dazedraver
Bluelighter
Trance Dancing - The Rave
by Jason Keehn
Can trance-dancing save the planet
Can you imagine a crazier notion?
Thousands of bored youth pumping themselves up with drugs, going out to huge
underground parties and dancing maniacally to electronic rhythms and
psychedelic light-shows till dawn.
And this is supposed to help the world?
Shouldn't we be putting our time instead into ecological or political
activism, or at least doing some kind of charity work? What about the
serious spiritual disciplines that claim to offer the only true path to
personal--and thereby social--transformation? What good does all our
drug-taking and revelry do for the hundreds of millions of dispossessed,
fucked over and starving around the world--not to mention all the untold
species and eco-systems being destroyed?
Hard to answer. And yet some of us still have this inescapable feeling,
maybe even faith, that what we are doing, confused, silly and commercialised
as it often is, is at its core absolutely necessary. . . not just to us, but
in the bigger picture, somehow. . .
Why is it that at the peak moments (admittedly rare) of the very best
underground house/techno/rave parties, we get this miraculous sense of hope,
of possibility, of transformation . . . a feeling that we're actually
heading somewhere. . . together. . . towards a brighter future, one worth
living in, one where we've returned to some kind of harmony with ourselves,
with each other and with our planet as a whole?
Is it "just the drugs," a kind of consensus delusion, or might there be some
basis in reality for these feelings, hard to justify as they may seem once
we're back out in the normal world?
More dimly sensed than clearly expressed, the feeling for such a possibility
permeates the entire global underground dance scene. Thousands of promoters
exploit it to inflate their party invites with cheesy techno-spiritual
imagery. It inspires and guides much of the music, and some small but key
fraction of the hard-core partiers. The rest of the crowds who fill the
floors at parties get off on it as a second or third-hand charge that sets
the party apart from being just another club, without ever thinking about
taking it seriously.
At moments, some hundreds, and maybe even thousands or tens of thousands, of
"ravers" have probably found themselves sensing/feeling/wondering that what
they were doing might be something really big, something that could really
change things at a larger scale.
But of course only people who turn themselves inside out with large amounts
of drugs would even conceive the question: Can trance-dancing save the
planet?
A few of us, myself included, have made public fools of ourselves already by
answering in the affirmative, and even giving some tentative reasons why.
Here I want to try to introduce a new way of thinking that complements and
deepens what already been proposed by people like Fraser Clarke and Terence
McKenna. They see psychedelicized mass trance dances as the only quick,
viable antidote to the egotism at the base of the western, techno-industrial
mega-machine maniacally chomping away at the life-fabric of the planet.
This different line of thought is based on a simple but profound idea first
expressed by the philosopher and teacher of temple dances G. I. Gurdjieff,
who died in 1949. His idea is almost completely unknown, outside of his hard
to read book All and Everything.
If true, it has staggering implications for ourselves, for our planet, even
for our entire solar system. I don't expect anybody to automatically take it
as Goddess's given truth, but its worthy of some serious attention.
Energies
As all "ravers" know, there is a mysterious something that makes a rave
different from just another club or party-scene. We call this "the vibe"--a
mixture of intangibles impossible to find anywhere else, except maybe at a
dead show or a rainbow gathering. Roughly put, the vibe consists of: an
attitude of openness, sharing, empathy and playfulness; intense,
unselfconscious dancing; a collective altered state of consciousness, thanks
to the combined effects of specific rhythms, lights and psychedelic drugs;
and, at its height, a melding of group feeling and energy into an ecstatic,
orgasmic release that feels nothing less than spiritual or religious--albeit
in a form that has little resemblance to any type of spirituality or
religion we are familiar with.
We all know that "energy" is somehow key to all of this. We know we raise
and release energy through our dancing, our feelings, and our interaction on
the dance-floor. Energy was one of the main buzzwords of the early English
rave scene. The vibe is all about energy--vibration, after all.
But what is this energy? What does it consist of, where does it come from,
where does it go? Are there different kinds of energies? Do they have
different purposes?
Back around the turn of the century, Gurdjieff and a group of friends
travelled back and forth across the Middle East and Central Asia
investigating humanity's true history, the nature of the cosmos, and the
possibilities for humans to evolve consciously, from their own efforts. In
the process, "the seekers of truth," as the group called themselves, also
encountered the Masters of Wisdom still alive in that part of the world (the
Khwajagan). The Khwajagan were considered to be the bearers of some of the
highest spiritual knowledge on the planet, handed down continuously for
thousands of years.
One of the focuses of Gurdjieff's research was the transformation of
substances and energies--both chemical and subtle--in the human organism. He
also learned a large number of temple dances, which he understood as
databases in movement intended to preserve ancient knowledge.
Eventually, Gurdjieff returned to the West and presented his synthesis of
these searches as a "system of ideas" and a practical method for
self-transformation.
Feeding the Moon
Gurdjieff's quest was guided by the basic question, "what is the sense and
significance of human life on earth?"
His conclusion, expressed in writing only towards the end of his life, was
that humanity does not exist for itself, but to supply the planet, the moon,
and the solar system with a particular gradation of energy which they need
to thrive and grow. At times he called this principle, "feeding the Moon,"
though it is not clear whether he meant this literally or merely as a handy
symbol.
He believed that the entire universe is in some sense alive and in a process
of continuously evolving (and if not evolving, actively devolving). In what
could be compared to a cosmic fractal, the universe is in a process of
unfolding and giving birth to itself, each birth at a new level mirroring in
its unique way that of other levels (known nowadays as the principle of
self-similarity). In what Gurdjieff called "the ray of creation," "God" or
the Absolute gives birth to universes; universes give birth to stars, which
give birth to planets, which give birth to organic life (viruses, bacteria,
plants and animals) and to moons. Eventually a planet may become a star, its
moon may become a planet in its turn, and "give birth" to its own moon, and
so on, ad infinitum.
Just as all plants and animals need a variety of nutrients to exist, grow
and reproduce, so our world and its siblings need a very specialised type of
substance to fuel their processes--their planetary metabolisms, if you will.
Supposedly, this special energetic substance can be produced only by human
beings.
Reciprocal Maintenance
Gurdjieff's answer fits into what he called "the doctrine of reciprocal
maintenance", the idea that every thing exists only insofar as it supports
or "feeds" something else. Everything is part of a vast, interconnected and
mutually reinforcing web of life. Or, "everything is something else's
lunch," as ecologists like to say. This idea anticipated the science of
ecology by at least half a century.
Examples: Bees don't just exist for themselves, they live to pollinate
flowers. Algae exists to turn sunlight into more complex molecules, and feed
other small creatures, such as plankton and krill. Krill feeds other
slightly larger creatures, and even whales. Plants exist to turn sunlight
and raw matter into organic compounds, and to feed animals. Worms exist to
loosen soil for plants. Bacteria recycle waste into useable raw matter.
Predators help to increase the strength and fitness of the herds they prey
on by eliminating the weak and sick. Etc. etc.
In the scheme of things, humanity's essential role is that of a transformer
of energy.
Human beings, according to this view, exist to serve the cosmic evolutionary
process--and not the opposite, as the Bible would have it: that all of
creation is merely a resource for us to use and abuse as we see fit.
Our possibilities as human beings are dependent on the degree to which we
fulfil this function, a kind of "obligation" which nature imposes on us.
By Gurdjieff's view, this special energy could be produced two different
ways: either involuntarily, at the moment of death, when a small "packet" is
released into the atmosphere, or voluntarily, in greater or lesser amounts,
through spiritual work.
Since Mother Nature, or Gaia, needs a definite quota of this energy from us,
she will do whatever is necessary to make sure she gets it. If we don't
provide the required intensities while alive, the total number of deaths
will have to be increased in such a proportion as to yield the needed
amount.
Devolution
Gurdjieff further believed that rather than progressing, the overall quality
of human being (as opposed to externalizations like technology, culture,
institutions, etc.) has actually been deteriorating over the last umpteen
thousands of years, especially in "civilised" societies such as our own. He
believed that in the very distant past, before the earliest recorded
history, human beings had a much greater presence and power; in a sense,
they were bigger, spiritually and existentially, than the vast majority of
us today. He also believed that people once had a much greater life-span.
They were energy-pumps.
Gurdjieff had his speculations about what caused this decline in the quality
of human being in the very remote past, perhaps even before the destruction
of Atlantis (his theory of the "kundabuffer," explored at length in All and
Everything). The upshot, though, is that humanity as a whole has "forgotten"
how to perform its ecological function in the world--or simply no longer has
the necessary juice to do it, which pretty much amounts to the same thing.
So if this is in fact the case--that we human beings generally no longer
have the knowledge or ability to "pump" this energy intentionally--Gaia will
be forced to increase the total quantity of human death to meet her needs.
This can be accomplished, of course, by 1) increasing the number of human
births, and eventually deaths, and 2) by shortening the life-span of
existing individuals, or 3) a combination of the two. The net results:
Population increase. . . disease, and war.
Following this line of thinking, our increasing inability to properly
transform and pump energy means that we have to be treated (by the Gaian
mind, if you like) the same way we treat plants and animals, as something to
be farmed, bred and harvested. Not a very dignified state of affairs!
So as the qualitative level of human being goes down, the number of human
beings, and thereby of human deaths, goes up to account for the difference
in energy. And of course, since organisms grow at different rates, with
different energy requirements depending on their activities, we can imagine
that there might be major fluctuations in the needs for our energies.
The Terror of the Situation
This suggests a radical, and terrifying, view of contemporary history: that
the population explosion, famines, plagues, wars and massacres might not be
due just to accidental or sociological and political causes but may be
induced by the needs of the solar "eco-system" as a whole, with human beings
acting for the most part unwittingly to effectuate these needs.
Think about all the horror and insanity that has gone done in the twentieth
century, even just in terms of cold numbers: millions killed in World War
One, hundreds of thousands wiped out in seconds at Hiroshima and Nagasake
alone, millions massacred one way or another in the Nazi concentration
camps; supposedly as many as twenty million Russians dying in combat in
World War Two, not to mention another twenty million who died in the same
period as a result of Stalinist persecution and forced famine. Millions died
in the Chinese civil war, six or seven million in Cambodia under Pol Pot.
Don't even bother counting all the famines in Africa and South East Asia
over the last few decades.
Why the incredible surge of violent death all over the world, paralleled by
an equally incredible population explosion? What is up with those peculiar
humanoid beings living on the surface of Sol-III?
I'm not going to try to argue the merits of this scheme against other
theories. Just chew on it for a while and see how it fits.
And so the picture painted is one of a race of hapless, deluded slaves to
some kind of a cosmic food-chain the existence of which we don't even
recognise. This is definitely insulting to all our best images of ourselves.
But then how do we reconcile all our great assets, our supposed free will,
intelligence, and creativity with the dismal facts of what we've done to
each other for all of recorded history?
Are we really anything more than automatons most of the time?
Gurdjieff had what might seem to many a horribly bleak, cynical view:
that our ideas of free-will and individuality are a delusion, an image of
our potential mistaken for a general fact of our existence. Bluntly put, we
are blind products of genetics, conditioning and external influence; on an
energetic level, we are next to nothing. We are less, in that sense, than
most mammals even.
We have become experts at consuming energy and resources, parasites.
As a civilisation, we no longer transform energy into higher gradients and
radiate it back out to the world, we just circulate like little ants in our
vast urban hives and manufacture stuff, endless quantities of stuff. We know
how to suck energy, make objects, and how to kill. Even if we're not killing
each other off at a given moment, we're decimating untold numbers of living
beings without even being grateful for their existence.
Sure, for the most part we don't feel ourselves that way, but anybody who's
tripped a few times in public places probably had disturbing glimpses--at
least--along these lines. We don't see other people--or ourselves--that way,
because it's just too hard a vision to live with.
The path of return
This perspective provides a definite way of understanding the connection
between our amazingly fucked up global situation and "spirituality"--or the
lack thereof. Seen this way, spirituality has less to do with living
according to some moral doctrine, or accumulating "spiritual" experiences
and states, than with being able to transform and radiate energy of a
particular quality.
If it is true that we have been suffering a generalised decline over
millennia, all our human institutions must participate in and reflect that
decline. So everything we associate with religion, in all its multifarious
forms, would generally be a product and mirror of a messed up situation; in
other words, just another part of the problem.
At its best, the spiritual component of religious traditions points to a
return to what should be our natural base-line of being, something so
distant we can barely remember or taste it except at moments of "peak
experience," or with the help of psychedelic drugs, or as a result of long,
intensive discipline.
Our so-called "salvation" is really more a matter of somehow pulling
ourselves back up out of a dysfunctional, disenabled, alienated state to
something like a natural way of being--not transcendence or cosmic
consciousness or union with God or whatever. We need to re-learn "how to be
and to do."
According to Gurdjieff, the two key principles to following this "path of
return," were intentional suffering and conscious labour. Through engaging
in intentional sufferings and conscious labours we begin again to release
the kinds of energies we were intended to give off.
Of course by today's standards, this sounds like a bummer of a philosophy.
Isn't life just supposed to be full of fun and games? On the other hand, if
we're realistic we know that there's always going to be pain, struggle,
suffering in life. If there weren't where would the joy and pleasure and
flow be? So maybe rather than seek to escape suffering, or just submit to it
blindly, it might make sense to choose your form of suffering and make
something out of it.
Intentional suffering. Again, if it's true that we exist in a chronic
low-energy state, one of inertia and stasis, it makes sense that in order to
get back to a point of being able to consciously transform energy we would
need to somehow exercise an enormous effort just to break out of our
passivity. "Only super-efforts count." If you're physically weak from
illness, it usually takes an extra effort to get to the point of being able
to exercise on a regular basis, to return to your previous level of
strength. Or as they say, no pain no gain.
This can apply on a lot of levels other than just the physical. Pain can
take the form of a kind of moral or spiritual suffering deriving from, say,
breaking habits, or confronting bad traits in one's character, or doing
exactly that which you least like to do. Suffering in the form of sacrifice
is necessary to be there for others, to truly love.
Conscious labour assumes that most of the "work" we do, of whatever nature,
is not really conscious to begin with. We are driven by culturally
programmed priorities, survival, automatic emotional needs, obsession,
neurosis, ego. To work consciously assumes that one must first have become
aware of how unconscious one is most of the time, of how automatic most of
how our thoughts, feelings, perceptions and actions really are.
To even get to this point itself requires a lot of intentional suffering,
because what could make us suffer more than waking up to how we really don't
"own" ourselves?
Forms of work
This general process is what people who study Gurdjieff's ideas and methods
generally call "work-on-oneself," or just "self-work."
No doubt for many orthodox "Gurdjieffians," this path of return can only
occur in the framework of decades of commitment to the "work," in the manner
it has been passed down to them.
Much of Gurdjieff's practical teaching consisted of dancing and physical
exercises used in combination with meditation and concentration techniques.
Some of the dances Gurdjieff himself invented, many were direct copies of
the ancient temple dances he found during his travels. (These dances are a
closely held secret of existing Gurdjieff groups, and rarely if ever
performed in public.)
Other important components of his method were the techniques of
"self-observation" and "self-remembering," designed to bring "essence" back
into balance with "personality."
What is little known to the world at large, and almost completely suppressed
within existing Gurdjieff groups, is that Gurdjieff was interested in and
worked with drugs. The references to "active substances" other than alcohol,
opium and cocaine in his writings are rare, and even then oblique (he tried
to set up a "chemical laboratory" in Russia at one point--for synthesising
what?); it is known, but little discussed, that Gurdjieff administered
certain substances to some of his students.
The monks of the legendary Sarmoun Brotherhood, whom Gurdjieff spent time
with, themselves cultivated and used a psychoactive plant they referred to
as the "Herb of Enlightenment." Curiously, Oscar Ichazo, founder of Arica, a
70s psycho-spiritual organisation that also incorporated psychedelics and
movement-work, claimed to have accessed the Sarmounis as well.*
Furthermore, we know from Gurdjieff himself that he considered his students
"guinea pigs," his groups a laboratory in which he was conducting certain
undefined experiments.
According to J. G. Bennett, one of his major students and better
interpreters, Gurdjieff experimented continuously with his ideas, techniques
and overall approach. While Gurdjieff always talked about his system, it was
never fixed in a way that most of his followers seem to believe and
dogmatically transmit it to others.
If everything Gurdjieff did was a kind of living laboratory, how does
anybody know what were really the goals and working hypotheses and what was
just part of the experiment? What if he kept certain pieces of his puzzle
secret, knowing perhaps they were too explosive to make public at the time?
The new trance dance
Here is a radically new take on Gurdjieff's philosophy and mission, one that
has a direct bearing on our neo-psychedelic-rave subculture:
Is it possible that trance-dancing is one of the most basic forms of
intentional suffering and conscious labour?
Is it possible that such dancing, performed by the right people in the right
way with the right intentions, is capable of producing exactly that same
energy Gurdjieff believed Mother Nature needs from us? Could it be that the
use of psychedelics in conjunction with intensive dancing to certain
specific rhythms, by a new breed of individuals, may be a way to fill our
cosmic obligation without the life-long spiritual training otherwise
required?
My intuition is that this is indeed the case--unlikely as it may seem to all
the "old school" esotericists and spiritualists.
Perhaps, in fact, we are not really now at the point of being able to do
this--being "youthful" as we are, and prone to all the naiveté and follies
of youth. But this may be what a certain number of us are instinctively
moving toward. Maybe this is just that mysterious something we cross over
into as we're peaking and pulsing together on the dance-floor.
Think about tribal trance dances. What better description could you think of
for endurance dancing to the point of fainting in the service of the gods
than intentional suffering and conscious labour?
Under different names, tribal peoples seem to commonly believe that their
dances are essential to the gods, a form of offering, sacrifice, or service.
Something necessary to keep the balance, to keep the rain falling, to keep
the sun coming up, to keep things moving. That's why they're sacred dances.
And so maybe it's not just the form of the dance that's sacred, or even what
the dancers experience, it's in what they do: the energy they collectively
release.
Isn't it odd that just when most of the cultures that still do this are
either being destroyed or forgetting their own traditions, just at that same
moment a whole tribalistic, "neo-shamanic" dance craze develops among
western youth?
Consider: How does someone behave who has a deep instinct, but in whom that
instinct has been muffled by hundreds or thousands of years of habitual
suppression and invalidation? Perhaps every now and then the instinct
manifests itself in a crude, awkward outburst, only to be quickly silenced
by the embarrassed ego and the lack of any proper name or place for it in
surrounding society.
In some of Bennett's writings on this whole theme, there is a tendency to
paint the "feeding the Moon" scenario in extremes: either one is
energetically inert and useless; or else one sacrifices one's life to
spiritual work and helps to make up for everyone else's lack.
But must it be such a dichotomy? Maybe that's how it tends to be nowadays,
but maybe it wasn't always if people used to "be more" than they are today.
Maybe once upon a time (and still in some remaining aboriginal cultures),
you didn't have to be a spiritual athlete, a specialist (monk, shaman,
priest/priestess, etc.), to return your two or three "cents" to Nature.
Maybe even now, everyone can return some energy, given the right
circumstances and maybe the right "assisting factors" too.
And what about the effect of psycho-active substances? If there is anything
we know about psychedelics for sure, it is that they act as catalysts. They
temporarily shift our system's mode of functioning, our rate of vibration,
and enable transformations that are otherwise difficult to achieve--again
passing. But what if that transformation, in tandem with the right kind of
dancing and mindset, is just enough to enable the release of some special
energy?
Does it matter that much whether we're in that state all the time, or just
that we have regular access to it and can use it to do what we need to do?
Sure, we have no tradition of sacred dance, and few ravers dance till they
drop, few dance with conscious devotional feeling or intent. What we do
have, or at least aspire to, is a basic attitude that sets the tone when we
come together for our celebrations: Peace-Love-Unity-Respect. Not bad for a
point of departure.
And yet, just how conscious do you have to be of your intent if your
instinct IS your intent? Maybe as we get high and move together our intent
resurfaces into consciousness, and for those few sweet timeless moments we
actually DO it, . . . and then we drift back down into consensus reality
where there is no name for it, and the veils gradually cover it all up and
soon we once again think we were there for nothing more than a good time and
some cool music.
But the taste and scent of that ineffable "juice" still lingers, and it
keeps us going in the days ahead, going back to more parties, wearing the
clothes we associate with it, compulsively getting high and listening to mix
tapes round the clock, searching for that rare synchronicity of time, place,
people and music where it might magically happen again.
In some of his late writings, Bennett speculated that recent decades are
seeing the birth of a new kind of person, maybe even a new race of sorts,
with spiritual capacities different from the rest of society.
Could that be us?
And just what is that "juice," that energy, that special nutrient so needed
for all things to live and grow in harmony? That erotic radiant mix of
thankfulness, joy, and compassion that just wants to fuck the entire cosmos?
Could it be . . . L-O-V-E?
OK, admittedly there are a lot of big ifs here. To try to prove that
a) human beings do give off energy when they die;
b) that some can give off an equivalent kind of energy intentionally
while still alive;
c) that most of us don't or can't do this anymore;
d) that people could once upon a time do it better;
e) that the planet or the moon or the solar system requires this
energy;
f) that if they don't get it human birth and death will automatically
be increased with no say on our side;
g) that this energy can be produced through trance dancing among tribal
peoples; and
h) that this energy can also be produced by teenagers dancing at
parties with the help of drugs. . .
To try to prove, or even argue, all of that would be at least another
article in itself. . . or more realistically, the basis for a life-time of
research.
by Jason Keehn
Can trance-dancing save the planet
Can you imagine a crazier notion?
Thousands of bored youth pumping themselves up with drugs, going out to huge
underground parties and dancing maniacally to electronic rhythms and
psychedelic light-shows till dawn.
And this is supposed to help the world?
Shouldn't we be putting our time instead into ecological or political
activism, or at least doing some kind of charity work? What about the
serious spiritual disciplines that claim to offer the only true path to
personal--and thereby social--transformation? What good does all our
drug-taking and revelry do for the hundreds of millions of dispossessed,
fucked over and starving around the world--not to mention all the untold
species and eco-systems being destroyed?
Hard to answer. And yet some of us still have this inescapable feeling,
maybe even faith, that what we are doing, confused, silly and commercialised
as it often is, is at its core absolutely necessary. . . not just to us, but
in the bigger picture, somehow. . .
Why is it that at the peak moments (admittedly rare) of the very best
underground house/techno/rave parties, we get this miraculous sense of hope,
of possibility, of transformation . . . a feeling that we're actually
heading somewhere. . . together. . . towards a brighter future, one worth
living in, one where we've returned to some kind of harmony with ourselves,
with each other and with our planet as a whole?
Is it "just the drugs," a kind of consensus delusion, or might there be some
basis in reality for these feelings, hard to justify as they may seem once
we're back out in the normal world?
More dimly sensed than clearly expressed, the feeling for such a possibility
permeates the entire global underground dance scene. Thousands of promoters
exploit it to inflate their party invites with cheesy techno-spiritual
imagery. It inspires and guides much of the music, and some small but key
fraction of the hard-core partiers. The rest of the crowds who fill the
floors at parties get off on it as a second or third-hand charge that sets
the party apart from being just another club, without ever thinking about
taking it seriously.
At moments, some hundreds, and maybe even thousands or tens of thousands, of
"ravers" have probably found themselves sensing/feeling/wondering that what
they were doing might be something really big, something that could really
change things at a larger scale.
But of course only people who turn themselves inside out with large amounts
of drugs would even conceive the question: Can trance-dancing save the
planet?
A few of us, myself included, have made public fools of ourselves already by
answering in the affirmative, and even giving some tentative reasons why.
Here I want to try to introduce a new way of thinking that complements and
deepens what already been proposed by people like Fraser Clarke and Terence
McKenna. They see psychedelicized mass trance dances as the only quick,
viable antidote to the egotism at the base of the western, techno-industrial
mega-machine maniacally chomping away at the life-fabric of the planet.
This different line of thought is based on a simple but profound idea first
expressed by the philosopher and teacher of temple dances G. I. Gurdjieff,
who died in 1949. His idea is almost completely unknown, outside of his hard
to read book All and Everything.
If true, it has staggering implications for ourselves, for our planet, even
for our entire solar system. I don't expect anybody to automatically take it
as Goddess's given truth, but its worthy of some serious attention.
Energies
As all "ravers" know, there is a mysterious something that makes a rave
different from just another club or party-scene. We call this "the vibe"--a
mixture of intangibles impossible to find anywhere else, except maybe at a
dead show or a rainbow gathering. Roughly put, the vibe consists of: an
attitude of openness, sharing, empathy and playfulness; intense,
unselfconscious dancing; a collective altered state of consciousness, thanks
to the combined effects of specific rhythms, lights and psychedelic drugs;
and, at its height, a melding of group feeling and energy into an ecstatic,
orgasmic release that feels nothing less than spiritual or religious--albeit
in a form that has little resemblance to any type of spirituality or
religion we are familiar with.
We all know that "energy" is somehow key to all of this. We know we raise
and release energy through our dancing, our feelings, and our interaction on
the dance-floor. Energy was one of the main buzzwords of the early English
rave scene. The vibe is all about energy--vibration, after all.
But what is this energy? What does it consist of, where does it come from,
where does it go? Are there different kinds of energies? Do they have
different purposes?
Back around the turn of the century, Gurdjieff and a group of friends
travelled back and forth across the Middle East and Central Asia
investigating humanity's true history, the nature of the cosmos, and the
possibilities for humans to evolve consciously, from their own efforts. In
the process, "the seekers of truth," as the group called themselves, also
encountered the Masters of Wisdom still alive in that part of the world (the
Khwajagan). The Khwajagan were considered to be the bearers of some of the
highest spiritual knowledge on the planet, handed down continuously for
thousands of years.
One of the focuses of Gurdjieff's research was the transformation of
substances and energies--both chemical and subtle--in the human organism. He
also learned a large number of temple dances, which he understood as
databases in movement intended to preserve ancient knowledge.
Eventually, Gurdjieff returned to the West and presented his synthesis of
these searches as a "system of ideas" and a practical method for
self-transformation.
Feeding the Moon
Gurdjieff's quest was guided by the basic question, "what is the sense and
significance of human life on earth?"
His conclusion, expressed in writing only towards the end of his life, was
that humanity does not exist for itself, but to supply the planet, the moon,
and the solar system with a particular gradation of energy which they need
to thrive and grow. At times he called this principle, "feeding the Moon,"
though it is not clear whether he meant this literally or merely as a handy
symbol.
He believed that the entire universe is in some sense alive and in a process
of continuously evolving (and if not evolving, actively devolving). In what
could be compared to a cosmic fractal, the universe is in a process of
unfolding and giving birth to itself, each birth at a new level mirroring in
its unique way that of other levels (known nowadays as the principle of
self-similarity). In what Gurdjieff called "the ray of creation," "God" or
the Absolute gives birth to universes; universes give birth to stars, which
give birth to planets, which give birth to organic life (viruses, bacteria,
plants and animals) and to moons. Eventually a planet may become a star, its
moon may become a planet in its turn, and "give birth" to its own moon, and
so on, ad infinitum.
Just as all plants and animals need a variety of nutrients to exist, grow
and reproduce, so our world and its siblings need a very specialised type of
substance to fuel their processes--their planetary metabolisms, if you will.
Supposedly, this special energetic substance can be produced only by human
beings.
Reciprocal Maintenance
Gurdjieff's answer fits into what he called "the doctrine of reciprocal
maintenance", the idea that every thing exists only insofar as it supports
or "feeds" something else. Everything is part of a vast, interconnected and
mutually reinforcing web of life. Or, "everything is something else's
lunch," as ecologists like to say. This idea anticipated the science of
ecology by at least half a century.
Examples: Bees don't just exist for themselves, they live to pollinate
flowers. Algae exists to turn sunlight into more complex molecules, and feed
other small creatures, such as plankton and krill. Krill feeds other
slightly larger creatures, and even whales. Plants exist to turn sunlight
and raw matter into organic compounds, and to feed animals. Worms exist to
loosen soil for plants. Bacteria recycle waste into useable raw matter.
Predators help to increase the strength and fitness of the herds they prey
on by eliminating the weak and sick. Etc. etc.
In the scheme of things, humanity's essential role is that of a transformer
of energy.
Human beings, according to this view, exist to serve the cosmic evolutionary
process--and not the opposite, as the Bible would have it: that all of
creation is merely a resource for us to use and abuse as we see fit.
Our possibilities as human beings are dependent on the degree to which we
fulfil this function, a kind of "obligation" which nature imposes on us.
By Gurdjieff's view, this special energy could be produced two different
ways: either involuntarily, at the moment of death, when a small "packet" is
released into the atmosphere, or voluntarily, in greater or lesser amounts,
through spiritual work.
Since Mother Nature, or Gaia, needs a definite quota of this energy from us,
she will do whatever is necessary to make sure she gets it. If we don't
provide the required intensities while alive, the total number of deaths
will have to be increased in such a proportion as to yield the needed
amount.
Devolution
Gurdjieff further believed that rather than progressing, the overall quality
of human being (as opposed to externalizations like technology, culture,
institutions, etc.) has actually been deteriorating over the last umpteen
thousands of years, especially in "civilised" societies such as our own. He
believed that in the very distant past, before the earliest recorded
history, human beings had a much greater presence and power; in a sense,
they were bigger, spiritually and existentially, than the vast majority of
us today. He also believed that people once had a much greater life-span.
They were energy-pumps.
Gurdjieff had his speculations about what caused this decline in the quality
of human being in the very remote past, perhaps even before the destruction
of Atlantis (his theory of the "kundabuffer," explored at length in All and
Everything). The upshot, though, is that humanity as a whole has "forgotten"
how to perform its ecological function in the world--or simply no longer has
the necessary juice to do it, which pretty much amounts to the same thing.
So if this is in fact the case--that we human beings generally no longer
have the knowledge or ability to "pump" this energy intentionally--Gaia will
be forced to increase the total quantity of human death to meet her needs.
This can be accomplished, of course, by 1) increasing the number of human
births, and eventually deaths, and 2) by shortening the life-span of
existing individuals, or 3) a combination of the two. The net results:
Population increase. . . disease, and war.
Following this line of thinking, our increasing inability to properly
transform and pump energy means that we have to be treated (by the Gaian
mind, if you like) the same way we treat plants and animals, as something to
be farmed, bred and harvested. Not a very dignified state of affairs!
So as the qualitative level of human being goes down, the number of human
beings, and thereby of human deaths, goes up to account for the difference
in energy. And of course, since organisms grow at different rates, with
different energy requirements depending on their activities, we can imagine
that there might be major fluctuations in the needs for our energies.
The Terror of the Situation
This suggests a radical, and terrifying, view of contemporary history: that
the population explosion, famines, plagues, wars and massacres might not be
due just to accidental or sociological and political causes but may be
induced by the needs of the solar "eco-system" as a whole, with human beings
acting for the most part unwittingly to effectuate these needs.
Think about all the horror and insanity that has gone done in the twentieth
century, even just in terms of cold numbers: millions killed in World War
One, hundreds of thousands wiped out in seconds at Hiroshima and Nagasake
alone, millions massacred one way or another in the Nazi concentration
camps; supposedly as many as twenty million Russians dying in combat in
World War Two, not to mention another twenty million who died in the same
period as a result of Stalinist persecution and forced famine. Millions died
in the Chinese civil war, six or seven million in Cambodia under Pol Pot.
Don't even bother counting all the famines in Africa and South East Asia
over the last few decades.
Why the incredible surge of violent death all over the world, paralleled by
an equally incredible population explosion? What is up with those peculiar
humanoid beings living on the surface of Sol-III?
I'm not going to try to argue the merits of this scheme against other
theories. Just chew on it for a while and see how it fits.
And so the picture painted is one of a race of hapless, deluded slaves to
some kind of a cosmic food-chain the existence of which we don't even
recognise. This is definitely insulting to all our best images of ourselves.
But then how do we reconcile all our great assets, our supposed free will,
intelligence, and creativity with the dismal facts of what we've done to
each other for all of recorded history?
Are we really anything more than automatons most of the time?
Gurdjieff had what might seem to many a horribly bleak, cynical view:
that our ideas of free-will and individuality are a delusion, an image of
our potential mistaken for a general fact of our existence. Bluntly put, we
are blind products of genetics, conditioning and external influence; on an
energetic level, we are next to nothing. We are less, in that sense, than
most mammals even.
We have become experts at consuming energy and resources, parasites.
As a civilisation, we no longer transform energy into higher gradients and
radiate it back out to the world, we just circulate like little ants in our
vast urban hives and manufacture stuff, endless quantities of stuff. We know
how to suck energy, make objects, and how to kill. Even if we're not killing
each other off at a given moment, we're decimating untold numbers of living
beings without even being grateful for their existence.
Sure, for the most part we don't feel ourselves that way, but anybody who's
tripped a few times in public places probably had disturbing glimpses--at
least--along these lines. We don't see other people--or ourselves--that way,
because it's just too hard a vision to live with.
The path of return
This perspective provides a definite way of understanding the connection
between our amazingly fucked up global situation and "spirituality"--or the
lack thereof. Seen this way, spirituality has less to do with living
according to some moral doctrine, or accumulating "spiritual" experiences
and states, than with being able to transform and radiate energy of a
particular quality.
If it is true that we have been suffering a generalised decline over
millennia, all our human institutions must participate in and reflect that
decline. So everything we associate with religion, in all its multifarious
forms, would generally be a product and mirror of a messed up situation; in
other words, just another part of the problem.
At its best, the spiritual component of religious traditions points to a
return to what should be our natural base-line of being, something so
distant we can barely remember or taste it except at moments of "peak
experience," or with the help of psychedelic drugs, or as a result of long,
intensive discipline.
Our so-called "salvation" is really more a matter of somehow pulling
ourselves back up out of a dysfunctional, disenabled, alienated state to
something like a natural way of being--not transcendence or cosmic
consciousness or union with God or whatever. We need to re-learn "how to be
and to do."
According to Gurdjieff, the two key principles to following this "path of
return," were intentional suffering and conscious labour. Through engaging
in intentional sufferings and conscious labours we begin again to release
the kinds of energies we were intended to give off.
Of course by today's standards, this sounds like a bummer of a philosophy.
Isn't life just supposed to be full of fun and games? On the other hand, if
we're realistic we know that there's always going to be pain, struggle,
suffering in life. If there weren't where would the joy and pleasure and
flow be? So maybe rather than seek to escape suffering, or just submit to it
blindly, it might make sense to choose your form of suffering and make
something out of it.
Intentional suffering. Again, if it's true that we exist in a chronic
low-energy state, one of inertia and stasis, it makes sense that in order to
get back to a point of being able to consciously transform energy we would
need to somehow exercise an enormous effort just to break out of our
passivity. "Only super-efforts count." If you're physically weak from
illness, it usually takes an extra effort to get to the point of being able
to exercise on a regular basis, to return to your previous level of
strength. Or as they say, no pain no gain.
This can apply on a lot of levels other than just the physical. Pain can
take the form of a kind of moral or spiritual suffering deriving from, say,
breaking habits, or confronting bad traits in one's character, or doing
exactly that which you least like to do. Suffering in the form of sacrifice
is necessary to be there for others, to truly love.
Conscious labour assumes that most of the "work" we do, of whatever nature,
is not really conscious to begin with. We are driven by culturally
programmed priorities, survival, automatic emotional needs, obsession,
neurosis, ego. To work consciously assumes that one must first have become
aware of how unconscious one is most of the time, of how automatic most of
how our thoughts, feelings, perceptions and actions really are.
To even get to this point itself requires a lot of intentional suffering,
because what could make us suffer more than waking up to how we really don't
"own" ourselves?
Forms of work
This general process is what people who study Gurdjieff's ideas and methods
generally call "work-on-oneself," or just "self-work."
No doubt for many orthodox "Gurdjieffians," this path of return can only
occur in the framework of decades of commitment to the "work," in the manner
it has been passed down to them.
Much of Gurdjieff's practical teaching consisted of dancing and physical
exercises used in combination with meditation and concentration techniques.
Some of the dances Gurdjieff himself invented, many were direct copies of
the ancient temple dances he found during his travels. (These dances are a
closely held secret of existing Gurdjieff groups, and rarely if ever
performed in public.)
Other important components of his method were the techniques of
"self-observation" and "self-remembering," designed to bring "essence" back
into balance with "personality."
What is little known to the world at large, and almost completely suppressed
within existing Gurdjieff groups, is that Gurdjieff was interested in and
worked with drugs. The references to "active substances" other than alcohol,
opium and cocaine in his writings are rare, and even then oblique (he tried
to set up a "chemical laboratory" in Russia at one point--for synthesising
what?); it is known, but little discussed, that Gurdjieff administered
certain substances to some of his students.
The monks of the legendary Sarmoun Brotherhood, whom Gurdjieff spent time
with, themselves cultivated and used a psychoactive plant they referred to
as the "Herb of Enlightenment." Curiously, Oscar Ichazo, founder of Arica, a
70s psycho-spiritual organisation that also incorporated psychedelics and
movement-work, claimed to have accessed the Sarmounis as well.*
Furthermore, we know from Gurdjieff himself that he considered his students
"guinea pigs," his groups a laboratory in which he was conducting certain
undefined experiments.
According to J. G. Bennett, one of his major students and better
interpreters, Gurdjieff experimented continuously with his ideas, techniques
and overall approach. While Gurdjieff always talked about his system, it was
never fixed in a way that most of his followers seem to believe and
dogmatically transmit it to others.
If everything Gurdjieff did was a kind of living laboratory, how does
anybody know what were really the goals and working hypotheses and what was
just part of the experiment? What if he kept certain pieces of his puzzle
secret, knowing perhaps they were too explosive to make public at the time?
The new trance dance
Here is a radically new take on Gurdjieff's philosophy and mission, one that
has a direct bearing on our neo-psychedelic-rave subculture:
Is it possible that trance-dancing is one of the most basic forms of
intentional suffering and conscious labour?
Is it possible that such dancing, performed by the right people in the right
way with the right intentions, is capable of producing exactly that same
energy Gurdjieff believed Mother Nature needs from us? Could it be that the
use of psychedelics in conjunction with intensive dancing to certain
specific rhythms, by a new breed of individuals, may be a way to fill our
cosmic obligation without the life-long spiritual training otherwise
required?
My intuition is that this is indeed the case--unlikely as it may seem to all
the "old school" esotericists and spiritualists.
Perhaps, in fact, we are not really now at the point of being able to do
this--being "youthful" as we are, and prone to all the naiveté and follies
of youth. But this may be what a certain number of us are instinctively
moving toward. Maybe this is just that mysterious something we cross over
into as we're peaking and pulsing together on the dance-floor.
Think about tribal trance dances. What better description could you think of
for endurance dancing to the point of fainting in the service of the gods
than intentional suffering and conscious labour?
Under different names, tribal peoples seem to commonly believe that their
dances are essential to the gods, a form of offering, sacrifice, or service.
Something necessary to keep the balance, to keep the rain falling, to keep
the sun coming up, to keep things moving. That's why they're sacred dances.
And so maybe it's not just the form of the dance that's sacred, or even what
the dancers experience, it's in what they do: the energy they collectively
release.
Isn't it odd that just when most of the cultures that still do this are
either being destroyed or forgetting their own traditions, just at that same
moment a whole tribalistic, "neo-shamanic" dance craze develops among
western youth?
Consider: How does someone behave who has a deep instinct, but in whom that
instinct has been muffled by hundreds or thousands of years of habitual
suppression and invalidation? Perhaps every now and then the instinct
manifests itself in a crude, awkward outburst, only to be quickly silenced
by the embarrassed ego and the lack of any proper name or place for it in
surrounding society.
In some of Bennett's writings on this whole theme, there is a tendency to
paint the "feeding the Moon" scenario in extremes: either one is
energetically inert and useless; or else one sacrifices one's life to
spiritual work and helps to make up for everyone else's lack.
But must it be such a dichotomy? Maybe that's how it tends to be nowadays,
but maybe it wasn't always if people used to "be more" than they are today.
Maybe once upon a time (and still in some remaining aboriginal cultures),
you didn't have to be a spiritual athlete, a specialist (monk, shaman,
priest/priestess, etc.), to return your two or three "cents" to Nature.
Maybe even now, everyone can return some energy, given the right
circumstances and maybe the right "assisting factors" too.
And what about the effect of psycho-active substances? If there is anything
we know about psychedelics for sure, it is that they act as catalysts. They
temporarily shift our system's mode of functioning, our rate of vibration,
and enable transformations that are otherwise difficult to achieve--again
passing. But what if that transformation, in tandem with the right kind of
dancing and mindset, is just enough to enable the release of some special
energy?
Does it matter that much whether we're in that state all the time, or just
that we have regular access to it and can use it to do what we need to do?
Sure, we have no tradition of sacred dance, and few ravers dance till they
drop, few dance with conscious devotional feeling or intent. What we do
have, or at least aspire to, is a basic attitude that sets the tone when we
come together for our celebrations: Peace-Love-Unity-Respect. Not bad for a
point of departure.
And yet, just how conscious do you have to be of your intent if your
instinct IS your intent? Maybe as we get high and move together our intent
resurfaces into consciousness, and for those few sweet timeless moments we
actually DO it, . . . and then we drift back down into consensus reality
where there is no name for it, and the veils gradually cover it all up and
soon we once again think we were there for nothing more than a good time and
some cool music.
But the taste and scent of that ineffable "juice" still lingers, and it
keeps us going in the days ahead, going back to more parties, wearing the
clothes we associate with it, compulsively getting high and listening to mix
tapes round the clock, searching for that rare synchronicity of time, place,
people and music where it might magically happen again.
In some of his late writings, Bennett speculated that recent decades are
seeing the birth of a new kind of person, maybe even a new race of sorts,
with spiritual capacities different from the rest of society.
Could that be us?
And just what is that "juice," that energy, that special nutrient so needed
for all things to live and grow in harmony? That erotic radiant mix of
thankfulness, joy, and compassion that just wants to fuck the entire cosmos?
Could it be . . . L-O-V-E?
OK, admittedly there are a lot of big ifs here. To try to prove that
a) human beings do give off energy when they die;
b) that some can give off an equivalent kind of energy intentionally
while still alive;
c) that most of us don't or can't do this anymore;
d) that people could once upon a time do it better;
e) that the planet or the moon or the solar system requires this
energy;
f) that if they don't get it human birth and death will automatically
be increased with no say on our side;
g) that this energy can be produced through trance dancing among tribal
peoples; and
h) that this energy can also be produced by teenagers dancing at
parties with the help of drugs. . .
To try to prove, or even argue, all of that would be at least another
article in itself. . . or more realistically, the basis for a life-time of
research.
