habit
Like Blavatsky Gurdjieff was an anti-Enlightenment, anti-establishment synthesiser of teachings from a variety of occult and traditional sources, and like her he seemed to court the reputation of charlatan guru. There is, however, a profound difference between the teachings in that, while Blavatsky included some practical teaching, Gurdjieff’s teaching is practical in essence.
‘A’ INFLUENCE see influences
Absolute, The
The Absolute is the name given to the incomprehensible All or One that comprises all worlds (see world/s, all worlds). It is the state of things when the All constitutes one Whole,… the primordial state of things, out of which, by division and differentiation arise the diversity of the phenomena observed by us. (Search: 76)
The three forces, which exist everywhere, exist in the Absolute as a whole possessing will, full consciousness, and understanding of themselves and all they do. The unity of three forces is expressed, for example, in the consubstantial and indivisible Trinity, in the Trimurti of Brahma, Vishnu and Siva.
The direct influence of the Absolute does not reach man.
Gurdjieff equates the Absolute, in philosophical terms, with the Hindu term ‘Brahman’ as the ‘ultimate principle lying beyond all worlds’ (Views, 1924: 66). He also equates the Absolute, at the top of the Ray of Creation, with God. The Absolute alone has will and creates from Himself; all subsequent creations are mechanical. The three forces, which are manifest in the world below the Absolute, correspond to the manifestation of the one God, in the three-fold form of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost.
For the ‘three matters’, see air, food/eating, impressions and unity.
ACCUMULATOR In each of the centres, there are two accumulators.
Yawning is a sign that energy is being pumped into the small accumulators. Laughter is a sign that excess energy is being pumped out of centres. The extra energy required for work on oneself (for self-remembering, for example) can be drawn directly from the large accumulator, but only via the emotional centre — the other centres are connected only to small accumulators (Search: 233–5). In relation to the mind, although the accumulator of the intellectual centre (see intellectual/thinking centre, intelligence) cannot be enlarged, it is possible to augment its energy through the involvement of other parts and their accumulators.
man’s first aim must be freedom from slavery, both within and without. He can achieve this aim only through self-knowledge gained through self-observation. A man must aim to perceive himself with all four centres. If a man seeks to change himself before he understands how his machine functions he will fail to achieve anything (Search: 99–100).
Gurdjieff encouraged pupils to take a small aim, for example the breaking of a small habit, and to make it ‘your God’. Once a small aim is accomplished, a larger one can be attempted. To find an aim, sit for an hour relaxing muscles, and allow associations to flow, but do not become identified with them (see identification). At the end of an hour write your aim down; keep the paper with you and read it constantly, so that your aim becomes a part of you. Through undertaking and achieving a voluntary aim, we acquire the ability to do and magnetism (see doing; magnetism/animal magnetism).
This aim penetrated the marrow of his bones; he fell under its spell and became a slave of this aim (see slavery/slaves), instilled in him by the Will of Fate.
to uproot forever an ‘evil “nothing” ‘ in men that is connected with lack of conscience, and to set up the training of the spiritual instructors who are needed to establish particular psychic factors in children (Herald: 75–6; see also psyche/psychic/psychology).
Although some of these elements are absorbed into the organism by everyone, only people who already have corresponding substances in their organisms can retain the finer substances.
The rules given by a teacher to the group also function as alarm clocks. In order to serve their purpose, rules must be ‘difficult, unpleasant and uncomfortable’ (Search: 221–2, 226). See also: difficulties; groups; reminding factor
The ‘fire’ is produced by friction, which comes from a person’s struggle with his desires. If he does not give in to desires that hinder his aim, a fire is created that transforms his inner world into a whole. The resulting alloy may be worked on further, giving it new properties, e.g. making it magnetised or radioactive. This process corresponds to the formation of a third body and its acquisition of new knowledge and powers. However, these are not yet permanent. The process of making them so through special work constitutes the formation of the fourth body. A man with a fourth body is immortal. The fire, which fuses all the powders in the retort, is conscience (Search: 40–3, 156; see also bodies; friction; occult/ occult revival).
Attention
Gurdjieff suggests that a pupil try to keep the organic sensation of the body, without interrupting ordinary occupations, and to keep a little energy to establish the habit. Our aim is to have a constant sensation of oneself, of one’s individuality. This sensation cannot be expressed intellectually, because it is organic. It is something which makes you independent when you are with other people. (Voices: 26)
In general, sexual abstinence can only be useful in the Work if all centres abstain. Sexual fantasy, for example, will not help the Work. Sexual energy should be used only for procreation or for transmutation. The problem lies not in sex itself, but in the abuse of sex for psychopathic abnormal purposes (Search: 254–9; see sex centre).
Sex acts need not be mingled with sentiment. If they are mingled, this makes the impartiality that love demands more difficult. Originally the sex act must have been sacred, performed only for procreation; gradually it became a pleasure (Voices: 47).
Gurdjieff’s sexual life was sometimes ascetic and abstaining, but more frequently he had sexual relations with ‘almost any woman who happened to come within the sphere of his influence’.
For Gurdjieff cosmic love was a divine emanation, a force implicit in the creative word that was identical to the Apostle John’s logos, that which the Alexandrine philosophers at the beginning of the second century AD called spermatologos (‘seed word’), comparable to Gurdjieff’s theomertma-logos or Word-God (see Tales: 756).
When a man has no will or consciousness, the sex centre, which is stronger than the other centres, is inhibited by buffers and its energy is stolen by other centres; their functioning is recognisable by a kind of ‘fervour’. As a result the sex centre has to work with inferior energy and so cannot receive the fine food of impressions that it is capable of.
If the sex centre works with its own energy, it is on the level of the higher emotional centre and indicates a person with a high level of being. Once the sex centre functions with its own energy, the other centres will function with their own energy; this will be helpful towards producing a permanent centre of gravity.
SIN Sins do not exist for people who are not on a ‘way’ (see ways/fourth way). For a person on or approaching a way a sin is anything that prevents him from moving or that deceives him into thinking he is working when he is in fact asleep. Sins put men to sleep; they are everything that is unnecessary (Search: 357).
‘If you already know it is bad and do it, you commit a sin difficult to redress’ (Views: 273, aphorism 8).
SINCERITY In relationship with others ‘sincerity’ is an unwillingness to restrain oneself. Sincerity should not be confused with lack of considering. A man should be cleverly sincere with those who are senior to him in the Work, and cleverly insincere with people who do not value the Work.
Around 1916, culture required automatons, so men were becoming willing slaves who were proud of and fond of their slavery; this is terrible (Search: 309). However, a pupil must become a slave voluntarily. He must do, say and think what he is told to by a teacher, because he realises his freedom is an illusion. Through slavery and obedience he can acquire everything (Search: 365; see sacrifice).
The chief feature of modern man’s being is that he is asleep. He is born asleep, lives asleep and dies asleep (Search: 66). One person cannot escape sleep on his own, and even if a group of people get together to help each other, all may fall asleep and dream that they are awake, so they must find someone who is already awake and hire him to help them.
SOUL Gurdjieff referred to the ‘brains’, or centres, as individual entities or souls (Views, 1923: 134).
The soul is a luxury, unnecessary for ordinary life. To form it, a man must accumulate a surfeit of fine matter in his organism that can be crystallised to form a soul (View, 1924: 191–2, 214–18; also Life: 170; see also bodies; religion/s, new religions; ways/fourth way).
Thus those on the stairway are interdependent and in unstable conditions, due to others, a person may fall down the stairway. Once he has completed the stairway, however, he is on the ‘Way’ and cannot lose what he has gained (Search: 201–2).
Non-mechanical study of oneself can only take place through the stop exercise given externally by a teacher. The uncustomary postures that result reveal to the pupil the circular interaction of body, thought and feeling postures, which otherwise cannot be broken or observed (Views, 1922: 155–8).
Gurdjieff’s definition of the subconscious is different from Freud’s. Gurdjieff defines the subconscious as being of a higher level than everyday waking-consciousness. Faith, hope, love and conscience, all of which ought to exist in man’s waking state, have been driven by his abnormalities into his subconsciousness, and these two consciousnesses, waking and subconscious, have nothing in common (Tales: 559, 579, 564–8).
We must know what makes us suffer and then make use of it, as the fire that ‘cooks, cements, crystallizes, does’, because when a person is conscious there is no more suffering, and we must suffer to repay Nature for cosmic substances, that is, for the food we eat (Voices: 25). Work consists of subjecting oneself voluntarily to temporary suffering in order to be free from eternal suffering. Pleasure that is not earned turns into suffering (Search: 357). Orage defined suffering as evil if we pass it on to others, but that if ‘eaten’ suffering can be transformed and used for the creation of being (Teachings: 94).
Voluntary suffering has value in that eventually ‘everything is paid for’. Suffering ‘pierces the crust’ that forms round conscience and the experience of this is painful (Views, 1924: 84–5, 247–8; Search: 156).
Unconscious suffering, in one centre only, leads to the lunatic asylum (Views, 1924: 101). Intentional suffering must be practised together with conscious labour in order to self-perfect (see conscious labour and intentional/voluntary suffering).
In the 1940s group meetings Gurdjieff urged physical suffering, not eating or subjecting the body to what it dislikes, (e.g. cold water), as a means of promoting the struggle that will create the substance needed for crystallisation of ‘different factors for the real functioning of conscious associations’; and emotional suffering, through recall by pupils of their own bad actions in the past, usually in relation to their parents.
In Tales, the Sun Absolute is the dwelling place of His Endlessness (God)
TALKING Whereas total silence is an evasion of life, unnecessary talking wastes a large amount of energy. Unnecessary talking is difficult to observe, because people usually connect talking with what are seen as ‘good’ traits, such as being helpful or being interested in others. For those in the Work to go beyond the limit of the necessary, whether in talking, eating or sleeping is a sin (Search: 356–7).
Terror Of The Situation, The
He decides to create conditions so that their objective conscience can participate in their waking existence. Orage (Teachings: 195) defines ‘the terror of the situation’ as being man’s diversion from his true purpose: he develops the outer life at the expense of the inner.
considering, not identifying and not expressing unpleasant emotions. Should the factory work with two conscious shocks, it would produce a quantity of fine matter that would change the character of the factory.
UNDERSTANDING Understanding differs from knowledge. Understanding depends on the ‘relationship of knowledge to being’.
Man’s helplessness is emphasised by the use of romantically dramatic language: ‘abyss’, ‘quagmire of pseudo-knowledge’, ‘the dark labyrinths of human stupidity’ and a green flowery meadow that hides a precipice all occur in a talk given in 1918.
Work must be assessed by its quality, not its quantity. In order to be of value, work must include all three centres. Work takes place in daily life.
Pupils should make a programme for work and stick to it. They should not work for more than a third of their waking time, nor use the results of interior work for exterior work. Don’t mix work and ordinary life (Voices: 275, 53, 116). Desire for the Work is not enough. The Work should be a need; the pupil must create a need. However, Gurdjieff also said that without a desire the pupil is wasting time: he must have a wish to change, though this is possible only by hard labour (Voices: 160, 274).