Notes on Energy, Part Two
September 9,2004
Group Discussion
Because energy, in one form or another, sets our universe into motion and into change, it is beneficial to pass rapidly through some of the main players. This brief treatment will certainly not answer all the possible questions, but hopefully it will serve to lay a background and carry some of that background as far as an energetic man.
Truly cosmic energy would, by definition, need to precede the Primary Explosion. As category three information, no elaboration is possible.
This would undoubtedly be the largest use of energy ever (so far).
The Primary Explosion began to utilize some of Einstein’s ideas after some of the first second had passed. What did it do with energy? It transformed the state of matter into other matter, probably transformed radiant energy into matter and absolutely moved what matter was available throughout what is called the expansion phase. It moved this matter from however big it was to start to a larger, roughly 12 billion lightyear radius area. We can still see the lingering effects of this incredible use of energy in the cosmic radiation all over our night skies.
This was probably the second most powerful amount of energy ever expended.
This great flood of energy, if we can skip a great number of details, became the mass of the universe. Roughly sixty per cent of it found its way to dark matter and dark energy. All of this is not really dark, of course. We simply cannot see it very clearly. The remaining forty per cent is quite familiar to us. These are the stars whose light we see. It also includes the mass of the stars and the gravity and all the energy it takes to keep each thermonuclear fire burning.
We can define the stars (and galaxies) of the night sky as cosmic solar and the stars we see from around here as galactic solar — energy. It is difficult to see examples, but we absolutely know that these gigantic systems are transforming energy, transforming energy from one kind of energy to another.
One easily understood example is the transformation from kinetic to potential energy. This occurs on the earth all the time. It occurs even more frequently in the universe around us. A thing perched high up in our planetary gravity field just sits, say on the top of a skyscraper. At this point the thing is rich in potential energy. It falls, moment by moment it moves down in the gravity field to sequential positions of less and less potential energy. However, at the same time it accelerates. The faster it goes, the more kinetic energy it has. Something which was still has been transformed into something moving.
Out in the universe this system would probably balance perfectly. On earth, it balances pretty closely except it is influenced by wind resistance and a few other irritations. If we look at the entire earth (with nothing else anywhere except the skyscraper and the thing) the perfect balance becomes even closer.
Now we are ready to start talking about energy in man. He cannot use a direct diet of truly cosmic energy or cosmic solar or galactic solar. If a friend were to complain, “I just don’t seem to have any energy, anymore.” we would not desire to see him receive any, for example, galactic solar energy close at hand. It requires a definite transformation before it’s any sort of food for the likes of us.
Yet, galactic solar food — and all the other kinds — is exactly what we eat. The energy of the universe is finite — there is no sort of source for getting any additional. It is strangely desirable for humans to see as clearly as possible a few important views of universal energy. The first is its path from the very beginning to “everywhere” else. The second is the manner in which it “lodges” itself in all sorts and levels of material things. As with energy, matter was at its peak not long after the start of things. Also similar to energy, there is no working source of new matter inside the universe. Of course, supernovas, common stars, impact meetings at 165,000 mph and even our teeny weeny H-Bombs can reorganize matter, but after the fireworks a careful inventory of mass and energy would show no change at all.
Consider our sun. Its nuclear fire burns hydrogen into helium and sun shine. The energy that shines from our sun to the earth is not “created” in the nuclear furnace in the strictest sense of the word. No, this sun was formed from galactic hydrogen which provides the means for it to “create” sunshine. So, is the hydrogen energy? No, but the hydrogen was also created, in a sense, from energy. The hydrogen was not present in the very beginning of the universe.
Hydrogen was “created” in the middle of some powerful energies which were a part of the initial explosion of the universe. These energies can be called something like “first degree energies.” They were transformed into hydrogen. The hydrogen, of course, was scattered all over everywhere, and would have remained there without the influence of all kinds of things, especially gravity. The gravity was transformed next. Before it was transformed the hydrogen was a cloud. After it was transformed, the hydrogen had formed a beginning of a solar accretion disc.
As a general product of World Three, that is, as a general process through which the existence of World Three could be materially send forward to lesser worlds, we will be well served to associate the development of higher hydrogens in the Octave of Development of Impressions with the larger image of the similar methods of World Creation (the higher hydrogens are, of course, World Maintenance) as a well accepted aspect of Gurdjieff’s cosmology.
When we see the process of the sun, we are actually seeing a line of transformations. The more or less final result of the transformation is what we see before us in the East every morning. But before we leave this quick review track the solar process back to the good stuff. Pick a sun beam — any sun beam. What was it before it was a sun beam? Where was it? If it changed form, what changed its form? So it is in the sun. Where was it before that? Was it a sun beam then? Where did the reaction fire originate? This could continue for a very long time and over a very long distance.
If we have moved as close as our very own World 12, it is probably close enough. The remainder of this story can just fall — as does ripe fruit from a tree — into our laps!
Gurdjieff sees our universe as entirely material, yet we seem to see momentary contradictions to that idea. We see both material things and fully energetic things. Our misconception does not arise from shabby telescopes, but rather from a first class, built-in bias. We haven’t been thinking in the long term. We haven’t been watching long enough to get the full picture.3
What we must see is the flow of energy. It flows from the big beginning all the way out to us. Along the way, it transformed from one energy to another. It transforms to all matter of material things. In fact, it transforms to different energy states, to different material states, back to new energy states. At least, gigantic clusters of suns and planets. The suns blow up and die. They fry the planets. The dust from the blown up suns speeds up, slows down, speeds up, makes another sun, or does not make another.
The energy continues to flow. It collects as if it were a clogged pipe. It builds in a style of ebb and flow, never ebbing or flowing everywhere at once. It flows through the Worlds of our universe like Siddartha’s river. Its moments of change can be a hundred million of our years. They can also change the path ahead for everything in a nanosecond.
What does this half-baked star trek have to do with the energetic man?
To bring the “star trek” a little closer to home, let us review a couple of further extensions of the “everything is energy with some temporarily parked here and there” idea. The earth is parked energy. It is a little bit of the greater parked energy of World 24, World 12 and so on.
We have all seen Gurdjieff’s octave for the specific Ray of Creation, the specific vector of the Ray of Creation which accounts for World 48. Additionally, we have seen his great emphasis of the importance of Life on Earth, a correctly determined shock in his Ray octave. This is significantly more than a wave of self-centeredness.
It is not too much of a leap to re-see Life on Earth as a vortex mix of actual energy of some kind and parked energy serving as a place for its phenomenon of life, that is, the continuing transformation of cosmic (Big Bang) energy between its active and parked forms. (Something missing?) Whether you are a man, a squirrel, an earthworm or a palm tree this fully explains and constitutes the energy which makes life possible. It simply had to pass through the “strainer” a few hundred billion times to become the right sized battery for you.
All men have sufficient energy to eat their pork chop. If not, they will enter into the parked energy mode (cemetery). But what about those men whose lives have fallen between fully energetic and fully passive? We need to accept the conclusion of our own observation that there seems to be a wide variation among the allegedly living beings we have encountered. Is there an additional spread where the utmost energy is the conscious man and the least most energy is the surviving, mechanical man?
How can I enjoy the maximum energy level? Foremost, there must be the full realization that the energy in my life is different only in the degree of transformation from the general energy of the entire universe. I move my hand the same way World Three can move a million stars. I come to know that I am part of this, whether I do anything useful or not.
I must also understand without any question what is meant by useful. Sooner or later I might wonder why all the Worlds emanated from the Most Holy Sun Absolute. I might come to a second realization that I am created and exist to serve and feed Our Common Creator.
Finally, I must understand that I am, in the venue of my own existence, responsible to become what I have been made to be. This responsibility exists without limit and prevails in my life in a way oblivious to challenge. I further understand that I must overwhelm or avoid the influences which will be always prepared to cast me down from my rightful place to a more insignificant place.
The wages of these labors will be my grant to a life defined by the Holy System of my creation, my grant to a life as a man, not something less.
