The SLUGS

As part of his education of his grandson, Hassein, Beelzebub repeatedly returns to explanations of the fundamental cosmic laws.  Most importantly, there are the “first-degree” Sacred Cosmic Laws of World-Creation and World-Maintenance.  In The Tales, these are the sacred laws of Triamazikamno and Heptaparaparshinokh.  In the Ouspenskian version of Gurdjieff’s teaching, these are referred to simply as the Law of Three and the Law of Seven, also called the Law of the Octave.  According to Beelzebub and Gurdjieff, these two sacred cosmic laws are embodied throughout the Universe in all phenomena in any world, and throughout all time. #1

Everything is some type of “law conformable ‘Fraction’” of the original unity, and these sacred principles of the threefold and sevenfold nature of the World depict the processes by which the multitude of things is created out of an original unity.  The student Nicoll explains: “God is ... first One and then Three and then Seven.”  (1975, p. 1386)   Just as white light is reflected through a three sided prism to yield a spectrum of seven colours, so also, these sacred principles state that all of life and creation is based on such patterns.  In fact, these Sacred Cosmic Laws are even inherent in the primary Source, even before creation occurs.   For Beelzebub, no education of his grandson Hassein could possibly be complete without attempting to articulate these archaic teachings of “Objective Science.”  Of course, “the slugs” have no memory of such principles, and can no longer “instinctually sense cosmic truths”–given the degradation of the human psyche.

“A law which always flows into a consequence and becomes the cause of subsequent consequences, and always functions by three independent and quite opposite characteristic manifestations, latent within it, in properties neither seen nor sensed.”  (p.139)

“The teaching of the three forces is at the root of all ancient systems. The first force may be called active or positive; the second, passive or negative; the third, neutralizing. But these are merely names, for in reality all three forces are equally active and appear as active, passive, and neutralizing, only at their meeting points, that is to say, only in relation to one another at a given moment. The first two forces are more or less comprehensible to man and the third may sometimes be discovered either at the point of application of the forces, or in the ‘medium,’ or in the ‘result.’  But, speaking in general, the third force is not easily accessible to direct observation and understanding. The reason for this is to be found in the fundamental limitations of man’s ordinary psychological activity ... . People  cannot perceive and observe the third force directly any more than they can spatially perceive the ‘fourth dimension.’ ...  people cannot observe phenomena as manifestations of three forces because we cannot observe the objective world in our subjective states of consciousness. ...  If we could see the manifestation of three forces  in every action, we should then see the world as it is (things in themselves). ... The third force is a property of the real world.” (Ouspensky, 1949, pp. 77-8)

    “The Law of Sevenfoldness exists on the Earth and will exist forever and in everything.
 “For instance, in accordance with this Law, there are in the white ray seven independent colors; in every definite sound there are seven different independent tones; in every state of man, seven different independent sensations; further, every definite form can be made up of only seven different dimensions; every weight remains at rest on the Earth only thanks to seven ‘reciprocal thrusts,’ and so on.”  (p. 461)

“.. ‘seven-classes-of-vibrations’ of those cosmic sources, the arising and further action of each of which also arise and depend on seven others, which in their turn arise and depend on seven further ones, and so on right up to the first most holy ‘unique-seven-propertied-vibration’ issuing from the Most Holy Prime Source ... .”  (p. 476)

 “‘The-line-of-the-flow-of-forces-constantly-deflecting-according-to-law
-and-uniting-again-at-its-ends.’   “This sacred primordial cosmic law has seven ‘centers of gravity’ and the distance between each two of these deflections or ‘centers of gravity’ is called a Stopinder-of-the-sacred- Heptaparaparshinokh.’   "This law, passing through everything newly arising and everything existing, always makes its completing processes with seven Stopinders.”  (p. 750)

The Stopinders are the intervals or distances between the centers of gravity.

These descriptions are illustrated by the music scale.  A descending octave, or devolving octave, begins at Do and passes through the first interval or Stopinder into ti, and then down through la-sol-fa-mi-re to a low do.  The high Do, the eighth note, is the completion of the whole seven notes.  Hence the Law of Sevenfoldness is also labelled as the “Law of the Octave”–as octave means eightfold.  An ascending octave, an evolutionary octave, begins at a low do, and pass through the first interval to re-mi-fa-sol-la-ti to the high Do.  Thus we can speak of both evolving and devolving octaves.   The eighth note of the Octave is the Whole in contrast to its Fractions.  #2
 

2.   Similarly, in Vedic teachings of ancient India, material nature is called Prakriti: which consists of one “fundamental” and “seven relative” classes of Prakriti.  Vedic teachings regards all of nature as composed of the generations of causes and effects generated through the “three modes of nature”– of tamas, rajas and sattva, related to matter, energy and intelligence.  In the same vein, Tibetan Buddhism construes reality as composed of forty-nine planes of existence, seven planes, each with seven sub-planes.