5. Beryl Pogson on Death as a Release of Energy

On 14 February 1961, Beryl Pogson said: “Have we spoken in this group about creating energy through dying to something in yourself? … When you feel scattered and chaotic, you can experience a loss of meaning. You may remain in this state until you receive a certain kind of shock: the shock which can break it is a sort of death, for whenever you die to something, you release energy, and as energy flows, entropy decreases. So, also, when the world reaches a state of entropy, a new saviour is born, and through death, the saviour releases great energy, and a new civilisation is created. Here is a way to create energy, through some kind of death. What happens is this: the finer and the coarser are separated. Something goes down and something goes up. This is the meaning of sacrifice as it is taught in esoteric teachings. You must die to something in order that something new may live.” (The Work Life, 71-72).

If correct, this offers a possible explanation for Bennett’s assertion of 14 May 1974 that: “The [sacred] image of Christ is more than any man, more even than Jesus was, because a power has been transmitted to that image which is then something very extraordinary. It is something which is more than this world. To bring it about very extraordinary things have to happen. Those who are concerned in the event, very often have to pay for it with their own lives and they have to return to the world that is beyond existence by way of a violent death.” (The Image of God in Work, 62)

There are some interesting ideas here: when we “die to something,” is there an energy released? Do we sense that? When I ask myself, I wonder whether it is not more that an energy is retained or conserved, rather than being wasted in identification. There are certain reactions of mine, especially those accompanied by negative emotions. After much work, re-working connections between thought, emotions and instinctive networks, I am sometimes present to myself when the old reactions starts up – ignites – but then goes no further than the note MI. Before it can reach the interval at which point it takes me captive, some more conscious aspect of myself, including something like real feeling, appears, is there as a presence displacing the other process. This, I would think, has to be death to the old me. Some energy, then, is conserved, and the stores which would otherwise be burnt up by negative emotions are retained for my being-aim.

But then, on closer analysis, these stores do “flush” my being, as it were. I find an access of feeling, a clarity of mind. So, Pogson was right: an energy is released, or perhaps more precisely, it is transformed in accordance with the aim by which the “re-networking” was done. Now, imagine what occur if all of a person’s energy were so transformed in one moment? And what could be the moment at which the entirety of my force is transmuted but the moment of death?

6. Beelzebub’s Tales on the Sacred Rasooarno

This ties in with Bennett’s account, which she cannot possibly have known about, as Pogson’s talk predates Bennett’s by some thirteen years. It also owes much to her almost phenomenally intelligent reading of Beelzebub. There, Gurdjieff speaks of the release of the “sacred Askokin” when a being dies, or in his terms, undergoes the “sacred Rascooarno.” (182-183) Further, some vibrations can only be released from our deaths: “the Nature of the planet Earth was beginning to adapt Herself to the deteriorating quality of the vibrations She demanded that had to be formed from their radiations, by substituting those vibrations which are now obtained only from the process of their sacred Rascooarno, or as they say ‘from-their-death’.” (416) Also, the quality of vibrations released at death can vary from person to person, and hence from humanity as a whole. (1104) Our vibrations can be more or less “akin” for cosmic purposes.

The higher being-part which can go to the Most Holy Sun Absolute can do so only at death. (765) At death, the components of the physical body begin to disintegrate, and return to the earth; those of the Kesdjan-body will likewise disintegrate, but in a different sphere, not into the earth. However, he adds:

This adds a further dimension to what Pogson said, or more precisely, it discusses what she had not mentioned: the fate of the higher elements. Gurdjieff seems to me to be saying here that even if the physical and astral bodies decay, yet the higher elements in us, which have come directly from the Word of God must exist in this solar system so long as they are not been organically formed into a body (i.e.perfected to the degree of Reason at which the elements of the higher body have coalesced to form a coherent and organic body.) To put this another way, Gurdjieff told Ouspensky only that Man Number 7 would be immortal within the limits of the solar system. On the basis of this passage in Beelzebub, that is still correct, if we mean that he is immortal as a man; but for people of lesser reason, the substances of their higher body still remain. What form do they take, and what do they experience? He does not say, at least not here. What he speaks of is beings of higher development:

… when they reach this state of the sacred Ischmetch and the Reason of their highest part is already perfected up to the required gradation of the sacred measure of Reason, then in the first place, the process of the sacred Rascoorno may also proceed with them, but only by their own wish; and secondly, their highest being-body is taken directly to the holy planet Purgatory. (1148-1149)

There is one more article in this series, and it appears tomorrow, on Easter Monday: the day when we ponder upon the meaning of the now completed great feast.