Issue #45 September/October, 2025
“The whole Work is really a cosmos – everything in it depends on and explains everything else. It is only when one catches a glimpse of the whole that one feels an enormous wonder at a great purpose.”
~Rodney Collin
Dear ALL
Long ago I encountered the following words in some mystical book I was reading (I can’t, for the life of me, remember which, although I remember what was said clearly). It read: “The word for GOD, the Tetragrammaton, Yod (י), He (ה), Vav (ו), and He (ה), is a verb and not a noun!” The idea haunted me. Recently, I encountered a poem with the title A Noun or a Verb which examines this idea in a surprising way. I include it, as a reading, in this newsletter.
In this month’s objective science posting we begin what will be a series of postings discussing the topic of whether gravity and electromagnetism are exactly the same force. This is not a trivial matter. There is, in fact, much to be discussed, beginning with why it is a question at all.
In our reflections on the Work we examine the evergreen topic of “the emotional center, and work on emotions,” and finally from Gurdjieff’s writings we reflect on the decline of the intellect that has been a characteristic of our time, and indeed, the many centuries leading up to it. If it seems that we have reached rock bottom, then perhaps, the only way from here is up!
Regards
RB
The Tales of Automatic Thought
The Tales is not a comforting read. It was written “to-corrode-without-mercy-all-the-rubbish-accumulated-during-the-ages-in-human-mentation”. Among the many observations Gurdjieff delivers concerning the unfortunate state of humanity, one stands out as particularly relevant to our contemporary era of perpetual digital chatter and instant expertise: the crippling epidemic of …
A Noun or A Verb
To name God a noun is to build a cathedral around a shadow.
It is to mistake the vessel for the sea, to worship the graven image of a force whose nature is flow.
A noun is a tomb, a fixed point, a final word for that which is ceaseless beginning.
It creates a separation—a deity there, and a devotee here. This is the architecture of control.
To name God a verb is to witness the current but ignore the riverbed.
Are Electromagnetism and Gravity The Same?
On the one hand, gravity is well established as a force. It is impossible to dispute the fact that Newton;’s gravitational equations have been, and still are used by all the space agencies to calculate the influence of planets, moons and the sun on the trajectory of space shots. But let’s take a step back, Until recently there were deemed to be four fundamental physical forces: Gravity, electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force …
To Awake the Emotional Side
While we might “know better otherwise,” we often imagine ourselves as having a single mind or consciousness, neatly tucked away in the brain. Nevertheless, in the Work, we are depicted as complex “machines” governed by several independent functions —the Intellectual, Moving, Instinctive, and Emotional (centers)-each possessing their own speed, function, and capacity for registering impressions.