In Search of the Miraculous
“A machine, a real machine, does not know itself and cannot know itself. When a machine knows itself it is then no longer a machine, at least, not such a machine as it was before. It already begins to be responsible for its actions.”
…”A man” (he emphasized this word) “is responsible. A machine is not responsible.” —Chapter 1
To be a Christian means to be responsible. Responsibility comes later when a man even partially ceases to be a machine, and begins in fact, and not only in words, to desire to be a Christian.” —Chapter 6
Return to Now, Henriette Lannes
Responsibility
As long as we remain submerged in ignorance we are irresponsible, whether we are thieves or altruists. In our mechanical state, we respond only partially to the varied demands of life. The sense of responsibility results from patient apprenticeship with men and women who have already developed this capacity in relation to their familial and professional obligations. If this transmission does not occur properly, artificial and illusory features may well insinuate themselves into so-called responsibility.
To be fully responsible is only a distant aim. Nonetheless, we can approach it if we understand what it asks of us in quite definite situations.
When the question of responsibility is raised, a confusion often slips in. People who possess a feeling of responsibility also believe that they possess consciousness, although the feeling of responsibility is actually what helps them move toward consciousness.
Our search calls on us to feel responsible for our actions, our manifestations; this is an indispensable condition for all work on ourselves toward further development. …Through experience, we sense that a moment of inner truth opens the door to other moments of truth. We come to feel responsible for this process.
Return to Now (elsewhere)
Little by little we learn to know the conditions of inner work and discover how an inner discipline engages us in a new responsibility toward ourselves. This is what Mr. Gurdjieff tried to make us feel when he asked us to give our word to ourselves. He also said: “The concepts of responsibility and freedom both have their source in C influences.”
The Reality of Being
29. An instrument of contact (authority)
I need to recognize a higher force, a master, and feel its authority. This recognition comes when the ordinary “I,” the ego, ceases to create its own movements. Then an energy of a very special quality appears, which is irresistible, all-powerful, as long as it is recognized and obeyed. It is this energy to which, along with all the traditions, we could give the name “love” if we knew what love meant. Conscious sensation is the first step toward this force.
45. To “know myself”
It is not necessary to come always to an exalted state, only to a level at which I can stay present a little longer. Simply remaining above the level of sleep—a little higher but in a way that has some stability—is itself extraordinary. It constantly jars something in us that awakens. We need to know what we are—either an unconscious slave or a conscious servant.
Inner Octaves, Michel Conge
Obedience
Obey as a friend must and can obey, and not as a servant would.
…In our certitude and in our love, active obedience can be born. We have to want it, wish it.
…. I will not obey through constraint or a sense of duty, or because it looks good, or to improve my image. I will obey when I become aware of the repercussions of my act. I am awaited, I am not forced.
But even when I am able to understand what is right and generous in the situation I am offered, I don’t necessarily become immediately able to obey. Because I am afraid. Because I am grasping. Because I am ruled by a belief in myself which is the counterpart of my relative freedom to disobey. …I do not want to give up anything.
…the act of obedience must arise, … not from my ordinary thought or feeling. … Obedience is the price of awakening. In order to awaken to myself, I must see what is in front of me, and give up “my” life for Life itself …
The only way for this to become possible is for me to fully realize my complete nothingness. Such as I am, in my dream of myself and my illusions, I am nothing. And I am nothing because I do not understand that my authentic being is something altogether different, and that, by clinging to my illusions, I deny the possibility of its realization.
I must give up my freedom to disobey in order fully to be.
The Reality of Being
67. My true form
…When I work in the quiet, I do not let myself begin without an order being established around my center of gravity. … It is not physical relaxation I seek, but to abandon my persistent ego, which is always eager for authority and has not yet recognized its master.
117. Stages of work
The most difficult thing is to learn how to pay. We receive exactly as much as we pay. In order to feel the authority of a subtle Presence, we have to pass beyond the wall of our ego, the wall of our mental reactions from which springs the notion of “I.” It is necessary to pay. Without paying, we have nothing.
Attention and The Two Natures, Michel Conge
So much more could be said on the subject of attention. For example, the …concept of relativity. The lower level of each center should be passive and, in relation to it, the higher level should be active. This would be normal. But in my habitual way of seeing, precisely the opposite occurs. If we return to the idea of two natures, the higher nature should be active, in authority, and the lower nature should be passive, of service. In fact, the higher nature remains passive and the agitated lower nature arrogates to itself the active role; and this is because there is nothing to reconcile the two.
It is the same in each of my centers. But I can understand that when I try to free my attention, it appears to be active (I appear to be active) in relation to a mechanism which becomes passive. …
Finally, if the higher levels of the centers become active, a great event may take place: this whole nature, now unified and ordered, can begin to serve the higher nature…
Better still, as I free myself from the functions and as my attention, charged with new power, comes together from each of the functions, I discover that a new structure is gradually taking shape, imbued with qualities of thought, feeling and sensation which I did not know before. This structure—a new body forming, condensing, organizing—is the previously missing intermediary element capable of uniting the higher and the lower natures.
The Reality of Being
91. A more intense energy appears
We need to understand the idea of a cosmic scale, that there is a link connecting humanity with a higher influence. Our lives, the purpose of being alive, can only be understood in relation to forces whose scale and grandeur go beyond ourselves. I am here to obey, to obey an authority that I recognize as greater because I am a particle of it. It calls to be recognized, to be served and to shine through me. There is a need to put myself under this higher influence and a need to relate to it in submitting to its service. I do not realize at the outset that my wish to be is a cosmic wish and that my being needs to situate itself and find its place in a world of forces. I consider it my subjective property, something I can make use of for personal profit. My search is organized on the scale of this subjectivity in which everything is measured from a subjective point of view—me and God. Yet at a certain point I must realize that the origin of the need I feel is not in me alone. There is a cosmic need for the new being that I could become. Humanity—a certain portion of humanity—needs it. And I also have a need, with their help, to capture the influence that is just above me.
We feel that without this relation with a higher energy, life has not much meaning. But by ourselves alone, we will not have the force to achieve it. A certain current, a certain magnetism, needs to be created in which each person finds his place, that is, the place which will permit the current to be better established. Our whole responsibility is here. The traditional ways all recognized and served this aim in a manner that corresponded to the development of people in a given place and period. Today we need to find again the contact with this energy. This is why Gurdjieff brought the help of a Fourth Way, which excludes nothing and takes account of the development of the different functions in contemporary people.