Inner Octaves, Michel Conge
What Is the Work? (December 20 , 1962)
What is the Work? It is not one form or another in which we participate. We must conceive of it as a whole, as a universe within which these forms are but one expression among an infinity of expressions. Even though these forms are essential, they are nevertheless secondary; we need to be able to open ourselves to the Whole…
I can always ask myself: ‘What is the Work?’
For years, we think we know, only to discover one day that we know nothing about it!…
One thing seems clear to me: if I don’t understand the Work, it’s because I always look with a limited perspective, always in relation to…this ‘me’ that wants to bring everything down to its own level… I look…with the eyes of the acquisitive ‘me’… But if I manage to give up my personal version, the life of the Work will reveal itself in me exactly to the extent that I have let it permeate me…
I do not understand…because the Work begins much higher up, and must reach fulfillment at a much higher level than we think…
While we are sleeping, something is taking place in the world that should be of tremendous interest to us. What we call the Work…is a cosmic undertaking that involves man but which precedes him. We always forget: ‘The Work is not made for me; I am made for the Work.’ If I could become sure of that, it would free me from needless worry, and bring me back to a realization that may be unpleasant for my pride, but is nonetheless right and fitting.
Being in contact with a traditional teaching does not therefore automatically mean being in the Work; we are immersed in the life of the Work, but we are not in the life of the Work if we are not conscious. It’s utterly futile to rebel against this idea…
Let’s face facts: even if I leave a teaching, the Work will nonetheless continue without me. So I can only hope to find my place in it if I think and feel differently, if I comply with it, if I discover its needs, if I learn to serve. If we were in love, we could understand – like a suitor who knows he has nothing to give, and looks day and night for a way to approach his beloved. But we are not in love. We are very far from that when we think that the Work is something owed us. It is not an entitlement; it’s an opportunity that we are in danger of passing right by.
This Work, which begins so high above, is compared in the Gospels to a gesture: that of the sower who sows men on Earth, and plants seeds in the soil of mankind. To be able to say that we are part of this Work, we would need to prove that we have recognized the seed in ourselves, that we recognize the meaning of the sowing, and that we see its extension beyond our insignificant selves toward what is above and what is below. To be part of this life of the Work, then, would mean to understand, to obey, to serve.
I must learn to practise an inner awareness, so that it can become free of clamouring preoccupations, and can discover that, without my knowledge, work has begun in the depths of my being, but that this work will come to nothing if I remain a stranger to it. Through an always limited number of men, a game of uncertain outcome is being played that puts at stake much more than I imagine…
Through this being that I am, whole lineages of men are at stake… It is as difficult to penetrate the mystery of the origin of what we call ‘the Work’ as it is to fathom the course of its unfolding…
…We see the uncertainties, the difficulties, the obstacles, the struggle, and the perseverance of those, through whom, this mysterious life has worked its way down to us – the birth of a nucleus that is expanding, gradually consolidating, and yet ever-fragile, exposed as it is to the forces of ruin.
And now, as I consider this group…I can’t help looking far beyond… Speaking entirely personally, and not on behalf of the teaching, I seem to see something new: a new seed of traditional civilization penetrating our brutal and disillusioned age – an age that is in the process of destroying the last remaining authentic values; a new seed that would constitute the hope of recovering an art of living and a reason for existing. So, the life of the Work as a whole gives me the impression of an immense circulation in which the call to rise up reverberates from level to level.
…(I)f we feel there is any truth in it, how can we understand what is offered to us and what role awaits us? How can we, one day, come to be in the Work? If I look at myself in the light of this perspective, I see that I am like a body in total cellular anarchy, like a state searching for its political unity. If I recognize that the Work is not made for me but derives from cosmic necessities, I can no longer tolerate my ‘an-archy’. The need for a larger view and the urgency of finding a unity become imperative.
Among the ideas that are offered us, there is one that may now help us approach the notion of union and reintegration. It is the idea of ‘three lines of Work’…
The first line, work on oneself…gradually broadens the vision within my personal universe. This…vision slowly draws closer to the source of our life, and gradually permeates the world of our manifestations, raising the question of connections and therefore of a union.
The second line, work with others and for others, will teach us to recognize what brings us closer to one another and what separates us: our common origin and the diversity of our manifestations.
As for the third line, work for the school, it embraces this perspective – specifically, the cosmic perspective – of all the levels of man that we mentioned…
Within these lines, characterizing them and actualizing them, are the forms of the Work – those that we study and all those we don’t yet know. By working·on the first line, in a group, we prepare ourselves for the second. By working on the second, we study the third. To fully engage in the third line would mean entering the way.
On each line, forms are necessary, but they are not rigid or unchangeable. There is nothing systematic about all this. The forms could be different, and the ability to create forms, to replace them, and to be free from them belongs to a high level of consciousness… And through these forms, if we submit to them intelligently, it becomes possible for us, in turn, to move toward knowledge. But no form can exist independently. Forms have meaning only in relation to an overall plan. They must serve. And this overall plan is what we must learn to approach… This implies the progressive renunciation of our subjective vision, but this renunciation is liberation…
…(T)he three lines of Work, each so different, lead toward the same goal; they complete and complement each other. They are differently phased octaves that intersect and thereby fill gaping intervals.
Everything moves out from the one in order to return to the one.
Is that not the life of the Work as a whole?