This Fundamental Quest
Exchanges with Mme Lannes (1963-64)
We must realize that we have very little wish, very little need, and that we cling to this life of sleep that demands no effort…
We discover the aim of the Work little by little. For as long as you wish only to calm yourself, your experiences will bring you no real change.
The Reality of Being
7. Can we become conscious?
…I must always, again and again, come back to this question: What do I wish? It must become the most important question of my life. Yet this wish for a different quality has no force at all if it comes from my ordinary “I.” It must be related to something completely different from my ordinary “I” and free from the desire for a result. I must not forget why I wish. This must be for me really a question of life or death—I wish to be, to live in a certain way.
Life is Real Only Then, When I Am
Third Talk
…there is a word, namely “wish,” …employed by you …only in order to vary …the degree of the expression of that so to say “slavish impulse” for which there are…a multitude of words, for example, “like,” “want,” “need,” “desire” and so on.
…When “I wish”—I feel with my whole being that I wish, and can wish. This does not mean that I want, that I need, that I like or, lastly, that I desire. No. “I wish.” I never like, never want, I do not desire anything and I do not need anything—all this is slavery; if “I wish” something, I must like it, even if I do not like it. I can wish to like it, because “I can.”…
Views From the Real World
New York, December 9, 1930 – How can we gain attention
If you “wish,” you “can.” Without “wishing,” you never “can.” Wish is the most powerful thing in the world. With conscious wish everything comes.
…I can say about the majority of those who are here now that they do not know what they wish, they do not know why they are here… At every moment each one wishes something, but in him “it” wishes.
February 17, 1924 – Working on oneself is not so difficult as wishing to work
…(O)ur centers … if they are to do anything together… have to submit to a common master. But it is difficult for them to agree because once there is a master, it will no longer be possible for any of them to order the others about, and to do what they like. There is no master in ordinary man. And if there is no master, there is no soul.
New York, February 22, 1924 – The two rivers
As long as we are in this passive current it will carry us wherever it may; as long as we are passive we shall be pushed about and be at the mercy of every accident. We are the slaves of these accidents. At the same time Nature has given us the possibility of escaping from this slavery… crossing over into the other river.
…This possibility depends on desire, strong wish of a very special kind, wishing with the essence, not with the personality. You must understand that it is very difficult to be sincere with yourself, and a man is very much afraid of seeing the truth. Sincerity is a function of conscience.
Teachings of Gurdjieff: A Pupil’s Journal, C.S. Nott
Chapter III – Orage’s Commentary On Beelzebub
‘Gurdjieff speaks of essence “wish” and personality “want”. Since I have a three-centred essence, which is a minute replica of the world, of God, in my essence I cannot but have the same wish as he has. I must discover what this essence wish is…
‘I myself do not originate the wish—it happens to me. Will is self-initiated…
…’Beings… only become individuals or individuums, indivisible, three in one and one in three—three centres having been developed—when active, passive and neutralizing are in their normal order: a repetition of the original state of creation. Every wish of which we are conscious derives from one of our three centres, and for the other two centres it is an apparition, an interruption. When all three centres have the same wish, this is what we call Will. Then a man can say “I wish” with his whole being. It is “I am-ness”…
…’The question of Will is said to be the mystery of mysteries. Real Will, the force that creates, preserves, and destroys the universe, is unintelligible to ordinary thinking. God, the Absolute, created the great universe by an act of conscious will, by overcoming inertia, inert matter. As we, in our small ways, develop real will, so shall we become like God, become Sons of God. How do we begin? Again, I repeat Gurdjieff: “Take some small thing you wish to do which you cannot now do, and compel yourself to do it”.
‘Whim is the beginning of will. Whim is a fly, will an elephant. St Patrick’s effort to change the course of human history, to civilize Ireland, is an example of elephantine will.
‘…Every effort to remember yourself and to observe yourself impartially is an act, a small act towards the state of real will—the first step, in. fact.’
Notes from a Meeting with A.R. Orage
New York City, April 14, 1931
Wish is in relation to an object; or, strictly speaking, an image of an object…
In relation to the object, we are like an iron filing to a magnet. If the iron filing could speak, it would probably say, “I’m crazy about that magnet. I simply must possess it.”…
The filing is negatively charged; but to itself it gives the psychological impression of a great and driving passion.
Will is choice—according to reason and not according to wish. In wish—drawing the filing towards the magnet—there is no choice…
We must stress the necessity of aim; because without aim no exercise of will is possible.
…Can you say, “This is what I wish to be?” …
The one that we would truly wish to be (after the water of our illusions has been squeezed out) is attached to us, by this very wish, by what we call a magnetic tie.
The Reality of Being
12. The sacred manifests as inner consciousness
In man it is the mind that is opposed to the body. The neutralizing force is the wish that unites them, connects them… To represent God, it is necessary to represent these three forces. Where the three forces are reunited, God is. Where our attention is, God is. When two forces are opposed and a third unites them, God is here…