In Search of the Miraculous – Chapter 1
…Have you noticed how, if a man passes quite close to you on a narrow pavement, you become all tense? The same tension takes place between planets. …here, on the earth, people …fail to realize to what an extent …all their movements, all their actions, are the result of planetary influences…
” …Human society is a highly sensitive mass for the reception of planetary influences. And any accidental small tension in planetary spheres can be reflected for years in an increased animation in one or another sphere of human activity…
The Moon – Gurdjieff, unpublished
(reproduced in C. Wertenbacker’s The Enneagram of G.I. Gurdjieff)
“…Given that man is the microcosm that replicates all that exists in the cosmos, this line from the Absolute to the Moon also exists in man. The representative of the Absolute in man is full consciousness, …The presence of free attention in a man is a second-order representative of the Absolute; it is a foretaste of what he might eventually come to know as full consciousness.
“The Moon in man is sensation. …and it is that part toward which a man who wishes to work has a primary responsibility, for sensation in man is the growing part of his inner cosmos. The Ray of Creation inside man extends from free attention to sensation.”
“…the Moon inside a man requires particles of free attention for the growth of its atmosphere. Sensation is the atmosphere of being. No growth of being will take place without a corresponding, prior growth in sensation.
“Of course, when we apply the term growth to sensation, we must understand that it refers to the growth of …the entire inner structure… …everything on the other side of intention is sensation. A man must be able to radiate particles of free attention from the moment an intention enters his bloodstream and neurological system.
“This work on sensation is the infrastructure of being.”
In Search of the Miraculous – Chapter 9
“A great deal of energy is …spent …which is completely unnecessary…, such as on …unpleasant emotions, on ..the constantly moving flow of thoughts in our mind, which we can neither stop nor control, and …there is the quite unnecessary constant tension of the muscles of our organism…
“In order to regulate and balance the work of the three centers whose functions constitute our life, it is necessary to learn to economize the energy produced by our organism, not to waste this energy on unnecessary functions, and to save it for that activity which will gradually connect the lower centers with the higher.
This Fundamental Quest, Mme. Henriette Lannes
Further Exchanges: With a Young Group (1963-64)
To relax is not a technical activity in which I learn to let go of tensions in my muscles, my nerves. True relaxation is to free ourselves from everything that possesses us in order to be able to turn with attention toward our inner lives. …
…But remember that you cannot go against the other parts of yourself. For the moment, you must accept yourself as you are. This is the most difficult thing. We are ready to rise up against—but this movement is not authentic.
What is asked of us is to maintain our attention in the sense of a deeper relaxation. Protect your attention against whatever wants to take it, but without animosity. The force of the Work is positive. It develops in us in the direction for, never against. The mechanical part in us, which judges, but which we still need for our lives, was not shaped by us. Today we grant it less confidence. This is what matters.
The Reality of Being
#30 Obeying the attraction of the earth
I have access to myself only through sensation. But there are different kinds of sensation. The one we usually know …is a sensation that is static, fixed on a particular part; it can be studied only if we stop moving. …In order for me to receive a deeper sensation, …there must be a letting go… Instead of seeking sensation, I need to open and receive the impression of a finer vibration…
…to have a sensation of a Presence in my body …comes not from tension but from a contact that is revealed to me. My body is centered… There is no tension. …I see that sensation is like an act of obedience to this Presence…
#31 A global sensation
…Thoughts are tensions, emotions also. …I am held by my tensions, as though …satisfying the specific needs of one part without taking account of the whole…
…I must agree to have no tension. I must be able to remain without judging, without expecting anything, without hoping… I will then perhaps come to the perception of a living Presence in me, a global sensation of the life of the whole…
Seeking a balance between tension and relaxation opens me to the struggle with the ordinary “I”. …I see the tendency again to become partial, to return toward tensions that are always the same and that preserve my ordinary “I.” I feel the need for a letting go that liberates me from them.
This is the struggle to be what I am, a struggle between the subjective “I” incarnate in my tensions and the unknown life in me…, a nostalgia for the “divine” that I feel at the root of my being, which shows me what I must serve. My entire life is shaped by this struggle, and I must understand it if I wish this life to be conscious….
In seeking to open to a sensation of myself, I see that I am still filled with tensions. The only sensation I have is of these contractions, like a wall that separates me from myself. My attention does not reach the Presence in me that lives another life. I feel the lack. The sense of this lack is the greatest truth I can approach today, the star that shows me the way…
#66 Becoming second nature
…Either I tense or I relax. …These two are the movement of life in me. Tension is not opposed to relaxation, and relaxation is not opposed to tension. They follow a rhythm whose purpose is to preserve the living form I seek. What is difficult to understand is the attitude I need in order to let go, the respect that alone will allow an opening that is unconditional. I always want to take or receive what is owed me, instead of letting go in order to feel the Presence of being, a divine Presence. I do not let this Presence act on me.
#121 A wholly different vibration
…I see that I vacillate between tensions of all kinds and the relaxation, voluntary and involuntary, that follows them. Yet I never see the tension—intellectual, emotional or physical—in the moment itself as tension. I see only the result: the word, the image, the form it produces, the emotion in reacting for or against. The tension itself, the movement of energy, I do not see, and so I am subject to it. Since tension and relaxation make up what we call our life, giving us the impression of living, we are avidly attached to them. It seems that everything would collapse without them. But these movements hide something more real, something that I do not see because my attention is caught.