LETTERS

THE ULTIMATE PURPOSE

OF THE

ARICA SCHOOL

BEYOND PLAGIARISM AND MISUSE

OSCAR ICHAZO
 CONTENTS

Foreword5

January 1986 6

April 1986 26

November 1986 39

December 1987 52

Letter To The Transpersonal Community 1991 91

Contact information 173

Books By Oscar Ichazo 174

About The Author 175

 FOREWORD

The Teachings of Oscar Ichazo’s new Tradition of Integral

Philosophy, presented by the Arica School of Knowledge,
have been constantly plagiarized and misused by unauth-
orized persons in their books and trainings. Letters clarifies
what the Integral Teachings and the Arica School repre-
sent. In this book, Oscar Ichazo explains the Arica Integral
Philosophy as the result of a new logic and new ontological
point of view, producing an alive School of Knowledge with
a modern approach to the science of the human condition
from ego to Enlightenment (Gk. Theosis) for the benefit of all.

Sarah Ichazo

5
 LETTERS

J A N U A R Y 1986

Our School is entering the final stage of the realization of

Sunyata, the Emptiness of non–conceptuality, and precise
tools have been passed for attaining Innate Awareness, the
State of Clear Light. These meditations, if taken in a rou-
tine way, are of immense practical value for recovering and
generating the Clear Light. However, when worked in a rit-
ualized way as we do in the Arica School, they acquire an
entirely different spiritual weight and strength, thus pro-
ducing an impact on the deepest foundations of cultural
identity in our time and place.

The last part of this Work is based upon the central motif
of the meditation on the Golden Eye. When a meditation
(with form or formless) is directed to generate the Clear
Light, and this State is maintained continuously through
specific meditations practiced over a number of years, these
meditations result in our normal vision being filled with a
golden Clear Light, a vibrating mist covering our ordinary
vision of external reality; and if we close our eyes, our inter-
nal vision is likewise filled with a golden Clear Light that
is alive with a higher vibration and quality. This type of
experience is common to any trained meditator capable of
thirty minutes of one–pointed meditation inside the Clear
Light of Innate Awareness of non–conceptuality (without
Feelings or Thoughts, as in Kinerhythm), a State of Innate
Awareness of the Absolute Mind. This experience, as a

6
 J anuary 1986

result of The Golden Eye Work, is an attainment of maturity,

clear insight, and understanding which will stabilize; and it
will be possible to generate it afterwards in three and a half
minutes of one–pointed meditation (with form or formless).
This is one of the most profound stages of Self–realization.
In the Arica Integral Teachings the meditations and meth-
odology are accompanied by a theoretical psychology,
including the way to apply practically this psychology to
balance the psyche in terms of the common ground of our
society, giving to Aricans a Method for professional coun-
seling with a complete view of the human process.

The Golden Eye is also a ritualized Work. Once again, with

this I am pointing out its importance as a cultural event
within our Western civilization. In the same way that the
Adamantine Pyramid has provided the tools and the abil-
ity to reach the Diamond State of non–duality, The Golden
Eye gives the maturity, recognition and ability to recall the
Clear Light at will and to use the strength that can ema-
nate only from the pure Emptiness (Innate Awareness) of
non–attachment and non–conceptualization. This is a very
important point to consider because a mature energy, skill-
fully conduced, has enormous health benefits, as has been
proved throughout history and manifested throughout all
cultures. But the most important element is that The Golden
Eye can establish, balance and fulfill our Ethical Self, which
is the fundamental basis for being able to work, totally and

7
 OSCAR ICHAZO

consciously, toward the common evolution and to attain

Enlightenment for the benefit of all humanity.

The Golden Eye Initiation and Ritual also refers to the attain-
ment of our internal "golden Transcendental Self" which
was known in ancient Egypt, classical Greece, and in the tra-
ditions of the Orthodox Christians and Gnostic Christians
as the realization of the internal Golden Christ (an ideal
internal State). Classical alchemy refers to this stage as the
"golden stone" of the philosophers, because once attained
it has the permanence and hardness of stone. It is a degree
of the highest spirituality, and we should make no mistake
about it. Because of the internal nature of the Work we are
starting, it is most important to have an organized life and
ethical behavior.

Recently I have been asked by fellow Aricans for my overall

assessment of several sex trainings, seminars and exercises
which are now proliferating in the culture. In general terms,
as I said to the Board of Directors of the Arica Institute: "In
Arica we do not behave upon a 'yes or no' position but upon
mature self–guidance." I have reviewed most of these train-
ings and I find them to be plainly materialistic, however
contrary could be the claims, because such manipulations
only enlarge and magnify bare desire and unmistakably
produce craving about the object of desire; consequently
suffering will inevitably result. If we turn the wheel of
desire, craving and suffering, only samsara, sickness and

8
 J anuary 1986

delusion will result, as the Enlightened One established. If

somebody wants to offer these activities upon a Bodhisattva
vow, it will never produce Bodhichitta, the enlightened prin-
ciple of compassion, because these trainings are based on
personal games and maneuvers of self–fulfilling pleasures,
upon egotistic and pornographic display, which will not
produce transcendentality. It is that simple. If someone
goes around bragging about their Buddhahood and pro-
claiming the qualifications of being a Buddha, you know
for sure they know nothing about it.

To work with the volatile energy of sex is a well known and

extremely old way to realization. In tantric terms it is known
as working with the realm of desire, where desire is skill-
fully transformed into eroticism and then transmuted into
a higher level energy of communion and spirituality. These
techniques exist and are very well known but require skill-
ful guidance and knowledgeable insight about the realm of
desire that has to be transformed into States of Clear Light
and Sunyata. In these States it is not pleasure that is being
sought but an enlargement of spiritual love—far away from
material desires. In the Arica School we do not fall into the
game of opinion, qualifying anything as good or bad, but
we should know how to make distinctions. This is just ele-
mental prudence.

The Exalted One said:

9
 OSCAR ICHAZO

Monks, these two extremes should not be followed

by one who has gone forth as a wanderer. Which
two? Devotion to the pleasures of sense, a low
practice of villagers, a practice unworthy, unprof-
itable, the way of the world [on the one hand];
and [on the other] devotion to self–mortification,
which is painful, unworthy and unprofitable. By
avoiding these two extremes, the Tathagata has
gained knowledge of that middle path which
giveth vision, which giveth knowledge, which
causeth calm, special knowledge, Enlightenment,
Nirvana.

The outcome of material pornography (manipulation to-

ward arousal of sexual desire) is lust. So we can say that lust
is double rooted, since it can be provoked both by manip-
ulating the sexual organs as well as by repressing them,
flatly and blindly denying them. Chastity vows that tend
to disrupt and stop the natural functions of human sexual-
ity will, as a matter of fact, always and in all cases just fail,
bluntly and coarsely inflicting the torment and suffering of
guilt and endless remorse upon their clients—providing we
are speaking about people with normal sexual organs and
those who are not psychopaths. Trying to stop the gonads
from producing sexual hormones and their natural drive
upon our body by the force of a vow is like believing that
we can stop our salivary glands from excreting saliva by

10
 J anuary 1986

the power of the decree of another uneducated futile vow,

however enforced by blessings, incense or holy water. In
both extremes, the voracious flame of lust will ignite fires
of desire in our psyche. Anyone serious about the Path of
Enlightenment should be aware of this fact because lust is
seen as the reddish hell, full of corrupting and nauseating
fumes, and is called "the fountain of all iniquity." It is wise
to know what is happening to our sexual energy. It is not
just a parochial predicament of saintliness; it is a fundamen-
tal truth. Sex is the basis of life. As a Mentation it produces
in our psyche the sense of orientation, giving us the incli-
nation of where we are going: toward our realization and
happiness, or toward burnout, despair and suffering. There
are no alternatives.

In the Buddhist tradition, lust is considered the main demon

enemy of Enlightenment, with the name of Mara (the Death
–dealer, the Evil One, the Tempter), defined as the one who
rules the events and manipulations of a life devoted to pas-
sion, desire and futile pleasures. Consequently Mara refutes
in himself and others the very thought of freedom. We must
remember that Mara was the first, the most implacable,
and most relentless tempter of Buddha at the point of his
Enlightenment under the bodhi tree. The Buddhist tradi-
tion informs us that Mara's three sons and three daughters
will ignite fires of desire throughout our psyche.

11
 OSCAR ICHAZO

9. Nervous System
Spiritual Pole

8. Cognitive System 1. Reproductive System

Adaptation Instinct Sexual Pole

7. Endocrine System 2. Movement System

Function of Coordination Function of Space

6. Expression System 3. Digestive System

Function of Expression Conservation Instinct

5. Circulatory System 4. Protective System

Relation Instinct Function of Time

ENNEAGRAM OF THE NINE SYSTEMS

AND PSYCHIC STRUCTURES

In the Arica Integral System these "fires of desire" are de-

scribed as the products of lust enthroned upon the three
Instincts. Thus, the Conservation Instinct is plagued by the
couple of senseless flurry (yang) and universal discontent
(yin). The Relation Instinct is disrupted by the duo of idiotic
gaiety (yang) and tricky delight (yin). And the Adaptation
Instinct is blurred by the couple of swollen pride (yang) and
morbid thirst (yin). Unfortunately, it does not stop here.

Lust will invade the four Functions. Thus, the Function of

Space will burn with lust for possessions, directed toward
the gross abuse of sex. The Function of Time will burn
with the lust for power, money, control over lovers, nym-
phomania, and priapism: all of it a fallacious arrangement.
The Function of Expression will collapse upon flirtations

12
 J anuary 1986

and the desire to be known as a sexual machine; and the

Function of Coordination will try to proselytize upon the
sexual explosion, gathering comrades for delusion and
deceit. The two Poles will also be transformed into mate-
rial outcomes. Consequently, suffering will appear at every
point of our activities. The profound imbalance of the Poles
will end in projections of sexual energy, making our exter-
nal reality entirely subjective and guided by sexual craving
as a leitmotif.

In sum, it is not healthy to manipulate uncontrollable lust

just for the sake of pleasure. What comes to mind here is
the old image of a demented man, running with an ignited
torch against the wind. We know what will happen. In any
case, it is healthy to meditate upon the traditional warn-
ing stated by the Foe Destroyer, the Guardian Heruka of
the Four Tantras:

The Foe (liar), teaching about a yoga that is not a

yoga, will unscrupulously proclaim secrets that
are not secrets; and thus offers his ego–self to
be adored as a meaningless deity covered with
tanned gold and flashy jewels; will surely claim
upon a wisdom that is not wisdom or sparkle of
wisdom; what could happen to those who follow
him, but to sink without remedy in the deepest
hell of burning ignorance and stalking suffering?

13
 OSCAR ICHAZO

It is definitely beneficial to work Alpha Heat from time to

time in order to rebalance the current of ch'i and to reopen
the central channel which, technically speaking, is one of
the places where clarification can happen. Any Arican who
has worked Alpha Heat can continue with reduced and syn-
optic indications, giving more attention to the practical
Work. From time to time it is also beneficial to meditate in
the Psychic Space to enlarge our sense of internal freedom
from hindrances and clinging attachments, and to medi-
tate in the golden–green–violet Light (the luminescence of
the Divine State of the Eternal Presence) of the Adamantine
Pyramid, becoming totally attuned and united in our heart
center, and from it expanding to all the four Realms of
Existence. Because the Work is offered for the benefit of all
and the realization of Humanity–One, these meditations
are aligned with our Way and strengthen our Self–reali-
zation. But if we play with sex at large, we should know
exactly where we are going and what we will get from it,
and then of course have a clear sense of what we are doing.
It is important that Aricans take a clear look at the process
of the School, because during the ritualized Work of The
Golden Eye it would be inappropriate for those polluted by
lust, greed, fear, and prejudice to participate in the Arica
Work at the same time. If somebody feels that what they
are doing is more important, they should leave the School
and continue their own way, whatever that may be.

14
 J anuary 1986

Sexual tantra is the ritualistic transformation of desire into

eroticism, and eroticism into an enlarged experience of
Spiritual Union. Kama Yoga and Maithuna are ancient rit-
uals and techniques. It is possible to offer a much deeper
explanation of these methods in terms of the metaphys-
ics and the psychology of our time and culture. Today we
have available a complete, scientific anatomical and phys-
iological knowledge of the human body that can deepen
our understanding by giving us, as a result, a mature and
perfectly balanced sexual life, with sex becoming a joyful
friend supporting our Way to Enlightenment, instead of
losing all our sexual energy to the darkened destroyer that
sex becomes when presented in material terms.

In all ages and cultures, mysticism has had to deal with

the problem of convincing ordinary people that "inside"
them is a Divine State to be realized. The major problem
is that this transcendental being refuses all descriptions in
ordinary terms. About this point the Upanishads and other
sacred books of the Orient have been quoted or simply
plagiarized and repeated ad nauseam to the point of absurd-
ity, proclaiming that we have an ego and in the depths of
that ego there is a Soul, Atman, which is equal to the Creator,
Brahma. Kashmiri Shaivaism works on the basis that we
have the same Divine Spark as the eternal Shiva. And
Buddhism explains that the Tathagata, the Buddha, is inside
us from the very beginning and beyond the beginning; and

15
 OSCAR ICHAZO

once we lose our ignorance, we realize our Buddha nature,

our True Self, and Nirvana is a State opened in us.

If we see the theoretical exposure, these mystical facts are

elementally simple; and because of this simplicity, weak
mentalities elaborate their beliefs upon this basis. Any ridic-
ulous reason or accident (falling on their buttocks when
young, having a dream, or perhaps a deluded vision, or any
"peak" experience) would be enough to trigger the belief
that in fact they have produced union with the Divine. Thus,
with the same simplicity and naiveté of mind, they would
proclaim themselves enlightened and completely ready to
become a guru. Once more we should remember that pro-
claiming yourself a Buddha, God or Jesus will not make you
one, but instead it will crystallize the ego to a level where it
can become indestructible, making it impossible for you to
enter the Higher States. Self–realization is nonexistent with-
out first entering the State of 'Mind–only' and witnessing
the 'ego as such.' When we accept material reality as being
our final realization, transcendental experiences become a
total impossibility. As always, self–appointed prophets and
priests are condemned to continuous self–deception and to
egregious and flagrant failure.

Ancient cultures, like those that flourished in India, have

had trouble with this point throughout thousands of years
of history. They have been polluted by self–proclaimed
gods, saints, buddhas, siddhas, sannyasins, etc. Because

16
 J anuary 1986

of this, they have in time produced elaborate tests and

proofs to separate the gross from the subtle. In the same
way, at the beginning of the Arica School, we defined the
primordial difference between the character produced by
our material aggregates (ego–self or ego personality) and
our Transcendental Self as our Innermost Being. There still
remains with us the cultural problem of our thinking that
the Higher Self is an actual entity. It is precisely this mis-
conception that disappears at the end of The Golden Eye.
In the schools of the highest Tantric Yoga, especially the
Madhyamaka School, the Higher Self is left unnamed and
of course undefined, since by nature it eludes any defini-
tion. There are explanations that define this Transcendental
Self by the negative, and that is why a personal relation
is required with a skillful teacher capable of transmitting
the "secret yoga" with a complete alive Teaching. Here the
implication of secrecy refers to the impossibility of produc-
ing real transmission without two components: an initiator
who "is there," and the one who is initiated and who has
acquired the level and the maturity for objective compre-
hension. And it is secret because the bare experience of
Clear Light at this level cannot be portrayed or described
and of course it is absolutely personal—that is, beyond
words.

Because of this inevitable fact, at the top level of En-

lightenment (Theosis), which can only be experienced,

17
 OSCAR ICHAZO

we say in the Arica School: "Nothing beats experience."

Experience here does not mean acquired competence, or
the experience of living through an event, or the sharing of
Feelings, Emotions and Thoughts, or the grasping of matter
through our senses. Experience is the permanent encoun-
ter with the State of Innate Awareness that happens only
by attaining Theosis (Enlightenment) or Buddhahood—the
eleventh grade of Highest Yoga Tantra, or the highest level
in our School. This is a very long way and a very difficult
one, and for corroborating this point there is the experi-
ence of all history. At the beginning of the Arica School we
worked the aphorism that "the Higher Self, though being
elementally simple, is far from being simple to attain." We
have to be very clear about this crucial and definitive fact.

In Buddhism the identification of our entire life with our

Higher Self is a gradual procedure, taken carefully step by
step to maturity. In the Arica School we start by learning
about the structure of our psyche, and so by this careful
Knowledge we gain a "natural self," a Higher Self that will
mature to the right point of complete Enlightenment. The
difference between the "I am" ego and the Higher Self is
that the former attaches itself to everything in relation to its
imagined ego–entity—the belief that it is god–like, aston-
ishingly awesome, beautiful, happy, full of light, clear, big,
important, powerful, magnificent, and bathing in the cel-
ebration of itself as a god. Thus, nothing is produced but

18
 J anuary 1986

the hardening of ego attachments by the use of conscious

or unconscious self–hypnosis and self–delusion, and this
will produce myriads of new and stronger clinging hin-
drances. We say in the Arica School that if you devote your
life to these hindrances you will finish with a "Saint Ego,"
unbreakable and hard as rock. As a general principle, spir-
itual ways cannot be criticized since they belong to internal
subjectivities; and as we know, what does not work for
one may work for another. This is the absolutely neces-
sary tolerance upon which spiritual and religious matters
are based, but once more I would refer to the Heruka of the
Four Tantras. However, we must remember that the world
of subjectivity is unreal and samsaric, and the real world is
the discovering of the True Nature of our Absolute Mind,
Enlightenment (Theosis).

The Work of Transcendence can be compared to a tree

whose maturity takes several years. Until this process is
complete there will be no fruits visible; yet suddenly at
the end there is a flowering, followed by an abundance of
fruit. We could imagine that the plant says about itself "I
am" when one year old, and "I am" several years after when
producing fruit. It would certainly be the same plant, but
in a totally different aspect of itself. Producing fruit here
means the Nirvanic State of non–duality and non–concep-
tuality. In the Arica Integral Teachings we take this State of
non–duality and non–conceptualization as the ontological

19
 OSCAR ICHAZO

basis for a more complete exposure and insight into the

metaphysical conception of Ultimate Reality—a theologi-
cal doctrine with a consequent eschatology, giving a new
experience of freedom and Ultimate Liberation and a new
philosophical interpretation of history as the main way for
our maturing as individuals and as a culture.

It is totally tragic and at the same time comical to see real

traditional mystical exercises in the hands of self–appointed,
incompetent gurus. For instance, there is the case of the
old exercise for accepting, every ten years or so, new mem-
bers into one of the very few real Sufi sects. The candidates
would gather in the tekke, and the Sufi master would ask
the candidates to move slowly, at ease, with their own
tempo, and to feel the Spirit enter them and let it manifest
through their bodies. What happened was that those pol-
luted by subjective attachments and hardened egos would
start dancing, whirling, jumping, throwing themselves to
the ground, kicking, tearing their hair, crying, speaking
in tongues, singing nonsense, lost in their own gibberish,
claiming visions and that they were struck by lights, with
uncontrollable waves of energy sweeping through their
bodies. This would show to the real Sufi master, in the most
clear and conclusive way, that these candidates were just
discharging their own impure internal ego intoxication and
cravings for saintliness that were in fact no more than dis-
guised manifestations of lust for money, sex and power.

20
 J anuary 1986

It would take a very long time before these ego cravings

and attachments could be purified and clarified. But there
would be those few in the group of candidates who did
not dance and had no experiences whatsoever of visions,
being struck by lights, or nervous currents of energy. They
would be showing that they were mature and that they
were already beyond self–pampering and self–deception,
that they were taking reality just as it is and so were pre-
pared for real Work.

This type of test was performed very rarely and in lapses

of more than ten years, under strictly controlled circum-
stances and ritual. This was because candidates for serious
Transcendental Work had to be taken with equal serious-
ness and responsibility. Unfortunately, this ritualized test,
since it has fallen into the hands of unprepared "guru mas-
ters," has completely lost its purpose and Divine Energy.
Instead it is taken as a daily exercise per se and thus it has
become just a chaotic outburst of energy, purposeless and
ridiculously absurd. It is sad to see such invaluable tools lost
forever because of the mockery and disrespect with which
they have been treated by pseudo–teachers. It reminds
me of the sad figure of the "cargo cult" of aborigines in
New Guinea who, by fashioning an imitation airfield with
wooden airplanes and boxes for radio transmitters, were
convinced that they would attract the real airplane—sad,
but comical.

21
 OSCAR ICHAZO

For instance, take these words:

I am, I am, I am, God, God, God,
Beautiful, fantastic, awesome,
I am God, I am God, I am God, God, God, God,
God I am, God I am, God I am,
Awesome, gorgeous, magnificent, I am, I am, I am.
If this gives you goosebumps, enhanced visions, and you
feel filled by lights, you have to know with total security
that you are completely immature and that you need a long
time of Karma Yoga—the yoga that deals with the suffering
of the material world, especially that produced by money,
sex and power—in order to attain clarity and get on the
Path of real Knowledge.

We are also polluted by the glittering attraction of weekends

that lure people with the promise of sudden Enlightenment.
The pompous weekend gurus will regurgitate their pedan-
tic fanfare, believing strongly that Enlightenment is like a
trick, a point of view or some strong opinion about your-
self. They believe that Enlightenment is no more than a
secret maneuver to be discovered by cunning wise guys—
as I say, a kind of glittering trick, mysterious and awesome.
In fact, these are the most pedestrian and domestic traps. It
is rather like the simple snares set for the very difficult to
catch monkeys in the tropics. The hunters make a hole in
a coconut and drain the juice, replacing it with nuts, and
leave the coconut close to the trees where the monkeys

22
 J anuary 1986

live. The monkeys succumb to their curiosity, smell the

nuts inside the coconuts, and then try to take them out
with their hands. When they grasp a nut between their fin-
gers, making a fist, they are not able to remove their hand
from inside the coconut because they have no idea that by
grasping the nut it is actually imprisoning them. Thus they
become an easy prey. Humans attracted by the glitter of
the unknown and by flashy advertisements for easy and
cheap pseudo–realization are no different from the clever
and opportunistic monkeys. They will lose their freedom,
and they will be used for displaying their pseudo–realiza-
tions in the marketplace.

The State of Enlightenment is attained as a matter of matu-

rity based upon very straightforward parameters plus a
clear sense that it is pursued, not for egotistical purposes
and aims, but for serving the common ground of our society
and, at large, our common ground of evolution from dense
matter to the highest States of Mind. The Path required to
be covered involves sometimes severe proofs which are
absolutely necessary in order to succeed. To maintain your-
self in a continuous practice offered for the benefit of all
humanity is known in spiritual terms as "accumulation of
merit." The Arica School is no different from other spiritual
Paths in this sense. Since we are so close to completing the
Telesmatta of Truth with the Golden Eye Work, our input
in the mainstream of our society is opening us to the time

23
 OSCAR ICHAZO

in which the Arica School will become a universal, open

Path fulfilling its historic duty.

At present I am preparing the last part of the Work, which

will open a deeper vision of the Arica Integral Teachings
that in time can be worked with the general public or under
any type of circumstance, and it will be accompanied by
Teachings suitable for counseling, supported by a meta-
physics where the principles will be exposed, including a
theology about spiritual Work with a foundation of true
religiosity directed to the Enlightenment and benefit of all
humanity. This Work will also contain a review of theo-
retical psychology and its practical application. Following
this immense Work, the material will be in the hands of the
School. It will offer a history and explanation of the entire
Integral Philosophical material and how to deal with it
practically. All this will prepare us for the Higher Work,
characterized by meditation upon the Divine Body (Total
Liberation and Eternal Life). This meditation will promote
the attainment of the perfect natural State of Enlightenment
by working with Symbol Yoga. The qualification for this
is to meditate upon Clear Light and Sunyata for four con-
secutive hours of practice. When this has been attained
effortlessly, naturally and spontaneously, the State is known
as "beyond all transient aggregates," or the State of "No
More Meditation." At this point Enlightenment becomes
our second nature, continuous and uninterrupted, during

24
 J anuary 1986

the Awakened State, Dream State, or altered States of Con-

sciousness; and it will not disappear during the transit of
death and beyond because the spiritual condition will have
crystallized as an unbreakable, incorruptible and Eternal
Diamond.

This level implies, as I said at the beginning of the Arica

School, a Work that requires entering an important step
toward Total Enlightenment. After a long process of spe-
cific trainings of entering, embodying and stabilizing the
Higher States, those who have continued the Work on an
ongoing basis will have the experience to enable them to
transmit the Initiation into the Light and to introduce oth-
ers into the Higher States of the Arica Integral Theory and
Method from the State of Innate Awareness, with skill and
authority.

The Integral Theory, Method and School have a clear des-

tiny. May the Eternal Presence in all of us be realized as
the Highest State of Enlightenment (Theosis) for the ben-
efit of all.

Beloved Sisters and Brothers, I keep you all in the depths

of my heart. Until always,

WE ARE ONE

25
 LETTERS

A P R I L 1986

This letter concerns what I think about the book The Ennea-
gram: A Journey of Self Discovery, which plagiarizes my work
and also infringes the copyrights. The matter referred to is
presently in the hands of the Institute's lawyers, and copy-
right infringement has already been acknowledged by the
party being contested.

What the Arica Institute has to legally contest is all the mat-
ter, letter by letter, plus the unlawful use of enneagrams.
Information in support of the Institute's case can be found
in the archives of the Instituto de Estudios Teologicos y
Misticismo Experimental (Institute of Theológical Studies
and Experimental Mysticism), Santiago, Chile, and Buenos
Aires, Argentina, 1958–62; in the Instituto de Psicologia
Aplicada (Institute of Applied Psychology), Santiago, Chile;
in my lectures of 1968 and 1969; in the Instituto de Gnose-
ologia (Institute of Gnosiology), Arica, Chile, 1968–70; in my
recorded lectures of 1970 in Arica, Chile, and in 1971–74 in
New York and San Francisco at the Arica Institute; in my
book The Human Process for Enlightenment and Freedom, 1975;
in the Kensho lectures of 1976; in my lectures at Lincoln
Center, New York, 1981, at Seabury Hall, Hawaii, 1981, and
at the University of London, London, England, 1981; in the
Wrekin Trust lectures, Winchester, England, 1982; in my
books Between Metaphysics and Protoanalysis and Interviews
with Oscar Ichazo, 1982; and in my lectures at Sugar Maples,

26
 A pril 1986

New York, in 1982. The list is vast.

The notorious difference between my presentation and the

plagiarized version is that the precise relation for analysis
—which is possible when our ordinary underdeveloped
psyche is measured against the perfect pattern of the Divine
Human Prototype—has been corrupted, prostituted and
fouled by pious Jesuit priests who have changed it using the
name of Jesus instead. This is totally inadequate, mislead-
ing and uninformed—not of course because the mystical
figure of Lord Jesus does not have all the qualifications of
the Divine Human Prototype, but because the same Truth
would be explained in different ways. To make a simple
analogy: wine and beer both contain alcohol (read spiritual
mysticism). Taken separately they can be enjoyed on occa-
sion but mixing them would evoke vomiting. Following
this raw example, perhaps it can be better defined if we
remember the classical words of Lord Jesus in the Gospels,
when he advised not to put new wine in old wineskins,
because by doing so they will break, and wineskins and
wine would be lost. We will not go inside the meaning of
this parable, directed not to confuse what we now know
as the Old Testament with the Good News taught by Lord
Jesus Christ. Let us understand clearly here that there is
no contradiction, but there are differences that have to be
carefully considered about the same Divine Message. In the
same way, I say and insist there is no difference whatsoever

27
 OSCAR ICHAZO

between the mystical figure of Lord Jesus and what we qual-

ify in the Arica School spirituality as the Divine Human
Prototype. Let us be clear again: both refer to the same
Divine Principle, but the difference is that the mystical
figure of Lord Jesus is a way of mysticism produced in
the depths of our emotional self. For this reason, mystical
Christianity is described as "accesses to the mystical heart"
that can be disturbed only when the mind interferes. This
we see perfectly and clearly exposed in all patristic phi-
losophy, St. Augustine, St. Anselm, and St. Bonaventure;
in the mystical writings of Martin Luther, Jacob Boehme,
George Fox, Duns Scotus, Erasmus, etc.; and in our time
by Kierkegaard, Unamuno, Schweitzer, Otto, Teilhard de
Chardin, Marcel, etc. What I want to point out without
doubt is that working with the Divine Human Prototype, as
I propose, chooses a totally different way (a completely new
Way) for the same Realization. This Way, instead of pro-
moting exclusively the "accesses of the heart" (a work that
anyhow is a categorical part of the Arica Integral System),
is clearly directed to the clarification of our mind, as well
as our heart. However, if you choose to confuse systems
and try to make a cocktail with them, you will just distort,
disarrange and dangerously muddle any transcendental
result. Putting it more clearly, in the Integral System the
entire psyche is reviewed with intellectual tools and prac-
tices of Bare Attention meditation, each degree enforcing
and guaranteeing that the psyche will integrate the changes

28
 A pril 1986

and shocks inherent in its expansion and growth.

A different way is the one followed by most of the exter-

nal and materialistic branches of Christianity and other
equally materialistic religions, easy to export, and pro-
ducing simple consolations, hypocritical admonitions, fear
of sin, panic about the devil, and redundant hate for the
Antichrist. These go no further than pampering the ego and
emptying the pockets of their ecstatic clients, who of course
forget the lesson a few seconds later. The Antichrist, inci-
dentally, is barely mentioned in the Gospel of St. John or in
Revelations because obviously the figure of the Antichrist
does not enhance or give any mystical stand to real inter-
nal Christianity, so it is irrelevant. This is also because the
Antichrist in front of the Christ is as meaningless as the
light of a candle in front of the summer sun at midday, and
his strength would be a total and radical impossibility, like
Satan trying to tempt Lord Jesus, and he is rather a figure
amplified by priestly, materialistic conventions and prof-
iting. Historically speaking, the epithet of the "Antichrist"
was the warhorse for throwing accusations to the competi-
tion almost from the beginning of Christianity. During the
Renaissance, any contention between the material interest
of the Pope and the Emperors would ineluctably be fol-
lowed by salvos of mutual charges of being the Antichrist.
Protestants made a famous caricature of the Pope appoint-
ing himself the "real" Antichrist: "Ego sum Papa." During

29
 OSCAR ICHAZO

the twentieth century it became more difficult to find feet

for these shoes, since the single main characteristic of the
Antichrist is his description as a "powerful king," a crowned
head; and since kingship has practically disappeared, you
would think that this type of denunciation has become
more and more difficult to support. But no, during the
"roaring twenties" Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was a favorite for
the title; during the thirties and World War II Hitler got
it (regardless of the admiration shown him by Pope Pius
XII); and who knows who will be next? This form of dis-
crediting people seems to me diabolically materialistic,
inhumane, and an obvious artifice of stupidity. If we want
to find the Antichrist as that which opposes the Christ, I
do not find him anywhere other than in the lower ego—
chaotic and full of iniquities, corruption, filthiness, and
accusation. The accuser is ready to throw not only "the first
stone" (Lord Jesus didn't do that, remember?) but a whole
wagonload of them to anyone who contradicts the selfish-
ness, hypocrisy, and intolerance of the lower ego when it
is promoted as our spiritual director. When this happens,
nobody should be alarmed by the monotonous and caco-
phonic hammering of accusations, based upon cunningly
malicious interpretations of the Book of Daniel that in fact
belong to a historical moment of Judaism. Perhaps "diab-
olos" in the original Greek means "slander accuser."

It has been the karma of my life to be blessed with the

Internal Initiations of the most important and ancient Paths

30
 A pril 1986

of Transcendentality and to be recognized by undeniable

authorities on these matters throughout the world. These
points will be made completely clear in future books. That is
why I know there is no transcendental system and method
so enjoyable and resultful as the Arica Integral Philosophical
System, in terms of true attainment and Realization; and
also because, when working within these totally new para-
meters, complete success can be expected in a significant
concentration of time.

I want to be specific about the "opening of the heart," a tran-

scendental experience of the highest degree that takes years
upon years or entire lives with no guarantee of success. You
can ask about it in any serious Christian monastery or any
recognized Protestant community. Successful cases are so
extraordinarily uncommon that it is hardly worth count-
ing them. Saints like St. Francis of Assisi or Martin Luther
are so extremely few that they are almost like a phenom-
enon of nature. This way takes total dedication and, more
important, Divine Grace. The point is that we should not
fall into the trap of producing spiritual cocktails. It is so
dangerous because one ingredient can contradict another
violently inside our psyche, producing irreparable damage,
confusion, breakdowns, and deep scars, possibly incurable,
that could take many years to clarify, if ever, in order to
achieve the real parameters of internal realization. When I
presented the description of the first nine enneagrams about

31
 OSCAR ICHAZO

our qualifications in front of the Divine Human Prototype,

it was no more than an intent to begin to introduce ideas
that have to be treated with extreme care and full responsi-
bility. "Ideas" here mean elements capable of transforming
our internal Self with unmistakable security, and not what
pop philosophers believe about their "ideas about ideas"
that are no more or less than a loss of time for pretentious
dilettantes, chattering endlessly for hearing themselves.

There would be no contradictions if the Arica Integral

System were taken side by side with any real spiritual
tradition. It would benefit both. But trying to mix them
irresponsibly will, I insist, just create confusion—a very
extreme, dangerous confusion—because methodology and
hermeneutics have not been correctly acknowledged. Things
of the Spirit need much more than just goodwill and the
pious sense of uninformed Jesuit priests.

In another vein, pertaining to what I said in my previous

letter to the School about the first transcendental experi-
ences of the Innate Awareness of the golden Clear Light,
it is necessary that these be taken as minimal references.
What is experienced inside is beyond your imagination,
my dear Sisters and Brothers. And then you will be with
me in why we must not describe these States or talk about
them. At this point, the one hundred and eight enneagrams
and Laws, which have precise keys, will become unmis-
takably clear, transparent and practical. It does not make

32
 A pril 1986

any sense if you have not experienced it. By "experience" I

mean that "bare spiritual experience" which happens only
at the very top of the Path to complete Enlightenment and
Buddhahood, never otherwise, not even in "flash" or "peak"
experiences, nor even under extraordinary circumstances
of recognized spiritual happenings.

The point then is to contest vigorously the flagrant abuse

and gross robbery and plagiarism that exist in The Ennea-
gram: A Journey of Self Discovery, published by Dimension
Books, Inc. and authored by Maria Beesing O.P., Robert J.
Nogosok C.S.C., and Patrick H. O'Leary S.J. The plundering
of Arica material has gone on a long time already. I am not
saying that the Arica Integral Method cannot be worked
with parallel paths but, once more, I advise with intention
and total efficiency not to confuse the ways to the same
final and only Truth. A garbled concoction could damage
unaware students beyond repair, and I insist that I will put
upon myself, as a total and absolute duty, the task of clari-
fying all mistakes and misleading indecencies concerning
this point that belongs to all humanity.

The totality of the human psyche can be explained, work-

ing carefully with the one hundred and eight enneagrams
and with the Laws of relations between them. The Laws
behave as such with no holes or lapses. They are supported
by hard metaphysics, meaning the principles of the Ultimate
Reality. This problem has been with us for more than 2,800

33
 OSCAR ICHAZO

years and metaphysical news comes to us in lapses of cen-

turies. To the present we can count no more than six new
and different metaphysical positions: Parmenides, Plato and
Aristotle, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, Descartes, and
Kant. All philosophy has been an ascending current of his-
tory around these six principle ontological positions. The
most recent metaphysical achievement, the one proposed
in the rational critique of Immanuel Kant, established the
metaphysics of Idealism; and here, of course, we are not
talking of Idealism as a virtue of enthusiasm, but of a meta-
physics based on reason and the critique of ideas: those
about human cognition, those about human logic, and those
about oneself, nature and the Divine.

Now however, we have to agree that there is nothing more

important for human understanding and science than to
establish a new metaphysics that can take us out of the
road of pure materialism in which we are stuck. Trying to
go back in history and to establish ourselves on the meta-
physics of the Scholastics is absurd, especially upon the
two Summas of St. Thomas Aquinas. Who has ever seen
history going backwards? But as the saying goes: "Every
crazy with his own craziness." All post–Kantian metaphys-
ics is directly or indirectly related to Kant's fundamental
questioning about our reason and our cognition. Idealism,
Marxist materialism, phenomenology, historicism, philo-
sophical anthropology, existentialism of the romantic kind,

34
 A pril 1986

ontological existentialism, Christian existentialism, mate-

rialistic existentialism, and even the pseudo–philosophical
positions of the pragmatists, behaviorists, semanticists, etc.,
etc. are all, without exception, trying to answer the ques-
tions established in Kant's transcendental metaphysics.
Because of this we are at a point of saturation, perpetually
trying different ways to deal with the same questions. And
so what in fact has to be reviewed, in accordance with the
needs of our culture and time, is the entire metaphysical
foundation, because we cannot continue in this situation
of indifference and cynicism. It is as though we are living
in the air or, if you want, stuck in pure materialism.

The essays that will be presented soon in my books contain

full ontological studies; a theology of principles concerning
our relation with the Divine; a philosophical psychology
desperately needed after its collapse during the nine-
teenth century; an urgent epistemology for evaluating our
Scientific Truth; a logic that can explain to us the Laws of
the Mind, the Laws of the course of time, and the Laws of
cycles; a logic that can make mathematics an understand-
able tool for dealing with the problems of the ultimate
reality of matter, the universe, our human existence, and
the mechanisms of human society and history, along with
axiological principles directed to true ethics, morale and
aesthetics. There is much more but let us just say clearly
that I am not playing with words or fancy diagrams.

35
 OSCAR ICHAZO

The pious Jesuit priests have already declared in their book

that the first nine enneagrams are the "cat's meow." These
nine enneagrams are presented at the beginning of the
Arica trainings as no more than the introductory foun-
dation to the Integral Method and as the first degree of
Protoanalysis—that is, the analysis of our psyche in front
of the Divine Human Prototype. Even at the first level the
changes are intense, as the priests have themselves dis-
covered, but I insist that these are only nine enneagrams
from the total set of one hundred and eight. Nevertheless,
the pious Jesuit priests proclaim themselves "expert mas-
ters" of the enneagrams (confusing my Work with that of
Master Gurdjieff) and assure their readers that more will
come, of course expecting to grasp it from my Work—from
where else?

The recklessness and immorality of the pious Jesuit priests

is not a recent happening. It started, by their own decla-
ration, in 1971 at Esalen Institute when Bob Ochs S.J.—on
the basis of what he is said to have learned from Claudio
Naranjo—began, as declared with a brazen face by Pat
O'Leary, "developing his theories about the enneagram." I
would love to see that material because, if it is that which
appears in their plagiarism, it will make me laugh for eter-
nities since not only am I the holder of the beginning of
this tradition but also, as can be absolutely and concretely
proven, the one hundred and eight enneagrams and the

36
 A pril 1986

entire Arica Integral System in all its terms have been devel-
oped by me, only and exclusively, and I am more than ready
to contest it publicly. What I want is a full explanation with
public acknowledgment. I am going to make the facts his-
torically clear, with total commitment and with full force.

I am immensely satisfied and glad to see that the Arica

Institute Board of Directors has taken the road to true his-
torical clarification with such a fierce and unmistakable
dedication and with cautious though strongly taken steps.
Indeed, these are matters of human history that soon will
promote our long expected human understanding, real
love, proven compassion, and a friendship that makes all
of us just One Body and One Spirit.

It makes me wonder how these tools that have been so care-

fully learned could be just thrown to the wind, taken from
people who have prepared themselves with complete altru-
ism and dedication, and who have acquired the necessary
Knowledge, the experience, and the rough endurance that
it has taken. These tools have no other purpose than for
promoting religious human insight to serve all humanity
to final True Enlightenment and Realization. They can-
not be dirtied by liars and impostors. It is not that others
cannot work with this material; but as in the case of a physi-
cian whose experience rather than his necessary theoretical
knowledge has made him a professional, Aricans are irre-
placeable. I have been saying this from the very beginning.

37
 OSCAR ICHAZO

Do not take my words as making us exclusive, but train-

ings and experiences are just irreplaceable. What would
we do without them?

To make a mishmash out of what belongs to the Spirit and

Realization of humanity is to open the door of no return
to the lower realms of human existence. I mean that who-
ever does it is opening themselves and their followers to
the worst and heaviest karma. This should be taken not as a
warning, but as a moral principle that will not be removed
in nine eternities, as it is established.

Beloved Sisters and Brothers, may the Divine State of the

Eternal Presence unify all of us in this critical moment of
history, and may this State conduce us on the road of true
compassion, love, understanding, and Enlightenment for
the benefit of all.

Remembering each of you with enormous love.

Until always, your friend.

WE ARE ONE

38
 LETTERS

N O V E M B E R 1986

After Kant, Western culture has been concerned with estab-

lishing a theoretical basis for the humanistic sciences, mainly
anthropology, sociology and psychology. Arbitrary foun-
dations were developed to avoid the difficult problems
that emerged from Kantian metaphysics and ontology,
"the Ultimate Reality" and the theory of the 'Being as such.'
In their search for practical answers, Western intellectu-
als took ideas elaborated by other cultures and considered
they should be "Westernized," for which effect a superfi-
cial change of wording was provided—a kind of translation
if you will. But once a new cover was applied to very old
metaphysics and praxes, intellectual Westerners felt that the
theory and the techniques now belonged entirely to them,
and so they were relieved of the duty to reveal and acknowl-
edge the fountainheads of their inspiration. For example,
many authors have pointed out that Freudian psychoanal-
ysis can be easily traced to the Kabbalah, which certainly
needs the irreplaceable help of true initiation in order for
its esoteric language to be understood.

This point of view seems to acquire validity when we

compare Freud's theory of the libido with the Kabbalistic
"primordial element" as a universal force materialized in
different degrees; the existence of a triple standard life (a
conscious, a subconscious, and a super–conscious life); the

39
 OSCAR ICHAZO

idea that dreams open the door to the subconscious, pro-

viding us with symbols that when correctly interpreted
can reveal the meaning of obscure sections of our being,
thus producing instant psychic cures; and the obsession
with incestuous relationships that for the Kabbalists are
passages, if they appear at all, which mirror our neurotic
self–love and produce conflicting consequences, and which
in Freud's translation become a universal aberration com-
mon to all in the form of complexes ("Oedipus" or "Electra")
based on the oral–anal masochism of infancy.

When studying the work of Adler, we can clearly see that his
psychology of willpower is a reinterpretation of Confucius'
'doctrine of the Jen and the Mean' (the superior and inferior
man) as the basis of social behavior. Perhaps this trend is
more obvious in the work of Jung. But Jung's reinterpreta-
tion of alchemy and the esoteric teachings of the East fail to
produce a valid synthesis; and his "depth analysis" most of
the time does not do justice to the analyzed doctrines that
are perceived across stereotyped clichés, so that in fact they
lose completely the internal value that they represent. The
alchemical treatises, when read in their proper language,
open the way to a very clear and direct internal work that
can be traced to ancient China and India. Since the early
1960s, the vanguard of psychology has been interested in
mixing meditation with therapy. This could be quite con-
fusing, since the basic awareness "to be here now" means

40
 N ovember 1986

nothing when worked out of the framework of total spiri-

tuality. Unfortunately, the case of the cargo cult—with the
idea that imitating an exterior phenomenon will produce
real internal changes—is a continuous and constant occur-
rence, and somebody trying to stop it looks like a disoriented
calf in the middle of a stampede. The trend continues with
the production of what have come to be known as "happy
mixtures of East and West."

What we have to observe clearly is that cultural elements

cannot be transposed or translated out of their cultural
framework. That is to say, we can never forget the basic
and fundamental differences in the way that Eastern and
Western cultures evolved. Now, as I have maintained since
the beginning of the Arica School, we are entering into a
new culture that is neither a synthesis nor a syncretic result
but is basically original, since the parameters of this new
culture are totally new and by their nature have to evolve
into an original culture. Thinking in terms of mixing East
and West is like believing that it is possible to cross a rhi-
noceros with an alligator (a "rhinogator" perhaps!). The
idea of such an impossibility must be addressed; we cannot
produce a new culture by synthesizing the old ones of the
East and West. If we are going to advance and produce the
cultural innovation that can be the seed of a universal cul-
ture, we require new parameters as forces actually present
in our modern society and felt as the beginning of a global

41
 OSCAR ICHAZO

awareness. These parameters have to be individualized

and confronted in order to find a harmonic development
through a consensus of ethics and morale, where defini-
tions and explanations are certainly necessary. Then society
can be promoted into what I call the "Metasociety" where
the moral order coincides with the practical order, and the
spiritual order coincides with the material order, and the
function of duality and blind competition is overcome.

I have in front of me a copy of the Latin American magazine

Uno Mismo, in which appears an article by Claudio Naranjo,
who with a relative point of view says that the old ways of
internal development have arrived at the right point when
they can be evaluated by psychotherapy. A comment like
this pretends that the glorious fruits of oriental mysticism
have been waiting for the appearance of materialistic psy-
chologists in order to be appreciated for what they are and
what they produce. This is just an overinflated claim upon
a baseless assumption. In the same article, Naranjo declares
that he is presenting a new form of meditation that he calls
"Meditation in Relation" between two or more participant
persons in a silent activity, purely psychic, staying all the
time inside the field of consciousness of the other person.
He then goes on to explain, in a distorted version, the exer-
cise elaborated by me, which in the Arica School has the
well–established name of "Traspaso of Consciousness." This
exercise was presented for the first time to the Arica School

42
 N ovember 1986

in Chile in 1968. Witnesses to this are Hector Fernandez,

then President of the Association of Psychologists in Chile,
and numerous professionals in the field of therapy and
health. Soon after, a group of Americans, including Naranjo
himself who worked with me in Arica, Chile in 1970, were
introduced to this technique, which John Lilly, M.D. calls
"a powerful tool for deep awareness." Naranjo overlooks
this factual evidence and maintains that this exercise comes
from Gestalt therapy, to my total bewilderment. I cannot
understand how Naranjo believes that an exercise that has
been worked for more than twenty years by thousands of
people has already been forgotten, and how now he feels
free to invent a new, cacophonic and hideous name for it.

As all the Arica School knows, as do the large audiences to

whom I have lectured in the United States, South America,
and Europe, I defined Traspaso as an 'arc of Consciousness'
that opens the Higher Self of the participants, and that,
because of this fact, it should never, and I repeat, never be
performed outside a consecrated place where the Presence
of the Divine is called upon. Traspaso is not a meditation.
It is the opening of the Witness by the influx of the 'arc of
Consciousness' which produces an instant flow of Divine
Energy between the participants. When the hermeneutics of
the ritual and consecration are forgotten, this exercise means
nothing (the cargo cult again). And what is worse, trying
to work Traspaso as Naranjo suggests, with materialistic

43
 OSCAR ICHAZO

quests (my happiness, your happiness, everybody's hap-

piness, cosmic happiness) is opening the internal self to
external manipulations that will obscure the Higher Self
by turning the natural inclination of the Higher Self to the
spiritual into self–centered materialistic ego adventures.
Naranjo advises his students to sit down in pairs facing each
other in a relaxed fashion, staring into each other's eyes like
"idiots," but in this way they are going to get nothing more
than a disturbed sense of embarrassment and the tension of
being assaulted intimately. That is why this Work cannot be
performed without carefully and truthfully respecting rit-
ual and consecration. This consecration cannot be opened
outside a School of Knowledge. Otherwise it loses its value
completely, and I repeat, it opens the internal self to dia-
bolic temptations. Traspaso is a sacred exercise that came to
me under conditions of perfect clarity. It is impersonal but
belongs to a tradition—the Integral Philosophy of the Arica
School—that has to be respected like any other tradition.

It is infinitely boring to have to clarify misinformation in

this fashion. I would prefer to say nothing and to let the
truth appear by itself at its right moment, but this scandal
has gone on for too long. Naranjo himself knows better than
anybody that he learned this exercise from me in Arica,
Chile along with fifty American participants in 1970. What
forces me to speak in these terms is that I see so many peo-
ple being misled, because Traspaso is not just any ordinary

44
 N ovember 1986

exercise but a profound, complex one that produces instant

transformation when performed correctly with the inten-
tion to benefit all humanity—the essential impersonal for
a true consecration. And when the right steps for estab-
lishing the Traspaso (the 'arc of Consciousness') have been
technically performed and when the steps for deepening
the State of clarifying the internal Witness have been taken
into consideration, the exercise produces a State of Pure
Light. At this point we cannot make reference to words
that propose materialistic thoughts, since we are in a place
of such intense spirituality. At this height, it is absolutely
necessary to speak only in essential propositions—that is,
those propositions that are Essential Truths. Because of
this, the Essence is the same as the Essential Truth, and
in this way is one and the same as the Divine Universal
Essence, the universal impersonal Divine Agent that is the
Transcendental Reality, the Spiritual Reality. Propositions
between the participants in the Traspaso, such as "We are
One," have profound repercussions in the very middle of
our Essential Self, because at that point in the Presence of
the Light of the 'arc of Consciousness' they become self–
evident truths. Propositions like "All is Consciousness"
during Traspaso have tremendous value in terms of Self–
remembrance. What I mean to stress is that each one of the
propositions, when worked in the correct sequence, opens
the internal Self gradually, step by step, with such a force
that after a session of Traspaso it is obvious that the faces

45
 OSCAR ICHAZO

of the participants have radically changed. After the exer-

cise, everyone feels this fact in a clear and distinct fashion,
because the best of themselves now appears manifested by
relaxing and harmonizing their own characteristics. There
is the undeniable impression of Light in the features—the
charisma referred to by ancient sages and mystics.

What belongs to the Spirit, as is the case with Traspaso, must

not be manipulated with such flagrant cynicism, because
the door to endless subjectivity will be opened and the
exercise could be lost forever. This is what makes me react
with a sense of duty and moral obligation in front of the
School and to say frankly and plainly where the mistakes
are. No wonder the pious Jesuit priests, Naranjo's disciples,
felt with their typical arrogance that it was time to put the
enneagrams in "modern perspective." And who better than
themselves to do the job of plainly plagiarizing. It is too
much of a scandal and it is infinitely boring, but it seems
there is no other way to deal with people who want to act
in front of all evidence with total cynicism. This obvious
plagiarism has to be verified in a court of justice. The ennea-
grams, the typological descriptions of character Fixations,
the method to work the triad of Instincts, the separation of
participants into "Being," "Living" and "Doing" groups, and
the totemistic animals for the subjective and objective aspects
of the Fixations are copyrighted in their totality in my name
by the Arica Institute. They have appeared in countless

46
 N ovember 1986

manuals, books, lectures, and magazines, and have been

presented at many universities, as well as to the more than
tens of thousands of people around the world who have
participated actively in the Arica Work, using these param-
eters for mapping their Work of internal realization. How
can these plagiarists (Maria Beesing O.P., Robert J. Nogosek
C.S.C., Patrick H. O'Leary S.J.) want everyone to forget all
these facts in favor of their greed? They have lost all sense
of proportion. The plagiarized version is not only partial
information but a pale and weak one, because it lacks the
keys for understanding the internal relations of the ennea-
grams, their functions, and their natural declension, which
make them perform as a cyclical series. Without this infor-
mation, they become flat and superficial and can promote
intense "mind chatter" instead of clarifying the lower con-
sciousness in the right direction, which is measured by the
pattern of the Divine Human Prototype. When this spiritual
science is bastardized and lacks the corresponding keys, it
is just a wooden horse that will not run.
The Arica Institute received the following letter:
July 3, 1986
Elliott Dunderdale
Arica Institute, Inc.
150 Fifth Avenue, Suite 912
New York, NY 10011
Dear Mr. Dunderdale,

47
 OSCAR ICHAZO

You previously wrote to me about the subject of

your letter of June 4, and after thorough consulta-
tion with attorneys who specialize in such matters,
I gave you my final answer, namely, that your
complaint was without merit.

Now, after a public misrepresentation of what I

said in my letter, you are back to me again, once
more trying to secure sums of money on trumped–
up and groundless charges. I hope for your sake
that you do not persist in writing to me in this
manner, which might be construed as harassment
and an effort at a shakedown.

Anybody can file a lawsuit and you are quite

free to do so. Whatever your choice, I respect-
fully request that you try to restrain those who
are indulging in the most vile and brazen defama-
tion of Dimension Books, Inc. and the authors of
The Enneagram: A Journey of Self Discovery. I specif-
ically request this so that any resulting damages,
including cancellation of orders and returns as
well as loss of good will and other injury, may
be kept to a minimum. As far as I am concerned
personally, I do not wish at this time to bring an
action against people who wear meditation suits
and capes and who drink Dragon's Milk, and I
am using all my energies to persuade three of the

48
 N ovember 1986

owners of Dimension Books, Inc. from taking legal

action against the Arica Institute over the libelous
statements made in your Spring 1986 newsletter
that is being distributed at the urging of Arica
outside your regular subscription list. Anything
more like that and this matter will pass beyond
my hope of control, however, as this is not some-
thing that can be endured.

Sincerely yours,
Thomas P. Coffey
Dimension Books, Inc.

This despicable piece, full of insolence and grotesque man-

nerisms, abounds in threats and disguised menaces. It seems
that the author of this letter feels we should be ashamed
because we "wear meditation suits and capes and drink
Dragon's Mix," a protein drink. Again, it is like seeing the vil-
lainous and torpid face of an inquisitor of the Middle Ages,
anxiously referring to his handbook Malleus Maleficarum to
obtain brutal confessions from people who dare to think
differently. What a panic! We use meditation suits as a sim-
ple factor to provide comfort in exercises that are otherwise
very difficult to perform. We need the cross–legged posi-
tion; we do not kneel when we perform internal Work since
Arica techniques are not based on fear, pain, tears, an excru-
ciating sense of guilt, remorse, forced visualizations of the
horrors of hell and terror of the devil, or on mechanisms

49
 OSCAR ICHAZO

for producing fanaticism and superstition across constant

suffering, self–flagellation, and hypocritical sexuality. The
use of these practical suits, of the color orange chosen by
Lord Gautama Buddha himself, belongs to the most ancient
and mystical traditions. The same color is favored by many
Hinayana and Mahayana Buddhist sects, by Shankara's
sannyasins, and by the Ramakrishna order, to name a few.
Imagine that! And this is being held up as reason for accu-
sations. Somebody is losing their mind. We can say about
capes that they are tools for meditational Work, broadly
used by all religions across history. Even the Pope does
not leave Rome without them! And Dragon's Mix is not
obtained from some she–dragon; it is a perfectly balanced
nutritional protein mix, which I composed, and which was
approved by the FDA years ago. It is proven to be an excep-
tional aid in anybody's diet.

What is to enjoy here is that the publishers of the plagiarized

version of the enneagrams are the ones who feel enraged
and outraged at the sight of the plain truth. This is a matter
that has to be decided in a court of justice. Otherwise it is
impossible to deal in any conscious, moral way with persons
who decide to profit at the expense of others by appropri-
ating intellectual and spiritual tools that are copyrighted,
defended by law, and are the Teachings of the Arica School.

It is infinitely boring, and I feel an enormous loss in the

sense of time spent paying attention to this flagrant abuse.

50
 N ovember 1986

But with some dismay, seeing the Arica Work plagiarized

in comical distortions, it is sad to see how true is the para-
graph published in Time magazine, October 6, 1986, by Roger
Rosenblatt ("The Freedom of the Damned"):

In the world these days, social crimes rarely are

penalized and often are rewarded. Investment
companies receive relatively small fines for major
theft. Insider traders are glorified as clever. A best–
selling writer plagiarizes another writer's work.
He pays some dollars in a civil suit. But beyond
this, his earning power is not diminished, his stat-
ure in his community is, if anything, enhanced.

Soon the Arica material will appear in its complete ver-

sion, proving by its specific Unity and internal coherence
(and including the dates when each element of the Work
was introduced) that this entire Work originated from me.
In fact, the truth will shine in its own hour and we can be
completely secure that the final judgment of history will
clarify plenty by itself. Dear Sisters and Brothers, I hope
your Work proposed for the benefit of all produces in all
of us the real Truth of Transcendentality under the blessed
attainment of the Highest State of the Eternal Presence for
the benefit of all.
WE ARE ONE

51
 LETTERS

D E C E M B E R 1987

I have received several letters from members of the School

asking my opinion of the books The Enneagram and Prayer
by Barbara Metz S.N.D. De N. and John Burchill O.P., and
Personality Types, Using the Enneagram for Self–Discovery by
Don Richard Riso. As we found in the plagiarized version of
the Integral enneagrams in The Enneagram: A Journey of Self–
discovery by Maria Beesing O.P., Robert J. Nogosek C.S. C.,
and Patrick H. O'Leary S.J., both these books unfortunately
repeat a mistaken and incorrect evaluation of the Arica
Integral System, particularly their misuse of the Enneagram
of the Fixations, which seems to attract their attention so
consistently.

As I have said in my books and lectures about the Nine

Systems, the Fixations Enneagram is the basic method for
opening the process of understanding our psyche when still
in the state of ignorance, arrogance and confusion. In the first
place, the Enneagram of the Fixations explains that there is
one point in a set of nine that is pivotal for the process of
the entire psyche, because this point of primary conscious-
ness has become fixated. Thus it will open any process at
any level and will finish it. Before we realize that we have
a fixated point of view, we imagine our life as ever–chang-
ing, when in fact it is just repeating itself endlessly, like a
dog chasing its own tail.

52
 D ecember 1987

Secondly, this is of enormous importance because by know-

ing our pivotal Fixation we can recognize our process as
cyclical. As long as we consider our process as continuous
and linear, without appreciating process and cycles, we are
preoccupied, busy and confused about what is happening
to us. Without a point of reference, "we cannot see the for-
est for the trees."

Though an understanding of the Fixations is indispensable

for opening the process of Self–observation in the Arica
Integral System, the Fixations are just a foundation. To play
with them endlessly and with no purpose other than for
ego–self, ego–gratifying contemplation (as happens in the
three books to which I am referring), is plainly irresponsible,
to say the least. This will have a very undesirable result: a
narcissistic ego–self contemplation that makes us believe we
are handling a situation whose laws of process and cycles
(Trialectics) are actually being totally ignored. Working the
Fixations in this way, the two main objectives proposed
in the Integral System—to know our pivotal Fixation and
to produce a process of Self–observation—become totally
obscured and lost. In fact, in the book The Enneagram and
Prayer, the enneagrams, since they are taken from a point of
view of subjectivity, become nothing more than sentimental
and absurd ego prayers (prayers for the head, prayers for
the heart, and prayers for the stomach or belly–type of per-
son). This position is just materialistic and does not go any

53
 OSCAR ICHAZO

further than pampering the lower ego, with the result that
the Fixation will just become more attached. This is exactly
what I call in the Arica Integral System the procreation and
production of a "Saint Ego"—that is to say, a state of nar-
cissistic internal ego–self adoration whose results cannot
be anything but an enlargement of ego–centered materi-
alism and plain abandonment of the reality of the Spirit.
What is confusing in these books is that all of this is said
and done in the name of Jesus. This makes the confusion
lethal because it is not advisable to mix different tradi-
tions for the sake of obvious ego trips. This type of pious,
priestly phoniness can be conducive only to materialistic
moral turpitude, because the real problems are avoided in
favor of caramelized and sugared ego prayers, destined to
produce ego inflation.

In Mr. Riso's book Personality Types, Using the Enneagram

for Self–Discovery, we also find a strange tree of transmis-
sion by which supposedly the enneagrams come from the
Pamir to Riso's hands somehow through me and some
Jesuit Sufi (an impossible anachronism). I do not know what
terms I am going to use to tell these people that, in fact, I
did not receive the enneagrams from anybody—for say-
ing anybody—or prove me differently. They came to me,
one hundred and eight in all as in a vision, showing their
internal relations with complete clarity in 1954 in Santiago,
Chile. Since then they have never required any correction or

54
 D ecember 1987

change. Nobody can be so incredibly naive or such a sim-

pleton as to believe that this very complex system appeared
to me for the sake of it. The enneagrams certainly did not
come to me as a coincidence or a casual realization while
in my car staring at the stars during a hot summer's night.
In fact, they came to me as the result of a long process of
investigation, analysis and careful study of theology, phi-
losophy and mysticism, and our scientific knowledge of
physics, biology and medicine. This might appear exces-
sive, but it was possible because I was preoccupied with
this enormous spectrum of scientific and related disciplines,
inasmuch as they were theoretically useful to my central
interest in philosophical analysis concerning the Ultimate
Reality. This was a passionate and completely absorbing
investigation and research of the 'Truth as such,' which
could not be found in any Western university—not as a liv-
ing tradition, which is what it takes if we are to understand
the State of Transcendentality.

As could be expected, years before the final synthesis of the

hundred and eight enneagrams, I worked on all types of
series, paying careful attention to all mythological enneads
and of course to the theory of numbers of Pythagoras that
is finally accomplished in the twelve volumes of Euclid's
Elements. I completed this study with the non–Euclidean
geometry of Bolyai and Lobachevsky, Bohr's Atomic Models,
and modern topology's qualification of points in space. I

55
 OSCAR ICHAZO

reviewed the cycles of the Mendelian laws, the periodic

table of Mendeleev, and the biological cycles of paleontol-
ogy. Curiously enough, these criteria could also be found
in the old models of the Kabbalah, alchemy, and divination
techniques based on cycles (astrology, Tarot, I Ching, and
numerology). Still, it was a tremendous surprise to see this
fundamental synthesis at hand. Yet it took me up to 1960 to
finally synthesize Trialectics as a logic that could explain
quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity. I also found
that this new logic explained the dynamic of any branch
of our modern science, and thus a psychology based on it
would by definition present a systematic scientific position
based on objective reality, in contrast to subjective psychol-
ogies that represent only ideological positions.

I have said repeatedly that I never considered Trialectics

or the set of a hundred and eight enneagrams my personal
invention, but instead an objective discovery as scientific
discoveries are, with exactly the same qualification of being
verifiable and objective. Even Mr. Riso says in his book: "In
short, the Enneagram rings true. The more accurate a typol-
ogy is the more we are justified in feeling that the categories
it employs are not artificially imposed on human nature but
reflect something real in human nature itself. We feel that
the categories have been discovered rather than invented."

He also says: "In fact, Ichazo's approach to the Enneagram

and mine are really quite different." This is true in absolute

56
 D ecember 1987

terms. He imagines the System proposed by me, taking

only the part that refers to the Fixations, to be an analysis
of psychological personality types, in the sense of the very
vague definitions that modern psychology provides on this
matter. Then Mr. Riso says: "But I soon realized that if the
Enneagram were to become valuable to people, it should
not be so negative and depressing. The personality types
would have to describe the whole person, not just neurotics."

What Mr. Riso does not realize is that I am speaking from a

new ontological point of view. That is to say, my approach
is based on our relation to the Ultimate Reality of the 'Being
as such,' and not on the partial view of practical psychol-
ogists who are still in the throes of trying to define what
their "science" is about. Consequently Mr. Riso misses the
point completely and totally.

The Fixations have to be used as a starting point for self–

analysis and the discovery in ourselves of an objective
description of our internal processes. When this happens, we
know by self–experience that we are touching ground that is
real. This is why studying and employing the Fixations trig-
gers such an enormous amount of internal process. It frees
our point of view by giving us objectivity about our own
reality as well as that of others. By this Method the human
psyche is no longer a mystery because once we can stop our
processes and analyze them with the help of the Integral
System, a new evaluation of our individuality commences.

57
 OSCAR ICHAZO

We see that the defense mechanisms by which we protect

our ego Fixation, as well as the Doors of Compensation by
which we sustain our internal equilibrium, are all mere
processes, essentially transient and subjective. Thus they
lose importance and they just become laughable, as long
as we understand them as part of a process. The inflation
and oversized proportions of a fixated ego are just the igno-
rance of the existence of eight other possible positions or
possible points of view with which to start a process. To
be continuously fixated in just one part of ourselves stops
our possibilities of growing up as individuals. In order to
become responsible for ourselves in an objective way, rather
than in a subjective unilateral position, we have to awaken
all the nine positions that objectively exist in our basic,
fundamental Self–consciousness. That is why in the Arica
Integral System, to know the basic Fixation is actually to
know the type of ego that is controlling our processes. To
become aware of the Fixation is indispensable if any seri-
ous internal growth will occur. Of course, we cannot work
the enneagrams with linear Formal Logic (as in these books
by the Jesuits and nuns) or with the dynamic of Dialectical
Logic. The enneagrams work only by applying the three
principles of Trialectical Logic for the understanding of pro-
cesses and cycles. Enneagrams without Trialectical Logic
are simple aberrations, because inevitably they will be seen
from the point of view of subjectivity and confusion and will
evolve into belief systems that pile reasons upon reasons

58
 D ecember 1987

for no reason whatsoever.

Thus, the Integral System, as I propose it, opens by study-

ing the nine Fixations in a series that is a natural declension
and, like the spectrum of colors, the sequence of the series
cannot be changed at will by subjective preference. The
Fixations correspond to our internal basic reality and cannot
be changed arbitrarily. The Fixations, as they come across
in Mr. Riso's book Personality Types, Using the Enneagram for
Self–Discovery, are the product of ill–informed intellectual-
izations about this material. It is obvious that he presumes
that not much has been said about the enneagrams. I just
have to point out that the Integral System has been devel-
oped in its entirety, which includes the way to find the
Fixation by a careful process of the Arica Autodiagnosis,
as well as how the Fixations manifest in all the levels of
the Integral System. This provides a complete description
and understanding of them, which serves the main pur-
pose of discovering the lower ego, acknowledging all its
internal mechanisms of self–defense (Fixations, Doors of
Compensation, etc.), with the final outcome of reducing
the importance of the lower ego (what in the Arica School
we call "ego reduction"). But when the Fixations become
intellectualized and played with, employing psychological
insights originating in a subjective and ego–centered point
of view, we inevitably have exactly the reverse of their orig-
inal proposition. What we can certainly see is that these

59
 OSCAR ICHAZO

speculations only pamper the "precious" lower ego and,

instead of reducing it, inflate it—to the point that it grows
pompous and adorable in its suffering, remorse and guilt.

What Mr. Riso considers his own input is giving the Fixations
a superficial, "positive" patina, rather than looking at their
subjective aspects. He says, replete with the preoccupation
of the pioneer having to do everything for the first time
himself: "As if all these problems were not enough, the tra-
ditional Enneagram materials also tended to be negative,
focusing almost exclusively on the unhealthy aspects of
each personality type." Again, this is incorrect and plainly
uninformed, because in the Integral System we work both
aspects, the subjective and the objective, in all their detail
and depth. In fact, we begin with the subjective aspects of
the Fixation because these are the only ones available in
our normal consciousness, of which we are very critically
aware, and because they correspond to the only reality
we have when we are still living in the confusion of the
lower ego. As I maintain, it is a defective part of our char-
acter, an imbalance that becomes pivotal for all our psychic
processes. After establishing the subjective Fixation in the
Arica Integral System, we continue with the long process of
karma clarification across the nine Hypergnostic Systems
with the corresponding dichotomical enneagrams of inter-
nal process. Once this is done, the profound enlargement of
our psyche will make the subjective aspect of the Fixation

60
 D ecember 1987

inoperative and ineffective. At this point and never before,

the objective side of the Fixation, which was covered by its
subjective manifestation, will appear spontaneously and
effortlessly, giving our life the impulse to produce a bridge
toward the transcendental world of the Spirit. That is, the
objective aspects of a Fixation open what we call the "trap,"
which is in fact our way out of gross subjectivity and our
ascension into the Spiritual Realm of Self–realization and
Enlightenment.

For instance, in the subjective Enneagram of the Fixations,

number seven is defined as the Idealist. This type abounds
in all sorts of plans for themselves, the future, humanity,
and the universe. Their constant preoccupation with plan-
ning becomes their principle defect, making them unreliable,
though full of enthusiasm, and generating an explosion of
activity that soon disappears in nothing but a lot of remorse,
to be followed by yet another long analysis and new plans.
Their objective side is idealism, in the sense of a desire
for service to noble causes concerned with the welfare of
humanity. This idealism is a positive advantage because
it becomes their "trap" to reach the transpersonal and the
Transcendental. They will observe in themselves how the
moral energy that we know as "altruism" appears as the
lighthouse in their path, making it possible for them to work
directly with Pure Ideas and finally with Pure Principles.
All this process is completely ignored by Mr. Riso, who in
his book says:

61
 OSCAR ICHAZO

Ichazo's interpretation of the Enneagram includes

material on the ego fixation, the 'traps' of each ego
fixation, the 'holy ideas,' the passions and virtues,
the centers of the body (the Path, Oth, and Kath—
roughly equivalent to the head, heart, and belly,
respectively), the physical organs and systems of
the body as they relate to attaining enlightenment,
the 'Mentations' (symbolic ways of thinking about
the body), astrological signs, mantras, and much
more, which I do not go into.

To present the Arica Integral System with such lassitude is

like attending a cannibal's dinner where nobody is quite sure
of what is being served. It just shows the author's gruesome
immodesty, or rather the arrogance of a tyro. If there were
any decent approach on his part, for sure Aricans and the
Arica School as a whole would welcome any type of inter-
action concerning this science, which clearly defines our
entire psychic process.

At this point, I would like to remind the School of two very

harsh aphorisms that we used from the beginning of the
Arica School and even before with the first Chilean group.
These aphorisms are intentionally harsh because they pre-
sent a concept in contrasting form, so the message becomes
clear and well–defined.

The first harsh aphorism is: "The truth in the mouth of a

liar becomes a lie." As we know, the liar is none other than

62
 D ecember 1987

our lower ego enthroned in the position of a spiritual mas-

ter and king. This is represented in Arica Logomachia (Battle
for Reason) as Satan with his triple crown of ignorance,
arrogance and stupidity: ignorance of the existence of the
Superior Self, arrogance of believing that the lower ego is
the real master, and stupidity because all that is material
and dualistic is by definition subjective and thus nonexis-
tent. The point here is to realize that until the Superior Self
is a concrete and crystallized reality for us, we are not qual-
ified to play the "Masters." That would become the obvious
liar peddling and prattling worthless lies. We know that
this results only in more contradictions, since it is a law of
the Spirit that the "blind cannot lead the blind."

The second harsh aphorism is: "The devil does not know
for whom he is working." In fact, the devil, the lower ego,
by disorienting us and producing questionable outcomes
(as well as a long waste of time), is preparing the Spirit with
disappointments of unfulfilled expectations and, by expe-
riencing the triviality of subjective creations, will finish
in complete frustration and disarray. However, this deep
disillusionment can in due time become the desire for real
Enlightenment.

The terms of reality become harsh when we play indiscrimi-

nately with endless intellectualizations of materialistic linear
logic. Once the Fixations have been analyzed, the Arica
Integral System continues working the moral Energies that

63
 OSCAR ICHAZO

are the outcome of the positive side of the Fixations. These

we call "Virtues" in the sense of the Latin virs (energy). The
Virtues appear naturally when our psyche has been com-
pletely clarified. Of course, they are inexistent in a confused
psyche controlled by ego Fixations. When the Virtues have
been embodied, we are ready to absorb the Pure Ideas,
defined as "catalyzers" of all our psychic processes, which
provoke radical changes toward our Superior Self. Then it
can be said that a secure encounter with the Transcendental
is possible. Further on, we find the enneagram that describes
the fundamental Divine Principles that form the crown of
Consciousness. There is much more, but going back to Mr.
Riso, since he dwells on the "positive" side of the Fixations,
he makes all this Work impossible because, by pampering
the fixated lower ego, nothing will be resolved except a
deeper Fixation in an even deeper material realm.

For instance, the fixated point of the number seven Idealist

is just an endless elaboration of possible actions, works and
fortuitous projects. The defect is extremely specific, and it
has to be established clearly to the bone or else, instead of
finding the defective pivotal part, we will get confused with
particularities that will make the Fixation opaque and vague,
and we will forget the real defect of the Fixation, which
must be maintained as obvious and clear—in this case, sim-
ply the endless "planner." Mr. Riso (by the way, an Idealist
himself, as we can see by reading his book) recalls his own

64
 D ecember 1987

Fixation with bombastic grandiosity. As we know in the

Integral System, this Fixation can be defined according to
the self–abounding idea that the Idealist has of himself. He
considers that every important movement should go only
with his approval. In this case, what Mr. Riso presents about
his ego Fixation is self–evident. He describes the Idealist as:

The generalist, the static appreciator, the happy

enthusiast, the accomplished generalist, even when
average, an experienced sophisticate, the hyper-
active extrovert. And if healthy becomes apprecia-
tive, grateful, awed by the wonders of life: Joyous,
ecstatic. Highly responsive, enthusiastic, viva-
cious, and lively. Practical, productive, an accom-
plished 'achiever': the generalist who does many
different things very well. Frequently dazzlingly
multi–talented.

Far out! He goes on to say:

Beyond their great vitality and enormous enthu-

siasm, healthy Sevens contribute something valu-
able to others because they are extraordinarily
practical and productive people, achievers who
do well at whatever they focus on. They are gen-
eralist, multi–talented, enjoying a dazzling array
of skills. They are so good at what they do that
Sevens become bridge builders from one area of
experience to another. They know a tremendous

65
 OSCAR ICHAZO

amount about a wide variety of subjects, partic-

ularly practical ones, cross–fertilizing their many
areas of interest.

Wow!

Healthy Sevens are enviably at home in every-

thing: they know several languages, are able to
play a number of musical instruments, are excep-
tionally competent in their professions, can cook
well, ski, and know their way around art, music,
the theater, and what have you. Quite literally, the
whole world seems to be at their disposal.

Incredible! And he goes on with inescapable gusto:

As a group, healthy Sevens are probably the most

talented of the personality types. If they are
exceptionally intelligent, they may have been pre-
cocious children. But whether or not they are out-
standingly gifted, Sevens are usually much more
accomplished than their years of experience would
lead others to expect. A large part of this is a con-
sequence of the extroversion of their psyches:
virtually all their attention and energy is focused
outward into the world. Sevens are not distracted
by introspective ruminations which might cause
them to withdraw from practical action. On the
contrary, they are eager to get on with new pro-
jects.

66
 D ecember 1987

Mr. Riso is also preoccupied with the scientific validity of

the Fixations, and with his pathetic arrogance he says:

Finally, there is, at present, no scientific proof for

the nine personality types. I have not done any
formal research on them other than to use my
own observation, intuition and reading from the
last twelve years.

I can just say to him that he can relax his preoccupation. The
nine Fixations, as well as the entire Arica Integral System,
are based upon our proven scientific knowledge of the
anatomical description of the systems of our body, as well
as our physiological functions. Because of this, I am not
coming from thin air or inventing anything. I am making
descriptions, based on Trialectical processes of physiology
that become psychological reality. This makes the entire
system scientific, provable in the laboratory and clinically.

At the end of his book, Mr. Riso gives us the fruit of his find-
ings, producing enneagrams based on his playing with the
psychological typologies of Freud, Jung and Horney—no
Adler, Pavlov, Maslow, Fromm, or Erikson around. And
then he tinkers with psychopathology, after reading the
third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders to which Mr. Riso refers, with awe and reverence,
as "this highly technical book," and by which he makes the
different types of psychosis a result and a derivation of the
Fixations, ignoring the fact that there are neurotransmitters,

67
 OSCAR ICHAZO

circuitries and areas in our brain (the limbic system and the
hypothalamus) that have to be considered when we speak
about psychosis, as well as metabolic conditions in general,
which have to include the endocrinal functions that deter-
mine the balance of our internal environment. In the Arica
Integral System, there are precise enneagrams that describe
the type of psychosis in accord with related organic pro-
cesses and cycles, but these are not the ones proposed by
Mr. Riso, which I find once more to be simple intellectu-
alizations and subjective insights that do not account for
anything.

This making of the enneagrams into a kind of mythologi-

cal procrustean bed, where what is larger is cut and what
is shorter is enlarged to fit, does not give us any news, and
is simply intellectual gymnastics originating in the lower
ego that have the tendency towards simple linear analysis,
becoming obsessed with a game of cause–effect, healthy–
unhealthy, and good–bad, which is duality, and as such
only a materialistic point of view.

What is disturbing is that the authors, pious Jesuit priests

and nuns, have found the way to elude, through all the
length of their books, the most important problem, the real
problem of the lower ego: its sexuality and sexual behavior.
Like a miracle, it is inexistent from the point of view of these
people. Ignoring the realities of human anatomy by the trick
of using the fig leaf and forgetting all about it is insulting

68
 D ecember 1987

everybody's intelligence (or please ask Dr. Ruth!). But of

course, we can understand that as pious Jesuit priests and
nuns they have to conform to the Catholic way of dealing
with their problems by ignoring them and instead support-
ing a set of dogmas.

The Catholic Church had the worst blow to its dogma and
the authority of the Bible since Copernicus' heliocentric
astronomy with the scientific acceptance of Darwin's the-
ory of evolution. As is largely agreed, the actual process
and mechanism of evolution is still to be described, but
it is unquestionable that there exists one. With Darwin's
theory, the authority of God's Creation (Genesis) became
unsustainable in terms of reality. In our time we can read
accurately the earth's past engraved in rocks. If this is not
enough, we cannot ignore that dinosaurs existed: their bones
are in the museums, they are enormous, so huge you can-
not miss them, not even with the help of dark glasses! And
so evolution as history is a proven fact. This shocked the
authority of the Church so violently that the first Vatican
Council counterattacked, or at least tried to, by declaring
the dogma of Papal infallibility that has troubled Catholics
ever since, because each new Pope refutes his predecessor.
It is known that two months after the proclamation of this
dogma, the Pope fell seriously ill and was on his death-
bed, and the press announced the sad event by saying, "His
Infallibility is delirious."

69
 OSCAR ICHAZO

The other blow to Catholic orthodoxy came with the sexual

theories of Sigmund Freud. Freud affirmed that sexuality
appears in the primordial stages of infancy, and that it stays
with us throughout our whole life as a form of energy that
he called sexual "libido." He insisted that sex should be seen
as the basis of neurosis and psychopathology. This was of
extreme importance, because finally psychological pro-
cesses could be related to physiological processes: in this
case, our undeniable sexuality. Again, these ideas deeply
hurt the authority of the Catholic Church whose morality
is based upon the rules established for sexual behavior.
After Freud's propositions, clinical psychology was possi-
ble. The validity of Freud's theory is in big doubt, but the
existence of sexuality and sexual energy throughout our
life is unquestionable, a proven fact. As we know, sexu-
ality is produced by the effect of sexual hormones in our
bloodstream (testosterone is present two weeks after birth
and female hormones from the beginning). Masculinity
and femininity are products of corresponding sexual hor-
mones. This is simple reality that cannot be denied. It has
been proven clinically and in the laboratory.

As is commonly known, the problems of Catholicism origi-

nate in the terrible contradiction between Catholic devotion
and the reality of sex. We can see that almost all the prob-
lems of the Church are based on sex and sexuality: celibacy,
the denial of the priesthood for women, divorce, abortion,

70
 D ecember 1987

marriage in the priesthood, birth control, and homosexual-

ity. The statistics published by major magazines (Newsweek,
2/23/87, "Gays in the Clergy"; McClean's, 2/23/87, "AIDS
and the Priesthood"; and National Catholic Reporter, 2/27/87,
"Homosexuality in the priesthood said to run high" and
12/12/86 "Priests' AIDS deaths: 'shame, fear, compassion'")
give us the staggering fact that homosexuals among Catholic
priests in America number between ten and eighty percent
(National Catholic Reporter), and forty percent (Newsweek).
Following these statistics, if they are correct, we can say
conservatively that about half of the Catholic priesthood is
homosexual, and so the Pope has no other way out but to
accept their existence as a fact, and to embrace them with
his reluctant "love." What is funny is that almost imme-
diately and with typical inconsistency, as everybody has
pointed out, the Holy Father denounces homosexual rela-
tions and practices as unacceptable and immoral in the
light of Catholicism—something like acknowledging bees
and hives, and forbidding them to produce honey. To say
the least, reality and nature do not accept this type of som-
ersault. It is useful to remember that when asked about
reforms in the Catholic Church, the Roman Pontiff chuck-
led charmingly into the microphone: "It's a long way to
Tipperary"—a crude and cynical answer for unresolved
problems that in the Catholic Church appear to have no
solution because they threaten its basic set of dogmas.

71
 OSCAR ICHAZO

I come to this point because in their books the pious Jesuit

priests and nuns propose systems using the enneagrams
for working internal growth and prayer, yet systemati-
cally avoid any discussion of sex and sexuality in relation
to the Fixations. Needless to say, such a position is a dou-
ble standard and, plainly speaking, hypocritical. In fact,
in the Integral System that I propose, our entire psyche
is sustained upon the polarity of sex and spirit. We can-
not pretend that we have an active Spiritual Pole if our
Sexual Pole has not been totally and completely examined,
observed, relieved, and consciously clarified by becoming
aware of it—not by denying it under any terms. Of course,
this further proves how subjective and ego–centered are
the propositions of these pious Jesuits and nuns. This is so
basic that, if the karma clarification of our sex and sexual-
ity is not thoroughly performed, we can say with security
that the Spiritual Pole is blocked by sexual trauma, suffering
and disorientation, seen in the Arica Logomachia (Battle for
Reason) as the horrendous vampire bat, who is the mother
of uncontrollable lust, the real bloodsucker of all our vital
energies (conducive to nymphomania and satyriasis with
a partner, partners or alone) who absorbs all our material
as well as our spiritual energy. These uncontrolled sexual
cravings appear on the surface as abundant sentimental-
ity with a susceptibility to being hurt when these subjective
sentiments are rejected. Frustration appears in the form of
jealousy and envious sexuality, and becomes manifested in

72
 D ecember 1987

what in the Arica Logomachia (Battle for Reason) is known as

the diabolical bull–headed ego archetype who is the ruler
of anger when lust is frustrated. Also in this realm of sex-
ual deprivation is the lecherous goat–headed ego archetype
who represents the lust for materialism, material bless-
ings, and well–being. From the point of view of the Arica
Integral System, the ruler of material lust is so dangerous
because he can camouflage himself in sugared, sentimen-
tal love. The goat–headed archetype is also lust for material
affection, material romance, and intense material sentimen-
tality. These archetypes will oppose the objective growth of
our internal self by tempting us, and there is no other way
but to face them so that mysteries disappear, processes are
seen, cycles are established, and the unknown lower forces
are objectively broken and dissolved.

Since all these groups of priests and nuns have been playing
with the Arica enneagrams and, because consequently they
have started a process that will inevitably and automatically
continue in their psyches, they have no other way out but
to engulf themselves in a radical karma clarification, giving
special attention to the Sexual Pole, because their own sexual
contradictions have closed the doors to simple enlightened
spirituality. Inasmuch as sex remains an unresolved prob-
lem, the polarity of real internal growth is inexistent, or
else it takes a St. Anthony resisting all the temptations of
hell to triumph over them. As any Catholic priest or nun
knows, this is not just extraordinarily difficult; it is more

73
 OSCAR ICHAZO

human to presume it as an impossible and unrealistic goal.

Meanwhile, the lower ego will use every excuse and every
figure of justification for producing diabolic aggrandize-
ment and ego inflation as an outcome of sexual denial and
repression.

As we have seen, Mr. Riso's book can be taken as a catalogue

of how the Idealist Fixation looks at themselves and oth-
ers. It is possible to say the same about the book of prayers;
both authors, the nun and the priest, have the same Fixation.
They can be easily recognized as number four, Reasoners.
The defect of this Fixation consists in a perennial distrust
that makes the Reasoner elaborate about the root of events
and actions. They question everything, and by this question-
ing they over–intellectualize any situation and lose relation
to what is actually happening. To ask ourselves "why" is
the basis of reasoning; but if we overdo it, the questioning
itself becomes the problem. In fact, the book of prayers is a
long, melancholic "why." Mr. Riso says about the Reasoner:

THE INSPIRED CREATOR—Of all the personal-

ity types, very healthy Fours are most in touch
with impulses from their unconscious. They
have learned to listen to their inner voices while
remaining open to impressions from the environ-
ment. Most important, they are able to act without
self–consciousness, and if they have the talent
and training, are able to give their unconscious

74
 D ecember 1987

impulses an objective form in a work of art wor-

thy of the name.

And later on, he also says:

THE SELF–AWARE INTUITIVE—Even relatively

healthy Fours do not always live at such a high level
of consciousness. When they draw back from
the inspired, creative moment to reflect upon it,
or to enjoy their creativity, they lose the unself-
consciousness necessary to sustain it. Inspired
creativity can be maintained only in the act it-
self, by continuing to transcend self–conscious-
ness. Thus, as soon as they become conscious of
themselves, Fours lose the spontaneous quality
of inspiration, becoming self–aware and intro-
spective.

Fine. Again Mr. Riso is coming from the subjectivity of a

fixated Idealist trying to understand the Reasoner Fixation
across his appalling superiority and his constant patroni-
zation. Just as easily, we could be hearing somebody's free
association on the couch of the analyst. Again he loses the
point completely. Simply speaking, the Reasoner Fixation
can be described as a constant "questioner." This makes
Reasoners elaborate formulas and systems as mechanisms
of defense for answering their constant "why" and disbe-
lief, which finally produce their typical melancholic attitude.
It could be described as a constant intellectual frustration,

75
 OSCAR ICHAZO

because the Reasoner questions "why," not in a transcen-

dental way, but in a small, personal way as in, "Why was
I born a woman?," "Why are my parents such and such?,"
"Why doesn't anybody love me?" If they go out shopping on
a rainy day, they will ask, "Why does it have to rain when
I go shopping?" The constant questioning of the Reasoner
is the questioning of one taking too much of the load of the
world on their shoulders. Because of this, they are extremely
susceptible, believing they are constantly cheated, and they
see the world in general as being opposed to them, not giv-
ing them their "fair share."

In their book, Barbara Metz S.N.D. De N. and John Burchill

O.P. say about the Reasoner Fixation (to which both authors
correspond):

The senses that are highly developed in these per-

sons are the senses of taste and touch. They seem
to have continually in their mouths the taste of the
experience of others' views of them and others'
expectations of them. They are never untouched
by others. It would be extremely difficult for them
just to move on without giving space and reflec-
tion to the ways that others experience them.
Inherent in our imagery and descriptive of the
heart centered approach to life is the control that
the outer world has upon this center. The ego of
this center is described as the image ego and with

76
 D ecember 1987

significant reason. They live with questions that

are real questions of image: Who am I with? Who
helps? Who likes people? Are you going to like
me or not?

We will never know from where all this redundant non-

sense comes. Sounds like a duet (the nun and the priest in
a delirious trance), "speaking in tongues"—incoherent and
unnerving glossolalia.

Again, all this abundance is meaningless because it is not

pinpointing the Fixation, and it is no more than a bunch
of elucubrations that offer no validation but the very sub-
jective point of view of the authors. It is not a small point
that the authors of these books insist on calling, somewhat
pompously, the ego Fixations "personality types." As we
know, up to our time, psychologists were far from agreeing
what personality could be and how its characteristics can be
defined. In the books of Mr. Riso and Barbara Metz S.N.D.
De N., and John Burchill O.P., this term comes in a collage
of moods, emotions, thoughts, anecdotes, fables, and char-
acter hints. All their descriptions come from nowhere but
the miraculous insights of their own subjectivity. As I have
explained in my lectures and books, the Fixations are prac-
tically accidental, so they cannot correspond semantically or
logically to a "type" that supposes permanent features and
unchangeability, like a tall person or a short person, who
are what they are. The Fixations, on the contrary, have to

77
 OSCAR ICHAZO

be removed and have to disappear in order to start a true

process of internal realization.

It is a gross mistake to combine methods of different tradi-

tions, because every method is hermeneutically attached to
its own roots. For instance, to mix the system of the ennea-
grams and Catholic dogma just does not work. The Integral
System itself does not need the validation of any dogma,
because it is only and exclusively sustained by the ability of
the Methods, exercises and techniques to attain the totality
of the Divine Enlightened Mind. Otherwise, playing with
the enneagrams will lead to a confusion that could paral-
lel that of the Tower of Babel.

Once more, I have to publish a letter of explanation because

of the immorality and superficiality of these plagiarisms that
are another case of the "cargo cult," where ritual imitation
is taken for reality. Actually I give them very little impor-
tance since I am focused on producing a final presentation
of the Arica Integral Theory and Method. What is some-
how ludicrous is that these obvious assaults to produce an
appropriation of the enneagrams are being made by pious
Jesuit priests and nuns presenting themselves as completely
qualified "masters," for which purpose they expose titles,
years of experience, and personal photographs. All this just
strikes me humorously, and I would like to say to them:
"Don't make me laugh—I have a cracked lip."

78
 D ecember 1987

The anxiety of appropriation is so transparent. It seems the

authors think they are so much bigger than the relatively
small body of Aricans. So they suppose that by repeating a
lie constantly and to bigger audiences, they will transform
the lie into a truth, like Dr. Goebbels. The lie here is that
they claim the enneagrams did not have any development
until their own profoundly subjective psychotypologies
and their no less deeply subjective psychological insights
about the Fixations that they claim to have developed into
a complete psychopathology. Imagine!

This denying of the Arica Integral School becomes so mis-

erable that in the book of the ego prayers The Enneagram
and Prayer, though employing the Integral terminology for
the Fixations, Arica is not named or referred to even once,
for which we thank you. Honestly. The same phenome-
non occurs in the bibliography to Mr. Riso's book. We see
no reference to the various books, publications, and papers
about the system of enneagrams by the Arica Institute, the
Sequoia Press, the Lexington Institute, the Wrekin Trust,
the Institute of Applied Psychology (Santiago, Chile), the
Institute of Gnosiology (Buenos Aires and Santiago), and
all the literature where there is reference to the Integral
System apparently so "well­known" by Mr. Riso. I can just
say directly: they are mistaken. In due time, the truth will
inevitably and inescapably appear, and these series of letters
to the School will be published to support how I evolved

79
 OSCAR ICHAZO

to construct the entire Arica Integral Theory and System,

something I owe and have offered to the School and which
is a matter of historical record.

What is not understood by the authors of these books is

that what is proposed by the Integral Theory is a way to go
beyond the need for dogma, belief systems, or the cult of
personalities, saints, martyrs, gurus, channels, entities, or
avatars (God's incarnations in human flesh) in order to con-
cretely and conclusively develop our Divine Higher Self in
its Totality. It is because of this fact that the Integral System
cannot be a religion or a cult. As I said from the beginning of
the School, the Arica Integral System, though not a religion,
is "religious" in all its terms, because its only goal consists
of knowing our Divine Eternal Spiritual Self by means of
proven techniques and practices that can be evaluated objec-
tively. In this sense, the attainment of the Integral System is
the same as that of Atiyoga, High Taoism, Chan Buddhism,
Zen, Highest Yoga Tantra, Yogachara, or any other proven
tradition. The methods and techniques worked in the Arica
Integral System have been developed exclusively for this
goal, with the purpose of attaining Enlightenment by the
use of Trialectical Logic, which proposes cycles as the basic
set of reality. Trialectics is the only logic consequential with
our knowledge of modern particle physics, as well as with
our biology, ecology and mathematics. This is indispensable
because it is the language of our culture and knowledge.

80
 D ecember 1987

This is to say that the Integral System is how to attain the

Divine Enlightened Mind, considering and including all
our knowledge, in a System that integrates us completely
to the highest level of our human possibilities.

The major point is that the Arica Integral System was con-
ceived with the intention that it serve as an ontological Path
to search for the Divine Mind and 'Truth as such.' This, of
course, means the search for Unity, not only in the Spiritual
Realm but also in the other Realms of possible human expe-
rience. This inevitably leads to a religious conclusion, since
the Spirit cannot be addressed any way but spiritually. It is
also very important to consider, as I said from the begin-
ning of the School, that though it has complete therapeutic
results, Arica is not a therapy because it is based on the
fundamental criterion of self–responsibility. Nevertheless,
the entire process is strongly supported by the School of
Knowledge, the Arica groups, and the Octagons where
interaction is based on objective love—rather than on car-
amelized sentimentalism that only pampers vanity—and
where the Work is offered for the Enlightenment of all. Still,
the principle of Self–responsibility is unavoidable if we con-
sider real growth in the Spiritual Realm.

In the Arica School, to call attention to this very impor-

tant point, we use aphoristically the common expression of
the marketplace: "Take it or leave it." This harsh demand
makes anybody take a hard look at what they are getting

81
 OSCAR ICHAZO

into, and thus become aware and take responsibility for it.
When it comes to the growth and maturing of our Soul, it
is a matter that cannot be bargained or transacted. The real-
ity of the Spirit is harsh and, as in the marketplace of brutal
materialism, there are certain items that are not for barter.
Similarly in the spiritual world, when it comes to your Soul,
there is no bargaining possible—you take total responsibil-
ity for it or you might as well leave it. To be clear about this
point is unavoidable, since any real spiritual attainment is
directly related to it. To be doubtful or confused about this
point is the road to plain "make believe," and this promotes
the need for intermediaries to reach the Divine and is the
origin of bargaining propositions which of course are mate-
rialistic in nature.

For clarifying our psychic processes, the Arica Integral

Theory and guidelines could be used for therapy and treat-
ment. Of course, if the laws of process and cycles are not
being observed, there can be no real objectivity about where
to start a natural process of Self–observation. But the position
of Mr. Riso is that of therapy proposed under the duality
of healthy–unhealthy. He forgets to give us his epistemol-
ogy or his validation of how he comes to know this. But in
general terms it seems that for him "healthy types" are imag-
ined like the spirit of carnival—all laughter and jumping
around—and his descriptions for "unhealthy types" sound
like a blues band at a funeral—depressing but with a certain

82
 D ecember 1987

mellowness. And what he calls "the average types" look like

the long boredom of people knocked out with narcotics—
nothing seems to move there. For sure, everybody has the
right to his own opinions, but when communicating a the-
ory, if no clear methodology is presented, how does the
author expect us to qualify these primary notions?

Again, the main point is that the Arica School as a whole is

the search for the ontological 'Being as such,' or the terms of
Absolute Unity. Mr. Riso analyzes his topics from a position
of duality (healthy–unhealthy, better–worse, and good–
bad), which is a position of subjectivity, as is any duality.
There is no way around this. The book of Barbara Metz
S.N.D. De N. and John Burchill O.P. is in the same posi-
tion, because of its constant preoccupation with fighting
the duality of pure–sinful, good–bad, pious–impious, and
avoiding any talk of sexuality. In their effort to mix tradi-
tions, these authors make an equivalence between the silent
prayer of the Christians with Buddhist and tantric medi-
tations, which are in fact worked according to a specific
point in the abdominal area, rather than in the general-
ized area of the gut or the belly as presented in the book
of prayers. To concentrate our attention upon the tan–t'ien
(Chi) or the hara (Jpn) is fundamental for acquiring a sta-
bilized meditation, but it is not silent prayer. It is actually
employing a technique. This mixture of tantric techniques
and Christian prayer is incorrect, and it contradicts all that

83
 OSCAR ICHAZO

we know about prayer as explained in the Patristics, as used

by the Desert Fathers, and as exposed in the Scholastics
of the Thomistic way or that of St. Bonaventure. It would
contradict the Spanish mystics of the Golden Age, Meister
Eckhart, Emmanuel Swedenborg, and quite a list of modern
authors up to Metropolitan Anthony (Archbishop Bloom).
It would also contradict the silent prayer as it is observed
in all the Orthodox Philokalia.

As we see once more, different traditions will not mix, since

they are based on different sets of values that give the inter-
pretive keys of their hermeneutics. This is unavoidable, or
else the confusion is tremendous. In their book, the authors
have different conceptions for prayers for the heart and for
the head type of people, which are equally irrelevant and
dangerous from the point of view of religious life based on
faith. In the mixture, both sides are trivialized, and the inter-
nal sense of what sustains these traditions is lost. Of course,
to elaborate a Christology on this platform would be impos-
sible and nonsensical. The reality of the matter is that if we
take the belly from one tradition, the heart from another,
and the head from still another, we will have a composite.
This figure will inevitably remind us of Dr. Frankenstein's
monster, who was never quite alive and was no fun. From
the beginning, the troublesome creature had difficulties
with coordination, speech and his sense of loyalty. Finally,
in his short appearance of life, he seemed destined to smash

84
 D ecember 1987

walls and doors and at the end even Herr Doktor, his own
creator—a warning that extravagant experimenters of all
ages should keep in mind.

One of the particularities of the Arica Integral Way to En-

lightenment and Freedom is that it does not contradict any
traditional valid way to the final goal of attaining Divine
Peace and Divine Grace. This feature is the only one, of
course, that can be qualified as salvific and Transcendental.
When I say it does not contradict any other true tradition,
this is not intended as a gesture of goodwill or simple oppor-
tunism (giving to everybody his own bit, to put it cynically),
but because the entire Integral System and Method is based
upon the logical terms of Trialectics. This is a completely
new set of logical principles and laws that makes us observe
human life as interrelated sets of cycles and processes that
we can understand, measure in psychic terms, and classify
according to psychic tempo. The point is that during our
first training we worked traditional exercises (whose origins
and credits were always given) together with the original
Arica exercises. This was important for establishing in the
Aricans an insight for interpreting relations between dif-
ferent cultures, values and mystical schools. This has had
an enormous cultural value, in the sense of understanding
Eastern mystical principles.

I have received several letters asking how to become an

Arican. To become an Arican and to be connected with

85
 OSCAR ICHAZO

the Spiritual Body of the School, it is necessary only to

declare consciously the Unity of God. This is because the
entire Integral System and Method is a way for the spiri-
tual embodiment of that Declaration of Unity. This simple
act is self–initiatory, though ritualistically it would be pref-
erable to do it in an Octagon practice, since the 'Octagon in
itself' is the basic cell structure of the School. It would also
be important to concentrate oneself and to take refuge in the
Mystical School by repeating the basic mantram of Arica that
resounds harmonically with the Spirit of the Presence of the
Absolute. Anyone making the Declaration of Unity for the
first time and with the intention of becoming a participant
will experience the immediate action of the Spiritual Body in
response, in the form of internal security, Innate Awareness,
and profound happiness. This experience should not be
taken lightly, and an initial commitment of Self–responsi-
bility should support the basic Arica Declaration of Unity.

The Arica School is a new concept, with new techniques,

which does not contradict any other tradition or system,
because it starts with a different logic that observes the entire
process and its inherent underlying laws of Unity. Because
of this, we can say about the Arica School that it is a new tra-
dition. But because the Teaching of the Integral System and
Method was paralleled with techniques of traditional ways,
the incorrect impression emerged that the Arica School was
a composite. As we can see, this is not so. The entire Integral

86
 D ecember 1987

System and Method are structured upon the demands and

realities observed in the human cycles, Realms of Existence,
and interrelated processes. This makes it organic, valid,
real, and alive in Absolute terms. That is why when people
are engaged in working the Integral System and Method,
they become interrelated in the Spiritual Realm, and that
is why in real terms we can speak of an active, alive, exist-
ing School of Knowledge: the Arica School.

Unfortunately, the appearance of presenting a concoc-

tion of different traditions seems to have inspired diverse
groups that since the 1970s have juggled with their own fab-
rications. All of them, uniformly and inevitably, collapsed
like Frankenstein. Most of these spurious groups claimed
that they synthesized different traditions, that they were
a composite, and that they therefore superseded any con-
tradiction—what has come to be called a "happy mixture
of East and West."

Nothing could be more absurd since every tradition corre-

sponds to its own ontological terms, and confusing these
terms or producing an arbitrary synthesis of them is as
illogical as trying to fit the angles of a square into those of
a triangle. It could not be otherwise, because life and real
historical existence depend on a true ontological stand: how
we conceive the 'Being as such,' or our perception about the
Ultimate Reality able to sustain a real way to Enlightenment
supported by a real theology and a valid philosophy. This

87
 OSCAR ICHAZO

is what actually happens in the Integral Work. Thus an

authentic relation between Souls is produced, and there is
a reaction in the Spiritual Realm creating an alive Spiritual
Body: the Arica School.

We have to remind ourselves that between traditional ways

there is not and cannot be any agreement as long as there
exist metaphysical differences. This is to say that tradi-
tional ways cannot accept another's point of view, or they
contradict themselves into exclusion and annihilation.
For instance, there is no arrangement or accommodation
between Buddhism and Christianity, or between Islam and
Christianity, or between Judaism and Hinduism, Zoro-
astrianism or Christianity. And that is that. At the most
and at best, they can speak of tolerance in the name of the
Universal Love that they all recognize. But as long as their
interpretation of the Ultimate Reality makes them differ-
ent, this ontological abyss can neither be avoided, ignored
or forgotten.

The Arica School, because of its new ontological position,

can appropriately be called a new tradition and does not
affect any other tradition or discipline. I am not saying that
the Arica School reconciles them. However, from a new
perspective they become more understandable for us. In
the case of Arica Integral Philosophy, the proposed System
covers completely the internal development to the Absolute
Unity, making it correctly called a new way with an original

88
 D ecember 1987

ontological basis. Because of this, it is possible to be an

Arican and at the same time participate in any traditional
way, providing the two are not confused and mingled. Of
course, this is the worst of mistakes, as we can appreciate
after reading the books of Mr. Riso, Barbara Metz S.N.D. De
N., and John Burchill O.P., as well as Maria Beesing O.P.,
Robert J. Nogoseck C.S.C., and Patrick H. O'Leary S.J. All
these books try to use Arica context and Arica structures
with Catholic content and principles (salvation on the basis
of faith and dogma) that project a different direction from the
original propositions and purposes of the Integral Teachings
toward total Enlightenment and Freedom which, from the
perspective of our time, space and culture, use scientific
methods (Trialectics) and techniques developed according
to structures and internal maps that make the final spiritual
attainment possible without the support of dogma, belief
systems, avatars, or personalities.

Beloved Sisters and Brothers, once more, wishing for all of

you individually and for the whole School as one Spiritual
Body that the Telesmatta of Truth (Stages of Completion), the
actual top Arica Telesmatta training, clarify for us and for
our culture the true Path to the attainment of the objective
and real Divine Enlightened Mind, the supreme purpose of
human life, as has been established in all true sacred texts
of antiquity. May the efforts of our School for preserving
the purity and the tradition of our School of Wisdom and

89
 OSCAR ICHAZO

Knowledge be accomplished for the benefit of all and this

humanity, One Body, One Spirit.

WE ARE ONE

90
 LETTERS

LETTER TO THE TRANSPERSONAL

C O M M U N I T Y 1991

The purpose of this letter is to clarify the gross and super-

ficial misconceptions that Mrs. Helen Palmer presents in
order to discredit the Arica School and me in her letter
under the title "The Enneagram Heresy" directed to you. In
her attempt to justify her misappropriations of Arica copy-
righted material, Mrs. Palmer portrays herself in her letter
as a martyred scientist being attacked by an obscurantist
Church that believes in archangels and other things, mak-
ing her a 'heretic' to the point of being burned in public
like a new Savonarola. Great image but it does not coin-
cide with reality at all. In her letter Mrs. Palmer's argument
is based on two points:

1 Besides "the names" in the Enneagram of the Fixations,

she does not see any other contribution on my part since
basically she presumes that what I say was taken from Mr.
Gurdjieff's "ideas."

2 The "enneagram authors" believe they have put the Arica

Integral Theory of the Enneagrams on a scientific basis,
making it acceptable and respectable to the scientific com-
munity.

The first point is not only the core of her letter but also the
main point she wanted to make clear during the trial in
front of the Honorable Judge Robert P. Patterson Jr. of the

91
 OSCAR ICHAZO

U.S. District Court of New York. Further on in her letter, to

affirm her position she quotes The Annotated Bibliography of
The Gurdjieff Foundation:

The Bolivian founder of Arica expounds his sys-

tem, a popular psychological training which draws
—usually without acknowledgment—on several
of the Gurdjieff ideas, especially the symbol of the
enneagram.... Using ideas such as the three cen-
ters, essence and personality, and claiming to have
found the 'Enneagram' before reading Gurdjieff,
Ichazo believes himself to be 'the root of a new
tradition.'

I came in contact with the "ideas" of Mr. Gurdjieff in the

early 1950s and I first became acquainted with his "ideas"
in Ouspensky's book In Search of the Miraculous. What I
observed then seems a good point to observe now, which
is that the entire book does not present any new "ideas"
about anything. Outstanding for me was that there is no
doubt about the scholarly capability of Mr. Ouspensky,
but we see him presenting very old and well known ideas
as if producing a new gospel full of wonderful news, and
he acknowledges this fact by saying: "I realized that I had
met with a completely new system of thought surpassing
all that I knew before." For myself I saw it as rather comi-
cal and I said so to my friends who were engulfed in The
Fourth Way.

92
 L etter T o T he T ranspersonal C ommunity 1991

Gurdjieff's main "ideas" are: the existence of an essence

and a personality; the essence is our real self with which
we are born. Gurdjieff qualifies the essence in a very diffu-
sive manner as being like our own natural body, our health,
or that which is essential and accompanies us through
this life and beyond; and the personality is the part that
learns from the world by imitation, association and edu-
cation, making a protective coat around the essence and in
this way supplanting it. From all I know, this is one of the
most ancient ideas and is the basis of the Vedas where the
essence is known as atman and the personality as jiva sur-
rounding the essence and imposing itself as the only actual
reality. The Katha, Mandukya and Chandogya Upanishads are
based on the same premise. Shankara's philosophy is also
based on this premise, and it is fundamental in Kashmir
Shaivaism, as well as being the basic premise of the work
of Ramakrishna, Sri Aurobindo, and Meher Baba. Without
the conception of the Absolute and Relative Minds (essence
and personality), there would be no Buddhism, Jainism,
Hinduism, Taoism, or any mystical doctrine.

This is also true of all philosophical doctrines. For instance,

there is Plato's observation of an essential part that con-
templates Pure Forms (Archetypes) directly and a persona
who learns from the world by imitation (mimesis) and edu-
cation. These are fundamental Platonic ideas. I can go on
and on. It is simply ridiculous to attribute this necessarily
universal idea to Mr. Gurdjieff as being his exclusively,

93
 OSCAR ICHAZO

but that is how it seems to be understood by Gurdjieffians

with complete clarity because Mr. Ouspensky presents it
in his book as an outstanding proposition being heard for
the very first time.

The second very important 'idea' of Mr. Gurdjieff is what he

seriously names as the "three brains": one in the head, one
in the chest, and one in the abdomen. These brain centers
govern the human machine and they make a mechani-
cal person who is a kind of robot. Following these brain
centers, Gurdjieff astutely concludes with three types of
persons: one centered in the belly where the instincts are;
one in the heart which is commanded by emotions; and
the third type, the intellectual one, controlled by thoughts.
He also speculates about a possible fourth type of person
who can employ the three brain centers simultaneously.
It is immensely embarrassing, but all that Mr. Gurdjieff
is doing is repeating almost verbatim, though in a terri-
ble style, a fundamental hypothesis of Plato's well–known
dialogue Republic. These are the three centers of a person
distributed in the physical body: head, heart and abdo-
men from which three types of persons are derived and
which produce three types of social classes; plus there is a
fourth type who has to be specially educated to function
with complete knowledge of the other three types of per-
sons, who can thus become a philosopher–governor since
they have been instructed in physical labor and tasks, in

94
 L etter T o T he T ranspersonal C ommunity 1991

the emotional courage and temper of the warrior, and in

the intellectual abilities of the administrator. Later on, this
doctrine appears in the Stoic 'doctrine of the three–cen-
tered person' which the Stoics called nous (located in the
head), zimos (found in the heart), and epizimos (situated in
the abdomen).

To exemplify the relation between the complex three cen-

ters of a person, in his Phaedrus Plato uses one of the most
famous allegories ever: the image of a winged chariot being
pulled by two horses (one good, one bad) and driven by a
charioteer. With this allegory Plato represents the difficult
and contradictory interrelation and dependency between
the physical center (the chariot), the emotional center (the
horses), and the intellectual center (the charioteer). This
allegory is repeated in Gurdjieff's Beelzebub's Tales with a
'hackney carriage' replacing for all purposes Plato's allegory
of the winged chariot and presented as if it were a spon-
taneous outpouring of the wisdom of Mr. Gurdjieff. This
is, to say the least, ridiculous. This image is also known in
Vedanta where it is based on the same division of a person
as appears in the Laws of Manu, which establishes the divi-
sion of the three castes plus the Sudras (outcasts). Also, in
the Bhagavad Gita when Krishna instructs Arjuna about the
doctrine of the three gunas, he describes the three types of
people: those commanded by instinctual desires (tamas), or
by their emotions (rajas), or by their intellect (sattva), and

95
 OSCAR ICHAZO

finally the real leaders, the fourth type of person, who com-
bines body, emotion and mind by the imperative of their
spiritual duty. Buddhism as well is based on work in the
body (instincts), speech (emotions), and mind (intellect).
What is Mr. Gurdjieff's news?

Mr. Gurdjieff’s third powerful 'idea' is presented as the

"Ray of Creation" divided into seven spheres, from the
Sun Absolute to the Moon. Again Mr. Ouspensky (fol-
lowed by noted Gurdjieffians M. Nicoll, A.R. Orage, and
J.G. Bennett) never relates Mr. Gurdjieff's "ideas" to the
very well known sources of these doctrines which flour-
ished in Sumerian times (2000 BC) and were inherited by
the Chaldean Magi, who developed a vast astrological sci-
ence and doctrine that produced a great following of the
Astral Religion and Cosmology. As we know, Pythagoras
(570–490 BC) learned this sevenfold pattern directly from
the Magi with whom he stayed and from whom he learned
for years before founding his own school in Croton. It is
also well known that Pythagoras related the sevenfold
path of the "Ray of Creation" to the seven musical tones of
the Pythagorean scale, where the first note 'Do' represents
the Absolute and the successive notes of the scale end in
the lower scale of 'Do' representing the lower creation.
Pythagoras called this the "Music of the Spheres." This
Pythagorean interpretation of the cosmos was the basis for
Ptolemy's astronomy, and thus religion and science became

96
 L etter T o T he T ranspersonal C ommunity 1991

powerfully united. Because in the Astral Religion human

destiny was inscribed indelibly in the stars, the 'doctrine of
Soteria' (salvation) became necessary and crucial, since it
was possible to transcend the material octet by attaining sal-
vation through the development of an 'astral body' during
life. This 'astral body' could survive the physical corrupting
body and continue with an immortal life, ascending into
a corresponding paradise in accordance with the 'astral
body's' vibration of purity and goodness. In this system
the higher vibrations became those of the Absolute Sun.
This Heliolatry produced monotheistic religions like that of
Sol Invictus and Mithra, and it can be seen in Julian's solar
theology in his famous Hymn to the Sun. Astral salvation
was, in fact, to be free from the weight and the gross mat-
ter of the body and to ascend to the 'perennial life.' These
religions were powerfully emotional and they actually pat-
terned the ancient world until the arrival of Plato, with his
doctrine that there existed a transcendental world of Ideas
or Pure Forms (Archetypes) beyond our material world
and to which our essential Self belongs from the begin-
ning. Thus we find that the 'doctrine of anamnesis (Gk)' or
real knowledge is actually a 'remembering' from the per-
fect world of Ideas or Forms (Archetypes). Again, this is
the concept of essence and personality.

The Stoics, founded by Zeno soon after Plato's Academy,

were of great importance because they synthesized Plato's
transcendental world of Pure Forms with the 'scientific'

97
 OSCAR ICHAZO

propositions of the old Astral Religion and mysticism. The

outcome was the Stoic notion that the way to transcend the
flesh was by the internal exercise of the 'Will,' producing a
moral force that made us capable of resisting any circum-
stance of life and that was sustained by an 'impartial' moral
view of apatheia (Gk), which considers all circumstances as
perishable and consequently undesirable. The superior per-
son produces by the exercise of their 'Will' the concentration
of material that perfects the 'astral body,' which ascends
the seven spheres of matter into the Ogdoad or the eighth
sphere of the 'perfected beings.' Thus, the Stoics combined
the 'doctrine of immanence' or 'God within the cosmos' of
the Astral Religion—with its seven spheres and seven cor-
responding vibrations related to the musical notes—with
Platonic transcendentalism or 'God beyond the cosmos.'
Consequently, to work and to produce results it was nec-
essary to establish schools with monastic rules of severe
discipline or Stoic discipline, disciplina arcani. It was also
necessary to be emotionally attuned with the transcendental
(sympatheia) and with the love of humanity (philanthropia),
asserted as the chief attribute of God.

All this could harden one into a moral life, producing in

accordance with Sextus Empericus a knowledge of God
hennoia (Gk.) with which transcendence could be attained.
This was intensified by the Orphic pessimistic view of a
person as an unrepenting sinner, a view that emerged
nine hundred years later in St. Augustine's Confessions. The

98
 L etter T o T he T ranspersonal C ommunity 1991

Neo–Pythagoreans of the first century AD intensified this

'consciousness of sin' as a must for acquiring purity of mind
and atonement, which was to be followed by a reformed
life based on the moral performance of pure duty whose
highest exponent is found in Marcus Aurelius' Meditations.
These religions were deeply emotional, as we can see in the
mania at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi or the enthousias-
mos of the Dionysiac Bacchantes. This powerful movement
was promoted by the Stoic philosopher Posidonius, who
became one of the main figures of Middle Platonism (80
BC to 220 AD). He stated that most mortal souls, because
of their lower vibrations, will ascend from earth into the
sphere of the Moon, which was actually 'fed' by the exhala-
tion of the earth region. This was known as the 'dark cone
of the Moon' where the low and demonic carcass–like souls
were coerced for eternities. The Roman Seneca also spoke of
astral immortality and said that the entry of souls into the
aeterna requires obtaining the highest ether and 'suffering
a sea change' while acquiring liberation from the original
elements of matter. I can go on and on.

I wonder why all Gurdjieffians seem to ignore that these

three fundamental concepts—the two minds (essence and
personality or the Absolute and the Relative Minds); the
doctrine of the three centers related to a person's physical
body, their emotions, and their intellect; and the "Ray of
Creation" formed by successive engrossing vibrations—are

99
 OSCAR ICHAZO

the most common universal and basic concepts which,

because of some gap in the minds of Gurdjieffians such as
Mrs. Palmer, causes them to believe and assert so emphat-
ically that these most universal and basic postulates all
belong to Mr. Gurdjieff and were originally brought to the
attention of the West by him exclusively. It is just incredi-
ble and as far as I am concerned, astonishing.

I would like to say very clearly that there is not one single
original "idea" of any importance in Mr. Gurdjieff's entire
work. In the early 1950s I read Beelzebub's Tales and I found
that Mr. Gurdjieff was, in fact, not only a mediocre but a
very bad writer with no idea of composition or how to
develop and present his themes, and his lack of rhetorical
form makes a mockery of Aristotle, Quintilian and Cicero.
Gurdjieffians will tell you the purpose of his writings was
to be in themselves difficult to understand, since it was part
of the exercise that you should read them three times and
a fourth time if you were clever. Fine, I said, that they are
difficult to understand—they are not kidding—but I have
to add, understand what?

Again, here is the story of the two minds, the three centers,
and the law of seven; and Mr. Gurdjieff further postulates
the idea that everything is embraced by time, the mer-
ciless "Heropass," to use a Gurdjieffian word. It sounds
quite like the Zoroastrian heresy of the Zurvanites which
makes time the final union of the two cosmic forces of

100
 L etter T o T he T ranspersonal C ommunity 1991

Ohrmazd and Ahriman. This concept is a heretical point

of view because it denies the ultimate transcendence of
God, One and only, understood by Orthodox Zoroastrians
as Ahura Mazda. This is all projected in Beelzebub's Tales
with unspeakable and unpronounceable words, like
"Aieioiuoa," "Kerkoolnonarnian," "Sekronoolanzaknian,"
"Hrhaharhtzaha," "Krhrrhihirhi," "Solookhnorakhoona,"
and "Prtzathalavr," invented by the curious humor of Mr.
Gurdjieff which certainly sounds like an explosion of enthu-
siastic Dada poetry. This would be great if he would give
us any news, something that in fact he does not produce.

In the early 1950s I was introduced to the Gurdjieffian sacred

dances or 'movements.' At that time I was also acquainted
with the methods of Dalcroze and Steiner, and I did not
have any questions about their superior ability to make
coordination of movement into a deep form of meditation.
In contrast, Gurdjieffian 'sacred movements' appeared to
me as being quite basic and very exterior and superficial,
never mind that the dancers tried to stay awake to the point
of hysteria. Nobody seemed to enjoy it. All would flow in
a funereal atmosphere where extreme seriousness looked
to be the common bond. With such an attitude, no won-
der they all seemed at the point of exploding. It is so well
known that it is an 'iron rule' that you cannot concentrate
your inner attention if you do not relax your body, emo-
tions and mind completely, either across a static position

101
 OSCAR ICHAZO

(asana) or across perfectly coordinated movements while

being constantly aware of the center of equilibrium and
energy, as in the movements of T'ai Chi Chuan. In any case,
in order to attain spiritual concentration, tension is avoided
and mental constructs are dissolved. This I did not see in
the performing Gurdjieffians but rather the look of serious-
ness in their faces and their heavy attitude that seemed to
produce its own uncontrolled tension.

As we know, a most important notion in the "ideas" of

Mr. Gurdjieff is the existence of 'objective art,' which he
defines as an art that can affect us psychosomatically in a
very determined manner. He explains in his book Meetings
with Remarkable Men the way one of his companions learned
in an Afghan monastery how to impress a whole audience
by playing certain notes on the piano. Mr. Gurdjieff him-
self affirms that he saw a plant growing from seed in thirty
minutes during the chanting of ancient Hebrew music. He
also speaks of positions and a basic alphabet of postures
and movements that correspond to sacred dances he saw in
the "Sarmoung Monastery" in Turkistan and in the "Olman
Monastery" in the northern Himalayas. He also says there
are temples and monuments that could impress us in a
very particular way.

In his book A New Model of the Universe, Mr. Ouspensky

recalls his impressions while visiting the Taj Mahal. But
again, if Mr. Gurdjieff and Mr. Ouspensky wanted to learn

102
 L etter T o T he T ranspersonal C ommunity 1991

about 'objective art,' there was certainly no need to go so

far and to such exotic places for the simple reason that the
debate and discovery of 'objective art' were main topics
of ancient Greek and Roman philosophy. The notion that
music played in certain modes produces psychosomatic
reactions was well known in ancient Egypt, as we can read
in Herodotus; but it was Pythagoras who examined music
and its effect in his theory of harmony. It is necessary to
remember that music was considered the general inspira-
tion of art produced by the nine Muses and that architecture
and sculpture were seen as parallel representations of these
'musical inspirations.' The foundation of 'objective art' was
based on the discovery of the four fundamental modes of
music: Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, and Aeolian. We can find
the importance of this theory in Plato's Republic where he
maintains that music has to be formally controlled because
it can automatically produce psychosomatic reactions, and
one could be induced by them to a state of elevation and
mystical rapture (Dorian mode) or states of enthusiasm,
voluptuousness and lust (Lydian mode).

Plato also observes that music combined with rhythmic

exercises and movements, such as those used in the fes-
tivals to the great gods in their temples, is a fundamental
part of the curriculum of education because it can cultivate
the integration of thoughts, emotions and movements. This
idea was directly taken by Rudolf Steiner in his Eurythmy

103
 OSCAR ICHAZO

and also by Dalcroze, and inevitably it reminds us of Mr.

Gurdjieff's three–centered sacred dances. But it was the
Stoic founder, Zeno of Citium, who superseded Plato's
restrictions and admitted all musical modes as integral
parts of music. Further on, Cleanthes and Chrysippus
studied the modes corresponding to the sevenfold "Ray
of Creation" that we find synthesized by Ptolemy into
seven: Hypodorian, Hypophrygian, Hypolydian, Dorian,
Phrygian, Lydian, and Mixolydian.

The modes were discoveries of such importance that they

were attributed to the gods and certain legendary heroes.
Together with the sacred dances, the modes were the cen-
tral and most emotional parts of the services and festivals
such as the Eleusinian and Samothracian Mysteries. But
the liturgic chants reached their highest sophistication in
the Mysteries of the Great Mother (Cybele) and her lover
Attis who, like Dionysius, Adonis, Jesus, and Hercules, was
directly fathered by God through His union with a human
virgin and, like all of them, died and became resurrected.
The Mysteries of the Great Mother were introduced in
Greece in the fifth century BC and maintained their enor-
mous popularity until the collapse of the ancient world;
whereupon all their liturgy, rites, sacraments, and sacerdo-
tal system, with the robes, capes, albs, and miters (Gk. mitra)
were transferred en bloc to Christianity, the new state reli-
gion of the Roman Empire, along with all its love for pomp,

104
 L etter T o T he T ranspersonal C ommunity 1991

ritual and nocturnal processions with men carrying idols

protected by sumptuous canopies. In fact the seven ancient
modes were directly incorporated into the Orthodox,
Coptic, Armenian, and Roman Christian Churches. The
modes can be found in the great Jewish Liturgy and in
the primitive Orthodox Church which evolved from the
Byzantine modes, and finally in the Gregorian chants of
the Middle Ages. Because of their enormous importance,
the modes were codified, and since we all have listened at
one time or another to Jewish Liturgy and Orthodox and
Gregorian chants, there is no doubt about the effectiveness
of this very old codified 'objective art.'

Further on we find the full force of this art in the madrigals

and masses of the great composers of the early Renaissance
such as Palestrina, Victoria and Lassus, and later on in
the great French composers Rameau, Couperin and the
Italian composer Lully. Bach's great Mass in B Minor is a
supreme example of this art which reappears in Mozart's
Requiem, Rossini's Stabat Mater, Wagner's Parsifal, Debussy's
Le Martyre de Saint–Sebastien, and Stravinsky's Le Sacre,
which were conceived in similar parameters. More recently
we have Alban Berg's opera Wozzeck whose atonality is con-
ceived as an outcome of classical modes.

What I am saying is that the notions about 'objective art'

are very well known, as in the example of the 'Golden
Mean' system of proportions employed in the Parthenon

105
 OSCAR ICHAZO

of Athena and in the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus. It is

also known that the proportions of a perfect square topped
by a cupola produce a specific impression of mystical ele-
vation, and it was the preferred form of the monumental
temples of the Great Mother in the ancient style of Persian
monuments such as Cyrus' tomb at Persepolis. We can still
see this form in the Roman Pantheon and the two greatest
temples and examples of 'objective art' ever, the Haggia
Sophia (537 AD) and the Suleymaniye Mosque (1557 AD) in
Istanbul. We can observe this in other Orthodox churches,
and it was the original plan of the cathedral of Rome by
Michelangelo, but it was reformed and ruined by Bernini
who destroyed the proportions of the equational relations
of the four sides with the center. By the way, the Taj Mahal
was designed by the architect Ustād 'Īsā inspired by Mimar
Sinan, the builder of the Great Suleymaniye Mosque, who
was influenced by Filippo Brunelleschi and Michelangelo,
and who was a follower of the School of Marsilio Ficino,
the great Florentine philosopher and revivalist of classical
aesthetics found throughout all the Stoa.

It seems to me that Mr. Gurdjieff had heard about this

'objective art' with little or no understanding because, when
we listen to the music he dictated to Mr. Hartmann, who
put the accompaniment to the melodies, we find that he has
no idea of composition since there is no harmony, varia-
tion or criteria of modal forms. In fact, they are very poor

106
 L etter T o T he T ranspersonal C ommunity 1991

and primary melodies to which are attached most impres-

sive names like "Hymn From A Great Temple," "Hymn to
the Endless Creator," and "Holy Affirming," "Holy Deny-
ing," and "Holy Reconciling"; and they are played with
redundant pianissimos or hammering fortissimos that go
nowhere and remind me of the great mistake of providing
an unruly child with a tin drum and now everyone has to
hear it. But under no circumstance are these Gurdjieffian
melodies, which fluctuate between sentimentality and pom-
posity, 'objective art.'

In synthesis, although I have gone through all Gurdjieff's

material as well as all the important literature about him,
I have never come to an "idea" I can call unique to Mr.
Gurdjieff. Before reading him, I found all the same ideas
totally developed in the Pythagorean, Platonic, Stoic, Her-
metic, Gnostic, and Kabbalist traditions which continued
to develop throughout Western culture for the simple rea-
son that they all are obvious, basic postulates. In any case,
I want to clarify the distinction between the Arica Integral
Theory and Gurdjieff's "ideas" in the following three most
important doctrines:

(1) PERSONALITY AND (2) ESSENCE

Gurdjieff asserts that:
Personality is what you acquire. Essence is what
is born in you. There are certain things which are
born with you, such as certain physical features,

107
 OSCAR ICHAZO

state of health, certain kinds of predispositions,

inclinations, tendencies, and so on. They belong
to essence. Personality is what you acquire in the
course of your life: views, opinions, words.
9. Access Base

8. Will 1. Awareness

7. Domains 2. Elements

6. Perceptions 3. Systems

5. Senses 4. Mentations

ENNEAGRAM OF THE NINE CONSTITUENTS

From the Integral point of view, Essence is the Eternal

Continuum of Consciousness, unborn, Eternal, perfect, and
pure in the same sense as in the 'doctrine of the Tathagata-
garbha' of the Chittamatra ('Mind–only') School; but the
Integral view conceives an ultimate 'henosis' or actual union
with the Godhead in an Ultimate Theosis (Supreme En-
lightenment).

The Arica Integral Theory observes that personality is not

just habit formations but the entire mechanism of nine
clearly defined Constituents of personality, as in the line
of the Hindu Shankara's philosophy and the Buddhist
Tradition of the five aggregates of personality. In the

108
 L etter T o T he T ranspersonal C ommunity 1991

Integral System, each one of the nine Constituents is seen

as a separate enneagram that presents the basic notion of
the nine numerals (points on the enneagram). The notion of
nine was first established by Pythagoras (550 BC). We also
find that in ancient Egypt the principle of nine was well
developed in the octet plus the supreme God Amen–Ra of
the cults of the Upper Nile at Thebes. In the Zoroastrian
Tradition we find seven major primordial emanations of
The One, the eighth, plus the ninth (the Creation).

In conclusion, Arica Integral Psychology is based on the

premise that there are nine Constituents based on the sci-
ence of the human condition from ego to Enlightenment,
and they are presented in a serial co–dependency and inter-
relation, as shown in the enneagram on page 113.

(3) THE THREE CENTERS

In the Gurdjieff–Ouspensky literature we find the follow-
ing definitions:
1 "The Instinctive center controls the working of
the body and its functions, and the Moving cen-
ter controls voluntary movements of the body. It
also contains the Sexual center."
2 "The Feeling center of our everyday emotions."
3 "The Thinking center or our intellect."
Thus, Gurdjieff defines a person as a three–centered being.
He also says that a person is a three–brained being. Then

109
 OSCAR ICHAZO

Mr. Gurdjieff advances very superficially that animals

are qualified as two–brain beings (minus intellect), and
insects are one–brain beings (minus intellect and emo-
tions). These definitions are not scientific, and he does not
offer any validation of these "ideas." Originally, we find
the same doctrine in Aristotle's Historia Animalium and De
Generatione Animalium, as well as in the Hermetic work of
Poimandres The Shepherd of Men (second century AD), and
also in Plutarch's On the Cleverness of Animals and Beasts are
Rational.

The Integral Philosophy of the Arica School observes that

there are five fundamental Centers of Attention in our psy-
che, each related to a basic organic body system. The first
Integral analysis is like Buddhism or Plato's Republic and
it posits the same three degrees: physical, emotional and
intellectual as the obvious basic Centers of our ordinary
life. This world of Feelings, Emotions and Thoughts in the
Integral System is the outcome of three separate Instincts as
well as two Drives, Sexual and Spiritual, which all together
are the basis of the five fundamental Centers of Attention.
These Centers of Attention are the outcome of the basic
impulse of survival at the very base of our consciousness.
This base is divided into two different functions: an inter-
nal function of preservation and support, and an external
function of procreation and continuity. One aspect of the
basic impulse of survival appears as the three Instincts that

110
 L etter T o T he T ranspersonal C ommunity 1991

support life, and in the Integral System they are known as

the three supporting Instincts, manifesting as the internal
activity of our organism in its three major organic functions
of digestion, circulation and cognition. The other aspect of
the basic impulse of survival appears as the two continu-
ity Drives which are the external functions of procreation
and individuality, known in the Integral Theory as the
"two poles." This analysis of the basic impulse of survival
which is divided into two functions: the internal function
with three supporting instincts and the external function
with two continuity Drives is original and exclusive to the
Arica Integral System.

Instincts are clearly defined as relating to three different

basic organic Systems, and the function of each System
produces a specific demand in our consciousness with a
specific characteristic and also a specific area of interest.
The Instincts and Drives appear in our consciousness as
innate basic questions. With this we mean that they do not
need to appear as intellectual questions because they are
felt immediately since they are, in fact, demands from the
most fundamental and basic law of all life: that of survival.
These instinctual innate questions are always present, and
when in need they instantly call our attention because they
are a demand of survival. For this reason we cannot post-
pone them because they are primary, and we cannot control
them because they are at the very basis of our psyche as

111
 OSCAR ICHAZO

instructions for living and surviving.

THE CONSERVATION INSTINCT

The Conservation Instinct is our basic instinct to feed our-
selves in order to survive. It manifests in the needs of our
alimentary tract, and is felt in the solar plexus at the top
of the abdominal cavity. It projects the innate question
"How am I?" We constantly have to answer the question
"Am I hungry and tense?" or "Am I satisfied and relaxed?"
We know this directly by instinct. We do not need to con-
sciously ask the actual question, but the need to eat means
that we have to get food. What it means here is that we
have to work and involve ourselves in a certain activity in
order to obtain this food. The Integral Enneagram of the
Conservation Instinct defines this process.

Because the Conservation Instinct means our survival,

it becomes a Center of Attention or the locus where the
Instinct posits its innate question as a direct demand. The
need to answer this instinctual innate question evolves into
an artificial 'ego' or the claim of "I" that involves the totality
of oneself because it is an imperative of survival. This ego
has its own interests, demands and strategies to succeed
in its claims and, as the ego projection of the Conservation
Instinct, it learns by experience how to get food for sur-
vival. In contrast to the ego personality manifestations of the
Domains, another series of Instinct egos develop in which
the ego projected by the Conservation Instinct naturally

112
 L etter T o T he T ranspersonal C ommunity 1991

develops into instinctual ego manifestations. When broken

down into its three corresponding Fixations, this exposes
the three 'Instinct group' ego projections of mythomania
(Moralist ego personality), ignorance, arrogance and stu-
pidity (Seeker ego personality), and lust (Perfectionist ego
personality), which influence the fixating of our conscious-
ness with their demands.

The triad of the Conservation Instinct ego is known as the

"Historical Ego" because it learns by experience how to
function and survive in the world and answers its own
basic innate question of food for survival. The Historical
Ego gives us our sense of property and possession, and it
makes our strategies for accumulating wealth and what-
ever else we need in terms of satisfaction of our instinctual
demand to be well covered 'conservation–wise' in a gen-
eralized sense. Because of this, the Conservation Instinct
through the Historical Ego answers the instinctual innate
question of "How am I?" in relation to the world. If we
sense our conservation is not well covered, we feel that our
state of being, in the sense of 'being well' or not, is threat-
ened. Our entire self will center its attention on this lack
that is felt as a threat to our survival. During childhood a
consistent threat to the Conservation Instinct develops a
Fixation in one of the three points of the triad known as the
"Being Group" and projects the Fixations of the Moralist,
the Seeker, or the Perfectionist.

113
 OSCAR ICHAZO

THE RELATION INSTINCT

The Relation Instinct in the Integral Theory is the natu-
ral Instinct to associate oneself in a community with other
human beings as a basic principle of survival. It relates to
the needs of our Circulatory System composed of the heart,
lungs, arteries, veins, and kidneys, and it is centered and felt
in the cardiopulmonary plexus at the center of the thoracic
cavity. We are basically related to our environment, even
more directly than with our skin, by our lungs and the alve-
oli which are in immediate contact with the air and through
it our environment. Our emotions are the outcome of how
well we cover our relations with other people. The instinc-
tual innate question of this Instinct is "Who am I with?"
The answer to this question, "Am I with a friend or a foe?"
triggers the primary emotions of love or hate. This emo-
tional Center of Attention develops an ego interested in our
human relations, how we appear to others and how others
appear to us. This ego is known in the Arica Integral System
as the "Image Ego" because it is always playing a social role,
a 'persona' in accordance with our own image. The inter-
est of this Center of Attention naturally develops into the
ego personalities of the three Relation Instinct Fixations,
exposing the basis for three 'Instinct group' ego manifes-
tations of aggression, power and avarice, which project the
Fixations of the "Living Group" triad: the Independent, the
Displayer, and the Reasoner respectively.

114
 L etter T o T he T ranspersonal C ommunity 1991

THE ADAPTATION INSTINCT

The Adaptation Instinct is the constant need to adapt our-
selves to our natural environment and also to adapt our-
selves to our social environment because this is a basic
need of our survival. It relates to the Cognitive System
(brain) and we feel its Center of Attention in the cranial
cavity. It projects the instinctual innate question, "Where
am I?" This basic need of orientation is the foundation
of our sense of working and doing, and it gives us the
direction of how we should conduct ourselves in order
to succeed in nature as well as in our society by adapting
ourselves to nature and society and by using them for our
basic purpose of survival. Adaptation develops into what
is known in the Arica Integral System as the "Practical Ego"
that has the know–how to survive. It is the mental Center
whose basic outcomes are thoughts and mind constructs.
The interest of this Center of Attention naturally develops
into the ego personality of each of the three corresponding
Fixations, exposing the three 'Instinct group' basis for the
manifestations of envy, hate and hypocrisy, which project
the respective Fixations of the "Doing Group" triad: the
Observer, the Adventurer, and the Idealist.

My idea of the three Centers is the outcome of its obvious

predecessors: the Vedas, Upanishads, Buddhist Sutras,
Plato, etc., plus an in–depth analysis of the relation between
our basic body systems and our instinctual reactions. The
idea that there is a link between our body (soma) and our

115
 OSCAR ICHAZO

psyche is one of the most ancient concepts, but the descrip-

tion and correlation of an Instinct to a specific body system
is exclusively the analysis of Integralism. Also, the develop-
ment of the Instincts into determined egos that are clearly
described has never been proposed before. Further on, the
analysis of the nine ego manifestations follows the common
Hindu/Buddhist traditions of the three 'poisons,' and it is
presented in the Arica Integral System as the nine possible
Fixations that occur when one of the Instincts has fixated
its attention as a "defense mechanism" during infancy. This
has nothing to do with Mr. Gurdjieff’s vague descriptions
about such a general principle as the three centers, which
only blindly dedicated Gurdjieffians believe to be their
Master's proposition.

THE SEXUAL AND SPIRITUAL POLES

Besides the three Instincts correlated with the three main
functions of our organism (digestion, circulation and cog-
nition), the Integral System observes two other Centers of
Attention known as the Poles of our psychic life because
between them our whole life is supported. These two
Centers of Attention are also functions of our basic impulse
of preservation and survival. The Sexual Pole relates to
the human drive of procreation for the survival of the spe-
cies and is based in the sexual organs (pelvic cavity). The
Spiritual Pole is centered in our innermost layer of being
and is felt as a sense of individuality and identity. This

116
 L etter T o T he T ranspersonal C ommunity 1991

is the mechanism to perpetuate our survival as a certain

identifiable, individual person. This Pole relates to the
nervous system and the dorsal cavity. Between these two
Poles (Sexual and Spiritual) there is a constant tension and,
being primary mechanisms of survival, they also call our
attention to questions of innate identity. The Sexual Pole
directly answers the question about our gender identity.
The Spiritual Pole answers the question of our individual
identity. In the Integral System, our psychic life fluctuates
between these two identities of gender and individuality.

These are original descriptions presented for the first time

in the Arica Integral Theory, and they have no trace of ori-
gin in or similarity to the very superficial descriptions of
the three–centered being of Mr. Gurdjieff for whom human
beings have thousands of personalities or "I's" which some-
times have no relation to each other and whose mutual
existence is ignored.

What called my attention most vividly to Mr. Gurdjieff

were his claims that everything in the universe is somehow
'material,' from the Sun Absolute to the second Sun (our
Sun) and down to the very low Moon. In this sense every-
thing is 'material,' including thoughts and further on the
spirit conceptualized as very subtle but nevertheless 'mate-
rial.' Also, the very subtle 'impressions' we receive from
the external world are 'material,' and they are as import-
ant or more so than oxygen and ordinary food for our

117
 OSCAR ICHAZO

sustenance and survival. This is exactly the 'doctrine of

impressions' as proposed by Zeno of Citium in which he
characterizes 'impressions' as the immediate grasping or
comprehension of reality that he called kataleptike phanta-
sia. This Stoic 'doctrine of impressions' leaves no room for
the common mistakes we find in our ordinary experience
of sense–impressions. Kataleptike phantasia are 'impressions'
of the highest vibrations and are defined as a very refined,
very subtle etheric fire that permeates the entire universe.
This notion is exactly the same as Gurdjieff's "Etherokrilno"
of his Beelzebub's Tales.

Another basic Stoic doctrine was the 'Ray of Creation' with

its corresponding seven vibrations. It was a doctrine the
Stoics inherited from the Pythagoreans and the Orphics,
and finally it was synthesized as Universal Reason (Logos)
because for the Stoics—from Zeno, Cleanthes, Chrysippus,
Panaetius, and Posidonius to Cicero, Seneca and Plutarch—
Reason was the highest spiritual manifestation possible.
Consequently they equated Reason with God, manifested
throughout the universe by subtle "ether–fire." This con-
cept is very similar to prana in the Vedas and the concept
of "supreme fire" of the Zoroastrians. It is most important
because the Stoic doctrine was inherited from the Persian
Magi: the concept that the universe is preordered and that
from our closest and immediate planets we receive not only
their 'influence' but their governance and control of our lives

118
 L etter T o T he T ranspersonal C ommunity 1991

from birth to the tomb. Consequently, we can do nothing

for ourselves because we live under the influence of the
planets conceived as living beings because they are influ-
enced by our Sun, which receives further 'influence' from
the Cosmos and God. They are all products of Supreme
Reason, which was given the name "Objective Reason" and
which we can come close to realizing by doing 'appropri-
ate things' or kathekonta, which is of the same nature as the
cosmic Absolute.

In this sense, salvation was only possible through under-

standing the cosmic laws and through accepting reality
with all its suffering since it is a 'divine plan' that has to be
accepted. Because of this we should accept suffering con-
sciously. This means a 'voluntary suffering,' which is one
of the most abstruse concepts used by Mr. Gurdjieff and
which can be understood only by the Stoic 'doctrine of the
Will.' This doctrine synthetically came from Zeno's anal-
ysis, which said that we are happy when we have what is
our desire or what is our 'will' in the form of a wish. But
because the action of time is unstoppable and merciless,
we can never conquer our desires and so we live mechani-
cally trying to accomplish our wishes, and we will always
be disappointed by the destructiveness of time. The only
way is to escape from the body, which is like a tomb and a
'prison.' This escape is possible if we become aware of the
Laws of the Cosmos or Objective Reason, accept the laws

119
 OSCAR ICHAZO

consciously and, instead of living 'mechanically,' we change

our attitude and 'will' ourselves to accept the inevitable pro-
cess that is happening; then we can observe suffering as a
'voluntary act.' This is the cry of Posidonius when he suf-
fered the miseries of an illness and he would say at every
new spasm: "Do your worst, pain, do your worst. You will
never compel me to acknowledge that you are an evil!" This
is to say that if we fall into the trap of fighting reality, we
will suffer; but if we change our attitude and our 'willing'
from individual to cosmic, we stop the mechanical suffer-
ing and the negative planetary influences by transforming
the energy of suffering into the positive energy of 'willing
consciously.' With this conscious effort of the will we can
produce an 'astral body' capable of surviving and transcend-
ing death. I do not need to point out the absolute similarity
of the doctrines of the Stoa and Mr. Gurdjieff.

The Stoic 'doctrine of Divine Providence' permeated all

Patristics along with the 'will' to 'accept suffering' because
there was a preestablished 'divine plan,' as we can see from
St. Clement, Ignatius, Papias, and Irenaeus to Clement of
Alexandria, Origen, Tertullian, Hippolytus, and Apollonius,
who directly influenced the Orthodox Philokalia. The Prayer
of the Lord, as taught by the Philokalia, is part of the com-
mon exercise of total acceptance of 'divine will' in exactly
the same format that Mr. Gurdjieff taught Ouspensky
and the rest. But here we have to observe that the 'will' of

120
 L etter T o T he T ranspersonal C ommunity 1991

Objective Reason of the Stoics and Mr. Gurdjieff is a 'mate-

rial' one, however subtle. This and the common idea that
the planets are live entities—plus the idea that the normal
mechanical functioning of a person produces exhalations
that actually 'feed the Moon'—from the point of view of
Integralism is a naive materialistic cosmology; and the
doctrine of redirecting the 'will' by 'conscious action' and
'voluntary suffering' in order to transcend planetary influ-
ences and save ourselves from becoming 'food for the Moon'
is a primitive cosmology that perished with Copernicus,
and that is that.

Mr. Gurdjieff makes a meal of all the "Hasnamuss–individ-

uals" who call themselves Theosophists, sociologists, psychol-
ogists, astronomers, or scientists or "wiseacres"—completely
asleep people living and acting mechanically. But when it
comes to the astrologers he stops his labyrinthine, repeti-
tive, redundant, and boring narrative and exalts with awe
and admiration in several paragraphs the astrology of the
Chaldean Magi who, he remembers, were experts in advis-
ing conjugal unions of a correspondent type in accordance
with the planets. For Mr. Gurdjieff there was no doubt that
this old astrology was 'real science,' and he would say,
"Mathematik is useless. You cannot learn laws of world
creation and world existence by mathematik." For him,
soothsayers and astrologers were the real thing and the
only ones with objective science.

121
 OSCAR ICHAZO

To think in this way in our time is simply a cockeyed, ab

surd and superstitious notion. But again we can understand
that in fact for the Stoics, astrology was an objective science
because it was the study of the sidereal science where des-
tiny is inscribed, as we can see in Cleanthes' Hymn to Zeus.
This astrological lore with its material influence produced
mechanical and robotic human lives which could be altered
by 'acting intentionally'—that is, being aware that we are
not following the will of our desires but the 'will' of our
'intentions' and thereby producing 'conscious impressions'
or kataleptike phantasia with which we can build and coat an
'astral body' that will survive death. The great problem of
the Stoics was that only a 'Wise Person' can perform kathek-
onta ('appropriate things') because only they have the spirit
of wisdom (phronesis) already developed in them. What Mr.
Gurdjieff would say is that you cannot absorb 'conscious
impressions' if you yourself are not completely awake; and
like the Stoic 'Wise Person,' the Gurdjieffian 'conscious per-
son' is a degree practically impossible to attain. We have
to remember that the Stoics, even in the most advanced
ranks, called themselves prokoptontes or people 'advanc-
ing' in the way. Even the Great Systematizer Chrysippus
sustained that his knowledge was still intellectual, and so
it was not direct and perfect kataleptike phantasia because
to obtain 'pure impressions' it was necessary to endure a
long process of continuous 'intentional labor' and 'volun-
tary suffering.' This practice gave the people of the Stoa

122
 L etter T o T he T ranspersonal C ommunity 1991

that characteristic of profound and deadly seriousness, that

Stoic attitude which had nothing to do with considerations
about personal suffering or incommodities. Despite their
claims to the contrary, the Stoics were known throughout
all antiquity for their deliberate seriousness in accepting
suffering. This image reminds me of the Gurdjieffians mak-
ing their movements to produce a serious 'alphabet.' I can
see all of them with their eyes opened as if somebody had
been shaking them frantically and now they were looking
disoriented and alarmed.

In conclusion, the reality is that the Gurdjieffians, as with

the Stoics of antiquity, are unable to present realized and
complete individuals in accordance with their ideas. It is
well known that none of Gurdjieff's closer followers arrived
at any degree of mystical transcendence. About mystical
transcendence nobody can play the 'wiseacre,' because
the way to complete realization is perfectly known and
described by the great schools of the Zoroastrian, Hindu
and Buddhist traditions.

As for working personally with Mr. Gurdjieff, Ouspensky

was afraid of the immense physical effort with all the com-
plications, emotional 'shocks,' and a superhuman attitude
of dedication to the 'master' and the 'work,' which put
him out of the 'work.' Ouspensky ended his life only the-
orizing about the 'human machine' and with very little

123
 OSCAR ICHAZO

self–realization, and his personal craving for the 'miraculous'

and real transformation, as Colin Wilson says, "remained
sadly unfulfilled." There is also the case of the tremendously
dedicated J.G. Bennett who tired of the quest and, because
he could not go beyond his level "of an idiot that should
be toasted," he finished by following Pak Subuh, the Indo-
nesian Messiah, and finally became a Roman Catholic.

Gurdjieff himself can be seen in the photographs and in

the descriptions of his close associates as a very tired, pre-
occupied, melancholic, frustrated, sad man; and "it seems
that he had to console himself with large quantities of Arm-
agnac and Calvados that he called 'feu concentre,' and his
most reliable 'medicaments' and big black cigars." We can
also hear him saying: "But when I am drunk, I pray to
Judas." A pause. "And I am nearly always drunk." The
fact is that when his autopsy was performed, an extremely
cirrhotic liver was found with terribly dilated varicose gas-
troesophageal veins. The stomach was grossly enlarged by
the constant and abusive ingestions of huge amounts of
indigestible and lethal combinations of food and alcohol,
which destroyed the functions of his pancreas and pro-
duced a calamitously constipated expanded colon. The
cirrhosis of the liver was diagnosed as alcoholic cirrhosis
that was the result of chronic alcohol ingestion, producing
an alcohol–induced liver injury, which in the case of Mr.
Gurdjieff was a generalized hepatic fibrosis that resulted

124
 L etter T o T he T ranspersonal C ommunity 1991

in portal vein thrombosis and a massive variceal hemor-

rhage of his varicose gastroesophageal veins and related
hepatic encephalopathy. The operating physicians said it
was strange that somebody could be alive with such an
abused and rundown organism. This was taken by the
devoted Gurdjieffians as an unquestionable proof of their
Master's realization. Frankly speaking, I always wondered
what type of proof this was.

It always amazed me that able scholars like Ouspensky,

Nicoll, Collins, Bennett, or anybody else never connected
Mr. Gurdjieff's "ideas" with the well known doctrines of
the Stoa, which in the second and third centuries became
the further teachings of the philosophical Neoplatonists
and the mystical Gnostics. I always thought that the notion
about the immense importance of Judas and his betrayal
of Jesus, which I first read in Ouspensky's book In Search
of the Miraculous, was enough of a clue to understand that
these Gurdjieffian "ideas" were in fact a recapitulation of the
Stoa and the Sethian Gnostic sect of the second century AD
founded on the metaphysics of Valentinus, which was com-
mented on by the Patristic Christian author Hippolytus who
trumpeted in his book The Refutation of All Heresies (early
third century AD) that Valentinus' doctrines were a straight
plagiarism of Pythagorean numbers and the Platonic 'doc-
trine of the Soul' as found in the Timaeus. We can see this in
the heading of Hippolytus' Book VI, Chapter 24: "Valentinus

125
 OSCAR ICHAZO

Convicted of Plagiarisms from the Platonic and Pythagoric

Philosophy."

In J.G. Bennett's book Idiots in Paris we find at the end of

the diary entry for August 27:
But Judas was the really important role in this.
"Because of Judas, your Christ has been God for
2000 years." Sometimes it was better to pray to
Judas than to pray to God. When he is drunk he
prays to Judas. "But then I [am] all times drunk,"
so he always prays to Judas.

And in the entry for August 28 we read:

This morning several of us got together to recon-
struct what G. has said about the role of Judas. Not
only was Judas the direct and efficient cause of
Jesus being, for 2000 years, God to half mankind,
but his was the supreme role. "I do not often pray
to God. I do not wish to disturb His Endlessness.
But when I am drunk, I pray to Judas." A pause.
"And I am nearly always drunk." He spoke very
extravagantly about the role of Judas as the only
one really conscious self–sacrificing role, the truly
Great One of the Christian event. Of Jesus as "only
a little Jew."
Separating that which was said "merely to shock new-
comers," there remains the consistent teaching of Judas as
playing an all–important part without which Christianity

126
 L etter T o T he T ranspersonal C ommunity 1991

as we know it would not have existed. All this could have

been taken verbatim from the great work of the Patristic
author Irenaeus Against Heresies (179–189 AD) where we
find in Book 1, Chapter XXXI, 'Doctrines of the Cainites':
They declare that Judas the traitor was thoroughly
acquainted with these things, and that he alone,
knowing the truth as no others did, accomplished
the mystery of the betrayal; by him all things, both
earthly and heavenly, were thus thrown into con-
fusion. They produce a fictitious history of this
kind, which they style the Gospel of Judas.

Further on we read:
They also hold, like Carpocrates, that men cannot
be saved until they have gone through all kinds
of experience. An angel, they maintain, attends
them in every one of their sinful and abominable
actions, and urges them to venture on audacity
and incur pollution.

As we can see, only the Gnostic Cainites, who were a

branch of the Sethian sect and consequently also sustained
Valentinus' doctrines, were the ones who took Judas Iscariot
as their Patron Saint because he had this 'perfect knowl-
edge,' which meant that one needed to do 'everything
without fear.' This is known in Gurdjieff's "ideas" as "the
awakening of courage."

127
 OSCAR ICHAZO

It is well known that after Gurdjieff's death it was believed

by his disciples that his book Beelzebub's Tales would be like
lightning in the night, but in reality it was a flop, and in one
way or another the few with the courage and patience to
read it did not know what type of gravel was being fed for
soup. But the devoted disciples insisted that, though "it was
very difficult to understand," they would continue reading
because Mr. Gurdjieff told them that everyone who wishes
to learn must read it again and again. "First série my writ-
ing," meaning Beelzebub's Tales which he himself found to
be of such profound unspeakable depth that it made him
exclaim: "Such chapter! How I write I don't know. I speak
objectivement. Whether I write or where it comes from I
don't know. By this chapter the whole force of Beelzebub
made three times more."

The enneagram figure, which the Gurdjieffians affirm I

took from their Master, is in fact one of the forms known as
'seals' produced by the Pythagorean School and later by the
Platonic mathematicians who studied the internal relation
of numbers with geometrical forms, giving to each number
not only their characteristics but their internal interrelations.

In the Arica Integral System we use the Pythagorean 'seals'

of five (pentagram), six (hexagram), seven (heptagram),
eight (octagram), nine (enneagram), and twelve (dodeca-
gram). All these geometrical figures are encircled, and they
show an outside progression of serial numbers and an

128
 L etter T o T he T ranspersonal C ommunity 1991

inside movement that gives a particular sequence of serial

numbers, as in the case of the pentagram where we have
the external serial numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and the internal
serial numbers 1, 3, 5, 2, 4. What is extraordinary in the
Pythagorean 'seals' is that they are patterns and pure Forms
(Archetypes) in accordance with which different processes
of reality have been patterned, and that is what we find
when we employ these figures as 'keys' for determined pro-
cesses. They conform strictly to reality and in this sense they
are scientific because they can be proved by experiment.
For instance, the pentagram is the key for the 'doctrine of
the Four Elements' plus the ether of Empedocles, and it was
the 'key' for Greek medicine and martial arts represented
in the Olympian Games by the skills of running, jumping,
throwing two different lethal weapons, and wrestling, each
skill correlated to an element. The important point for read-
ing these 'keys' is that the outside movement in the circle is
constructive and progressive, while the inside movement
is destructive and regressive.

What is amazing is that up to our time we have no expla-

nation of how or why in classical China there appeared the
same four elements and ether which they applied, much
in the same way as the Greeks, to medicine as well as to
martial arts. Anyone who has experience in Chinese med-
icine and internal martial arts—such as T'ai Chi, Shing Yi,
and Pa Kua—knows the incredible effectiveness and reality

129
 OSCAR ICHAZO

of how processes and organs relate in a sequence where

they cooperate with each other or in a sequence where they
destroy each other. The accuracy of these descriptions is
validated by the millenarian tradition of Chinese medicine
whose descriptions of pathological processes that con-
sider the entire organism are incredibly more sophisticated
than what Western medicine can offer in terms of diagno-
sis and prognosis, which in Western medicine is restricted
because it considers only specific organs or problems. In
the Integral System, the pentagram is also used in relation
to the 'doctrine of the Elements,' which rise from five to the
nine primordial elements in the Integral System; they are
studied in a pattern known as the "Adamantine Pyramid"
which describes the relation between the eight primordial
elements plus space for complete processes. This Integral
figure becomes synthesized into five points, and the same
laws of the classical pentagram are observed.

The hexagram, known as the "Royal Seal of Solomon"—

which is dear to Kabbalists, Knights Templar, Masons,
Rosicrucians, and mystics like John Dee, Jakob Boehme,
and Meister Eckhart—is the 'key' of the union between the
Absolute and Relative Minds in the Integral System or as
the Hermetists say "the union of the microcosm with the
macrocosm," the 'royal key' of their science. In the Arica
Integral System this is exposed as the 'doctrine of reality
and its shadow' and is described in the eighteen lower and

130
 L etter T o T he T ranspersonal C ommunity 1991

upper Spheres of "The Scarab."

The heptagram is a 'key' that describes the relations of the

Pythagorean seven notes. In the Integral System the first
three notes represent the internal essence of the Divine
Absolute Existence (The One), Absolute Knowledge (The
Good), and Absolute Compassion (The Truth). The four
lower notes in the Integral Theory represent the four Divine
Minds: the Divine Mind of Separation, the Divine Mind of
Equality, the Divine Mind of Love and Compassion, the
Divine Mind of Awareness, and end in the Divine Mind of
Presence. The relation between the two groups is 'key' for
understanding the connection between our Eternal Con-
tinuum and the realization of the Adamantine Being, which
is understood in the Mahayana Chittamatra School as the
'doctrine of the four bodies of Buddha.'

The octagram is the 'seal' that represents the harmonic rela-

tionship of a complete unity or monad, which is described
as eight distinct forces that produce a space of equilibrium
of a self–contained unit. In the Integral System it is the 'key'
of the Arica 'cells' or unities where the body of the School
is represented completely by eight individuals, producing
an objective ground to support a mystical space that tran-
scends time and the Relative Mind because it is based on
the nine Divine Principles of Consciousness.

The enneagram is the 'seal' describing the Pythagorean

octet and the Divine Principle of Unity in a series that de-

131
 OSCAR ICHAZO

fines the Pythagorean "Ray of Creation" with the seven

emanations which have their origin in the Absolute Unity
of God and end in the lower states of matter. This 'doc-
trine of the Ray of Creation' is the basis of all the schools
of Middle Platonism, Stoics, Epicureans, Gnostics, and
Pseudo–Dionysius in his most fundamental tractates On the
Divine Names, On the Celestial Hierarchy, On the Ecclesiastical
Hierarchy, and On Mystical Theology, and it was employed
to the letter by Mr. Gurdjieff. For Integralism this type of
cosmology founded upon a doctrine of 'material' emana-
tions is naive and materialistic, which the Integral System
cannot adhere to because the first Tenet of Arica is based on
the Absolute Transcendence (beyond matter) of the Unity
of God. Thus for the Integral System, the enneagram is
'key' for representing transcendentality on the grounds of
Trialectical Logic. The enneagram is the archetypal matrix
that describes the series of the declension of Light into nine
colors. This is why it is known as the "Scale of Light," as
used in the Arica Hypergnostic Meditation.

The dodecagram is a 'seal' used in the series of twelve; it

appears in the Integral System as the 'key' to the system of
the Mentations or the rhetorical series of objective analysis,
producing a complete description of process, a complete
thought, or a necessary order of thinking that concludes
in a perfect result. The dodecagram is the 'key' for Arica
Mentational Analysis. The dodecagram is the archetypal
figure of the correlation between the twelve musical notes,

132
 L etter T o T he T ranspersonal C ommunity 1991

a complete dodecaphonic system where the laws of musi-

cal harmony are applied to the Mentations, producing a
tridimensional pattern of thought by the use of harmonics
paralleled to rhetorical thinking. The dodecagram is known
as the "Scale of Sound" in the Integral System and is elabo-
rated on and studied in the Work of the Arica Mentations.

I work with the enneagram because it is possible to accom-

modate in this figure a perfect series of nine, and also the
three Laws of Trialectics can be represented in this dia-
gram. As we can see, my approach to the enneagram figure
is totally different from that of Mr. Gurdjieff.

It repeatedly came to my attention that nobody knew the

origin of Mr. Gurdjieff's "ideas" since he always just referred
to "this system" and would give no indication as to its ori-
gin whatsoever. Thus Mr. Gurdjieff never had the courtesy
of telling us his sources, perhaps because he thought it was
'an internal consideration' and should be kept secret or per-
haps more simply because he did not know. But when he
speaks of his quest for achieving an 'astral body' or "body–
Kesdjan," to use a Gurdjieffian word, he might as well be
repeating Posidonius, the Great Stoic of the first century
BC. Nobody seems to have observed the obvious connec-
tion until now.

After Mr. Gurdjieff's death, his disciples tried to under-

stand his sources by attempting to locate the legendary
"Sarmoung Brotherhood" to which he referred in his books;

133
 OSCAR ICHAZO

and according to J.G. Bennett, this brotherhood supposedly

developed into a Sufi sect known as Khwajagan or the 'Way
of the Masters,' which existed in Central Asia in the Middle
Ages. There was also the quest by Rafael Lefort and others
to link the Gurdjieff 'sacred movements' with Sufism, espe-
cially with the Whirling Dervishes of the Mevlevi Order.
Nothing could be farther from reality because the Mevlevi
Order belongs to Muslim Orthodoxy.

But the point most difficult for me to understand is why no

one directly linked Mr. Gurdjieff's "ideas" with the philoso-
phy, techniques and methods of the Stoa. It seems he never
told anyone how this system came to his hands and most
probably we will never know, but you have to be blind not
to observe that Mr. Gurdjieff's system and ancient Stoicism
are one and the same, and there is no need to go looking for
utopian monasteries and the ever–so–secret societies that
are completely unknown and not recorded anywhere. Up
to our time Mr. Gurdjieff's "ideas" have been linked to the
Sufi Tradition by J.G. Bennett and to primitive Christian
Orthodoxy by Boris Mouravieff; but there is not one single
mention of the obvious and direct relation between the doc-
trines of the Stoa and Mr. Gurdjieff's "ideas." This is rather
strange because from 1958 to 1965 in Santiago, Chile with
a group studying with me I found that the roots of eso-
teric knowledge have to be directly understood in relation
to Pythagoras, Plato, the doctrines of the Stoa, the Sceptics,

134
 L etter T o T he T ranspersonal C ommunity 1991

the Epicureans, and the Cynics. In my book The Human

Process for Enlightenment and Freedom (1975) I made a ref-
erence to the fact that the concepts of apatheia and ataraxia
are fundamental for Self–observation and Enlightenment.
All the notions of 'self–remembering' were, according to
the Stoics, obtained by certain 'objective movements' which
developed with the need to extract energy from the center
of gravity or the 'great accumulator' of the body known as
the tan t'ien in Chinese medicine and martial arts, and as
the Kath point in the Integral System. At that time I system-
atized these ancient exercises in what is known in Arica as
the "Pampas," which is a set of five exercises for producing
a State of intensified Innate Awareness known by the Stoics
as kataleptike phantasia. The same principle is applied in the
higher exercises of Kinerhythm and the Fire Exercise, consid-
ered in Arica as objective prayer because they produce the
simultaneous balance between physical movements, emo-
tions, concentration of mind, and spiritual integration. The
Cutting of the Adamantine Pyramid also uses exercises based
on this principle.

As we can see, the accusation by Mrs. Palmer that I "took

and taught 'ideas' of Mr. Gurdjieff without acknowledging
him" is totally without foundation. This does not mean that
in the Arica School we did not examine Mr. Gurdjieff's
"ideas" or study the Kabbalah, alchemy, Hermeticism, Gnos-
ticism, Sufism, Shamanism, the astrological system, or other

135
 OSCAR ICHAZO

basic teachings like Advaita Vedanta or Zen Buddhism.

The sources have always been acknowledged precisely
because the Integral System and Method proposes a new
way to accomplish the supreme goal of Enlightenment in
this one life along with the precious goal of Humanity–
One. Arica exposes a complete Theory with precise logic
and a metaphysical analysis of ontology, theology and the
philosophy of history. Since I am proposing a completely
new Method, I am certainly correct when I say "I am the
root of a new tradition." About the nauseating implica-
tions of using Gurdjieff's 'ideas without acknowledgment,'
I am asking the Gurdjieffians who published The Annotated
Bibliography of The Gurdjieff Foundation to categorically erase
their slanderous and gratuitous libel of the Arica School
and my person, based on what I have just exposed in this
letter to the Transpersonal Community.

In Gnosis magazine (Summer 1991) in the article written

by Joel Friedlander under the title of "The Work Today"
he states: "Oscar Ichazo, founder of the Arica Institute and
teacher of Claudio Naranjo: Ichazo liberally used Gurdjieff's
ideas and techniques and is the original source for much of
the modern teaching on the typology of the enneagram." I
would also like to directly ask the editors of Gnosis maga-
zine and the author Joel Friedlander to correct their gross,
irresponsible and abusive misconception of the Arica School
and myself in accordance with what I have very clearly

136
 L etter T o T he T ranspersonal C ommunity 1991

shown, proving exhaustively that my Teachings have no

link and could not be inspired in any way by the naive,
materialistic cosmology and the very old "ideas" presented
by Mr. Gurdjieff, whether he knew the real origin or not.

As I said at the beginning of this letter, Mrs. Palmer's argu-

ment is based on two points, the first of which concerns
her misconception that I took Mr. Gurdjieff's "ideas"; this
has now been answered. What is left to discuss is the sec-
ond point: that the "enneagram authors" have put the
Arica Integral Theory of the Enneagram on a scientific
basis, making it acceptable and respectable to the scien-
tific community.

Victor Hugo used to affirm that "plagiarism that kills is

no longer plagiarism." What he was implying is that the
ideas of small authors used by great ones make the original
source disappear in front of the superior presentation. The
classical example is William Shakespeare taking the ideas
for his tragedies, like Romeo and Juliet and The Merchant of
Venice, from obscure Italian authors of the early Renaissance
and transforming their stories and plots into masterpieces,
making us completely forget the original sources as a minor
point because of the grand, unquestionably supreme and
unparalleled presentation of his dramas.

Claudio Naranjo and his followers, a certain line of the

Catholic priests and nuns, and a line of psychologists have
in all intention the desire to posit Arica and myself as just

137
 OSCAR ICHAZO

a vague principle completely superseded by the scientific

presentation of the psychologists (Naranjo included), as
well as by the theological presentation of the priests and
nuns. For this purpose they claim:

1 That I received this Theory from some obscure Sufi sect

and that my role was to bring the Enneagram Theory to the
West.

2 They present me as an uninformed person who barely

speaks English and thus my very synthetic Teachings were
in need of their expansive and scientific language and argu-
ments.

3 They say that I am a kind of 'crazy mystic' who talks

with a certain archangel or the seemingly no less esoteric
'Green Qutub,' and that I am a mystical 'fruitcake' who has
visions.

4 They (the enneagram authors) are the real promoters

of the Enneagram Theory because I want to keep it in my
power for my exclusive use inside the Arica School. The
secrecy of this Theory was broken by Naranjo and this pro-
voked a "falling–out" between Naranjo and me.

5 They maintain that they are the real holders of the en-
neagram truth because they have already built so much
from the small beginning of Arica, and they are present-
ing this Theory in a scientific and humanistic format (the

138
 L etter T o T he T ranspersonal C ommunity 1991

psychologists), or in a theological and religious format (the

priests and nuns).

The following are my answers to the five points of their

argumentation:

1 That I received this Theory from some obscure Sufi sect and
that my role was to bring the Enneagram Theory to the West.

In this picture they make me only a 'messenger boy' who

did not understand at all the treasures entrusted to his
hands. Thus this material needed the discovery and expla-
nation of the clever scientist–psychologists and priestly
theologians.

The basis of this belief started from the completely wrong

notion that Gurdjieff's "ideas" were the secret teachings of a
very secret society known as the "Sarmoung Brotherhood,"
later known as the "Way of the Masters" or the Khwajagan
which existed in Central Asia in the Middle Ages. This point
of view is sustained by J.G. Bennett in his book The Masters of
Wisdom. When I first got to know the Gurdjieff–Ouspensky
"ideas," I observed they matched perfectly the teachings of
the Stoa, which depended on the knowledge of the 'cosmic
law' of the "Ray of Creation" and the 'trinitary law' of action,
reaction and neutral that Gurdjieff called "Holy–Affirming,"
"Holy–Denying," and "Holy–Reconciling." The third point,
the neutral "Holy–Reconciling," had the same importance
and transcendence for the Stoics as it did for Mr. Gurdjieff

139
 OSCAR ICHAZO

because, if we produce the 'neutral state' in ourselves, we

will have an 'impartial mind' that sees everything dispas-
sionately (apatheia), in this way making it possible to absorb
the pure ether–fire of superior impressions or kataleptike
phantasia expressing itself in perfect kathekonta or right atti-
tude and 'intention.'

The materialistic Stoic–Gurdjieff cosmology and meta-

physics can be anything but Sufi, which by all definitions is
the mystical outcome of Islam. There cannot be a Sufi who
in all its terms is not a Muslim, since Sufism is an extreme
position of Orthodox Islam. This is radical, and to pretend
that there is an all–embracing Christian Sufism is contradic-
tory because Christianity, according to the Muslim tradition,
denies the Unity of God with its dogma of Incarnation and
the dogma of the Trinity, and it is seen by Islam as cate-
gorically a pagan and idolatrous religion. Plainly speaking,
anyone who wants to find Sufism has to look somewhere
other than in the books and "ideas" of Mr. Gurdjieff. I have
been blessed to know personally great teachers of the purest
forms of Islamic Orthodoxy, and I know intimately that they
would never accept Mr. Gurdjieff's materialistic "ideas."

It should be pointed out that the Integral Theory of the Arica

School does not initially start as a mystical and spiritual
interpretation of reality but begins by analyzing scien-
tifically the nine Constituents of the human personality with
the use of Trialectical Logic (fourth and fifth Arica Tenets),

140
 L etter T o T he T ranspersonal C ommunity 1991

followed by a metaphysical analysis of Ultimate Reality,

and the theological conception of the Absolute Unity of
God. The truth is that, though I know very closely several
Orthodox Sufi Schools, the Integral Theory comes from a
different type of analysis directly proposed by me alone.
The Integral Theory is not anybody's message but Arica's.

2 The "enneagram authors" present me as an uninformed

person who barely speaks English and thus my very synth-
etic Teachings were in need of their expansive and scientific
language and arguments.

This has been the constant presentation quite unfairly made

by Claudio Naranjo and dramatically elaborated by his
disciples of the psychological line, as well as those of the
theological line (the priests and nuns). To this misrepresen-
tation there is the answer of my Teachings as presented to
date, and I will be publishing the books of the entire Arica
Integral Theory with its complete philosophical, scientific
and theological presentation.

3 They say that I am a kind of 'crazy mystic' who talks with a

certain esoteric 'Green Qutub,' and I am a mystical 'fruitcake'
who has visions.

There is nothing you can do against the bigotry and trick-

ery of certain journalists who play by making collages of
phrases according to their own intentions. This dirty manip-
ulation and trickery is simply despicable because it is done

141
 OSCAR ICHAZO

in the name of freedom of speech. Just look at the malice of

the journalist Richard Leviton of the East/West Journal, who
puts together a phrase taken from John Lily and Joe Hart
and a statement by me from the book Letters to the School:

Ichazo claimed to have received the enneagram

inspiration directly from "a high ranking archan-
gel." He further claimed that a mysterious teacher
named 'the Green Qutub' who supervised all sub-
sequent Arica activities.... [A]s he stated in 1988
in his Arica–published Letters to the School: "They
came to me, 108 in all, as in a vision, showing their
internal relations with complete clarity, in 1954 in
Santiago, Chile. Not only am I the holder of the
beginning of this tradition but also, as can be abso-
lutely and concretely proven, the 108 Enneagrams
and the entire Integral System in all its terms have
been developed by me, only and exclusively, and
I am more than ready to contest it publicly."

If we read this collage, it certainly looks as if I were a

'crazed mystic' receiving direct revelation, which is con-
trary to the first Arica Tenet that clearly states: "Arica de-
clares the Absolute Unity of God, not on the basis of faith or
revelation...." The purpose of my letter in 1988 was precisely
to correct this point and to say very directly that I did not
receive this material from any entity whatsoever, but that
it was the fruit of a long, careful and dedicated study of the

142
 L etter T o T he T ranspersonal C ommunity 1991

human psyche and the main problems of philosophy and

theology. At that point after working years with the ennea-
grams, I could visualize them in the same form observed
in tantric visualizations that become more vivid and clear
than anything we can perceive with our ordinary senses.
When I said that I saw the entire System of Enneagrams
"as in a vision," it was a reference to this clarity of thought
with which I could envision the entire System after so many
years of dedicated intense work. This is what I wanted to
convey in my letter which reads:

They came to me, 108 in all, as in a vision, show-

ing their internal relations with complete clarity, in
1954 in Santiago, Chile. Not only am I the holder of
the beginning of this tradition but also, as can be
absolutely and concretely proven, the 108 Ennea-
grams and the entire System in all its terms have
been developed by me, only and exclusively, and
I am more than ready to contest it publicly.…
The Enneagrams certainly did not come to me
as a coincidence or a casual realization while in
my car staring at the stars during a hot summer's
night. In fact, they came to me as the result of a
long process of investigation, analysis and care-
ful study of theology, philosophy and mysticism,
and our scientific knowledge of physics, biology
and medicine.

143
 OSCAR ICHAZO

The kind of indecent and unfair journalism that tries to

make a 'twister' of what is just direct and plain truth pro-
duces a situation of confusion that shows at the end the
obtuse and narrow point of view of the journalist's will to
make a reality of his own intentional lack of appreciation
for somebody else's work. This type of journalism is just
trickery and a lie. I do not understand the purpose of Mr.
Richard Leviton's article in East/West Journal. He insists that
Arica contends it has the sole authority and then he makes
his totally arbitrary question: "Can intellectual propositions
be copyrighted?" Arica does not want to copyright its prop-
ositions but simply wants to say precisely what they are,
because they are being used by immoral psychologists and
priests adapting only the beginning of the Integral System
to their own ideas, which are radically opposed to those of
Arica. We have to make this extreme clarification because
the psychologists and religious people publish their work,
using Integral descriptions mainly of the Fixations without
appropriate acknowledgment of what is Arica's and what
is their own input—as a linear therapy in the case of the
psychologists, or as a way to Christian redemption by the
group of priests and nuns.

The entire Integral Method has the main goal of attaining

Theosis (Supreme Enlightenment) in this one life. For this
purpose, the entire Integral System is delineated with com-
plete clarity, the main point being to reduce the complex
artificial ego by the method of ego reduction and to acquire

144
 L etter T o T he T ranspersonal C ommunity 1991

the understanding of our external and internal worlds

as products of 'Mind–only.' What we have to observe is
that unfair journalism does not go anywhere. For me, Mr.
Leviton's obtuse and obviously bad–intentioned article
has no explanation, and we have only his gratuitous and
arbitrary pique against a Method and System of which he
knows so little.

The Divine Mind of Presence in the Arica Integral System

is the Mind that recognizes the Presence of God. This is
to say that when you work protected by the Divine Mind
of Presence, it means that you have stabilized a mind that
remembers the Unity of God constantly and without inter-
ruption. In fact, this State of Mind is the most important for
attaining real mystical insight and understanding across
the Integral Theory of the Arica School. It is under this
State of Mind that the synthesis of the Integral System has
been produced, and here I am clearly saying that I did
not receive messages from some entity or entities coming
from the sky above because this would be contradictory to
Integral Theology.

The 'Green Qutub,' or 'the center' for some of the Sufi orders,
appears as the Divine Mind of Love and Compassion whose
color and vibration in the Integral System is also green. The
Divine Mind of Love and Compassion is the enlightened
Mind of No–action. This is to say that when under the influ-
ence of the green Divine Mind of Love and Compassion,

145
 OSCAR ICHAZO

we are in a Mind that has 'no–individual–action' or 'no–

ego–action,' meaning that it is interested in transcending
individuality by observing the 'divine plan' which makes
humanity evolve into its own maturity (second Arica Tenet).
This Divine Mind of No–action can be defined as the total
surrendering of individual 'will' into the omnipotent 'Will
of God, One Only.' This is also known as the 'great peace'
of God because with this noncontradictory mind we can
understand the supreme process of humanity becoming
one. The Divine Mind of Love and Compassion is also rep-
resented as the Ultimate Guardian State and is generated
by the Work of the Mandala of the Telesmatta of Grace,
concentrated in the Arica Thought of Enlightenment or
the inevitable and factual historical perspective of human-
ity becoming One (second Arica Tenet). In this sense, the
force of the green Divine Mind of Love and Compassion
means the 'future of humanity' unified into the transformed
Metasociety, Humanity–One. When we say that the direc-
tion of the Arica School is inspired by the green Divine
Mind of Love and Compassion, we mean the State of Mind
concerned with benefiting all sentient beings by acting in the
right direction, which is synthesized in the Arica Thought
of Enlightenment. This form of Divine Mind is represented
in the Mahayana Buddhist Tradition as the green Dhyana
Buddha Amoghasiddhi or a Mind of Perfected Action in
accordance with the Universal Mind whose Bodhisattva is
the future Buddha or the green Maitreya.

146
 L etter T o T he T ranspersonal C ommunity 1991

4 The "enneagram authors" believe that they are the real pro-
moters of the Enneagram Theory because I want to keep it in my
power for my exclusive use inside the Arica School. The secrecy
of the Theory was broken by Naranjo and this provoked a "fall-
ing–out" between Naranjo and me.

I can begin by saying that whoever says that I ever had a

"falling–out" with Claudio Naranjo because he wanted to
make this Work public and I wanted to keep it in the secret
lore of the Arica School, is just lying. How could I be try-
ing to guard it secretly and be giving public lectures like
those I gave in Santiago, Chile in 1969 at the Instituto de
Psicologia Aplicada under the sponsorship of the Chilean
Psychological Association where Claudio Naranjo learned
for the first time about the Integral System? As you can see,
Claudio Naranjo would be the first to confirm that I wanted
to make the Integral System public, and it was presented to
professional psychologists and physicians as a new prop-
osition of mapping the entire human psyche for the first
time, considering the nine elements of what was consti-
tuted and treated as a 'coordinated system of systems' and
presented in an Integral view where all phenomena of the
three worlds (not the three Centers) can be reduced into the
Transcendental Mind of the Absolute Unity of God. This
union between science, metaphysics and mysticism is a fun-
damental premise of Arica (fourth and fifth Arica Tenets).
I always tried to convey it publicly, and in the near future

147
 OSCAR ICHAZO

the entire body of the Integral Theory and System will be

published. When I asked for secrecy in the School, a secrecy
known as 'closed circle,' it was about certain techniques
devised by me that, if known and falling into irresponsible
and unlearned hands, could provoke a catastrophe of con-
siderable proportions. Unfortunately this did happen and
it is a matter to elucidate sometime in the future. But about
the Theory itself, I always thought that it was the most valid
and efficient tool ever proposed to analyze systematically
and exhaustively the human psyche since the Abhidhamma
Pitaka. I by no means wanted or want to keep it for myself
and the exclusive use of the Arica School.

About the "falling–out" between Claudio Naranjo and me,

it never happened since there was no reason for it. What
did happen was that in 1970, while working with the first
American group in Arica, Chile, after seven months of
intense Work in order to obtain a group as one organic
entity, it was necessary to make an agreement between this
body of people, an agreement that had to come from their
very essence because we were forming a mystical body, a
Mystical School (third Arica Tenet). Because of this we pro-
duced a Line of the School, which meant we were going
to face a decision confronted by the circumstance that on
this decision completely depended the future of the School
and all this meant. In the Line, Naranjo was rejected by a
hundred percent of the vote, the main reason being that he

148
 L etter T o T he T ranspersonal C ommunity 1991

could not drop his 'messianic' attitude, which was felt as

very individualistic and egocentric. That is how the group
felt about him then. Because of the decision of the Line of
the School, which is not appealable and can only be changed
by another Line, and because of this fact, I could not bring
Naranjo and his group back into the School. Nevertheless,
I continued to work with Naranjo and with a small group
that adhered to him, which made clear that in fact the main
group was correct in observing there was already a divi-
sion in the original group. I always thought that I was on
good terms with him, but later reports started coming about
this "falling–out," painting me as the fanatic and Naranjo
as the heroic scientist. And so it is inevitable to see in this
story about the "falling–out" that it is just with the plain
intention to scorn the Arica School and myself without any
foundation.

I have clarified my position with Claudio Naranjo in the

following paragraphs of The Arican, Twentieth Anniversary
Issue (1990):

Recently Claudio Naranjo has published a book

titled Ennea–type Structures, and to my surprise
he openly recognizes the origin of this material,
which he first became acquainted with "during a
series of lectures dictated [by me] at the Instituto
de Psicologia Aplicada (Santiago) in 1969 under
the sponsorship of the Chilean Psychological As-

149
 OSCAR ICHAZO

sociation." Honestly I was expecting Naranjo to

demonstrate more unfair treatment of the Arica
material and to plainly ignore the fact that this
material has been published and copyrighted by
Arica Institute and that I am its sole originator.
Naranjo presents the structure and psychody-
namics of the five Centers in the same way that I
presented them, as can be seen in the Arica publi-
cations, so he contradicts Arica neither fundamen-
tally nor substantially. What he does is produce
a critical analysis of the semantics of some of the
names tentatively appointed during my first intro-
ductory lectures. He also observes some changes
in hermeneutics and interpretation, which are
the fruit of his long work with Protoanalysis.
However, he does not present any new theoreti-
cal points nor any reform of the structure of the
material. Indeed, as long as we play by the rules
of the scholarly game of due recognition of origin
and source, we should benefit.

Returning to the acknowledgment at the beginning

of Naranjo's book, he employs the embarrassing
gambit of naming me as his midwife by which I
am relegated to the equivalent situation of Soc-
rates, who never wrote a word of his philosophy,
while Naranjo automatically appoints himself as

150
L etter T o T he T ranspersonal C ommunity 1991

the Plato of the Arica Theory. Who knows at this

point whether Riso or some Jesuit priest or nun
is deceiving himself or herself by trying to fit into
the role of Aristotle!

What is embarrassing is that these authors present

their copies of the Arica manuals as the complete
picture, when in fact the Theory for describing
each one of the points of the Enneagram is far
more vast. The entire Integral System, which is
presented at first as a psychology, is in fact based
on logic, ontology and theology and certainly does
not appear from thin air. This most important
part has yet to be presented. Anyhow, if I were
Naranjo's midwife, he should at least show some
observable news. But as far as the material in his
book goes, I find no theoretical news whatsoever.
To debate the semantics of the different points
of the Enneagram, or what language and what
hermeneutics we should use, is certainly valid;
but the points of the Enneagram cannot finally
be left as simple language–definitions or meta-
phoric descriptions because, however powerful,
these leave us only in the plane of aesthetic inter-
pretation rather than a scientific basis. The true
psychological and scientific purpose of this Theory
requires a major analysis of how we conceive all

151
 OSCAR ICHAZO

of reality epistemologically. Once we can demon-

strate proven facts in terms of hard science, the
propositions of Protoanalysis become a coher-
ent part in a Theory that takes into account the
whole of human experience and that can there-
fore claim to be a way to attain the Totality as a
human being—Supreme Enlightenment (Theosis).

5 The "enneagram authors" believe that they are the real holders
of the Enneagram truth because they have already built so much
from the small beginning of Arica, and they are presenting this
Theory in a scientific and humanistic format (the psychologists),
or in a theological and religious form (the priests and nuns).

What is amazing is that uniformly all Naranjo's disciples

repeat the same descriptions I made of the Fixations and
also of the Enneagrams of the Higher States, which appeal
more to the fancy of the priests and nuns. The descrip-
tions are all consistent with very little differences and so
their common origin is translucent. Nevertheless, they all
insist that they just did it themselves and the part of the
Arica Integral System they are using is the fruit of their
long experience, and they give frightening references like
"twelve years of reading" or so many cases treated, thou-
sands upon thousands. Grandiose stuff. What is funny is
that in their practices they do not use the material they
learned in the universities or the seminaries which gave
them their titles, but instead they use the Integral System of

152
 L etter T o T he T ranspersonal C ommunity 1991

the Arica School that suddenly becomes their own, which

they tell us they just developed on the basis of an obscure
and limited beginning of this Theory now so brilliantly and
scientifically presented by them. I mean it is really funny.
For one, what type of scientists are they who believe in a
system because somebody "told them" it was ancient Sufi
stuff? What this implies is simple: all these scientists and
theologians work on the basis of a 'belief' of which they
make a 'dogma,' and in any case their presentation is not
based on a due logical, epistemological, and ontological
analysis. The psychologists and the priests and nuns have
nothing but straight belief, like pure dogma. Now what
type of scientists are these? What type of metaphysics and
theology does this imply? As they flatly present it without
due explanations, it is just a soup of incongruous notions;
but unfortunately they still retain the descriptions of the
Integral System originally presented by me.

This is what I want to clarify between the Integral System

and the "enneagram authors." Concretely speaking, the
"enneagram authors" start from the point of a belief, which
they make into a dogma because they accept it irrationally
and in full without any analysis or criticism as if it were
a divine truth, unquestionable and final. They appoint an
"old Sufi" theory or whatever as their basis for construct-
ing their endless and inconsistent rationalizations, for the
simple reason that they do not present a logical basis to

153
 OSCAR ICHAZO

elaborate scientific propositions. The work of the "ennea-

gram authors" is plainly unscientific and without rational
foundation because it is based on dogmatic formulations, as
opposed to the Arica Integral System which by any measure
is logical and scientific and is based on rational metaphys-
ical propositions and Ultimate Theological Truth. This
distinction is the one I want to make clear. The scientific
position of the Integral System is an uncompromised one
because it depends on logical propositions and establishes a
scientific approach to validate and consolidate classification,
experiment and measurements of the human psyche (fifth
Arica Tenet). The theology of the Integral System is based
on the Absolute Unity of God (first Arica Tenet), which is
a point that cannot be compromised because all the spiri-
tuality of Integralism depends radically on this Tenet:

Unity of God
Arica declares the Absolute Unity of God, not on the basis of
faith or revelation but on the basis of the innate structure of the
human mind as analyzed by Trialectical Logic, which under-
stands this first principle of metaphysics as the foundation of all
thought and human experience.

To read propositions twisted by the theologian priests and

nuns to serve their old, dry, and subjective beliefs is really
repugnant. I am saying clearly that the whole Integral
System depends on the primordial premise of the Absolute
Unity of God. Any unscientific belief renders the System

154
 L etter T o T he T ranspersonal C ommunity 1991

useless from the point of view of Arica. The image of me

as an uninformed, obscure, "cuckoo mystic," who has no
idea of science or theology, will be drastically corrected
because it is clear that the psychologists, priests and nuns
begin from the irrational standpoint of just believing for
the sake of believing whatever was proposed in this "old
Sufi" stuff. This is dogma, by any measure.

We can see the total lack of a scientific basis or a theological

explanation in the book by Robert J. Nogosek, C.S.C., Nine
Portraits of Jesus. From nowhere he tells us as a matter of
fact that: "The enneagram system demonstrates that there
are nine ways of expressing what it is to be human." This
time he does not tell us where it is from, not even with the
justifying explanation that it is "old Sufi" stuff; but he tells
us directly and with great conviction that "the enneagram
system demonstrates," and that is that. This has no other
basis but the belief of Father Nogosek. He does not tell us
where this notion comes from because he does not know,
clear and simple. He continues saying:

At once, however, we come up against the fact

that all nine types in the enneagram are 'sin types,'
built up due to a defense mechanism we have cho-
sen to defend a compulsion special to us.

Further on he states:
Since the types are differentiated by the specific

155
 OSCAR ICHAZO

compulsions, we conclude that his personality

(Jesus) spontaneously expressed all nine types.
Each type is a specific way of being human. All
nine together are the perfect expression of his
humanness. Jesus could be that fully human being.
Indeed, he was the first to be fully human.

Now Nogosek attributes a sinful nature to the Fixations

from nowhere. He just tells us that this idea came to him
from having conversations with other pious priests. The
reality is that if we accept the 'doctrine of sin,' as in the
ancient Mystery religions, there will be the need for atone-
ment which can only be produced by the intercession of
ritual and sacraments needing a class of religious specialists,
punctilious in the ritualism of the priestly office. 'Sin' needs
the intercessory functions of priests who have been conse-
crated and can now act on behalf of their God, producing
a privileged separate order of sacerdotal sacramentarians
whose perilous status of ordo sacerdotum has to be sustained
with its celibate priesthood and holy virgins.

From the point of view of Integralism there is nothing that

can be considered as 'sin,' which is an old infusion from the
Orphics and the Pythagoreans. Arica considers all human
experience as 'process,' because it starts from a point of
view beyond the 'good and evil' that supports the theory of
'sin' and the dogma of atonement with the need for a priest

156
 L etter T o T he T ranspersonal C ommunity 1991

who represents a God enthroned in a church. This is com-

pletely contradictory with Arica where there is no notion
of 'sinful types' and all Fixations are seen as 'process' and
as starting points for self–analysis. As I said in Letters to the
School (December 1987):

To be continuously fixated in just one part of our-

selves stops our possibility of growing up as indi-
viduals. In order to become responsible for our-
selves in an objective way, rather than in a subjec-
tive unilateral position, we have to awaken all the
nine positions that objectively exist in our basic,
fundamental consciousness.

In Integralism, the Fixation is dissolved by acquiring an

understanding of the other eight positions. This is obtained
by 'karma cleaning' and not by the grace of Jesus or any
other dogmatic religious position completely alien to the
Integral System. The Integral System does not need atone-
ment for 'sin,' priestly intercessions, sacramental rights, or
dogma supported by a Church. The Integral System is a way
of Self–realization and a way to attain Theosis (Supreme
Enlightenment) in this one life by the personal effort of the
practitioner, supported by the strength of a real Mystical
School and a Teaching that proves its ontological basis for
the human process, as is clearly observed in The Arica Five
Supreme Determinants (fourth Arica Tenet).

157
 OSCAR ICHAZO

Another point of contradiction with the priestly interpreta-

tions is that for the Integral System our psychic life depends
on the polarity of sex and spirit. This is to say that if we
have not processed and cleansed our sexual life, our spir-
itual life is inexistent because it is blocked with the filth
of unprocessed sexuality which becomes manifested in
rampant and deviated abuse of sex. From the Integral stand-
point, it is simply hypocritical to try to use the System by
avoiding any talk of sexuality; it is irrational, dogmatic
and against all the facts of life. What I want to make clear
is that the twist given to the Integral material by the priests
and nuns makes the System useless because it is directed
toward beliefs supported by a variety of impossible dogmas.

As we can see, it is completely unjustified for Mrs. Palmer

to insist that "it (the Theory) was transmitted to an enlight-
ened being (myself) through the divine intercession ... and
so there is no question." She also says: "He has moved the
enneagram from a Sufi context, from a Christian esoteric
context, from the Gurdjieff context, and couched his 'new
discovery' in an eclectic, new age spiritual growth context."
Frankly this is a gross and insidious way to discredit Arica
and myself. Mrs. Palmer also informs us that the paid adver-
tising of Arica in the New Age magazine was made in order
"to make people think that Ichazo had won a victory." She
insists that this was not so because "no money changed
hands." This just shows the materialistic preoccupation of

158
 L etter T o T he T ranspersonal C ommunity 1991

Mrs. Palmer, because Arica sued the priests and nuns for
not acknowledging Arica as the source of the enneagrams
they were using liberally in their own endless rational-
izations and profit. When they acknowledged this clearly
in front of the Honorable Judge Miriam G. Cedarbaum
in Federal Court, Arica considered it had won the case
completely and unconditionally, to anyone who has eyes
for reading. Except not to Mrs. Palmer who says that the
Arica Institute "has sued for huge sums of money." This
is an absolute lie. What Arica wants Mrs. Palmer to do is
to acknowledge, like the priests and nuns, the source of
the material with which she plays like conducting free
association sessions. From the point of view of Arica, the
lawsuit before the Honorable Judge Robert P. Patterson Jr.
was won by Arica totally and completely in the moment
that "Palmer did not dispute the ownership and validity
of Arica's copyright."

To say it clearly in a few words, the origin of the ideas is

not disputed by Mrs. Palmer, but she affirms with Judge
Patterson that they are unprotected and consequently can
be copied or directly plagiarized or closely paraphrased by
arguing they are common terms of language and clichés.
This decision is being appealed by Arica because copy-
right laws state differently. We can see this in the recent
ruling of Judge Robert F. Kelly of the Eastern District of
Pennsylvania with respect to a book and a subsequent

159
 OSCAR ICHAZO

television docudrama. "The copyright laws were not enacted

to inhibit creativity," Judge Kelly wrote in his ruling.

But it is one thing to inhibit creativity and another

to use the idea–versus–expression distinction as
something akin to an absolute defense to maintain
that the protection of copyright law is negated by
any small amount of tinkering with another writ-
er's idea that results in a different expression. At a
time when works of so–called 'fiction' or television
docudrama which merge historical events and
characters with fictional invention are increasingly
common, and when accusations of plagiarism have
become frequent, the verdict appears to toughen
existing copyright law by stating that it is not
enough to slightly alter the expression of another
writer's ideas.

I will be publishing the entire Integral Theory. In the mean-

time, for the Arica School it is absolutely necessary to clarify
its position in front of the mass of the "enneagram authors"
who make use of Integral doctrines, trivializing them as
a Sufi dogma to which they have become addicted and
devoted. Further on, these trivial and unfounded descrip-
tions and typologies they are presenting have a marked
similarity with astrological lore, making the System super-
ficial and a fountain of ego inflation instead of the ego
reduction that the Integral Theory proposes. On the other

160
 L etter T o T he T ranspersonal C ommunity 1991

side, we see all the enneagram authors engulfed in their

own interest of material gain, ego inflation, and prestige,
producing wave after wave of ludicrous slanders against
Arica while ornamenting themselves, as in the pathetic
case of Mrs. Palmer who in a trance of enthusiasm has
proclaimed herself the "Queen of the Enneagram"! For all
we know at this point, Naranjo, Riso and Nogosek, C.S.C.
must be appointing themselves as the King, Emperor and
Pope of the Enneagram respectively.

After all we have seen of the "enneagram authors," Arica

does not embrace any illusion about the materialistic nature
of these authors. What is important to establish clearly is
that Arica is the only source of this Theory, because it is
indispensable for the Arica School to continue with an
untouched moral strength and clarity of consciousness
and goals so that the actualization of the precious goal
of humanity becoming One Body and One Spirit in the
Metasociety is made possible by the inexorable factual real-
ity that humankind will be transformed by the pressure of
its own necessary and unavoidable Unity, as in the second
Tenet of the Arica School.

We can see Mrs. Palmer's complete lack of information

about Arica because she thinks that "Trialectic Analysis"
means the observation of "the three energies (affirming,
denying and reconciling) apparent in the diagram's (the
enneagram) shock points." For the benefit of Mrs. Palmer,

161
 OSCAR ICHAZO

the well known Law of Causation is not a logical prin-

ciple of either Formal logic, Hegelian Dialectics or Arica
Trialectics. Causation is analyzed by Formal logic in the
dilemma of cause and effect. Hegelian Dialectics analyzes
it in the trilemma of thesis, antithesis and synthesis; or
positive, negative and neutral; or Gurdjieff's "Holy Affirm-
ing," "Holy Denying," and "Holy Reconciling." In Arica
Trialectics, causation is analyzed in the tetralemma of action,
reaction, function, and result. The Laws of Trialectics are not
just the Law of Causation (action, reaction and neutral)
but the exposition of logical principles of identity. What
Gurdjieff implied in the Law of Three, which he called the
sacred Law of Triamazikamno, is the same as the Stoic Law
of Causation as presented by the Stoic Posidonius who was
interested in producing 'Objective Reason,' exactly the same
wording as Mr. Gurdjieff. I hope Mrs. Palmer is not going
to question who came first.

For the Stoics, 'Objective Reason' was their way to cross

the "Ray of Creation" and to ascend into the sphere of
the Ogdoad. In Posidonius' theory, a person who has not
'awakened consciously' to the reality of the cosmic law is
condemned to receive 'mechanically' the influence of the
planets and to become 'food for the Moon.' This is exactly
the same wording Mr. Gurdjieff uses in his Beelzebub's Tales.
Like the Stoics, he imagines the ego as completely artifi-
cial and he calls it the organ 'Kundabuffer' composed of

162
 L etter T o T he T ranspersonal C ommunity 1991

hundreds of different "I's" or personalities. For the Stoics,

either you serve as 'food for the Moon' or you 'work con-
sciously' following and accepting Divine Providence,
pronoia, as we find in Cicero's De Officiis, and in that way
you ascend through the planets and into the Absolute Sun.
Gurdjieff tells us that the planets are alive and that 'angels'
are formed in the planet "Modiktheo" and that "they are
responsible for the government of the world and are closest
to His Endlessness." Flatly speaking, this is Stoic cosmol-
ogy where the soul is figured as descending from the Sun
Absolute and being engrossed by the vibration of each
of the planets, which are alive and called the 'archons' or
the rulers of the world in charge of their government and
functioning. This Stoic theory, which originated in Plato's
Timaeus, affirms that first we have to succeed in stopping
ourselves from being just 'food for the Moon' by the aid
of 'voluntary suffering' or the acceptance of the cosmic
unchangeable destiny and by 'intentional labor,' which has
to be dispassionate, and to benefit others. This is just the
same theory and wording Mr. Gurdjieff wants to inform us
about in his Beelzebub's Tales. These two most basic ideas of
Stoicism are painfully explained and obscurely described
by Mr. Gurdjieff who tries to expound upon them in large
tirades and endless repetitions. We can see the profound
misunderstanding that J.G. Bennett himself had of these
two basic concepts even after working with Gurdjieff for
so long. Bennett defined 'voluntary suffering' as "suffering

163
 OSCAR ICHAZO

one imposes on oneself to achieve something. The typi-

cal example is that of the athlete who disciplines himself,"
and his definition of 'intentional labors' is "to act without
regard to the fruits of action," and more vaguely that "they
are connected to the service of the future." If we observe
without understanding Stoic cosmology, we will not notice
that it is the source of these "ideas" where the cosmos is an
alive and enormous organism with different layers of mat-
ter or vibrations that come from the 'Sun Absolute' and will
return only if we 'become conscious,' saving ourselves from
becoming 'food for the Moon' and in this way transcend-
ing time, the merciless 'Heropass' of Gurdjieff. Gurdjieff
puts time, 'Heropass,' beyond the 'Sun Absolute' in the
same way as the Zurvanite heresy where time is beyond
the Absolute. J.G. Bennett believed this originated with the
"Sarmoung Brotherhood" that Gurdjieff found in Central
Asia and that later became the Sufi "Way of the Masters" or
the Khwajagan. Thus, it gives a Sufi source to the Gurdjieff
"ideas." This is totally impossible because of the material
cosmology of Mr. Gurdjieff.

On the other hand, the Stoics inherited from Heraclitus

the idea of time beyond the most pure "ether–fire," which
involved the 'being' of the Absolute described by Parmen-
ides. For the Stoics, time was the big riddle of the Uni-
verse. This was the case for them as well as in the previous
doctrines of Pythagoras, and from him directly to Egypt in
the form of the Sphinx (another one of the preoccupations

164
 L etter T o T he T ranspersonal C ommunity 1991

of Mr. Gurdjieff) of which it was said that if you do not

discover her meaning, she will devour you (food for
the Moon) and if you do discover her meaning, she will
accompany you throughout all eternity as a guardian. In
the Stoic–Gurdjieff cosmology there is a constant inter-
action of energies between God Himself and His entire
Creation. From the Integral point of view, this is a naive
primitive cosmology like the Magi astrologers of the Orphic,
Pythagorean and Stoic schools who transmitted this knowl-
edge to the Gnostic sects with their doctrine of the Creator
and His Archons, through Iamblichus (245–325 AD) and
Proclus (412–485 AD). The doctrine finished in Pseudo–
Dionysius (late fifth and early sixth century AD), who was
considered the first great Scholastic philosopher, and from
him into the Orthodox and Catholic Churches. For these
doctrines, the soul is imprisoned in the body. This idea of
being in a 'prison' from which you need to escape is used
again by Gurdjieff, and we can find the same description of
a prisoner in need of escaping with the help of other pris-
oners and knowledge from the outside, as we find in the
catechisms or the Stoic manuals where it was revealed how
to act consciously by means of kathekonta. This notion can
also be found in Epictetus' Enchiridion.

Central to the "ideas" of Mr. Gurdjieff as well as the ancient

Stoics is their total panic of dying without an 'astral body'
('body–Kesdjan'). This is what Mr. Gurdjieff used to say
was like "dying like a dog." In fact his close associates never

165
 OSCAR ICHAZO

seemed to understand this notion and it only becomes clear

when we read Posidonius, who explains that we should not
die as dogs "howling to the Moon" or being "food for the
Moon" because of our lack of a well–developed 'astral body.'

I have seen the Gnosis magazine (Summer 1991) in which

Mr. Gurdjieff is presented as a unique incredibly original
figure. He was by any account one of the most remark-
able men the human race has produced. Even Claudio
Naranjo asserts: "As a single individual (Gurdjieff) man-
aged to administer the European and American world a
shock perhaps more significant than any other until the
cultural wave of the early sixties." He also tells us that he
believes Gurdjieff's teaching reflects a northern strain of
Sufism indigenous to Central Asia and less connected to
orthodox Islam than more southerly versions. Naranjo is
just repeating the same mistake of J.G. Bennett, but he does
not tell us his sources.

The point of view of the Astral Religion from the Magi to

the Catholic Church is to obtain freedom by acknowledging
and understanding the cosmic laws of the "Ray of Creation"
and the Law of Causation (the Law of Three, Gurdjieff's
Triamazikamno). In all its different forms, this cosmology
collapsed with Copernicus, and a God who depends on the
interchange of energies with all His creation is a materialis-
tic conception completely and absolutely repugnant to the
Integral System and Theory, which is based on the Absolute

166
 L etter T o T he T ranspersonal C ommunity 1991

Transcendence (beyond matter) of God, as proposed by the

Arica Declaration of the Unity of God, which is the primor-
dial principle of the School and the first Arica Tenet.

Gurdjieff never gave us his sources and he describes himself

as somebody completing his 'astral body' ('body–Kesdjan'),
or in the fifth of the seven possible levels. For all we know,
not one of his disciples became enlightened but were frus-
trated and disappointed, and Gurdjieff himself did not
appear to have arrived at the final peace of Enlightenment
because here we have only a few possibilities. If he was
enlightened, he did not teach anybody else how to reach
this State or he did not know how to teach it. Perhaps more
simply he did not attain it himself because in his last book
Life Is Real Only Then, When "I am," his explanation of the
real "I" is missing. He says this can only be formed by the
work in the three centers simultaneously. This is a very pri-
mary position of self–observation upon which he does not
elaborate, and all his "ideas" are personal insights instead
of direct and precise instructions as we find in real and
proven traditions.

The most important doctrine in the Stoic and the Gurd-

jieffian "ideas" is to awaken in order to escape the mechanical
'influence' of the planets. For this purpose, it was nec-
essary to know the cosmic law formed by the "Ray of Cre-
ation" and the three–legged Law of Causation, and to pro-
duce the awareness with which we change the 'mechanical

167
 OSCAR ICHAZO

will' of our low desires into the 'intentional will' of accepting

Divine Providence, pronoia, thus evading time by coating
an 'astral body' and further on an 'essential body' with the
subtle material of 'conscious impressions' or the actual
stuff of Divine Objective Reason. To produce self–obser-
vation following this theory, it was necessary to knock out
your habitual intellection by 'intentional' super–efforts, at
the end of which it was possible to obtain direct 'impres-
sions' or kataleptike phantasia, the constant self–observation
of the main and stronger planetary 'influence' that gives all
individuals the very special characteristic of their person-
ality or special 'feature.' The astrology of antiquity could
present the elaborate personal astrological charts for this
effect, while Gurdjieff based his point of self–observation
on some important and obvious personal defect called the
'chief feature.' This is to say, his method of self–observation
was never clear and was mainly an artistic expression from
the power of observation of Mr. Gurdjieff who could find
what was ridiculous in all his friends. Of course, this is a
very poor method of observation; it comes from nowhere
and has no scientific basis or ground. Consequently it does
not work, or Mr. Gurdjieff and the Gurdjieffians would
have obtained some ponderable results.

The importance of Self–observation is another universal idea

and in the Integral System Self–observation is founded on
the great method exposed by Lord Gautama in the 'doctrine

168
 L etter T o T he T ranspersonal C ommunity 1991

of the Four Mindfulnesses' in the Mahasatipatthana Sutta

of the Digha Nikaya: or how to self–observe our body, our
emotions, our mind, and the objects of our mind. But the
Integral System, because it is founded upon the descrip-
tions of the entire human psyche in its nine Constituents,
observes that the three Instincts which support life develop
into nine possible psychological Fixations, one of which is
felt as a weak point that has to be defended for our own sur-
vival (defense mechanism). This weak point evolves into a
characteristic fixated type of personality, which is easy to
observe because all the Fixations follow the patterns and
descriptions of the correlated enneagrams of the System. This
is why the Fixations in the Arica Integral Theory are most
fundamental and pivotal for Self–analysis and Self–obser-
vation. With the Method of the Arica Fixations, it is possible
to obtain prolonged Self–observation as well as to recall all
our past experiences, clarifying our entire karma by under-
standing the part it has played in the development of our
being. This is observed as an integral part of Self–realization
(fifth Arica Tenet).
In summary:
1 The Arica Integral Theory and System is not derived in
any sense from the so–called Gurdjieffian–Ouspensky "ideas"
of The Fourth Way because their very old and naive materi-
alistic cosmology, where there are times "when God almost
has to ask for help," is a completely repugnant and materi-
alistic belief in front of The Five Tenets of the Arica School.

169
 OSCAR ICHAZO

2 I did not receive the Integral Theory from some obscure

Sufi sect or from anybody else. The Integral Theory and
Method are directly and completely proposed and pre-
sented exclusively by me. I am the only source of the Inte-
gral Theory and Method.
3 As I have proven, the "enneagram authors" base their
theories on blind acceptance of the formulation of a sup-
posed Sufi sect, transforming it into dogmatic principles of
belief and consequently without the need of critical analy-
sis for a logical and scientific formulation. In contrast, the
Integral System proposes a logical basis and a systematic
and scientific description of the human psyche, and it devel-
ops a complete Method for describing the human psyche
with its epistemology or theory of knowledge, its psychol-
ogy or map of the psyche and its functions, its ontology or
conception of Ultimate Reality, and its theology with a con-
ception of Transcendental Reality.
4 I do not have visions of flying angels or the 'Green
Qutub,' and the Integral System and Method is the prod-
uct of my whole life's work.
5 I have never had a "falling–out" with Claudio Naranjo,
and I never intended to keep in secrecy the Integral Theory
and Method since I have publicly lectured about the System
since 1968 in South America, the United States, and Europe.
6 The propositions of the psychologists and the priests
and nuns are contradictory to the Integral System. This is

170
 L etter T o T he T ranspersonal C ommunity 1991

the case with the psychologists because of their unscien-

tific and unsystematic approach to the matter, and with the
theologians (priests and nuns) because they are making a
mishmash of the Integral Theory in order to accommodate
it to their religious beliefs founded upon so many unprov-
able dogmas.
About Mrs. Palmer being a "heretic" as Judge Patterson
says, she just maintains a very different position and cer-
tainly she is entitled to it; but there is no question, as she
herself insists on clearly saying, that the origin of her eluci-
dations is strictly based on Arica. In fact, Arica Integralism
is not dependent on any other theory.
For some reason, in our time plagiarism has become a cur-
rent practice and because frenetic American television needs
an endless input of new ideas for turning its mills, it has
become like assembly–line products and, as in industry,
every company feels free to rob the competition under any
circumstance with the only purpose of winning the market.
This is such a common practice that people get uncomfort-
able when someone speaks of plagiarism; it is the attitude
of "so what, don't be a crybaby." But that is not the problem
with the Arica material. What is at stake is a true ground
for our science and our spiritual evolution and final Real-
ization. This is the only State that can be qualified as com-
pletely human, and it is known in the Integral Theory as
Theosis (Supreme Enlightenment).

171
 OSCAR ICHAZO

There appears to be a conspiracy between the "enneagram

authors" and some of the press who are interested in affirm-
ing the plagiarized versions of these authors. It reminds me
of "la claque" or the paid mob who applaud or boo following
the orders of crediting or discrediting authors and com-
posers. We all remember Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps
which was booed to death and scandalized by the paid
claque. But claques do not make history, only the truth
does. The proof is that we still can hear Le Sacre.

I have to write these explanations because of the abso-

lute necessity for Arica to be clear about sources and the
importance of the Integral Teachings toward the Path of
Supreme Enlightenment. Arica maintains that it is a new
Way to acquire the Supreme State (Theosis). Consequently,
its relation with other true Paths has to be clearly exposed
and delineated. Arica as a true School of Knowledge rests
on the grounds of Objective Truth and Method (fourth and
fifth Arica Tenets), which are capable of producing Total
Liberation in this one life. To be absolutely clear in this
point is essential because it is the moral ground of Arica
as a School of Wisdom and Knowledge.

Sincerely yours,

Oscar Ichazo

172
 C O N TA C T I N F O R M AT I O N

THE ARICA SCHOOL

The Arica School is a School of Knowledge founded in 1968

by Oscar Ichazo that presents a contemporary method for
the clarification of the human process, establishing the
ground of Unity for entering into States of Enlightenment
and true Liberation for the benefit of all humanity.

THE OSCAR ICHAZO FOUNDATION

The Oscar Ichazo Foundation is a nonprofit foundation

with the sole purpose of developing and producing the
publications, and the group and individual trainings of
Oscar Ichazo for the Arica School and the public at large.
These include the complete Teachings of Arica Integral
Philosophy, the Protoanalytical trainings and Teachings, and
the Theory of the Enneagram of which he was originator.

To contact the Arica School, email:

orders@arica.org

To contact the Foundation, email:

orders@theoscarichazofoundation.org

BOOKS AND TRAININGS BY OSCAR ICHAZO

store.arica.org

WE ARE ONE TRAINING

www.arica.org/weareone

173
 BOOKS BY OSCAR ICHAZO

The Human Process for Enlightenment and Freedom: A Series of

Five Lectures (1975) (out of stock)

Psychocalisthenics (1976) (out of print)

Between Metaphysics and Protoanalysis: A Theory for Analyzing the

Human Psyche (1982) (in revision)

Interviews with Oscar Ichazo (1982) (in revision)

Master Level Exercise: Psychocalisthenics (1986) (in revision)

Letters to the School (1988) (revised 2021; in Letters book)

Kath State: The Energy of Inner Fire (2004)

P–Cals/Psychocalisthenics: Exercises to Awaken Your Core Fire

(2011)

Core Fire: Awaken • Generate • Revitalize (2012)

Human Culture and Enlightenment (2015)

Oscar Ichazo: Insights into the Teacher • The Philosophy • The School
(2015)

The Religious Consciousness (2016)

A Commentary on Protoanalysis (2018)

Teachings of Integral Philosophy: The Nine Constituents: The

Science of the Human Condition from Ego to Enlightenment (2018)

The Four Killers of Humanity (2020)

The History of the Integral Teachings, Volume One (2020)

The History of the Integral Teachings, Volume Two (2021)

174
 ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Oscar Ichazo is the originator of the new tradition of Int-

egral Philosophy, which presents the complete analysis of
the lowest levels of the human condition up to the Highest
States of Enlightenment (Theosis). In 1968 he founded the
Arica School of Knowledge, through which he presented
the Enneagrammatic Theory of Protoanalysis (first analy-
sis) as well as its Theoretical Teachings and Practices.
From the beginning Oscar’s Teachings answered three most
important metaphysical questions: What is humankind?
What is the Supreme Good of humanity? What is the Truth
that gives meaning and value to human life? His work also
includes the Universal Truths supported by a new logic of
cycles called "Trialectics," the logical Laws of the Mind in
the 'process of becoming.'
The international Arica School, founded in New York in
1971, presents Oscar’s Protoanalytical Teachings, Methods
and Practices. The Arica School, a body and depository
of the Integral Knowledge, is fundamental for the alive
Teachings of Protoanalysis and for the presentation of In-
tegral Teachings worldwide by Arica Institute sponsors.
The practices of the Arica School have advanced into the
Higher Integral States.
Oscar Ichazo died at his home on Maui, Hawai’i in 2020
at the age of 88, and was survived by Sarah, his wife of
40 years. Sarah and many friends and students of the
Arica School continue to offer Oscar’s Teachings for the
benefit of all and the realization of a united humanity
(Humanity-One).

175