All eyes are currently on Israel following the outbreak of violence sparked by a visit to the Al Aqsa mosque complex by Ariel Sharon. That such a seemingly trivial event could provoke riots leading to some 100 deaths and the threat of all out war seems amazing to say the least. Seen objectively it is surely in no one's interest to fight a war over couple of acres occupied by the "Harem Ash Sharif", the "Temple Mount" of Jerusalem. However these are not ordinary times and the forces driving these events are not rational. We are, I believe, seeing the beginnings of the events prophesied in the Book of Revelations.
This summer I took a tour group to Egypt and Israel to mark the occasion of the "Opening of the stargate" (for details of what 'stargate' means in this context, please pres the 'stargate' tab on the menu bar and read the articles on the subject). At Giza we witnessed the sun crowning the Khafre pyramid to the east and west on the summer solstice and then departed to Israel. On 29th June, the feast of St Peter and St Paul, we observed dawn over the mount of Olives from a position close to the Golden Gate of Jerusalem. On this day the constellation of Orion, the "gate-keeper" of heaven, was flanked on either side by the 7 planets or "candlesticks" described in Revelations. Orion himself symbolises, I believe, the cosmic Son of Man called in Revelations the First and the Last, the Alpha and Omega. From our vantage point near to the Golden Gate of the Old City we were unable to see Orion because as it rose over the Mount of Olives, the constellation was obscured by the glare of the sun. However we did see three of the candlesticks, those which rose before the dawn: the Moon, Saturn and Jupiter.
For most of the early part of this year the sun and planets were close together and there were repeated conjunctions between them. In the ancient world this would have been referred to as a conference of the gods. Many people were expecting this gathering to trigger earthquakes but these fears don't seem to have materialised. However I believe that the gathering of the planets has had a more subtle effect that we have all been feeling for the last six months: a sense of psychic tension.
In his famous book In search of the miraculous, the Russian mathematician and mystic P.D Ouspensky recorded a number of conversations he had with his erstwhile teacher, G. I. Gurdjieff, who was certainly one of the most enigmatic people of the 20th century. During one of these conversations, which took place in 1917, during the First World War, Gurdieff explained how wars are started not by people but rather planets; that warfare is a response to psychic tensions and is not, as some believe, politics by other means.
‘The conversation began with my question: "Can war be stopped?" And G. answered: "Yes it can." And yet I had been certain from previous talks that he would answer: "No, it cannot.
"But the whole thing is: How?" he said. "It is necessary to know a great deal in order to understand that. What is war? It is the result of planetary influences. Somewhere up there two or three planets have approached too near to each other; tension results. Have you noticed how, if a man passes quite close to you on a narrow pavement, you become all tense? The same tension takes place between planets. For them it lasts, perhaps, a second or two. But here, on the earth, people begin to slaughter one another, and they go on slaughtering for maybe for several years. It seems to them at the time that they hate one another; or that perhaps they have to slaughter each other for some exalted purpose; or that they must defend somebody or something and that it is a very noble thing to do; or something else of the same kind. They fail to realise to what extent they are mere pawns in the game. They think they signify something; they think they can move about as they like; they think they can decide to do this or that. But in reality all of their movements, all their actions, are the results of planetary influences. And they themselves signify literally nothing. Then the Moon plays a big part in this. But we will speak about the moon separately. Only it must be understood that neither Emperor Wilhelm, nor generals, nor ministers, not parliaments, signify anything. Everything that happens on a big scale is governed from outside, and governed either by accidental combinations of influences or by general cosmic laws."’[Copyright P. D. Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous, pp.23-24, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1950]
It seems to me that the lining up of the planets this summer was just such a time of tension. Indeed, from about April onwards there has been an almost palpable feeling in the air of profound unease. Many people, perhaps most of us, have been aware of this. For some it has manifested as frustration with work or home-life. For others it has been a matter of politics. Thus I believe that we are living through a period of what Gurdjieff called "Solioonensius". This is highly dangerous and could easily lead to a Third World War.
The theory of how tension between heavenly bodies can cause war is reiterated by one of Gurdjieff's and Ouspensky's pupils, J. G. Bennett. But he goes further and explains how the tension caused astrologically can be used as a factor for self-development and transformation.
‘Our attitude towards war is altogether false. We tend, as a matter of course, to regard war as the result of the intentional action of some wicked man or group of men or of some nation with a lust for conquest and power. Wars appear, to both sides engaged in them, as defence against some aggression or as necessary for the furthering of some worthy or even sacred cause. Even those who most detest war and are prepared to sacrifice their liberty, or even their lives, to save themselves from becoming involved in it, conceive it as a wicked action, deliberately undertaken.
‘In reality, war is not like this at all. It is a terrible madness that overtakes mankind, when people lose even the little sense of reality they usually have. War is the supreme manifestation of human helplessness. This applies to all forms of mutual destruction, whether revolution and civil war within a nation or armed conflict between nations and the peoples of the world.
‘War has a twofold origin. The first is outside of man and arises independently. The second is within man and is due to his own weakness and failure. From time to time a special state of tension arises on the earth, which Gurdjieff calls the state of "Solioonensius." This state of tension arises from the relations between the planets. I do not mean by this that it is something supernatural or mysterious. It is a perfectly natural process, connected with the changes in the balance of electrical and other energy in the solar system. For example, it is already suspected by science that the occurrence of sunspots has an effect upon the human psyche.
‘It may help you to understand what I mean by calling Solioonensius a perfectly natural process if you consider a simple phenomenon, well-known to all. I refer to the effect in Great Britain of the east wind, or in the Mediterranean of the sirocco. When the east wind blows, people become irritable and nothing seems to go right. I once became interested in this because I wanted to see whether it was a real or an imaginary effect. I asked a number of people to observe carefully and let me know as obiectively as possible whether they could detect a state of inner tension caused by the east wind. Nearly everyone confirmed that a state of irritability did, in fact, arise in them even before they were aware that the east wind was blowing.
‘In a more subtle and pervasive manner, great regions of the earth's surface, and sometimes even the whole of the earth, become subject to a state of tension that produces in people a strong sense of dissatisfaction with their conditions of life. They become irritable or aggressive, apprehensive, nervous and highly suggestible. Gurdjieff said that knowledge of Solioonensius existed thousands of years ago, and that he took the term from a very ancient tradition. At the present time, its significance has been forgotten or lost.
‘The point is that there are two completely different ways in which people can react to a state of Solioonensius. It always arouses dissatisfaction, but this may be external or internal. External dissatisfaction leads to external conflict; internal dissatisfaction strengthens the desire to struggle with oneself. Those who understand the necessity for working on themselves and achieving the second destiny find in that state of tension the greatest possibility of incentive and force to make them work harder. But those who do not have this feeling, this realization, project outwards their dissatisfaction and become hostile and angry with other people—suspicious, jealous and the rest of it- and then, defenseless against these mass psychoses, begin to hate. And the very people who, only a few years before, could not conceive of themselves consenting to the idea of war become involved in the destruction of other people. And those other people, passing through the same mass psychosis with the same justification, wish in turn to destroy their existence.
‘It is possible by careful study of history and of various psychological processes to verify this. And once you understand it, you will see that there is no way by which war can be stopped other than by making people understand the necessity for this work. Otherwise, they have no defense against this state of tension; no contrivances, no organization, no good resolutions can avail, because there is a physio-chemical process involved. This state of tension must produce the result. We do not know when such a state of tension will come over the world again. When it is absent, we do not feel war as something possible, but when it approaches, nothing can be done unless an idea can come into the world that can act on a sufficiently large number of people to enable them to turn this force in a different direction.
‘This is one reason why the change—the transition period— From one epoch to another, from one world to another, is a dangerous period. Old ideas have lost their momentum and can no longer move the world. New ideas have not yet gained momentum. All through history, and even before the beginning of history, we find such periods accompanied by war and revolution, not because war and revolution are inevitable in themselves but because people have lacked that discrimination that would enable them to use this situation rightly. If we are able to go into a world in which this is understood, then the course of history can be different, because the destiny of all mankind can be raised to a higher level. There is no higher purpose in the life of man than to bring about this great transition.
‘If a new world is to come, we must first create it in ourselves. You may ask how the work of a few people can change the world. It has always been so. Ideas are powerful, not organizations. Nothing can be done by outward force; everything can be done by inner strength.’ [Copyright J.G. Bennett, Is there "Life" on Earth, Bennett Books, Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA].
It is my humble opinion that we are living at the most dangerous time in the whole history of mankind, at least for the past 26,000 years. How we respond to the forces currently manifesting in the atmosphere of our planet will determine what happens to us, whether we move boldly onwards into a "New Age" of enlightenment or retreat back into a "Dark Age" of unimaginable bestiality. I believe that the choice lies within us all. That is down to us individually and as nations to turn this energy of tension to our own self-development, to use it as a spur for growth. That way we will make it through the transition.
Copyright © 2000 Adrian G Gilbert