Chapter 2
Gurdjieff's Theory of Laughter
[62>] Gurdjieff offers us a theory of laughter, independent of any state of amusement (= humor), that nevertheless distinguishes between laughter as a physiological response and the organismic cause of it, which he also calls "laughter." This organismic variable (O), though not necessarily the same as humor, is shown to be a complex structure that is radically different from the visible laughter that results from it. Since his conception of O, though outlined in a most rudimentary and concise form, provides us the basis of the most viable theory of humor that we have been able to elaborate and immediately brings into relief some of the most conspicuous features of this humor-theory, we find it both convenient and opportune to begin with his succinct formulation of the structure of the organismic variable responsible for both humor and laughter. The passage on laughter is reproduced below in full and much of this thesis may be considered to be a systematic interpretation of his theory of laughter, its integration into a general theory of humor, and a sustained exploration of its consequences in various domains. We shall ignore his references to other aspects of his system such as his theory of yawning, of accumulators, centers, and so on, except insofar as they are relevant to our proper understanding of humor. [63>]
[63>] In addition to what he said about accumulators G. made some very interesting remarks about yawning and laughter."There are two incomprehensible functions of our organism inexplicable from a scientific point of view," he said, although naturally science does not admit them to be inexplicable; these are yawning and laughter. Neither the one nor the other can be rightly understood and explained without knowing about accumulators and their role in the organism.1
Laughter is also directly concerned with the accumulators. But laughter is the opposite function to yawning. It is not pumping in, but pumping out, that is the pumping out and the discarding of superfluous energy collected in the accumulators. Laughter does not exist in all the centers,2 but only in the centers divided into two halves—positive and negative (...). At present we shall take only the intellectual center. There can be impressions which fall at once on the two halves of the center and produce at once a sharp 'yes' and 'no'. Such a simultaneous 'yes' and 'no' produces a kind of convulsion in the center and, being unable to harmonize and digest these two opposite impressions of one fact, the center begins to throw out [64>] in the form of laughter the energy which flows into it from the accumulator whose turn it is to supply it. In another instance it happens that in the accumulator there has collected too much energy which the center cannot manage to use up. Then every, the most ordinary, impression can be received as double, that is, it may fall at once on the two halves of the center and produce laughter, that is, the discarding of energy.
You must remember that I am only giving you an outline. You must remember that both yawning and laughter are very contagious. This shows that they are essentially functions of the instinctive and moving centers."3
"Why is laughter so pleasant?" asked someone.
"Because," G. answered, "laughter relieves us of superfluous energy, which, if remained unused, might become negative, that is, poison. We always have plenty of this poison in us. Laughter is the antidote. But this antidote is necessary only so long as we are unable to use all the energy for useful work. It is said of Christ that he never laughed. And indeed you will find in the Gospels no indication or mention of the fact that any time Christ laughed. But there are different ways of not laughing. There are people who do not laugh because they are completely immersed in negative emotions, in malice, in fear, in hatred, in suspicion. And there may be others who do not laugh because they cannot have negative emotions. Understand one thing. In the higher centers there can be no laughter, because in the higher centers there is no division, and no 'yes' and 'no'."
(emphasis ours, and not the author's).
P.D. Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous, pp.236-37
[65>] Before proceeding further it would be useful to summarize all the distinctive features of this theory of laughter, then we can examine how they are related to each other and to other theories of humor and laughter.
The psychology of the ordinary 'mechanical' man (the paśu of the Tantras) is conceived by Gurdjieff in a manner very similar to the modern behaviorists, which is again very close to the psychology implicit in the philosophical systems of non-tantricized Hinduism:
The scheme made explicit by the Nyāya—Indian philosophical system constructed in order to found and expound logic—is [69>] accepted more or less tacitly by all the Brahmanical systems: action is conceived as a sort of response of the subject to a stimulus coming from outside. There is invariably the sequence: knowledge→desire→inclination to act. There is no action which is not preceded by a desire, and the latter is never the desire to act, but the desire for an object, for a precise result that is known to be good for oneself. The knowledge which engenders the desire is often a perception.4
Indeed Biardeau has very well expressed
the manner in which Brahmanical philosophy conceives the human psychism: a set of organs destined to passively transmit external data to the ātman and to in this way evoke mechanically in him, starting from these data, desires that will push him to act, a sort of reflex arc passing through consciousness. The 'interior' of man is destined only to feel, to enjoy what is furnished by the world.5
In fact, Gurdjieff carries this analysis to the point of doing away the notion of self-ātman altogether. But just as the aim of Gurdjieff's Method is to break this "behavioral circuit" by "making a self," that is, by acquiring a will that is autonomous and a capacity to do that is independent of external stimuli, so too is the whole perspective of "brahmanical psychology" reversed in the "metapsychology" of the Tantric systems like the Trika. The latter are orientated towards the permanent acquisition of an autonomous Will (svātantrya) [70>] and the truly creative activity that flows spontaneously from it. In this process of reversal the paśu ('creature') is transformed into pati ('Lord'). But, for the present, it is the behavioral model that is of relevance here.
The desire provoked by the external stimulus is two-fold: the desire to obtain (īpsā) or the desire to avoid (jihāsā), which find their most obvious manifestation in the emotional response to the stimulus, a response that is so ingrained in human nature that it becomes practically identified with the perception of the stimulus itself.
Man, in the normal state natural to him, is taken as a duality. He consists entirely of dualities or 'pairs of opposites.' All man's sensations, impressions, feelings, thoughts, are divided into positive and negative, useful and harmful, necessary and unnecessary, good and bad, pleasant and unpleasant. The work of the centers proceeds under the sign of this division… This is the duality in which proceed all the perceptions, all the reactions, the whole life of man. Any man who observes himself, however little, can see this duality in himself.
Ouspensky, op. cit., p.281
The Nyāya epistemology in fact defines the knowing subject (pramātr) and his activity (pravrtti) in terms of this fundamental duality which is taken for granted.6
One is immediately struck by the fact that it never is a question [71>] of knowing purely and simply things in themselves; or rather, and to speak a language that is closer to the Indian experience, the objective knowledge of the real is the knowledge of things insofar as they are affected in relation to us with a certain index of positive or negative value,
Biardeau, CPBC, p.66)
Since our emotions towards things are part of our knowledge of them, and immediately affect the latter with a positive or negative index allowing the organism on the biological level to react appropriately and immediately without the intervention of the intellectual center which is generally too slow, therefore these emotions too are divided into pleasurable (sukhātmaka) and painful (duhkhātmaka) categories depending on whether they involve a primarily positive (attraction) or negative (aversion) reaction to their respective objects. The two-fold division of the permanent emotions (sthāyi-bhāva) in Indian aesthetics is as follows:
The classification of hāsa here as sukhātmaka, notwithstanding the dual character of O (laughter as organismic variable) as the mutual neutralization of īpsā and jihāsā ('yes' and 'no'), is easily explicable by the fact the laughter response R is pleasurable and is often eagerly sought for, through the very mechanism of O. But this does not mean that stimulus itself of O is experienced as wholly desirable. From this point of view, it may be suggested that hāsa is actually a weak sukhātmaka-sthāyin and a parallel may be found in the dual planet Mercury in astrology which, though governing humor (hāsya), is classified as [72>] the weakest benefic planet instead of neutral.
Here the objection may arise that Indian psychology has no place for such a double and contradictory perception of a stimulus as in O, for the mind (manas) has been postulated precisely to account for the non-simultaneity of the perceptions produced by the constant contact of the sense-organs with their respective objects (Biardeau, CPBC, pp.112-13). We doubt the relevance of this objection, for in O it is not a question of apprehending and reacting to two different stimuli but of the attention being focused on a single junctional stimulus, bridging two contradictory fields of perceptual organization and orientation, giving rise simultaneously to two opposing reactions. It would make no difference if this simultaneity of the twin-response were conceived of as a rapid oscillation instead. This is how Koestler, for example, justifies his theory of bisociation (= dual and simultaneous association).
It may be objected that we can neither give our attention to two independent subjects at a time nor correlate two independent contexts, as the term bisociation implies...; the psychologically trained reader may reassure himself by not taking the expression 'simultaneous' textually, but as referring to a quick oscillation of the bisociated concept between its two contexts accounting for the presence of both (...) in consciousness.
Koestler, Insight and Outlook, p.37
The positive or negative nature of the emotional response colors the perception itself (instinctive center) and determines the motor reaction to it (moving center) and the mental constructions elaborated around the stimulus (intellectual center) and therefore [73>] all these correlated centers, along with the emotional center, may be conceived of as having a double aspect intrinsic to them, at least insofar as they are the mainsprings of all worldly transaction and endeavor. With these preliminary clarifications, we are in the position to critically evaluate the relevance of Gurdjieff's theory of laughter to the conception of hāsya in Indian tradition.
Before we terminate this chapter on Gurdjieff's theory, it would be useful to underline the relationship between his "laughter in the moving center" and Freud's category of the "comic of movement" here itself, for we shall not return to it again while criticizing Freud's own categories of the comic. No doubt, where the moving impulse is determined or colored by a specific emotional motivation the positive or negative character of the former will correspond to that of the emotion itself. But many forms of perceived movement in others, like the comic movements of circus clowns, are able to produce laughter in us without there really being a 'positive' or 'negative' component in the above sense involved. Freud explains the comic of movement in terms of what he calls "ideational mimetics." When thinking or speaking, the ideas we entertain are constantly emphasized by involuntary automatic gestures and slight muscular contractions of the eyes, etc., which often serve to communicate verbal ideas like those of largeness, smallness, distance, height, etc. The contents of our ideas are accompanied by an ideational mimetics that requires varying degrees of expenditure of nervous energy. The perception of others' movements also necessarily involves such ideational mimetics in the form of the harmonious coordination of [74>] the two complementary vectors that ensure the coherence of this perception. In the first place, we make a certain expenditure of energy in "trying to understand" the movement by putting ourselves in the place of the person making the directed movement; there is expenditure through automatic empathy with him. But at the same time, we make an independent estimation, also automatic, on the basis of the aim of the movement and the nature and distribution of the objects towards which it is directed, as to the scale of expenditure required. In doing so we disregard the person being observed and inwardly behave as though we were ourselves trying to accomplish the objective of the movement. Normally, that is when the magnitude and direction of the perceived movement is adequated to its external objective, the two modes of processing the movement fuse indistinguishably and reinforce each other to constitute the perception of an intelligible movement. But
if the other person's movement is exaggerated and inexpedient, my increased expenditure in order to understand it is inhibited in statu nascendi, as it were in the act of being mobilized; it is declared superfluous and is free for use elsewhere or perhaps for discharge by laughter.
Freud, Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious, p.254
In laughing at the clown's extravagant movements, "we are laughing at an expenditure that is too large" (ibid., p.249). Going on to examine comic nonsense, where the other person apparently makes a mental effort that is too meager to accomplish the aim as compared to what we would ourselves have expended if directly confronted with the task, Freud concludes that in reality either of the two vectors may be exaggerated or reduced in relation to the other, and all that is essential for the comic effect is that there [75>] should be a sharp difference between the two which can provide the surplus energies to be released as laughter.
"The comic effect apparently depends, therefore, on the difference between the two cathectic expenditures—one's own and the other person's as estimated by 'empathy'—and not on which of the two the difference favors" (ibid., p.255).
So too the comic may take place in our own movements alone when there is a quantitative disproportion between our expected and real efforts, such as when we almost fall over when we make a strenuous effort to lift a seemingly heavy weight only to discover that it is made of wax. Freud refers to Theodore Lipps and others to support his claim that "quantitative (and not qualitative) contrast is to be regarded primarily as the source of comic pleasure" (p.259).
Koestler has, however, ably criticized Freud's analysis as an attempt to reduce qualitative factors to purely quantitative ones. Each of the two complementary vectors contributing to the integral movement or its perception may be considered an independent field having its own coherence. One field consists of the ideational miming of all the complex combinations of muscular tensions, movements and compensations in bodily balance, etc., seen to be adequate to the goal, whereas the other field consists of the same but this time as induced by empathy or through false expectation. The momentary juxtaposition of the two fields and the impossibility of both being operational at exactly the same time results in the unusable energies of both fields being expended as laughter. It is not a question of mere subtraction of the total energy of one field from the larger total, for laughter may occur even when [76>] t they are quantitatively equivalent but qualitatively different.
In the great majority of comic patterns the 'gain' of the redundant energy results from the intersection of fields which differ in the quality of their operators and not in their quantitative scale. It is not a case of energy becoming redundant because there was too much effort, but because it was a type of effort which does not fit the situation. Freud's attempt to reduce differences in the quality of the behavioral patterns involved in a comic situation to differences in quantity leads to quite absurd results.
for the concept of operative fields see the following chapter III, pp.87-88).p>
Koestler, Insight and Outlook, p.426;
Since in all these processes involved in the comic of movement, there are no deliberate intellectual assessments involved, the ideational mimetics relegate the laughter to Gurdjieff's 'moving center.' What really matters is not the facility with which we are able to pigeon-hole each component into some absolute 'yes|no' categories, but the fact that they stand in a mutually incompatible, if not diametrically opposed, relation with each other. Neither impression is inherently indigestible, it is only their juxtaposition that is so.
ThThough this "laughter in the moving-instinctive center" is certainly effective in the vidūṣaka'sncongruous displacement of his limbs (aṅga-hāsya) , we shall not devote further attention to it as it does not shed any specific light in elucidating his symbolism and function. All that we intended to demonstrate was that even this humble category of the comic conforms rigorously to Gurdjieff's bisociative theory of laughter.
[This concludes the complete text of chapter II on "Gurdjieff's Theory of Laughter" ]