Notes for 15 September 2026
The 30th chapter of All and Everything, “Art,” is about how Art has become one of the factors which are “gradually, and … almost imperceptibly yet very surely” changing us into mere “living flesh.” This is tragic because, as he says there, we possess “in [our] presences every possibility for becoming particles of a part of Divinity …” (452)
In respect of Art, which is a form of providing impressions and associations, it should be noted that in this chapter Beelzebub says that “the automatic-satiation-of-externals” is basis of the “possibility of natural self-perfecting …” (472) I take this to mean that the abundance of impressions which we receive were intended to provide us with a natural means of self-perfecting. On this basis, one of the catastrophes of modern art is that it prevents us receiving impressions with the simplicity and directness which we should.
Modern art, then, interferes with the “currents-of-associative-movements.” (479) How our associations should operate within us is found on p.480, where he says:
The process is the same as that which also proceeds in us, but it proceeds in us when we are intentionally resting to allow the whole functioning of our common presence freely to transform, without hindrance by our will, all the varieties of being-energy required for our all-round active existence, whereas in them these said various being-energies can now arise only during their total inactivity, that is during what they call their ‘sleep,’ and then of course only ‘after-a-fashion.’
This is significant: he is asserting that we can, by “intentionally resting,” allow what he calls “the whole functioning of our common presence,” by which I understand all our energies and inner processes, to produce the being-energies which we need. To be clear, he is saying that they do so while awake, and—if I understand what comes next correctly—also as they sleep (although I suspect the quality of the energies transformed while awake and asleep may potentially be different.)
What comes next, of course, is that we as we are can only do this “during [our] total inactivity, that is during [our] sleep,” and even then, not completely.
So there exists a possibility of producing a free transformation of desirable being-energies while awake, and of producing more and better of these while we sleep.
If I am correct, then the way we do this while awake is through three-centred activity; and that, I suggest, is performed while working with his contemplative exercises, during the Movements, and in ordinary life. Further, there are means of preparing for sleep so that the improved elaboration of energies can might proceed then.
Beelzebub now adds something quite valuable about three-centred activity:
they, like every other three-brained being of the whole of our Great Universe, have three separate independent spiritualized parts, each of which has, as a central place for the concentration of all its functioning, a localization of its own which they themselves call a ‘brain,’ all the impressions in their common presences whether coming from without or arising from within are also perceived independently by each of these ‘brains’ of theirs, in accordance with the nature of these impressions; and afterwards, as it is also proper to proceed in the presences of every kind of being without distinction of brain-system, these impressions together with previous impressions compose the total and thanks to occasional shocks evoke in each of these separate ‘brains’ an independent association.
That is, each of our centres is a functioning concentration of spiritualized energies. They are not loose or unconfined energies, but form a spirit, a coherent whole, and being spiritualized, they are more than the material sums of their composition.
We are made so that whatever we perceive be “perceived independently by each of these ‘brains’ … in accordance with the nature of these impressions …” (480)
It seems to me that the upshot of this is that we could but are not conscious of how each perception is received in each of our three brains. This is a loss as each brain will receive each impression differently, depending upon the nature of the impression.
I think it is, therefore, advisable to collect oneself and patiently, taking one set of impressions, ask oneself: how is this received by mind? By feeling? By body? All three together?
We should, with this, be especially careful about how we receive impressions from what we are pleased to call “art.” We should insist on experiencing the spiritualized nature of our brains (centres), as one whole, and so resist falling into the state of not much more than “living flesh.” After all, our birthright is to be “particles of a part of Divinity.”
Elsewhere, He said that our higher being-part is meant, at the death of the physical body, to become an independent individual with its own individual Reason. (766) “Each separate ‘higher-perfected-being-body’ becomes an independent Individual and acquires in itself its own law of Sacred Triamazikamno …” (798)
Perhaps the formulation which means most to me is this one: “becoming a particle, though an independent one, of everything existing in the Great Universe.” (183)