(Gurdjieff) “We come to the conclusion that we must ‘remember ourselves.’ But we can ‘remember ourselves’ only if we have in us the energy for ‘self-remembering.’ We can study something, understand or feel something, only if we have the energy for understanding, feeling, or studying.
“…every normal man has quite enough energy to begin work on himself. It is only necessary to learn how to save the greater part of the energy we possess for useful work instead of wasting it unproductively.
“Energy is spent chiefly on unnecessary and unpleasant emotions, on the expectation of unpleasant things, possible and impossible, on bad moods, on unnecessary haste, nervousness, irritability, imagination, daydreaming, and so on. —In Search of the Miraculous, Chapter 8
* * *
“Small accumulators suffice for the ordinary, everyday work of life. But for work on oneself, for inner growth, and for the efforts which are required… ”We must learn how to draw energy straight from the large accumulator.
“This however is possible only with the help of the emotional center. It is essential that this be understood. The connection with the large accumulator can be effected only through the emotional center. The instinctive, moving, and intellectual centers, by themselves, can feed only on the small accumulators.
“This is precisely what people do not understand. Therefore their aim must be the development of the activity of the emotional center. The emotional center is an apparatus much more subtle than the intellectual center… If anyone desires to know and to understand more than he actually knows and understands, he must remember that this new knowledge and this new understanding will come through the emotional center and not through the intellectual center.” —In Search of the Miraculous, Chapter 11
* * *
(Jean Vaysse) Study of the emotional function, even arrived at indirectly by way of our habitual emotional habits, is probably even more difficult than study of the intellectual center… We can change nothing as regards our emotions. Although they are always there, we see them only when they are stronger than usual. Then we call them “feelings.” But a real feeling would be something quite different. We live with nothing but automatic emotional reactions… which follow each other in rapid succession at each instant of our lives, and… please us or displease us, attract us or repel us. We no more see this than we know why we experience our attractions repulsions, our acceptances and refusals; they take place in us automatically. —Toward Awakening, Jean Vaysse – Conditions of Self Observation
* * *
(Mme. de Salzmann) …in trying not to express negative emotions, we are not struggling against the emotions themselves or struggling to do away with their expression. It is a struggle with our identification, to allow the energy otherwise wasted to serve the work. We struggle not against something, we struggle for something. —The Reality of Being – 6. The first initiation
* * *
(Gurdjieff) …”If the emotional center were to work with hydrogen 12, its work would be connected with the work of the higher emotional center. In those cases where the work of the emotional center reaches the intensity and speed… given by hydrogen 12, a temporary connection with the higher emotional center takes place and man experiences new emotions, new impressions hitherto entirely unknown to him… But in ordinary conditions the difference between the speed of our usual emotions and the speed of the higher emotional center is so great that no connection can take place and we fail to hear within us the voices which are speaking and calling to us from the higher emotional center.
“The higher thinking center, working with hydrogen 6, is still further removed from us, still less accessible. Connection with it is possible only through the higher emotional center.
* * *
(Gurdjieff) “…This present teaching… affirms that… higher centers exist in man and are fully developed.
“It is the lower centers that are undeveloped. And it is precisely this lack of development, or the incomplete functioning, of the lower centers that prevents us from making use of the work of the higher centers. —In Search of the Miraculous – Chapter 8
* * *
(Mme. de Salzmann) …I wish for a change of being, a change in the state of my Presence. The thought can change easily, but not the body or the feeling. Yet, as Gurdjieff said, the power of transformation is not in the thought. It is in the body and the feeling. And our body and feeling experience no demand so long as they are contented. They live only in the present moment, and their memory is short. Until now, the greatest part of our wish, of our efforts, has come from the thought… But what has to change is the state of the feeling. The wish must come from the feeling, and the power to do—the capacity—must come from the body. —The Reality of Being – 137. I must live the lack of relation
* * *
Do you see that the problem before us is a question of feeling? We begin to see the poverty of all our feelings and the need for a feeling that is more pure, more penetrating… it is necessary to reach a depth of silence where my feeling is no longer attached to my usual egoism…
I wish to be present, to remain present. But I feel powerless, that I cannot wish, cannot be… Help appears in the form of a more active feeling, with more conviction, a feeling that comes from the higher emotional center…
But I only receive this help if I feel a compelling need for it.
…How to understand the experience of feeling? We know what sensing is, an inner touch. Feeling requires another quality. It has nothing to do with “like” or “dislike,” and yet it is emotion. I feel sorrow or joy. Feeling is always rising up. Like fire it flares up, then dies away. And I feel “I am.” Pure feeling has no object… —The Reality of Being – 35. I feel “I am”
* * *
With a second conscious shock, it is possible that consciousness opens and we see reality. This is an emotional understanding of truth… There is no closing, no negation. I do not refuse. I do not accept. With this vigilance, which does not choose, a new feeling appears and a new understanding, not born from opposites… —The Reality of Being – 86. First and second conscious shocks