Hold Infinity in the Palm of Your Hand

Hold Infinity in the Palm of Your Hand

The greatest contradiction in nature is that of the higher self and the lower self temporarily cohabiting the same body. From this comes the 'Struggle of the Magicians.' It is a very necessary irritant. —The Teacher

The Teacher references G.I. Gurdjieff’s The Struggle of the Magicians, which is an esoteric ballet designed to instruct students about the “dance” and relationship of the lower self and Higher Self. This bodily cohabitation is a conflict between black and white magicians. It is an inner journey of enlightenment from “waking sleep” (the second state of consciousness) to the potential of the third state (subjective consciousness) and the fourth state (objective consciousness). For students on the Way, it is an awakening from illusion to real awareness.

Our five senses are a part of the Instinctive Center – the lower self, and people consider the sense organs an indispensable instrument for processing the impressions of our world. If you are like me, I take what I see, hear, touch, smell, and taste as the only reality. Yet these sense organs of the lower self are part of the contradiction of the lower self and Higher Self occupying one body. If I root myself and identify merely with what my senses are perceiving, this can prevent me from seeing beyond the material world and block a higher, more conscious understanding.

To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand

And Eternity in an hour. — William Blake

Our Teacher has recently been highlighting the writings of Helen Keller, who was deaf and blind at 19 months because of an illness. Since she could not hear, she was also not able to speak, although through intensive training with her teacher, Anne Sullivan, she eventually learned to speak. Helen Keller is an inspiring example of being able to move beyond the limitations of the lower self into a world of seeing and inner light. Her limitations became her gift, her hands were her eyes, and in her own voice, she describes what she sees without apology for the apparent contradiction:

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“Philosophy constantly points out the untrustworthiness of the five senses and the important work of reason which corrects the errors of sight and reveals its illusions. If we cannot depend on five senses, how much less may we rely on three! What ground have we for discarding light, sound, and color as an integral part of our world? How are we to know that they have ceased to exist for us? We must take their reality for granted, even as the philosopher assumes the reality of the world without being able to see it physically as a whole.”

“Ancient philosophy offers an argument which seems still valid. There is in the blind as in the seeing an Absolute which gives truth to what we know to be true, order to what is orderly, beauty to the beautiful, touchableness to what is tangible. If this is granted, it follows that this Absolute is not imperfect, incomplete, partial. It must need go beyond the limited evidence of our sensations, and also give light to what is invisible, music to the musical that silence dulls. Thus mind itself compels us to acknowledge that we are in a world of intellectual order, beauty, and harmony. The essences, or absolutes of these ideas, necessarily dispel their opposites which belong with evil, disorder, and discord. Thus deafness and blindness do not exist in the immaterial mind, which is philosophically the real world, but are banished with the perishable material senses. Reality, of which visible things are the symbol, shines before my mind. While I walk about my chamber with unsteady steps, my spirit sweeps skyward on eagle wings and looks out with unquenchable vision upon the world of eternal beauty.”

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Looking out with Helen Keller’s unquenchable vision is the conscious state of self-awareness and Presence. The aim of awakening and the product of Work in a conscious School is to create and bring more permanence to higher states through self-remembering.

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye. — Antoine de Saint Exupéry

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Helen Keller, Whitman Studio, Library of Congress