Ouspensky suggested that we are all asleep, or unconscious of ourselves, then he met Gurdjieff whom he thought had the answer to awaken people . They set up some training centers to train people around the world and then G. told O. that he made the whole thing up out of folk lore and bullshit just to bilk rich people out of money. O. didnt take it very well ,but alot of followers had made enough progress in the study of consciousness that they didn't abandon ship right away. Any way a lot of books ended up being published about the material and it reveals the minds of people a century ago. The rich intellectuals were all to willing to give up huge amounts of cash to develop themselves into better people and make the world a better place. These guys also went through the Russian revolution. all Gurdjieff really told them was "eat the right food, be good to your parents and children, don't think bad thoughts, be kind, don't take anything personally and do what you can to escape the obvious monster.
On the other hand most of what he says makes sense. The patterns of resonance that we call music are more than just entertainment. Everything has this resonant characteristic and the different 'contexts' that 'information' gets organied into are represented in a very concrete way by music. Indian and Islamic music have an important part in spiritual practice of those religions, the performance of Indian Classical Music is always a religious experience. It is also a history lesson about a point in time when The Mogul Empire ruled over northern India. the ruling class encouraged the development of their 'host' culture to the degree that it benefited both groups. The thing about music though is that it can test our metal to find our true temper or exagerate emotions for artistic (and political) purposes. The other thing about music is that you can pass it along and the song becomes concrete evidence that information can be shared and pass between individuals. And in the form of song, ancient words come alive in a singers mouth. Any way Gurdieff suggested that the keys to a culture and the universe and everything could be contained in song and that orders of being like earth to moon had a harmonic relationship. An individual also has a harmonic relationship with the culture they are part of and with the earth and the moon and the sun. Clearly mass is the one great difference but it got me thinking.... isn't there a connection between mass and pitch? And what is the smallest mass that you would still call human? I don't mean little bits of people or DNA. The human molecule must be more than one, but human culture in its total contains a degree of knowledge and history and suffering that could not be contained in one person or two but only a whole society. it also takes more than one person to make a good song. none of us ever makes up music, mostly we use what forms exist in the culture around us to express the things that art is meant to express. If we didn't there would be nothing to pass on and no common reference or 'context' for us to share. We need each other in order to continue being human. the more deeply we know that, the better we become. We need that vision of an endless sea of pain" to imagine ourselves rising above that. And it is that Vision which compells us study everything with delight and hunger and create poetry and power plants, all to give our children a foot hold in the world and Cliff Notes for the book of life.

"All thought on God ends up diminishing the truth."