Mme. Ouspensky at Mendham
excerpted from notes 1946-50, by Daphne Ripman Matchelajovic, published in It’s Up to Ourselves, by Dushka Howarth
“Mme. Ouspensky said, ‘If our aim is not formed, we are not in the work yet. If a man has aim he makes demands on himself— a man in the work knows what he wants, knows right from wrong and is determined to achieve his aim— hates sleep and desires to remember himself and takes everything relative to that.’
“… You cannot come to consciousness unconsciously. If we see what we have not got we will know what we want— and what effort or payment we must make to get it.’
“We can always gauge how much we want something by the price we are willing to pay for it. Mme. Ouspensky describes us now as ‘People without railway ticket who come up to the gate but who won’t be let through.’
The Reality of Being
136. A look from Above
I can never come to quietude if I do not sacrifice my agitation and my tensions. I cannot have a free attention if I do not sacrifice what keeps it enslaved. Everything I wish has to be paid for. If I wish to have a new state, I must sacrifice the old. We never get more than we give up. What we receive is proportional to what we sacrifice.
Teachings of Gurdjieff: a Pupils Journal, CS Nott
Orage’s Commentary on ‘Beelzebub’
…In the Christian religion, the idea of sacrifice has degenerated into giving up things we enjoy. It reached its extreme with the Puritans, who passed laws abolishing dancing, secular singing, festivals, plays, bearbaiting, and above all, sex—because people enjoyed these. The Puritan, the most intolerant of people, believes that if a thing is unpleasant it must be good for you. In this sense we are all perverted Puritans; we will sacrifice anything but our mechanical suffering. But if we wish to progress in this work we must sacrifice this mechanical suffering— resentment, irritation, despondency, self-pity, sentimentality—all that represents our personality…
In Search of the Miraculous
Chapter 13
“Without sacrifice nothing can be attained. But if there is anything in the world that people do not understand it is the idea of sacrifice. They think they have to sacrifice something that they have… In actual fact they have to sacrifice only what they imagine they have and which in reality they do not have. They must sacrifice their fantasies. But this is difficult for them, very difficult. It is much easier to sacrifice real things.
“Another thing that people must sacrifice is their suffering… A man will renounce any pleasures you like but he will not give up his suffering. Man is made in such a way that he is never so much attached to anything as he is to his suffering. And it is necessary to be free from suffering. No one who is not free from suffering, who has not sacrificed his suffering, can work… Nothing can be attained without suffering, but at the same time one must begin by sacrificing suffering. Now, decipher what this means.”
The First Initiation
Jeanne de Salzmann
This essay was originally published in Gurdjieff: Essays and Reflections on the Man and His Teaching, New York: Continuum, 1996, edited by Jacob Needleman and George Baker, from the French edition compiled by Bruno de Panafieu. Earlier versions of this essay—sometimes under the variant title, The Only Exact Measure—have been incorrectly attributed to G. I. Gurdjieff.
You will see that in life you receive exactly what you give. Your life is the mirror of what you are. It is in your image. You are passive, blind, demanding. You take all, you accept all, without feeling any obligation. Your attitude toward the world and toward life is the attitude of one who has the right to make demands and to take; who has no need to pay or to earn. You believe that all things are your due, simply because it is you! All your blindness is there! None of this strikes your attention. And yet this is what in you keeps one world separate from another world.
…And it is not cheap. You must pay dearly. For bad payers, lazy people, parasites, no hope. You must pay, pay a lot, and pay immediately, pay in advance. Pay with yourself. By sincere, conscientious, disinterested efforts. The more you are prepared to pay without economizing, without cheating, without any falsification, the more you will receive. And from that time on you will become acquainted with your nature. And you will see all the tricks, all the dishonesties that your nature resorts to in order to avoid paying hard cash. Because you have to pay with your ready-made theories, with your rooted convictions, with your prejudices, your conventions, your “I like” and “I don’t like.” Without bargaining, honestly, without pretending. Try “sincerely” to see as your offer your counterfeit money.
Transcripts of Gurdjieff’s Meetings 1941-1946
Meeting Nine
Gurdjieff: …You must accustom yourself to prepare yourself for work. One certain time of day must he consecrated to work; you do nothing else. You sacrifice this. And if you cannot work yet, you do nothing. You think about the work. You read something connected with the work. And you allow all the associations connected with the work to flow. It is not yet work. But you fix a time in which the future will be reserved for work. You prepare the ground.
Meeting Fifteen
Gurdjieff: …You cannot work interiorly all day. You must make a special time and increase it little by little. To this work you give a half hour of the twenty-four hours. During this half hour forget all the rest, put all the rest aside. It’s a little thing. You sacrifice to this time all your occupations, all the work of your exterior functions. Sacrifice everything for your interior work and afterwards you can put it aside for the things of ordinary life. You cannot do this work all day.
…And if you can’t do a half hour, even ten minutes is rich for him who can work ten minutes. You must give and sacrifice to this work a special time. You cannot give all your time. Life is one thing, the work another… And if you work a long time, that proves that you do not work with all your being—you are working only with your mind. But as to that, you can do it for a thousand years without gaining anything; it is worth nothing. Work a short time, but work well. Here it isn’t the quantity but the quality that counts… Five minutes of good work is worth more than twenty-four hours of another kind.