Mme. Ouspensky at Mendham excerpted from notes 1946-50
by Daphne Ripman Matchelajovic, published in It’s Up to Ourselves, by Dushka Howarth
“…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.’
The Reality Of Being
29. An Instrument Of Contact
I wish to experience the fact that I exist, not merely as a body, an animal, or as a machine, but as a human being. My thoughts and feelings are on the level of an animal. When I do turn my attention toward myself, I find I am never aware, never awake. I do not know that I exist, or how I exist. I just forget about it. All my life passes without my experiencing the most important thing.
By attempting to turn my attention toward myself, I see that it is difficult, and in fact I almost never even try. My attention always goes to something that is not me, about who I am. So the first step is to think “I exist,” the fact of existing. Without this thought, I will never remember my existence. Yet this thought alone is insufficient, it is not an experience. Only my thought is present. In order to remember my existing, I also have to wish. But I have no wish. I do not care. I have no interest in the fact that I exist. If I really see this, it is a shock. I begin to understand that my feeling does not obey me. I have absolutely no power over it.
I take my existing for granted, but I do not know it. I do not know what it means to exist as a human being. Yet unless I realize that I exist, I will never know why, and I will never know how I exist. I have to experience it, to know it – my existing has to be a conscious existence or it has no sense. What does it mean to know, to experience? I have to see that my thinking is not enough, that I will never experience something by thinking about it. I have to bring more into my Presence. But how?
Gurdjieff’s Emissary in New York
Talks and Lectures with A.R. Orage 1924-1931
Do not quarrel with the planetary body received but make use of it. When you are dealt a hand of cards, you do not quarrel because there are no trumps but you learn to play cards. This is what we call a debt. This cannot be conceived intellectually but can be felt. Experience of indebtedness must be felt, through the awakening of consciousness before it can be recognized intellectually. For mind can work only on material supplied by sensation and emotion…
1938 Meetings at Gurdjieff’s Apartment
6 rue des Colonels-Renard, Paris, with Mme. de Salzmann assisting
One needs fire. Without fire, there will never be anything. This fire is suffering, voluntary suffering… One must prepare, must know what will make one suffer and when it is there, make use of it. Only you can prepare, only you know what makes you suffer… Suffer by your defects, in your pride, in your egoism. Remind yourself of the aim. Without prepared suffering there is nothing… That is why with your conscience you must prepare what is necessary.
The Reality of Being
118. A Flagrant Contradiction
We always hope that something will come about all by itself, but transformation takes place only if, little by little, I give myself to it entirely. We have to pay with the effort of self-remembering and the effort of self-observation, giving up the lie of believing in ourselves for a moment of reality. This will bring a new attitude toward ourselves. The most difficult thing is to learn how to pay. We receive exactly as much as we pay. In order to feel the authority of a subtle Presence, we have to pass beyond the wall of our ego, the wall of our mental reactions from which springs the notion of “I.” It is necessary to pay. Without paying, we have nothing.
Essays and Reflections on the Man and His Teaching, ed. Jacob Needleman and George Baker
The First Initiation – Jeanne DeSalzman
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 keeps one world separate from another world.
…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. Trying “sincerely” to see as you offer your counterfeit money.
Gurdjieff’s Early Talks 1914-1931 – Sincerity
Many things are necessary for observing, the first being sincerity with oneself. And this is very difficult. It is much easier to be sincere with a friend. Man is afraid to see something bad, and if by accident, looking deep down, he sees his own bad, he sees his nothingness. We have the habit of driving away thoughts about ourselves because we fear remorse. Sincerity may be the key which will open the door through which one part can see another part. With sincerity man may look and see something. Sincerity with oneself is very difficult, for a thick crust has grown over essence. Each year a man puts on a new dress, a new mask, one after the other. All this should be gradually removed – one should free oneself, uncover oneself. Until man uncovers himself, he cannot see.