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Overview

Oprah and Eckhart Tolle's 10-week series "A New Earth" premieres Sunday, March 23 at 12 p.m. ET/PT on OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network

The bestselling book by one of the 21st centurys most innovative and exciting spiritual thinkers

With his bestselling spiritual guide The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle inspired millions of readers to discover the freedom and joy of a life lived "in the now." In A New Earth, Tolle expands on these powerful ideas to show how transcending our ego-based state of consciousness is not only essential to personal happiness, but also the key to ending conflict and suffering throughout the world. Tolle describes how our attachment to the ego creates the dysfunction that leads to anger, jealousy, and unhappiness, and shows readers how to awaken to a new state of consciousness and follow the path to a truly fulfilling existence.

A New Earth was an Oprah Book Club pick and reads as a traditional narrative, offering anecdotes and philosophies in a way that is accessible to all. Illuminating, enlightening, and uplifting, A New Earth is a profoundly spiritual manifesto for a better way of lifeand for building a better world.

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According to Tolle, who assumes the role of narrator as well, humans are on the verge of creating a new world by a personal transformation that shifts our attention away from our ever-expanding egos. This idea is well realized through Tolle's remarkably well-paced narration. Naturally, the author understands his material so thoroughly that he is able to convey it in an enjoyable manner, but Tolle's gentle tone and dialect begs his audience's attention simply through its straightforward approach. Something about this reading just seems profoundly important, whether one agrees with the material or not, and listeners' attention is sure to be captured within seconds of listening to Tolle's take on the universe in which we live. Originally released in 2005, both book and audiobook were reissued when Oprah Winfrey chose the title for her book club this year. A Penguin paperback. (Feb.)

Library Journal

The Flowering of Human Consciousness

Evocation

Earth, 114 million years ago, one morning just after sunrise: The first flower ever to appear on the planet opens up to receive the rays of the sun. Prior to this momentous event that heralds an evolutionary transformation in the life of plants, the planet had already been covered in vegetation for millions of years. The first flower probably did not survive for long, and flowers must have remained rare and isolated phenomena, since conditions were most likely not yet favorable for a widespread flowering to occur. One day, however, a critical threshold was reached, and suddenly there would have been an explosion of color and scent all over the planetif a perceiving consciousness had been there to witness it.

Much later those delicate and fragrant beings we call flowers would come to play an essential part in the evolution of consciousness of another species. Humans would increasingly be drawn to and fascinated by them. As the consciousness of human beings developed, flowers were most likely the first thing they came to value that had no utilitarian purpose for them, that is to say, was not linked in some way to survival. They provided inspiration to countless artists, poets, and mystics. Jesus tells us to contemplate the flowers and learn from them how to live. The Buddha is said to have given a "silent sermon" once during which he held up a flower and gazed at it. After a while, one of those present, a monk called Mahakasyapa, began to smile. He is said to have been the only one who had understood the sermon. According to legend, that smile (that is to say, realization) was handed down by twenty-eight successive masters and much later became the origin of Zen.

Seeing beauty in a flower could awaken humans, however briefly, to the beauty that is an essential part of their own innermost being, their true nature. The first recognition of beauty was one of the most significant events in the evolution of human consciousness. The feelings of joy and love are intrinsically connected to that recognition. Without our fully realizing it, flowers would become for us an expression in form of that which is most high, most sacred, and ultimately formless within ourselves. Flowers, more fleeting, more ethereal, and more delicate than the plants out of which they emerged, would become like messengers from another realm, like a bridge between the world of physical forms and the formless. They not only had a scent that was delicate and pleasing to humans, but also brought a fragrance from the realm of spirit. Using the word "enlightenment" in a wider sense than the conventionally accepted one, we could look upon flowers as the enlightenment of plants.

Any life-form in any realmmineral, vegetable, animal, or humancan be said to undergo "enlightenment." It is, however, an extremely rare occurrence since it is more than an evolutionary progression: It also implies a discontinuity in its development, a leap to an entirely different level of Being and, most importantly, a lessening of materiality.

What could be heavier and more impenetrable than a rock, the densest of all forms? And yet some rocks undergo a change in their molecular structure, turn into crystals, and so become transparent to the light. Some carbons, under inconceivable heat and pressure, turn into diamonds, and some heavy minerals into other precious stones.

Most crawling reptilians, the most earthbound of all creatures, have remained unchanged for millions of years. Some, however, grew feathers and wings and turned into birds, thus defying the force of gravity that had held them for so long. They didn't become better at crawling or walking, but transcended crawling and walking entirely.

Since time immemorial, flowers, crystals, precious stones, and birds have held special significance for the human spirit. Like all life-forms, they are, of course, temporary manifestations of the underlying one Life, one Consciousness. Their special significance and the reason why humans feel such fascination for and affinity with them can be attributed to their ethereal quality.

Once there is a certain degree of Presence, of still and alert attention in human beings' perceptions, they can sense that there is more there than the mere physical existence of that form, without knowing that this is the reason why he or she is drawn toward it, feels an affinity with it. Because of its ethereal nature, its form obscures the indwelling spirit to a lesser degree than is the case with other life-forms. The exception to this are all newborn life-formsbabies, puppies, kittens, lambs, and so on. They are fragile, delicate, not yet firmly established in materiality. An innocence, sweetness and beauty that are not of this world still shine through them. They delight even relatively insensitive humans.

So when you are alert and contemplate a flower, crystal, or bird without naming it mentally, it becomes a window for you into the formless. There is an inner opening, however slight, into the realm of spirit. This is why these three "en-lightened" life-forms have played such an important part in the evolution of human consciousness since ancient times; why, for example, the jewel in the lotus flower is a central symbol of Buddhism and a white bird, the dove, signifies the Holy Spirit in Christianity. They have been preparing the ground for a more profound shift in planetary consciousness that is destined to take place in the human species. This is the spiritual awakening that we are beginning to witness now.

The Purpose of This Book

Is humanity ready for a transformation of consciousness, an inner flowering so radical and profound that compared to it the flowering of plants, no matter how beautiful, is only a pale reflection? Can human beings lose the density of their conditioned mind structures and become like crystals or precious stones, so to speak, transparent to the light of consciousness? Can they defy the gravitational pull of materialism and materiality and rise above identification with form that keeps the ego in place and condemns them to imprisonment within their own personality?

The possibility of such a transformation has been the central message of the great wisdom teachings of humankind. The messengersBuddha, jesus, and others, not all of them knownwere humanity's early flowers. They were precursors, rare and precious beings. A widespread flowering was not yet possible at that time, and their message became largely misunderstood and often greatly distorted. It certainly did not transform human behavior, except in a small minority of people.

Is humanity more ready now than at the time of those early teachers? Why should this be so? What can you do, if anything, to bring about or accelerate this inner shift? What is it that characterizes the old egoic state of consciousness recognized? These and other essential questions will be addressed in this book. More important, this book itself is a transformational device that has come out of the arising new consciousness. The ideas and concepts presented here may be important, but they are secondary. They are no more than signposts pointing toward awakening. As you read, a shift takes place within you.

This book's main purpose is not to add new information or beliefs to your mind or to try to convince you of anything, but to bring about a shift in consciousness, that is to say, to awaken. In that sense, this book is not "interesting." Interesting means you can keep your distance, play around with ideas and concepts in your mind, agree or disagree. This book is about you. It will change your state of consciousness or it will be meaningless. It can only awaken those who are ready. Not everyone is ready yet, but many are, and with each person who awakens, the momentum in the collective consciousness grows, and it becomes easier for others. If you don't know what awakening means, read on. Only by awakening can you know the true meaning of that word. A glimpse is enough to initiate the awakening process, which is irreversible. For some, that glimpse will come while reading this book. For many others who may not even have realized it, the process has already begun. This book will help them recognize it. For some, it may have begun through loss or suffering; for others, through coming into contact with a spiritual teacher or teaching, through reading The Power of Now or some other spiritually alive and therefore transformational bookor any combination of the above. If the awakening process has begun in you, the reading of this book will accelerate and intensify it.

An essential part of the awakening is the recognition of the unawakened you, the ego as it thinks, speaks, and acts, as well as the recognition of the collectively conditioned mental processes that perpetuate the unawakened state. That is why this book shows the main aspects of the ego and how they operate in the individual as well as in the collective. This is important for two related reasons: The first is that unless you know the basic mechanics behind the workings of the ego, you won't recognize it, and it will trick you into identifying with it again and again. This means it takes you over, an imposter pretending to be you. The second reason is that the act of recognition itself is one of the ways in which awakening happens. When you recognize the unconsciousness in you, that which makes the recognition possible is the arising consciousness, is awakening. You cannot fight against darkness. The light of consciousness is all that is necessary. You are that light.

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A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose by Eckhart ...

Sri Aurobindo Born Aurobindo Ghosh (1872-08-15)15 August 1872 Calcutta, Bengal Presidency, British India (now Kolkata, West Bengal, India) Died 5 December 1950(1950-12-05) (aged78) Pondicherry, French India (now in Puducherry) Nationality Indian Founder of Sri Aurobindo Ashram Auroville Philosophy Integral Yoga, Involution (Sri Aurobindo), Evolution, Integral psychology, Intermediate zone, Supermind Literary works Life Divine, Synthesis of Yoga, Savitri, Agenda Notable disciple(s) Champaklal, N.K. Gupta, Amal Kiran, Nirodbaran, Pavitra, M.P. Pandit, A.B. Purani, D.K. Roy, Satprem, Indra Sen Quotation The Spirit shall look out through Matter's gaze. And Matter shall reveal the Spirit's face.[1] Signature

Sri Aurobindo (Sri robindo), (15 August 1872 5 December 1950), born Aurobindo Ghose, was an Indian nationalist, philosopher, yogi, guru, and poet. He joined the Indian movement for independence from British rule, for a while became one of its influential leaders and then became a spiritual reformer, introducing his visions on human progress and spiritual evolution.

Aurobindo studied for the Indian Civil Service at King's College, Cambridge, England. After returning to India he took up various civil service works under the maharaja of the princely state of Baroda and began to involve himself in politics. He was imprisoned by the British for writing articles against British rule in India. He was released when no evidence was provided. During his stay in the jail he had mystical and spiritual experiences, after which he moved to Pondicherry, leaving politics for spiritual work.

During his stay in Pondicherry, Aurobindo developed a method of spiritual practice he called Integral Yoga. The central theme of his vision was the evolution of human life into a life divine. He believed in a spiritual realisation that not only liberated man but transformed his nature, enabling a divine life on earth. In 1926, with the help of his spiritual collaborator, Mirra Alfassa ("The Mother"), he founded the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. He died on 5 December 1950 in Pondicherry.

His main literary works are The Life Divine, which deals with theoretical aspects of Integral Yoga; Synthesis of Yoga, which deals with practical guidance to Integral Yoga; and Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol, an epic poem which refers to a passage in the Mahabharata, where its characters actualise Integral Yoga in their lives. His works also include philosophy, poetry, translations and commentaries on the Vedas, Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1943 and for the Nobel Prize in Peace in 1950.[3]

Aurobindo Acroyd Ghose was born in Calcutta (now Kolkata), Bengal Presidency, India on 15 August 1872. His father, Krishna Dhun Ghose, was then Assistant Surgeon of Rangapur in Bengal, and a former member of the Brahmo Samaj religious reform movement who had become enamoured with the then-new idea of evolution while pursuing medical studies in Britain.[a] His mother was Swarnalotta Devi, whose father was Rajnarain Bose, a leading figure in the Samaj. She had been sent to the more salubrious surroundings of Calcutta for Aurobindo's birth. Aurobindo had two elder siblings, Benoybhusan and Manmohan, and both a younger sister, Sarojini, and a younger brother, Barindrakumar (also referred to as Barin, born Emmanuel Matthew).

Young Aurobindo was brought up speaking English but used Hindustani to communicate with servants. Although his family were Bengali, his father believed British culture to be superior to that of his countrymen. He and his two elder siblings were sent to the English-speaking Loreto House boarding school in Darjeeling, in part to improve their language skills and in part to distance them from their mother, who had developed a mental illness soon after the birth of her first child. Darjeeling was a centre of British life in India and the school was run by Irish nuns, through which the boys would have been exposed to Christian religious teachings and symbolism.

Krishna Dhun Ghose wanted his sons to enter the Indian Civil Service (ICS), an elite organisation comprising around 1000 people. To achieve this it was necessary that they study in England and so it was there that the entire family moved in 1879.[b] The three brothers were placed in the care of the Reverend W. H. Drewett in Manchester. Drewett was a minister of the Congregational Church whom Krishna Dhun Ghose knew through his British friends at Rangapur.[c]

The boys were taught Latin by Drewett and his wife. This was a prerequisite for admission to good English schools and, after two years, in 1881, the elder two siblings were enrolled at Manchester Grammar School. Aurobindo was considered too young for enrolment and he continued his studies with the Drewetts, learning history, Latin, French, geography and arithmetic. Although the Drewetts were told not to teach religion, the boys inevitably were exposed to Christian teachings and events, which generally bored Aurobindo and sometimes repulsed him. There was little contact with his father, who wrote only a few letters to his sons while they were in England, but what communication there was indicated that he was becoming less endeared to the British in India than he had been, on one occasion describing the British Raj as a "heartless government".

Drewett emigrated to Australia in 1884, causing the boys to be uprooted as they went to live with Drewett's mother in London. In September of that year, Aurobindo and Manmohan joined St Paul's School there.[d] He learned Greek and spent the last three years reading literature and English poetry. He also acquired some familiarity with the German and Italian languages and, exposed to the evangelical strictures of Drewett's mother, a distaste for religion. He considered himself at one point to be an atheist but later determined that he was agnostic. A blue plaque unveiled in 2007 commemorates Aurobindo's residence at 49 St Stephen's Avenue in Shepherd's Bush, London, from 1884 to 1887. The three brothers began living in spartan circumstances at the Liberal Club in South Kensington during 1887, their father having experienced some financial difficulties. The Club's secretary was James Cotton, brother of their father's friend in the Bengal ICS, Henry Cotton.

By 1889, Manmohan had determined to pursue a literary career and Benoybhusan had proved himself unequal to the standards necessary for ICS entrance. This meant that only Aurobindo might fulfil his father's aspirations but to do so when his father lacked money required that he studied hard for a scholarship. To become an ICS official, students were required to pass the competitive examination, as well as to study at an English university for two years under probation. Aurobindo secured a scholarship at King's College, Cambridge, under recommendation of Oscar Browning. He passed the written ICS examination after a few months, being ranked 11th out of 250 competitors. He spent the next two years at King's College. Sri Aurobindo had no interest in the ICS and came late to the horse-riding practical exam purposefully to get himself disqualified for the service.

At this time, the Maharaja of Baroda, Sayajirao Gaekwad III, was travelling in England. Cotton secured for him a place in Baroda State Service and arranged for him to meet the prince. He left England for India, arriving there in February 1893. In India, Krishna Dhun Ghose, who was waiting to receive his son, was misinformed by his agents from Bombay (now Mumbai) that the ship on which Aurobindo had been travelling had sunk off the coast of Portugal. His father died upon hearing this news.

In Baroda, Aurobindo joined the state service in 1893, working first in the Survey and Settlements department, later moving to the Department of Revenue and then to the Secretariat, and many miscellaneous work like teaching grammar and assisted in writing speeches for the Maharaja of Gaekwad until 1897. In 1897 during his work in Baroda he started working as a part-time French teacher at Baroda College (now Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda), he was later promoted to the post of Vice-Principal. At Baroda, Sri Aurobindo self-studied Sanskrit and Bengali.

During his stay at Baroda he contributed to many articles to Indu Prakash and spoke as a chairman of the Baroda college board. He also started taking active interest in the politics of India's independence struggle against British rule, working behind the scenes as his position in the Baroda state administration barred him from overt political activity. He linked up with resistance groups in Bengal and Madhya Pradesh, while travelling to these states. He established contact with Lokmanya Tilak and Sister Nivedita. He also arranged for the military training of Jatindra Nath Banerjee (Niralamba Swami) in the Baroda army and then dispatched him to organise the resistance groups in Bengal.

Aurobindo often travelled between Baroda and Bengal, at first in a bid to re-establish links with his parent's families and other Bengali relatives, including his cousin Sarojini and brother Barin, and later increasingly to establish resistance groups across the Presidency. He formally moved to Calcutta only in 1906 after the announcement of the Partition of Bengal. Aged 28, he had married 14-year-old Mrinalini, daughter of Bhupal Chandra Bose, a senior official in government service, when he visited Calcutta in 1901. Mrinalini died in December 1918 during the influenza pandemic.

Aurobindo was influenced by studies on rebellion and revolutions against England in medieval France and the revolts in America and Italy. In his public activities he favoured non-co-operation and passive resistance but in private he took up secret revolutionary activity as a preparation for open revolt, in case that the passive revolt failed.

In Bengal, with Barin's help, he established contacts with revolutionaries, inspiring radicals such as Bagha Jatin, Jatin Banerjee and Surendranath Tagore. He helped establish a series of youth clubs, including the Anushilan Samiti of Calcutta in 1902.

Aurobindo attended the 1906 Congress meeting headed by Dadabhai Naoroji and participated as a councillor in forming the fourfold objectives of "Swaraj, Swadesh, Boycott and national education". In 1907 at the Surat session of Congress where moderates and extremists had a major showdown, he led with extremists along with Bal Gangadhar Tilak. The Congress split after this session.In 19071908 Aurobindo travelled extensively to Pune, Bombay and Baroda to firm-up support for the nationalist cause, giving speeches and meeting various groups. He was arrested again in May 1908 in connection with the Alipore Bomb Case. He was acquitted in the ensuing trial and released after a year of isolated incarceration. Once out of the prison he started two new publications, Karmayogin in English and Dharma in Bengali. He also delivered the Uttarpara Speech hinting at the transformation of his focus to spiritual matters. The British persecution continued because of his writings in his new journals and in April 1910 Aurobindo moved to Pondicherry, where Britain's secret police monitored his activities.

In July 1905 then Viceroy of India, Lord Curzon, partitioned Bengal. This sparked an outburst of public anger against the British, leading to civil unrest and a nationalist campaign by groups of revolutionaries, who included Aurobindo. In 1908, Khudiram Bose and Prafulla Chaki attempted to kill Magistrate Kingsford, a judge known for handing down particularly severe sentences against nationalists. However, the bomb thrown at his horse carriage missed its target and instead landed in another carriage and killed two British women, the wife and daughter of barrister Pringle Kennedy. Aurobindo was also arrested on charges of planning and overseeing the attack and imprisoned in solitary confinement in Alipore Jail. The trial of the Alipore Bomb Case lasted for a year, but eventually he was acquitted on 6.May.1909. His defence counsel was Chittaranjan Das.

During this period in the Jail, his view of life was radically changed due to spiritual experiences and realizations. Consequently, his aim went far beyond the service and liberation of the country.

Aurobindo said he was "visited" by Vivekananda in the Alipore Jail: "It is a fact that I was hearing constantly the voice of Vivekananda speaking to me for a fortnight in the jail in my solitary meditation and felt his presence."

In his autobiographical notes, Aurobindo said he felt a vast sense of calmness when he first came back to India. He could not explain this and continued to have various such experiences from time to time. He knew nothing of yoga at that time and started his practise of it without a teacher, except for some rules that he learned from Ganganath, a friend who was a disciple of Brahmananda. In 1907, Barin introduced Aurobindo to Vishnu Bhaskar Lele, a Maharashtrian yogi. Aurobindo was influenced by the guidance he got from the yogi, who had instructed Aurobindo to depend on an inner guide and any kind of external guru or guidance would not be required.

In 1910 Aurobindo withdrew himself from all political activities and went into hiding at Chandannagar while the British were trying to prosecute him for sedition on the basis of a signed article titled 'To My Countrymen', published in Karmayogin. As Aurobindo disappeared from view, the warrant was held back and the prosecution postponed. Aurobindo manoeuvred the police into open action and a warrant was issued on 4 April 1910, but the warrant could not be executed because on that date he had reached Pondicherry, then a French colony. The warrant against Aurobindo was withdrawn.

In Pondicherry, Aurobindo dedicated himself to his spiritual and philosophical pursuits. In 1914, after four years of secluded yoga, he started a monthly philosophical magazine called Arya. This ceased publication in 1921. Many years later, he revised some of these works before they were published in book form. Some of the book series derived out of this publication were The Life Divine, The Synthesis of Yoga, Essays on The Gita, The Secret of The Veda, Hymns to the Mystic Fire, The Upanishads, The Renaissance in India, War and Self-determination, The Human Cycle, The Ideal of Human Unity and The Future Poetry were published in this magazine.

At the beginning of his stay at Pondicherry, there were few followers, but with time their numbers grew, resulting in the formation of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in 1926.[41] From 1926 he started to sign himself as Sri Aurobindo, Sri (meaning holy in Sanskrit) being commonly used as an honorific.

For some time afterwards, his main literary output was his voluminous correspondence with his disciples. His letters, most of which were written in the 1930s, numbered in the several thousands. Many were brief comments made in the margins of his disciple's notebooks in answer to their questions and reports of their spiritual practiceothers extended to several pages of carefully composed explanations of practical aspects of his teachings. These were later collected and published in book form in three volumes of Letters on Yoga. In the late 1930s, he resumed work on a poem he had started earlierhe continued to expand and revise this poem for the rest of his life. It became perhaps his greatest literary achievement, Savitri, an epic spiritual poem in blank verse of approximately 24,000 lines.

Aurobindo died on 5 December 1950. Around 60,000 people attended his funeral. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, and President Rajendra Prasad praised him for his contribution to Yogic philosophy and the independence struggle. National and international newspapers commemorated his death.[41]

Aurobindo's close spiritual collaborator, Mirra Richard (b. Alfassa), came to be known as The Mother.[46] She was a French national, born in Paris on 21 February 1878. In her 20s she studied occultism with Max Theon. Along with her husband, Paul Richard, she went to Pondicherry on 29 March 1914, and finally settled there in 1920. Aurobindo considered her his spiritual equal and collaborator. After 24 November 1926, when Aurobindo retired into seclusion, he left it to her to plan, build and run the ashram, the community of disciples which had gathered around them. Some time later, when families with children joined the ashram, she established and supervised the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education with its experiments in the field of education. When he died in 1950, she continued their spiritual work, directed the ashram and guided their disciples.

Aurobindo's concept of the Integral Yoga system is described in his books, The Synthesis of Yoga and The Life Divine.

Aurobindo believed that the current concept of evolution merely describes a phenomenon and does not explain the reason behind it, while he finds life to be already present in matter. He argued that nature (which he interpreted as divine) has evolved life out of matter and then mind out of life, in other words that evolution had a purpose. He believed that matter has an impulse to become life, and that life has a similar impulse to become mind. He stated that he found the task of understanding the nature of reality arduous and difficult to justify by immediate tangible results.

Aurobindo was an Indian nationalist but is best known for his philosophy on human evolution and Integral Yoga.

His influence has been wide-ranging. In India, S. K. Maitra, Anilbaran Roy and D. P. Chattopadhyaya commented on Aurobindo's work. Writers on esotericism and traditional wisdom, such as Mircea Eliade, Paul Brunton, and Rene Guenon, all saw him as an authentic representative of the Indian spiritual tradition.

Haridas Chaudhuri and Frederic Spiegelberg[54] were among those who were inspired by Aurobindo, who worked on the newly formed American Academy of Asian Studies in San Francisco. Soon after, Chaudhuri and his wife Bina established the Cultural Integration Fellowship, from which later emerged the California Institute of Integral Studies.[55]

Karlheinz Stockhausen was heavily inspired by Satprem's writings about Aurobindo during a week in May 1968, a time at which the composer was undergoing a personal crisis and had found Aurobindo's philosophies were relevant to his feelings. After this experience, Stockhausen's music took a completely different turn, focusing on mysticism, that was to continue until the end of his career.

William Irwin Thompson traveled to Auroville in 1972, where he met "The Mother". Thompson has called Aurobindo's teaching on spirituality a "radical anarchism" and a "post-religious approach" and regards their work as having "...reached back into the Goddess culture of prehistory, and, in Marshall McLuhans terms, 'culturally retrieved' the archetypes of the shaman and la sage femme..." Thompson also writes that he experienced Shakti, or psychic power coming from The Mother on the night of her death in 1973.[57]

Aurobindo's ideas about the further evolution of human capabilities influenced the thinking of Michael Murphy and indirectly, the human potential movement, through Murphy's writings.

The American philosopher Ken Wilber has called Aurobindo "India's greatest modern philosopher sage"[59] and has integrated some of his ideas into his philosophical vision. Wilber's interpretation of Aurobindo has been criticised by Rod Hemsell.[60]New Age writer Andrew Harvey also looks to Aurobindo as a major inspiration.[61]

The following authors, disciples and organisations trace their intellectual heritage back to, or have in some measure been influenced by, Aurobindo and The Mother.

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Bibliography

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Sri Aurobindo - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sri Aurobindo was born in Calcutta on 15 August 1872. At the age of seven he was taken to England for education. There he studied at St. Paul's School, London, and at King's College, Cambridge. Returning to India in 1893, he worked for the next thirteen years in the Princely State of Baroda in the service of the Maharaja and as a professor in Baroda College. During this period he also joined a revolutionary society and took a leading role in secret preparations for an uprising against the British Government in India.

In 1906, soon after the Partition of Bengal, Sri Aurobindo quit his post in Baroda and went to Calcutta, where he soon became one of the leaders of the Nationalist movement. He was the first political leader in India to openly put forward, in his newspaper Bande Mataram, the idea of complete independence for the country. Prosecuted twice for sedition and once for conspiracy, he was released each time for lack of evidence.

Sri Aurobindo had begun the practice of Yoga in 1905 in Baroda. In 1908 he had the first of several fundamental spiritual realisations. In 1910 he withdrew from politics and went to Pondicherry in order to devote himself entirely to his inner spiritual life and work. During his forty years in Pondicherry he evolved a new method of spiritual practice, which he called the Integral Yoga. Its aim is a spiritual realisation that not only liberates man's consciousness but also transforms his nature. In 1926, with the help of his spiritual collaborator, the Mother, he founded the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. Among his many writings are The Life Divine, The Synthesis of Yoga and Savitri. Sri Aurobindo left his body on 5 December 1950.

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Western education

Aravind Ghose, born in Calcutta on 15th August 1872, lived 78 years. He passed from this life in Pondicherry on 5th December,1950.

Wholly educated in England along with his two brothers, he was given an entirely Western education by their Anglophile father. After infant schooling at a convent in Darjeeling, they were taken to England to live with a clergyman's family in Manchester. From there they joined St. Paul's public school in West London, and later went on to Cambridge Unversity. There Sri Aurobindo was a brilliant scholar, winning record marks in the Classical Tripos examination. But he had already been touched by a will for the Independence of India, and did not wish to become an official of the colonial administration - the position his father and his education had marked him out for. He managed to disqualify himself by failing to take the mandatory riding test, and instead returned to India in 1893 in the service of the Indian princely State of Baroda, where he remained up to 1906.

In that year he returned to his birthplace, Calcutta, as the first Principal of the new Bengal National College. He resigned that post because of his increasingly active involvement in the Nationalist Movement. Sri Aurobindo was the first of the Nationalist leaders to insist on full independence for India as the goal of the movement, and for several years he lent all his considerable abilities and energies to this struggle. This led to him being arrested on a charge of treason and being kept in solitary confinement for almost a year as an 'under trial' prisoner in Alipore jail. During this time he had a number of fundamental spiritual experiences which convinced him of the truth of the "Sanatana Dharma" - the ancient spiritual knowledge and practice of India.

After he was acquitted and released, this spiritual awareness led him to take refuge from continuing pursuit by the British authorities in Pondicherry, then part of French India, where he devoted himself intensively to the exploration of the new possibilities it opened up to him. Supported by his spiritual collaborator, The Mother, and using his new-found spiritual capacities, he continued to work tirelessly for the upliftment of India and the world. When India gained its Independence on 15.8.1947, he responded to the request for a message to his countrymen by speaking of five dreams that he had worked for, and which he now saw on the way to fulfilment.

These five Dreams were:

The great originality of Sri Aurobindo is to have fused the modern scientific concept of evolution with the perennial gnostic experience of an all-pervading divine consciousness supporting all phenomenal existence. His synthesis was not a philosophic construct, but a realisation stemming from direct spiritual experience. The unfolding of more and more complex forms and higher levels of consciousness out of an original total material inconscience is seen as the gradual return to self-awareness and the diverse self-expression of involved Spirit. This process is evidently not complete, and the evolution of higher levels of consciousness and less unconscious forms of expression are to be expected. But with the development of Mind, individual human beings can, if they choose, use their will and intelligence to begin to participate consciously in this process of self-discovery and self-exploration. This knowledge founds an optimistic and dynamic world-view, which gives each individual a meaningful place in a progressive cosmic unfolding, and casts our understanding of human endeavour, whether individual or collective, in a new and purposeful perspective. Many facets of this world-view are elaborated in the 35 volumes of Sri Aurobindo's Collected Works.

See the original post:
Sri Aurobindo: his vision made Auroville possible

The Sri Aurobindo Ashram is a spiritual community (ashram) located in Pondicherry, in the Indian territory of Puducherry. The ashram grew out of a small community of disciples who had gathered around Sri Aurobindo after he retired from politics and settled in Pondicherry in 1910. On 24 November 1926, after a major spiritual realization, Sri Aurobindo withdrew from public view in order to continue his spiritual work. At this time he handed over the full responsibility for the inner and outer lives of the sadhaks (spiritual aspirants) and the ashram to his spiritual collaborator, "the Mother", earlier known as Mirra Alfassa. This date is therefore generally known as the founding-day of the ashram, though, as Sri Aurobindo himself wrote, it had less been created than grown around him as its centre.[1]

Sri Aurobindo Ashram has only one location. It does not have any branches. (Sri Aurobindo Ashram Delhi Branch is a separate organization, with its own administration.) Many other organisations in Pondicherry and elsewhere include Sri Aurobindo in their name, but they are not part of Sri Aurobindo Ashram. The most important organisation also inspired by the vision of Sri Aurobindo is Auroville, an international township founded by the Mother and dedicated to human unity.

Life in the community that preceded the ashram was informal. Sri Aurobindo spent most of his time in writing and meditation. The three or four young men who had followed him to Pondicherry in 1910 lived with him and looked after the household. Otherwise they were free to do as they wished. The Mother and French writer Paul Richard met Sri Aurobindo in 1914 and proposed that they bring out a monthly review; but after the outbreak of World War I, they were obliged to leave India, and Sri Aurobindo had to do almost all of the work on the review himself, helped a little by the young men who were living with him. In April 1920 the Mother returned to Pondicherry, and soon the community began to take the form of an ashram, more because the sadhaks desired to entrust their whole inner and outer life to the Mother than from any intention or plan of hers or of Sri Aurobindo.[2] After the ashram was given formal shape in 1926, it experienced a period of rapid growth, increasing from around 24 in the beginning of 1927 to more than 150 in 1934.[3] The membership leveled off in 1934 owing to a lack of suitable housing.

During these years there was a regular routine. At 6:00 every morning the Mother appeared on the ashram balcony to initiate the day with her blessings. Sadhaks would have woken very early and completed a good portion of the days work including meditation and then assembled under the balcony to receive her blessings.[4]

As the ashram grew, many departments came up and were looked after by the sadhaks as part of their sadhana: the offices, library, dining room, book/photograph printing, workshops, sports/playground, art gallery, dispensary/nursing home, farms, dairies, flower gardens, guest houses, laundry, bakery, etc. The heads of the departments met the Mother in the morning and took her blessings and orders. She would meet the sadhaks individually again at 10 am and, in the evening at 5:30 pm, she would conduct meditation and meet the sadhaks.

In addition, four times a year Sri Aurobindo and the Mother used to give public Darshans (spiritual gatherings where the guru bestows blessings) to thousands of devotees gathered to receive grace.

Once confined to a few buildings in one corner of Pondicherry, the Ashrams growth has caused it to expand physically in all directions. Today Ashramites live and work in more than 400 buildings spread throughout the town. The central focus of the community is one group of houses including those in which Sri Aurobindo and the Mother dwelt for most of their lives in Pondicherry. This interconnected block of houses called the Ashram main-building, or more usually just the Ashram surrounds a tree-shaded courtyard, at the centre of which lies the flower-covered Samadhi. This white marble shrine holds, in two separate chambers, the physical remains of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.

Today, Pondicherry has become an important destination for spiritual seekers as well as tourists. Thousands of visitors from all over the world come to the ashram.

The visiting hours for the visitors are from 8 am to 12 noon and then again from 2 pm to 6 pm.

The Ashram, according to Sri Aurobindo, has been created with another object than that ordinarily common to such institutions, not for the renunciation of the world but as a centre and a field of practice for the evolution of another kind and form of life which would in the final end be moved by a higher spiritual consciousness and embody a greater life of the spirit.[5]

The practice of Integral Yoga, Sri Aurobindo explained, does not proceed through any set mental teaching or prescribed forms of meditation, mantras or others, but by aspiration, by a self-concentration inwards or upwards, by self-opening to an Influence, to the Divine Power above us and its workings, to the Divine Presence in the heart, and by the rejection of all that is foreign to these things.[6]

The complete method of Integral Yoga aims to transform human life into a divine life. In Sri Aurobindo's yoga, the highest aim is the state of being one with the Divine, without the renunciation of life in the world. For such a fulfillment of the consciousness, the urge for perfection must not be confined to a few individuals. There must be "a general spiritual awakening and aspiration in mankind" as well as "a dynamic re-creating of individual manhood in the spiritual type."[8] This would lead eventually to the emergence of a new type of being, the gnostic being, which would be the hope of a more harmonious evolutionary order in terrestrial Nature.[9]

Sri Aurobindo Ashram is the primary publisher of the works of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. As of January 2015 it keeps some 200 publications in English in print, of which 78 are books by Sri Aurobindo, 44 books by the Mother, 27 compilations from their works, and 47 books by other authors. These books are printed at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, which has been in operation since the 1940s. They are distributed by SABDA, the Ashrams book distribution service, which has been in operation since the 1950s. SABDA also carries books relating to Sri Aurobindo, the Mother, and their yoga brought out by other publishers, making the number of English books on their list more than 600. The Ashram also publishes books in 17 other European and Indian languages, for a total of more than 550 publications. SABDA carries these and other non-English titles: in all there are 1678 titles in 23 languages.

The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo are being issued in 37 volumes, of which 34 have been published. The Collected Works of the Mother have been issued in 17 volumes.

The Ashram publishes a number of journals relating to the philosophy and yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. These are currently printed at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, though several were earlier brought out in other cities. Some of Sri Aurobindos works first appeared in these and other journals, among them The Advent, a quarterly, which has recently ceased publication. The most important journals in English are:

The Ashram press also prints several journals published by other organizations. These include:

During the early years of the community Sri Aurobindo and the Mother imposed very few rules on the sadhaks, because they wished them to learn to direct their lives by looking for the divine guidance within. According to author Peter Heehs, during the 1920s Aurobindo's policy was laissez faire with only one rule: strict brahmacharya (celibacy).[10] After 1926, written rules were circulated. The main rules were an absolute prohibition of alcohol, drugs, sex and politics.[11][12] There were also a number of guidelines for the smooth functioning of the collective life of the community. These rules were collected in Rules and Regulations of Sri Aurobindo Ashram, copies of which are given to all members.

The Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust was established in 1955 to administer the community and its assets. The trust board consists of five Trustees, the first of whom were chosen by the Mother herself. After her passing in 1973, the trustees have chosen replacements by consensus.

The main ashram departments are overseen by department heads who report to the Trustees.

The Ashram, a public charitable trust, is open to all. No distinctions of nationality, religion, caste, gender, or age are observed. Members come from every part of India and many foreign countries. A large number of devotees from Pondicherry and Tamil Nadu visit the Ashram every day, and support the activities of the Ashram in various ways. Many say that they have benefited from the teachings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.[13] However, some feel that there is little mingling of ashramites and local people. According to a senior Ashram official, the practice of silence observed by the ashramites may have been misunderstood as rude behaviour.[14]

In 2001, a female member was expelled from the ashram for violating a "mandatory rule".[15] Thereafter she filed charges of sexual harassment against various members. These charges were dismissed by committees and government agencies, all of which found the charges false.[16][17][18][19] The National Human Rights Commission of India added that there "appeared to be malicious planning behind the complaints".[18][20] Cases relating to the dismissal of the former member and her four sisters were lodged in various courts, and were pursued up to the Supreme court of India, which in 2014 ruled against the sisters and ordered them to be evicted from their rooms in an ashram residence by the police.[21] The sisters then presented the ashram with an ultimatum demanding full reinstatement, failing which they would all commit suicide.[22] The day after their eviction, the sisters and their parents entered the sea in order to commit suicide by drowning. Three died in the attempt. The four others were saved. Violence and protests erupted against the ashram in the wake of this incident. The trustees of the Ashram expressed shock at the suicides and offered to help the sisters in finding accommodation. On 23 December a joint memorandum was presented by delegates of various political parties seeking the intervention of chief minister N. Rangaswamy for a takeover of the Ashram by the Puducherry government.[23] (The territorial government has however no jurisdiction over the Ashram's internal activities, since the public affairs of the Trust, as of all public charitable trusts, are governed by the appropriate sections of the Indian Trusts Act, Government of India.[24]) The pressure for a government takeover is alleged to come from elements within the ashram,[25] who have pushed for the rewriting of the ashram's Trust Deed, which was signed by the Mother.[26]

More here:
Sri Aurobindo Ashram - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Matthijs Cornelissen Indian Psychology Institute Pondicherry

Sri Aurobindo was born in Calcutta, on 15th August 1872. His father, a thoroughly Anglicised Indian doctor in British Government service, wanted his sons to have a solid, British education, and when Aurobindo was seven, he sent him, together with his two brothers, to England with the specific instruction that the three brothers should be kept free from Indian influence. The young Aurobindo was a brilliant student who was consistently amongst the top of his class in English, and for much of this time, he and his two brothers were supported by his scholarships. He attended what was at the time one of the best public schools in London (St. Pauls) and later studied in Cambridge where he obtained the highest score ever awarded in Greek. When he returned to India in 1893, he had an excellent command of English, Greek, Latin and French, and knew enough German and Italian to enjoy Goethe and Dante in the original, but he knew rather little about India. While still in England, he obtained a job with one of the Indian princes, the Gaekwor of Baroda, and after his return, he worked in Baroda for twelve years, as teacher, as private secretary to the Gaekwor, and finally as Vice-principal of the Baroda College. During this period he immersed himself deeply in Indian culture and learned Sanskrit as well as several modern Indian languages. Though he became fairly fluent in what should have been his mother tongue, Bengali, he remained more at home in English, and it is in this language that he wrote all his major works.

As he became more familiar with the Indian tradition, his admiration for the Indian tradition grew, and it became increasingly clear to him that the Indian civilization could not regain its full stature as long as India was under foreign occupation. Interestingly, at that time, this was not at all a common view: the Indian elite of those days had widely accepted the superiority of the English culture, and Aurobindo would become the first Indian intellectual who dared proclaim publicly that complete independence from Britain should be the primary aim of Indian political life. As his increasing political involvement embarrassed his employer, whose position was entirely dependent on British approval, he left Baroda service in 1906 and moved to Calcutta where he soon became one of the most outspoken leaders of the political movement for Indian independence. His writings brought him in frequent conflict with the British authorities but he carefully chose his language and repeatedly managed to escape conviction.

During a visit to Baroda in 1907, Aurobindo took some private lessons from a Maharashtrian yogi, Bhaskar Lele. Aurobindo had no interest in personal liberation, but he knew from experience that pryma could increase ones mental energy and clarity, and he hoped that yoga could develop other psychological powers, which he intended to use for his political work. Within three days he managed under Leles guidance to completely, and permanently, silence his mind. Soon after, he had the realisation of the silent, impersonal Brahman in which the whole world assumed the appearance of empty forms, materialised shadows without true substance

There was no ego, no real worldonly when one looked through the immobile senses, something perceived or bore upon its sheer silence a world of empty forms, materialised shadows without true substance. There was no One or many even, only just absolutely That, featureless, relationless, sheer, indescribable, unthinkable, absolute, yet supremely real and solely real. This was no mental realisation nor something glimpsed somewhere above,no abstraction,it was positive, the only positive reality,although not a spatial physical world, pervading, occupying or rather flooding and drowning this semblance of a physical world, leaving no room or space for any reality but itself, allowing nothing else to seem at all actual, positive or substantial. I cannot say there was anything exhilarating or rapturous in the experience . . . but what it brought was an inexpressible Peace, a stupendous silence, an infinity of release and freedom. (Aurobindo, 1972b, p. 101)

There are two things noteworthy about this experience. The first is that it was not a fleeting experience but a true realisation in the sense that the peace and inner silence never diminished. The other is that the experience of the silent Brahman and the myvdin sense of the unreality of the world were not at all what Aurobindo had expected or wanted from yoga, and they did not fit either within the mental framework of his instructor, Lele, whose own experiences were with the personal Divine. During the following weeks Lele still taught Aurobindo how to rely both for his outer work and for the rest of his inner development on an inner guidance, but after that, they parted ways. The presence of the silent Brahman never left Aurobindo, though it subsequently merged with other realisations of the Divine. Interestingly, all this happened during one of the busiest periods of his life while he was at the peak of his political influence, and he managed, in his own words, to organise political work, deliver speeches, edit his newspaper and write articles, all from an entirely silent mind.

In the mean time, his younger brother Barin got involved in daring but largely ineffective exploits of violent revolt. After a bomb-blast in May 1908 in which two British ladies died who happened to occupy the coach in which Barin expected some hated official to travel, Aurobindo was arrested by the police under suspicion that he was the brain behind the increasing violence. He was put on trial for waging war against the King, a charge that could have sent him to the gallows if convicted. Lack of evidence of direct, active involvement in violent action lead, however, to his acquittal, much to the discomfort of the British Viceroy, who by that time had come to the conclusion that Aurobindo was the most dangerous man in the British Empire. His incarceration had one major effect, which the British police could not have foreseen, or, for that matter, understood. Aurobindo took his arrest and yearlong incarceration as a God-imposed opportunity to concentrate fully on his inner, spiritual development, or sdhan. While in jail, he showed remarkably little concern about the court-case, but made an in depth study of the Bhagavad Gt and realised the presence of the personal Divine in everything and everybody around him. In his own words:

[I]t was while I was walking that His strength again entered into me. I looked at the jail that secluded me from men and it was no longer by its high walls that I was imprisoned; no, it was Vasudeva(2) who surrounded me. I walked under the branches of the tree in front of my cell, but it was not the tree, I knew it was Vasudeva, it was Srikrishna whom I saw standing there and holding over me His shade. I looked at the bars of my cell, the very grating that did duty for a door and again I saw Vasudeva. It was Narayana who was guarding and standing sentry over me.

... [and later, in court:]

I looked at the Prosecuting Counsel and it was not the Counsel for the prosecution that I saw; it was Srikrishna who sat there, it was my Lover and Friend who sat there and smiled. (Aurobindo, 1997, p. 6-7)

After his release from jail, he remained for another two years in Calcutta, where he started another journal that focused more on culture and yoga, less on politics.(3) He was by now convinced that the political independence of India was only a matter of time, and that he had to concentrate on another, inner work. In 1910, he decided to relocate to Pondicherry, which was at the time a French enclave in India, where he would be more safe from harassment by the British police. Though he expected initially to stay in Pondicherry only for a few years of intense inner work after which he intended to re-enter the active, political life he had been used to, he was to stay in Pondicherry till the end of his life in 1950.

Shortly after his birthday on August 15, 1912 he described in a letter to an old friend another major turning point in his yoga:

My subjective Sadhana may be said to have received its final seal and something like its consummation by a prolonged realisation and dwelling in Parabrahman(4) for many hours. Since then, egoism is dead for all in me except the Annamaya Atma,the physical self which awaits one farther realisation before it is entirely liberated from occasional visitings or external touches of the old separated existence. (Aurobindo, 1972, 43335)

In spite of his political involvement, Sri Aurobindo had a rather private disposition and rarely spoke or wrote directly about his own experiences, so most of what we know about them is derived somewhat indirectly from his other writings. A notable exception is, however, the detailed record he maintained during some of the early years of his stay in Pondicherry. This Record of Yoga came to light more than 25 years after his death, and its 1500 pages shed a fascinating light on his inner development and on the way his personal experiences related to his public writings of the same period. Though the Record is written in the manner of laboratory notes -- in telegram style and with extensive use of technical terms and abbreviations which are often difficult to follow -- they leave one with the definite impression that he hardly ever, if at all, made any general statement about the possibilities of yoga which he had not first extensively verified in his own experience.

In 1914, a French couple, Paul Richard and his wife, Mirra Alfassa, visited Pondicherry and soon became acquainted with Aurobindo. Paul Richard invited Aurobindo to join him in bringing out a new journal. The intention of the journal was, in Aurobindos words, to feel out for the thought of the future, to help in shaping its foundations and to link it to the best and most vital thought of the past (1915/1998, p.103). By the time its first issue came out, the first World War had started and soon after, the Richards had to return to France. This left the task of filling the 64 pages of the monthly journal to Aurobindo, and he faithfully fulfilled this task for the next 6 years, by serialising, in parallel, several books. By the time he closed down the journal, he had completed almost all his major works, The Life Divine, The Synthesis of Yoga, The Secret of the Veda, Hymns to the Mystic Fire, Essays on the Gita, Foundations of Indian Culture, translations and commentaries on several major Upaniads, a trilogy on social psychology and politics, etc. Only a few of these texts, Essays on the Gita, The Life Divine and the first part of The Synthesis of Yoga, he revised and brought out in book form during his lifetime. Others were published as books only posthumously.

Paul Richard and Mirra Alfassa returned to Pondicherry in 1920. Paul Richard found it difficult to accept the by now obvious spiritual and intellectual superiority of Aurobindo and left soon after, but Mirra Alfassa stayed, and gradually took up an increasingly important role in the small community that began to form around Aurobindo. Initially she was simply the most gifted of Aurobindos disciples, but over time, Sri Aurobindo, as he now came to be known, began to address her as the Mother, in honour of her complete identification with the akti, the Power which mediates between the Divine and the manifestation. In letters to his disciples, he often stressed that their consciousness and realisation were essentially one, and that they differed only in their most outer roles and forms of manifestation.

In 1926 Sri Aurobindo had another major breakthrough in his own sdhan, which he later described as the embodiment of Krishnas Overmental consciousness. One should take this event in the context of what future generations may well consider Sri Aurobindos greatest contribution to our human understanding of the world and our role in it: the distinction he made between what he called the Overmental and the Supramental planes of consciousness.

After 1926 Sri Aurobindo retired entirely to a small, first floor apartment in order to concentrate fully on his inner work. From this time onwards, he left the daily care for the small community that had begun to develop around him, to the Mother, and this became the formal beginning of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. We know relatively little about what Sri Aurobindo did during the 24 years after his retirement to his rooms. He spoke hardly to anybody, except for a short period just before the Second World War when he needed physical assistance after breaking his leg, and he saw his disciples only 3-4 times a year in a silent darshan. What we know of his inner life during this period is largely from his letters, from his poetry, and from the changes he introduced in some of his earlier writings. During the 1930s Sri Aurobindo answered a staggering number of letters to his disciples, of which over 5000 have been published. Most of them deal with sdhan, quite a few with literature, and a smaller number with other issues. Roughly during the same time he also took up the revision of a few of his major works like his Essays on the Gita, the first two parts of The Synthesis of Yoga, and The Life Divine. His poetic writings include besides sonnets, other short poems and metrical experiments, also his most important written work, the epic poem Savitri. With its over 24000 lines and 724 pages Savitri is in a class of its own. Its richness of imagery, beauty of expression, and sheer number of memorable lines could remind one of Shakespeare, but in terms of depth and width of spiritual experience it simply has no equal in the English language. It would not be surprising if posterity would count Savitri amongst the most valuable texts ever composed.

It may be noted that in spite of his official retirement from politics, Sri Aurobindo was one of the very few major public figures in India who recognised how serious the consequences of a victory of Nazi Germany and Japan would have been for the future development of human civilization, and during the Second World War he gave his full support to the Allied war-effort.

After the war, in a radio message, which he gave on the occasion of Indias Independence (15-8-1947), which coincided with his 75th birthday, Sri Aurobindo described the main areas of his lifes work as five world-movements which he wished for as a young man, and which he worked for during the different phases of his life. They all looked, in his own words, like impractical dreams when he was young, but he saw all of them fully or partially fulfilled during his lifetime:

All these world-movements have begun, though none of them has been perfectly accomplished in the direction Sri Aurobindo envisaged. In the long run, it seems likely that Sri Aurobindo will be remembered mainly for his role in the fifth movement, on which he worked incessantly during the last 40 years of his life. Just before his death in 1950, he still wrote a few essays for a newly started Ashram Journal on the transitional period between our present state and the supramental stage he envisaged for the future. He also completed the revision of the first part of The Synthesis of Yoga and the whole of Savitri. The Mother continued his work till her own passing in 1973 at the age of 95. The Ashram and the international township, Auroville, which she started in 1968 (at the age of 90), still exist and continue to develop as creative spiritual communities.

All Sri Aurobindos writings are available from http://www.sabda.in

His Collected works are also available for download as PDF files, at: http://www.sriaurobindoashram.org/ashram/sriauro/writings.php

To get the basic flavour of Sri Aurobindos writing, one could have a look at a few representative short texts, collected at http://www.saccs.org.in/texts/integralyoga-sa.php

For original (auto)biographical material, one can consult volume 35 and 36 of The Collected Works of Sri Aurobindo: Letters on Himself and the Ashram (still to be published) and Autobiographical Notes and Other Writings of Historical Interest (2009). Both published by Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, Puducherry, INDIA.

Three entirely different biographies are:

A.B. Purani. (1978). The Life of Sri Aurobindo. Puducherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram.

Satprem (1970). Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness. (Translated from the French. Original title: Sri Aurobindo ou l'Aventure de la conscience.) The English edition, successively brought out by several publishers, is presently out of print.

Peter Heehs (2008) The lives of Sri Aurobindo. New York: Columbia University Press.

(1) For many details in this biographical note, I have made use of Peter Heehs (2008).

(2) Vasudeva and Narayana are different names for Krishna.

(3) His previous Journal, the Bande Mataram, had been closed down by the British Government.

(4) The parabrahman is, in Aurobindos words, the supreme Reality with the static and dynamic Brahman as its two aspects.

Read the original here:
A short biography of Sri Aurobindo

For P. D. Ouspensky's book see Fourth Way (book). For the jazz group see The Fourth Way (band)

The Fourth Way is an approach to self-development described by George Gurdjieff which he developed over years of travel in the East. It combines what he saw as three established traditional "ways" or "schools", those of the mind, emotions and body, or of yogis, monks and fakirs respectively, and is sometimes referred to as "The Work", "Work on oneself" or "The System". The exact origins of Gurdjieff's teachings are unknown, but people have offered various sources.[1]

The term was further used by his disciple P. D. Ouspensky in his lectures and writings. After Ouspensky's death his students published a book entitled The Fourth Way based on his lectures.

According to this system, the three traditional schools, or ways, "are permanent forms which have survived throughout history mostly unchanged, and are based on religion. Where schools of yogis, monks or fakirs exist, they are barely distinguishable from religious schools. The fourth way differs in that it is not a permanent way. It has no specific forms or institutions and comes and goes controlled by some particular laws of its own."[citation needed]

When this work is finished, that is to say, when the aim set before it has been accomplished, the fourth way disappears, that is, it disappears from the given place, disappears in its given form, continuing perhaps in another place in another form. Schools of the fourth way exist for the needs of the work which is being carried out in connection with the proposed undertaking. They never exist by themselves as schools for the purpose of education and instruction.[2]

The Fourth Way addresses the question of people's place in the Universe, their possibilities of inner development, and emphasizes that people ordinarily live in a state referred to as "waking sleep", while higher levels of being are possible.

The Fourth Way teaches how to increase and focus attention and energy in various ways, and to minimize daydreaming and absentmindedness. This inner development in oneself is the beginning of a possible further process of change, whose aim is to transform man into "what he ought to be".

Gurdjieff's followers believed he was a spiritual master,[3] a human being who is fully awake or enlightened. He was also seen as an esotericist or occultist.[4] He agreed that the teaching was esoteric but claimed that none of it was veiled in secrecy but that many people lack the interest or the capability to understand it.[5] Gurdjieff said, "The teaching whose theory is here being set out is completely self supporting and independent of other lines and it has been completely unknown up to the present time."[citation needed]

The Fourth Way teaches that humans are not born with a soul and are not really conscious but only believe they are. A person must create a soul by following a teaching which can lead to this aim, or else "die like a dog". Humans are born asleep, live in sleep and die in sleep, only imagining that they are awake.[6] The ordinary waking "consciousness" of human beings is not consciousness at all but merely a form of sleep.

Gurdjieff taught "sacred dances" or "movements", now known as Gurdjieff movements, which they performed together as a group.[7] He left a body of music, inspired by that which he had heard in remote monasteries and other places, which was written for piano in collaboration with one of his pupils, Thomas de Hartmann.[8]

Gurdjieff taught that traditional paths to spiritual enlightenment followed one of three ways:

Gurdjieff insisted that these paths - although they may intend to seek to produce a fully developed human being - tend to cultivate certain faculties at the expense of others. The goal of religion or spirituality was, in fact, to produce a well-balanced, responsive and sane human being capable of dealing with all eventualities that life may present. Gurdjieff therefore made it clear that it was necessary to cultivate a way that integrated and combined the traditional three ways.

Gurdjieff said that his Fourth Way was a quicker means than the first three ways because it simultaneously combined work on all three centers rather than focusing on one. It could be followed by ordinary people in everyday life, requiring no retirement into the desert. The Fourth Way does involve certain conditions imposed by a teacher, but blind acceptance of them is discouraged. Each student is advised to do only what they understand and to verify for themselves the teaching's ideas.

Ouspensky documented Gurdjieff as saying that "two or three thousand years ago there were yet other ways which no longer exist and the ways now in existence were not so divided, they stood much closer to one another. The fourth way differs from the old and the new ways by the fact that it is never a permanent way. It has no definite forms and there are no institutions connected with it.[9]

Ouspensky quotes Gurdjieff that there are fake schools and that "It is impossible to recognize a wrong way without knowing the right way. This means that it is no use troubling oneself how to recognize a wrong way. One must think of how to find the right way."[10]

In his works, Gurdjieff credits his teachings to a number of more or less mysterious sources:[11]-

Attempts to fill out his account have featured:

The Fourth Way focuses on "conscious labor" and "intentional suffering."

Conscious Labor is an action where the person who is performing the act is present to what he is doing; not absentminded. At the same time he is striving to perform the act more efficiently.

Intentional suffering is the act of struggling against automatism such as daydreaming, pleasure, food (eating for reasons other than real hunger), etc... In Gurdjieff's book Beelzebub's Tales he states that "the greatest 'intentional suffering' can be obtained in our presences by compelling ourselves to endure the displeasing manifestations of others toward ourselves"[18]

To Gurdjieff these two were the basis of all evolution of man.

Self-Observation

This is to strive to observe in oneself behavior and habits usually only observed in others, and as dispassionately as one may observe them in others, to observe thoughts, feelings, and sensations without judging or analyzing what is observed.[19]

The Need for Effort

Gurdjieff emphasized that awakening results from consistent, prolonged effort. Such efforts may be made as an act of will after one is already exhausted.

The Many 'I's

This indicates fragmentation of the psyche, the different feelings and thoughts of I in a person: I think, I want, I know best, I prefer, I am happy, I am hungry, I am tired, etc. These have nothing in common with one another and are unaware of each other, arising and vanishing for short periods of time. Hence man usually has no unity in himself, wanting one thing now and another, perhaps contradictory, thing later.

Centers

Gurdjieff classified plants as having one center, animals two and humans three. Centers refer to apparati within a being that dictate specific organic functions. There are three main centers in a man: intellectual, emotional and physical, and two higher centers: higher emotional and higher intellectual.

Body, Essence and Personality

Gurdjieff divided people's being into Essence and Personality.

Cosmic Laws

Gurdjieff focused on two main cosmic laws, the Law of Three and the Law of Seven[citation needed].

How the Law of Seven and Law of Three function together is said to be illustrated on the Fourth Way Enneagram, a nine-pointed symbol which is the central glyph of Gurdjieff's system.

In his explanations Gurdjieff often used different symbols such as the Enneagram and the Ray of Creation. Gurdjieff said that "the enneagram is a universal symbol. All knowledge can be included in the enneagram and with the help of the enneagram it can be interpreted ... A man may be quite alone in the desert and he can trace the enneagram in the sand and in it read the eternal laws of the universe. And every time he can learn something new, something he did not know before."[20] The ray of creation is a diagram which represents the Earth's place in the Universe. The diagram has eight levels, each corresponding to Gurdjieff's laws of octaves.

Through the elaboration of the law of octaves and the meaning of the enneagram, Gurdjieff offered his students alternative means of conceptualizing the world and their place in it.

To provide conditions in which attention could be exercised more intensively, Gurdjieff also taught his pupils "sacred dances" or "movements" which they performed together as a group, and he left a body of music inspired by what he heard in visits to remote monasteries and other places, which was written for piano in collaboration with one of his pupils, Thomas de Hartmann.

Gurdjieff laid emphasis on the idea that the seeker must conduct his or her own search. The teacher cannot do the student's work for the student, but is more of a guide on the path to self-discovery. As a teacher, Gurdjieff specialized in creating conditions for students - conditions in which growth was possible, in which efficient progress could be made by the willing. To find oneself in a set of conditions that a gifted teacher has arranged has another benefit. As Gurdjieff put it, "You must realize that each man has a definite repertoire of roles which he plays in ordinary circumstances ... but put him into even only slightly different circumstances and he is unable to find a suitable role and for a short time he becomes himself."

Having migrated for four years after escaping the Russian Revolution with dozens of followers and family members, Gurdjieff settled in France and established his Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man at the Chteau Le Prieur at Fontainebleau-Avon in October 1922.[21] The institute was an esoteric school based on Gurdjieff's Fourth Way teaching. After nearly dying in a car crash in 1924, he recovered and closed down the Institute. He began writing All and Everything. From 1930, Gurdjieff made visits to North America where he resumed his teachings.

Ouspensky relates that in the early work with Gurdjieff in Moscow and Saint Petersburg, Gurdjieff forbade students from writing down or publishing anything connected with Gurdjieff and his ideas. Gurdjieff said that students of his methods would find themselves unable to transmit correctly what was said in the groups. Later, Gurdjieff relaxed this rule, accepting students who subsequently published accounts of their experiences in the Gurdjieff work.

After Gurdjieff's death in 1949 a variety of groups around the world have attempted to continue The Gurdjieff Work. The Gurdjieff Foundation, was established in 1953 in New York City by Jeanne de Salzmann in cooperation with other direct pupils.[22]J. G. Bennett ran groups and also made contact with the Subud and Sufi schools to develop The Work in different directions. Maurice Nicoll, a Jungian psychologist, also ran his own groups based on Gurdjieff and Ouspensky's ideas. The French institute was headed for many years by Madam de Salzmann - a direct pupil of Gurdjieff. Under her leadership, the Gurdjieff Societies of London and New York were founded and developed.

There is debate regarding the ability to use Gurdjieff's ideas through groups. Some critics believe that none of Gurdjieff's students were able to raise themselves to his level of understanding. Proponents of the continued viability of Gurdjieff's system, and its study through the use of groups, however, point to Gurdjieff's insistence on the training of initiates in interpreting and disseminating the ideas that he expressed cryptically in Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson. This, combined with Gurdjieff's almost fanatical dedication to the completion of this text (Beelzebub's Tales), suggest that Gurdjieff himself intended his ideas to continue to be practiced and taught long after his death. Other proponents of continuing the Work are not concerned with external factors, but focus on the inner results achieved through a sincere practice of Gurdjieff's system.

In contrast, some former Gurdjieffians joined other movements,[23][24] and there are a number of offshoots, and syntheses incorporating elements of the Fourth Way, such as:

The Enneagram is often studied in contexts that do not include other elements of Fourth Way teaching.

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Fourth Way - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Gurdjieff's Movements: The Pattern of All and Everything

G.I. Gurdjieff (1866?-1949) dedicated his life to the pursuit and teaching of an ancient knowledge about Man and the Universe. Gurdjieff's Movements is the name given to the collective body of dances ...

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Gurdjieff's Early Talks 19141931

In Moscow, St. Petersburg, Essentuki, Tiflis, Constantinople, Berlin, Paris, London, Fontainebleau, New York, and Chicago

With a foreword by Joseph Azize

The talks in this volume are not verbatim ...

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Sufism and the Way of Blame: Hidden Sources of a Sacred Psychology

This is a definitive book on the Sufi way of blame that addresses the cultural life of Sufism in its entirety. Originating in ninth-century Persia, the way of blame (Arab. malamatiyya) is a little-known ...

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Beyond Sufism Travels and Essays [Kindle Edition]

BEYOND SUFISM - TRAVELS & ESSAYS A series of travels and essays in modern Sufism and beyond. These essays cover many subjects; modern sufi spirituality, experiences in painting and colour, a history of ...

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Spiritual Physics

An exploration of the ideas of G. I. Gurdjieff through questions and answers. Compiled by John Anderson & Marshall May. Ships in 6-8 business days.

There is a chapter in this book that introduces Jerry's ...

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The Globalization of Hesychasm and the Jesus Prayer:

The meditative prayer practices known as Hesychasm and the Jesus Prayer have played an important role in the history of Eastern Orthodox Christianity. This book explores how these prayer practices have ...

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Breathe, for God's Sake!

This book holds a treasure of deep insights into the great mystery of breathfrom a spiritual perspective. Inspiring discourses, effective and safe practices and beautiful poetry from various traditions ...

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Atmen Sie, um Gottes Willen!

Vortrge ber die mystische Kunst und Wissenschaft des Atems

Dieses neue Buch, dessen Erstausgabe bei Chalice gleichzeitig im englischen Original sowie in einer deutschen bersetzung erscheint, enthlt ...

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The Holy Trinity and the Law of Three: Discovering the Radical Truth at the Heart of Christianity

Just as she's done in her previous books, Cynthia Bourgeault asks us to take a look at an idea from traditional Christianitythis time the formula of Father, Son, and Holy Spiritas though we're looking ...

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The Tantric Path of Indestructible Wakefulness: The Profound Treasury of the Ocean of Dharma, Volume Three

The third volume of this landmark series presents the vajrayana teachings of the tantric path (edited by Judith Lief). The vajrayana, or diamond vehicle, also referred to as tantra, draws upon and extends ...

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Important Notice

Gurdjieff Internet Guide was started on the 7th of August in 2002 ( which was my 60th birthday), and retired after ten years on the 7th of August 2012, when I became 70 years old. What you experiences on the site is "life after death" of the site, as the number of visitors is not going down, but keeping steadily at the reasonable level of just under 10 000 visits a month. In fact, it is not I, but the visitors, who keep the site going!

Against all odds, it was meant to give an idea of the Gurdjieff Work on the internet focusing on what is happening in it, particularly in our time, and without the hush of a "secret teaching". This has been achieved with interviews, articles, videos, book reviews, event listings, forums and other material related to the teachings of G.I. Gurdjieff.

Amden, Switzerland, 12 January 2015 Reijo Oksanen

This musis is played by Wim van Dullemen Gurdjieff/de Hartmann: Essentuki Prayer Please push the button to play!

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Gurdjieff Internet Guide

Tradition itself, in times of dogmatism and dogmatic revolution, is a revolutionary force which must be safeguarded.

Peter Brook

~ ~

The continuous investigation of the meaning of theatre, which underpins all of Peter Brooks work, has inevitably led him to an investigation of Tradition. If theatre springs from life, then life itself must be questioned. Understanding theatrical reality also entails understanding the agents of that reality, the participants in any theatrical event: actors, director, spectators. For a man who rejects all dogma and closed systems of thought, Tradition offers the ideal characteristic of unity in contradiction. Although it asserts its immutable nature, nevertheless it appears in forms of an immense heterogeneity: while devoting itself to the understanding of unity, it does so by focusing its concerns on the infinite diversity of reality. Finally, Tradition conceives of understanding as being something originally engendered by experience, beyond all explanation and theoretical generalisation. Isnt the theatrical event itself experience, above all else?

Even on the most superficial of levels, Brooks interest in Tradition is self-evident: one thinks of his theatre adaptation of one of the jewels of Sufi art, Attars Conference of the Birds, of his film taken from Gurdjieffs book Meetings with Remarkable Men, and of the subsequent work on The Mahabharata. Clearly an investigation of the points of convergence between Brooks theatre work and traditional thought is not devoid of purpose.

An important point needs to be made at the very outset: the word tradition (from the Latin tradere, meaning to restore, to transmit) carries within it a contradiction charged with repercussions. In its primary familiar usage, the word tradition signifies a way of thinking or acting inherited from the past1: it is therefore linked with the words custom and habit. In this sense, one might refer to academic tradition, to a Comdie Franaise tradition or to Shakespearean tradition. In theatre, tradition represents an attempt at mummification, the preservation of external forms at all costsinevitably concealing a corpse within, for any vital correspondence with the present moment is entirely absent. Therefore, according to this first use of tradition, Brooks theatre work seems to be anti-traditional, or, to be more precise, a-traditional. Brook himself has said:

Even if its ancient, by its very nature theatre is always an art of modernity. A phoenix that has to be constantly brought back to life. Because the image that communicates in the world in which we live, the right effect which creates a direct link between performance and audience, dies very quickly. In five years a production is out of date. So we must entirely abandon any notion of theatrical tradition2

A second, less familiar meaning of Traditionand one that will be used throughout this essayis a set of doctrines and religious or moral practices, transmitted from century to century, originally by word of mouth or by example or a body of more or less legendary information, related to the past, primarily transmitted orally from generation to generation.3 According to this definition, Tradition encapsulates different traditionsChristian, Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist, Sufi etc. (To avoid any confusion between these two accepted uses of the same word, a capital letter will be employed throughout when referring to this latter use).

So in essence Tradition is concerned with the transmission of a body of knowledge on the spiritual evolution of man, his position in different worlds, his relationship with different cosmoses. This body of knowledge is therefore unvarying, stable, permanent, despite the multiplicity of forms assumed in its transmission, and despite those distortions brought about by history and the passage of time. Although its transmission is usually oral, Tradition can also be conveyed by means of the science of symbols, by various writings and works of art, as well as by myths and rituals.

Traditional knowledge was established in ancient times, but it would be futile to look for a source of Tradition. As far as its deepest roots are concerned, Tradition could be conceived to be outside both space (geographical) and time (historical). It is eternally present, here and now, in every human being, a constant and vital wellspring. The source of Tradition can only be metaphysical. By addressing itself to what is essential in mankind, Tradition remains very much alive in our times. The work of Ren Gunon or Mircea Eliade have shown the extent to which traditional thought can be of burning interest for our own era. In addition, increasingly detailed studies demonstrate the points of convergence in structural terms between contemporary science and Tradition.

One can find a precise point of contact between Tradition and theatre in Traditions quality of vital immediacya quality reflected in its oral transmission, in its constant reference to the present moment and to experience in the present moment. Brook himself refers to just this, more or less directly, when he writes:

Theatre exists in the here and now. It is what happens at that precise moment when you perform, that moment at which the world of the actors and the world of the audience meet. A society in miniature, a microcosm brought together every evening within a space. Theatres role is to give this microcosm a burning and fleeting taste of another world, and thereby interest it, transform it, integrate it.4

Evidently, according to Brooks vision, although the theatre is on the one hand by its very nature a-traditional, it could be conceived to be a field of study in which to confront and explore Tradition. The reasons for Brooks interest in the thought of Gurdjieff are also apparent: as we know, Brook devoted several years of work to realising a film version of one of his books. We believe that significant correspondences exist between Brooks work in theatre and the teachings of Gurdjieff: and for that reason Gurdjieffs name will recur throughout this essay.

While resolutely remaining a man of Tradition, Gurdjieff (18771949) managed to express his teachings in contemporary language. He also succeeded in locating and formulating, in a scientific manner, laws common to all levels of reality. These laws assure a unity in diversity,5 a unity beyond the infinite variety of forms associated with the different levels. These laws explain why mankind need not be a fragmented state in a thousand realities, but in one multi-faceted reality only.

Aesthetic reality, spiritual reality, scientific reality: dont they all converge on one and the same centre, while remaining utterly distinct and different in themselves? Hasnt contemporary scientific thought itself (both quantum and sub-quantum) uncovered paradoxical and surprising aspects in nature, formerly entirely unsuspectedaspects which bring it significantly closer to Tradition?6

Theatre work, traditional thought, scientific thought: such a meeting is perhaps unusual, but certainly not fortuitous. By Peter Brooks own admission, what attracted him to theatrical form as well as to the study of Tradition was precisely this apparent contradiction between art and science. So it is not at all surprising that a book such as Matila Ghykas Le Nombre dOr (a discussion of the relationship between numbers, proportions and emotions) should have made such a strong impression on him.

The possible dialogues between science and Tradition, art and Tradition, science and art, are rich and fruitful, potentially offering a means of understanding a world borne down by and submerged beneath increasingly alienating complexities.

We believe that Brooks theatre research is structured around three polar elements: energy, movement and interrelations. We know that the world of appearance, writes Brook, is a crustunder the crust is the boiling matter we see if we peer into a volcano. How can we tap this energy?7 Theatrical reality will be determined by the movement of energy, a movement itself only perceivable by means of certain relationships: the interrelations of actors, and that between text, actors and audience. Movement cannot be the result of an actors action: the actor does not do a movement, it moves through him/her. Brook takes Merce Cunningham as an example: he has trained his body to obey, his technique is his servant, so that instead of being wrapped up in the making of a movement, he can let the movement unfold in intimate company with the unfolding of the music.8

The simultaneous presence of energy, movement and certain interrelations brings the theatrical event to life. With reference to Orghast, Brook spoke of the fire of the event, which is that marvelous thing of performance in the theatre. Through it, all the things that wed been working on suddenly fell into place.9 This falling into place indicates the sudden discovery of a structure hidden beneath the multiplicity of forms, apparently extending in all directions. That is why Brook believes the essence of theatre work to be in freeing the dynamic process.10 It is a question of freeing and not of fixing or capturing this process which explains the suddenness of the event. A linear unfolding would signify a mechanistic determinism, whereas here the event is linked to a structure which is clearly not linear at allbut rather one of lateral interrelationships and interconnections.

Event is another key word, frequently recurring in Brooks work. Surely it is not simply coincidence that the same word covers a central notion in modern scientific theory, since Einstein and Minkowski? Beyond the infinite multiplicity of appearances, isnt reality perhaps based on one single foundation?

In 1900, Max Planck introduced the concept of the elementary quantum of action, a theory in physics based on the notion of continuity: energy has a discreet, discontinuous structure. In 1905, Einstein formulated his special theory of relativity, revealing a new relationship between space and time: it would contribute to a radical reevaluation of the object/energy hierarchy. Gradually, the notion of an object would be replaced by that of an event, a relationship and an interconnectionreal movement being that of energy. Quantum mechanics as a theory was elaborated much later, around 1930: it shattered the concept of identity in a classical particle. For the first time, the possibility of a space/time discontinuum was recognised as logically valid. And finally the theory of elementary particlesa continuation of both quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity, as well as an attempt to go beyond both of these physical theoriesis still in the process of elaboration today.

Like both contemporary scientists and Gurdjieff, Brook is convinced of the materiality of energy. Describing the characteristics of rough theatre, he writes:

The Holy Theatre has one energy, the Rough has others. Lightheartedness and gaiety feed it, but so does the same energy that produces rebellion and opposition. This is a militant energy: it is the energy of anger, sometimes the energy of hate.11

Wasnt it Gurdjieff himself who said that: Everything in the universe is material, and for that very reason Ultimate Understanding is more materialist than materialism?12 Of course he distinguishes matter, which is always the same: but materiality is different. And the different degrees of materiality directly depend on the qualities and properties of the energy manifested at a given point.13 So objects would be localised configurations of energy.

But where does this energy come from? What are the laws governing the transformation of non-differentiated energy into a specific form of energy? Is this non-differentiated energy the fundamental substratum of all forms? To what extent can actors and audience at a theatrical performance become implicated and integrated with the formidable struggle of energies that takes place at every moment in nature?

In the first place, we believe that it is important to recognise that, in Peter Brooks theatre research, the grouping text-actor-audience reflects the characteristics of a natural system: when a true theatrical event takes place, it is greater than the sum of its parts. The interactions between text and actors, text and audience and actors and audience constitute the new, irreducible element. At the same time, text, actors and audience are true sub-systems, opening themselves up to each other. In this sense, one can talk of the life of a text. As Brook has said many times, a play does not have a form which is fixed forever. It evolves (or involves) because of actors and audiences. The death of a text is connected to a process of closure, to an absence of exchange. In The Empty Space, we read that: A doctor can tell at once between the trace of life and the useless bag of bones that life has left. But we are less practised in observing how an idea, an attitude or a form can pass from the lively to the moribund.14

Might one not further suggest that the text-actor-audience system possesses another of the important characteristics of natural systems, that of being modules of coordination in the hierarchy of nature?15 Certainly, in that instance when the spectator emerges from a theatre event enriched with new information in the sphere of energy: I have also looked for movement and energy. Bodily energy as much as that of emotions, in such a way that the energy released onstage can unleash within the spectator a feeling of vitality that he would not find in everyday life.16 As the bearer of this feeling of vitality, the spectator could participate in other openings and other exchanges, in life.

But what is essential is elsewherein the recognition, on its own level, of the action of those laws common to all levels. One can conceive of the universe (as in Gurdjieffs cosmology, or scientific systems theory) as a great Whole, a vast cosmic matrix within which all is in perpetual motion in a continuous restructuring of energies. Such a unity is not static, it implies differentiation and diversity in the existence not of a substance, but of a common organisation: the determining laws of the Whole. These laws are only fully operational when systems are mutually open to each other, in an incessant and universal exchange of energy.

It is precisely this exchange that confirms what Gurdjieff called the general harmonic movement of systems, or the harmony of reciprocal maintenance in all cosmic concentrations.17 The opening of a system prevents its degeneration, and ultimate death. In-separability is the safeguard of life. It is well known that all closed physical systems are subjected to Clausius-Carnots principle, which implies an inevitable degeneration of energy, a growing disorder. For there to be order and stability, there must be opening and exchange. Such an exchange can take place between syntheses on one single level, or between systems belonging to different levels.

Almost all of the actors exercises and improvisations in Brooks Centre seem to aim at engendering opening and exchange. First-hand testimonies to this effect are numerous: one thinks of those published accounts of the preparatory processes for Conference of the Birds, Orghast and Carmen.18 Brook has explicitly said himself that, by means of these exercises and improvisations, the actors are trying to get to whats essential: in other words to that point at which the impulses of one conjoin with the impulses of another to resonate together.19 Michel Rostain describes how, during the preparation for Carmen, one singer would turn his/her back on another, in order to try to recreate the gesture accompanying the other persons singing without ever having seen it. Actors sitting in a circle attempted to transmit gestures or words: and in the end the force and clarity of internal images enabled them to be made visible. This is genuinely precise and rigorous research work.

In one exercise during the preparation for Orghast, each actor represented a part of a single personincluding, for example, the voice of the subconscious.20 In another, actors took part in the recitation of a monologue from a Shakespearean text, delivering it as a round for three voices: suddenly the actor bursts a barrier and experiences how much freedom there can be within the tightest discipline.21 And that is what it is essentially aboutthe discovery of freedom by submitting oneself to laws which permit an opening towards the unknown, towards a relationship. To be means to be related was the startling formula of the founder of General Semantics, Alfred Korzybski.22 Exercises and improvisations offer the possibility of interrelating the most ordinary and the most hidden levels of experience,23 of discovering potentially powerful equivalences between gestures, words and sounds. In this way, words, the usual vehicle of signification, can be replaced by gestures or sounds. Going into the unknown is always frightening. Each letter is the cause of the letter that follows. Hours of work can come out of ten letters, in a search to free the word, the sound. We are not trying to create a method, we want to make discoveries.24

So exercises and improvisations have little particular value in themselves, but they facilitate a tuning of the theatrical instrument that is the actors being, and a circulation of living dramatic flow25 in the actors as a group. The theatrical miracle is produced afterwards, in the active presence of the audience, when an opening towards the unknown can be mobilised more fully. But what is the nature of this unknown? Is it another name for the unity of indefinite links in systems of systems, as Stephane Lupasco would say,26 in a paradoxical coexistence of determinate and indeterminate, of discipline and spontaneity, of homogeneity and heterogeneity? How can we best understand the words of Attar when he wrote in the Invocation to Conference of the Birds:

To each atom there is a different door, and for each atom there is a different way which leads to the mysterious Being of whom I speak In this vast oceans, the world is an atom and the atom a world?27

Traditional thought has always affirmed that Reality is not linked to space-time: it simply is. When Gurdjieff talked of the trogoautoegocratic process which assures the reciprocal nutrition of everything that exists, he was proposing it as our infallible saviour from the action, in conformity with the laws, of merciless Heropass28 Once one knows that for him Heropass meant Time, one can understand the sense of his statement: the unity of indefinite links between systems evades the action of timeit is, outside space-time. Time, that unique ideally subjective phenomenon, does not exist per se. So the space-time continuum, when it is considered in isolation, is a sort of approximation, a subjective phenomenon, linked to a sub-system. Each sub-system, corresponding to a certain degree of materiality, possesses its own space-time.

Finally, in certain recent scientific theories,29 descriptions of physical reality have necessitated the introduction of dimensions other than those of space-time. The physical event takes place in all dimensions at the same time. Consequently, one can no longer talk at that level of linear, continuous time. There is a law of causality, but the event occurs in a sudden way. There is neither before nor after in the usual sense of the terms: there is something like a discontinuity in the notion of time itself.

Would it be possible to discuss a theatre event without immersing oneself in an experience of time? One might argue that the essence of a Peter Brook theatre event is in its suddenness, in its unforeseeable nature (in the sense of the impossibility of precise reproduction at will). Brook says that: The special moments no longer happen by luck. Yet they cant be repeated. Its why spontaneous events are so terrifying and marvelous. They can only be rediscovered.30 Meaning never belongs to the past31: it appears in the mystery of the present moment, the instant of opening towards a relationship. This meaning is infinitely richer than that to which classical rational thought has access, based as it is (perhaps without it ever being aware) on linear causality, on mechanistic determinism. At fleeting moments, great actors touch upon this new kind of meaning. In Paul Scofield, for example,

instrument and player are onean instrument of flesh and blood that opens itself to the unknownIt was as though the act of speaking a word sent through him vibrations that echoed back meanings far more complex than his rational thinking could find.32

There is something primitive, direct and immediate in the idea of present momenta sort of absolute liberty in relation to performance, a revivifying sentient spontaneity. The idea of present moment, writes Pierce, within which, whether it exists or not, one naturally thinks of a point in time when no thought can take place, when no detail can be differentiated, is an idea of Primacy33Primacy being the mode of being of whatever is such as it is, in a positive way, with no reference to anything else at all.34

The miracle of Peter Brooks theatre work seems to me to reside in precisely this sense of the moment, in the liberation of energies circulating in harmonic flux, incorporating the spectator as active participant in the theatrical event. Paradoxically we find all of the points of convergence that have been discussed throughout this study embodied not so much in his film Meetings with Remarkable Men, but rather in a play like The Cherry Orchard. A result perhaps of the difference between cinema and theatre, which Brook has underlined: There is only one interesting difference between the cinema and the theatre. The cinema flashes on to a screen images from the past. As this is what the mind does to itself all through life, the cinema seems intimately real. Of course, it is nothing of the sortit is a satisfying and enjoyable extension of the unreality of everyday perception. The theatre, on the other hand, always asserts itself in the present. This is what can make it more real than the normal stream of consciousness. This is also what can make it so disturbing.35 Texts by Chekhov, the dramatist of lifes movement,36 or by Shakespeare, enable every dimension of Brooks theatre work to be revealed. In The Cherry Orchard, there are specific moments when apparently banal words and gestures fall apart, suddenly opened to another reality that one somehow feels to be the only one that counts. A flow of a new quality of energy starts to circulate, and the spectator is carried off to new heights, in a sudden confrontation with him/herself. The marks etched into our memories in this way last a very long time: although theatre is a self-destructive art,37 it is nonetheless capable of attaining a certain permanence.

Another remarkable meeting point between Peter Brooks theatre work, traditional thought and quantum theory, is in their shared recognition of contradiction as the motor of every process in reality.

The role of contradiction is apparent in the changes of direction Brook himself has chosen throughout his career, through Shakespeare, commercial comedy, television, cinema and opera: Ive really spent all my working life in looking for opposites, Brook suggested in an interview with The Times. This is a dialectical principle of finding a reality through opposites.38 He emphasises the role of contradiction as a means of awakening understanding, taking Elizabethan drama as an example: Elizabethan drama was exposure, it was confrontation, it was contradiction and it led to analysis, involvement, recognition and, eventually, to an awakening of understanding.39 Contradiction is not destructive, but a balancing force. It has its role to play in the genesis of all processes. The absence of contradiction would lead to general homogenisation, a dwindling of energy and eventual death. Whatever contains contradiction contains the world, claims Lupasco, whose conclusions are based on quantum physics.40 Brook points out the constructive role of negation in the theatre of Beckett: Beckett does not say no with satisfaction: he forges his merciless no out of a longing for yes, and so his despair is the negative from which the contour of its opposite can be drawn.41

Contradiction also plays a central role in the works of Shakespeare which pass through many stages of consciousness: What enabled him technically to do so, the essence, in fact, of his style, is a roughness of texture and a conscious mingling of opposites42 Shakespeare remains the great ideal, the summit, an indelible point of reference for a possible evolution in theatre:

It is through the unreconciled opposition of Rough and Holy, through an atonal screech of absolutely unsympathetic keys that we get the disturbing and the unforgettable impressions of his plays. It is because the contradictions are so strong that they burn on us so deeply.43

Brook sees King Lear as a vast, complex, coherent poem attaining cosmic dimensions in its revelation of the power and the emptiness of nothingthe positive and negative aspects latent in the zero.44

Contradiction is the sine qua non of successful theatrical performance. Zeami (13631444), one of the first great masters of the Nohhis treatise is known as the secret tradition of the Nohobserved five centuries ago:

Let it be known that in everything, it is at the critical point of harmonic balance between yin and yang that perfection is located if one was to interpret yang in a yang way, or yin in a yin way, there could be no harmonising balance, and perfection would be impossible. Without perfection, how could one ever be interesting?45

For certain traditional thinkers like Zeami, Jakob Bhme or Gurdjieff, as well as for certain philosophers whose thinking is based on scientific knowledge, like Pierce and Lupasco, contradiction is quite simply the dynamic interrelationship of three independent forces, simultaneously present in every process in realityan affirmative force, a negative force and a conciliatory force. Therefore reality has a ternary dynamic structure, a trialectical structure.

For example, Zeami elaborated a law called johakyu, to which Peter Brook often refers. Jo means beginning or opening: ha means middle or development (as well as to break, crumble, spread out): kyu means end or finale (as well as speed, climax, paroxysm). According to Zeami it is not only theatre performance itself which can be broken down into jo, ha and kyu, but also every vocal or instrumental phrase, every movement, every step, every word.46

Zeamis comments are still vitally relevant to us today. One can easily imagine, for example, the boredom provoked by the performance of a tragic play, which begins in climactic paroxysm, then develops through interminable expositions of the causes of the drama. At the same time it would be possible to undertake a detailed analysis of the unique atmosphere created in the plays staged by Peter Brook, as the result of conformity with the law of johakyuin the structural progression of these plays as well as in the actors performances. But the most personal aspect of Brooks theatre work seems to lie in his elaboration and presentation of a new ternary structuring.

Brooks theatre space could be represented by a triangle, with the base line for the audiences consciousness, and the two other sides for the inner life of the actors and their relations with their partners. This ternary configuration is constantly present in both Brooks practice and his writings. In everyday life, our contacts are often limited to a confrontation between our inner life and our relationships with our partners: the triangle is mutilated, for its base is absent. In the theatre, actors are obliged to confront their ultimate and absolute responsibility, the relationship with an audience, which is what in effect gives theatre its fundamental meaning.47 We will return to the central role of the audience in Brooks theatre space in the next section.

Another ternary structure which is active in theatre space can be located if one accepts the notion of centres proposed by Gurdjieff. He believed that what distinguishes mankind from other organic entities in nature is the fact of being tricentric or tricerebrala being with three centres or brains. Indeed a human being could be represented by a trianglethe base representing the emotional centre (locus of Reconciliation), the two other sides the intellectual centre (locus of Affirmation) and the instinctive motor centre (locus of Negation). Harmony stems from a state of balance between these three centres.

It is very clear that the conditions of modern life only favour the functioning of the intellectual centre, particularly of the automated part of that centre, what one could call cerebral activity. This ideational element, which is of course a powerful means in mans adaptation to his environment, has changed from a means into an end, adopting the role of omnipotent tyrant. Therefore the triangle representing mankind threatens to break apart, on account of the disproportionate lengthening of one of its sides. Theatrical space, in turn, cannot fail to feel the consequences of this process.

John Heilpern, who has described the C.I.R.T. actors expedition to Africa, recalled his astonishment when he heard Peter Brook talking about the role of cerebral activity: He pointed to the imbalance within us where the golden calf of the intellect is worshipped at the cost of true feelings and experience. Like Jung, he believes that the intellectualthe intellect aloneprotects us from true feeling, stifles and camouflages the spirit in a blind collection of facts and concepts. Yet as Brook talked to me of this I was struck forcibly by the fact that he, a supreme intellectual figure, should express himself this way.48 As someone who had branded 20th Century man as emotionally constipated,49 Brook sheds no tears for the deadly theatre, which he considers to be the perfect expression of the cerebral element in its attempt to appropriate real feelings and experiences:

To make matters worse, there is always a deadly spectator, who for special reasons enjoys a lack of intensity and even a lack of entertainment, such as the scholar who emerges from routine performances of the classics smiling because nothing has distracted him from trying over and confirming his pet theories to himself, whist reciting his favourite lines under his breath. In his heart he sincerely wants a theatre that is nobler-than-life, and he confuses a sort of intellectual satisfaction with the true experience for which he craves.50

Harmony between the centres facilitates the development of a new quality of perception, a direct and immediate perception which does not pass through the deforming filter of cerebral activity. So a new intelligence can appear: along with emotion, there is always a role for a special intelligence that is not there at the start, but which has to be developed as a selecting instrument.51

A lot of the exercises elaborated by Peter Brook have as their precise aim the development of this state of unity between thought, body and feelings by liberating the actor from an over-cerebral approach. In this way, the actor can be organically linked with him/herself and act as a unified whole being, rather than as a fragmented one. Through such research work, one gradually discovers an important aspect of the functioning of the centresthe great difference in their speeds. According to Gurdjieff,52 the intellectual centre is the slowest, whereas the emotional centre is the quickestits impressions are immediately made apparent to us.

So it is clear in what way the demands of an exercise can enable a discovery of the common rule by mobilising the intervention of the quicker centres. During the Carmen rehearsals, actors were asked to walk while at the same time emitting a sound, then to pass from piano to fortissimo without altering the dynamic and bearing of the walk.53 The difficulty of this exercise revealed the disharmony between centres, a blocking of the quicker centres by the intellectual one. Compare this with another exercise where actors would be required to mark out rhythms in four/four time with their feet, while their hands kept three/three time. Certain exercises allow something akin to a photograph of the functioning of the centres at a given moment to be taken. Fixed in a certain attitude, the actor can discover the contradictory functioning of these different centres, and thereby find, through experiment, the way towards a more integrated, harmonious functioning.

One might want to establish revelatory points of correspondence between the two trianglesthat of Brooks theatre space and that of Gurdjieffs centres. In particular, this isomorphism between the two triangles could well enlighten us as to the role of the audience, in its capacity as catalyst for the emotional centres impressions. But that would lead us far from our immediate concerns here: and anyway no theoretical analysis could ever substitute for the richness of a first-hand experience of immersion in Brooks theatre space.

The most spectacular illustration of the crucial, primary role of experience in Brooks work is perhaps in the preparation for Conference of the Birds. Instead of plunging his actors into a study of Attars poem, or committing them to an erudite analysis of Sufi texts, Brook led them off on an extraordinary expedition to Africa. Confronted with the difficulties inherent in a crossing of the Sahara desert, obliged to improvise in front of the inhabitants of African villages, the actors went inexorably towards a meeting with themselves: Everything we do on this journey is an exercise in heightening perception on every conceivable level. You might call the performance of a show the grand exercise. But everything feeds the work, and everything surrounding it is part of a bigger test of awareness. Call it the super-grand exercise.54 Indeed self-confrontation after a long and arduous process of self-initiation is the very keystone to Attars poem. This kind of experimental, organic approach to a text has an infinitely greater value than any theoretical, methodical or systematic study. Its value becomes apparent in the stimulation of a very particular quality: it constitutes the most tangible characteristic of Brooks work.

His comments on Orghast are as significant and valid for Conference of the Birds, as indeed for all of the other performances: The result that we are working towards is not a form, not an image, but a set of conditions in which a certain quality of performance can arise.55 This quality is directly connected to the free circulation of energies, through precise and detailed (one could even call it scientific) work on perception. Discipline is inextricably associated with spontaneity, precision with freedom.

How can discipline and spontaneity be made to coexist and interact? Where does spontaneity come from? How can one distinguish true spontaneity from a simple automatic response, associated with a set of pre-existing (if unconscious) clichs? In other words, how can one differentiate between an associationperhaps unexpected, but nonetheless mechanicalwith its source in what has been seen already, and the emergence of something really new?

Spontaneity introduces an indeterminate element into an evolutionary process. Heisenbergs celebrated uncertainty relation, or uncertainty principle indicates that spontaneity is effectively active in nature. This principle tells us that the product of an increase in quantity of a quantum events momentum through its spatial extension, or the product of an increase in energy through its temporal extension must be superior to a certain constant representing the elementary quantum of action. So if one were to ask, for example, for a precisely pinpointed spatial localization of the quantum event, the result would be an infinite increase on the level of uncertainty of momentum: just as if one were to ask for a precisely pinpointed temporal localisation, the result would be an infinite increase in the level of energy. There is no need for a high degree of sophistication in mathematics or physics to understand that this signifies the impossibility of a precise localisation in space-time of any quantum event. The concept of identity in a classical particle (identity defined in relation to the particle itself, as a part separate from the Whole) is therefore necessarily smashed apart.

The quantum event is not made up of wave or particle, it is simultaneously wave and particle. The impossibility of precisely locating a quantum event in space-time can be understood as a consequence of the in-separability of events. Their aleatory or probabilist character does not reflect the action of chance. The aleatory quantum is constructive, it has a directionthat of the self-organization of natural systems. At the same time, the observer ceases to be an observers/he becomes, as Wheeler has said, a participant. Quantum theory has its place in the Valley of Astonishment (one of the seven valleys in Conference of the Birds) where contradiction and indeterminacy lie in wait for the traveller.

One could postulate the existence of a general principle of uncertainty, active in any process in reality. It is also necessarily active in theatrical space, above all in the relationship between audience and play. In the formula for theatre suggested by Brook (Theatre = Rra: Rptition, reprsentation, assistance), the presenceassistanceof an audience plays an essential role:

The only thing that all forms of theatre have in common is the need for an audience. This is more than a truism: in the theatre the audience completes the steps of creation.56

The audience is part of a much greater unity, subject to the principle of uncertainty: It is hard to understand the true function of spectator, there and not there, ignored and yet needed. The actors work is never for an audience, yet it always is for one.57 The audience makes itself open to the actors, in its desire to see more clearly into itself,58 and so the performance begins to act more fully on the audience. By opening itself up, the audience in turn begins to influence the actors, if the quality of their perception allows interaction. That explains why the global vision of a director can be dissolved by an audiences presence: the audience exposes the non-conformity of this vision with the structure of the theatrical event. The theatrical event is indeterminate, instantaneous, unpredictable, even if it necessitates the reunion of a set of clearly determined conditions. The directors role consists of working at great length and in detail to prepare the actors, thus enabling the emergence of the theatrical event. All attempts to anticipate or predetermine the theatrical event are doomed to failure: the director cannot substitute him/herself for the audience. The triangle comprising inner life of the actorstheir relations with their partnersthe audiences consciousness can only be engendered at the actual moment of performance. The collective entity that is the audience makes the conciliatory element indispensable to the birth of the theatrical event: (An audiences) true activity can be invisible, but also indivisible.59

However invisible it is, this active participation by the audience is nonetheless material and potent: When the Royal Shakespeare Companys production of King Lear toured through Europe, the production was steadily improving The quality of attention that this audience brought expressed itself in silence and concentration: a feeling in the house that affected the actors as though a brilliant light were turned on their work.60 So it is evident why Brooks research work tends towards a necessary theatre, one in which there is only a practical difference between actor and audience, not a fundamental one.61 The space in which the interaction between audience and actors takes place is infinitely more subtle than that of ideas, concepts, prejudices or preconditioning. The quality of the attention of both audience and actors enables the event to occur as a full manifestation of spontaneity. Ideally this interaction can transcend linguistic and cultural barriers. The C.I.R.T. actors can communicate just as well with African villagers, Australian aborigines or the inhabitants of Brooklyn; Theatre isnt about narrative. Narrative isnt necessary. Events will make the whole.62

Many of the confusions concerning the problem of spontaneity appear to have their source in a linear, mono-dimensional conception of the theatrical event. One can easily believe in the existence of laws such as Zeamis johakyu,67 but that is insufficient in understanding how a theatrical event can take place through the transition between the different elements of johakyu. If one limits oneself to a strictly horizontal view of the action of johakyu (jo, the beginning: ha, the development: kyu, the ending), it is impossible to understand how one might arrive, for example, at the ultimate refinement of the ha part of ha, or to a paroxystic peak in the kyu part of kyu. What can produce the dynamic shocks necessary for the movement not to stop, not to become blocked? How can the necessary continuity of a theatrical performance be reconciled with the discontinuity inherent in its different components? How can one harmonise the progression of the play, the actors work and the perception liberated in the audience?

In other words, horizontal movement is meaningless by itself. It remains on the same level forever, no information is forthcoming. This movement only acquires a significance if it is combined with an evolutionary dynamic. It is as if each phenomenon in reality were subject, at every moment, to two contradictory movements, in two opposing directions: one ascending, the other descending. As if there were two parallel rivers, flowing with considerable force in two opposing directions: in order to pass from one river to the other, an external interventiona shockis absolutely essential. This is where the full richness of the significance of the notion of discontinuity is revealed.

But in order for this shock to be effective, a certain concordance or overlap must exist between the shock (which in itself is subject to the law of johakyu) and the system upon which it is acting. Therefore it becomes clear why each element of johakyu must be composed in turn of the three other elementsin other words, why there has to be a jo-ha-kyu sequence within the jo, the ha and the kyu. These different components enable interaction between the different systems to take place.

Therefore, in order for a harmonious movement to appear, a new dimension must be present: johakyu is not only active horizontally, but also vertically. If each element (jo, ha and kyu) is composed in turn of three other elements, therefore we obtain nine elements, two of which represent a sort of interval. One of these is filled by the shock enabling the horizontal transition to take place, the other by the shock enabling the vertical transition to take place. In this way, one ends up with a vision of the action of Zeamis johakyu which is very close to the precise mathematical formulation Gurdjieff elaborated for his law of Seven or octave law.63

When one considers this two-dimensional vision of the action of johakyu, Peter Brooks insistence on the audiences central role in a theatrical event becomes clearer. The audience can follow the suggestions proposed to it by the playtext, the actors and the director. The first intervalbetween jo and hacan be traversed by means of a more or less automatic exchange, the play can continue its horizontal movement. But the audience also has its own irreducible presence: its culture, its sensitivity, its experience of life, its quality of attention, the intensity of its perception. A resonance between the actors work and the audiences inner life can occur. Therefore the theatrical event can appear fully spontaneous, by means of vertical exchangewhich implies a certain degree of will and of awarenessthereby leading to something truly new, not pre-existent in theatrical performance. The ascent of the action of johakyu towards the plays summitthe kyu of kyucan therefore take place. The second interval is filled by a true shock, allowing the paradoxical coexistence of continuity and discontinuity.

We have described what could be considered to be a first level of perception in a theatre event. This analysis could be further refined by taking into account the tree-like structure (it is never ending) of johakyu. Different levels of perception, structured hierarchically in a qualitative ladder, could be discovered in this way. There are degrees of spontaneity, just as there are degrees of perception. The quality of a theatrical performance is determined by the effective presence of these degrees.

We have also referred to a vertical dimension in the action of johakyu. This dimension is associated with two possible impulses: one ascending (evolution), the other descending (entropic involution). The ascending curve corresponds to a densification of energy, reflecting the tendency towards unity in diversity and an augmentation of awareness. It is in this sense that we have described the action of johakyu until this point.

But one might well conceive of a johakyu in reverse, such as appears, for example, in the subject of Peter Brooks film Lord of the Flies, where one witnessed the progressive degradation of a paradise towards a hell. An ideal, innocent space exists nowhere. Left to themselves, without the intervention of conscience and awareness, the laws of creation lead inexorably towards fragmentation, mechanicity, and, in the final instance, to violence and destruction. In this way spontaneity is metamorphosed into mechanicity.

It should be noted that spontaneity and sincerity are closely linked. The usual moral connotation of sincerity signifies its reduction to an automatic functioning based on a set of ideas and beliefs implanted into the collective psyche in an accidental way through the passage of time. In this sense, sincerity comes close to a lie, in relation to itself. By ridding ourselves of the ballast of what does not belong to us, we can eventually become sincere: recognising laws, seeing oneself, opening oneself to relationships with others. Such a process demands work, a significant degree of effort: sincerity must be learnt.64 In relation to our usual conception of it, this kind of sincerity resembles insincerity: with its moral overtones, the word (sincerity) causes great confusion. In a way, the most powerful feature of the Brecht actors is the degree of their insincerity. It is only through detachment that an actor will see his own cliches.65 The actor inhabits a double space of false and true sincerity, the most fruitful movement being an oscillation between the two: The actor is called upon to be completely involved while distanceddetached without detachment. He must be sincere, he must be insincere: he must practice how to be insincere with sincerity and how to lie truthfully. This is almost impossible, but it is essential66

The actors predicament is reminiscent of Arjunas perplexity when confronted with the advice that Krishna gives him, in the Bhagavad Gita, to reconcile action and non-action: paradoxically, action undertaken with understanding becomes intertwined with inaction.

At every moment, the actor is confronted with a choice between acting and not-acting, between an action visible to the audience and an invisible action, linked to his/her inner life. Zeami drew our attention to the importance of intervals of non-interpretation or non-action, separating a pair of gestures, actions or movements:

It is a spiritual concentration which will allow you to remain on your guard, retaining all of your attention, at that moment when you stop dancing or chanting, or in any other circumstances during an interval in the text or in the mimic art. The emotion created by this inner spiritual concentrationwhich manifests itself externallyis what produces interest and enjoyment It is in relation to the degree of non-consciousness and selflessness, through a mental attitude in which ones spiritual reality is hidden even from oneself, that one must forge the link between what precedes and what follows the intervals of non-action. This is what constitutes the inner strength which can serve to reunite all ten thousand means of expression in the oneness of the spirit.67

It is only by mastering the attitudes and associations produced in this way that the actor can truly play parts, putting him/herself in others places. At every moment, wrote Gurdjieff, associations change automatically, one evoking another, and so on. If I am in the process of playing a part, I must be in control all the time. It is impossible to start again with the given impulse.68 In a sense a free man is one who can truly play parts.

In the light of all that has been said so far in this essay, would it not now be possible to state that there is a very strong relationship between theatrical and spiritual work? Whether one agrees or not, a clear and important distinction between theatre research and traditional research must be made in order to avoid the source of an indefinite chain of harmful confusions, which in any case have already coloured certain endeavours in the modern theatre.

Traditional research addresses itself to man as a whole, calling into play a wide range of aspects, infinitely richer than that of theatre research: after all, the latters end is aesthetic. Traditional research is closely linked with an oral teaching, untranslatable into ordinary language. Isnt it significant that no traditional writings ever describe the process of self-initiation? In his Third Series, faced with the impossibility of the task, Gurdjieff preferred to destroy his manuscriptwhat was eventually published as Life is real only then, when I am is only a collection of fragments from that manuscript. On several occasions, Saint John of the Cross announced a treatise on the mystical union, but no trace has ever been found of such a work. Finally, Attar devoted the major part of his poem Conference of the Birds to the story of the discussions between the birds and a description of the preparation for their journey: the journey itself and the meeting with the Simorgh only take up a few lines.

Theatre research clearly has another end in mind: art, theatre. Peter Brook himself has strongly emphasised the need for such a distinction: theatre work is not a substitute for a spiritual search.69 In itself the theatrical experience is insufficient to transform the life of an actor. Nevertheless, like a savant, for example, or indeed any human being, the actor can experience fleetingly what could be a higher level of evolution. Theatre is an imitation of life, but an imitation based upon the concentration of energies released in the creation of a theatre event. So one can become aware, on an experiential level, of the full richness of the present moment. If theatre is not really the decisive meeting with oneself and with others, it nonetheless allows for a certain degree of exploration to take place.

This fundamental ambiguity recurs in Grotowskis approach, at least such as it is described by Brook: The theatre, he believes, cannot be an end in itself: like dancing or music in certain dervish orders, the theatre is a vehicle, a means for self-study, self-exploration70 According to Brooks conception of the theatre, it cannot lay claim to unity, in terms of its end. Of course one can arrive at certain privileged moments; At certain moments, this fragmented world comes together, and for a certain time it can rediscover the marvel of organic life. The marvel of being one.71 But theatre work is ephemeral, subject to the influences (both evoluted and involuted) of the environment. This impermanence prevents it from leading to points of dynamic concentration. In answer to a question about Orghast, Brook replied that theatre work is:

self destructive within waves You go through lines and points. The line that has gone through Orghast should come to a point, and the point should be a work obviously there is a necessary crystallising of the work into a concentrated form. Its always about thatcoming to points of concentration.72

When A.C.H. Smith asked him about the possibility of a universal language, Peter Brook dismissed the question as being meaningless.73 His response reflects a fear of the stifling of a vital question by endless theoretical considerations, by deforming and maiming abstractions. How many prejudices and cliches are unleashed automatically simply by pronouncing the two words universal language? And yet Brooks entire work testifies to his search for a new language which endeavours to unite sound, gesture and word, and in this way to free meanings which could not be expressed in any other way. But above all this research is experimental: something living emerges into the theatre space, and it matters little what name one gives to it. What happens, Brook asks, when gesture and sound turn into word? What is the exact place of the word in theatrical expression? As vibration? Concept? Music? Is any evidence buried in the structure of certain ancient languages?74

The fact that, by themselves, words cannot provide total access to reality has been well known for a long time. In the final analysis, any definition of words by words is based on indefinite terms. Where does linguistic determinism begin, and where does it end? Can it be characterised by a single value, by a finite number of values or by an infinite number? And if, according to Korzybskis famous phrase, the map is not the territory,75 it nevertheless has the considerable advantage of a structure similar to that of the territory. How can this similarity become operative? The word is a small visible portion of a gigantic unseen formation, writes Brook.76 Starting with this small visible portion, how can one gain access to the gigantic formation of the universe as a whole? A theatrical event, as has already been suggested, determines the appearance of a laddered structure of different levels of perception. How can any single word encapsulate the sum of these levels?

The relativisation of perception has enabled us to specify a phenomenons place in reality, as well as how it is linked to the rest. A word, a gesture, an action are all linked to a certain level of perception, but, in the true theatrical event, they are also linked to other levels present in the event. Relativity allows us to uncover the invariance concealed behind the multiplicity of forms of phenomena in different systems of reference. This vision of things is close to that implied by the principle of relativity formulated by Gurdjieff.77

Relativity conditions vision: without relativity there can be no vision. The playwright who takes his/her own reality for reality as a whole presents an image of a desiccated and dead world, in spite of any originality that he/she might have shown. Unfortunately the playwright rarely searches to relate their detail to any larger structureit is as though they accept without question their intuition as complete, their reality as all of reality.78 Death itself can be relativised in an acceptance of contradiction. Brook cites the example of Chekhov: In Chekhovs work, death is omnipresent But he learnt how to balance compassion with distance This awareness of death, and of the precious moments that could be lived, endow his work with a sense of the relative: in other words, a viewpoint from which the tragic is always a bit absurd.79 Non-identification is another word for vision.

Theatre work can be the constant search for a simultaneous perception, by both actors and audience, of every level present in an event. Brook describes his own research in this concise formulation:

the simple relationship of movement and sound that passes directly, and the single element which has the ambiguity and density that permits it to be read simultaneously on a multitude of levelsthose are the two points that the research is all about.80

The principle of relativity clarifies what an eventual universal language could be. For Gurdjieff, this new, precise, mathematical language had to be centered around the idea of evolution: The fundamental property of this new language is that all ideas are concentrated around one single idea: in other words, they are all considered, in terms of their mutual relationships, from the point of view of a single idea. And this idea is that of evolution. Not at all in the sense of a mechanical evolution, naturally, because that does not exist, but in the sense of a conscious and voluntary evolution. It is the only possible kind The language which permits understanding is based on the knowledge of its place in the evolutionary ladder.81 So the sacred itself could be understood to be anything that is linked to an evolutionary process.

This new language involves the participation of body and emotions. Human beings in their totality, as an image of reality, could therefore forge a new language. We do not only live in the world of action and reaction, but also in that of spontaneity and of self-conscious thought.

Traditional symbolic language prefigures this new language. When talking about different systems which convey the idea of unity, Gurdjieff said:

A symbol can never be taken in a definitive and exclusive sense. In so far as it express the laws of unity in indefinite diversity, a symbol itself possesses an indefinite number of aspects from which it can be considered, and it demands from whoever approaches it the capacity to see it from different points of view. Symbols that are transposed into the words of ordinary language harden, become less clear: they can quite easily become their own opposites, imprisoning meaning within dogmatic and narrow frame-works, without even permitting the relative freedom of a logical examination of the subject. Reason merely provides a literal understanding of symbols, only ever attributing to them a single meaning.82

The fact that a symbol possesses an indefinite number of aspects does not mean that it is imprecise at all. Indeed it is its reading on an indefinite number of levels which confers on it its extreme precision. Commenting on the theatre of Samuel Beckett, Brook writes:

Becketts plays are symbols in an exact sense of the word. A false symbol is soft and vague: a true symbol is hard and clear. When we say symbolic we often mean something drearily obscure: a true symbol is specific, it is the only form a certain truth can take We get nowhere if we expect to be told what they mean, yet each one has a relation with us we cant deny. If we accept this, the symbol opens in us a great wondering O.83

It is clear therefore why Brook believes Chekhovs essential quality to be precision, and why he states that today fidelity is the central concern, an approach which necessitates weighing every single word and bringing it into sharp focus.84 Only then can words have an influence: they can become active, bearers of real significance, if the actor behaves as a medium, allowing words to act through and colour him/her, rather than him/her trying to manipulate them.85

By forgetting relativity, language has become in time inevitably narrower, diminished in its emotional and even intellectual capacities. It has been necessarily bastardised: one word is taken for another, one meaning for another. The Orghast experiment showed in a startling way that a return to an organic language, detached from the dread bonding of abstraction to abstraction, is possible. Words invented by the poet Ted Hughes and fragments performed in different ancient languages acted as catalysts to the reciprocal transformation between movement and sound, as an expression of an inner state, meaning no longer needing to be filtered solely through cerebral activity. In an interview with American Theatre, Brook emphasised that actors, whatever their origin, can play intuitively a work in its original language. This simple principle is the most unusual thing that exists in the theatre86

Evidently the relativisation of perception demands hard work, a considerable effort, an inner silence that is a sort of penitence. Silence plays an integral part in Brooks work, beginning with the research into the inter-relationship of silence and duration with his Theatre of Cruelty group in 1964, and culminating in the rhythm punctuated with silences that is indefinitely present at the core of his film Meetings with Remarkable Men: In silence there are many potentialities: chaos or order, muddle or pattern, all lie fallowthe invisible-made-visible is of sacred nature87 Silence is all-embracing, and it contains countless layers.88

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Peter Brook and Traditional Thought - Gurdjieff