The Birth of the Magnetic Center

The Birth of the Magnetic Center

Gurdjieff established a schema that includes all the influences that can reach us, which he called—in his usual unvarnished language—A, B, and C influences.

Influences A are born and come to us mechanically, that is, unconsciously. Examples: the desire for wealth; the novelty of fashion. Influences B are born consciously; they originate from enlightened beings, from conscious schools, but are diluted when they enter the current of life and mix with influences A. Example: a book by Gurdjieff. Today Gurdjieff is dead, he cannot guide us personally, and only the written word remains, which is a by-product with limited potential. If we read it distractedly, misinterpret a sentence, he is not here to clear up the misunderstanding.

Influences C are conscious; they are born conscious and they come to us consciously. Example: contact with a living, conscious teacher. The magnetic center is born when we begin to perceive, albeit dimly, the difference between influences A and B, and to acquire a taste for influence B—philosophy, art, thought in which we discover a special quality. Once we have recognized it, we will be magnetically attracted to this quality, and will search for it.

Different people find this quality in different forms. It could take the form of someone we met, perhaps as a child, in whom we recognized something special. Maybe this person belonged to a school, or had some knowledge of a school, and we felt the depth of it. It could be through the works of conscious artists—poetry, music, theater, and much more. Or through the transmission of ideas, for example, by reading books like In Search of the Miraculous.

This first contact and recognition marks the partial disconnection from the descending current of life and the tenuous connection to an ascending current—the passage from one river to another, as Gurdjieff expressed it. We continue to suffer the pull of the part that wants to follow the descending current of life—sleep—but now we are also influenced by a new part, at first very small, that wants to follow the ascending current toward awakening. The connection is still unstable, everything could be lost, and it will be so for a long time to come. But something has crept into our being, and from that moment on we will try to drink more and more from conscious springs. Thirsty for influence B, we sniff it out, even if this search costs some discomfort, derision, or isolation.

Just as turtle hatchlings stumble down the beach without knowing they are aiming for the sea, so a person who has developed a magnetic center may not realize that he is looking for a conscious source, a school, Influence C. He will call his restlessness by the most diverse names: in most cases it is a blind search, with no words to define it. With each step, with each effort, the magnetic center is strengthened. Still, efforts can lead to distortions and steps to blind alleys. Magnetic center can take root in the wrong part of us. If it is allied only with intellectual curiosity, for example, we will want to learn, and learn, and learn some more, without realizing that the lack of practical will contaminate and deform everything we seem to know.

From A Question of Presence, Sergio Antonio

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Angel Appearing to the Shepherds, Rembrandt