Jesus – “in my father’s house are many mansions” (John 14:2).

This can be seen as referring to the Perennial Tradition of a Great Chain of Being. This is the core model of how things came into existence. Something was projected forward. Something came forth.

Orthodoxy speaks of the essence of God that is deep, unknowable, inaccessible, the void out of which emanates manifestation descending and becoming denser as it descends.

Earth is dense, heavy, “fallen”.

Creation moves out of the fire of God. It moves towards entropy, becoming denser, colder more formal, further from the heart of God, heavier, “fallen” towards a cold, dead equilibrium. Until it becomes “redshift” blind eg. siren sound moves to a lower key as it moves into the distance.

Gurdjieff reimagined the Great Chain of Being in a unique way. It is not a redshift system. He saw it not heading towards a final entropy but as an intelligence that can hold the whole thing together. Along the whole Chain is an energy exchange between higher and lower that is being handed off at every point. The net effect creates a force within that counteracts entropy.

Reciprocal feeding = the Trogoautocratic (“I stay alive by feeding”) process. Suppose the whole created Universe was a part of this system seeking to bring life into equilibrium. This is not just about Earth.

When God decided to bring creation into existence he created an interactive system that looks like the Great Chain of Being.

In G.I. Gurdjieff’s Beelzebub’s Tales To His Grandson, the world was created to be a force working against the entropic force. We are here for a purpose. We need to think in terms of cosmic scale.

The problem with the world is that people are not working consciously. We are not fulfilling our destiny to be cosmic transformers.

We are intended to mediate between visible and invisible spheres by surrendering our survival and pleasure impulses. This is the classic realm of spiritual work.

Only through alignment can we find contentment; there is a coherence we can be part of = “equanimity.”

Up to the 18c. the concept of human rights did not exist. Instead, there was an understanding of the role of obligation. Part of being human is to recognise ourselves as a responsible part of an intricate web of interconnectivity.

This is not about personal enlightenment and personal gain.

There are descending Worlds of increasing density:

1 – Unity: Holy Absolute, Oneness, Wholeness. Undivided, indivisible, unmanifest monad = the godhead. Has to bring itself into form in order to manifest. Eastern Orthodox – there is a world #1. The West rejects the idea of godhead behind all that is.

3 – Trinity: for there to be any manifestation, the indivisible has to bring itself into division. The law of three – affirming, denying, reconciling

6 – World of ideals, forms from which arise profound templates. The world of fundamental principles. The Logos is the primordial template. This is the World beyond the personal.  

12 – Christic realm = the centre of the Universe. And the Word became flesh, ie. became personal. World that is saturated with the full heft of the personal. We can know this world. We touch this World in our embodied reality. It breaks our heart; it is an extraordinary expression of love, not an energy but a love, a consecration of the personal in love. Don’t call “it” an it, but a Thou. The sense of being touched by infinite tenderness and caring.

24 – Imaginal World. Radial/spatial time, synchronous causality, nonduality, fluid and permeable boundaries, holographic selfhood, conscience, counterentropic, radial/generative energy, subtle inner body, virtue as operative energy. The World of Gospel logic. The realm of the Kesdjan body, an order of realm that is lighter and more coherent than ours. An unbearable lightness of being that feels familiar. Imaginal = form of reality, not concerned with boundaries. One step less heavy than our World.

48 – World of linear time, sequential causality, either/or dualism, corporeal density, nucleated selfhood, attraction/aversion, entropic, tangential energy, flesh-and-blood body, virtue as descriptor. This is the world in which the normal high-functioning ego operates. We have a story with a plot in which we play the role of victim. World of pleasure. Go towards and away from pain and dislike.

96 – World of the home-made self / the “false self”, the mechanical. This is the self we manufacture to protect ourselves when we get too far off three-centered awareness. It is a world of transactional mechanicality. People in the grip of addiction live here. Even the illusion of freedom has disappeared.

Humans can touch 12 but function most in 24-96. When we get to 192 we are in real trouble

The mind of Christ is not an ideology nor concepts. It is the mind in the heart.

The long arc of evolution bends towards consciousness. Nothing can ever fall out of God.