Anger: Deeper Aspects

My teacher used to say, “Do not lose your anger, it is very precious.” Anger is the highest form of negativity; it is energy vibrating at a very high frequency.

Nature is interested in us getting angry; she wants to use this highly volatile psychic energy for a specific purpose. This energy can only be created in a human being, and every time we express anger, we are serving nature’s purpose. There is a small gap between the impulse to get angry and the actual manifestation of anger. A special energy is needed to bridge this gap, which normally, man does not have. Hence, this is provided by nature. This very precious energy, added by nature, my teacher called the ‘energy of the essence of consciousnesses’.

Now suppose that I sit in meditation for an hour in the morning but later, I get irritated easily hearing an announcement that the bus I am waiting for would be late. Here, nature adds the energy that allows me to let my anger manifest as irritation. I could not remember at the right time that the fault lies inside, not outside. This shows that I do not have enough of the energy of essence of consciousness to hold awareness at the right time. This is the energy which is the bridge to the divine.

A disciple on the path wants to collect this energy in great amounts, and fast too. So the guru teaches him how to steal it from nature. This very advanced technique takes years of hard practice, because the student has to allow the anger to express right up to the point when it is about to manifest, without becoming hypnotised by it.

Gurdjieff calls this the second conscious shock. At this point, nature adds the energy of essence of consciousness to the anger before it can actually manifest. The moment this is done, the disciple pauses, not allowing the anger to manifest, and the energy of anger flows back to him, along with the added energy of the essence of consciousness.

The more anger we have lying in our unconscious minds, the faster our progress can be if we practice this technique. Many spiritual teachers make the students practice catharsis to get rid of pent up anger, seldom realising the valuable raw material they are throwing away.