If you set your watch alarm (or, sorry, this sounds so old-fashioned now – your cell phone) to go off at random intervals, you’ll be practicing one of the esoteric techniques of the Russian philosopher Gurdjieff. Exercises like this were called The Work, and they were designed to lift people up out of the automatic unaware existence we all inhabit most of the time – daydreaming default mode, in more modern parlance.
Gurdjieff’s followers believed that little practices like this were part of “making a soul” and that if you worked hard enough at it you could get through that needle’s eye and eventually transcend bodily life, whatever that means.
If this is possible, I think Gurdjieff of all people must be up there somewhere feeling quite pleased about tomorrow’s global mosaic because, in order to do it right, everybody’s going to have to set up some sort of beeping in their lives tomorrow at 15:00 U.T.C. At that moment they’ll not only be “self-remembering” (which is one of those esoteric exercises), but trying to figure out what image represents that particular moment for them.
Stay tuned, set your personal remembering device, and try not to daydream.
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