In the last passage, we heard the story of Maya and Lila, which seemed, when all is said and done, to be yet another allegorical version of humanity’s Fall, albeit painting women as the culprits. This next section picks up the threads of the previous one and tells how the remnants of the Children of God (the men especially) mated with the womenfolk of the Children of Men (a wanton lot who apparently knew how to please a man) and begat strapping male offspring ideally suited for warfare (although any daughters they produced were considered a bit wishy-washy). The newly formed tribe migrated to a new land called Kithermis which they split into three.
At this point The Kolbrin relates that mankind’s life-span became shortened because he became fully Earth-sustained. Now, many ancient traditions catalogue humanity’s dwindling life expectancy after The Fall, although this appears to run counter-intuitive to modern scientific thought (for what that’s worth). If you’ve been following the Gurdjieff thread on this website, you’d have recognised a similar scenario; that is, that humanity’s life-expectancy is directly commensurate with its yearning for spiritual and psychic self-betterment. The more humanity aspires to godhood, the longer it seems to live; and the reverse is true the more attached to an Earthy existence it becomes. I suppose that means that we have to take the concept metaphorically. It’s nothing to do, really, with our physical bodies; it’s all about developing our spirituality. In other words, those ancient writings are probably implying that the more we develop the non-corporeal aspects of our existence, the more chance we have of creating an ‘inner’self that isn’t subject to the law of material decay and can, in theory anyway, survive physical death. Alternatively, it could mean that the better we lead our lives for the good of others, the longer we will be remembered; that is, we create a kind of ‘digital’ self; we become ‘information’, as it were, that lives on in the minds of others long after our physical disintegration. But, then again, the same could be said for real nasty buggers whose evil stinks out the years long after their deaths, so I’m opting (if we’re going to read anything into this changing life-expectancy thing) for it meaning we have the possibility of creating some kind of ‘spirit’ body for ourselves, if for no other reason than it’s a much more optimistic and promising way of looking at it – gives existence a point, sort of thing.
Anyhow, to the east of this Kithermis place was mountainous Ubal, populated by herdsmen. To the west was Chaisen which stretched northwards until it bordered Ubal. To the south were the plains of Utoh and Kayman, populated by farmers. Some Children of God emigrated to Chaisen and taught law-making and brick-building. They also taught writing and built a city Keridor, between two rivers. The terminology here is very evocative of Ashurbanipal, Hammurabi, Gilgalad, Babylon, and Assyrian etc. culture in general.
Some kind of weather anomaly followed, in which the seasons got mixed up, crops failed, and a famine ensued. The narrative all gets a bit confused here, but apparently a woman, Eloma, felt the call of the god of the Children of God. In true Old Testament prophet style, she went into the wilderness and lived in a cave with running water for seven years. She managed to have three sons somehow, all of whom were also keen on this god of their mum’s. The first-born, Haryanah, carried the word of the Children of God’s god north, married Didi and had mighty sons. The second, Yahana, carried the Word eastwards, and the third, Manum, carried it westwards.
So, Eloma returned to the Children of God who started whingeing that their diminishing numbers were making them weaker than the Children of Men to whom members of their own tribe were deserting. Eloma, having consulted with her god, reassured the Children of God that this was just a process of natural selection – things happen as they will – and that the deserters would descend into an existence of ‘earthiness’ , thereby finding it harder to get back on to the path of spirituality (one generation down, ten to come back up again, is the rather unfair ratio given in The Kolbrin – a bit more of a deterrent threat than anything else if you ask me). The old adage about the path of pleasure being easy whereas the path of progress is full of pain and strife, is also used at this point, although that is a very clichéd axiom in philosophies and religions of all ages. I think it’s meant to make the people who make the effort and endure the hardship feel better about going through the whole thing, although I’ve always found it a bit off-putting. Yes, self-betterment demands effort but, it seems to me, there are ways of slowly, slowly catching your monkey without having to endure pain and hardship. The Kolbrin, though, uses the concept here to bring home what is, in reality, a pretty simple parable:
Eloma’s god tells her that the Children of God have basically had it too easy – they’ve never really had to struggle for anything, whereas the Children of Men have gone through harsher times and so have grown stronger for the experience. This is, of course, all about growing up, becoming adult, and understanding that the world is often not a very fair place, but you can level the playing field by pulling your finger out and helping yourself.
Eloma was sent by her god back out to the wilderness for a further seven years and, when she returned the next time, the Children of God had got themselves into a terrible mess: the fields were unsown, the irrigation ditches were dry, and the once upright and moralistic females of the tribe were getting it on with the Children of Men and no longer behaving like ‘true’ women. These women blamed the change in circumstances on their menfolk who, they said, had been easily out-fought by the Children of Men who were inspired by a true ‘battle god’. The men of the Children of God, they said, were now penned up and treated as slave-labour. Eloma complained about this to her god, but he maintained that it was a further filtering process and would ensure that only the best men were left standing.
At this point, I’d like to throw in an observation of my own that has something to do with the ‘as above, so below principle’ but in a kind of abstract way. The mechanics of the process being described by The Kolbrin here are no different to the ‘Survival of the Fittest’ principle of Darwinian evolutionary theory. It’s just narrowed down to a singular effect. The ‘cream of the crop’ survives because it is the fittest, strongest, smartest, or, occasionally, luckiest . . . sure, no argument there. But what The Kolbrin is arguing – indeed, what a shed-load of religions and philosophies argue – is that all that energy (physical or mental) expended in surviving to live, procreate, fight – whatever – another day, is a very good thing and has some kind of cosmic rub-off. In this, I see the Law of Threes in action playing out in a very recognisable scenario: Your life is stable and you are coasting along (1) – then, to apply a rather coarse but very apposite term, shit happens (2) – so, you have to expend energy at some level to survive (3). This is two ‘states’ (1) and (2) clashing together, the collision of which can only be resolved by a third input (3); that is, energy, or, to express it terms of the outcome, change. Change is what the Universe does. It has to in order to keep going. In terms of spiritual, psychic, even physical self-betterment, change is good. Embrace it!
Eloma’s god went on to describe himself as not a god of battles, nations, or even men, but The God of Souls; and that it wasn’t he that had deserted the Children of God but vice versa. The Kolbrin even brings in, at this point, that famous remark made by Jesus on the cross: ‘My God, why have you deserted me?’ but, in this case, it is the god moaning about that sentence ‘echoing down through the generations of man’ and coming ‘from those who have deserted their god’. I’ve remarked before that The Kolbrin lets itself down at times, and this is one of those occasions. Sure, the text may be truly ancient, but this type of thing strikes me as simply a rather amateurish attempt to capitalise on a well-known adage from another work and put a spin on it to suit The Kolbrin’s current context. In other words, it is borrowing an authority for its message from somewhere else.
Despite maintaining that he is conducting some kind of natural selection experiment, Eloma’s god nevertheless offers her a way to sort out the mess by telling her to hunt down a maiden from a place called Shinara who, says this god, is ‘pure of heart’. Her name is Nanua, and she was, at that time, a mere swineherd. Eloma is instructed to guard this Nanua as she is the ‘daughter of a new dawning’, the ‘Maid of the Morning’. Very Joan of Ark, don’t you think? More of Nanua in later installments but, for now, back to Eloma.
Right here, the narrative suddenly becomes very esoteric. Still addressing Eloma, the god goes into one about the Laws that govern inheritance (in its broadest sense). What can, on the surface, be mistaken for racist-supremacist propaganda, is laced with echoes of a much deeper truth. Eloma is told that the longer the bloodlines of the Children of God are kept intact and they only intermarry amongst themselves, the greater their Virtue will increase (the analogy of good wine becoming bad if over-diluted is used). Therefore, the longer the pedigree, the more potential for greatness the offspring will have. At first glance, this is is just so much racial-elitist nonsense – not least because modern science informs us that the smaller the gene-pool, the more vulnerable and prone to degenerative disorder and disease it becomes – but then comes the sentence: There is a law of inheritance from which no man is exempt, for man is governed by the laws of earthly creatures as well as by greater laws and this, almost statute-sounding statement, flags up the warning to look deeper than the superficial meaning of the words. This is the Law of Threes again: Man + woman = child with the insinuation that the child is greater than the sum of its creative parts. But, of course, we’re not talking in purely physical terms here (even though two beautiful, athletic people might likely produce a beautiful, athletic child with the best attributes of the two parents – the Law manifests on many different levels, after all). No, the emphasis here is on spiritual development, and it is not limited to the concept of two spiritually enlightened humans getting together and producing a child who is likely to grow up even more spiritually enlightened than its parents because it can learn from the morals and learning of both. This is, again, all about positive change. Take the best of the Good from one thing (whatever it is – human being, work of art, bar of chocolate), let it ‘react’ with the best of the Good from another thing, and, lo and behold, you get something that is better, because it combines the ‘Good’ from both constituent parts. What is being described here is a basic, inexorable Law of the way the Universe operates. The Universe is a machine. Really simply put, this law states: THIS + THAT = CHANGE. Learn how it works and how to spot it happening and your life will get a hell of a lot simpler. Back to the text: Let the truly great ones rule says the author of this section of The Kolbrin. There is, of course, the possibility that the author in question is an elitist, racist no-hoper, but I choose to read into this passage that, even if it is strictly limited to the human process of sifting out somebody best suited to rule, it is hinting at the moral holy grail of the Philosopher King (or Queen).
Eloma’s god then goes banging on about how all things have their origin in energy generated from his ‘side of the veil’, essentially an easily chewable version of the as-above-so-below principle found earlier in The Kolbrin. But what we see as reality in the world around us is only a distorted reflection of the true essence of things as they exist on the other side of the veil. We read all about this concept in one of my earlier installments; that is, everything that we perceive of as reality is really a ‘collapsed’ potential energy wave, which, once it has collapsed, somehow loses its umbilical cord to the divine source from which it emanated. I used the analogy of a wave from the sea: If you think of the ocean as the divine source of everything possible, and the waves crashing on the shore as the creative potential from that divine source, then what we ‘see’ from our perspective is something like the foamy spume left on the beach as the wave recedes. It is definitely ‘something’, but it no longer has a connection to the power that gave it substance, even though there is a memory of it in the particles that dance its life away.
This is quite a heavy passage of text, as the next issue Eloma’s god addresses is the ‘all gods are One God’ debate. Again, there are echoes of other philosophical and/or esoteric teachings here. Of course, we get the ‘most people are too dumb (i.e. spiritually underdeveloped) to really get what religious worship is all about’ comment, which comes across as a bit patronising but it does tie in with something I’ve been getting at in the Gurdjieff section of this Ancient Self-Help website, in that what is generally rubbished as ’empty ritual’ can have its uses. Firstly, there’s the obvious consideration that some people – the elderly, the bereaved, the lonely, for instance – derive comfort from it. Sure, if it’s company you’re lacking, then you can find it in plenty of other places, but I defy anyone reading this to enter a place of worship – any place of worship – whether you believe or not, with all your senses open and receptive, and not feel the power of the place. Where this ‘power’ comes from is a different discussion altogether, but I believe these places somehow absorb the concentrated energy of those that have opened themselves up there. Then there is the consideration that Gurdjieff points out. ‘Great Mysteries’ (however you want to interpret that term) can be embedded in rote ritual as a vehicle to preserve them through the ages. The people who perform the rituals – priests in churches, dancers of sacred rites, and so on – may not be aware of the true message behind what they are doing or saying, but the fact that they have learned their performance, for want of a better word, by rote, ensures it will be passed on down the years in exactly the same form, in a way something that is committed to the printed word, for instance, can never be guaranteed to do. What Gurdjieff is saying, is that, if you have been trained, or are perceptive enough, or are spiritually developed enough, then the message, the ‘Great Truth’, is there for you to understand, hidden in plain view.
Eloma’s god then goes on to talk about when humans attempt to get him to intercede on their behalf in order to alter things going on in their lives. He’s not quite as absolute as the Stoics and their interpretation of god, who – or which – just sits there and gradually unfolds the universe according to a predetermined plan, for altering which all and any prayers are useless, but he does take a very hands-off approach to human affairs. Why? Well, because of the law of enidvadew, of course. That’s pretty much karma and dharma all rolled into one, or the what-you-reap-is-what-you-sow concept the effects of which can echo down through lifetimes and generations. Eloma’s god makes the good point that you’d learn nothing from your suffering if he were to wipe out your karmic debt just because you’d begged him to. Well, that’s all very convenient for a god who is trying to find an excuse not to have to prove he exists by answering prayers, but, of course, this is not really about gods – any gods – and whether or not they exist. It’s about the mechanics of the Universe. The Kolbrin, just like many other philosophies and belief systems, has realised that many concepts are easier to understand if you stick a god in the story somewhere. It gives all the moralising a kind of starting point, onto which humans can anchor their imaginations. And we all rather like a voice of authority telling us what to do when things get a bit rough, don’t we? Involving a god, when you remove all the hocus-pocus from it, is a pretty nifty narrative technique.
The point is made – yet again – that the Earth is a testing ground; that it was never meant to be an easy gig. Man must find his spiritual path under his own individual terms, and those terms will differ, depending on the human involved. Rather neatly, this particular author ‘predicts’, through the mouth of the god, that the coming ages will find the Truth as it befits their own understanding and capabilities. Also, he will not send prophets or spokesmen but rely on those who make the effort to evolve their own spirituality and ‘spread the word’, as it were. Hmmmm . . . all very convenient really.
So, off goes Eloma and relays all these words of her god to the masses, urging them to rise above their ignorance and see beyond the illusion of their perceived ‘reality’ to the wonders that lie ahead if the effort is made to tread the spiritual path. She delivers the standard sermon about her god being the creator of all things in Nature, how life’s ups and downs are all according to his design (as the inventor and sustainer of the Law of Karma, I suppose) and that things like poverty and illness can be seen as tests (several ancient Greek and Roman philosophies tried this one on as well), and that the only sacrifice demanded by such a being was service to his will.
Nothing too earth-shattering in that little lot. But the author has Eloma cap her little lesson off by plunging back down from the divine to the mundane. She expressly forbids men – any men – from succumbing to the charms of silver-tongued, unwedded temptresses, ‘maids’ (I am assuming girls below marriageable age), or other men’s wives. Such behaviour, she says, is cankerous and dishonourable. Maybe the author of this section – a scribe by the name of Ishkiga, by the way – was a cuckold? As an encore, Eloma taught some astronomy, and used the analogy (at least this is how I interpret the text) of the inexorable paths and patterns of the stars and planets across the sky to illustrate the multi-threaded inevitability of the destinies of individual humans according to the dictates of enidvadew/karma.
That concludes the section on Eloma. The next passage takes up the story of Nanua, the girl Eloma was sent to seek out and protect, and we get yet another variation of catastrophe, the true meaning of a Greek word that means destruction by water. I hope to see you there.
