Views From the Real World
In order to be understood by another man, it is not only necessary for the speaker to know how to speak but for the listener to know how to listen.
…Our thinking machine possesses the capacity to be convinced of anything you like, provided it is repeatedly and persistently influenced in the required direction. A thing that may appear absurd to start with will in the end become rationalized, provided it is repeated sufficiently often and with sufficient conviction. And, just as one type will repeat ready-made words which have stuck in his mind, so a second type will find intricate proofs and paradoxes to explain what he says. But both are equally to be pitied. All these theories offer assertions which, like dogmas, usually cannot be verified… —Essentuki, about 1918 – When speaking on different subjects
You see, now everybody is listening in his own way, but a way corresponding to his inner posture. For example, “Starosta” listens with his mind, and you with your feeling; and if all of you were asked to repeat, everyone would repeat in his own way in accordance with his inner state of the moment…
And all this is because only one center is working—for instance, either mind or feeling. Yet you must learn to listen in a new way. The knowledge you have had up to today is the knowledge of one center—knowledge without understanding. Are there many things you know and at the same time understand? For instance, you know what electricity is, but do you understand it as clearly as you understand that twice two makes four? The latter you understand so clearly that no one can prove to you the contrary; but with electricity it is different. Today it is explained to you in one way—you believe it. Tomorrow you will be given a different explanation—you will also believe that. But understanding is perception not by one but by not less than two centers. There exists a more complete perception, but for the moment it is enough if you make one center control the other. If one center perceives and the other approves the perception, agrees with it or rejects it, this is understanding… It is necessary that everything you listen to here, everything you talk about among yourselves elsewhere, should be said or listened to not with one center but with two. Otherwise there will be no right result either for me or for you. —Berlin, November 24, 1921 – First talk in Berlin
If you wish to hear new things in a new way, you must listen in a new way. This is necessary not only in the work but also in life. You can become a little more free in life, more secure, if you begin to be interested in all new things, and remember them by new methods. This new method can be understood easily. It would no longer be wholly automatic but semi-automatic. This new method consists in the following: when thought is already there, try to feel. When you feel something, try to direct your thoughts on your feeling. Up to now, thought and feeling have been separated.
Begin to watch your mind: feel what you think. Prepare for tomorrow and safeguard yourselves from deceit. Speaking generally, you will never understand what I wish to convey if you merely listen.
…Even if you ask yourselves sincerely, do you understand why two and two make four, you will find that you are not sure even of that. You only heard someone else say so, and you repeat what you have heard. And not only in questions of daily life, but also in higher serious matters, you understand nothing. All that you have is not yours. —New York, February 24, 1924
The Reality of Being
There is in me an essential energy that is the basis of all that exists. I do not feel it because my attention is occupied by everything contained in my memory—thoughts, images, desires, disappointments, physical impressions… When I try to listen, I see that I am stopped by thoughts and feelings of all kinds. I listen poorly; I am not quiet enough to hear, to feel… —15. Hypnotized by my mind
At the outset…(a)ll I can do is begin to distinguish myself from my ordinary “I,” to see that I am not my associations, I am not my feelings, I am not my sensations. But the question then arises: Who am I? I need to listen, I become quiet to mobilize all my attention and come to a more balanced state. Am I this? No, but the direction is good… In order to go toward the source of “I,” it must be gathered and concentrated on one question: “Who am I?”…
…From moment to moment, I recognize that I do not know, and I listen. The very act of listening is a liberation. —75. I do not know
Heart Without Measure:
Gurdjieff Work with Madame de Salzmann, by Ravi Ravindra
Someone had asked a question in the meeting…
Madame de de Salzmann…spoke for about fifteen minutes…
I have rarely been quieter and lighter than I was during that meeting… (F)or a moment I felt as if she as a whole, and not only her voice, was inside me.
(A) few weeks later I described…the experience of feeling her inside me. She said, “That was an example of real listening. In an experience like that we do become each other although we are still separate.” —9
Gurdjieff’s Emissary in New York:
Talks and Lectures with A.R. Orage 1924-1931
Suggestion: …(S)elect one of your manners of behavior, tone of voice, and say, “I will hear every word I speak as if I were listening to another person.” In listening to your own voice, you do not change it, but it changes… —II Monday, October 14, 1929,