"Everything living on the Earth, people, animals, plants, is food for the moon…. All movements, actions, and manifestations of people, animals, and plants depend upon the moon and are controlled by the moon…. The mechanical part of our life depends upon the moon, is subject to the moon. If we develop in ourselves consciousness and will, and subject our mechanical life and all our mechanical manifestations to them, we shall escape from the power of the #moon."
— G. I. #Gurdjieff
In 1916, hoping to interest the Russian intelligentsia in his teaching, Mr. Gurdjieff asked his students to spread the ideas. It’s likely that the idea about man being not only a puppet of the moon but also its “food” was one they rarely, if ever, spoke about. It’s just too strange. Even today, some 90 years later, there is little discussion about the unique place given the moon in the teaching. If mentioned at all, it is taken either as a fable or as a metaphor for the creation of the moon in oneself. But Gurdjieff maintained that all of his ideas could be taken in seven different ways, one of which is factual.
Gurdjieff’s ideas of the moon’s control and use of the organic life of the Earth, and that but for the moon’s need there would be no organic life, or at the least a very different organic life on Earth, seem to be unique to The Fourth Way. Is this idea—that all organic life and man in particular are intimately involved in the mechanical process of reciprocal maintenance—unique to Gurdjieff’s teaching or have modern science, other ways, teachings and religions spoken of this?
Today’s scientific thought considers the moon to be essentially dead and acknowledges only the gravitational influence of the moon, primarily the tidal effect. This influence could be considered a “measurable” influence. There is anecdotal evidence of the moon’s more “subtle” influence on human behavior, generally considered to be a negative effect, on a woman’s menstrual cycle and on plant growth. Belief in the moon’s subtle influence on life is widely held among diverse cultures and often incorporated into their agraria
There are no comments yet.