Reyner is something of a mystery, all the more enigmatic for the fact that he wrote a number of books, some on technical questions of engineering, and others on the Fourth Way and related “esoterica.” If anyone has any information about Reyner, or knows anyone who knew him, please advise me. I would like to make contact with anyone of his family or acquaintance. He states that he was a pupil of Nicoll’s; and I think he may have met Ouspensky. He was authorised by Nicoll (I think) to teach the Fourth Way. But where he did he teach? Who were his pupils? Are there any notes of his meetings? Are any of his papers available? I shall review more of his books in future posts. I shall not now offer a synthesis: that must wait.

Reyner was a second-generation pupil of Gurdjieff. [A first-generation pupil is one who met Gurdjieff (e.g. Ouspensky, the de Salzmanns – Alexandre, Jeanne and their children – Bennett, the Adies), and the second-generation pupils are those who knew them. I would guess that there are less than a dozen first-generation pupils still alive (as they would have to have be 94 years old to have been 18 when Gurdjieff died). There are still a good number of second-generation pupils around. There are a certain number of third- and fourth-generation pupils, together with a number who never learnt from anyone who had never met Gurdjieff, being thus students, I would say, but not pupils.]

So Reyner, I say, was a second-generation pupil. I have dwelt on this because this book, God Beyond Time: A new and practical appraisal of the influence and use of time, is one of the best books written by a second-generation pupil, and is in fact better than some written by first-generation pupils. The edition I have was published in 2010 by Eureka in a limited edition of 100. It was first published in 1965 by the Regency Press, London. The Foreword is bylined Little Missenden, Bucks, January 1965. I can find no obituary for him on-line.

He went on to write more books, which include among other matters reason to think that he was party to Nicoll’s breakthrough in “conversing” with Deputy Steward. However, as often happens, people who have come into contact with the miraculous then become credulous: after all, if they could experience this, why could not others. I think this is happened to Reynard, and he was eventually having trouble with distinguishing reality from fantasy.

But that does not seem to have come to pass in 1965 when he wrote God Beyond Time. It is only 140 pages, in two parts “The Quest” and “The Pattern.” Part One comprises seven chapters (The Unmanifest World, The Nature of Time, The Space-Time Landscape, The Concept of Mind, The Nature of Illusion, The Meaning of Consciousness, Vibrations and Rhythms), and Part Two six (The Domain of Eternity, Internal and External Time, Creation and Evolution, Individual Recurrence, The Moment in Time, The Use of Time) with an appendix on recurrence. He does not waste time, and yet his writing is clear and accessible. He has a certain lightness of style which is unexpected in so deep a work, dealing with such abstruse matters.

If he has one thesis, it is that our limited understanding of time is one of the factors which prevent us from “seeing” God. But that understanding can be improved, and if it is, that new understanding facilitates a new life, and an approach to the mystery of eternity.

I will head directly to what has been, for me, the most important insight. At p.112, he writes: “If the events of life are attracted by the quality of one’s Being, they are for that very reason events with which one is able to contend, and which therefore afford the best opportunities for development.” He then cites as a similar insight, St Paul in 1 Corinthians 10:13: “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.”

I will not attempt to develop that here, but it is vital. It is related to his idea of the uses of time, and if we understand it, it will revolutionise our lives. We have a certain consciousness, of fluctuating levels. It fluctuates over time, and he sees time – at least on our level – as the movement of the highest consciousness through the one reality in which all possibilities have been actualised. That is, Higher Mind – at a higher level of time – casts its eye over the One Ineffable Reality, and our participation in that vision of Higher Mind, unfolds time as we know it. This still does not explain everything – but as Gurdjieff said, we cannot understand it. Yet, I think Mr Adie may have been right when we said: “You know how he speaks of the Merciless Heropass”? Well, at a higher level, he is merciful.” I would note too that Gurdjieff says the Heropass is just – by that he may mean lawful and regular.

Reyner’s insights are also valuable because we need to receive encouragement. Perhaps the most common reason people have for leaving the Work is that they turn negative against it (as Mr Adie said to me once). And, I suspect, they turn negative because they find it too hard, or, to put it another world, they do not gain as much from it as they had hoped. I think this is partly due to the fact that the contemplative exercises are not taught in what I might call as “systematic” way, i.e. according to their internal logic and the needs of the pupil concerned.

Reyner arrived at this point after, speaking of the sort of person we are, he wrote:

Gurdjieff calls this ‘Being’ of a person. It includes his essential type, his personality and his spiritual state, which depends on the relative development of his mind, and it is this Being which attracts the events of his life. Once this is realised it becomes possible to savour the events and recognise them as experiences, and not just steps in a purely material progress in passing time. This can lead to a raising of one’s level of Being, which is a real progress, and would involve a different path through the space-time domain, even though the external events might be the same … (122)

This relates to the most subtle exposition of the idea of the “Inner Circle of Humanity” I have ever seen. Reyner does not contradict Gurdjieff’s saying that it is made up of people who have reached the highest possible level of development. But he relates it to the concept of the “group mind,” which is often called the “hive mind.” I will return to that in the next post, but for now, this passage is – once more – quite deep. We place too much emphasis on what we do and what happens to us, but not enough on our being and how we respond internally.