Summary

The Adventures of a Solitary Soul - H. J. Sharp

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Introduction

 

An important aspect of the teaching of Gurdjieff is the existence of Higher Mind, already functioning but access to which as we are is not possible. The Kahunas of Hawaii held a similar belief. They held that in each of us there are three separate entities or selves, which they called the aka bodies. The High Self already works correctly. The task of the Middle Self is to teach and guide the Low self, to bring it along in its evolutionary growth and help it to be less animal and more human, just as the High self offers help and guidance to the Middle Self . In the Christian presentation we have a similar pattern: Body, Soul and Spirit.

Let us in this introduction explore this question of lower and Higher Mind stage by stage, using the concept of the Law of Seven as a framework, the law that is based on events being organised as seven "centres of gravity", punctuated by three stages at which extra energy has to be supplied. For convenience each stage is labelled using the musical notation although the Law of Seven, the Heptaparaparshinokh, has no real relation to the musical octave.