A Study of Gurdjieff’s Teaching, Kenneth Walker
Chapter IX – The Three-Storied Factory
Man, Ouspensky began, expended a large amount of energy every day in living, and this energy was derived from …ordinary food …air …and …impressions… (I)mpressions reaching us from the outer world were all parcels of energy… Moreover …it was… impressions from the external world which activated us and set us in motion in the same way that the driving-belt set in motion the lathes in an engineering workshop. If all the impressions from the outer world were to cease… we should plunge straight into a coma and rapidly die. Of the three varieties of food, impressions were by far the most important to us…
Ouspensky then drew on the blackboard a …diagram which he said represented man as a three-storied chemical factory. The work of this factory was to convert coarser matters into finer matters, the coarser matters being the raw material we took in as food, and the finer matters being the various materials we required for the maintenance of our machinery, and for the fuel consumed in running it. Ouspensky said that one of the reasons why we were unable to remember ourselves, and why the Higher Centres in us did not function, was that we possessed insufficient of the finer fuels. Hydrogen 12 was needed by both Emotional and Higher Emotional Centres, and we were invariably short of this high-octave spirit, so that Emotional Centre in us usually had to work with Hydrogen 24. There were two ways of obviating this shortage: first, by ceasing to waste Hydrogen… and second, by producing more of it.
Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson
Chapter 39 The Holy Planet Purgatory
“…the three-brained beings of the planet Earth are not only apparatuses… for transforming cosmic substances required for the Most Great Trogoautoegocrat, but also have the possibility, while absorbing …in addition to the substances indispensable for their own existence, certain substances destined for the coating and perfecting of their own higher being-bodies.
“In this way those three-sourced substances entering their common presence for transformation are, for them just as for us, a threefold being-food.
“In other words, those substances… on the path of their returning evolutionary ascent toward the Most Holy Protocosmos from… the last stopinder of the fundamental sacred Heptaparaparshinokh …enter the three-brained beings for further transformation as their ‘first being-food,’ namely, their ordinary ‘food’ and ‘drink.’
“The ‘second-sourced’ substances, arising from the transformations of their own sun and of all the other planets of their solar system, …enter into them for further evolutionary transformation … as the ‘second being-food,’ …the ‘air’ they breathe, and it is these substances in the air that serve for the coating and maintenance of the existence of their ‘second being-body. ‘
“Finally, the substances of the ‘first source’ …a third kind of being-food, serve for the coating and perfecting of the ‘highest being-body’ itself.
“Although these sacred substances of the higher being-food have never ceased to enter into them, they enter, particularly in contemporary beings, only spontaneously, without any participation of their conscious intention, and only in the amount required for the transformations proceeding through them for the purposes of the common-cosmic trogoautoegocratic harmony, and for the automatic continuation of their species demanded by Nature…
“…note only that these higher cosmic substances are transformed according to exactly the same principles as the substances of the first being-food.
“…the cosmic substances that enter ‘beings-apparatuses’ for the purpose of evolution … are transformed into that definite totality of cosmic substances whose production is the automatic justification of the sense and aim of the existence of all beings in general, and in particular of the contemporary three-brained beings breeding on the planet Earth. And everywhere in the Universe this totality of cosmic substances is called ‘exioëhary.’
“So, my boy, this totality of cosmic substances named ‘exioëhary,’ resulting from the evolution of the first being-food in these beings-apparatuses, corresponds in its vibrations to the last stopinder of the being-Heptaparaparshinokh… And in order to complete its transformation into new higher substances …it indispensably requires just that outside help which can be obtained in …three-brained beings only through those factors… manifested in ‘being-partkdolgduty’… (T)hose factors which our Common Father Creator Endlessness consented to designate as …the sole possible means for the assimilation of the cosmic substances required for the coating and perfecting of the higher being-bodies, today we call… ‘conscious labor’ and ‘intentional suffering. ‘
Transcripts of Gurdjieff’s Meetings 1941-1946
Meeting One
Gurdjieff: …One needs fire. Without fire, there will never be anything. This fire is suffering, voluntary suffering, without which it is impossible to create anything. 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, makes the fire which cooks, cements, crystalizes, does. Suffer by your defects, in your pride, in your egoism. Remind yourself of the aim. Without prepared suffering there is nothing, for by as much as one is conscious, there is no more suffering. That is why with your conscience you must prepare what is necessary. You owe to nature. The food you eat which nourishes your life. You must pay for these cosmic substances. You have a debt, an obligation, to repay by conscious work. Do not eat like an animal but render to nature for what she has given you, nature, your mother. Work—a drop, a drop, a drop—accumulated during days, months, years, centuries, perhaps will give results.
Meeting 29
Gurdjieff: …you are a human being, not a dog. Man knows how to eat. How? Consciously. He knows how to direct, assimilate not like a dog. Only after this, man can cease to be called a factory for merde; until then, everyone is a factory for merde…