ABC OF RELATIONS by Eugene Halliday

[Recorded in Liverpool sometime between the late 1950’s - early 60’s]

1. …And observe that this is the head of the alphabet, and it’s a free vowel form, and therefore signifies what is absolute. We can say, “ ‘A’ equals ‘The Absolute’.”

2. Absolute means, ‘that which IS when all else is ‘sol’d away’. Ab-sol - ‘sol’d away. So that a thing is absolute when it is pure; when there is nothing alien with it.

3. We can say then that the term ‘absolute’ should be used for the ultimate source of all things, because that alone is truly absolute.

4. If we take the paper as our symbol again, and we say, “Let the paper represent the sentient power, the Infinite Sentient Power, the behaviour patterns of which constitute the world we see,” we can say that, “This paper remains itself, even when it is waving, or if we fold it up.” No matter what we do with it, it remains paper. If this paper is made to represent the Absolute Sentient Substance, we can say that, “It remains itself, absolutely.” That is, there is nothing other than it, and all the rolling up of the paper; the folding of the paper; the creasing of the paper; the twisting of the paper; the waving of the paper; the vibrating of the paper, does not alter for a moment that it is paper that is doing all these things. In the same sense, the ultimate source of all things whatever is remaining exactly what it is from all eternity. No matter what happens in the way of actualisation of power, power remains essentially itself, and therefore we say it is ‘Absolute’. We can ‘solve away’ the whole of creation, remove all the forms, and that which has caused all these forms remains what it is - ’The Ultimate Cause With All Washed Away’ – therefore we use the term ‘Absolute’ for it, and we can use the letter ‘A’ to symbolise this.

5. Now our letter ‘A’ in the English form is like two inclined lines leaning on each other, tied together with a ligature. And this itself symbolises something of the nature of the Absolute. The Absolute is such, that when there is an inclination within it, and a ligature, then you have a closure. Creation occurs by the inclination of two aspects of the Absolute.

6. If we like to represent it in another way, we can say, “Let there be a contraction onto a centre, and let the centre react back onto the contracting force.” This again would be another way of representing the letter ‘A’ – the movement onto a centre, the reaction from the centre. The centre would mark the focal point of any given zone of attention and the perimeter would mark its limit of extension.

7. The letter ‘A then, can be symbolised in three lines, as we do it; two diagonal lines ones leaning on each other, and a horizontal ligature. And it can symbolise the three-fold nature of the Absolute.

8. The Absolute is a field of sentient power and this power ‘leans’ on itself, and thus apparently gives rise to a dualism, and yet underneath is the ‘ligature’ of a continuum of power. So in the same way when we write Saturn in the centre of a circle, and Jupiter on the perimeter, we are symbolising a force pressing onto the centre, and a force going away from the centre, and the continuous balance of these across the middle (which we represent by Mercury) gives us again a triangle – Saturn, Jupiter, and Mercury. This same triangle can be seen in the letter ‘A’. (05.00). The two forces leaning on each other in this case are the ‘Jupiter’ force and the ‘Saturn’ force (which pre-suppose each other) and the ‘Mercury’ is the linking force between the two.

9. We can say then that the Absolute, because it is the source of all that is, must contain within itself such functions that can appear as polarised forces; can appear as forces in self-opposition.

10. But we observe straight away that as soon as we get these forces in opposition, they give rise to a closed zone. In the case of the letter ‘A’ it is the triangle.

11. In the case of the opposition where we put Saturn at the centre of the circle, Jupiter on the perimeter, we are closing a zone by the continuous rotation of the force to the centre, from the centre, to the centre, from the centre. This generates a sphere of being. And this closure is represented in the letter ‘B’.

12. Now we’ll draw a line, and the line we have drawn to separate ‘A’ from ‘B’ we will call the line demarking the finite from the infinite. The Absolute is infinite, and below the level of the infinite is the finite. We can say that ‘B’ then equals ‘the relative, and closure of finites’. The Absolute is infinite.

13. We’ve drawn a straight line between ‘A’ and ‘B’, but if you like to imagine this line continuing a long way and bending round quietly until it meets itself, it is really a circle. And then we can draw another diagram showing the closure of the circle and we would write the letter ‘B; inside the circle, and ‘A’ outside the circle. The ‘A’ is infinite; the ‘B’ is finite.

14. If we understand this diagram properly we can read philosophy with some degree of profit, and if we don’t understand this division we don’t understand the basic propositions behind philosophy at all.

15. Whenever we talk about ‘being’ we are talking about closure; when we talk about ‘non-being’ we are talking about the Absolute.

16. ‘Being’ means ‘being closed’. ‘Being’ is a verb, the progressive form of the verb (the verb ‘to be’) and it implies a boundary. ‘B’ for ‘boundary’; ‘B’ for ‘booth’; ‘B’ for ‘Ball’, and so on. It all implies a closure. So ‘B’ is the realm of all relative closed finites. ‘A’ is the ‘non-realm’ of the ‘Absolute-Infinite’.

17. Now with the ‘Absolute-Infinite’ we have to postulate two aspects: sentience; and power. We have to postulate these from the beginning because if we don’t we can never introduce these again at any point.

18. From the power aspect, ‘power’ equals ‘force’, equals ‘cause’, equals ‘universe of forms’. Power ‘behaving’ produces forms. But these forms produced would never be known to us unless there was sentiency in the power. If we hadn’t got sentiency in our bodies (in the power which has modalised itself as ‘body’), we wouldn’t know that we were bodies. Sentience is here with us In the body, and if we, with abstract thought, pretend that there is a non-sentient and feeling matter, as soon as we have pretended it we have committed an error because in fact we are pretending there is one. And we are sentient beings – a non-sentient being could pretend nothing. We, in pretending that sentience does not exist, prove it to exist because only by our sentience can we postulate it not to exist at all. So our proof of the sentience of all things consists in this: if sentience is not inserted into the Absolute in the first place there is no point at which we can introduce it into a materialistic evolutionary analysis.

19. Supposing we imagine for a moment that there are various bound particles called material particles… Shade them in …. Little circles. Shade them in to signify the opacity of matter. Now if we define each particle as non-sentient, that is, having no sense, then if we put two no-senses together we don’t get any sense out of it. (10.00) If we put three non-senses together we still get no sense. If we put a million non-senses together we get no sense.

20. Now the Materialist-Evolutionists have pretended that we can take a number of material particles and by simply increasing the number of it, we can cause sentience to appear out of non-sentience simply by multiplying the entities that have no sense. And this is manifestly illogical.

21. Because they are aware that mere multiplicity will not confer sense upon non-sense, then they have introduced another concept to try to induce us to accept the hypothesis. This is the idea of ‘pattern’, they say, “Although number alone wouldn’t do it – “, (because if we imagine an infinity of non-sentient points, and infinite number, infinitely large, beyond our grasp, making them large does not add sense to them. And therefore the simple increase by number of non-sense particles does not produce sense). So they say, “Let us now begin to arrange these particles in a certain way and then declare that the relation between them can produce sentience.” The non-sentience gives rise to sentience by ‘patterning’ the parts. Now this is what they say when they pretend that the molecules constituting a human brain by their peculiar arrangement give rise to sentience. Now if any single molecule in the brain is non-sentient then that one can never generate sentience from itself. And if we take a few million-million of these things and put them all together and pattern them in a form we call the human brain, if there is no sense in all the constituent elements then there is no sense in the brain.

22. So we can never give rise to the concept of sentience in a material universe if we start with a statement that, “The material particles (the atoms, or sub-atomic particles) are non-sentient.” We can never give rise to sentience from it. There is point at which we can insert sentience into the material world if it has been excluded from the beginning.

23. Now the fact that we are sentient shows that it is ‘Here-Now’. That it cannot be introduced unless it’s at the head of it. It is ‘Here-Now’ and therefore it has been introduced. Therefore it must be in the Absolute itself. The Absolute must be stated to be ‘Sentient Power’, because, from the Absolute has appeared powers; forces; bodies,; and so on, as modalities of power; and ‘sentience’, that is - awareness of these things. The awareness must be in the Absolute; otherwise it can never appear in nature. So, when we see the letter ‘A’ we should meditate on this fact.

24. If we were doing Mantra Yoga, we would take the letter ‘A’ or ‘Aah’ (the free vowel uttered by the babies when they are first born) and we would say, “This signifies the ‘Power Absolute’ prior to creation; prior to binding.”

25. When we come to ‘bind’ we use the letter ‘B’ to signify it. We find a very early form of it is simply a circle. And we find another form of it is squared off; another form of it is parted; our form of it is a sort of cursive one, made out of a square one with two rooms. If we look at the Hebrew for it, we draw a base-line to represent the ground, and we draw a curved line - nearly a right-angle to the curve on the change of direction – and then we are looking at a side elevation if you like of what in effect is a tent. The base line here is the ground; the vertical and the roof are continuous lines because they are made of canvas. This is a tent, and the wind is blowing this way, and the owner of this tent is sitting inside the tent.

26. So that the letter ‘B; as written in the Hebrew is really the drawing of a tent which is still a dwelling, it’s still a place where the thing is sheltered from infinity, from the outside world.

27. Now, as soon as we finite at all we have caused relative curvature. To draw a circle is to include (that’s ‘close in’), and exclude (that’s ‘close out’). (15.00). The fluid (..?..) part means ‘close’ and we have the (..?..) ‘X’. And we say that, “When a circle is drawn it includes a finite and excludes the In-finite. So every circle drawn brings to be (that is, ‘to bind – ‘B’ means ‘to bind, to circumscribe’) … brings to be a finite, closed, zone; and excludes infinity.

28. Now from this we can see the meaning of the statement that, “Egotism is a bad thing, because Egotism is ‘identification with a finite zone’,” and it automatically excludes the infinite resources of infinite power.

29. If we were to take the Freudian definition of the Ego Complex we would say that it is simply a group of ideas derived from education and recorded in our brain in such a way that when we try to act, the nervous impulses of the act always go through this group of ideas called the Ego Complex. And this Ego Complex, according to the mode of its filing, or training, or requirement, modifies whatever you try to do on the way out.

30. So that when you are being egotistic, you have a system of ideas to do with your individuality. They are the product of what your parents have said to you, and what your educators have said to you; and your reaction to these things. And these ideas together constitute the idea that you are a separate individual. As a separate individual you are closed in, and you have closed out (excluded) the infinite sentient power of the Absolute. Now all religion has to do with a method of widening out ‘B’ and re-asserting ‘A’.

31. The statement is made that from ‘A’ to ‘B’ there is a fall, and we know that the word ‘fall’ is the same as the word ‘pall’ (p-a-double ‘L’; sound-shift ‘f’ to ‘p’`). This ‘pall’ is a covering. It is this circular line, this is a ‘pall’; the circulating forces round a sphere, that create a shielding shell over the finite event. Now the ‘Fall’ is always from the Absolute into the Relative. It is always from the infinite into the finite.

32. When you act purely, that is, without adulteration, without in any sense doing a thing for any reason other than itself; when a thing is done purely for this act alone and not for any other; when it is done as an end in itself and not a means to something else, then the act is called Absolute, and it is said in this sense, “Man can act Absolutely.” That is to say, he can do an act simply because that act is that act and not another. Some people want to walk when they go somewhere. That is walking as a means. That’s impure, that’s walking as a means; walking not to walk, but walking to get somewhere. And if you go walking for walking, like a good Zen exponent would do, you would walk simply because the function of walking is doing something in itself. And the psyche is doing the walking with it. He is identified with the walking, and the walking psyche is its own end. It is not trying to get somewhere from ‘A’ to ‘B’. By means of walking it is simply walking. In the same way that if you cry, like the old holy man in Zarathustra, if you cry, you may be crying as a means to get your own way; you may be crying in order to express some particular sorrow. If you do, this is a means, and it isn’t pure - it’s not Absolute: and if you cry, and the crying is simply crying, and not for something other than crying, then it is Absolute. It is absolved from contagion by other things. If you laugh, likewise; when you do so, provided you are not doing it for any reason beyond itself – reducing it to a means – the act is Absolute. And to act in this way is called ‘Absolute Action’.

33. Now ‘Absolute `Action’ is the same thing that is referred to in Zen philosophy as ‘immediacy’. It is not mediated; you have no reason for it, you simply do it. It is not a mechanical reaction to an external stimulus. It springs out of the centre of your own awareness (20.00) but it has no rationale preceding it and guiding it. It simply springs into existence from itself.

34. If we compare here two different philosophies, the Zen philosophy of Buddhist Japan, with the Hasidic philosophy of the Jews, we find them very, very, similar, and yet different in a very special way. All oriental philosophies with the exception of the Jewish philosophies have said that, “The time process itself is transitory, and therefore to be got rid of.” They have said that time is, “Something to transcend, to get over, to get rid of; and forget about it.” They have said that, “There is a non-time level called Nirvana and this is the aim – getting to Nirvana.”

35. Now we could show, given the appropriate length of time, that this has been misconceived, not by the founders, but by the disciples of those founders, who have failed to appreciate the precise nature of this Eternal Absolute. While Zen, as a Buddhist religion, is biased into immediacy of the non-temporal order, the Hasidic idea is different. It looks slightly different; but it is absolutely different in this sense. Time, in Jewish thought, is eternity expressing itself ‘here’ in a ‘now’. And this ‘now’ is moving. We’ve said before that we cannot assert that the Absolute is static, because the concept of the static is derived from finite forces in opposition. Only where there are finite forces opposing each other and blocking each other’s activity, can we use the word ‘static’, from the base ‘sta-‘. When we stand and fasten it, and tie it down, and lock it up, that is ‘static’. Now that can only refer to a finite. The infinite therefore, which cannot be opposed in this way and ‘tied down’ cannot be static. Therefore we say that the Absolute is absolutely dynamic. It is power and it is pure motion. But that motion is all there is absolutely; and therefore whatever appears in what we call the ‘time-process’ serially can only be aspects of eternality viewed from within it through closed zones – the closure of those zones itself being a function of the movement of the Absolute. It is the movement of the Absolute we have represented so often with the rippling of the paper, and the positing in the ripples of an infinite pattern of overlapping circles, and the shifting of super-stress as the paper waves means that one circle is animated then lapses; the next circle is animated then lapses; the next is animated and lapses, and is an apparent serialization of presentation of a circle when in fact what we know is an infinity of such zones are continuously activated. And yet it appears that if we identify with one of these zones, and then make an observation from it to another one, it will always give rise to the idea of serial presentation.

36. In other words we only get the temporal serial world by first identifying with a finite closed system. If you don’t identify with your gross physical body your time sense begins to go away. You know this because when you stop identification with your physical body tonight when you go to bed your time awareness lapses. So if it happens that when you go to sleep it is dark, when you wake up suddenly because of a strange noise it is still dark, you don’t know what time it is. There’s no sense of time there, unless you identify with a given finite physical observation point. Now, the first few seconds about it is saying in effect, “Every circle that appears as a finite in the time process is an eternal, there presented as if it were a temporal.”

37. Now, as it happens to be an ‘eternal’ it is an absolutely valid and invaluable experience in time.

38. Supposing you turn round and shake hands with each other; that’s a temporal act. And if you do it, and at the moment of making contact hand to hand (25.00) you say, “This is contact: this is participation in absolute relation of the order signified by the two inclining lines in the letter ‘A’.” Suddenly, instead of being merely a temporal act, contact is an eternal act appearing in the ‘now’. Now this is the Hasidic attitude towards it as opposed to the orientalist attitude of the Buddhist generally, and various other religions like Hinduism. A Hasid, being Jewish, is strongly individuated. He says, “Each one of those circles in eternity, is as valid as all the others, and is peculiarly unique in that it is the only centre from which the kind of observation can be made that it makes.” So it doesn’t matter how many others there are; it doesn’t matter if a given zone is a congenital idiot. From the point where that congenital idiot is situated, it, and it alone, can make that observation.” That observation is absolutely valid because it is made from that centre. And that centre is an absolute centre when it stands from its own central impulse, and rejects interference from other centres. When interference comes it has committed adultery with surrounding circles. When it acts of its own centre there is no adultery and its action is absolute. So that even a congenital idiot looking at the world, if we could suddenly see through his eyes we would see a world perfectly valid for him; and a world which is valid for us, seen through his eyes. We will have to see that his world is as good as our world. And if we can once realise this fact that inside each individual there is a centre of absolute validity, because this individual, appearing in the time process is only a super-stress on an eternal individuating form. This is a terribly important difference because, in the one case (the general orientalist’s attitude), we tend to devalue the time process and devalue the individual consciousness and try to get rid of it. Whereas in the other case, represented generally by Jewish thought and specifically by Hasidic thought, that eternity is pushing itself and generating a time process and appearing at any moment of time in a peculiarly individuated way. Now the way it is individuating is an eternal fact here presenting itself. So that everybody then feels his own eternality in the act of being a temporal being. Now this is a peculiar identity of opposites.

39. The kind of thought here is illustrated in a statement by a rabbi who is telling a story about a young man who is going home, and on the way he passes another rabbi friend of his, and the house is in darkness and it’s late at night. He taps on the door, and the rabbi inside says, “Who is it?” And he says’ “It is I!” And the rabbi does not open the door. So he waits sometime, and he knocks again. “Who is it?” “It is I!” Again the rabbi does not open the door. He waits. “Who is it?” This time he gives his name, and the rabbi shouts out to him, “You should have said so in the first place; you have no right to say ‘I’; only God can say ‘I’”

40. Now he’s talking about ‘absoluteness’ and about the observation from reflexive self-awareness.

41. When you stand at the door in the dark and say’ “I,” How do we know who it is? We know this ‘I’ is a consciousness, but you are only legitimate to say, “I,” when you are referring to pure consciousness and not to a specific body. So standing outside in the dark and saying, “I am here,” conveys no information whatever, because ‘formation’ is not ‘I’, not ‘consciousness’. Formation is an object, and therefore no information is given when you say, ”I.”

42. Well, if you see every zone to be absolute in itself, because it is the Absolute Sentient Power at that point, which is activating itself, and looking from this centre to other centres, and in looking from it, from this finite closed zone; looking from it to other zones, it is generated by its mode of looking - a time process. It is seeing other circles as if they were serialised (30.00) when in fact they are not.

43. Now, at the moment, a being who is reflexively aware of ‘aware-nessing’ himself and not identified with the form, then he is identical with the absolute and it would be correct for him to say, “I,” because he would be referring to the Absolute and he would not be referring to a form.

44. When then we look at this letter ‘B’, we see that in fact the boundary of it can only be a super-stress. It cannot be valid in itself. It does not separate this finite closed zone from other zones. It isn’t as if we could finite a zone and take it out, and leave a hole where it has been with nothing in it. You can’t do this sort of thing. We can abstractly talk as if we could do it, but we cannot in fact do it. Neither can we conceive the possibility of doing it. It is merely an abstract intellectual exercise to pretend we can do it. But if we are duped by the exercise into thinking we have done it, we have fallen from the continuous nature of the Absolute into a conceptual level. The intellect has duped us. And it is this power of the intellect to dupe us by abstract thinking that is signified by the devil when he is said to be, “The prince of the powers of the air,” which signifies intellect.

45. Now because this letter ‘B’, or the ‘binding letter’ can only be a super-stress in the Absolute, (because this finite cannot be valid on its own, because it is surrounded by an infinity of such finites overlapping it), and also because it is a modality of the absolute continuum; because of that this letter ‘B’ must be considered to be merely a function of the eternal. If we now compound ‘A’ and ‘B’ together and write them down, we have an old word ‘father’. ‘Ab’ means ‘father’. We have it in the word ‘abbot’, abbey, and so on. It means ‘father’ and it is the peculiar name of the God who has created everything. And it is saying, in this word, that ‘absolute’ (which is pure dynamism - ‘A’) has within itself produced ‘B’; ‘Being’ is inside ‘non-being’. You often come across this concept of non-being in modern philosophy, and if you are not used to the handling of the concept, you can get very pessimistic and think that ‘non-being’ is a terrible thing. You may think it means ‘annihilation’, and you may think annihilation is a bad thing. But in fact the ‘non-being’ is simply the ‘non limited’.

46. When we do the letter ‘B’ we simply circumscribe a zone, when we untie it and take the string away, … Throw it away … What remains is the Absolute; but this Absolute is not annihilation. This Absolute is an Absolute positive; it was the ‘B’ that was posited that was the negative. The finite being was negated of its infinity in the act of being posited as a finite. Two negatives make a positive, so if we negate the negation of finite being, we get back the absolute positive from which it started.

47. Now both of these put together (the Absolute Infinite, and the relatively bound within the infinite by the infinite) constitutes the letter ‘A’ and ‘B’, and the word ‘Ab’ meaning ‘father’.

48. If you reverse the reading into ‘Ba’, this is the Hebrew word meaning ‘in; within’, and therefore we can see that the word ‘Ab’ contains within itself as a complete word - a symbol - all ‘possibles’ whatever, the possible those power abilities to close and to unclose; to include and exclude; to posit and to negate, all these are symbolised in ‘Ab’. And therefore when we say’ “Ab’” of the father, like Jesus in Gethsemane, talking about his father and doubling the word, “Abba.” When he is saying this he is talking about the Absolute Sentient Power internal to which all closures are made. One of the closures being the body that was in Gethsemane at the time and was being used as a centre of reference in order to produce the dialogue, in order that other circles identified with themselves should receive this as a stimulus (35.00) towards breaking identification.

49. But the purpose of breaking the identification is not to eliminate the zones of individuation. It is to eliminate slavery to them.

50. Once we have broken away from them so that we are no longer mechanically identified with them, then we can deliberately re-identify, and then break identification, and re-identify. We can make and break, this is the key of the ‘binding and loosing’. When you go to bed at night you break identification with your body, when you wake up in the morning you re-identify with the body.

51. For ordinary daily living this kind of making and breaking of identification is mechanical and is not under the control of the resident intelligence in that body, but by certain exercises and clear thinking it can become a possibility that a person can identify with his body and then let go of the identification; he can pass from the time-process identification into the eternal non-identification. But all the time he can see that when he is in the time process he is still only an eternal being with a super-stress placed on himself by his own will to identify. And this will to identify individually is precisely the cause of all the finiting processes that breed opposition and conflict in the time process. Remove identification with finites and the problem disappears. Hence all the work that is done to break down the concept of being.

52. Now unfortunately, in the history of European thought we have found a tremendous extrovert sense of thought directed into the material and identified with the material body. And identifying this and all finity, with the concept of value, we have generated a term ‘being’ and this ‘being’ has come to be equivalent to ‘absolute value’, and consequently you will find all modern books of philosophy are concerned with the problem of being and non-being, but they don’t understand what being means precisely. So if you read in the deepest thinkers in modern existentialist philosophy, you’ll find they keep using the term being and non-being and then apologising for themselves in the next sentence as if they were not sure where being and non-being overlap, if they do. And this is still failure to realise that elementary fact that we say, “When we define, we define the limits of applications of terms. We do not define things; they are defined already.” So that when we indicate the limit of the application of the term ‘being’, we say, “Only that which can be circumscribed and which closes a finite zone shall we call ‘a being’. But whatever cannot be so closed must be called a non-being. We must negate this binding; this binding process.” And in so doing we posit back the Absolute internal to which that boundary has appeared. So here we have the father out of the Absolute, and his first dwelling. The letter ‘B’ here is the English ‘booth’, that means a house; ‘b-e-a-t-h’ in Hebrew (beath) means ‘a house’. ‘A’ is the Absolute First; ‘B’ is the house produced inside him. Observe, he is not in the house, the house is in him. “In him we live, move, and have our being, and dwelleth.” And consequently the ‘B’ is always within the Absolute.

53. The circle I draw is on the paper, but the amount of paper inside the circle isn’t all the paper, there’s paper beyond. And that paper here within the circle is inside the paper outside the circle. So that every finite thing whatever is inside God, and God himself is inside nothing.

54. Let us say that the concept ‘inside/outside’ does not apply to the Absolute.

55. Now if we come to consider what emerges after this, in the third letter, in the case of the English, we get ‘C’ and in the case of the Hebrew we get a ‘hard G’. Let’s see what this signifies.

56. The letter ‘C’ we normally pronounce, when followed by a back vowel like ‘a’, ‘o’, or ‘u’, as a hard ‘k’. And it means ‘closure’. And the letter ‘G’ hard – Gamma – or the Hebrew ‘Gimel’ (40.00) means ‘a closure’ and a complete blocking or a solidifying of that zone.

57. So it’s just as if we were to say, “Let us do ‘A’ for the Absolute; and then ‘B’ is a circle; and then we shade the circle in, and call that ‘Gamma’.

58. It is this ‘Gamma’d up’ business that we find as an ordinary expression. To ‘Gamma-up’ is to ‘block up’ – ‘to gamma’. This hard ‘G’ and the ‘M’ “G –m” means ‘to lock up the substance and press it together very hard’.

59. Now this is the third stage. Let’s have a look at what this means philosophically. Let’s write, in this particular mode: ‘A’ for Absolute; then ‘B’ for the binding process; and then ‘G’ for the solidification or substantialisation of that which is bound. We have now got two worlds in a non-world. The Absolute is not a world at all because ‘world’ implies ‘order’ and ‘division’. ‘World’ is ‘word’ (or ‘power ordering’) plus ‘l’ – which means ‘link’ or ‘binding’ or ‘labouring to tie together’. So that when we say that ‘A’ equals ‘Absolute’; and ‘B’ equals ‘what is circumscribed’; and ‘Gamma’ or ‘Gimel’ equals ‘what is solid’, we have said, ”An Absolute world; an ideal world; and a gross-material world.” Now the ‘Absolute world’ is that internal to which these other two worlds are.

60. Let’s slightly modify the diagram. ‘A’ for the Absolute; now we’ll do a circle for ‘B’; and inside that circle we’ll do another little circle and shade it black.

61. Let’s have a look at what we’ve got. We’ve got a central solid particle marked ‘G’; we’ve got a circumscribed zone marked ‘ B’; and an infinite beyond the circumscribed marked ‘A’.

62. Imagine our gross physical body is this hard ‘G’ Gamma; our gross physical body is a ‘gamma’d up zone’; it is pressed in; it interferes with itself; it gets in its own way. If you decide to put your arm round yourself and get hold of your own elbow around the back of your body, then you’ll have difficulty with it because it are solid and won’t let you do it. So this ‘gamma’d up’ body is a zone of interference that makes a large number of things very difficult. It produces discrete gross-material particles that will not penetrate each other. But the zone of circumscription itself, which is not ‘gamma’d up’, which is to say ‘B’, is the zone where form exists (that is circumscription) but it is not solidified, not ’gamma’d up’. And this is a ‘form’ world around a gross material world.

63. Now in our own case we know that this is somehow mixed up with air we breathe and this helps to animate our body. We can see that that this breathing process is intimately linked to the peculiar qualities of the air that goes into us, and at the same time that it somehow permeates the gross material interspaces of our body, and by this sphere of air going in and out in the breathing act we are somehow animated, and allowed to transcend the gross material level.

64. Our gross material bodies will not penetrate each other, but our idea level, our form level, will. It is still separate, it’s a tangible, one from another, but it can overlap. This means to say that we can actually exchange ideas, and cause our ideas to penetrate into each other, in a way that our gross physical bodies will not. So we can look at somebody’s gross body, and at somebody else’s gross body (one may be tall, one may be short, one may be fat, one may be thin), we close our eyes and put these bodies together- make them overlap - and then press them together, and get an average body out of these, and with the aid of this average body we can make certain statistical predictions.

65. This we can do because there is a form world that is not ‘gathered up’. And apart from this form world (45.00), which is not ‘gathered up’, we have the Absolute in which these other two worlds are themselves. And this Absolute is generating form in one zone and then ‘gathering it up’, and this same Absolute is making another form in another zone and ‘gamming it up’.

66. Now this is very strange, because somehow this Absolute, which is not plural, not dual, is producing zones within itself which are forms and then it is ‘gathering up’ (by pressing into their centres) the individual gross bodies within this non-dual Absolute.

67. We know actually how it does it, because when we draw our diagram of the overlapping circles which represent simply the impulses of the paper when it waves; this Absolute, which is non-dual, when it vibrates throughout itself, produces image vibrations, zones which of themselves, when viewed from any given point of view within a circle are always seen to be finite, and yet they overlap. So our realm of ideas can overlap. But in the centre of each one there is a gamma’d up zone – the gross material body (those look like lots of fried eggs!), which in fact is the discrete part of the relation.

68. So this Absolute then can somehow be seen as creating individuation zones round each individuated form. So each man has his own mind as well as his own body, but the minds are overlapping. The Absolute which is non-plural, non-dual, is producing this plurality of beings and this opposition within itself by en-sphering zones within itself, and it is doing this in creating them, and individuating them although itself is not individuated. When we look at this then we could see three zones: a gross material body; an individual form which has precipitated that body; and round it the Absolute bringing that individual form to exist. That makes three levels, apart from the Absolute, while we’re making a special case for the Absolute producing form ‘B’ and, ’gamming-up’, ‘G’.

69. Now if we said, “When a man is completely identified with his gross-material body, he is said to be awake in the world of matter. But when he’s awake in the world of matter, focused on a material particle, he is asleep to the causal level of his being.”

70. Here is the body, gross body, subtle body or form body, causal body round it. Causal –Subtle – Gross: those three concentric spheres.

71. When we are awake and focused on your gross-material body, the fact that you are focused on that body and identified with its processes means that you are asleep to the infinity of other modes of beings that are beyond the particular one on which you’re focussed.

72. So it is said, “Those being who are walking around in the material world believing they are awake in the material world are really asleep.” And what for them constitutes a dream and deep sleep are really modes of serial presentation in the dream process and simultaneous awareness at the causal level of all that appears in the time process in the gross world as separated serial.

73. So we have a causal here, which simultaneously presents all the form that is appearing in the dream and in thought processes serially, and then precipitating gross material bodies (chemical precipitates) which are formed by the form body, which is made by the causal body; and all these three are in the Absolute.

74. The Absolute is called the (…../…..) beyond the fourth, the mysterious fourth beyond the three you know about. But if we turn this upside down we can see a very peculiar thing about it. If we place the gross-material body on the belly level (50.00) where you put your food; we’ll then have to place the chest level in the form body; and then the causal body in the head. Whereas if we said, “Let us imagine another man upside down to this man.”Well he has his belly in the causal world; then his feeling still in the form/subtle zone; and then his head in the gross material world, we will see a man upside down to the first one. And these are the two ways we can live. We can either put our head, or chief part, into the gross-material world and say, “This is my ruler ‘in me napper’,” in which case the head responds to a mechanical physical stimuli. Or we can turn our head upside down and say my real head is my will.

75. Now the man who has his head in the material world, is actually having his belly in the causal world. It is the impulses of the belly, of the materialistically orientated man that make him move. Whereas in the man who is not materialistically orientated, he has his belly in the gross material world (that is to say he exists as a gross material being) but his control overhead is in the causal world. And therefore it is said, “These two are upside down one to the other, and the ways of God and of men are opposite ways.”

76. A man cannot comprehend, as identified with a finite, what God is up to; because God keeps his head at the causal level.

77. Well the fourth state, of the Absolute, internal to which the causal, and subtle, and gross are precipitated, we must remember, like the paper underneath the drawing, is running underneath all of these and is the continuity principle behind the three – that which links them all together.

78. So we see here in dealing with the first three letters of the alphabet, that we already have a quite complicated series of concepts. We find this same thing, turned round, we can read them just Hebraica or in the ordinary way that we do in English; from left to right or right to left.

79. If we take this same triad of letters and read them the opposite way round to the way we have done, from B-A-G we get G-A-B, ‘gab’. Now everybody knows what ‘Gift of the Gab’ is, and what the angel Gabriel is. Gabriel is the ‘gab’ of God and this gab is the same thing as being able to obscure something by talking about it.

80. If we think of the time process as a mode of God’s speaking, but speaking in such a way that the serial presentation obscures, by the very fact of serialising, the simultaneity of the fact. So that you miss the simultaneity and the relation by focusing on the serial, you are put in the ‘bag’ by the ‘gift of the gab’!

81. Now if we take it as of the English, the letter ‘C’, which is taken as a closure, without bothering to stress specifically - because the English are not concerned with it - the merely gross aspects of it. It gives rise to the words ‘Cab’ and ‘Bac’. This ‘Bac’ is of course the same as the ‘baculum’, the stick or rod of office. And the ‘Cab’ is the ‘Great Secret’; the same one as the ‘cabinet’. And you know the kind of decisions that go on in the ‘Cabinet’, or its equivalent, in any country. This ‘Cab’ means ‘secret’. It’s the same ‘Cab’ in ‘Cabala’. It’s the same ‘cab’ in ‘Cabal’. The same ‘Cab’ in ‘Cabalo’, the horse - the hierarchical symbol. And therefore we see in the simple three-fold literal structure, a highly complex series of ideas which tell us that there is a great secret or ‘Cab’ to do with the ‘gift of the Gab’ inside the letters, which signify God the Absolute begat for himself a Son and then precipitated the world.

82. So we have immediately the letter ‘B’ standing for the Logos as a rational order. The Absolute going beyond this order is the Father, but giving itself into the order. And then internal to this cosmic order, this Logos, the gross-material world is precipitated (55.00).

83. So we can then imagine a gross-material particle, a small one like an electron, or the biggest one we can conceive, the whole of the visible universe seen through the Asalus (?) telescope.

84. All the matter that we can see is great sphere, viewed from a proper distance it would look like a single point. And round it there would be seen a field with a limiting factor round it, and this would correspond with the subtle form of it, and therefore the Cosmic Logos, and then beyond this is the Infinite – the Absolute itself.

85. If we were doing a Mantra Yoga exercise, we would start by observing the ‘B’ and see the limitations of our own body. We would then feel the body by moving it a bit to get the sense of the mass inertia of it, and meditate on what it means to be ‘gamma’d up’, to be blocked, to be solid, to be opaque, to be ignorant. All the things symbolised by the impenetrable.

86. And then to meditate round this block of impenetrability and see the space round it to be that which has precipitated this, and then just as we have focused on the gross-material body, so we then move out of it because we have made a focal centre.

87. We keep it in the centre but we move out from it, and we discover our sphere of ideas, and then we keep on moving out further still until we come to the end of our ideas – that’s the end of the subtle world, not in the serial sense but simply as a sphere of form. And then we leap out of this (and it can only be done by a leap) because further serialisation is still inside the sphere; we leap outside of the sphere, straight into the Absolute.

88. Now this Absolute is the causal level of our being and is our own will. When we become aware of this in this exercise - Starting in the gross body and going into the idea body, and then going beyond the idea body’ simply to feel that one is a being/power initiating these two spheres within itself - this confers what we call ‘initiative’, that is, freedom from reactivity. The power to stand perfectly still, and then without waiting for a stimulus to come, starting a process immediately. And in this immediate start from nothing, breathing a pure, or absolute, act. … (57.40)