How can we utilize the law of octaves to help continue progressing in our work to awaken? Movement forward also requires rest, where new shocks can enter.

“Life is a movement and a rest.” – Gospel of Thomas

Motion and Repose in Spiritual Life 

The word movement comes from the Latin, movere; “to move, set in motion.” And this comes from the PIE (Proto-Indo-European) root meue- “to push away.”

Rest comes from Old English ræste: “rest, bed, intermission of labor, mental peace.” Rest is sometimes translated as “repose” in this passage from the Gospel of Thomas. That word comes from Latin, repausare;  “back to the original place; again, anew, once more,” and later Latin pausare: “to stop.” Perhaps we could take the sense of repausare as “stop anew.”

So, we have a “pushing away,” and a point at which to stop, or rest. In other words, life—and here we must mean conscious life—should consist of a “pushing away” or “setting in motion,” and a “rest” or a “stopping anew.”

Movement and Rest in the Law of Octaves

The Law of Octaves says that processes slow down or stop by themselves, when they reach the intervals mi-fa and si-do. These intervals happen by themselves. However, “stop anew” implies a choice, an intentional internal halting.

A moment of the third state does stop the functions, at least for one breath. It is exactly that “stop anew.” However, it is only a flash, a brief moment of consciousness. 

“Consciousness is something different from thought. You use thought just to give a push, and then it begins to move in this direction and you become conscious without thought.” – Ouspensky

The Law of Octaves: Stopping Effort Intentionally

When we divide our attention, we intentionally mirror how our attention works in the state of self-consciousness. Once we have this, however, we must let go of it and allow presence to fill the emptiness that we created. If we keep going with the effort, we actually stand in the way of what we wished to accomplish. At the same time, this emptiness will not last long, and we will need to repeat the effort within a few seconds. Again, a “pushing away” and a “stopping anew.”

 “If they ask you, ‘What is the sign of your father in you?’ say to them, ‘It is movement and rest.'” – Gospel of Thomas

Here is the quotation direct from the original text. What does “your father” mean? It must refer to the seed of presence, the god-particle that is in each of us. Work within the Fourth Way encourages this seed to grow, to become the active force in our inner world. Without the work, the seed is covered over by involuntary identification with the thousand impulses of thought, feeling, and sensation. A conscious ‘movement and rest’ indicates that ‘the father’ has become active within us. 

A New Presence Forms

“It seems to me that almost all our sadnesses are moments of tension, which we feel as paralysis because we no longer hear our astonished emotions living. Because we are alone with the unfamiliar presence that has entered us; because everything we trust and are used to is for a moment taken away from us; because we stand in the midst of a transition where we cannot remain standing.” – Rainer Maria Rilke

Unexpected events in our lives often cause a sadness, a loss of direction. The forward-moving momentums of our life suddenly stop. We don’t know who we are, and we don’t recognize ourselves. This is that same stop that a moment of consciousness produces. 

Later comes the moment when the new thing—such as consciousness entering us— intersects with the line of our life. Sometimes what begins as an internal silence happens to us from outside. In fact, here we have our formula. But in this case, the stop—resting in a higher state—arrives first. The “stop anew” becomes a cause for a future “pushing away” and this, in turn, can be followed by a new stop.

With this connected chain of conscious causes, we can begin to have a conscious life, not merely isolated moments of presence. The “sign of the father” in us gradually becomes more and more manifest.

David Tuttle, with over forty years in the work, has contributed various article for the Fourth Way Today include The Uncarved Block, An Apollo Walk and The Cascade Fire.