Beelzebub’s Tales
Chapter 17 The arch-absurd…
“Three-brained beings have the possibility of personal self-perfecting because of the localization in their common presence of three centers, or three brains, upon which, when the Omnipresent Okidanokh undergoes the process of ‘djartklom,’ the three holy forces of the sacred Triamazikamno are deposited and acquire the possibility of further, this time independent, actualizations.
“The point is that beings having this three-brained system can, by the conscious and intentional fulfilling of being-partkdolgduty, utilize for their own presence the three holy forces liberated from the Omnipresent Okidanokh …and so …become Individuals who have their own sacred law of Triamazikamno, and thereby the possibility of consciously taking in and coating in their common presence that ‘All-Holy’ which, among other things, helps to actualize the functioning in cosmic units of objective or divine Reason.
…”…But since they have entirely ceased to fulfill being-partkdolgduty, chiefly because of the abnormal conditions of being-existence gradually established by them themselves, none of these holy sources of everything existing is transubstantiated for their own presences, except the denying source alone.
Chapter 23 – The fourth personal sojourn of Beelzebub…
… if something is attained by the three-brained beings on your planet thanks to their being-partkdolgduty’—that is to say, their conscious labor and intentional suffering—not only are these attainments utilized by them for the welfare of their own being but also, as with us, a certain part of these attainments is transmitted by heredity and becomes the property of their direct descendants.
Orage’s Commentary On Beelzebub
(from C.S. Nott’s Teachings of Gurdjieff, 1961)
‘… When we begin to ask ourselves, …like Hassein, “How can I pay for my existence and for all that others have done for me?”, then we begin to become aware of genuine being-duty.
…”What am I here for? …What must I do?”
… ‘One of the chief purposes of a man is to develop from a substance called “essence”, a special kind of reason—objective reason—which will establish him as a permanent brain-cell of all life. …Nature, says Gurdjieff, needs these relatively liberated beings. ..
Of objective reason, at present, we know very little; again, this can be developed only by the practice of being-Parktdolg-duty. Objective reason is the opposite of mere intellectualism, mere philosophical speculation, which produce only monsters.
…To a question about parktdolgduty, Orage said: ‘…it is conscious labour and voluntary suffering. From one aspect it is an intellectual duty to strive to understand the meaning and aim of existence, an emotional duty to feel the weight of the maintenance of everything existing, and a physical duty to make the planetary body the servant of your aim.
…Existence—the participation in the experiences of incarnation—cost somebody something. To feel the obligation of this is to have an understanding of what is meant by paying for one’s existence. …The obligation for our life is …one …that is felt by a normal human being.’
Transcripts of Gurdjieff’s Meetings 1941-1946 (p. 64)
Gurdjieff: …You should be having an interior struggle between your individuality and your functions. You must not calm yourself…
…It is only 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. … I advise you…not to stop. Continue your struggle, but without waiting for results. Accumulate the results of the process of struggle. When we struggle interiorly with thought, feeling and body, that gives a substance in the place where it belongs. We have no interest today in knowing where that place is. Accumulate. It is this that is lacking in you. …But you must not stop.
…What is necessary is that you must have in you the process of struggle. What means shall you employ? That isn’t important. Struggle. You know better than I what struggle. For example, whatever your body likes, whatever you have the habit of giving it, don’t give it any more. The important thing is to have a continual process of struggle, because you need the substance that struggle will give you.
The Reality of Being
#115. I must live the insufficiency
In order to have a contact with the higher centers, it is necessary to increase the intensity of the lower centers. Their vibrations have to intensify through seeing and suffering the lack, a conscious suffering. …
I suffer from my lack, my incapacity. I am closed, the passage is not free. I suffer this, that is, I stay in front, accepting the friction between the “yes” and the “no.” I see the resistance, the passivity, and I see myself give up, abdicate my wish to be, in order to go toward sleep. I struggle to stay in front, not to prevail, but to observe the constant changes in myself. … The thinking and the sensation intensify through the active force of this attention, which maintains a relation between them. A new feeling appears when the conditions of suffering are accepted, even wished for. I accept my powerlessness and I suffer. In this staying in front of my insufficiency, the energy intensifies and becomes an active force that obliges the passive force to obey.
Inner Octaves, Michel Conge
The Struggle in the World of the Soul
…The aim is to enable us to live an ordinary life consciously.
Our ultimate task is, by a transformation of our being and the appearance of a Presence… to allow higher forces to pass through us at last, and to illumine the darkness of our lower nature.
To shy away from that, or to seek anything else would be, as Mr. Gurdjieff has written, to misjudge what is expected of us and to betray ‘the hope sown from Above’. That requires a total conversion of our thinking, then of our feeling, and finally of our very substance; for if the transformation does not involve our very flesh, nothing will be accomplished.
…we must allow two worlds to unite.
…here .. the notion of sacrificing one’s suffering comes in. …
In order that Faith and Love may appear in us, we must sacrifice all our subjective pain and suffering, which are rooted in ordinary self-love.
The struggle must, little by little, take place in this intermediate world—the world of the soul—between our two natures. It is there that the Great Battle with oneself takes place, and that battle will take years.