The Third Series, Life Is Real Only Then, When I Am
from Madame De Salzman’s Introduction
According to Gurdjieff, the truth can be approached only if all the parts which make up the human being, the thought, the feeling and the body, are touched with the same force and in the particular way appropriate to each of them—failing which, development will inevitably be one-sided and sooner or later come to a stop.
In the absence of an effective understanding of this principle, all work on oneself is certain to deviate from the aim. The essential conditions will be wrongly understood and one will see a mechanical repetition of forms of effort which never surpass a quite ordinary level.
Gurdjieff knew how to make use of every circumstance of life to have people feel the truth…
…It was a way that did not isolate them from life but passed through life, a way that took into account …all the contrary forces, a way that made them understand the necessity of struggling to rise above the battle while at the same time taking part in it.
Views From the Real World
First Talk in Berlin
…It is necessary to have a different attitude, not the attitude you had till now. You know where your habitual attitudes have led you till now. There is no sense in going on as before, …(W)hat you have had until today was not knowledge. It was only mechanical collecting of information. It is knowledge not in you but outside you. It has no value. …You have not created it, therefore it is of small value. You say, for instance, that you know how to set type for newspapers, and you value this in yourself. But now a machine can do that. Combining is not creating.
To new things one must learn to have new attitudes.
The Reality of Being
32. To be spiritualized
…The creative action of the life force appears only where there is no tension, that is, only in the void. If I wish to develop my being, I must come to this point of no tension, which I feel as a void, as unknown. It is void of my ego … something I do not know—my essence. I perceive emptiness because the fineness of vibrations is beyond the density in myself that I usually know. At this moment I touch on the wish to be, the will to be what I am beyond form and time. I become conscious of the void by the change in my sensation, which becomes finer as tensions are dissolved.
I begin to understand what is meant by a pure sensation, which appears when my thought is free, seeing without any image. Under this vision my body lets go. Relaxation comes by itself, progressing with the clarity of my seeing. This sensation is the first sign of obedience to something greater. It can be conscious only if I am voluntarily passive.
130. The miraculous in action
In coming together to practice the work to be present in practical activities, we are drawn by an irresistible desire for the miraculous but find ourselves working at mundane tasks like construction, cleaning, cooking, pottery. How do we relate these two, the miraculous and life? Through action. Without action, there is no miraculous and no life.
When we think of an action, we never think that actions can be radically different in themselves, in their quality. We see clearly the difference between wood and metal, and we are not mistaken. But we do not see that, in their quality, actions can be as different from each other as different materials. We are blind to the forces that enter into our actions. Of course, we know that our action is meant to reach an aim, and we expect a result from it. We always think of the aim, of the result, but never of the action itself. Nevertheless, the aim does not determine the action. It is the quality of the force entering an action that conditions it, that makes it automatic or creative. The miraculous is the entry into an action of a conscious force that knows why and how the action is performed.
Each act, everything we do—working with wood or stone, making a meal or a work of art, or thinking—can be either automatic or a creation. In my habitual state I always proceed by repetition. When I have to produce something, the first thing I do is collect my memories on the subject. Then I put together all my experience and all my knowledge, and go forward. My head applies itself, my body follows, and at times I am interested. But all this is merely automatic, and something in me knows it. There is no need for the action to be performed in one particular way or another, and I can do it at a tempo that pleases me. I may succeed in doing something well, but this has no power to change me. It contains no power of action, of creation.
The situation is completely different when my action is not a repetition but something new, an action that can only take place in the present moment to respond to a need I recognize right now. Then there is only one possible speed, and no other tempo can replace it. In a creative action, this comes from a life force that is irresistible, recognized as a truth I obey. And it is this force that sees what has to be done and directs my thought and body. It creates an act and an object, which contains a dynamism and intelligence that are irresistible. The word must be said, the sound emitted.
In order to act in this way, I need to be free, without any image or idea, without thought trapped in memory. Freedom is not freedom from something, but freedom to be in the present, in a moment that never existed before. Action is immediate, without the intervention of thought. I never know; I learn. It is always new. In order to learn, I must have freedom to look. The thinking is silent, entirely silent, free. It sees. In this state, we can understand and carry out an action with all the parts of ourselves. We can even act together with others, provided that, in this moment, all have the same seriousness and intensity.
An action depends on the way my energy is engaged at the very moment I act. I have to be conscious of this at the moment of action and feel the movement of the energy going toward its goal. Once the movement has begun, it is too late to intervene. What has been launched no longer belongs to me. Nothing can stop it from giving the results that will follow—whether good or bad, strong or weak, pure or distorted. Everything is thus determined by the disposition of my different centers at the moment of the action. Each act requires a certain freedom of my body, a one-pointedness of my thought, and an interest, a warmth for what is being done. This will bring me a new way of living.
132. Something entirely new
A creation is the appearance of something entirely new. It is not a projection of what already exists, coming from memory, not a repetition of something known. Creation only appears in front of the unknown. It is difficult, however, to act from the unknown, to accept not knowing. It seems that I am deprived of the capacity to “do,” that is, to prove that my ordinary “I” is something important, superior to others.
I seek to distract myself from this feeling of not knowing. I search my memory for something that helps me understand. But when I can no longer escape not knowing, when I face this fact as it is and no longer try to give it a meaning that suits me, then I am no longer separated in my ordinary “I,” and something new is created. This fact is truth, and truth cannot be translated. A relation appears, and this relation is an act of creation. In the face of what is unknown, what is not understood, my mind becomes silent, and in this silence I discover what is true. In the very act of seeing, there is an act of creation. To see without thought is the discovery of reality.
…In ordinary life we can assemble and construct with elements of the known. But in order to create, it is necessary to be liberated by voluntary death, the death of the ego. Creative vision only belongs to one who dares to look into the depths of himself as far as the void, a matrix created by the constant movement of interiorizing and manifesting, in which one is face-to-face with oneself. We are the calm center of the whirlwind of life, and the inner life is the only good. Then everything is done without attachment, as though we have nothing to do, living wherever it is necessary. Things arise by themselves brought by the current of life.
When we have a thinking that is truly free, we can face life in a new way, including challenges like disease and poverty. Instead of approaching issues as separate from the totality of existence, we can see them as particular aspects of the whole. If I understand the totality of existence in a connected world, I will see that in order to transform things outside me, I have to transform myself. As I approach a better quality in myself, I wish to participate in something higher in this one world. Then I can accept as a fact this life in which I find myself, voluntarily assuming the role given to me within it. I understand my part in the struggle within the totality of existence.