What is amazing is that each of us can be aware of this at all. It is amazing that we human beings can actually conceive of these vast perspectives. Somehow out of the vast array of energy and matter, more and more complex organisms have evolved on this planet (at least), and this has led to creatures that can move around on its surface and further led to us human beings.

Why? What is the point? It's clearly a process that has been developing over a very long time and now I find myself existing, as (or with?) this creature, like millions around me. I know this has evolved in an amazing sequence of steps stretching back ultimately as long as time itself for all I know - a creature that is me, a living body that can move and sense and feel and think. Why? What is the point?

I felt something like this:

"I may be young and I'm in a loving family and the people around me are generally kind enough, but they don't seem to be evolving much. They're going round, very busy, doing this, that and the other, arguing and worrying about things, but do they really know what they're doing? They show me things all the time, and they're pleased when I go along with it and learn it, but why? All this stuff doesn't seem like the answer to me. Perhaps it will become clearer to me when I learn more, when I'm older. Perhaps they don't know. Somebody must know. Anyway I'd better go along with things as they are."

I was being stuffed with information just the same as I had been at school. Something was not quite right. The course included modern physics, but even in this subject that seemed promising at first it seemed to be looking at things "from a distance", whereas somehow it ought to include "me" to have any real significance.

All the scientists, astronomers, those engaged in atomic physics research, look at what they are doing "from a distance", treating it as a dead thing from which they are somehow exempt. They presume this, as they arrogantly suppose, from their power to think, totally blind to the fact that they themselves are living persons and as such, equally part of the same creation that they are studying.

Another line of investigation arose from space exploration. The technology that we use, burning fuel in rockets, always struck me as very crude, basically no better than firework rockets. The technology used in what appeared to be "extra-terrestrial" craft seemed far better. Whether these craft were extra-terrestrial or secret military experiments did not matter to me. There were forces available, electromagnetic and gravitational, that it was simply necessary to be able to align to, given the necessary understanding of the basic relationships between them. The most promising book I found was "The Principles of Ultra Relativity" by Shinichi Seike, but I could make no real progress with it. I reluctantly abandoned the hope of discovering how to utilize the forces of nature to construct vehicles that clearly did have the benefits of such knowledge.

This was what I had been looking for, as it did not look at the physical universe as something "out there" to be studied as if the observer were not part of the physical world he was studying at all, as I saw that everyone else involved in science did. At the same time it did not involve a lot of "beliefs" that those scientists had rightly condemned as being subjective, unscientific, and not capable of independent proof.

Heason's ideas are difficult to grasp - and "Beyond Relativity" is unlikely to ever become a bestseller. Nevertheless, if you have a need to find something to unify the principles behind

a) the world of dots in one direction (atomic particles, the energy packets of quantum mechanics, etc.),
b) the world here and now in which you live, and move, and have your being, and
c) the world of dots in the other direction (stars, galaxies, the question of general relativity),

then maybe you should give it a try. You could be successful if you remember perspective. Are those atomic physicists and cosmologists discovering things with their ever more powerful technological tools, or are they merely inventing them in line with their means of measurement?

After a lot of such investigations in the search for something real, a big step forward began for me when I realized above all that I must actually find someone who could see things clearly and not be hypnotized like everyone else. I met such a person quite soon after this, and after we had talked a while he asked me if I knew of Gurdjieff. He suggested I read P.D.Ouspensky's book "In Search of the Miraculous", or as it is better titled, "Fragments of an Unknown Teaching". He also put me on track to participating in the Gurdjieff Work. That was in 1975, and I have been involved in this, off and on, ever since.

A few words of information about Mr G.I.Gurdjieff (1866? -1949) are appropriate here. It is known that he spent many of his earlier years, with others, in search of a knowledge which he was certain had existed in the past. They explored many countries in Central Asia and the Middle East. The doors of a certain school opened for him, where he came to understand how to bring together all the principles of an esoteric teaching. In 1917 he left Russia and came to Western Europe. In the 1920s he founded "The Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man" in France. Mr Gurdjieff used many means to transmit his teachings, including writing books including "Beelzebub's Tales to his Grandson", and taught selected groups of pupils, including French, English and American, for the remainder of his life.

There is a real science, but it cannot be found such as we are. One of the obligations in the work is to understand the meaning and aim of existence, to find our place in the scheme of things.

Ouspensky gives a clear account of the Gurdjieff System in his book "In Search of the Miraculous", but its essence, in my experience, can only be approached through following the teaching in the form that Mr Gurdjieff originally transmitted it. The teaching is essentially practical and with other people.  

A few months ago, it was about midnight and there was a clear starry sky, a friend and I got to discussing facts and beliefs. He has always equated what I have, maybe unwisely, told him about things that matter to me with beliefs, and religion, which have no place in his rationalist view of the world. We have both earned our pennies through electronics.

"Basing everything on scientific facts is modern scientific arrogance", I said. "These facts are not reality to me. To you - what you call reality - is based on facts, and other people have beliefs. You value what you call reality - that is, facts - higher than beliefs, but to me they are of equal value, they're beliefs. Your conclusion that scientific facts represent reality is no more or less valid than someone else's conclusion that their religious beliefs represent reality."

This led to talking about astronomy and astrology. "It is ridiculous to believe that stars so far away can influence human beings", he said, "Light reaching us now would have left the star so long ago, the star may not even exist now."

It was natural in the course of being disappointed with science as it is generally portrayed to look back in history in search of any evidence of real science. What was revealed about alchemy and astrology seemed promising, and it was with great interest that I read the book "A Search in Secret Egypt" by Paul Brunton in my "esoteric" period. Then having been introduced to the teachings of Mr Gurdjieff, I discovered "A New Model of the Universe" by P.D.Ouspensky who had also made interesting investigations about ancient Egypt, and especially the Pyramids and the Sphinx, before he had met Mr Gurdjieff. I later saw that although Mr. Ouspensky had much knowledge, he did not have Mr Gurdjieff's level of understanding.

From all that I had read and heard about concerning possible higher knowledge of past civilizations, the pyramids of Egypt and the Sphinx seemed the most promising. My first visit was in 1987. Immediately on leaving the bustle of Cairo and arriving in the presence of the pyramids I felt welcome to ancient Egypt. I had not expected this and it was reassuring. My companion and I spent much of the day thereabouts. I was most keen to spend some time inside the Great Pyramid and we went inside first thing in the morning.  

Immediately on entering I felt I was on the right track and that this was important and I gave a keen attention to the impressions I was receiving. Everyone else there, or rather any considerations I may have had for them disappeared, but no one bothered about this. The impression of being welcome there increased as I got to the Grand Gallery. Simply being there and attentive it all felt familiar to me as though I were returning to somewhere I had spent much time in the past. This felt confirmed to me by the shape and size of the construction, the precision workmanship of the heavy stone blocks, and the mass of stone around me that insulated us from the outside world. The energies of the impressions were at their most focussed in the King's Chamber. I stayed there quite some time and it felt important that I did not allow my attention to wander. After some time I experienced the presence of another living person within me and the honest mutual joy of us meeting, as it were, across the centuries. This harmonising of energies was very alive and true to the knowledge of those ancient times whose evidence was all around me. The feeling of knowing this place and the people involved in working there for the purpose for which it was built remained long after leaving, indeed something of it is with me now.

The experience I had that day was the only time I have experienced the living presence of another person in this way when I have been "on my own". There were of course many other people in the Great Pyramid at the time, who were behaving in the ordinary way we do, but I knew they did not experience anything of this at all. Fortunately and because this was an important time for me I was able to have sufficient attention to not consider them in the way I usually consider people and instead to accept them for what they are, that is, that they are asleep. Ouspensky calls them dead people, but I would rather say asleep. I have experienced the living presence of another person in a similar way within a group environment on certain occasions, but that is a matter only for those who have the need to follow that line.

I cannot do better than quote from Ouspensky's account of his visit to the Great Pyramid. He writes, It is very difficult to define in our language the object and purpose of the pyramid. The pyramid was an observatory, but not only an "observatory" in the modern meaning of the word, for it was also a "scientific instrument"; and not only an instrument or a collection of instruments, but also a "scientific treatise", or rather a whole library on physics, mathematics and astronomy; or, to be still more exact, it was a "physico-mathematical faculty" and at the same time a "depository of measures", which is quite clearly shown by the measurements of the pyramid, the numerical interrelation of its height, base, sides, angles, and so on."

Matters relating to the purpose of these constructions built long ago in Egypt are also covered in Gurdjieff's book, "Beelzebub's Tales to his Grandson". As this book can be read on many levels, according to the reader's understanding, I will simply quote one sentence from it. At that period, the terrestrial three-brained beings of responsible age called 'astrologers', besides making observations and investigations of various other cosmic concentrations for the purpose of a more detailed study of the branch of general learning they represented, took upon themselves several other definite essence-obligations toward their fellow beings.

I remember thinking how basic is the inverse square law in physics. Classically this applies to the gravitational attraction between particles and the force between point charges and so on, where the force varies inversely as the square of the distance between them. It was only necessary to imagine electrons circling the nucleus or the Earth circling the Sun to see that for all kinds of relationships the "total phenomenon" depends on three things - the two entities themselves and the medium between them by which they relate. One entity may act as transmitter, the other as receiver.

It was then very interesting to find that in Gurdjieff's teachings there is reference to the 'Law of Three', and also the 'Law of Seven' and the 'Enneagram'. Within Ouspensky's "In Search of the Miraculous" there is an excellent theoretical account.

The Law of Three says that every phenomenon, molecular, cosmic or whatever, is the result of the combination or the meeting of three different and opposing forces. The three forces appear as active, passive, and neutralizing, but only in relation to one another at a given moment. The third force however is not easily accessible to direct observation and understanding.

The Law of Seven relates to the cyclic nature of phenomena. Events progress by certain definite steps, and each separate event is itself a whole sequence of events on a smaller scale. These ideas relating to the Law of Seven were also very interesting in relation to quantum physics, the whole concept of energy in distinct "packets" and the wave nature of particles. Also there are cyclic qualities in so much in nature on a whole range of scales from the sub-atomic to the cosmological, including visible life.

There is nothing vague or airy-fairy about this in practice. It is at times very clear in one aspect or another. At the same time it requires a self-awareness that is difficult to acquire. That is why real objective science is not understood today; it is not generally known about, valued or taught. Not only that, but those things that are generally known about, valued or taught, in the name of factual knowledge, often conspire to stop each of us understanding objective science. We prefer our comfortable illusions.

The teaching refers to human beings as three-brained beings, these "brains" or "centres" being the instinctive-moving centre, the emotional centre and the thinking centre. Generally speaking our upbringing does not teach us how to use these correctly and in harmony with one another. As a result we tend to react to situations using one centre, and we use that incorrectly as it is taking on the functions of all three. Western education concentrates on the thinking centre that is in the head, leaving the others uneducated

Given the need and special conditions, I can come to recognize in myself three centres, three distinct parts of my psyche that don't communicate with one another, basically because they operate at different frequencies and no one ever taught them. Further, it can become possible to find new values so that the three parts can begin to work correctly together. Thus there can be through the forces of the three centres a "phenomenon", which effectively can mean that I can have an identity apart from the functions that I have. The creature that I am born with can become my "instrument". Instead of my life being lived through "phenomena" between one of my centres and all kinds of influences from outside or accumulated within me, I can begin to be able to truly say "I am".

The other fundamental law, the Law of Seven, or the Law of the Octave, is as universal as the Law of Three and also plays a vital role in the life of a human being. It relates in the ordinary world of science to the periodic table of elements, and is the basis of the musical octave in which the frequency of sound gets to double or half its value in a series of seven steps. The notes of the musical scale are do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si, do, with full-tone intervals between each pair of notes except mi-fa and si-do, which are semitone intervals.  

Scientific method requires that, having seen what can be done, to find the clearest and most direct method of doing it in a way that can be verified by an independent investigator. That is exactly and precisely the method which I am finding in these teachings.