The Reality of Being
#55 Real exchange
When I exchange in a group, I need to know to what I am calling the other person, to what participation. …I need to know the nature of the cooperative effort in which I am engaged…
…We are here with the others to see our nothingness, which otherwise is too difficult to perceive, and to open to the possibilities in ourselves and with others…
…At the moment of exchange, I need to be in question myself, open to my inquiry, truly living it, sensitive to all my own reactions and to those of the others sharing my experience…
Teachings of Gurdjieff, A Pupil’s Journal – C.S. Nott
New York and Fontainebleau 1923-5
…about observing oneself, (Gurdjieff) said: ’Many things are necessary for observing. The first is sincerity with oneself. This is very difficult. It is much easier to be sincere with a friend. We find it difficult to look at ourselves, for we are afraid that we may see something bad, and if by accident we do look deep down, we see our own nothingness. We try not to see ourselves because we fear we shall suffer remorse of conscience. There are many dirty dogs in us, and we do not want to see them. Sincerity may be the key to the door through which one part may see another part. Sincerity is difficult because of the thick crust that has grown over essence. Each year a man puts on a new dress, a new mask, one over the other. All this has gradually to be removed. It is like peeling off the skins of an onion. Until these masks are removed we cannot see ourselves.
‘A useful exercise is to try to put oneself in another’s place. … ’If I do this often enough I shall begin to see that if someone is bad- tempered there may be a reason for it which has nothing to do with me personally. We must try to remember that often it is not the person himself but his state that behaves irritably towards us. As I change, so does another.
‘If you can do this and remember yourself and observe yourself you will see many things, not only in the other person, but in yourself, things you never even thought of.’
A Way in Life, Lawrence Morris
But in looking for the truth of our being, we are in a curious predicament. Long ago I heard intelligence defined, …as the ability to see the flower in the seed. In those few words, …was …the whole mystery of potentiality. …We do not know what a fully developed man or woman will be like; we have never caught the fragrance of wholeness. Does the caterpillar understand the butterfly? The caterpillar must first renounce its existence as a caterpillar and accept its nothingness in the cocoon.
Toward Awakening,Jean Vaysse
Awakening and Obstacles
Man is weak. He is as weak as a child and in his own being, in his essence, he is really nothing but a child. In moments of sincerity he knows this… But instead of recognizing this and undertaking the necessary efforts …a man prefers to defend …this picture he has of himself and his “ideal” of “what he ought to be.” Every time this image, which he believes in, is threatened, he feels as if he were personally threatened. He reacts immediately in its defense, in exactly the same way as a child defends a doll. This senseless attachment to an image, which is largely fallacious, and on behalf of which all his reactions arise, is the very foundation of his self-love and one of the greatest obstacles to his seeing what he really is, as well as being an obstacle to the awakening of his higher I (that is, to the growth of his essence).
Self-love and defending this image of himself are basic in man’s usual relations with his fellow man. … As this image is generally “idealized” and somewhat exaggerated, he always considers that he is not …appreciated at his true worth. How people look at him, what they think of him, takes on an enormous importance in his eyes. …If he feels a little bit misunderstood he becomes suspicious, distrustful, even hostile toward others and in this way he develops a negative attitude which only aggravates his situation. …Everything he dislikes appears to him as an affront and seems unjust, illegitimate, or wrong. Everybody is wrong, even is weather is at fault—only he is right.
This is not to say that there is nothing for a man to defend in life. But what he really ought to defend …appears only with the awakening and development of his higher I and has nothing to do with his many I’s or his self-image..
The Reality of Being
#94 A cosmic scale
We need to understand the idea of a cosmic scale, that there is a link connecting humanity with a higher influence. Our lives, the purpose of being alive, can only be understood in relation to forces whose scale and grandeur go beyond ourselves. I am here to obey, to obey an authority that I recognize as greater because I am a particle of it. It calls to be recognized, to be served and to shine through me. There is a need to put myself under this higher influence and a need to relate to it in submitting to its service. I do not realize at the outset that my wish to be is a cosmic wish and that my being needs to situate itself and find its place in a world of forces. I consider it my subjective property, something I can make use of for personal profit. ……Yet at a certain point I must realize that the origin of the need I feel is not in me alone. There is a cosmic need for the new being that I could become. Humanity—a certain portion of humanity—needs it. And I also have a need, with their help, to capture the influence that is just above me.
#53 A special condition for exchange
…We need higher influences that are inaccessible when we work alone with our ordinary means. …
What then is our responsibility? We have an obligation to exchange, and to accept and help each one to play his role in the group so that consciousness, the measure of our actual awareness, determines everything we do. In becoming conscious of ourselves as a group, we experience the truth of our work. …If the group does not become conscious of itself as a group, it cannot know its place and obligations in the Work. It cannot serve, cannot play its role in the Work.
…What we engage, what we give, is more important than what we wish to take. Each time the possibility is renewed, we have the opportunity to engage our attention and to serve. This possibility is something great that we must strive to maintain. …