Views From the Real World
New York, March 1, 1924 – The education of children
All people are the same, yet each is quick to see a mote in another’s eye. We are all blind to our worst faults. If a man is sincere with himself, he enters into another’s position and knows that he himself is no better. If you wish to be better, try to help another. But as people are now, they hinder each other and run each other down. Moreover, a man cannot help another, cannot lift another up, because he cannot even help himself.
If you wish your children well, you must first wish yourself well. For if you change, your children too will change. For the sake of their future you must, for a time, forget about them and think about yourself.
We must always start with ourselves and take ourselves as an example, for we cannot see another man through the mask he wears. Only if we know ourselves can we see others, for all people are alike inside, and others are the same as we are.
They have the same good intentions to be better, but they cannot be; it is just as hard for them; they are equally unhappy, equally full of regrets afterwards. You must forgive what there is in them now, and remember the future. If you are sorry for yourself, then for the sake of the future you must be sorry in advance for others.
The Reality of Being
15. Hypnotized by my mind
An inattentive mind is filled with thoughts. In a passive state it is constantly creating images and …illusions… In observing from a fixed vantage point, this mind creates a kind of separation, an opposition, a judge that reacts to everything with a preconception based on what has been learned. This inner disposition is one of the greatest obstacles to receiving impressions, any impression—judging oneself, judging another, judging others, judging … no matter what. In truth, our entire life is colored, even directed, by this tendency, which is stronger than we are. Whenever and wherever it arises, this judging shows that our ordinary “I” is involved. There is not a moment in the day when we stop judging, even when we are alone. It keeps us in ferocious slavery, enslaved by what we believe we know and what we believe ourselves to be.
…I have not yet seen the difference between a fixed attention coming from only one part of myself and a free attention attached to nothing, held back by nothing, which involves all the centers at the same time…
Could my mind …perceive without recognizing and naming, that is, without separating to be someone who looks, judges and knows? …
25. The functioning of the mind
…I need to see and to understand the functioning of the mind. The mind is the source and center of my ordinary “I,” the ego. This “I” seeks security. It is afraid and identifies in order to find security. This is a perpetual battle. …Indeed, in this state, without a quiet mind, nothing real can be revealed to me.
Return to Now, Henriette Lannes
Work with Others
Work really develops only in relation to life. Now the essential element in life is other people…
Mr. Gurdjieff brought us a way in life, a possibility of evolution that we naively think to be easier than others. This belief misleads us.
The other, whosoever he may be, living with us, working with us in life or in the teaching, is an essential reminding factor. But the difficulty is large. Our inability to accept others, especially if certain of their personal traits displease us, is our major stumbling block. Not that we are completely blind where others are concerned: like us, they have many highly unpleasant features. There is not one of us, known at close quarters, who would escape criticism. But this criticism arises in us as if it were impartial and unalterable. We set ourselves up as judges, although of course we detest being judged. This attitude of men and women toward their neighbor is the root of all conflicts.
The New Man, Maurice Nicoll
“Simon Peter, therefore having a sword, drew it, and struck the high priest’s servant, and cut off his right ear… Jesus therefore said unto Peter, Put up the sword into the sheath. ” (John xviii, 10, 11. )
…
Peter is the violent man of knowledge, in this case the man who is taught the Truth of the possible inner evolution of Man and receives it only as knowledge, and thinks from its logic. And there is nothing more merciless than the logic of Truth alone. All the persecutions in the Church were from Truth alone, from some disputed detail of knowledge, without mercy. When a man thinks intellectually, he thinks logically; emotional thinking is psychological. A man who thinks logically has no mercy, for he has no understanding. He is the man of dogma. …Yet remember that Christ …said: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And a second like unto it is this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hangeth the whole law…” (Matt, xxii, 37−40. )
…It is typical of Peter to ask Christ: “Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? until seven times?” Jesus answers him: “I say not unto thee, Until seven times; but, Until seventy times seven. ” …Only mercy can find a way out, and that mercy must begin with others: “Forgive us as we forgive others”, as it is said in the Lord’s Prayer.
The Reality of Being
66. Becoming second nature
My will to do, my ego, has again taken over. …I have no control over either my tension or my letting go. And I cannot consider them simultaneously. Either I tense or I relax. Yet there is one complete movement. These two are the movement of life in me. Tension is not opposed to relaxation, and relaxation is not opposed to tension. They follow a rhythm whose purpose is to preserve the living form I seek. What is difficult to understand is the attitude I need in order to let go, the respect that alone will allow an opening that is unconditional. I always want to take or receive what is owed me, instead of letting go in order to feel the Presence of being, a divine Presence. I do not let this Presence act on me.
…In each tension, however small, the whole is engaged. And if the tension has become fixed, access to my being is blocked…
My aim is to become whole, a unity. Only then can I know what is necessary for the whole. …Without tension, the energy is liberated in a downward movement of letting go. The totality is no longer threatened. I discover a law under whose influence I wish to remain…