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We continue with the second of our three-part interview with Wm. Patrick Patterson, author of
Eating The "I".
The Gurdjieff Journal: You say you finished the first draft of
Eating The "I" in 1979, wrote four more drafts, the final one in
1989. But then you didn’t immediately publish. Why not?
William Patrick Patterson: I wanted to sit with it a while, let it "talk" to
me. It is a serious book on a serious subject.
TGJ: What were your concerns?
WPP: So many books by seekers gloss over or minimize
the guts of their search—the human problems. It's
a form of lying. I hadn't done that. I was exposing myself
and others and, to a certain degree, the Work. This put
Eating The "I" outside the "canon" of Gurdjieff literature.
TGJ: I don't follow.
WPP: Gurdjieff liked very much Ouspensky's Search,
but in places he also said it was "wet." That is, too
personal, not objective. Here I had written a book that
could be read as not being a little wet, but soaked
through to the skin!
TGJ: So why didn't you write a "dry" book?
WPP: The first draft was exactly that. But it was the
Work talking to the Work. It didn't come anywhere close
to the actual experience of "the collision of worlds" that
was experienced. I didn't want to make the mistake made
with the film Meetings with Remarkable Men.
TGJ: What was that?
WPP: In my opinion, the film's beginning, the
movements and certain other parts are exactly right but,
overall, the film forgets its audience. It doesn't speak to
them, involve them. I understand the makers did not
want a "bon ton" film, but they so cut the life out of Gurdjieff
and his search that the film fails to inform or inspire.
TGJ: What was the decisive moment when you decided to publish?
Larresingle at the Prieuré
WPP: When I stood in the attic of the Prieuré holding
an empty bottle of armagnac. In 1988 I had gone to
France with my wife, Barbara, to write a travel story on
the French chateaux and of course ended up in Fontainebleau-en-Avon. The Prieuré, which became a
convalescent hospital after Gurdjieff sold it, had long
been deserted. The door was locked
but one small windowpane was broken.
Just as I reached through and
opened the door, a watchman
appeared and shushed me out. I was
out by the fountain when I woke up
and realized this was ridiculous.
Had I come all this way to accept the
"no" of a watchman? I went back
and pleaded with him, using suitable
body language, pointing all
over the place, crying: "Gurdjieff's
maison, this Gurdjieff's." He smiled
and nodded. In a kind of pig-French, I told him that my grandfather
was Gurdjieff's student and I had come all the way from America to honor his past.
TGJ: Wonderful!
WPP: Well, he not only let me
in but gave me a guided tour. The
place was dusty, the walls cracking,
the wallpaper yellowing with age.
But it was so still, so alive. In the
attic my attention was attracted to
one corner. I noticed there, stuffed
down below floor level, the tops of
some bottles. The first one I touched
was an armagnac bottle. Immediately,
I felt it had been used in one of Gurdjieff's dinners.
TGJ: Why?
WPP: I can't tell you. There was
simply this certainty. Certainly the
convalescent patients weren't drinking
armagnac. Also, as I later
learned, it was the kind of armagnac
that Gurdjieff drank, Larresingle.
TGJ: Why did this answer your
question about whether to publish the book or not?
WPP: It was the "sign" I was
waiting for (though I hadn't known that until then).
TGJ: You believe in "signs"?
WPP: Yes, of course. But one
has to be very careful here. The psychic
world is not the spiritual world.
One can drown in psyche. Whatever
"world" one finds oneself in, what is
all-important is not the objects, no
matter how subtle or potent, but the
seeing itself. Otherwise, you get
trapped in the objects, the story.
TGJ: In writing the book, what did you come to?
WPP: In writing the book, I
recapitulated my life. The fire of the
writing crystallized the material of
my life, gave its form and shape a
strength. The payment was that
"Patterson" had to be stripped bare.
This had already happened in life.
Writing about it took it to a new depth, a new "death."
TGJ: There is a lot of death in your book.
WPP: We all "die" many times
before we physically die. The book
opens with my psychic "death," and
the last chapter records still another
"death." The difference in those
deaths is the training I went through
in the Work. It enabled me to be
present to this death. It opened the way into a new life.
TGJ: Are you done dying?
WPP: Are we ever done dying?
Death, I would say, is the stuff of
life. The secret is to learn how to
face it, use it for one's own transformation.
Otherwise, death is just
another dream. The uncertainty,
shocks and suffering of life, the
many "deaths" each of us goes
through...well, the question is a
warrior question: do we keep our
eyes open or shut on the roller
coaster ride? It's all practice for the
death of deaths, the grand finale.
TGJ: I was really taken with
the scene in the book where you cut
open the shark, feel its guts, and feel yourself coming to life.
WPP: All we can do is to hold
to the wish to be awake. Then we can
sense the shock points approaching,
and we can read the symbols of life.
When the interval comes, we will be
intact and ready to act, ready to give
our energy to the non-desires, not
the desires. The symbols that, so to
speak, come to life for us are just
part of it. Many people glue onto the
symbol level and make a world of it. It's a form of idolatry.
Death of the Father
TGJ: Of all the other scenes in
the book, I imagine the most powerful
for you was the death of your father.
WPP: I didn't identify with my
father's death, and so on his deathbed
I was open to receiving the
question "What does he need—now?" That was a call, a demand on
a higher world, and it was answered.
This could not have happened without
all my years of work with Lord Pentland.
TGJ: And on the same day that
your father died, there you were bargaining
like an Aisor for his funeral!
WPP: There is a very powerful
idea in the Work—that of "doing otherwise."
TGJ: Isn't it said we can't do?
WPP: At certain points in the
Work, it tests some, either through
the conditions the teacher creates,
or through life. One must be ready.
The student must have amassed
enough clarity and certainty,
enough real will, that he can act
against his "I", his conditioned self-identity. That produces real heat.
TGJ: Heat? In what sense?
WPP: Crystallization.
TGJ: So crystallization takes place only when—
WPP: Only at extreme internal temperatures. Having a sensation of
the whole of oneself (at whatever level) in a neutral or passive
moment is only preparation.
TGJ: For what?
WPP: To self-remember in the
fire of the moment. There are many
instances in the book where this
"firing" takes place. Also, of course,
there's one helluva lot of forgetting!
The Feminine
TGJ: In the last chapters of
your book you seem to focus on the feminine. Why is that?
WPP: In my opinion, the student
works on both his masculine
and feminine sides, so to speak.
Being of an artistic temperament,
the feminine archetype has played a
large part in my life. When ready, I
had to actively explore it so that it
could be consciously integrated. I
didn't recognize this until after my
father's death. With his death, my
work with the masculine ended in a
sense (relative to that point on the
life spiral) and work on the feminine
began. For the last 12 years, that has been my focus.
TGJ: Your females are very strong.
WPP: Yes, the women are
strong but also quite feminine. Each
fed me with different aspects of the
feminine that had to be integrated.
TGJ: What about Stanley?
WPP: We have "black teachers,"
not just "white." I learned a lot from Stanley.
TGJ: The way you describe it,
your relationship almost seems archetypal.
WPP: There are many such
relationships in the book. With
Stanley, I saw the myth of St. George
and the dragon play out. I don't say
that in any grandiose way. Everyone
is encountering archetypes, we just
don't realize it. On the path to real I
the student enters that world and
wakes up to it, or is put to sleep again. Only deeper.
TGJ: Tell about killing the dragon.
WPP: The secret is, you don't
kill the dragon, but you have to try.
The best you can get is, as Stanley
says, "a draw." We are conditioned to
play to win. When we realize we
can't, most people don't have the
force to continue, but that's when
the real fight begins. You fight not
for victory but to fight as well as you
can, regardless of outcome. That
takes you out of the heavy duality
(that people like Stanley love) to a
new level of being. You lose if you
fight the dragon on its own level.
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