A Magic Touch

A miraculous, generous, and discreet hand suddenly touches me. It’s imperceptible and yet I feel it. I do not know the owner of this hand, and yet I feel that it has always been with me. This touch snatches me from the seductive threads of my own musings. It brings me to the present where a tiny insect is trying to break through the window glass. I see its efforts to reach the yard. Beyond the invisible and cold wall, there is the green grass, the trees, the inexhaustible murmur of life after the rain. A second before, all this was there. But where was I?  What magical touch made me wake up out of nowhere and find myself here and now, before myself, the little visitor, the glass of the window, and my patio?

C Influence – A Higher Force

When I was a little girl, my father would take me to bed, read me a story, and tuck me in. Before turning off the light, he’d point to the bright frosted butterfly hanging from the head of my bed. He would say, “Rest easy, she is taking care of you.” Since then, I have always known that a very high force, an energy beyond all human understanding, exists. In a state of absolute consciousness, in this pure and awake state, it is aware of me, knows me, sees me, cares for me, and guides me.

Throughout my life, battles have been countless. The results of these battles with suffering has been the creation of an inner atmosphere of gentle surrender. Something in me that was originally rough, with the passage of time and the storms of the soul, has been refined. Gradually this has created a soft and light inner tapestry, definitely very light.

This was not my doing. I didn’t create these circumstances or this inner confection. Just as it was not me myself who woke up from sleep and imagination to witness the insect’s fight on my window.

Influence C, or higher forces, is simply a non-religious term for what has been called angels. In its undifferentiated aspect, it is the invisible higher energy that fills the universe since before its creation. While in its a differentiated aspect, it refers to those who awakened from sleep and became immortal. Beings who returned to help other mortals accomplish the same task.

In the writings of Rilke, we find the modern expression of this idea closest to Influence C. He writes, in the first Duino Elegy, “Every angel is terrible”. Later, in a letter, he explains what he means by this. “The angel of the Elegies is that creature in whom the transformation of the visible into the invisible, which we are accomplishing, appears already consummated… The angel of the Elegies is that being who vouches for the recognition in the invisible of a higher order of reality. Hence ‘terrible’ to us, because we, the lovers and transformers of the visible, still cling to it.”

For many years I searched with uncontrollable ardor without knowing exactly what I was looking for. Along the way I met very interesting worlds. I met convincing and powerful people, shamans, priests, and healers who brought peace in times of storm. I visited temples, participated in complicated rites. While I lived these experiences, I continued to have the feeling that they spoke about something.  But they were not that ‘something’ itself. As time passed, the inner burning became more intense and the search more frenetic. I didn’t want to stay on the periphery or keep hearing about the truth. I wanted to simply live the truth.

“All descriptions of this light are inferior to its reality.” – Rabbi Abraham Ibn Daud

Sleep and Escape from Prison

If we pursue the Fourth Way work on ourselves, we soon see that our daily state is one of sleep. Everything inside and outside of us, especially in modern life, serves to perpetuate this sleep. Sleep in bed at night involves the fantasies that our unconscious mind generates. Sleep during the day is means believing the thoughts and emotions, the ‘I’s that constantly pass through us, to be who one is.

Awakening consists in a shift of our identity to the ‘god particle’ in us, the divine spark given at birth. The purpose of life is to develop this ‘god particle.’ We must shift our identity there, rather than in the phantasm of the many ‘I’s. For an example of modern life, take my cell phone. Every time I have an ‘I’ that I need to know something, I can go to it and find the answer. What a great method to keep humans asleep, believing their ‘I’s are important.

Our world reinforces this sleep in so many ways that my teacher calls the Earth “a maximum security prison.” The prison is imagination, the constant turning of thoughts that we all have and become absorbed in. Even work on oneself can serve to perpetuate this sleep in a subtle way. The steward, developed through great effort, becomes our identity, eclipsing the wordless state of wonder, the trace of the god particle. 

Rembrandt – Flight to Egypt, 1651, Metropolitan Museum, New York

“Furthermore, no one can escape from prison without the help of those who have escaped before. Only they can say in what way escape is possible or can send tools, files, or whatever may be necessary. But one prisoner alone cannot find these people or get into touch with them. An organization is necessary. Nothing can be achieved without an organization.” – Gurdjieff

This brings us to the question: How can a human truly awaken? Only through breaking the hypnotism of the many ‘I’s by unpleasant experiences. Just the same as waking up a person that is sound asleep through loud noises, or by jolting them. Influence C must bring difficult experiences to humans in order to awaken them. And we must encounter experiences that we need to transform, to somehow bring something positive out of the negative. Ouspensky remarked, “Awakening through pleasant emotions has not been invented yet.”

From that day when I first met my teacher, I have no memory of what he said. Nor have I memory of what he did while I was near him. But I remember exactly that I had in front of me a person who was living the truth. The present was his anchor, completely. He lived in the center of the reality of those moments and in the deepest center of his own being. So he was the only man, of all those I had known, who could be my teacher.

Being close to a man rooted in the present and whose truth is found nowhere else but in this moment, perfects the search. It brings a clear understanding of what we seek. Higher forces are and have been in our lives forever. They have been tirelessly creating a complicated and creative tapestry of circumstances that are often painful and disconcerting. Moments full of small and large opportunities to awaken.

Trying to understand the work of Influence C is only possible through its manifestations in our lives. And we only experience these manifestations as flashes of consciousness. The miraculous action of waking up again and again, many times, millions of times, to finally reach, one day, a state of being definitely awake.

David Tuttle and Elisa Edner are long-time Fourth Way students. For other recent articles from David for FourthWayToday.org, see here: https://fourthwaytoday.org/author/david/ and from Elisa: https://fourthwaytoday.org/author/elisa-eidner/ and jointly at: https://fourthwaytoday.org/author/david-tuttle-and-elisa-eidner/