Correspondence with
Annette C. Herter

Words are tricky things and I use them badly, but we won't let words come between us, the real me and the real you, will we? You revivify me, give me a nudge. You mean by normal man the perfect[ed] integrity. Of course that is right. But I, for practical purposes, am inclined to think of a person as normal if headed the right way, if he has discovered his normal function and is performing his reasonable service gladly to the best of his ability. Because no man is perfect is just why the word humanity flew to Blake's mind. I think he had the same idea as you. The recognition of the unity of humanity is essential to perfection. "We are all members of one body."¹ I may be wrong, but I think Blake had in mind the striving man rather than the perfect man. However that may be, I KNOW that the striving one is not in his Spectre's power; he may still find his Spectre a formidable foe, but he is an opponent, not a master.

Each Man is in his Spectre's power
Untill the arrival of that hour,
When his Humanity awake
And cast his own Spectre into the lake.

And there to Eternity aspire
The selfhood in a flame of fire
Till then the Lamb of God ...²

I think you will agree; you use the word trying, which is just as good. The thing to remember is that the Spectre is not an outside terror. He is part of me. I think that is the real meaning of the prayer, "deliver us from evil." It means deliver us from the idea of an outside evil on which we can throw the blame. We grow by struggle. "Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth."³ That is why I say that M[ary] is equal to any emergency; not because she is all-powerful but because she has the right attitude, to use one of my ill-favored words. She looks at things from the inside rather than the outside. Each crisis is not a painful blow but a glorious opportunity to discover new riches, to actualize latent possibilities. From this viewpoint, even a comet may be of advantage. "I eat myself."⁴ "Honi soit qui mal y pense."⁵

Now comes that terrible word acceptance. You are quite right that supine acceptance is dangerous. It is fatal, it is turning back, it is Lot's wife. But continued sleep is also fatal. The only thing, as you say, is active acceptance, a recognition of the factual situation and fixed determination to deal with it. Only we must realize that the awful thing will always be there just as it was wound up. Harness it as we will, it will struggle to escape and get the dominance... The Spectre becomes entirely resigned to its chains, only with the perfected man.

MT's letter was not only comforting in the sense of re-assuring; it was also basic and searching. There is one thing that I want to ask about: "se charge." We have an expression in English which seems to be the same but I am not sure. One charges himself with doing a certain thing, that is, he sets himself a definite task.⁶ T's remark, "real air suffocates," makes me think of the oft-repeated saying of Jesus, "I will make you fishers of men." That is what a fisher of men does: He pulls men up into an unaccustomed atmosphere. Extreme care and patience are required so men do not die like fish. I fear I lack the necessary care and patience.

It is very difficult to know just what was in Blake's mind; he was not a bon ton writer. But I choose to think that if he used the subjunctive of awake merely for the sake of the rhyme (which is quite possible) he might have used the indicative casts, for there is no rhyming problem there.

John Scott was an important and lovable figure to me not because of his addiction to money reform (perhaps in spite of it) but because of his inner attitude. This was in part manifested to me by his "Route 1" column, which I followed eagerly and always thought worth more than the rest of MONEY.⁷

There is a vast difference between resigned acceptance of the universe and co-operative acquiescence. We are really all members of one body and if we do not gladly co-operate it is because we do not understand our normal function.

As William Blake says, One thought fills immensity. Socrates long ago said, Know thyself. Gurdjieff proclaims the universal truth. I like him because he is very strong against self-deceit. Self-consciousness before cosmic consciousness. There is a paradox here.

I am with you. I regret not in person, but perhaps in a more real way. We owe a debt. But as God is made to say in Man and God, "If only they were to forsake me and observe my teachings!"⁸

Mary is out of hospital. Everything went very well. She has been very much upset about the death of her doctor. But the lions were chained.

I have been working hard on the Dead Sea Scrolls. Although not as good as Zen, these Qumran people are astonishingly good. They are very insistent on using the present day rather than remembering the past or dreaming about the future. I was much amused by the translation of one of their rules: Do not set your guilt before so as to backslide through it.

Thank you for your birthday wishes and the book.⁹ You and Highlands are always with me so I don't have to remember. I am greatly impressed by Zen. They have the aim and know the necessity of going but do not seem (I may be wrong) fully to appreciate the disharmonization in the fifth stopinder.¹⁰ I have been reading Gurdjieff to the girls at their request. Of course it is being-effort, not reading that counts.

Mary and I read your Zen-nature pamphlet. It is in the Suzuki you gave me. There are many differences in terminology and I would say that they are a trifle vague but they are striving. They emphasize experiencing but they do not seem to emphasize WHO is experiencing. They thus avoid personality but go too far.

Heaven is about us though we see it not. Now sometimes it takes a long time to see. The children of Israel journeyed through the wilderness and did not see the promised land. They drew a material line which simply did not exist. Now I am going a step further and know that you will not be shocked because you know that everyone must formulate in accordance with his own understanding. To me heaven and hell are of the universal reality and therefore inseparable. That is, to put it bluntly, heaven and hell are one. Hell is a beginning, a necessary beginning; it might be called the outskirts of heaven; I prefer to consider it an aspect of heaven. Though we pass through the valley of the direst agony, "something" is with us, if we WISH, to present that agony as an opportunity. But let us get back to earth and have a cup of tea. After all Orpheus followed Eurydice to hell.

I have been reading the Suzuki you gave me for my birthday. He makes many astonishingly profound and useful points, but on the whole I do not think that the Zen methodology as it is called is as efficient for the ordinary beginner as ours. That is, I think Gurdjieff's kindly, "You go too far," is more likely to bring [understanding] than a whack with a cane. Don't work too hard. Remember the first duty.¹¹ But don't stop cooperating with Mary.

Easter is a moveable feast, a symbol traveling with the speed of that comet but always representing right effort, the mighty triumph over death, for selfhood is death.

The Confessions of Jacob Boehme came today. Thank you so much. Boehme has always rated very high with me in spite of the difficulties in reading his books. I suppose my favorite picture is Blake's "Glad Dawn." One theory is that it was inspired by Boehme's "Aurora." I don't believe that theory. I think each one tried to express his own individual experience.

My birthday is Feb. 6. I'll have to confess that I don't hold much with birthdays. I rather incline to the Quaker approach that EVERY day is a new day.

The Bhakti way always causes trouble unless it is understood. It cannot be rejected but must be assimilated.¹²

You speak very wisely and feelingly of suffering.

Your letter was loving and stimulating. I'm always afraid of attempting to present my own ideas for fear they may differ in words (not in essence I am sure) and thus confuse the hearer. For instance the word "relativity." It is used in many senses. To me it means relatedness, reciprocal feeling, love. In this sense it includes your three subheads[:] varying states of consciousness, effort and duration.

[1.] As finite creatures we cannot hope to arrive at reality, only [to] approach it. All truth is a shadow except the last. And we can only approach it by loving trying. 2. Effort must be constant, in the spirit of love and relatedness, not duty. 3. Duration to me means permanence, accepting our own subjective idea of the flow of time and not straining after higher dimensions. I hark back to what Orage said: Anybody can have a momentary flash of awareness; our job is to make it permanent. This can be done only by relatedness.

You have done a marvellous job with Mary and I love you. The best of Christmas to you, in the real sense not the social and commercial sense.

...All being emanates. Blake puts it negatively[:] He whose face gives no light shall never become a star.

TRUST is a wonderful word if not allowed to degenerate into resting in the Lord. Objectively it includes convincement and active participation, although of course that relation to the infinite is quite ineffable and can only be known by experience.

With me the struggle is not so much with limited diet. But I cannot see, hear or speak very well. So there comes to the front the old problem, an actual realization that we cannot do.

Thank you for your thought. The title of the book[,] as you intimate, is misleading. It does not even try to understand. Orage's words on culture are profound. The relation of appearance to reality is basic. I enclose a clipping from Look which shows the current distortion of the idea of culture. As I see it culture is a part of life rather than an aesthetic diversion embroidered on it. This is clearly shown in Mount Analogue, a truly remarkable book, which we have read together.¹³

Galina sent me for my birthday a statue of the apostle Paul.¹⁴ I called to her attention Caravaggio's picture, "The Conversion of St. Paul," and said that it represented the difference between two-centered and three-centered beings.¹⁵ I was pleased (and somewhat surprised) immediately after to find Alexander Eliot saying that the artist was depicting not consummation but opportunity.

It is good to have Mary back.

... I look forward with eagerness to "Avicenna" and your coming and hope to discuss what you suggest. I feel that Gurdjieff's method is indispensable and superb in its meticulous details, but after all a method is merely a means to an end and it is the end that counts.... There is no being unless there is relationship. In quite other than a theological sense, we are all members of one body.

I don't do much ballet dancing these days, but I remember Orage saying that we must struggle on until the horse is shot [from] under us.

Thank you for your post-prandial card. All went well. A. McC brought a most delicious cakeless cake and Mary provided quail. A high level indeed must be reached before one can do what he likes. The populace seems to have given up to the pursuit of fun, not bearing in mind that the word "fun" comes from the early English word "fom" meaning food.¹⁷

Thank you for sending the book.¹⁸ and particularly at this time of hardship. Your reading of this series to us has become embedded in my presence.

¹ Here Mr. Brown quotes Paul, Letter to the Ephesians 4:25. See also Paul's Letter to the Romans 12:5.

² William Blake, Jerusalem. Plate 37.

³ Hebrews 12:6.

⁴ Possible reference to Ouroboros, the ancient Egyptian (and later Gnostic) symbol depicting a serpent swallowing its tail.

⁵ Motto of Britain's Order of the Garter ("May whoever thinks badly of it be shamed.")

⁶ Annette Herter's text, as supplied by Thea Wheelwright: "'Se charge' = takes in charge— "Something, greater than man, that then took him in charge"[:] words I quoted to you. AH"

⁷ MONEY – The Social Credit Newspaper began publication in New York City in 1936. Its publisher (and editor?) was John G. Scott, not to be confused with his better known contemporary John Scott, who later wrote for Time.

⁸ Quote by Charles Péguy, a nineteenth-century French poet also known for his epigrams. Mr. Brown likely encountered this line in Victor Gollancz, Man and God: Passages Chosen and Arranged to Express a Mood about the Human and Divine (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1951).

⁹ Ms. Herter had sent one of D. T. Suzuki's books on the practice of Zen.

¹⁰ Note by Mary Brown or Thea Wheelwright: See the chapter on Purgatory, which is Gurdjieff's creation myth, in All and Everything.

¹¹ "Don't work too hard. Remember the first duty." Mr. Brown may be saying pithily (to another fourth-way practitioner) that striving for enlightenment is less effective than "liking what it does not like."

¹² Here Mr. Brown is speaking not about devotional practices within Hinduism itself but rather about importing such practices into fourth-way work. One source of trouble, for example, would be seeing the object of one's adoration and worship as something separate from oneself.

¹³ René Daumal. Le Mont Analogue. Roman d'aventures alpines, non euclidiennes et symboliquement authentiques. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1952. Translated as Mount Analogue: A Novel of Symbolically Authentic Non-Euclidean Adventures in Mountain Climbing. London: Vincent Stuart Ltd., 1959. It's unlikely that the "we" in this sentence includes Ms. Herter; it probably refers to Mr. Brown and his wife Mary.

¹⁴ Galina Volkov is another of Mr. Brown's correspondents.

¹⁵ Note by Mary Brown: Two-centered beings are animals. All animals are born with physical and emotional centers, sometimes called brains or functions. Three-centered beings are men. We have intellectual, physical, and emotional centers. Owing to our being born with three centers, we have greater possibilities for understanding and growth and also greater responsibilities than animals or worms. A worm can be considered a one-centered being. (See also the letter of 30 April 1966 to Lisa Courtney Howe.)

¹⁶ Mr. Brown is referring to Alexander Eliot, Sight and Insight (New York: McDowell, Obolensky Inc., 1959), p. 11.

¹⁷ Note by Mary Brown or Thea Wheelwright: Allan is referring here to the following: "What is this myth 'happiness' that has bamboozled all of us? I know of nothing more demeaning than the frantic pursuit of 'fun.' I find it a form of communal lunacy. The word 'fun' comes from the medieval English 'fom,' meaning food. Happiness to me lies in stretching, to the farthest boundaries of which we are capable, the resources of the mind and heart." --Leo Rosten

¹⁸ Note by Thea Wheelwright: Meetings with Remarkable Men.