Gurdjieff’s Emissary in New York:
Talks and Lectures with A.R. Orage 1924-1931
Tuesday, 28 April 1931:
The diagram which Orage considers particularly useful… and which was given to him to be passed on at these meetings, is the time diagram of a circle in which the center represents the present and the circumference a given number of years hence.
…On the circumference we can conceive a certain number of actualities of yourself as you will be, or may be, in (for example) ten years. There is nothing metaphysical about this; it is yourself ten years older…
Any move in the circle is bound to be along some radius; time passes and we cannot stand still.
New York City, Tuesday, May 12, 1931:
Orage recalled the time diagram…
There is one radius to which we are magnetically attached by a sort of compass within ourselves, and even when the steering apparatus is broken the compass still points north.
There is no common north for all of us; but looking at your own compass, ask yourself if you are moving towards what you would wish to become…
Having discovered… (what) should be the normal development of your present potentialities, and having experienced the wish to become this… it is necessary then to specify what… must be actualized in order to pursue your radius with some hope of arriving.
All things start as a triangle, that is, an assembly of three forces. Nothing is initiated without all three; two produce nothing…
…there are three alone that promise success. It is not necessary, nor even possible, that the three should be already developed. We don’t require of a seed that it be a tree; merely that it contain the potentialities of normal development…
Similarly, each of our potentialities exists in us as a seed of the future. The three necessary element’s are:
1) Some degree of understanding of what is meant by will; and some ability to try to exercise it. Will may be defined as “effort against inclination”. But one must be careful… that the effort against inclination is not merely an effort made in the direction of a greater inclination; the kind of effort indicated here is made for its own sake.
As an example of effort against inclination in the direction of a greater inclination, we often overcome momentary temptations to inertia to obtain a subsequent profit–say, a hundred dollar check. The hundred dollars in this case… (is) a magnet overcoming the inertia, and we — an iron filing between the two magnets of inertia and the check — approach… the stronger. In other words, merely overcoming difficulties proves not will, but the attraction of the magnet.
(Q)uestion: Isn’t the magnetic compass we have already spoken of an inclination?
Orage answered: Not an inclination, but a direction. Our organism as a whole is unaware of this compass; its inclinations are determined by its history… The greatest inclination differs, in kind, from the smallest will. In the case of people…we say…have a strong will, the fact is that they have merely fallen under the influence of a strong magnet, such as ambition… We are various types of machines… of varying years, models, etc., and we think we are making a distinction of kind, when in fact it is only one of degree…
Inclination is the sum of our past… a disposition of a group of cells, resulting from our history, and charged to act in a certain way…
(W)ill cannot be for any motive that appeals to any one of the existing centers. It would thus seem an objectless activity, of the nature of whim or fancy or mere cussedness…
The object is to attain will. We might say it is not an object but an aim…
In what has been said above I have tried to point towards will; it is impossible to realize its nature from a definition. It is to be developed by self-observation.
Will is thus the first of the three necessary elements, and is the positive force.
2) The passive element is consciousness. The word passive is misleading… The difference between positive will and passive consciousness is that, consciousness aims only to be aware of what is happening. Will initiates activity against inclination; consciousness is aware of the degree of will acting, and the effects produced by it in our psychology. It is important to remember that it is also an activity, but. the activity of awareness of an activity.
Try always to be aware of what in fact you are doing, and when it occurs to you to act against inclination, be especially aware of how it feels, and what happens.
3) The third force is the neutralizing… This is not to be regarded as a compound of the first two; nor a resultant. It appears only when the other two are present, but at the same time is a force in itself.
This third force is equally necessary as the others; in one sense a resultant of them, in another quite different from them.
We may define it by saying that consciousness of will constitutes individuality.
In the absence of will there is nothing of which to be conscious; in the absence of consciousness, the will is not in existence; in the absence of will and consciousness there is no possibility of individuality…
…But it is only in regard to the first two that we can do anything directly. The first may be developed by self-observation and opposing inclination,… the second by the effort to be on the ‘qui vive’ [alert] when doing so; and let individuality look out for itself…
Tuesday, May 19, 1931:
…Orage… said… the main idea he had got from seven years’ association with the Gurdjieff system… he could express… in a simple diagram.
This diagram consisted merely of an octave, in which, the three lower notes were mechanical; the three upper conscious; and the bridge between them (fa) the state of transition which we call balance of normality.
The lower notes (do, re, mi) are the three mechanical centers; each of us has his center of gravity pitched in one or another of them…
The fourth note, fa, is normality. We can pass from mechanicality to consciousness only through normality…
The three higher notes (sol – consciousness; la – individuality; si – will) are “I” (the state of being “I”).