12

Inner Octaves

By this stage readers will appreciate that the universe may have many more facets than science currently allows. No longer do we see it as simply a four-dimensional phenomenon involving according to thermodynamic principles; it has now become a vibrant, essentially six-dimensional entity, possibly teeming with innumerable kinds of lesser six-dimensional life forms. These various life forms, as we have noted, occupy various scales of existence on the evolutionary ladder, beginning at the level of DNA and culminating at the scale of the galactic helix, all of them coexisting within a framework of seven dimensions.

Now, this ascending “ladder” is not simply a progressive chain of separate rungs placed one on top of another. If the whole universe is a living entity, this means that it is a fully synchronized body, the vibrations of all scales interpenetrating and reinforcing one another strictly according to the dictates of the grand design. We might best view this evolutionary phenomenon as a series of seven pulsating spheres of vibrations, each being contained within the one above it, all of them sharing the same central point.

For example, linear DNA contains within it the whole atomic scale, an infinity of “points,” or an endlessly variable sequence of nitrogenous base pairs, each consisting of a few fundamental atoms. But it also contains within it the seeds, or genes, of the greater scale above; it is the blueprint, the recipe, for the creation of the entire organism. In the same way the organism of the human being contains within it the whole DNA scale, an “infinity” of biomolecules, and also, one assumes, the seeds or genes of the greater solar body above. We can imagine the same process repeating itself up through the galactic scale, to the ultimate, Absolute scale.

The hierarchy of dimensions is also integrated in the same manner. A one-dimensional entity—a line—contains within it an infinite number of zero-dimensional points and is a cross-section, a blue-print, of a greater plane; a plane is comprised of an infinite number of one-dimensional lines and is a cross-section of a greater solid; and a solid, in a similar fashion, contains within it an infinite number of two-dimensional planes and is a cross-section of a greater four-dimensional entity existing along the line of time. Exactly the same pattern would repeat itself in the metaphysical scales above, where the four-dimensional line of time encompasses all three-dimensional possibilities, the five-dimensional plane of light all four-dimensional possibilities, and the six-dimensional “solid” form of the ultimate reality embraces everything: points, lines, planes, solids, time, eternity.

Such a view expresses above all the holistic nature of the universe, on which we shall be concentrating in the following two chapters. We are now familiar with the idea of the complete interconnectedness of everything, a principle that mystics and yogis have intuitively understood for thousands of years and which scientists of the twentieth century latterly discovered through the so-called nonlocal quantum correlations existing between widely separated particles. But is there a way in which this somewhat tenuous and abstract reality can be better understood? That is, if the entire universe is a nonlocal arena of interpenetrating and mutually interacting vibrations, how might such an all-encompassing process work? For example, how can vibrations or wave/particles in one part of the universe be simultaneously “in tune” with vibrations light years away? Or, alternatively, how could the conscious mind of the mystic or the shaman or the LSD tripper connect with a nonlocal reality?

In chapter 8, we noted that musical theory itself provided at least part of an explanation for simultaneity, whereby the ultimate note of any given harmonious scale can at one and the same time exist in other scales, above and below. But can we determine what kind of mechanism allows these vastly different scales to be so intimately linked?

As it happens, we can. And, not surprisingly perhaps, we need look no further than the theory of transcendental evolution, the “theory of everything,” for a major clue. This is the sacred number 64, the number of infinite harmony, the key, as it were, to infinity. Primarily associated with the Great Pyramid—a monument dedicated to light, or “lightsmeasures”—the number 64 tells us that an octave of light is further subdivisible into eight inner octaves.

Just for the record, this concept of inner octaves—an outline of which follows in a moment—did not come to me directly as a result of my preoccupation with the Hermetic Code. In fact, I first came across it several years before I fully realized the Code’s significance. My source at that time was Ouspensky’s In Search of the Miraculous, the record of lectures given by George Gurdjieff in Moscow and St. Petersburg at the turn of the twentieth century. As I said in the introduction, Gurdjieff always claimed that his system of knowledge was drawn from teachings reaching back into the remotest antiquity, but even after reading everything written by or about him it was some time before I made the connection and realized that the principle of inner octaves is in fact very neatly embodied in the Hermetic Code, the oldest recorded teaching on Earth.

Gurdjieff tells us that all matter vibrates, resonates within, in the form of octaves. Normally, when we speak of matter, we are referring to phenomena of substance, things we can touch, see, or measure through some form of scientific method. According to Gurdjieff, however, the property of materiality spans the entire universal spectrum. “Everything in this universe can be weighed and measured,” he said, “The Absolute is as material, as weighable and measurable as the moon, or as man.”¹ The higher orders of materiality, however, are much too rarefied to be regarded as matter from the point of view of chemistry or physics; matter on a higher plane is not material at all for the lower planes, but it permeates them nonetheless.

In his lectures, Gurdjieff often referred to a cosmological model known as the “ray of creation,” which, he said, belonged to ancient knowledge. Basically, it was an elementary plan of the universe, beginning with the highest “world order” and ending with the lowest, so:

1. Absolute

2. All worlds

3. All suns

4. Sun

5. All planets

6. Earth

7. Moon

As we see, the ray of creation, like the hierarchy of dimensions already discussed, represents seven planes in the universe, seven worlds, one within another. (Pythagoras, incidentally, expressed this same view through his geometrical symbol known as the Lambda, comprising seven concentric circles.)

Gurdjieff then described this descending octave, or order of worlds, in terms of the cumulative effect of the law of three forces at each successive level. In the world of the Absolute, the three forces, being harmoniously related in the fullest sense, constitute one whole. The Absolute world is therefore designated by the number one.

In a world of the second order (all worlds), the three forces are already divided. Such a world would be designated by the number 3. These three divided forces, meeting together in each of these worlds, create new worlds of the third order (all suns), each of which manifests three new forces of its own, so that the number of forces operating within them will be six. In these worlds are generated worlds of the fourth order (the sun), in which there operate three forces of the second-order world, six forces of the third-order world, and three of their own, making twelve forces altogether. The process continues, giving twenty-four forces in worlds of the fifth order (all planets), forty-eight in worlds of the sixth order, of which the Earth is a part, and ninety-six in the seventh (moon). It follows, therefore, that the number of forces in each order of worlds, one, three, six, twelve, and so on, indicates the number of laws controlling it. So the fewer laws there are in a given world order, the nearer it is to the will of the Absolute; the more laws there are in a given world, the greater the mechanicalness, the further it is from the will of the Absolute. We live in a world subject to forty-eight orders of laws, that is to say, very far from the will of the Absolute and in a very remote and dark corner of the universe.²

Following on from this descending pattern of accumulating laws and forces, Gurdjieff then explains how the materiality of each world order differs accordingly, becoming ever denser as it involves from the Absolute to the moon. All matter, he says, including that of the world of the Absolute, is composed of “primordial atoms.” Obviously these “atoms” should not be confused with those described in ordinary physics; rather, they are certain small particles that are indivisible only on the given plane. Only on world 1, the world of the Absolute, are these particles truly indivisible. The “atoms” of world 3 consist of three atoms of the Absolute world and so would be three times bigger and heavier. Again, the “atoms” of world 6 each consist of six atoms of the Absolute—and so on, according to the laws and forces described above, with twelve primordial “particles” constituting an “atom” of world 12 and a corresponding increase in density as we pass further down through worlds 24, 48, and 96. We thus have seven different orders of “materiality” in the universe. Our ordinary concept of one order, said Gurdjieff, just about embraces the materiality of worlds 96 and 48. The substance of world 24, he said, is almost too metaphysical to be identified through ordinary scientific method; and the even more rarefied substances of worlds 12, 6, 3, and 1, have, to all intents and purposes, no identifiable material characteristics.

It is interesting to note here that in the early 1900s when Gurdjieff was giving his lectures, the conventional atom was still the smallest “particle” of matter known to science. But while Gurdjieff was speaking of these still finer substances permeating the material world, Ernest Rutherford was discovering the nucleus of the atom, Einstein was attempting to show that photons were particles, and Max Planck was in the process of formulating his idea that electromagnetic radiation was emitted by energetic sources in discrete, symmetrical packages called quanta. Later discoveries, such as the existence of neutrons and electrons within the atom, and of quarks literally everywhere, all served to reinforce Gurdjieff’s idea that there are finer substances and vibrations permeating the coarser ones. Nowadays, of course, even individual quanta, the tiniest “particles” known to science, are also described as ephemeral, wavelike entities, suggesting the existence of a finer, more rarefied manifestation of “materiality” than even the most minuscule, pointlike quantum.

Clearly the claim that all matter everywhere is actually composed of the fundamental and indivisible particles of the Absolute world has no arguable scientific basis. As Gurdjieff himself said, the substances of the higher worlds have no recognizable or measurable material characteristics. On the possible nature of such materiality, however, we can speculate at least as far as world order 3 (dimension six in the hierarchy), the world of “all worlds.”

Beginning with the lowest world order in the ray of creation, the moon, or world 96 (an order of materiality that would also incorporate the interior of planet Earth), we can say that the matter of this world would probably consist for the most part of the heavy transition metals and all the superdense radioactive elements.

The next world order in the ascending scale, represented in the ray of creation by our own planet and its atmosphere (world order 48), would incorporate matter comprising atoms of the lighter chemical elements, ending with hydrogen, the least dense of them all. Accordingly the matter of the world of “all planets,” world 24, might consist primarily of subatomic particles. Beneath the “particle,” be it photon, electron, or whatever, lies the even more rarefied wave-mode vibration. Let’s say that this wave aspect of subatomic quanta represents the nature of the materiality of world order 12, the world of our sun.

We have now come to the outer limits of scientific knowledge. On the reality beyond the wave we can only speculate. Hermetic theory tells us that even finer vibrations exist within these waves. Possibly, therefore, the next order of materiality, that of world order 6, “all suns,” is consciousness itself, the “substance” from which, as I suggested in an earlier chapter, all solar helices are constructed. The materiality of the next world order—the scale of the galactic helix—might be defined as a form of superconsciousness (ordinary consciousness squared, as it were), a substance that, if it exists, must be so rarefied that it must forever remain hypothetical. Finally, the materiality of the primordial “atoms” of the Absolute world order, as we might expect, defies all expression.

We now come to the concept of inner octaves. According to Gurdjieff, each note of any given octave can be regarded as a complete octave on another plane. Similarly, each note of these inner octaves is also a complete octave in another scale—and so on, but not ad infinitum, because there is a definite limit to the development of inner octaves (just as there is a definite limit to the hierarchy of dimensions and the ray of creation). These inner vibrations, said Gurdjieff, proceed simultaneously in media of different densities, continually interpenetrating and interacting with one another. In a substance or medium consisting of, for example, the superdense atoms of world order 96, each of which is a composite of 96 primordial “particles,” the vibrations or oscillations active within this medium are divisible into octaves, which are in turn divisible into notes. The medium of world order 96, like a solid piece of wood saturated with water, is also saturated with the substance of world order 48. Now, the vibrations subsisting in the matter of world order 48 stand in a definite relation to the vibrations in the substance of world order 96; each “note” of the vibrations of world 96 contains a whole octave of vibrations in the medium of world 48. These inner octaves, said Gurdjieff, proceed inward to the very heart of all matter. The substance of world order 48 is in turn saturated with the substance of world order 24, so that each “note” in the vibrations of world 48 again contains a whole octave of the vibrations of world 24—and so on through to the final phase, where the substance of world order 3 is permeated with the substance of world order 1, with each note in the vibrations of world 3 containing a whole octave of the vibrations of the world of the Absolute.

As I mentioned before, Gurdjieff always claimed that the original teachings from which his ideas were drawn—including the above description of inner octaves—dated back to very remote times. How far back this teaching actually does go is currently the subject of much heated debate among alternative theorists and orthodox historians, but it was very much alive in Old Kingdom Egypt, as we know from the previously discussed Magic Square of Hermes and its associate number, 2,080, the sum of all the factors from 1 to 64. Obviously 64 is the key. The Greeks, as we know, associated the Magic Square with the Great Pyramid, “The Lights.” And light, of course, is an octave of resonance, composed of eight fundamental “notes.” According to Gurdjieff, each of these fundamental notes in an octave of ordinary light would contain a whole octave of notes from the scale or world above. As we see, this very principle is precisely encoded in the Magic Square.

Gurdjieff claimed that “objective music” (by which he meant the kind played by such as Joshua and the builders of the Egyptian and Orphic schools, which allegedly could move mountains of stone) was all based on these inner octaves. Ordinary music, he said, cannot be used to reconstitute matter, destroy, or build up great walls of stone, but objective music can.

The music being referred to here is, I believe, fundamentally psychological music, the music of the mind, the music described by the Hermetic Code and the I Ching, by the Greek and Egyptian mysteries, and, indeed, by the established principles of all major religious disciplines. In Egypt, this “religion,” the making of “celestial music,” was known as “writing,” the sacred art invented by Hermes/Thoth, the art of striking harmonious metaphysical “notes,” or thought patterns, up into the stellar scale of existence, into the “heavenly” world inhabited by the gods. We must assume here that this does not mean “writing” in the ordinary sense.

So let us just imagine for a moment that the mind were conscious to the degree that it could generate higher vibrations—inner octaves— that were in tune with solar helices, world order 12 in Gurdjieff’s ray of creation.

As I have suggested, this level of materiality would be as fine and as penetrating as the ghostlike wave mode of subatomic quanta, reaching, as it were, beyond the particle itself into the very heart of the electron. It is not too difficult to imagine some kind of process whereby such vibrations, if they could be concentrated or focused to a sufficient degree of intensity, could indeed have dramatic psychic and physical consequences. Theoretically such rarefied “substances” could actually enter into objects—even blocks of the hardest stone—and affect them from within.

No doubt most orthodox scholars will regard such a notion as entirely fanciful, but not, I would hope, all of them. Times are changing, and scientists are today having to rely as much on intuition and instinct as they are on logical cognition in their attempts to come to terms with the baffling nonlocal nature of the multidimensional universe. We might optimistically view this scientific venture beyond the empirical world out into the metaphysical realm of concepts, thought patterns, and vibrations, as evidence of evolution of the transcendental kind, the beginning of mankind’s next momentous journey—to the stars. If this is so, then the rationalist, whether knowingly or unknowingly, may now be contributing actively toward this ultimate flowering of human consciousness.

Take the ideas of David Bohm, for example, the “orthodox” scientist mentioned in chapter 4, whose investigations into plasmas led him to conclude that the electron is a “mindlike” entity. We may recall that he felt instinctively that the “plasmon”—the electron sea—was alive, with billions of individual electrons simultaneously engaging in a mass, instantaneously coordinated action. This implies that electrons are somehow able under certain conditions to “connect” with every other electron, and Bohm recognized that the nonlocal nature of interactive quanta could account for this kind of synchronized activity.

Impressed by the evidence for nonlocality, Bohm went on to develop what at first appears to be a revolutionary new view of the universe. He suggested that the whole of reality was like a living hologram, a “holomovement,” and that what we see through ordinary methods of investigation is something like a frozen holographic image, behind which lies a much deeper and more meaningful level of reality. Now this idea may be new to science, but it is revolutionary only in the sense that it has turned full circle: it has been held before. In fact, this “holographic principle,” as we shall see, is basically an updated scientific description of the mechanism of inner octaves and of the principles of musical theory.