G. remarked that the Fourth Way is also called the Way of the Fool, who
uses his organic machine's mechanical weaknesses and hungers to his
own advantage, for his evolution and to help him in his self- invocations
and other preparatory work.
"This calls to mind the subject of the remembering factor," he
continued, "which can be anything that serves to remind us to invoke presence.
"The invocation of presence depends entirely on the ability to
remember to invoke presence.
"In the same way, the popcorn exercise and its resulting reversal of the function of the headbrain and talibrain depends on your ability to
remember to do the exercise."
"But is this not similar to the experience of not riding a bicycle for many years and then when you climb on a bicycle the ability to ride just comes back to you as you begin peddling it all over town?" one of the younger American women asked.
G. said, "If you practice dance or theatrical arts, how do you remember to practice? A natural dancer when practicing engages what we call the mental reflexive and notates movements by sensing.
But dance is dance. A dancer cannot fail to remember to take class; in dance there are many forceful reminders.
"But self-invocation is different. Nobody pays us to self-invoke, nor does self-invocation elicit applause...
"So... How to remember to invoke presence?
"We could put up a sign... we will see the writing on the wall and remember to do it. But if the sign is always up, eventually it blends with the totality of visual vibrations and becomes just another dull blob of gray in the vague clutter of half-and-quarter-perceived visions which form the
greater part of the life of man on earth...
To be really certain to remember to invoke presence, every few
minutes an entirely different alarm clock would be necessary, because the same remembering factor would soon become familiar and trite
Ho hum, I invoke presence, I invoke presence, invoke presence, presence, presence. . . " he droned in a dull, flat tone.
"The invocation itself would become automatic and formal and
ritualized. Ritual simply means to follow format. But ritualized in this sense means that the format has become more important than the content. If an activity becomes ritualized the actual conditions are not taken into account leaving no room for improvisation."
"There is the problem," R. said. "You improvise and make the scene work, come alive, but so often we do not."
G. said, "As in a play, If you plow through, the sheer luck of your straightline effort may occasionally produce the invocational effect. But as in a play the inability to improvise generally guarantees that seldom if ever will it become infused with the living force of presence.
"We need a remembering factor to remind us to make each scene of
the play of life come alive in the spotlight of presence.
"Suppose we saw an automobile driving on the street by itself. Could this act as a reminder for us? Anything of an unusual nature could serve to help us to remember. And after you develop a certain discipline for the invocation of presence, you will notice many remembering factors all around you in the course of ordinary life.
"You may work very hard to invoke presence four times each hour, like clockwork... if grudgingly, dutifully, the invocation of presence is ritualized. What could serve as a remembering factor?" he asked.
"I use thoughts as remembering factors," R. said.
"What about when thoughts become trite?" G. asked.
"In Sufi literature there is reference made to something called
remembering, but not what remembering refers to, because remembering in our tradition refers to different things at different stages, placing attention differently at each gradation along the way.
"For your work just now, remembering refers to the invocation of
presence.
"Remembering to invoke presence and then actually taking a moment to invisibly invoke presence is the beginning of work-discipline.
"At a certain point, remembering refers to the unveiled vision of the Patchwork Quilt, 'the living Face of our endless in the sense of the endless knot, or the endlessness of that without borders, separations or boundaries creator.'
"Remembering can also refer to any sensation which produces
negative emotion, which in turn should, by its automatic force, arouse your sleeping or wandering attention, which reminds you to invoke presence; the invocation of presence reminds you to do the popcorn exercise; the popcorn exercise reminds you to clarify the unveiled vision, which in turn reminds you to diffuse vision; which in turn reminds you to walk between raindrops; which in turn reminds you to do the last hour of life exercise; which in turn reminds you to remember to observe your pulse, which reminds you to do the pulse-prayer...
"Then suddenly you have the definition of negative emotion which
reminds you
'Oh, I am supposed to remember something... something that starts with a P... provokes...? I could probably rationally mentate on it. Let us see if something suggests itself A,B,C... D, I think it starts with... my last hour of death?'
'Oops, I feel remorse... What?... remorse? Remorse... I feel so guilty when I feel remorse, because I know I should feel more remorse than I do.
'Remorse should remind me of something, but what?
'No matter what I think I see the King is naked...
'All phenomena is illusion...
'There is something I am supposed to remember ... something,
something... something... something ... something ...
'My habits carry me through.
'Even if I cannot remember the four lines, I did remember that there are four of them, just like the Ten Commandments. I may not know what any of them are exactly, but I do remember that there are ten of them...'
"Steering the sequence of associations back to the more obvious work ideas," G. continued, "because we have an associative brain, anything could remind us to work... This idea, using our ordinary habits and weaknesses for our work, and especially for -invocation, is the fulcrum by which we gain evolutionary authority over the machine and suck our own blood, which is to say, drawing alchemical substances from the ordinary chemical factory of the organic functions, for the benefit of the
work and for our work-life.
"Just as M. may swear off movies yet go to the cinema."
"Is this because I am attracted to how I behave at the theater?" M. asked.
"No, it is an addiction," G. replied. M., you will simply find yourself in a theater. You may have no intention of going to the cinema and even outline other plans, but you will end up in a theater and find yourself watching a film. In the same way someone who has decided to quit smoking will several hours later suddenly to his astonishment and horror find himself smoking a cigarette.
"If you do not know your Chief Weakness, you do not have a handle on your machine and have not done your homework, which is to say, self-study, the careful and attentive observation of the machine to discover useful weaknesses which can provide the automatic force of attention for your work... "
"I've noticed a sarcastic reaction toward people I don't like," R. admitted. "Then at the certain crucial point, I verbalize sarcastically my observation. This happens often, because people evoke it out of me."
"You do not wish to necessarily stop," G. said.
"I could not stop if I wished to," R. replied.
"I work at my daily tasks out of guilt because people will otherwise think badly of me " D. confessed.
"Smoking is my weakness," T. said.
"Examine yourself as if you are confessing," G. said, "but these little confessions are nothing. So ... continue your confession."
"My Chief Weakness is being an involuntary slave, performing
automatically whatever I am asked to do at the moment, not examining the request," K. said. " I am a slave to approval from others."
"I am known to procrastinate on occasion," L. said, provoking some laughter.
"I am stubborn," K.W. admitted.
"My Chief Weakness is my tendency to try to draw attention to myself and to evoke laughter from people by being a clown," R. said. "And then another tendency I have is being attached to people or activities sometimes."
"Oral gratification would be one of my Chief Weaknesses," C. said.
"Another weakness would be that I realize I am working very hard, but at
what?"
"What you are referring to is a form of oblivion," G. said, "a taste of
death. It is just as being dead, being totally identified with something."
"Making people feel guilty is my Chief Weakness," W. said.
"My Chief Weakness would be oral gratification as well as sneakiness,"
P. admitted.
"These confessions will change as your vision of the machine clarifies
and you can discover more objectively what your Chief Weakness is," G.
said.
"Suggestibility is a Chief Weakness of organic man. It can be used to
provoke a series of exercises one thing suggests another. You cannot
eliminate this tendency by ordinary means, nor should you wish to,
because you can use your tendency of suggestibility, the associative
function, for the exercise of self-invocation...
"Just as the presence exercise 'I invoke my presence into the present'
is more effective because the invocation of presence is a magical act,
when you say, 'I am here now,' you can understand what you have said,
agree to it, realize it, and arrive at its truth as in a deduction process.
"The invocation of presence may for a long time be imaginary, but
some day you may hear thunder; you will discover that you have actually
invoked your presence into the present and will ask yourself, 'what do I do
now?' And then you must continue in a determined, if slightly trembling
inner voice, 'I hereby invoke my presence into the present... I hereby
invoke my presence into the present...'
"Actors perform for nearly their entire career and then one day they
walk on stage and stage fright overcomes them," M. said. "They forget
their lines or turn away from the audience or even freeze."
"Stage fright has plagued even some of the best, most well-known
actors," G. continued, "who succumbed to it at one time or another, even
at the height of their careers. Of what are they afraid?"
"Perhaps their effect on the audience," M. offered, "most actors seem
rather vain and self-important."
"From my experience," P., who had been a professional actress, said,
"sometimes it suddenly comes to me that I find myself doing something
onstage without really knowing how I came to be there... I catch myself in
the middle of a line which came so automatically that I scarcely knew how
I got there, or exactly where I am.
"In those moments when I wonder who I am... am I the character or an
actress playing a character?... I can feel what stage fright, if it were allowed
to blossom full-blown, would feel like, and even the mild attacks I have
experienced now and again make it almost impossible to go on. I feel lost,
alone, disoriented, but that doesn't really say it."
"Do you mean to tell us," chuckled G., "that stage fright is the result of a
mild, accidental invocation of presence?"
'Yes, that is exactly what it must be," she agreed.
"Then we must be prepared if presence catches us in an accidental
spotlight on the stage of life!" he exclaimed. "Ordinary actors and
actresses may not understand what has happened to them, but for you
there is no excuse!
"You are aware of the invocation of presence, and by now should have
observed that on occasion this can occasionally occur accidentally in the
course of ordinary events.
"If none of the exercises given in this special academy of ours are of
any use, then just review all your remembering factors. Nothing is without
some use.
"In addition to the exercises, your group also has such songs as 'Turkish
Coffee'..." He asked the group to sing this song, with guitar
accompaniment provided by a folk-singer member of the group, Parker
Dixon, who had written many of the songs based on talks at G.'s table...
"I don't know what to do with impartiality," P. commented as the song
concluded, "it just reminds me to invoke presence, or to try to... it seems
that sometimes even the invocation of presence can become automatic,"
she added.
"Yes, that seems to be true for me, too," M. said, and several members
of the group nodded in agreement.
"How do we remedy mechanicality in our invocations of presence?" P.
asked, although the question was obviously in the air as several others
started to ask the same thing.
"For mechanicality, the cure comes with time," G. replied.
"Really, there
are no hard rules, nor can there be, because if we allow ourselves to fall
into firm rules for invocation, it is certain to become not just mechanical,
but completely ritualized, just a formality, as the Buddhists now greet
each other by bowing, supposedly in recognition of one another's
nonphenomenal self, but really it has become little more than a
businessman's limp dead-fish handshake and wide, enthusiastic, but
totally vacant, smile.
"These little songs can be the catalyst which catches you in the
spotlight of your attention, helping you to discover yourself onstage,
perhaps in the middle of delivering some line or other...
G. paused and lifted his arms, beginning a complicated series of
rhythmics. "If one thing does not bring you out of your wandering
daydreams," he continued, "then something else may...
"Everything can be a remembering factor for the invocation of
presence," he said, increasing the speed of the rhythmic exercise slightly,
"even other exercises can serve as remembering factors, whether
successful or not... even forgetting to perform the exercise can serve as a
remembering factor, because we can use the organic sensation of
remorse both as a remembering factor and as a source of force for our
Invocation...
"Why, that son of a bitch," he suddenly exclaimed, "he told me I was
working for the sun... he told me I was the only one... I believed it, I believed it
was true but... where are you?" he sang in a boomy, deep voice. It was one
of the folk songs the group had written together.
"Where are you?" he asked again. "Now this gives me an idea. After all,
doesn't the ordinary mental attention of the headbrain function entirely by
association?
"In which case, as long as it functions by association anyway, why not use
this unfortunate situation to my own advantage?
"Yes, why not allow the associations to cause me to remember to invoke
my presence into the present... something like jiu-jitsu, in which we use an
opponent's own weight and force to defeat him?
"Where are you?" he repeated. "This reminds me of something... but what?
To whom does the 'you' in the song refer?
"It could be anyone, but it happens also to remind me that I am not really
here at this moment, and yet I could easily be present...
"Yes, presence is not all that difficult, it just requires a little something from
me, something that wouldn't really interfere with any of my other activities, and no one else will ever be the wiser, so it won't embarrass me or my
companions... After all, it only takes a moment of my time to silently invoke
my presence...
"And so I will, I will invoke my presence... I hereby invoke the presence of
my presence into the present," he said, sitting back just a little.
"Now we will wait for results," he continued: "I can tell by certain definite
alterations in vision, emotion and sensation... by which I mean that I feel
clean, my state is washed away, drained by some sort of cleansing radiation
which comes over me as my presence descends into the present and settles
into the organic body... that my invocation has succeeded.
"And I am not the only one who should be able to tell that my presence
has descended into the present," he continued, "others should also feel
this cleansing effect as my vibrations of presence reverberate outward to
a distance of about ten feet...
"But now I have lost it, invocation is only momentary in any case, and very
soon the organic self reasserts itself, resuming its unending emission of bad
vibrations, turning everything and everyone within its sphere of influence into
one or another form of fertilizer.
"But as it happens, I find myself sitting here with a group of people at a
large table, surrounded by other tables.
"If I were to count the people here, I would say that there are at least
seventy, and yet the chamber is very small, intended for a single family of
perhaps six members...
"It somehow reminds me of a Hollywood version of the Last Supper, which
happens to also remind me of the Last Hour of Life, another exercise which I
forgot to do today...
"But this sensation of remorse as I look back at all the time I have wasted in
my life when I could have been working . . .
"This sensation and the corresponding thoughts which are aroused at the same time provide me with something... but what?
"Now I remember... They provide me with the force necessary for the invocation of my presence, but unfortunately I haven't really got the time just now for all that, because I'm eating...
"But I have almost finished my dinner and I realize that during the whole course of the meal I have completely forgotten to try to transubstantiate my food as I chew and swallow it.
"How many bites did I take? What did I eat for dinner just now? I cannot even recall having eaten and, except for my empty plate and used napkin, I have no real evidence that dinner was served to me personally.
"What a waste... Here I am in the midst of a work-community, and I cannot even remember to eat my food in a work way!
"Imagine that! Surrounded by others, all of whom no doubt did not fail to transubstantiate their food, and I cannot remember to do the same!
"But this reminds me of something else... Surrounded by creatures who wish to eat my higher blood...
"Yes, lunar parasites, all around me and because I forgot to invoke my presence, which is a banishing for them and which prevents them from eating my higher substances, they have had quite a feast tonight at my expense!
"But it wasn't just tonight. All during the day I was with other people, and if I didn't do something to produce organic emotions in them for the benefit of their lunar parasites, they aroused them in me for the benefit of mine.
"Yes, it's easy to see how the folk sayings came about... I scratch your back and you scratch mine... one hand washes another... Now I can see that these really refer to the process of reciprocal feeding, all for the benefit of lunar parasites...
"I may have fed them all day long, but not now, not at this very moment, because I have a weapon... the invocation of presence.
"It somehow reminds me of the Lone Ranger or the cavalry, riding to the rescue, but never mind, I will try it... perhaps it will afford me a moment or two of relief from the greedy vampires...
"My lunar parasites don't want me to just sit here and invoke my presence.
They are hungry. They want me to get myself involved in an argument.
"Maybe I will forget all about this lunar parasite business and just read a Valentine's card; it makes me so happy Sneezy... Grumpy... Doc...
"Now I remember... several years ago, the members of a work group took those names to help them remember their chief weaknesses so they could guard against the loss of angelic substances.
"But what good are they?
"How can something you can't see be of any use? What good is it to produce food for angelic invocation, anyway?
"And what are the others sitting here with me doing? Are they also having these same thoughts? I wish this to be used for the benefit of all beings everywhere, but what exactly is the 'this' to which that prayer refers?
"I cannot think of anything to do with this just now; it doesn't seem possible to make a prayer from these stupid thoughts...
"I'll just relax for a while, maybe drift off to sleep for a few moments...
"Ah, yes, the sleep exercise. I observe my machine as it arranges itself in a pseudo-sleeping, semi-horizontal posture in mimicry of sleep...
"What was that noise in the kitchen just now? No, not a noise, a sound. All sounds are from a single source, which recalls to mind the famous Muses and the composer Beethoven, who told his wife that she was his inspiration, to which she answered in the tones of his fifth symphony, not yet written, 'What, me? Your inspiration? Ha-ha-ha-ha! Ridiculous!'
"In-voke-your- presence!" G. sang in the same notes of Beethoven's Fifth.
"Damn," he continued in the same stream-of-consciousness style, "of all the twenty-four primary exercises, I can only remember one of them, and now I find myself just knowing vaguely that it exists...
"What was that one exercise I was able to remember? This is all very embarrassing, I'm sweating from embarrassment... but this also reminds me of something...
"Yes, I've heard that the unveiling of the nonphenomenal self generates heat... but that can only come as a result of the invocation of presence, which doesn't usually just happen by itself... now I feel remorse, and it's all his fault.
"After all, I'm new here; I shouldn't be expected to perform as well as the others; they've all had more practice at this sort of thing and ...." G.'s narrative came to a stop, and he sat back against the chair, at the same time signaling for the dessert and coffee to be served from the kitchen.
"This is an example of the use of mental and organic momentum for the purpose of self-invocation. It is a method by which we use the force of ordinary life against itself, allowing the momentum to proceed, but changing its form and its effect upon us.
"We are still influenced by the full force of organic life, still under the influence of the momentum of our ordinary habits, but the influence is applied... to the invocation of presence.
"As a group, review now all exercises as possible remembering factors, generating a list of every little work-trick you know. Do this group review of exercises and remembering factors periodically.
"Even notate methods of which you have only heard and about which you know nothing whatever in the practical sense; they may frustrate you into invocation."
THE PRESENCE EXERCISE
"To begin with, one must learn to divide attention at least a little, with half the attention on 'it', the organic self plus the outer world, and the other half on our real 'I', which can be found by tracing attention back to the source of attention with the use of sensing until the vision changes slightly and the phenomenal veil lifts a little... the ambient atmosphere
will seem subjectively noticeably cooler, as during a seance, in true meditation, during a successful angelic invocation, or at a voluntary passing from this life. At the same time the other half of attention should be firmly but gently fixated on objects of outer attention... say, the second-hand of a clock.
"Do this for two whole minutes without interruption in the sensing of presence of 'I'. If 'I' is not fully present or something else attracts the ttention even for one moment, begin again. If prayer beads are used, count one bead for each involuntary break in attention. For the purpose of this exercise, all breaks in attention are involuntary.
" It is possible in six months, maybe one year, to attain the status of a 'two-minute-idiot'. An 'idiot' in this sense is anyone who struggles with his automatic phenomenal nature, his bio-psychological conditioning.
"We must not be tempted to use this higher, nonphenomenal
attention In the same way as a donkey follows a carrot tied to his own head, just mentally aware of our presence
We must successfully with our unified will, invoke and sense our presence in the present."
"He then stood in front of the group in a bow-and-arrow pose.
Indicating the forward hand holding the bow, he said, "This hand
represents the world of 'it', what we can call 'the present' the outer world, including our organic machine and its functioning centrums."
Drawing his other hand back in a smooth, swift motion he added, "This other hand represents presence becoming for the first time aware of its presence in the present, by drawing away from identification with events by observing impartially and at the same time using subjective organic sensations to sense its own definite presence in the present.
"This invocation of presence in the present eventually produces what we call Being in the real sense of the word... Pure nonphenomenal electromagnetic vibration resulting from the blending of the two primary forces represented by the passive present and the active force, presence.
"In ordinary life man is a phenomenal-veil-nonentity and for him only his fixation on phenomena exists; he cannot make being, because being is a result of the blending of two real forces. To make any vibration whatever, one must have both plus and minus forces, above and below the zero-point, producing a wave with a definite frequency amplitude and periodicity.
"When being is produced, a definite and discernable sound and
vibration are emitted from the organism. With my sensing apparatus which was originally the same as yours I am able to see and hear this vibration-of-being.
"Only when presence is present in the present, can the First Force blend with the Second, making the Third force, Being."
He held one hand with fingers extended. "This will represent the
phenomenal, what we call the present, the Second Force." Holding his other hand with the fingers extended in the same way, he added, "And this will represent our nonphenomenal 'presence', the First Force.
"When we blend them together," he said, at the same time meshing
the fingers of both hands together, "we produce momentarily what we call Being. Now we can rightfully say 'I Am Here Now', because all three forces are at least temporarily represented.
"To attain permanent existence for our Being, we must invoke our
presence many thousand times. You have the data now to decide if self-invocation will be a profitable enterprise for you before you waste too much of your precious time. Should you wish to continue, you will quickly learn that self-invocation requires a definite degree of force not force in
the ordinary sense, but as it would be understood in certain forms of martial arts, and in certain religious gatherings.
"To invoke presence with this special force, each pulsation of the body resulting from the heartbeat provides a natural tempo. Do not allow this effort to become automatic. Real presence must be freshly invoked for each new moment.
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