The INTELLIGENT ENNEAGRAM SHAMBHALA Boston & London - 1996 Shambhala Publications, Inc. Horticultural Hall 300 Massachusetts Avenue Boston, Massachusetts 02115 © 1996 by A. G. E. Blake All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 First Edition Printed in the United States of America @ This edition is printed on acid-free paper that meets the American National Standards Institute Z39.48 Standard. Distributed in the United States by Random House, Inc., and in Canada by Random House of Canada Ltd Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Blake, A. G. E. (Anthony George Edward) The intelligent enneagram / A.G.E. Blake.—1st ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-57062-213-2 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Enneagram I. Title. BF698.35.E54B57 1996 96-14474 155.2'6—dc2G CIP No learning can substitute for intelligence, which is a sense of what is real; a sense of one’s own being and the presence of the world. The wise imagine what they can see, feel what they can touch and reason about what they experience. —Stephen Vizinczey, The Rules of Chaos In expressing the laws of the unity of endless diversity a symbol itself possesses an endless number of aspects from which it can be examined and it demands from the man approaching it the ability to see simultaneously from different points of view. Sym­ bols which are transposed into the words of ordinary language become rigid—then, they grow dim and very easily become “their own opposites” confining the meaning within narrow dogmatic frames, without giving it even the very relative freedom of a logical examination of a subject. —Gurdjieff speaking in In Search of the Miraculous by P. D. Ouspensky Contents List of Figures xi Preface XV Acknowledgments xix Introduction: A Place in Time 1 Preamble 1 Carrier of a Teaching 2 Gurdjieff and His World 4 Beelzebub’s Story 13 Intelligence 15 Part One: The Frame of Transformation 1. The Symbol 23 The Diagram 23 Calculations 29 To Feel and Sense 32 2. Overview 39 Form and Content 39 Asymmetry and Buildup: Transformation 40 Intelligence 42 Triunity 42 3. Form of Sequence 44 In Music and Painting 44 Change and Order 50 4. The Symbolism of Making and Becoming ' 54 Octaves of Achievement 54 Shocks or Enablement 59 The Evolutionary Sequence and Physical Science 62 Vll viii Contents 5. Sevenfold Architecture 68 The Law of Seven 68 Seeing in Depth 72 Seven into Three 75 5. I Put Three Together 80 The Law of Three 80 The Three 85 Creation 87 Evolution 89 The Logos 90 Triamazikamno 92 Part Two: The Hazard of Transformation 7. Four Paradigms of the Enneagram 99 The Simple Action 99 The Impossible Object 103 The Problem Solution 105 The Three Versions 107 8. The Metabolism of Perception 110 The Secular Ritual of the Kitchen 110 Centers of Gravity 116 The Intervention of Point 6 122 Going Beyond 123 The Restaurant (at the End of the Universe?) 125 9. A Computer Running on Air 130 The Analogue 130 Three Bodies 131 Spirit and Soul 133 Matter, Energy, and Information 134 Consciousness and Sensitivity 135 State and Station 138 Hardware and Software 139 What Are Bodies Made of, and Who Has Them? 143 10. Being in Life 147 The Human Life Cycle 147 The World of Sex 153 The Physical Symbol 168 Contents 11. Drama 171 Legominism 171 Weaving a Plot 176 The Art of Interpretation 183 The Turn and the Latch 186 The Measures of Interpretation 187 Dramatic Progression 190 Form of Recurrence 193 12. An Enneagram of Crisis 199 Rise of the Technosphere 199 The Three Octaves 207 The Inner Lines of Regulation 210 The Structure of Sustainable Development 214 The Logos of the Biosphere 218 Part Three: The Purpose of Transformation Wheels within Wheels 225 Into Eternity 225 Acceleration 228 The Design of the Enneagram 231 They Leave Our Story Here 234 Worlds and Cosmoses 236 Cosmic Interlude 241 Immortality and Finer Impressions 241 The Trouble Spots 243 Transmitting Influences 245 The Lateral Octave and the Solar System 254 The Greater Present Moment 260 Enneagram of Worldviews 260 Change of Epoch 267 Correlation with Centers 272 Interpreting Progress 274 Lines of Work 281 Overview 284 The Great Amen 288 Praying in Three Worlds 288 Contents The Traditional Forms 292 Striving to Know Ever More and More 297 17. TheTescooano 301 How Deep Is Reality? 301 Apparatus of Perception 304 Vision 312 18. Recurrent Meaning 318 The Paths of Experience 318 Structure of the Week 324 Intentional Method 326 Backward and Forward 332 19. Remember to Remember 338 The Transformational Present 338 The Inner Lines 343 Remembering 347 Every Day 348 Reading the Enneagram 350 Afterword: The Beginning of Dialogue 360 Glossary 363 References 369 Index 379 List of Figures 1.1. The enneagram symbol 23 1.2. Forms in the symbol 24 1.3. Process sequence 25 1.4. Unity in multiplicity 26 1.5. Triad in circle 26 1.6. Openings in the process 27 1.7. The periodic figure 27 1.8. Progression of hydrogens 31 2.1. The trimurti of the enneagram 43 3.1. The musical scale 46 3.2. The octave in the enneagram 47 3.3. A celestial octave 48 3.4. Botticelli’s octave 48 4.1. Changes in level and time 55 4.2. Patterns of transformation in pot-making 58 4.3. Diagram of shocks 60 4.4. Energy levels 64 5.1. Sevenfold hierarchies 69 5.2. Ecological hierarchy 69 5.3. Levels of abstraction and time-span capacity 71 5.4. Implicit laws of the enneagram 73 5.5. The octaves in triplets 76 5.6. The octave as a form of the triad 76 6.1. Holy Trinity 82 6.2. Uncertainty and the third force 83 6.3. Three categories of existence 86 6.4. Action space defined by the logos 92 7.1. Filling a glass with water 101 7.2. An impossible object, after Opus 2B by Oscar Reutersvard 103 XI XU List of Figures 7.3. Borromean rings 105 7.4. Problem-solving sequence 106 7.5. Celestial analogue 107 8.1. Commands in the circle of the process 112 8.2. Face-off at the apex 114 8.3. Centers of gravity 118 8.4. Transformational community 124 9.1. The dynamic of awareness 135 9.2. The will forms of the three bodies 144 10.1. The circle of a human life 153 10.2. Enneagram of sex 161 11.1. Implications of the initial points 178 11.2. Plot of The Terminator 179 11.3. Sketch of the “music of life” 184 U.4. Turn, and latch 186 11.5. Diagram of text with crossover links 187 11.6. Design of Total Recall 189 11.7. Basic structure of drama 190 11.8. Enneagram of the Scriptures 194 12.1. Biosphere, technosphere, and noosphere 206 12.2. Nine points of evolution 208 12.3. Developmental curves 215 13.1. Three octaves 226 13.2. Enneagram of perpetual motion 226 13.3. Enneagram of concrete situations 227 13.4. . Enneagram of food transformation 228 13.5. Cumulative effect of octaves 229 13.6. Step symbol 230 13.7. The first octave 231 13.8. The second octave 232 13.9. The third octave 232 14.1. Cosmic octaves 246 14.2. Branching from the main octave 248 14.3. Life coupling Sun and Earth 252 14.4. The requirement for further intervention 255 14.5. Life in the solar system 255 14.6. Planetary synchronicity 256 15.1. Making a new world 267 15.2. Enneagram as a diagram of centers 273