Transcripts of Gurdjieff’s Meetings 1941-1946
Gurdjieff: …Another year is beginning for the work. Use your mistakes and your observations to work now seriously, and to have good results…
(Y)ou can use what you gained during the holidays, if you… make up for… what you did not do; put aside what you developed, put your attention and work on the side that wasn’t developed…
Your work must consist of two things: Get better acquainted with your nonentityness, and remember yourself often, as often as possible…—Meeting Fourteen
In Search of the Miraculous
“…(P)eople very often… think that the efforts they have previously made, their former merits, so to speak, give them some kind of rights or advantages, diminish the demands to be made upon them, and constitute as it were, an excuse should they not work…This, of course, is most profoundly false. Nothing that a man did yesterday excuses him today… Whoever does nothing receives nothing. —Chapter Eleven
Views From the Real World
…Sooner or later everything is paid for… (O)nly voluntary suffering has value. One may suffer simply because one feels unhappy. Or one may suffer for yesterday, and to prepare for tomorrow.
I repeat, only voluntary suffering has value. —New York, February 13, 1924
Every man dislikes suffering, every man wants to be quiet. Every man chooses what is easiest, least disturbing, tries not to think too much…
…”I” is the master, if we have an “I.” If we have not, there is always someone… giving orders to the driver. Between the passenger and the driver there is a substance which allows the driver to hear…
One of these substances is formed when we suffer. We suffer whenever we are not mechanically quiet… For instance, I want to tell you something, but I feel it is best to say nothing. One side wants to tell, the other wants to keep silent. The struggle produces a substance. Gradually this substance collects in a certain place. —New York, February 22, 1924
Transcripts of Gurdjieff’s Meetings 1941-1946
Gurdjieff: … It is… necessary that you obtain results in yourself. Collect, accumulate the results of struggle. You will need them for continuing. You must accumulate; you have batteries in you in which you must accumulate this substance, like electricity. This substance can only be accumulated by struggle. Therefore, create a struggle between your head and your animal… When we struggle interior with thought, feeling and body, that gives a substance… Accumulate. It is this that is lacking in you… What is necessary is that you must have in you the process of struggle… because you need the substance that struggle will give you. —Meeting Fifteen
Gurdjieff’s Emissary in New York: Talks and Lectures with A.R. Orage 1924-1931
Gurdjieff has said that all suffering is either repayment of old debts incurred or preparation for future conscious or unconscious satisfactions…
Remember that the word suffering is not used in the ordinary sense; but in the sense of effort to overcome conditions of inertia…
… Voluntary suffering is… (g)iving oneself the trouble… (n)ot merely resisting inclination but substituting a positive. When swimming against the current… the purpose… is not the overcoming of resistance but arriving at a goal. Our goal is consciousness, ability at will to regard the planetary body with non-identification, as an instrument… —Tuesday, 6 May 1930
“Intentional suffering” has nothing whatever to do with pain or the infliction of disagreeables. Overcoming… inhibitions that keep us from doing what we wish, this is called intentional suffering… What we lack is not wish, but the will to overcome inhibitions. We must not have asceticism but a deliberate exploitation of life and joy… —Tuesday, 29 April 1930
Experiment I define as an intended experience… in the direction of changing habits, so the body will cease to be an automaton, but will be amenable to my (“I”) wishes… We don’t begin by changing good habits—they are all right; not with bad habits, as this might lead to Puritanism. So we begin with… habits that do not matter, to discover… what you suffer in changing them… —Charles Sumner Greene papers
First Initiation (excerpts)
Mr. Gurdjieff: You must see that in life, you receive exactly what you give, life is the mirror of what you are; it is in your own likeness. You are passive, blind and demanding. You take everything, you accept everything, without ever feeling any obligation. Your attitude towards the world and towards life is the attitude of one who has the right to demand and to take, who needs neither to pay nor to earn…
…You acknowledge something higher than yourself only in theory or with your logic – not in actual fact. This is why you make demands and continue to believe that all things are cheap, that you have enough in your pocket to buy everything you may want…
…I need to recognize in myself a part that is higher than other parts. It is by my attitude towards this part that I demonstrate the respect I have towards it. In this way I shall respect myself and my relationship towards others will be governed by the same respect…
But you will find that this is not easy – and it is not cheap… One must pay dearly, pay at once, pay in advance. Pay from oneself by sincere, conscientious, disinterested efforts.
The more you are prepared to pay without sparing yourself, without cheating or tampering, the more you will receive…
…And if you observe in this manner, paying from yourself, without self pity, by giving up all your imaginary riches for one moment of reality, then you may suddenly see what you have never seen before. You will see that you are not what you believe. You will see that there are two of you – the one who is not, yet takes the place of, and plays the role of the other. And the one who is but so weakly, so impermanently that he vanishes almost as soon as he appears… —Paris, September 16, 1941, edited by Dr. Michel de Salzmann