I met Mr. Tavaria in 1988. For the past thirty-two years, I have been studying his writings to further my understanding of what he is telling us.
Let us examine correlations between Mr. Tavaria’s writings and Gurdjieff literature.
Gurdjieff’s science is rooted in the digestion of 3 kinds of food, which stems from the Law of Three and the Law of Seven. These 3 kinds of food are three ascending octaves in nature and man. Of these, the highest food is that of impressions, which is digested by the application of the first conscious shock or what Gurdjieff calls self-remembering.
For the sake of our study, we can say that Gurdjieff’s science starts with an impression.
Mr. Tavaria talks of an impulse and not an impression. He says these incoming impulses come into the Body-Brain System through the five senses.
What is the difference between an impression and an impulse? At a very ordinary level, we can say that one impression can be made up of many impulses. However, an impulse makes a long journey to becoming an impression. My personal study says that there is one full descending octave from impulse to impression.
Let us trace this journey of an impulse to impression.
Mr. Tavaria says that when attention falls upon an object of the senses, that object is broken down into electromagnetic impulses.
So we can say that Mr. Tavaria’s science starts with ‘Attention’. Gurdjieff says our effort is to take attention back to it’s source, the Divine.
In the language of the Shastras, electromagnetic impulses are called ‘tanmatras’. Tanmatras are of five kinds. The Yogasutra says ‘That which is seen is made of the five elements (tanmatras) and three forces’.
Mr. Tavaria says 30,000 of these electromagnetic impulses flow into our Body-Brain System every second and they are divided into three parts.
One part (or 10,000 impulses) is stored as sex energy and is used for many functions, including the maintenance and healing of the body.
It is important to note that Gurdjieff says sex energy, or what he calls Si12, is produced in the body from the physical food we eat. However, Mr. Tavaria is saying we already have sex energy, even before we start eating food. This is a very different form of sex energy made of matter of a very high vibration. In yogic literature, it is called Udana Vayu (not Udana Prana).
There is no mention of this energy in Gurdjieff literature. There is mention of a large accumulator, but the source of its energy is not stated. With the Phase Exercises, Mr. Tavaria is showing us ways to tap this energy and directly use it for our transformation.
The second part, that is another set of 10,000 impulses, is used as energy to maintain our memory patterns, which is the experiential history of several lifetimes. Every lifetime we have passed through is meticulously stored as experiential memory. In Gurdjieff terminology, these patterns are called our Time Body. But again, there is no clarity on the structure of this Time Body and how it is maintained. In Yoga, this energy is known as Samana Vayu.
The third part, one more set of 10,000 impulses, hits the inner instrument or manas, or what Mr. Tavaria calls the astral brain.
The whole yogic chakra system is a part of the manas. It is a laboratory that decodes impulses according to their structure in the five elements. The Muladhara decodes the prithvi tanmatra, the swadhishthana decodes the water tanmantra, manipura decodes the fire tanmatra, anahata the air tanmatra and vishuddhi decodes the ether tanmatra.
These tanmatras or impulses flow in at electronic speeds. However, the manas is not an electronic instrument, it is a molecular instrument. Thus, it cannot process all 10,000 impulses and automatically processes certain impulses according to our sanskars or what we referred to earlier as the time body.
These limited number of impulses, chosen by the manas, reach the taluka or medulla to mix with memory patterns and create 120 thought forms. The rest of the impulses, which are not processed, vanish into the silent area of the brain.
The 120 thought forms then travel to the forebrain to make 16 thoughts per second (the rest are ejected as exhaust through the ajna chakra). Each thought form will have a thinking part, an emotional part, a moving part and an instinctive part. These workings of the mind are what Gurdjieff refers to as centres.
After this decoding process as elaborated above, the manas reconstructs the object we have seen outside on the screen of the mind.
In other words, when you see an object, you are not actually seeing the object, but a reconstructed image of the object on the screen of the mind.
It is the registration of this image that Gurdjieff calls an impression. It is from this point that the Gurdjieff science of impression food begins. Thus, we can deduce that the reason there is no mention of the chakras in Gurdjieff literature is because the chakras have done their work before the impression is created.
What is our work here? Presently, every impression goes on a journey to becoming a mechanical thought, where impulses are decoded by the same memory patterns again and again. Even though the content of the thoughts may seem new to us, influenced by the same memory patterns, they remain old. This mechanical journey is what Gurdjieff calls association.
If we can remember ourselves at the point where the impression is created, the association is broken and the impression goes on a journey of digestion.
Mr. Tavaria says that when we digest an impression, that is, extract finer substances from the impression, we are actually going backwards in the journey. From ‘impulse to impression’ to ‘impression to impulse’. In other words, we are taking attention back to source.
It is fascinating how Mr. Tavaria was able to write this science. Just as a rishi or seer, he must have seen it right before his eyes.
This was an attempt to put before you an understanding of the science of Mr. Tavaria through the lens of Gurdjieff literature.
Excellently explained the science of Shri Tavariaji’s and Gurdjieff ‘s on impulse and impression. More important is
to understand the journey from impression to impulse
Excellent . Thanks for detail explanation .
Happy Guru Purnima .