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As to the emotional nature of donkeys, this video showing a donkey’s reaction to the girl who raised him after a long absence is unbelievable. These animals belong with the emotional center.
Your analysis ties everything together, James. Purely intellectual pursuits, Like Gornahoor Harharkh’s, are only the beginning. He is like a puppy that falls into deep water because of his enthusiasm. Gotta love a puppy, but you also have to laugh at him.
I do think Gurdjeiff has a laugh at the expense of G Harharkh, HarHarHarHar, but in an affectionate kind of way. After all, they are essence brothers in that they both pursued the sciences as young men, but eventually came to understand their limitations. This is why Beelzebub asks for all the instruments that G Harharkh built for him to be taken to Karatas. The process of the intellect has value, and if we are genuine in our search, it will lead us to the process of the heart.
Pictured above is my dog, a most inquisitive and adventurous puppy, when he first discovered what happens when you jump into a pond.
I am grateful for formatoy thinking, which I share with the animals, because it provides a solid floor under my feet. I liken it to Adam and Eve’s state in Eden before they ate of the fruit of knowledge (see my post on conscious and subconscious.) Mentation by thought cannot be separated from the personality. While a necessary part of our evolution, it embroils us in endless hairsplitting caused by our inevitable differences. I am certain that the only way we can access objective knowledge is through the higher emotional and higher mental centers. However, those are rare events. As Robin once described when speaking about his insight into the names of archangels pertaining to the digestion of food,”I was taking a walk and the thought came to me.” This is why I make an effort to retain flexibility when dealing with mentation by thought, lest I get pulled into identification with my or other people’s ideas. To me, G’s words are ‘pokes’ to get me thinking, with the ultimate goal of helping me to open to the higher nature. He says he wants to destroy preconceived notions. He does not say he wants to provide a new rational framework.
I always thought that mentation by form is our friend, not something we have to combat. Without it, we would be left with empty wiseacring, completely out of touch with our subconscious.
Orage comments on pg. 62: “The two forms of mentation spoken about in the prologue of the book become the two dynamic rivers of the epilogue.
Hassein says ‘Things are a-thinking in me.’ The mind is always ‘a-thinking,’ and if we take a hand in it and direct the thinking it is active being-mentation; it is the result of an experience digested and made part and parcel of our being. in ‘being-mentation’ we are mentating with materials, which, since they are part of experience, have an emotional element. Instead of dealing with words and their associations, which makes possible verbal logic, we have to use experiences and their associations, which make possible a being-logic… Formal understanding—understanding by forms—is brought about by being-mentation.”
I know that when I work on a painting I am entirely focused on seeing through formatory thinking in order to “see”. I push normal, verbal thinking out of the way. Once the painting has been laid down I wait for a few weeks and then evaluate it with the “normal” thinking to make adjusments.
G states on page 15 “The second kind of mentation, that is, mentation by form, by which, strictly speaking, the exact sense of all writing must also be perceived, and after conscious confrontation with information already possessed, be assimilated…”
