The Moon
G.I. Gurdjieff (unpublished, except in C. Wertenbacker’s The Enneagram of G.I. Gurdjieff)
“…this line from the Absolute to the Moon …exists in man. The representative of the Absolute in man is full consciousness, about which our knowledge is incomplete. We do know, however, that the effort to free oneself from identification creates a corresponding amount of free attention. The presence of free attention in a man is a second-order representative of the Absolute; it is a foretaste of what he might eventually come to know as full consciousness.
The Reality of Being
11. Conscious Effort
When I have a feeling of my Presence, I am connected with higher forces. At the same time, I am connected with lower forces. I am in between. I cannot have a sense of myself without the participation of the lower forces that work in me. A conscious attention means something that is between two worlds.
What Is the Attention?
(from the papers of William Segal)
…attention is an instrument. While an instrument for one’s use, it is clear that the attention is not “mine” in any narrow sense. Having it at one’s disposal allows a person to face the fact that it does not originate with him at all. One is there to serve it, not the converse.
…There is the attention, and there is one’s service to it. Though its source is surrounded by mystery, the attention communicates higher, finer energies, ones beyond the mind’s capacity to represent. When a person is able to find the place of active stillness, and so, to receive these vibratory energies, they pass through him, and into the coarse, denser substances of ordinary life. The life is then enriched, refined, and made also to serve a higher intelligence.
…it is not correct to say that the attention is only a receiving apparatus. It also transmits…God speaks to man, but also man speaks to God. …Just as life needs to be vivified by the infusion of finer vibrations, those very same vibrations require the mixing of coarse material for their maintenance. Without the upwards transmission of energies through the attention, the effort of sustaining the universe would give in to entropy.
…The attention lives in, and through the body. Returning to the body is a gesture of welcoming the attention…Welcomed by a person, the attention is then ready to serve its cosmological function.
Views From the Real World
Essentuki, 1917: Fears—identification
Man is possessed by all that surrounds him because he can never look sufficiently objectively on his relationship to his surroundings. He can never stand aside and look at himself together with whatever attracts or repels him at the moment. And because of this inability he is identified with everything.
In Search of the Miraculous
Chapter 8
…”Identifying is the chief obstacle to self-remembering. A man who identifies with anything is unable to remember himself. In order to remember oneself it is necessary first of all not to identify. …So long as a man identifies or can be identified, he is the slave of everything that can happen to him. Freedom is first of all freedom from identification.
Chapter 11
” ‘A man may be born, but in order to be born he must first die, and in order to die he must first awake.’ . …
“…being ‘born.’…relates to the beginning of a new growth of essence, the beginning of the formation of individuality, the beginning of the appearance of one indivisible I.
“But in order to be able to …at least begin to attain it, a man must die, that is, he must free himself from a thousand petty attachments and identifications which hold him in the position in which he is. He is attached to everything in his life, attached to his imagination, attached to his stupidity, attached even to his sufferings… He must free himself from this attachment. Attachment to things, identification with things, keep alive a thousand useless I’s in a man. These I’s must die in order that the big I may be born. But… They do not want to die. It is at this point that the possibility of awakening comes to the rescue. To awaken means to realize one’s nothingness, that is to realize one’s complete and absolute mechanicalness and one’s complete and absolute helplessness. …It is necessary to realize it in clear, simple, and concrete facts, in one’s own facts. …(W)hen he begins to know himself a man sees that …all …his views, thoughts, convictions, tastes, habits, even faults and vices, …are not his own, but have been …formed through imitation or borrowed from somewhere ready-made. In feeling this a man may feel his nothingness. …
“…(C)ontinual consciousness of his nothingness and of his helplessness will eventually give a man the courage to ‘die,’ …and to renounce actually and forever those aspects of himself which are either unnecessary from the point of view of his inner growth or which hinder it. These aspects are …all the fantastic ideas about his ‘individuality,’ ‘will,’ ‘consciousness,’ ‘capacity to do,’ his powers, initiative, determination, and so on.
“But in order to see a thing always, one must first of all see it even if only for a second.
Attention and Two Natures
Michel Conge
…the fundamental idea is: I am the attention. Where my attention is, there am I. If the attention is weak, I am weak, if it is mechanical, I am mechanical, if it is free, I am free.
Transcripts of Gurdjieff’s Meetings 1941-1946
Meeting Seventeen
(Gurdjieff: ) Do everything without identifying yourself internally and, externally, play a role. This role is to be exactly as you were before. Act around each as you have done until now, without letting him know externally that you are working. No one must notice that you do something. Expect nothing. Do only your task. Do not identify internally with anyone or anything. This is your task. Be exactly as before, it is the role that you must play. …Do not let him see that you are doing something exceptional. Search not to enlighten, to send rays outside, you are not strong enough; you have not the possibility of doing it. One must never expect; leave things to be done as before. Your friend was idiotic? Let him be idiotic, and keep the same relationship. He was intelligent? Let him be intelligent. Show him that nothing has changed. This is called playing a role.
Meeting Twenty-One
G: …To play a role is not an aim, but a means. … Everything comes in its time, only necessary practice. …Now your aim is not to identify. …It is necessary for us to be inwardly impartial.