The following paper can best be considered in two separate but related parts. The first part was presented as a group discussion in 2002. It covers several general principles of energy in an informal way. The first part was intended in increase student understanding of select topics. The second part of the paper deals with an overview of energy as it extends through a Ray of Creation to the conscious man.
Group Discussion
- Energy in the life of a man is similar to other forms of physical energy in the universe.
- The General Law of Thermodynamics requires the conservation of energy within a closed system.
- The General Law applies in various ways governs physics, particles and forms of radiant energy.
- The General Law applies to Life on Earth when it is considered from a position within the Mesocosmos
- The General Law applies to a single man when it is considered from a position within the Triticosmos
Thermodynamics defines an energetic system in opposition to either a passive system or a transductional system. Energetic systems take in energy, passive systems take in no energy and transductive systems are channels for energy to move from one place or state to another. Transductive systems do not receive energy from the flow of energy through them.
Entropy is, generally, the gradual loss of energy from any system back to the larger source of that energy. Entropy can also be considered the degrading of complex systems or structures into simpler ones. It can be considered to be the loss of organization in a system in favor of disorganization or chaos.
In the Mesocosmos, entropy is considered to be an absolute General Order of Law prevailing over all structures and systems.
The same absolute General Order of Law prevails in the Triticosmos. A man loses energy to entropy, but in the Triticosmos the main energy lost is psychic energy.
Energetic systems take in energy and transform it into system creation and system maintenance, similar in every respect to World Maintenance and World Creation. These systems create larger, more powerful, more efficient, more ordered and more complex states within themselves.
Life On Earth is a manifestation of an energetic system functioning in many dimensions. For example, what clearly started as a hot rock being bathed with solar energy and the change energy of cosmic radiation has evolved into the complex physiology of the house fly. The fly is far more complex than the rocks were.
Likewise, the conservation of energy has allowed the fly to enjoy very many greater possibilities than the hot rock. For this opportunity it must be grateful to and for its complexity.
The complexity of the fly is the product of mechanical evolution. Neither the fly nor its myriad of ancestors ever took, or for that matter, had the opportunity to decide about the direction of their evolution. Mechanical evolution is the mechanical system, an energetic system, which has delivered the house fly from the hot rock.
In the Trogoautoegocratic model, man faces the possibility of being an energetic system or a transductive system. This possibility for man is equivalent to the prospects of some ancient precursor of the house fly making the decision to evolve or not or in which direction.
The transductive man is subject to all General Laws of the Triticosmos. During his mechanical life he will receive energy from the larger system, the earth, the sun and the cosmos, and he will be a conduit through which that energy can, in return, flow to the earth, and specifically to the Trogoautoegocratic systems requirements concerning World 96, the moon. He will be a channel for the flow of cosmic substances.
The energetic man has the possibility of receiving, utilizing and ultimately controlling ever greater amounts of the same energy. He takes in this energy and transforms it to increase his complexity and efficiency to, in return, take in more. His existence is bathed in energy in quantity and power far in excess of the transductive man. He is no longer a transductive system.
The energetic man, when he controls sufficient energy, can be freed of some of the General Laws. “Becomes a law unto himself. . .” means, in one example, being free of the law of entropy.
Some men are uninterested. They use all the energy available to them to service likes and dislikes. They are subject to entropy along with all other General Laws of this place.
Which man will strive against entropy? Why?
One quality of being an energetic system is that one has possibilities other than Gurdjieff’s “being a passage for food.”
Some machines are broken through the misadventure of being transductive systems.
Reading for the group meeting will be about schools and students, page 199, In Search of the Miraculous and the section on Ee in Appendix B of Brain Systems.
