Garden of Earthly Delights- the fountain of divine influences

 

 

 Certain aspects of the fountain deserve special mention. The trickles of water emerging from the upper levels of the fountain represent divine influences — the word of God — descending into the water (man's mind, or, the collective mind of mankind) by channels outside of the divine influence itself. These, broadly speaking, represent Gurdjieff's "influences C", that is, influences from the highest level descending into the earthly realm.

 

 

 

 

 The divine influence pours down from above, striking the waters below it and creating ripples, which represent influences spreading outward from an esoteric center. These fountains represent, in other words, the equivalent of divine teachings.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Readers may want to remember that the influences depicted in the divine fountain are not, as it were, just the influence of ideas; the influences are to be understood as an actual physical substance, an energy, that flows downward from higher levels into the earthly realm. As such, the influences have a physical transformative power that transcends the nature of ideas, hypotheses or abstractions; a generative power that creates a new form of life, which is exactly what we see taking place below the fountain.