Remembrance Day

In Canada and other Commonwealth countries, November 11^th is Remembrance Day, a day that marks the armistice that ended World War I and commemorates the war experience in general. What exactly is being commemorated is not very clear. There are those who choose to focus on the fact that “The Great War” was fought as “the war to end war” and (given that it evidently did not end wars) it is seen as a tragedy that must never be repeated. There are others who focus on the fact that Canada’s participation in the war was what won us our separate nationhood from Britain, not simply because we very considerably helped to feed the British Empire in the conflict, but because our soldiers fought with extreme ferocity and valor on many occasions. When I visited the Calgary Military Museums earlier this year, I was astonished by the story of how Lord Strathcona’s Horse contributed to the war effort at the Battle of Moreuil Wood by charging on horseback uphill into German machine gun fire, and thereby managed to secure a crucial victory at the cost of most of the participating cavalry’s lives (and those of the opposing Germans).

By these kinds of examples, it is said that Canada earned its nationhood on the battlefield.

While these are perspectives that are relevant to Canadian history, if we take a global view of the conflict, it is truly horrific. It is estimated that roughly 15-22 million people died in the conflict, and 23 million military personnel were injured in it. The combined casualty figure is roughly equal to the entire present population of Canada at about 40 million, and this says nothing about the many millions who were further traumatized by the war experience and its aftereffects (among which we certainly could include the outbreak of the Second World War).

Gurdjieff lived through the conflict, and it forms the apocalyptic backdrop for much of Ouspensky’s In Search of the Miraculous. For his part, Gurdjieff was very clear and unsentimental about the nature of the conflict. It was simply a case of humanity being driven to mass slaughter by conflicting astrological influences from other planets in a purely reactive, mechanical, and unconscious way:

"What is war? It is the result of planetary influences. Somewhere up there two or three planets have approached too near to each other; tension results. Have you noticed how, if a man passes quite close to you on a narrow pavement, you become all tense? The same tension takes place between planets. For them it lasts, perhaps, a second or two. But here, on the earth, people begin to slaughter one another, and they go on slaughtering maybe for several years. It seems to them at the time that they hate one another; or perhaps that they have to slaughter each other for some exalted purpose; or that they must defend somebody or something and that it is a very noble thing to do; or something else of the same kind. They fail to realize that they are mere pawns in the game. They think they really signify something; they think they can move about as they like; they think they can decide to do this or that. But in reality all their movements, all their actions, are the result of planetary influences. And they themselves signify literally nothing…it must be understood that neither Emperor Wilhelm, nor generals, nor ministers, nor parliaments, signify anything or can do anything. Everything that happens on a big scale is governed from outside, and governed either by accidental combinations of influences or by general cosmic laws” (24).

On multiple occasions in the book Gurdjieff additionally uses the conflict to argue that historical progress is a delusion that is without substance. Indeed, in watching Peter Jackson’s documentary on the British war experience They Shall Not Grow Old, I was struck by how soldiers entered the conflict quite unconsciously and afterwards reflected on it quite unconsciously. The impression was as though the survivors had simply been through an unpleasant and sometimes nightmarish camping trip but had then gone on with their lives afterwards without much fuss. This impression is consonant with Christopher Clark naming his famous history of the conflict The Sleepwalkers. Having lived through the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, I must conclude that this dazed state of unconsciousness is characteristic of the general human experience of mass trauma.

Nevertheless, some people fortuitously had the presence of mind to call the commemorative occasion Remembrance Day. Driving around Calgary today, I was impressed to see the many signs saying LEST WE FORGET or WE REMEMBER. As an Enneagram type 9 living in a 9 country, and therefore someone especially prone to self-forgetting, this seemed to me to be a much-needed message! Indeed, the Remembrance Day ceremonies are marked by playing the Reveille or The Rouse, which quite simply call us to WAKE UP, the most important message of all. The Reveille in particular is associated with remembrance of Judgment Day for Christians, when it is said that the living and the dead alike will awaken to God’s judgment, and it therefore has a definite spiritual meaning.

The relationship of war remembrance to awakening is very interesting. As a 9, learning about horrific conflicts like the World Wars actually reinforced my indolence as a child. For example, I distinctly remember watching footage of the fire-bombing of Tokyo in the 2003 documentary The Fog of War and breaking into uncontrollable sobbing at the sight of the senseless violence against civilians, feeling certainty that no loving God would ever allow such a thing to happen. On another occasion I visited the World War II concentration camp at the Czech fortress of Terezín and saw a sad little underground altar where the Jewish residents had made their prayers. The thought that these people were subsequently shipped off to other camps around Central Europe and horribly abused and killed, their prayers to God unanswered, utterly shattered my heart. In such cases, remembering war caused me to forget Love. And yet, we know that part of the holy idea of Holy Love is that love is unconditional and non-localizable. In short, all is Love, including these horrific acts of war. Part of waking up as a 9 is accepting that this is true, even though my human mind and heart don’t understand how this could possibly be the case. Whenever a 9 discriminates between what is or is not love or lovable we drift further into indolence and sloth, as we fall into the delusion that world is cruel, dead, and devoid of Love, and the only things worth seeking are comfort and sleep to help numb away the pain of separation from Holy Love. When we start to remember that all is Love on the other hand, we start to wake up and take right action.

So on this Remembrance Day, I want to point to the redemptive quality of remembrance. Yes, Remembrance Day asks us to remember something that to the human ego seems utterly horrific, cruel, and devoid of Love. But we should not just remember the war that happened, we should go further and remember the most important thing of all – Love. We don’t have to understand it, and we certainly don’t need to explain it away, we just have to wake up and remember that all is Love – LEST WE FORGET.