Gurdjieff
We…do not recognize that we are machines, and we do not know the nature and working of our mechanism…
We are governed entirely by external circumstances. All our actions follow the line of least resistance to the pressure of outside circumstances.
Try for yourselves: can you govern your emotions? No. You may try to suppress them, or cast out one emotion by another emotion. But you cannot control it. It controls you. Or you may decide to do something… But when the time comes to do it, you may find yourself doing just the opposite.
If circumstances are favorable to your decision you may do it, but if they are unfavorable you will do whatever they direct…irrespective of your desires…
If we learn to control our actions, that will be different… but, as we are now, we cannot even do what we decide to do. —Views From the Real World – London, 1922
Mme. de Salzmann
We must see our mechanicalness, and we can only see it by resisting it. We resist being identified in order to know the force with which we identify. When we resist, a different quality of energy, of Presence, appears with a different taste… But what does it mean to resist?…
We need to remember that the struggle is for, and not against something, —The Reality of Being, 47. The struggle for being
Jean Vaysse
At the beginning of life, a human being is body and essence…
But as soon as the necessity to face life arises, personality begins to grow. It is formed in part by…education, in part by involuntary imitation of adults by the child himself, and partly also by the child’s “resistance” to what is around him, and by efforts to protect (and to disguise if necessary) what he feels to be himself, and to be his own—that which is “real” in him, his essence. —Toward Awakening, Essence and Personality
Lillian Firestone
I see that my wish and my resistance are both here in this moment, but the resistance takes a hidden form. It takes the form of tension. So, my wish is to be. My resistance is to be someone who is admired or respected, and this creates a tension which is felt in all my parts, in my mind and in feelings, and most especially in my body, because my body obeys the tensions generated in the feelings and the mind…
This tension stands in the way of my wish to be and to serve… —Spiritual Chemistry – August 19, 2008
Gurdjieff
You must educate your body with your head, consciously… He in which the body…has the initiative over him, this one is…a nullity… (I)f you direct your body you are intelligent. Thus, choose what you want… If you want to be intelligent, let your consciousness direct your body. The more you want to direct your body, the more it opposes you. And in resisting you, the more strength it gives you. —Transcripts of Gurdjieff’s Meetings 1941-1946 – Meeting Eight
Mme. de Salzmann
I need to anticipate the resistance. There are obstacles that I must understand… My passivity…will tell me that it cannot decide, or carry out a decision. This is true—it cannot. But something else can. I need to listen to that, and not to the doubt brought by my passivity… —The Reality of Being, 44. The way down
Beelzebub
“(T)he Great Angel Hariton…invented a new type of ship for intersystem and interplanetary communication.” —Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson, Chapter 4, The Law of Falling
“The new system was unanimously acknowledged to be the best….
“At the present time this system of the…now Archangel, Hariton is in use everywhere… It is not very complicated…
“The whole of this great invention consists of a single ‘cylinder’…
“(I)n spaces where there is no resistance…ships…simply fall toward the nearest stability, but where there are…cosmic substances that offer resistance, it is these… no matter what their density, that are acted upon by the cylinder, and enable the ship to move in any desired direction.
“It is interesting to note that the denser the substance in any given part of the Universe, the better the charging and discharging of the cylinder-barrel proceed, and…of course, the rate of movement…is accelerated… —ibid., Chapter 5, The system of Archangel Hariton
Gurdjieff
I can tell you one thing. We have a property: if you are on the right path, nature immediately puts an idea into you, crystallizes the exact factor in you that is going to stand in your way. The further you are on the right path, the more nature will send you obstacles of this kind to prevent you from continuing. This is how it is in life.
So, you will…sit down very quietly; you will become calm in a good state. Do this for one or two weeks or a month, and you will no longer believe anything or anyone. Make a programme. If you don’t have a programme, anything—any idiot, any nonentity or shit—can order you around. Trust only this programme you have decided on while in a special state. The main thing is to decide how you want to behave, what you want to do… (T)hat is what a programme is. And you believe only in this. And even if God…tells you to do something else, you must not do it. Maybe He has come just to trip you up. You do only what you decided to do in your special state…
Understand that I am saying something important… You…believe only your programme and your decision. It is the only precise path for you. There are no others, because nature puts many dogs in us on purpose in order to make us weak. It’s perhaps in nature’s interest that there be few men on the right path. —G.I.Gurdjieff Paris Meetings 1943 —Thursday, December 9