all the cosm ic p henomena p resent in a g iven place. Time i tself, no beingcan either understand by reason or sense by any outer or i nner being-function. It cannot even be sen sed by any gradation of instinct.… It is p ossibleto judge Time only if one compares real cosmic phenomena w hich proceed inthe same p lace and under the same con ditions, where Time is bei ng constatedand considered.… Only Time alone has n o sense of objectivity because it isnot the result of the fractioning of any denite cosm ic phenomena. And itdoes not issue from anything, but blends always with everything, and

becomes self-sufficiently independent; therefore, iit alone can be called and extolled as the "Ideally-Unique-Subjective-Phenomenon." 71

These p ropositions by Gurdjieff introduce an interesting dialectic between time

and nontime, between time an d the ab olition of time.Considered in isolation, this space-time continuum appears as a sort ofapproximation, as a subjective phenomenon linked to a subsystem. Eachsubsystem, corresponding to a certain degree of materiality, possesses i ts ow nspace-time. Time associated with a subsystem will be therefore a "breath," 72

characterizing the i ndividuality of this su bsystem in the u nity of the u niverse.

On the other ha nd, according to Gurdjieff's d enition of time, if we co nsider al lphenomena in all places i n the universe, time ceases t o exist. The unity of theendless l inkage o f systems esc apes t he a ction of time; it is o utside t ime.

4. In spite o f the i nteraction between systems an d the en dless linkage o f systems,systems t heory gives n o particular si gnicance t o the p lace o f this syst em in thewhole of al l systems an d to the relation of this syst em with this w hole. ForGurdjieff, on the other h and, these aspects are essential. To study them, heintroduces a principle o f relativity:


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The st udy of the relation of laws to the p lanes on which they are m anifested brings us to the study of relativiu

to understand the rel ativity of each thing and of each manifestation accordingto the p lace i t occupies i n the co smic o rder. 73

The ch oice of t he word "relativity" may be su rprising. Gurdjieff probably knewEinstein's th eory of r elativity. 74 Did he ch oose t his w ord ironically? But, exactly asin Einstein's t heory, the d iversity of phenomena in different systems of referencecoexists w ith the invariance of t he laws o f p hysics i n all systems o f r eference.Likewise, in Gurdjieff's cosm ology, the great diversity of p henomena bound totheir places i n different cosmoses coexists w ith the invariance o f the g reat cosmiclaws, the law of three an d the law of seven. Gurdjieff insisted on the n ecessity ofthe study of phenomena of one cosmos as if we were observing them from thepoint of view of the laws of another cosmos. Likewise, if we con sider the ch ange

of one sy stem of reference t o another s ystem of reference, according to Einstein'srelativity theory, we d emonstrate—by the d iversity of these t ransformations—thedynamic aspect of t he l aws of invariance.

Gurdjieff speaks o f an "exact language" whose s tructure sho uld be based on theprinciple of relativity. 75 A ll the ideas of this n ew language concentrate ar ound asingle idea: that of evo lution. "The place in the cosmic order" con sidered byGurdjieff in his d enition of the p rinciple o f relativity is, in fact, the "p lace i n theevolutionary l adder." 76

It is p erhaps i n keeping with the principle of relativity, with all its i mplications,that we can note the most important difference between systems theory andGurdjieff's p hilosophy of nature.

THE REASON OF KNOWING AND THE REASON OF UNDERSTANDINGIN OUR TIME

The hegemony of technoscience in our societies no longer needs to bedemonstrated. It is t ied in an undeniable m anner to the n otion of "power."

But what does knowledge serve? In the name of what does the extraordinarydevelopment of technoscience f unction?

These questions m ay seem useless, because the association between the words"technoscience" and "progress" is made automatically. The word "progress,"unhappily, is one of the most ambiguous and noxious words in our vocabulary.


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In the absence o f a value system, the development of technoscience follows itsown logic: all that can be done w ill be done. If we reect for a m oment, we canunderstand that this logic of technoscience is frightening. The disastrousconsequences for ou r species can be innumerable an d some of them are already

present among us. Several philosophers h ave n ot failed to note the d angers of atechnoscience w hich w ould exclusively follow its own logic.

Thus, a p hilosopher such as M ichel Henry is n ot afraid to say that technoscienceis t he cause o f a new barbarism: "Life i tself is aff ected, all our v alues t otter, notonly the aesthetic, but al so the ethical, the sacred—and with them the verypossibility of living each day." 77

For Gurdjieff, the decline and disappearance of civilizations is tied to the"disequilibrium between 'knowing' and 'being'": "In the h istory of humanity thereare known many examples when entire civilizations have perished becauseknowledge outweighed being or being outweighed knowledge." 78 Are we not in aworld where kn owing far surpasses being?

Gurdjieff distinguishes in this w ay "the reason of kn owing" and "the reason ofunderstanding": "Knowledge is one thing, u nderstanding is another t hing.…Understanding depends on the relation of knowledge to being." 79 Gurdjieffironically refers t o the "sci entist of new formation," 80 who serves only knowing:

And especially in Western culture, it is con sidered that a man may possessgreat knowledge, for exam ple he may be an able scientist, make d iscoveries,advance science, and at the sam e time he may be, and has t he right to be, apetty, egoistic, caviling, mean, envious, vain, naive, and absent-minded man.It seems to be considered here that a professor must always forget hi sumbrella everywhere.… And they do not understand that a man's knowledgedepends on the level of hi s being. If knowledge gets far ah ead of bei ng, it

becomes theoretical and abstract and inapplicabl because instead of serving life and helpi

the difficulties they meet, it beg ins to complicate man's life, brings newdifficulties i nto it, new troubles an d calamities w hich were not t here before.

The reason for t his is that knowledge which is no t in accordance w ith beingcan never b e large enough for, or su fficiently suited to, man's r eal needs. Itwill always be a knowledge of one thing together w ith ignorance o f anotherthing ; a knowledge of the detail , without a knowledge of the whole ; aknowledge of the form without a knowledge of the essence .… A change in thenature o f knowledge is po ssible o nly with a ch ange i n the n ature of being. 81


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So we see al l the importance o f Gurdjieff's p hilosophy of nature in its d enitionof "reason of understanding": the relation between the manifestations on thedifferent planes o f reality, relation between the p art and the w hole, the relation

between form and structure.

On the other ha nd, in Gurdjieff's t erminology, the co ntent of t he w ord "to be" isvery precise. It i s l inked to evolution—a central as pect of G urdjieff's o ral an dwritten teaching. Gurdjieff was revolted by the modern acceptance of theexpression "evolution of m an." "Only thought as t heoretical and as f ar r emovedfrom fact as modern European thought could have conceived the evolution ofman to be possible apart from surrounding nature , or hav e regard ed the ev olutionof man as a gr adual conquest of nature ." 82 Moreover, the very idea o f the " conquestof nature " is ab surd and pernicious, and it is t his t hat has l ed us t o the d isquietingand dangerous char acter of technoscience. Man is a p art of nat ure and not the

conqueror of a n ature outside h imself. In this sense, each "conquest of nature"can, po tentially and paradoxically, be a defeat for man. We should ratherenvisage a cooperation between man and nature. But this cooperation necessarilytakes p lace t hrough the "reason of understanding."

In Beelzebub's Tales t o His G randson , Gurdjieff describes i n some d etail the inneralchemy which l eads to t he "reason of understanding," 83 but the f ull meaning of itrequires a com plete an d effective knowledge of the Gurdjieff teaching. Here i t isenough to say that, for G urdjieff, the "reason of understanding" fuses or ganicallywith a man's being, whereas t he "reason of kn owing" settles in him merely asinformation. In any case, it i s the "reason of u nderstanding" in one form oranother w hich could help in developing the dialogue between science andmeaning.

The contemporary encounter between science and meaning is a major eventwhich, in our vi ew, is p robably going to generate t he o nly true revo lution of t hiscentury. 84 We are perhaps at the threshold of a new Renaissance, one of whoseconditions is exactly the d ialogue between science an d meaning. More and more,science i s d iscovering its ow n limits, owing from its ow n methodology. Sciencehas b een able to reveal, in an exemplary w ay, the si gns of nature, but, because ofits ow n methodology, it is incapable of d iscovering the meaning of t hese signs.Science car ries w ith it an immense technological development. Technoscience,withdrawn into itself, cut off from philosophy by its d ominant position in oursociety, can only lead to self-destruction. O ur self-destruction is necessarilyengendered by the on tological incomprehension of the signs of nature, more an dmore numerous, more and more powerful, and more and more active. This


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ontological incomprehension leads in its turn to a technological, ana rchicdevelopment, invariably guided by the con cern for effi ciency and prot.

We m ust invent a m ediator bet ween sc ience and meaning. This m ediator can only be a new philosophy of nature. The point

nature can only be modern science, but a sci ence w hich, having arrived at its ow nlimits, tolerates a nd even cries o ut for an ontological opening. The discovery ofidea-symbols in quantum physics and in other sciences, as well as theinterpretation of c ertain major sci entic d iscoveries, opens a fabulous f ree spacewhere there arises a trans-disciplinary dialogue between past an d present,

between science and the philosophies of knowledge.

In a realistic w ay, in the present st ate of knowledge, and in the actual state oftrends i n the philosophic, historical, sociological, or rel igious d omains, a returnto the ancient p hilosophy of n ature is u nthinkable. But t he study of certainphilosophies of nature, such a s that of Gurdjieff, which sh ow deep parallels w ithmodern science, can be a p recious gu ide in the sear ch for a p hilosophy of natureadapted to our time. Gurdjieff's philosophy of nat ure is undoubtedly ahead ofour t ime, as i t has b een ahead on certain aspects of modern science. It can, in anycase, help us in our choice between a new barbarism and a new Renaissance.Only the "reason of understanding" can lead us t o this new Renaissance.

* Quantum mechanics was born in 1900, with the work of Max Planck on theradiation of the "black body" (a "black body" is a b ody which completely absorbselectromagnetic rad iation). As w e shall see, this w ork gave rise, at t he cen ter o fthe n ew physics, to the d iscontinuous s tructure o f energy. Many other discoveries

followed, up to about 1915, but it is true that quan tum mechanics was notformulated as a theory until about 1920–1930 and, since t hen, it has been theformal basis of m odern particle physics, which extends, and at the same timepresupposes, quantum mechanics and Einstein's theory of relativity.

** "Corpuscle" was t he t erm used in the ear ly days of quantum physics.


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A specialist in the t heory of elementary particle p hysics, Basarab Nicolescu is t heauthor of more than a hundred articles in leading international scientic

journals, has made numerous contributions to science anthologies andparticipated in several dozen French radio documentaries on science. He hascollaborated for many years with G. F. Chew, former Dean of Physics at theUniversity of C alifornia at Berkeley and founder of t he Bootstrap Theory. Theyhave jointly published several articles o n the t opological framework of BootstrapTheory.

He is t he au thor of several books including Science, Meaning, and Evolution-TheCosmology of Jacob Boehme, translated from the French by Rob Baker, winner ofthe 1992 Benjamin Franklin Award for Best History Book. His latest book,

Manifesto of Transdisciplinar is pu blished by the State University of New YorkPress. In it, Nicolescu unies science and the sacred based on what we'velearned from Quantum physics. More information about Nicolescu’s work isavailable f rom his T rans d isciplinary web site:

h&&p'((perso.club-i)&er)e&.fr()icol(cire&(

h&&p'((perso.club-i)&er)e&.fr()icol(cire&(biob)(bib)e).h&!

E-mail : )icol*club-i)&er)e&.fr

NOTES

1. Michel Ambacher, Les P hilosophies de l a N ature (Presses U niversitaires de France,Coll.) "Que sais-je?", No. 1589, 1974.

2. P. D. Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching(New York: Harcourt Brace and World, 1949), 75.3. Ouspensky, In Search of the M iraculous , 122–23.4. Basarab Nicolescu, Nous, la p articule e t le m onde (Paris: Le M ail, 1985).5. Max Planck, Initiations à l a p hysique (Flammarion, 1941), 73.6. Ibid., 76.7. G. I. Gurdjieff, Beelzebub's Tal es to H is G randson (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1950),

832.


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http://perso.club-internet.fr/nicol/ciret/

http://perso.club-internet.fr/nicol/ciret/biobn/bibnen.htm

mailto:[email protected]

http://perso.club-internet.fr/nicol/ciret/

http://perso.club-internet.fr/nicol/ciret/biobn/bibnen.htm

mailto:[email protected]



8. G. I. Gurdjieff, Views from the R eal World: Early Talks A s Recollected by His P upils(New York: E. P. Dutton, 1973), 21.

9. Ouspensky, In Search of the M iraculous , 86.10.Ibid., 86.11.Ibid.12.Ibid., 87.13.Ibid., 170.14.Stephane Lupasco, Le pri ncipe d'an tagonisme et la l ogique d e l 'énergie (Paris: Rocher

1987), foreword by Basarab Nicolescu; see al so G eorge Melhuish, The P aradoxicalUniverse (Bristol: Rankin Books L td., 1959).

15.Gurdjieff, Views f rom the R eal World , 189.16.Ouspensky, In Search of the M iraculous , 172.17.Ibid., 317.18.Ouspensky, In Search of the M iraculous , 176.19.Ibid., 88.20.Ibid.21.Ibid., 77.22.Gurdjieff, Beelzebub's Tales , 139.23.P. D. Ouspensky, Tertium Organum (New York: Vintage Books, 1970). Ouspensky

also wrote A New Model of the Universe (New York: Vintage Books, 1971).24.Edwin A. Abbott, Flatland (New York: New American Library, 1984).25.Ouspensky, In Search of the M iraculous , 77.26.Gurdjieff, Beelzebub's Tales , 140.27.Ibid., 153.28.Ibid., 138.29.Ibid., 153.

30.Ibid., 140.31.Ibid., 137.32.Ibid., 142.33.Ibid., 749.34.Basarab Nicolescu, Science, Meaning and Evolution: The Cosmology of Jacob Boehme

(New York: Parabola Books, 1991).35.Gurdjieff, Beelzebub's Tales , 785.36.Ibid., 136–37.37.Ouspensky, In Search of the M iraculous , 22.38.Gurdjieff , Beelzebub's Ta les , 1094–95.39.Ibid., 759.


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40.Basarab Nicolescu, "Unité et s tructure hiérarchique: l a théorie du bootstraptopologique," i n Nous, la p articule et le m onde.

41.Paul Davies, Superforce: the S earch for a G rand Unied Theory of Nature (New York:Simon and Schuster, 1984).

42.Ibid., 195.43.Ouspensky, In Search of the M iraculous , 208.44.Ibid., 206.45.Ibid., 76.46.Ibid.47.Gurdjieff, Beelzebub's Tales , 477.48.Ouspensky, In Search of the M iraculous , 208–13.49.Ibid., 206.50.Ibid., 195.51.Ibid., 132.52.Heinz R. Pagels, The Cosmic Code (New York: Bantam Books, 1983), 247.53.Ouspensky, In Search of the M iraculous , 283.54.Ibid., 138.55.George G ale, "The Anthropic Principle," Scientic American (vol. 245, no. 6, 1981),

114–22; John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986).

56.John D. Barrow, Frank J. Tipler and M.-O. Monchicourt , L'Homme et le cosmos-LePrincipe an thropique en astrophysique moderne (Imago, 1984). Afterword by HubertReeves, 103.

57.Ibid., 79–80.58.Ouspensky, In Search of the M iraculous , 139.59.Ibid., 138.60.Ibid., 25.61.Ibid.62.James E. Lovelock, Gaia—A New Look at Life on Earth (New York: Oxford

University Press, 1982).63.Gurdjieff, Beelzebub's Tales , 170.64.Ibid., 263.65.Ibid., 951.66.Ouspensky, In Search of the M iraculous , 285.67.Ouspensky, In Search of the M iraculous , 139.

68.Ibid., 135–36.69.Ibid., 129–30.70.Ouspensky, In Search of the M iraculous , 122.71.Gurdjieff, Beelzebub's Tales , 123–24.72.Ouspensky, In Search of the M iraculous , 213, 329, 334.73.Ibid., 89.74.Ibid., 207.


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75.Ibid., 70.76.Ibid., 71.77.Michel Henry, La barbari e (P aris: Grasse t, 1987), 9.78.Ouspensky, In Search of the M iraculous , 66–67.79.Ibid., 67.80.Gurdjieff, Beelzebub's Tales , 853.81.Ouspensky, In Search of the M iraculous , 65–66.82.Ibid., 57.83.Gurdjieff, Beelzebub's Tales , 1164–67.84.Basarab Nicolescu, La t ransdisciplinarité , manifeste (Paris: Rocher, 1996); Manifesto

of T ransdiisciplinarity translated by Karen-Claire Voss. A volume in the WesternEsoteric Traditions Series. ( Albany: SUNY, 2002).

18 nicolescu g-philos-nat 2004-07-03

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