Talks with A.L.Staveley (Jane Heap & Gurdjieff)

INTRODUCTION TO PART ONE The material presented here was not written down verbatim nor transcribed from recordings, but recalled afterwards from memory. The original intent of such an exercise was to fuel the wish to be present in the moment, so as to objectively as possible remember what had been said. It is not the intention of Part One to present a record of subjective responses to what was given, as this varies from person to person and would add little to the reader’s understanding. The leader of the group was Annie Lou Staveley (1906-2001), a pupil of both Jane Heap and Gurdjieff himself. The group was first situated in Portland, and later, Aurora, OR. The transmitter of a teaching lends his or her own “flavour” to that teaching. Although a fair percentage of the following material can be found elsewhere, the context and elaboration are often unique. It is my opinion that even Gurdjieff himself in his most pessimistic moments did not foresee the extent to which humanity would degenerate in the years after his death (1949). The mirage of “progress”, the dawning of a “New Age” and all the rest of it mask the fact that the vast majority of the world does as it always has done: finding newer ways to indulge in vanity, self love, hate, greed and stupidity in general. There is a tendency to label a teaching as “failed” if the whole planet is not miraculously transformed within a short period after having been exposed to it. One only has to look at The Christ’s teaching to see how readily humanity incorporates higher knowledge into everyday life. So it would be an error to judge any given method by external results. The “world” that must be changed is not one experienced by the five senses. Two essential aspects of the Work will not be described, the Movements or Sacred Dances and Sittings. The reason that the former will be omitted is that they can only be experienced by actually doing them and the latter must be transmitted directly from teacher to pupil. Both require feedback from one who has already thoroughly participated in them. It is amazingly easy to corrupt a technique, even a simple one, when one does not fully understand it. Witness how a short story or a joke is transformed when passed around a circle of ten or twelve people. Gurdjieff designed his teaching to be carried out in groups, so that there would be others to reflect back how one actually is. Working alone almost guarantees that one will slip into fantasy and imagine all sorts of grand attainments. There is no royal road to understanding, no magic process, as such, hidden from public view. Real inner change occurs by actively incorporating the ideas in everyday life. Merely acquiring more “esoteric” knowledge is useless and can lead to a state which is worse than if one had never heard of the ideas to begin with. To ponder one idea, to

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practice one exercise for at least a week at a time, is a way to “digest” this material. Otherwise it can lead to mental constipation and leave the reader with a false sense of knowing something without really understanding it. A tool is only valuable if it is used. 09/04/73

First Group Meeting

ALS: This is a school of the Fourth Way. Schools of this nature have existed since man could think, though they have always been suspected by the general public. But we won’t go into that at this early date. These meetings will take the form advocated by Mr. Gurdjieff, that of question and answer. Always try to ask a question that really means something to you, not something that may sound important for the sake of sounding important. When I met Mr. Gurdjieff for the first time, and we were given prior notice that each of us would be able to ask him one question, I thought and thought about it, but only one question kept occurring to me and that is what I asked. He began by saying “Ah, you, without knowing it have accidentally asked important question”. The answer to any question is more form than anything else, because by the fact that you can ask, it means that you already have the answer. So try to clarify the question in your minds, just don’t ask out of habit, and you will probably have at least a portion of the answer. None of you would be here unless you felt some disappointment in life. I have heard many stories of how individuals have come to have contact with Schools. One person in New York stood on the block he thought the Gurdjieff Institute might be located. Finally one night he saw a group of people entering a doorway and followed them in. He of course was noticed as a stranger, but was later assigned a class and joined the Work. There was a fellow who had read all the books and wrote to the publishers, they forwarded the letters to the Institute and the Institute forwarded them to me. We all come to this Work wanting something more. Only by working on yourselves can you acquire that something. Everything man gains, everything he comes to know, is always destroyed by war or disaster or forgetfulness. What may seem like “peace” one moment is an illusion because war breaks out the next. The world is a reflection of ourselves, and if we are at odds with ourselves, there will always be wars and violence. Q. Will this Work help my children or can they help me? It says on the cover of Beelzebub that it is in the form of a myth, is that true? ALS: Well, what is truth? Do you know? Yes, of course this Work can help your children, but you must be able to help yourself first. Can you really do anything now? Humanity is like a tidal wave and we are individual drops in that wave. Can one drop of water influence another drop? No. But we can learn from children; we can learn to be child-like not childish. Children don’t lie as much as adults and that is helpful. Also myths and fairy tales are very important; they contain many important things and you should read your children these. Not the modern remade fairy tales, but the old ones.

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Some of you may have been lucky enough to have had them read to you as a child. One of the older groups is now working on myths, comparing them. They have found that the story of creation, of course with minor differences, is the same in all religions. ALS: Do we actually go to the sun when we die? Q: No. As we are, we are food for the moon. What we are trying to do in this Work is to be able to be food for the sun. We are not able to Be as we are. Q:

How does vegetarian diet fit into the Work?

ALS: In Beelzebub Gurdjieff says that it will be most unlikely that all the people on the planet will become vegetarians. Therefore, we must consume at least some meat or experience a lessening of our will power. This is not to say that a vegetarian diet is not good for your health, but it is bad for your will because you are surrounded by nonvegetarians. But we must keep in mind where the chops that we are eating come from. Keep in mind that they were once part of a living being somewhat like us and thank that being for giving its life to provide us with a meal. We waste a great deal in America. The Indians always asked the animal they had killed for forgiveness. They never wasted any part of the animal. We throw away vast amounts of food. One Northwest Indian tribe even went so far as to reconstruct the bones of the salmon they ate and place the remains in the river in the hope that the fish would come back to life. Of course it didn’t, but it was the thought that was important. Q:

Do you mean that we literally waste food or spiritually?

ALS: Don’t you see how much isn’t used? Q:

On the chart of the Ray of Creation is there anything below the bottom triangle?

ALS: Yes, but that does not concern us now. We must get to know what is immediately around us at first, and then we may be able to think of these things which are so far beyond us. Q: I am worried that I may be too old to be in the Work. I read somewhere that Gurdjieff said you had to be young to be successful in the Work. ALS: When we were visiting Gurdjieff in his apartment in Paris, I was a member of Jane Heap’s group; a pupil brought his parents to meet Gurdjieff. Gurdjieff was always very kind and deferential to older persons. Finally the father got up enough courage to ask Gurdjieff whether he and his wife were too old to be in the Work. Gurdjieff was silent for a long time, then he looked up and asked the man: “You able to get out of bed in morning?” “Yes”. “Then not too old for Work!” Young people often do not have enough life behind them and older people often do not have enough time in their everyday life for the Work, so it works both ways. It is good to have young and old in the same group. One group I have is all younger people and they have a difficult time getting

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off the ground because they all had similar experiences and there wasn’t much disagreement. You need friction to get real discussion going. Q:

How can I use everyday disappointments, suffering to increase my awareness?

ALS: A good question. But now you must observe yourself. You don’t really know much about yourself at all, do you? Observe how you react, how you operate. Do you know what kind of machine you are? No. Then you must find out. Try to be aware of yourself, stand back from yourself and regard yourself as “it”. Don’t identify with your body, let the “I” as it is now, see the way you move or feel. Don’t become involved or you will cease observing. This will allow you to acquire information that will be useful to you in the future. Q:

I found the comparison with a machine interesting. The heart a pump……….

ALS: We can be food for higher beings. But as we are we just return to the soil, become food for worms, compost. We descend on the scale instead of rising. Our goal is to go to the sun, not figuratively, but really. One thing you must always remember: Never accept anything I say as true, you must prove it to yourselves. Your task for next week will be to take words that you use frequently, that you think you know the meaning of, words like freedom, truth, justice and really think about them. Write down what they mean to you. Don’t write down what you’ve heard from other people or learned in school, but what might be their inner meaning. We will discuss your thoughts. You have probably come across the statement that this Work isn’t for everybody and asked yourselves “Why is this so, why can’t everybody be helped?” Well, if someone would go downstairs and let in the long line of people waiting at the door……….. 09/11/73 Q:

Once we are in the Work are we still under the Law of Accident?

ALS: Yes and no. One of my favourite analogies is that as we are we are like a canoe being propelled down a swift river. We have no control and may be dashed upon a rock at any minute. We have no idea of what might happen next. Later, after much work, you may acquire a rudder, still later you may have your own sails and be able to criss-cross the river at will or even sail against the current. As we are we have no direction or individual power. We appear to be under the Law of Accident, but this is because of our ignorance; as we are we cannot see the meaning and the why of things. As I said at the first meeting we are the only self-evolving creature on the Earth at this time, or rather we are the only creature to have the potential for self-evolution. There have been many experiments by Nature to create a self-evolving species and until humans came upon the scene, about a million years ago, all previous experiments were

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failures. An example of a failed experiment is the insect world. You may have wondered at one time “why insects?” especially after having been bitten by one. They don’t really seem to fill much of a need in the scheme of things. Well, it is because they were once much larger and when they failed to develop properly Nature reduced them in size. You see, Nature never wastes anything, only man wastes, so rather than destroying them, they were kept. Insects have an advanced intelligence of their own, they are highly organised and successful on a limited basis, but they nevertheless failed to self-evolve. Justice is getting what you have worked for. Gurdjieff said that all three centres must sweat. Nothing in the Work is really given, it must be earned. Someone who just sits back and waits for efforts to be made by themselves will consider it unjust if another strives hard and achieves something, but of course, that is justice. Q: Where does our wish to do something in the Work come from, does it come from all our centres? ALS: A true wish, yes. Because a true wish is a wish to Be. To Be what we really are. We have very few wishes. Most of the urges in us are desires or wants or needs. Desires are created in us without our say in the matter, they come from outside ourselves. Like a shiny new car or pair of shoes in the show room window, they act on us subconsciously, we can’t really help it. We find ourselves being attracted to this and that all the time, this is what keeps society going along on one level, the material desires of many people. A huge amount of material and energy is totally wasted on these dreams, but when it comes to actual needs we spend very little on them: food, shelter and acquiring useful knowledge. True wish transcends all of this and once you have it and find a school, you have a chance to break out of the cycle of desires and artificial attractions that hold us where we are. Every time a desire takes hold of you your energy drains away. Often ask yourself ”Who am I?” but don’t try to get the answer. Only after long work you may get an answer from within yourself. “Go out and live dangerously, put your life in jeopardy- become a jeopard!” Jane Heap. Two thousand million is what the Earth’s population should be, three and a half thousand million is what it is today. There are many people who are actually subhuman because of this. Most people don’t want any more knowledge than they have already. We have this material because it is not being used by others. We are not stealing it from people who really desire it. Eighty percent of mankind is Man Number One and I have a high regard for Man Number One, the man of the moving centre. Man Number Two is emotionally based, such as artists who are usually hysterically inclined, are pathological, sick. Man Number Three thinks, is concerned with his head brain. He should learn to work with his hands and train his moving centre which works 30,000 times faster than his mind. Say you come in after chopping wood, you are worn out and take a glass of brandy or a slice of bread, it affects you immediately, the whole body feels it. If you had to rely on the head brain to digest food, it would take 8 hours. Men Numbers Two and One should learn to

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think, to think abstractly, to use ideas to make forms. But you must remember that Men Numbers One, Two and Three are all on the same level, are all equal in potential. Everything wants to Be, to manifest itself, its idea. You can feel this walking among the redwoods, the urge to Be; the seed growing into the plant, the plant trying to fulfil itself. Each of us is an idea coming into itself, producing self-ness. I have heard old people ask “Is this all there is?” And it is really sad to hear this, especially when it is too late for them to change. That is the question that brought us here and one we must not forget to keep asking. Chinese story: A very rich man built himself a great castle, protected from all his possible enemies; all routes of entry were well guarded. He lived peacefully there many years until one day he had an unexpected visitor. Death penetrated to the very heart of the fortress and carried him away. Q:

Is it useful to try to stop the flow of associations by counting exercises?

ALS: Yes, it is a good exercise to use various methods to stave off useless associations. Did you get the idea from Orage’s book? Q:

No, I haven’t read it.

ALS: Well, Orage gives several ways to do this, like saying ‘Mary Had A Little Lamb’ while at the same time thinking ‘Jack And Jill Went Up The Hill’ or 1-100, 299, 3-98 and so forth until you meet in the middle and start back to the beginning. But like any exercise you shouldn’t overdo them at first, approach them gradually. If you are starting training for the Olympics you don’t begin by running 20 miles the first day. Associations aren’t “bad” of themselves. It is daydreams and fantasies that do much more to keep us asleep. You must start slowly and build up, avoid attempting too much at once or of doing any one thing, but keep observing yourself at all times, if you can remember to do so. That is the hardest part- remembering to observe, remembering to remember. Q:

Should I continue to practice Kundalini Yoga?

ALS: What do you mean by Kundalini Yoga? Q:

Breath of fire, breathing exercises.

ALS: No, you should not. You must not fool around with your breathing. It would be alright to continue the physical exercises, but leave out the breathing parts. Q:

But most of the exercises contain breathing…….

ALS: Well, get yourself another yoga book. You see breathing is controlled by the moving centre, which doesn’t really know much about these matters; you can upset, upset badly, your entire organism. So stay away from these methods, they can only do you

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harm in the end. If you have read the Second Series, you may remember Ekim Bey’s injunction to the young Gurdjieff regarding those who teach and do not know. We do so much to ourselves, experiment with drugs and cooked up techniques, that should only be taught by real experts, that we often do more harm than if we’d just left ourselves alone and lived an everyday life. The moving centre is by far the most intelligent of the centres; it regulates all the organs without the thinking centre butting in. And when it does butt in it usually messes things up. We must get to know our moving centre better before we can start any type of exercise that involves breathing. After that we can perhaps get to know something about the emotional centre, which is the most difficult of the three to understand. Q:

When we study one centre, don’t the other two interfere, get in the way?

ALS: Yes, they do. When we study the centres we must be, as Mr. Gurdjieff says, sly, we have to outwit them. They usually want to go their own ways and we have to discover methods to prevent this. We have hundreds, thousands of little “I’s” all wanting different things at different times. To really study and remember what we have seen requires one “I”, the big “I”, which is now small and weak, to compel us to work. Q:

Could interest in the Work be the result of exposure to the ideas in other lives?

ALS: Yes, it could. There is a possibility that some may have been exposed to these ideas somewhere, at some time. But it really doesn’t do much good to think about it. Q:

Won’t it be easier for those who might have been exposed to the Work before?

ALS: Not really, no. We all begin this work equally. At some future date you may realise something, feel some force at work in you and that might be the result of past effort, but that is a long time away. I don’t think that conjecture of this sort is of much benefit. Next week’s task will be to try to find the difference between a clear thought, an emotion and a sensation. Try to see how each manifest itself. 09/18/73 ALS: Everything is either eating, being eaten or preparing to eat or be eaten. Think about this. We have very few, if any, real emotions. Once in a while we may feel true grief, true sorrow, if someone close to us dies. But most of what we regard as “emotions” are, in fact, self-indulgent: self-pity, inner considering, etc. It is good to doubt things. When you “know” everything, there is no room for change. It is better to say “I don’t know”- then you can learn.

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We “go around” many times, both in circles and cycles. But we can have no knowledge of this as we are. We must prepare ourselves so we do not die like a dog. If you live your life with the thought of your imminent death, your whole life will change. Write “memoria morte”, remember death, on a slip of paper and tack it where only you will see it, in your closet or bathroom medicine chest. This will change the flavour of your life. We are born – we die. Observe your apprehension about death. Death is natural. Trying to deny death is unnatural. When you are sick, let your body heal itself. It knows more than you do. Don’t try to think about how sick you are. Read a detective novel, something to keep your mind busy. In studying the enneagram or any of these ideas, you must feel them. Don’t approach them through your intellect. Feeling is important. Our emotions, or what we have of them, are like wild horses. You can’t control them; you have to let them run their course once they’ve begun. The intellectual centre is our weakest centre, that is why it is so easy to control. The moving and emotional centres are far more difficult to control. Our three basic foods – air, the tangible food we eat at meals and impressions. We can live a month without eating, five minutes without breathing, but we would die in a second without impressions. Impressions separate us from other animals. But as we are we have no idea how to properly use impressions, or even the other two foods we take for granted. Your task is to make money doing something you have never done before. From this point on you need to pay dues which are $2.50 per person per week and we will need a group secretary and treasurer. 09/25/73 ALS: The “soul” is only a germ, a seed in us as we are. Each of us has a drop of “water” in us, humanity is the ocean. But we cannot do anything with this drop unless we develop individuality, as opposed to personality. In this Work we start at the very bottom, not at the top as in most other methods. You must start with small things and not concern yourselves with the big, weighty questions which you cannot have any understanding of at the present. It is important to make a list of your first childhood memories, try to remember what your emotions were, what you thought about. Children, very young children, rarely lie and can even see the world as it is. I remember when I was a small child, crawling on the floor. It was cold and snowy out and a delivery boy came in- the first thing I saw was the white snow on his shiny black

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boots. I was so intrigued by this that I crawled over and began licking them- until my mother rushed over and yanked me away, unexpectedly. It is important that young men work hard, physically and use their energy while they have it. One of the reasons for all the trouble we have in this country with teenagers is that they rarely work hard any more. And if you observe yourself while physically working, you store another kind of energy. We are in a very sad state- we have no real faith, hope or charity. Gurdjieff says that only one true being impulse is left in us and that is so encrusted over by personality that it has great difficulty in being heard over the din of desires, wants and day dreams- that is conscience. Not the “learned” conscience of our parents, schools and churches, but that voice deep down inside us which knows what it is we should do. We must try to uncover this facet of ourselves before we can truly Be. Do not attempt to suppress or control your emotions. Learn to direct them. Make them serve a function rather than letting them fester or fly off the handle. As you are you think that you can control yourselves. This is an illusion. One minute you may think you’re in control, the next a new “I” steps in which may have an entirely different attitude and not wish to be “under control”. Think of your body as a wild animal. Have you seen trained, working farm animals like the cow, pony or sheep dog? They are happy with themselves. Compare them to the pampered city poodles, always yapping, useless. Our bodies wish for a master, a real “I”, to tell them what to do. As we are we are like two thirds of a triangle, a negative side and a positive side, but no base connecting them so there’s nothing to let them flow, work together. What takes the place of real “I” in us now is personality and personality constantly changes, never stays put, so we can’t really use ourselves for any real tasks. When we replace personality with individuality based in essence, then we will be able to do. We spend most of our time being concerned with what other people think of us and yet we do not even know who we are. As we are we do not see how vanity and self-love operate in us. Notice how physical postures are connected to mental and emotional states. Many of the yogic postures were invented to produce definite states of mind. If you frown, wrinkle up your face or slouch while you walk, notice the state of mind that goes with these postures. You can determine a person’s type by just looking at how he or she sits. I was watching the Watergate business on television last night and Howard Hunt’s face was a veritable map of his inner state. I would like to give you some hints on what to observe in this area: Tone of voice. Gestures from pelvis to head. Facial expressions. Carriage. Posture (an expression of how one is thinking/feeling).

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Emotional temperature (“icy detachment”, “hot under the collar”). Psychological weight (heavy, dense or light, airy). Also notice how others manifest. One thing, don’t label. Don’t try to define things or psychologise about them. Just observe and take notes as though you were collecting insects, placing them in bottles up on a shelf. Someday, after a good deal of work, you’ll be able to notice when anger or a strong dislike is coming down the road toward you and you will be able to direct it. Now, try to observe, don’t try to keep it down. Try to make any strong emotion a signal that it is time to observe. Keep in mind that to go on to more advanced work you must know what you are working with: yourselves. You must get to the point where you are no-thing, nothing. Only then does real work begin. Q:

What is the difference between a reaction and a response?

ALS: All that you do now is the result of reactions; everything happens to you, everything is influenced from the outside. There is no real “I”, just a collection of little “I’s” who rarely agree on anything and never stay with you for more than a day at a time. What we are aiming for in this Work is re-sponse-ability, not reactions. To be able to respond and not automatically react. How can your ship ever get anywhere if there are a hundred captains who take turns going where they have a whim to go? At best you would get somewhere purely by accident. Air is the food of emotions. You can double the effect of an incoming impression if you are present when it arrives. This cannot be an afterthought, but must occur simultaneously. We live most of our lives either in the past or future, so this rarely happens by itself unless one is in new or threatening circumstances. So, while actively observing ourselves we start to change, we increase our body’s ability to absorb “higher hydrogens”. Always be aware of the “role” you are playing, and that it is a role. Insanity is usually caused by a person becoming so thoroughly identified with one of his small “I’s” that he can’t break out of the established pattern, or by accidentally glimpsing things as they really are, the world behind the façade. If such a person is unprepared for such a glimpse, he can become totally unbalanced. Many persons in institutions have what is called an idée fixe, a fixed idea of one thing which takes up their entire life. We are sometimes not that far from that state ourselves. Q:

Is conscience like the super-ego?

ALS: What do you mean “by super-ego”? Q:

Oh, the id, the ego, the super-ego….

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ALS: Well, I haven’t kept up on modern psychology, but perhaps it might on some superficial level. In this work we have a definite language, a language you must all get to know if you are to understand each other. Otherwise, there will only be confusion. It does little good to attempt to compare how one idea in the Work is like some other idea in another system. By conscience we mean that which is in you at birth, an inner voice which knows what is right and wrong. This is not learned. Keep observing yourselves, try to for the habit. This is the most important thing you can do. I realise that it is easy to become impatient, but you must remember that this Work takes a very long time and that nothing can be gained overnight. Q: Aren’t all of the modern labour-saving devices progress because they give us more free time…..? ALS: Free time for what? To do what? What are you saving time for? All of these machines only serve to weaken us. There will come a time, if this trend continues, when we will be unable to do even simple physical things. If you have read “Also Sprach Zarathustra”, you will remember that the “last man” had only enough energy left to blink his eyes! He didn’t have anything left to feed himself, move or even have sex. And that is where we are headed. Energies in our everyday life are like water; they flow quite well down hill and become easily exhausted. But by conscious effort we can pump them up hill, increase them. We use very little of our potential strength. Try to learn as many physical skills as you can. Nowadays people know less and less about more and more. You know, I still have my mother’s piano and when I am dusting it, if I miss a spot, I can distinctively hear her voice saying, “You missed that spot, do it over!” Try not to do as others around you do. This is an excellent method by which you can observe yourselves and the actions of other people. Remember Gurdjieff’s response to his grandmother’s death, that little jingle: “Let her with the saints’ repose, Now that she’s turned up her toes….” That’s what he is saying; avoid doing the routine, the expected. As we are, we are creatures of our given situation. Notice how even the weather influences us, as though it rains or snows to spite us. Try to break the pattern of re-action. Do something the way you have never done it before; brushing your teeth with your left hand if you usually use your right hand. Put a pebble in your shoe. Give it a try. 10/02/73 Q:

Are you one who knows?

ALS: Knows what? Q: Oh, in the Search Gurdjieff says that a teacher must be above, on a higher level. Are you?

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ALS: Well (laughter), Gurdjieff always answered questions of this nature by saying that we, in the Work, are all on different rungs of a very long ladder. A large octave of the scale. Jesus Christ was a Man Number 7 and we can have no idea of Him or how we would approach Him. When you ask a question of someone “above,” you and they do not know the full answer, they in turn ask the person above them and so on until it gets to God and the answer returns down the scale. Each of us depends upon the person above and below. I have no absolute knowledge. Q: All we do is sit around and talk here, there doesn’t seem to be any emotion or closeness. I feel hemmed in. ALS: What else can we do now? There are other things we will do after you have learned to observe your selves long enough so that something is crystallised in you. Right now we must plant these ideas and talking about them is the only way we can do that. I seem to be doing most of the talking, don’t I? Remember, you are like dough (and do as in do-re-mi) and these ideas are the yeast. By properly receiving them, perhaps something will be change. Q: I notice that I have a whole collection of gestures that I go through when I’m in a crowd or just with other people so I’ll blend in and not be noticed. ALS: Yes, it is strange that in America, where we have a chance to really be different, everyone is so concerned with being alike in attitudes and approaches. In England, where I spent a good deal of my life, everyone is expected to be alike, as in the schools where the children wear uniforms. But if you look closely, you will see that each girl will tie her hair ribbon differently so she won’t be exactly alike the others. We are subject to the laws of centrifugal and centric force. I don’t know whether you have been exposed to this idea in your school systems, but it merely means that there is a strong pull that tries to blend together individuals in a society while at the same time separating them. Some expect individuality, while others are very uncomfortable with it. Look at Communist China; they abhor the idea of individuality. Q:

How can I consider exteriorly?

ALS: As you are it is almost impossible to consider exteriorly, because every time you start to put yourself in another’s place a different “I” pops up and promptly decides to consider interiorly. “Why isn’t he paying more attention to me? She really doesn’t love me. It isn’t worth the effort”. Etc. We always end up right back in ourselves and ignore how the other person may be feeling. You see, until we know ourselves better than we do now, we can start out with the best intentions in the world and still end up as we always do - wanting the other person to conform to our expectations and becoming angry when they fail to do so. We are always seeing how people should be and not how they actually are.

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Jane Heap told us an anecdote about Gurdjieff and three aristocratic Russian ladies who had heard about Gurdjieff and wishes to meet him. They were allowed to come to dinner one day and even though they’d been told that Gurdjieff was a son of a sheep herder, they were still willing to risk their social position. Well, when they arrived they found Gurdjieff slumped over his chair as if drunk, arms askew, head on chest. As the evening wore on the ladies became more and more taken aback, Gurdjieff unbuttoned the top buttons on his pants and winked at them. The ladies kept balancing, as Jane said, their tiaras atop their heads until they could escape. You see, Gurdjieff never made it easy, if you felt some specific resistance, he would ferret it out and make things even harder for you. But if you were prepared, if you could overcome obstacles, meeting him could be a very moving experience. He often overflowed with benevolence and some would break down and cry. Good is that which makes you more conscious. Bad is that which hinders consciousness, makes you forget. That is the only real good and evil. The rest is what it is, no more, no less. Everything else is just neutral. You will find that you only think you think. True thinking is a really big thing. We lie to ourselves and others all the time, constantly. This is not good mainly because we are unaware of it. If you consciously lie that is another matter. The important thing is not to lie to yourselves, inwardly. Gurdjieff says that it is foolish to tell the truth to everyone at all times; it would only serve to get you into useless trouble. Be conscious of what you say. Don’t fall into the trap of believing your own bluffs. We are always pretending. We are afraid if we say we don’t know that we will be thrown out of the human race. We pretend that everyone else knows and the funny thing is, they don’t either. So don’t feel isolated, even though we are all “alone in a crowd” to some degree. Cleanliness is important. The Arabs always go to the baths before any important event, as do the Jews. If you notice animals, you can see that they are always grooming themselves in their own way. “Only man and friend pig stay dirty,” said Gurdjieff. Each person has a definite chemistry. Sometimes a person will repel us, sometimes attract, this has nothing to do with personality, it is merely chemicals at work. Even one’s own children can have chemistries that might not mix with our own. But blood is deeper than chemistry and the feeling of family runs beneath it all. Do not become discouraged. I know it is difficult to remember to remember, but you have to be scientific about it in the sense of impartially observing yourselves; regard your “I” and the rest of you as living a thousand years apart. Q:

What is type? How many types are there? Are they all here?

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ALS: There are 72 types, but we have a good selection here. Type is that quality connected with chief fault, that something in us that tips the scales whenever you are in a situation that requires a decision. It determines your reaction. If you are lazy, you do the thing that requires least energy, if aggressive; you jump into conflict, etc. About a year during lunch on Sunday Work Day a folding table loaded with dishes collapsed with a crash. I could see most of those present and each reacted according to type, one immediately rushed to pick up the broken dishes, one watched the table fall and smiled, another couldn’t figure out what had happened and so forth. Q:

What is the correlation between astrology and the Gurdjieff system?

ALS: I can’t help you much on astrology; you’ll have to find out about that on your own. But we are influenced in essence by the astrological configuration at the time of conception. But as we live most of our lives in personality this influence plays little part in our individual, everyday existence. Q:

Is the quality of impressions inferior today compared to past generations?

ALS: No. They are the same as they always have been, even with the layer of man made pollution which surrounds us. We receive all the impressions we need, thousands each second, even while asleep. But the human race is quickly degenerating and makes little use of the impressions available to it. Try to keep in mind that at every moment every possible human emotion, every possible human situation, is happening on the surface of the planet. If you can remember this when you encounter personal difficulties, and remember how small you are in relation to the whole of existence, you may, if only for a moment, attain the proper perspective. Any effort we make helps us, even though we may not see it right away. Occasionally, when we least expect it, we will see something in a different light. So remember, results are always proportional to efforts, the larger the effort, the greater the results. Therefore, do not begrudge modern life and its difficulties; it supplies much grist for the mill. We treat ourselves like pampered pets. Have you noticed how house pets stink if not washed frequently? We indulge ourselves far too much. Conversely, we must not abuse our bodies, drink too much, eat in excess, get too little sleep. When we observe, we often fail to see what is right in front of our noses and this may lead to depression, to a sense of not getting anywhere. The people in the oldest group have neglected self-observation and have to go back to square one and begin all over again. You can never neglect this. It is a constant and continuing process, the key to the whole system, not something you do for a while and then “go to higher things”. This may be why we don’t see the wood for the trees. Because Big Answers don’t just pop out and hit us over the head, we sometimes assume that we aren’t “doing” anything. Right now we should be collecting data, not trying to analyse.

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We don’t really know why we are here, do we? Animals “know”, plants do not have to be told. But man has forgotten. Have any of you thought about this? Wondered why you were placed here? Why you are alive? And what this body with its three brains is for? Keep these questions in mind. Quite a few years ago, when I was just beginning the Work, I happened to see a man speaking on the telephone. He was so thoroughly identified with that telephone, he was the telephone. I once visited my eldest son at boarding school and I was swearing a rather stylish hat and when he saw what I was wearing he said, “Mum, please don’t let the other boys see you with that hat on”. We all have our little visions of the way people should be tucked away in our minds and it takes a charge of dynamite to change our views once they are formed. In the New York groups the group leader, at the end of the allotted time, just gets up, collects his notes, and marches out. That’s it. It is startling if you have never attended one of their meetings before. Here we do not operate the way they do in New York or San Francisco; it is a bit more relaxed. I suspect it is a hold over from the rigid Ouspensky way of doing things. “Women are hysterical five days a week, men only three”. “Today people not mere psychopaths, but psychopaths squared”. Gurdjieff. Have you noticed how we tolerate actions on the part of our grandparents that would appal us if our parents did them? Why is that? Each person needs something from the work which is not exactly like any other person’s needs. Now we have to work together on the same things, no matter how dull this may seem. At a later date we can work on an individual basis. When you find yourself angry, upset, whatever, stop, retain the expression on your face and look into the mirror, just for a second. See what you look like to others. We usually begin acting as soon as we get in front of the mirror, or camera, and only see our most appealing expressions. 10/16/73 ALS: We think God really cares whether we believe in Him or not. It would be similar to our caring whether one of the billions of cells in our body believed we existed or not. God is the Being of all beings. The early Christians had the ability for much more intense Work than we do today. Today we are quite deteriorated, but still have a chance and have to try. About 200 years

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ago we began to rapidly decline. Today people avoid doing the simplest things with their minds. I have actually seen a person write down 10 + 10 = 20. The human mind is superior to any personal computer. I recall when England still had the pounds, shillings and pence system; 12 pence to a shilling, 20 shillings to a pound. People easily figured out costs in any combination with their minds. When you have to do something it becomes easy. Now they let children use calculators in school. No effort. You can tell your mind exactly when you want to wake up in the morning and it will. Give it a try. Try to guess the time when you have been away from a clock, or the temperature. You can generally come within two or three minutes, or degrees. Impressions fall on us in wrong centres. Notice sudden feelings that come out of the blue, of sadness or elation. This is the result of associative flow. Each centre uses a different grade of fuel and cannot operate properly on the fuel of another centre. An owl is a two brained being and lives in two worlds, earth and air. We are three brained and can live in the air, on earth, or in water. Americans are a mongrel race. We are often in conflict with our heredity; the average person is lucky to know who their grandfather was or what he did. In most countries people know about their ancestors, they have a sense of continuity and place. Try to find out as much as you can about your family as far back as you can to see if there any patterns. Everyone completely misunderstands everyone else. We each have totally different meanings for the same, shared words. That is why we must learn to use a Work vocabulary, so that we know what is actually being said. Q:

Can people who practice martial arts develop a permanent “I”?

ALS: No, not as such. Judo, karate, and so forth were once part of real schools, now they are separated and mostly used only to train the moving centre, to enable you to knock one’s enemy on the head; they are too concerned with results. Q: I notice that when I’m around machines in a factory I’m very nervous. Do we have an instinctive fear of machines? ALS: We should have! But no, I don’t think so. As a matter of fact, most people love machines. When I was a girl “progress” was a big deal; the idea was that more and more machines would give people more “time”, for what I do not know. Q: I have noticed that a certain sense of urgency, a feeling that there isn’t enough time, that it is running faster and faster. ALS: Yes, things do seem to go in and out of style much more rapidly than they did before, and yet everything remains the same. Q:

What is attention?

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ALS: I could give you several definitions of attention, but all you would do would be to place them in a notebook and think that you understood what attention is and promptly forget about it. You must find out for yourself. But I will tell you this: “a” before a word means “in” or “toward”, so a-ttention means “with tension”, but that is not what we are after, is it? Jane Heap said that Fritz Peters once told her, when he was about nine years old: “I’d rather walk a mile than think a thought”. We all suppose that we are constantly “thinking”, but we don’t, we associate. To really think about something is far more difficult than it seems. Even though Gurdjieff lambastes us in “Beelzebub in America”, he did have hopes for Americans. Mme. De Salzmann spends three months of the year in New York, the longest period that she spends anywhere. I asked her: “Why, if we are so hopeless, do you spend so much time with us?” She couldn’t answer. She even was persuaded to visit the San Francisco group a few years ago. When I first started the Work with Jane Heap in London five of us got together and rented a house and lived in a “commune” as you’d say now-a- days. Though we had some pretty bad disagreements, we stuck together and remained friends. In everyday communes the group usually falls apart unless they have a true common, inner aim. Friendships formed in real groups are often deeper than blood relationships. After having lived in England for 25 years, I returned to America and found many things I did not like at all, but after thinking about it I found that my dislikes were all in me and not on the outside. Q:

Are our parents environment or just heredity?

ALS: Both. Each person is the sum total of all those who have gone before, one’s parents are the immediate representatives of all your ancestors. Any Work you do is retroactive and influences both those who have gone before you and those to come. It is difficult to separate what is the product of heredity and what is the product of personality or environment. Try to think of a mile high glacier and each snowflake there, compressed in layers year after year, is unique, yet alike. Each of us is unique, yet we are all human beings. If we were to disappear, Nature would not miss us at all. Notice how much tension you have all the time, in your neck, the way you sit, when you go to sleep at night you do not even let the bed hold you up. Everyone knows where they really are. Let’s do an experiment; now point to where you are (half the group puts their hands on their hearts, half watch). See, no one pointed to their head, so little goes on there anyway. “Art” today is merely self-portraiture, one artist’s view of himself, usually psychopathic.

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It has gotten to the point where I would be most hesitant to go into a hospital, so many machines are taking over the duties of people that it is frightening. I watched (ex) Vice-president Agnew’s farewell speech on television last night and the commentator’s remarks afterwards. It was simply amazing to hear the difference between what Agnew said and what the commentator heard. They were almost exactly opposite in meaning. After the end of WW II what did people do to celebrate? They got drunk? Isn’t that a strange way to celebrate the end of such vast destruction? Each person asks a question for everyone in the group. Ask what you want to know, others want to know the same thing, but do not ask. Remember, it is in me and you have to drag it out, very little is given. 10/20/73 Conversation after two plays put on by group members: ALS: The plays of Shakespeare contain far too much material to be written by one man. Shakespeare was a member of a group and the plays were presented under his name. Even though the mode of expression in Shakespeare’s work is out-dated, the plays still have a great deal of valuable material in them. It is good to attend real plays, not the hodge-podge of plays you can currently find; ones that don’t merely pander to fads or trivial emotions. When acting in a play you should pretend to be someone else, but actually try to be that person; it helps you see how others feel and think. The ability to laugh at your own fantasies is a good start on the way to destroying them. 10/23/73 “Happiness, as a pursuit, is worthy only of a pig”. Albert Einstein. ALS: It is most unfortunate that our founding fathers included such a basically silly idea as the “pursuit of happiness” in the Declaration of Independence. If you really think about it, “happiness” is such a trivial thing to pursue. We can register impressions from the sun, the stars and the Sun

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10-23-73 Absolute, but not in our present state. As we are, impressions fall on the wrong centers, helterskelter. Our fantasies get in the way of the proper use of impressions. Introspection is useless because we have very little to “look into”. Just observe yourselves, don’t try to analyze - that will come after you have stored a great deal of data. Do not shy away from people who cause you friction. They can be very helpful in allowing you to see what you find distasteful in yourselves, although people who are always depressed, always negative, should be avoided because their negativity can be contagious. It jumps like an electrical spark between people. That was part of Hitler’s power, his ability to share his intense negativity with his audience. Don’t be afraid to speak your mind, or offend someone. If they want to be offended, let them. We are like earthworms, one centered, groping toward what we like and avoiding what we don’t like, always fearful of suffering and making a real effort. Try to have intentional thoughts, they don’t have to be “big” thoughts, just everyday, simple things, but you initiate them without having to have an external situation forcing them on you. When you learn a skill you will notice that it becomes easier and easier, that is merely because it is becoming mechanical. You must observe yourself to avoid this. We shouldn’t try to stop emotional reactions but we shouldn’t mull them over and over in our minds. That unnaturally prolongs them. Learn to become indifferent to them rather than letting them take over your entire being. As you get along in the Work, assuming you stick with it, I think you will find that you will feel a strong sense of closeness with other members in the group. Not a social type of feeling, but something that transcends everyday concerns. I remember a story Jane Heap told us about one of the members who had studied with Gurdjieff in Paris. A proper young man had returned to his home town in England and was out walking with the village vicar. As they were walking the young man happened to notice a girl who was walking with her parents. He had met her in Paris and she too was in a Gurdjieff group. The young man broke away, rushed up to her, they embraced, exchanged greetings and promised to meet in Paris. When the young man returned to the vicar’s side, the vicar asked whether the girl was his fiancée. He said “No, she wasn’t”. The vicar asked if they were related, “No” again. Well, what was her name, he didn’t know. Puzzled, the vicar asked where he had met her, well, in Paris…….. Today this story doesn’t have much impact as mores have changed so much in the past fifty years, but you get the idea. We are half asleep when we are “awake” and half awake when we are asleep. If you exercise all three centers during the day, do physical labor and conscious thought, then you will sleep soundly, without dreaming, at night. Dreaming is a product of left over energy we fail to fully use during the day which must be released, so we fantasize, hover between true rest and waking.

1 It is a mistake to think we should look at things with detachment, that closes off a place within you. We should view things with impartiality, without identifying, without becoming caught up in them. This would be like looking out of a window and becoming lost in the rain, rather than seeing the window, the rain and ourselves looking at them. When we experience a negative emotion or state because of another’s attitude, it is a current passing between us, a contact is made because we have a place in us for that attitude to roost. If you do not have that corresponding place, no contact will be made and you will remain unaffected. Don’t try to work against these feelings in you, try to build up other feelings to replace them. Little can be gained by working against something, working for something is much better. (Readings during this period were from Orage’s Psychological Exercises – Generally a ten minute reading at the start of the meeting. 10-30-73 ALS. Understanding is immediate and non-verbal. Information and knowledge is retrospective and verbal. You can always tell when fantasy has taken the place of actual effort, when the exercise or task you are doing becomes easier instead of harder. The thinking center has to be pushed or it lapses into imagining that it is working. When typing or doing anything with your moving center that requires no thought, don’t let the thinking center sit idly by, do math problems, learn words of another language, learn to do more than one thing at a time. Most of our illnesses come from not properly exercising our centers, especially the moving center. If you are good to your body, it will return the kindness. Young people should use their bodies and prepare them for later life, even perhaps for a time when they don’t have their bodies. Last year when some of us went to the San Francisco group for some intensive work we would get up at 5 am and work until 3am the next morning. The mind itself needs no sleep, only the body, though the body is often adroit at persuading the mind that it needs sleep also. The energy that is needed for mental exercises is scarce as we are now; it is a higher energy that we usually do not use. We are working “against nature” in this respect. Our emotional center can’t count. The mental center can. The moving center can watch. Take 15 minutes from your body, your everyday life, in the morning when you get up. Spend this time wishing, true wishing with all three centers, building up the will power to try to remember yourselves. Spend this time quietly looking out of a window, not daydreaming, but really thinking about why you are in the Work, what it means to you. Get a “hair shirt”, wear shoes that are a little too small or too large. If you have a corn use it as a reminding device. Nothing comes easily in this work, you have to force your lazy selves. Your old habits which have been built up and control you are not only from this life but from all your past lives, they must be taught to take second place to your wish, your wish to Be.

1 It is a great tragedy that the Tibetans who have come to this country after their country was destroyed by the Chinese are almost completely unable to pass on the great knowledge because so few people are even close to their level of understanding. Some of the Gurdjieff people do have contact with them and perhaps not all the Tibetan wisdom will be lost. 11-06-73 (Reading of A Gnostic Hymn from Mead’s Fragments of a Faith Forgotten) ALS. The pearl has a special meaning in esoteric teachings, it is produced by a small, one brained being as a result of irritation. Gems taken from the earth are of a lower level of the octave. After meetings try to write down what is important to you. If you keep trying you will develop a “Work memory”. You must keep trying, again and again, nothing is easy – you get nothing for nothing. Stubbornness is a very useful trait, sometimes. Some of the difficulty is that the Work is basically so simple. Gurdjieff said at one of the dinners: “Now you are like fisherman with net that has large holes, fish can swim right through.” Later, maybe, the holes will get smaller and smaller until you can catch ideas before they get away. Jane Heap said: “Little steps for little feet.” We live partially in two worlds, one, the mundane, the other, a higher world. The Work is an attempt to bring them together, rather than leaving one at the expense of the other. Days can be like the weather, some are just terrible, others blah, some wonderful. We shouldn’t let our emotional climate dictate our lives. You can use negative states to remember; if you don’t, that day is lost forever and is wasted. We spend most of our lives living in the past or the future. Some people even get totally stuck living in the past and never live right NOW. They worry about what they once did or what they’re going to do and let petty little fears push them around. Everything exists and happens NOW. Only our self imposed veil of illusions prevents us from seeing that. We get stuck looking out one window of our house when there are many more available. We have a small supply of days allotted to us, we can make of them what we will, or let them disappear without a trace. Q. Where do our fears come from? Do they come from the conflict between how we think we are and how we actually manifest? ALS. Yes, that could be one source. We spend so much time worrying about what others think of us and, in fact, people really only think of themselves and hardly notice we exist. Nobody really cares about us, we just mechanically think that they do. Remembering early childhood experiences is a useful way to find out where some of your fears come from. Write down these memories and then ask your mother when they occurred and at what age, or if they happened at all. Set yourself a task and follow it through. This is the best way to get out of an attack of depression and listlessness. Also, making a conscious decision and intentionally carrying it out stores up energy rather than letting it drain out of you. You can never do anything tomorrow, only right now.

1 Q. Will you ever give us direct answers to our questions? ALS. Sometimes I will give you a very direct answer! But to stimulate you to think about these ideas so that they are really part of you, are really your own, you have to find out the answers inside of yourselves, otherwise, what good would an “answer” be? It would be like glimpsing into “higher” realities with drugs, or like looking over someone’s shoulder during a test. Yes, you get the answer, but it is not from your own understanding and is therefore lost and can’t be used. It is easy to sit and listen to someone else’s answer to a question, then tuck it in your book of answers and forget about it. That’s what they do in everyday schools and that is why most people don’t really learn anything. You must steal time from your everyday life for the Work. If you don’t you can’t expect anything to change. You have to devote all your energies to what you are doing at any given moment. If you are at your job, then all of your energy must be directed towards that. If you are at home doing something, then all of you should be engaged in that. You see, when you come to a cross roads and decide to go north, go north with your whole being, all of you, don’t go north with 25%, south with 50% and west with the other 25%. Q. I read in the Search that only people who are “normal” sexually can make it in the Work, what exactly is “normal”? ALS. Well, I know the passage and this is one of the few places in the book where Ouspensky inserts his own opinion. Gurdjieff never said that. Even though Ouspensky did lapse in this case, we should be grateful to him for writing this account because Gurdjieff never taught that way again, after he left Russia and the material would have been lost forever. Unfortunately Ouspensky latched onto it as an unchanging gospel and couldn’t see that one must adapt the teaching to the circumstances, to the people being taught. The sex and instinctive centers of the lower story, as we are, push the other brains around, they are all mixed up. The sex center (it is not a brain) supplies energy for the continuation of the race. Later on, when we sort out the proper functions of the three brains, you may be able to make use of the higher energies of the sex center. Now, don’t concern yourselves with this matter. (Referring to how a sore toe or tooth can totally take over our consciousness): Man #4 could still operate, think, even though experiencing severe pain. Man #5 remembers himself often, is much closer to true consciousness. Observing ourselves now is relative consciousness. Observing is the first step on the long path toward really remembering one’s self. Don’t confuse the two. In a year we will begin reading Beelzebub in group. Now, try reading it to each other. If you aren’t married or living with someone, find a good friend who will read it with you. Twenty pages at a time is enough. Gurdjieff would always bury an idea deeper and deeper as soon as people caught onto it too quickly. He said: “Everything is in Beelzebub, even how to boil egg, but that is not what it is about.” Q. Was da Vinci an objective artist? ALS. No. But he tried all his life to find the true meanings of life, as did Blake. But there were no esoteric schools operating near him at that time. A hundred or more years can pass when there are no teachers available. We are fortunate to have relatively quite a few

1 teachers in our lifetimes. Individuals on their own can only get just so far. They are like candles without someone to light them. They are able to ascend do-re-me but need a teacher to jump the gap at fa. To be tense or keyed-up is the wrong approach. Being relaxed, at ease is much better. Notice a cat poured out in the sunlight, totally relaxed, yet a bird can land and the cat is immediately alert, ready to pounce. To be ready for any situation you must be relaxed. In the Orage exercise I gave you last week what did you trace your observations back to? The idea. Everything initially starts as an idea. Try to get beyond the material side of a thing and discern its idea, its why, its function. Krishnamurti is an example of a man who became a Man #5 without having been a Man #4. He didn’t go through the process of struggle involved when a Man #1, #2 or #3 becomes a Man #4 and then a #5. You can hear the strain in his voice when he tries to explain his ideas. This is because he cannot explain how to get to where he is. He can tell you how it is to be there but not the practical steps required to arrive on your own. In this Work we develop slowly, thoroughly and, most importantly, practically, so that all of our knowledge is ours and is balanced. Some forms of yoga release intense energies, usually sexual, which can totally unbalance a man, even drive him insane and this is because he was not prepared correctly, he is not strong enough to use these energies and does not know how to direct them. The Story of the Nativity is a picture of how we are. There was no room in the inn for the Christ child, it was busy, filled with visitors and occupied by everyday concerns. It had no room for anything else. So the Christ child had to be born in the stables, the essential self. A man in an older group related how he uncovered the basis of his fear of riding in automobiles, even though he drives one all the time. You see, he wasn’t allowed to go to the toilet one time as a child when riding with his parents. It seems silly now, but these small things take root in ourselves if the light of awareness is not focussed on them and they can take over one’s entire life. Keep a lookout for your own fears and try to trace them back to their origins. Anger and shouting around children is very bad for them. They tend to think that they are the cause and assume all sorts of guilt feelings, even though the conflict may not involve them at all. Write a fairy tale using a Work idea, based on your own understanding and we may read some in group. As regards to “helping out” with dinners and functions, you can really do nothing. All you do here is for yourself and you must earn the right to participate. All of the chores are inner tasks and any idea of you “helping” must be left behind. You must be alert and know when to seize the opportunity to assist. It is not a matter of following orders, of being told. 11-09-73

1 (Group dinner at Mrs. Staveley’s home) ALS. At Gurdjieff’s meals we were expected to drain a tumbler full of vodka, the women in seven draughts, the men in three. At one dinner I came feeling as though I were about to catch a bad cold and thought all that drinking would make me feel more fuzzy, so I didn’t drink my share that night. I was seated way at the end of the table and surely thought Gurdjieff couldn’t see me very well, at least not well enough to detect my shirking. Of course he noticed. At the end of the meal he came up to me: “You not drink honorably, you not finish vodka!” Mme. de Salzmann sided with me and said it was my business whether I drank or not. That took guts with Gurdjieff standing there. Gurdjieff replied: “Come on, drink!” So I downed the glass. If I had waded in and debated I probably would have collapsed. As it was, the alcohol had no effect. With Gurdjieff present alcohol served a definite purpose, you didn’t get drunk, but more essential; the masks slipped a bit. Brandy is the “spirit” of the grape, if properly used, one can become more “spirited”. Alcohol is a shock to the stomach and moving center. And if used this way, not to stupefy (you can watch TV if that’s what you want) but to give force to your wish, it is useful. Hemp affects the thinking center and eventually reduces what little will we may have. It is much more harmful than alcohol in that respect. People don’t know how to use their leisure time, so they just get drunk or blank their minds off with television. Q. Were the Idiot toasts a reminder of your type after you had discovered it or what? ALS. Oh yes, the toasts. There were the geometric idiots, square, round, zig-zag, hopeless, squirming, even God is an idiot, an unique idiot. I have the list around here somewhere. The science of the idiots was used by Gurdjieff to show those who had broken with life, who were “between two stools”, who were travelling in the direction of consciousness, where they were. One of the first effects of the Work you may notice is that you slowly find yourself not understanding anything. You don’t know where you are, you feel lost and tend to be attracted to any light in a window. When you finally go down all the way, then all that is left is to go up. If we could lower our sights a little, if, through this work we could secure just one thing, one quality, something in us which is really permanent and truly our own and can survive our deaths, then we will have achieved a great deal. This would make the Work “easier” the next time around. If you can shed “you”, your life and habits, then there is a chance to move up the scale, you won't have to repeat the same life over and over again . There has to be, say, a “Joe Smith” somewhere in time, whether you occupy that position or not doesn’t matter. You can go on to another level and leave “Joe” behind, he doesn’t cease to exist. All of Nature is in agony over us, we are holding up the process. Everything alive wants to move up the scale and as long as we’re standing in the doorway not moving, this can’t happen. Evolution can’t skip over us, at least not yet. Once you catch a glimpse of the great plan, the overall scheme of Gurdjieff’s Work, it will alter everything.

1 Being exactly on time, being punctual, may seem like a small thing, but it is important. Gurdjieff would be walking out the door if someone was twenty seconds late for an appointment. There was a woman in the New York group who complained to Lord Pentland that she never could get to the meetings on time. He said: “Well, that is very simple. Just come a half hour early!” You rob others by being late. There was a young English woman who visited Gurdjieff, this was after the war, who was still in the starry eyed stage. It was difficult not to be starry eyed around him. She arrived early one day and found him cooking a large pot of soup in the kitchen. Despite all of his responsibilities he found time to do a good deal of the cooking. She just stood there, agape, staring at him. He turned, smiled at her, took a spoonful of the boiling soup and offered it to her. She opened her mouth and proceeded to swallow the scalding hot liquid and burnt her mouth. You see, you are expected to be practical, to always keep your wits about you, to be alert and not asleep. She learned the lesson the hard way. You had to be constantly on your toes in his presence, he could play many roles, he could be anyone he pleased to be. One moment he could play the role of a young girl with the gestures, the voice so perfect you would believe that he was a young girl. The next moment he could be a doddering old fool, the next a great sage and we were always alert for the sage, because he would slyly slip something in that was important for us to know. If you were day dreaming you might miss it and he might not repeat it. Someone who did not know Gurdjieff very well commented that he kept his students in a constant state of fear. Not at all, we were just afraid of missing something that might prove to be invaluable. Q. Why did Gurdjieff speak so strangely? Well, for one thing, he always did his best to make you work, he never made anything easy and if it seemed easy, or if he seemed to go out of his way to make it simple for you, it was so that he could later turn around and make it twice as difficult. But his words kept coming back to you. If he spoke so that you could easily understand what he said, you wouldn’t mull over what you had heard. He would often tell a person to leave the Work so that the person could gain a perspective and figure out things before going on. Gurdjieff could also be intensely boring. He could drone on and on and suddenly say very clearly, when he noticed those present had ceased listening and were getting nothing out of what he was saying: “You know, here in the West hospitality very strange, guests never know when to leave, they just stay on and on…” Mme. would jump up and say: “Yes, time to leave!” This Work is for those who really want it, no, no, that’s wrong, that’s being sentimental. I mean to say, this Work is for those who can use it. It is sometimes called “the technique of techniques”. The more individual skills you have, the better. How can you expect to put into action what you learn on a higher level if you have trouble baking a potato on this level? Christianity, during its first three hundred years, taught the technique. Then it went underground and taught only those who could make use of it. Someday this will happen to the Gurdjieff Work. In the beginning the ideas and the schools are open to all, if they look hard enough. And I am not talking about the “Ouspensky-Gurdjieff” book-mark people, but real schools. But to preserve the true nature of the Work it will have to go underground. Even now little more than twenty years after Gurdjieff’s death people are wiseacring about the Work. I hear the Gurdjieff-de Hartmann music in the most unlikely places. Bennett, the Judas of the Work, has six month “instant” courses and charges $2000. This ruins many people’s chances of ever succeeding. A few months ago a young man visited me who had

1 been in Bennett’s school and just by studying his posture you could see that he was hopelessly mixed up, he had gotten too much too soon and had not developed in a balanced way. This is one reason why you should not read a book which is coming out this month, “Views From the Real World”. It contains a great deal of very valuable material, but it is really intended to be read aloud in groups, not by individuals. You can purchase it if you just have to have it, but don’t read it. Well, maybe once a year as a treat. But if you do, remember that most of the material was intended for advanced pupils, people who had already attained something, who had earned the answers. Once again this is an example of getting something for nothing. This applies to the Sacred Music, when you pay $15 for a recording (records at this time cost $5) it reminds you that it is special, that you shouldn’t treat it like all your other records and just play it as “easy listening” music. Only Beelzebub was intended to be read, at first, by yourself alone. Meetings and Life Is Real Only Then When “I AM” are meant to be read aloud in a group. But because people began handing them around in typescript copies, sometimes incomplete, it was decided to publish them, so they wouldn’t be distorted. After dinners Gurdjieff would appear with his little harmonium hung around his neck and play a selection of music. Sometimes its would leave us in tears, other times profound thought. This was true, objective art, it affected everyone alike. It is unfortunate that more wasn’t preserved. At first Gurdjieff forbade anyone to record these sessions. But, as always, several American pupils disobeyed him and hid a tape recorder under his couch. Finally he approved and even appointed a “keeper of the tapes”. Also an American student made a very short film of Gurdjieff, maybe you will get to see it someday, it was made during a departure for a picnic. You can see pupils rushing around, hither and thither and then Gurdjieff walks into the frame, completely there, full of Being and slowly lights a cigarette, looks into the camera and that’s it. There were people around Gurdjieff who were so attuned to what he wished to convey that all he had to do was tap out a meter on a table top and they could produce a whole Movement, including the music. De Hartmann and Mme de Salzmann could do that and for many, many hours on end. Then Gurdjieff would come in the next day and discard all that had been put together and start on another idea. There are many Movements, more than the 39 recorded on records. To really have a true understanding of the Work you have to take part in the Movements, all three centers are involved. If I told you what a clear idea was, or a real emotion, what would you do? You’d stop looking. Information is useless unless it is gained by inner work. Fear, natural fear, comes only from the instinctive center and should not involve, as it often does, the emotional center. If it does, then something is wrong. We are not out to “control” the centers, but to allow them to work as they should. There are times I would like to take a stick and whack someone over the head with it, but I don’t. We have such a limited amount of available “higher fuel” for real thinking that we exhaust it very quickly. But if we keep practising, over and over, these exercises, we will develop a greater capacity. The ability develops geometrically, not arithmetically. Try to think in two dimensions, we tend to regard things linearly, in straight lines, rather than vertically and horizontally at the same time. Everything seems to us to come into

1 existence, stay awhile and then crumble back to dust. But the idea is always there, it exists forever, the forms may change, but the concept behind them remains. Gurdjieff’s relatives have been no help at all regarding the Work. They are always bringing law suits and trying to grab all the money they can from his work. Yes, several of his children are in the Work, but you must remember that children inherit their parent’s bodies, not their minds or ideas. If that were the case humanity would have evolved aeons ago. Just before he died Gurdjieff said: “Next twenty years most important period of my life.” You see, we all thought that the Work had come to an end with Gurdjieff’s death, that the Work was Gurdjieff. But something quite unexpected happened, the seeds he planted took root and started growing. There are real Gurdjieff groups all around the world. The pseudo groups serve a purpose though, they help weed out those who aren’t really suited for the Work, who are satisfied with the form. Someday, just like Christianity, Gurdjieff’s teaching will be made into a religion and the real teaching will go underground. We have to repay all that we get from the Work. Some, who have it, can pay in money (notice how money, the “blood” of society seems to flow to all the wrong places?), some pay by passing on what they have learned, but we all must pay by working on ourselves. And if you think I have groups solely for your benefit you’d be badly mistaken. We all are Gurdjieff’s children and grandchildren, children of his mind. Q. How long does it take to develop? ALS. Jane Heap, I think, developed as quickly as anyone in the Work. It took her 15-20 years. So don’t start looking ahead just yet for immediate results. Keep your attention on the here and now and don’t start counting your chickens. Have any of you noticed the queer feeling produced by a full moon, and how your energy levels are affected? Gurdjieff calls the moon a huge electro-magnet. How do you sense it influences you? I usually keep my windows open, but when there’s a full moon I draw the curtains, somehow the moon light has a negative feel to it. Currently there are very negative vibrations in the atmosphere all around the Earth. But you can use these vibrations intentionally and not allow them to take hold of you. We are 90% water and the moon and planets push us around as they do the oceans. The Sun created us, the ancients knew this and did not worship the Sun because of some simple-minded reason such as it was big and bright, but because it literally is true. Sunlight, water and air. That is where our food comes from. Notice how people eat, they gobble it down without any thought. Where did it come from, who grew it, what had to die so they can eat? Try to be aware of these things when you eat, try to see the connections. Then food will have chance of becoming “higher food” and of being transmuted. Q. What can we do to help stop war? ALS. We are all “doing” our small share to stop war and violence by our efforts in the Work. If we can change ourselves then there is a chance. People are always wanting to change others without themselves changing. Always wanting to “convert” others and make them change. In times of great tension the Work seems to surface to try to prevent great knowledge from total destruction. But the poor Tibetans, I feel especially sad for them, having to live amongst us barbarians, no one can understand their immense learning. They must feel as though they are pregnant and unable to give birth.

1 The volume of a room is very important as to how it affects the moods and psyche of an individual. Up until about thirty years ago people still knew how to construct at least liveable homes, now they are throwing up these match boxes, sheds. You feel now as though you were in a coffin. We will gladly limit our lives just to “save” money on the important things, but throw it away on the trivial. The instinctive center “sees” things as pictures, as do animals (points to cat); he sees his world that way. Our thinking center works, for the most part, verbally. Math is an excellent way to train it and learning to cook well brings all three centers into play. A good exercise you might try is what is called the Cinema Exercise. When you just get into bed at night and are about to fall asleep, don’t. Start counting 1-2-3-3-2-1-2-3-4-4-3-2 etc. and try to review your entire day, beginning when you first get up in the morning right on through your day to right now. Try to see yourself as though you were sitting in a theatre watching yourself up on the screen. Don’t think about what you see or make judgements, but just observe your day. Then, when you are finally about to drift off to sleep, get out of bed and say: “Now I am going to sleep”. Intentionally do this, rather than letting your body drag you off. The main hazard of this exercise is that you may fall asleep before you get to the end of your day and sleep very soundly. I suppose it could serve as an excellent sleeping pill if you don’t watch out. Even when a large group of people would be packed into Gurdjieff’s apartment to hear Beelzebub read aloud, some persons could fall asleep sitting up and snore away and the temptation to stick a needle into them was very great. Gurdjieff gave off tremendous amounts of energy which could allow you to do things you normally would be unable to do. A friend of mine who was living in London during the war happened to be making pigeon pies one day. Food, especially meat, was very scarce at that time. And it seemed that she was a little short on pigeons that day, so when one flew down and started to walk across the lawn she said to me: “Oh, if only Mr. Gurdjieff were here, I could figure out how to catch that bird.” Conversely, if you depended on Gurdjieff to do your work for you, he’d let you fall flat on your face. 11-13-73 (Reading from Nicoll’s Psychological Commentaries on fusing the ideas of the Work into your everyday life) ALS. The Fourth Way is in life, so pay attention to what is going on around you, but don’t get hypnotised by newspapers and TV. But now they are a part of our lives and we shouldn’t ignore them or pretend they don’t exist. The mass of humanity doesn’t change, it is the same today as it was in the time of Christ, history just keeps repeating itself automatically. Now I’m not comparing Mr. Nixon with Christ (laughter) but take a good look at what is going on. The last news conference was more like a lynch mob than anything else. Knowledge is a passing presence. Understanding is permanent. Mr. Gurdjieff was once asked what, exactly, he was trying to teach, he answered: “When it rains, street gets wet.”

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You can only understand the laws of the Universe through the emotional center. Once Mr. de Hartmann visited our group and told of the time he was travelling through the Caucasian mountains with Gurdjieff. They had stopped at a small town and Gurdjieff decided to conduct a Movements class on the spur of the moment. All the town had was a run down hall with an old, badly out of tune piano. “ I throw up my hand say “Georgeivanitch, I cannot play such a piano!” He said: “Donkey can play Steinway, but only real musician can play this piano.”” When you feel yourself slipping into a bad mood, say to yourself: “I have a right NOT to be negative.” When, after long work, you have a real moment of self-remembering, each cell in your body will be fed. And, after awhile, your body will remind you to remember yourself. Nothing is important, yet everything is important. Long periods of forgetfulness can actually help you realize the value of self remembering and observation. Gurdjieff said he would trust instincts over all else. Use Orage’s exercise of taking a small whim and carrying it to its end. This is a small step in developing will. YOU CAN THINK YOU CAN DO YOU CAN BE 12-04-73 ALS. In this Work we do not learn skills merely to be good at something, but to develop our true “I”. Various skills are a means to do this, not an end. Just as a real artist should develop his art and not be content with an excellent technique. Perhaps the Earth, like a dog infested with fleas, will become ill and die, or, perhaps, it will shake off all this excess population. Who knows whether the fit or the unfit will survive? Modern medicine has done great harm to our species by keeping alive the defectives, trying to avoid Nature’s predators. In all other species Nature takes “care” of the weak and the lame. Now, of course, I don’t want those who are unfortunate to be lined up against a wall and shot, but we shouldn’t devote so much time and energy to keeping them alive, like vegetables, merely to say they are “alive”. It is more a fear of death than a love of life that fuels this sentimental attachment to those who are not really living. Time is three dimensional, not just a straight line between then and now. We have 84,000 separate, yet concurrent, lives. The Irish have a certain “something”, they were once part of Atlantis and, perhaps, have some dim memory tucked away back in their minds of this heritage. 12-11-73 ALS. Conscience is feeling all at once.

1 Consciousness is seeing all at once (with three centers). Your eyes are just lenses, in actual fact you see through the top of your head. Go out and buy a good anatomy book, learn about your bodies, where things are and what they do. We are like someone who owns a mansion but who has never left his bedroom. You hear right behind your eyes, in the bone there. Exercise: Like what “it” does not like. Higher centers: Moving – Individuality. Emotional – Will. Thinking – Consciousness. Once you really start to observe the various “I’s” that reside inside of you, you’ll never be bored. Matter of fact, you will cease having to go to the theatre to be entertained. Watching yourself, or watching other people, can occupy you for hours. All those people, outside of yourself, are you also. We are all part of the human brotherhood. If you have, or like, cats you can definitely see that they have distinct emotions, they can even show contempt. Cats have perfected their being-Kesdjan-bodies, they are as high on the scale of their being as they can go. The ancient Egyptians knew this. People assume they worshipped cats – not so. They only recognized the fact of their perfection and represented it as an example. Dogs on the other hand have a way to go, perhaps that is why Gurdjieff used the expression “to die like a dirty dog”. You really shouldn’t make consciousness into such a complex affair. I don’t know whether I told you one of my favourite analogies or not, so I’ll repeat it now. The beginning of consciousness is like walking through a pasture at night. In the pasture are cow pies, now, if you are not paying attention to what you are doing, you will step in a cow patty. If you are trying to see and are trying to make use of all the available light, no matter how dim it may be, you won’t step in it – simple as that. It is sometimes better to make a decision, any decision in a given situation than to sit around vacillating over it. Gurdjieff said: “As you are all your decisions are wrong, so what does it matter what you decide?” There are no “right” or “wrong” decisions for you really to make, yet. There are correct instinctive decisions, like not stepping in front of an oncoming car, that is obviously “right”, but other than that, they are arbitrary. The same applies to “answers”. Every one is so concerned with coming up with the “right” answer, there isn’t any right answer, only an answer you happen to give. Remember the first dictum of Objective Morality: Honour you mother and your father. You should honour them whether you like or dislike them. Now-a-days parents get all excited about whether their children like them or not, what does it matter? My mother used to tell me: “You’ll thank me for this someday!” And I thought: “Oh, no I won’t.” Now I thank her. When she made me work or do something I didn’t want to do, she helped me. Our bodies want a master. Someone who knows what to do. We are always starting something and then find excuses to stop. Our emotional center and our moving center can always find some trick that will side track our thinking center. We are experts at finding the path of least resistance. Yet that path usually nets the least results and if we happen to obtain results, it is an accident, without

1 consciousness. A great many contemporary parents are afraid of their children. Afraid their children will dislike them if they make them do anything they don’t want to do. We will all pay for this later when we have a nation of criminals and malcontents. Q. Time seems to be actually moving faster and faster, is it that I’m just getting older or is it speeding up? ALS. Both. Nature is winding up the clocks within us. On our level Nature needs certain vibrations to be at a higher rate, so things happen more quickly now. Beelzebub, in the chapter on time, says that time is the Unique Subjective phenomenon. We are experiencing life at a faster pace. What Nature can’t get at one pace, she gets at another. All of creation is in travail over the state of man, we are swimming around in circles while the rest of the Earth’s species wait for us. When I first met my husband to be be I knew at once that he was the man I was going to marry. Later on I imagined that it was because I was in love with him. Q. Do you know your past lives? ALS. When I came from London, after living there for 25 years, to be with my parents in their last illness, I decided I might as well stay in America because I was an American. After my parents died I moved down to Portland to find a job and then, a house. When I was looking for a house I happened to pass one and knew that was the one, and sure enough, it was for sale. The movers asked me: “Hey, lady, you live here before?” because I knew exactly where everything fit. Developing a real “I” is like silver plating a spoon. One crystal at a time and it takes thousands and thousands of crystals to finally complete the process. Anything we consciously learn in this life is retained. Anything mechanically learned is lost forever. Artists can crystallize something in themselves through suffering and great effort, but this is usually in one center, such as Mozart knowing how to compose at the age of three. Competition serves a real purpose in cultures which have not totally degenerated. The female must choose the strongest, fastest, most able male. But now this has turned into a cartoon in our society, as an end in itself. We are, as a person in one of the older groups pointed out, very much like the “slugs” in Beelzebub. We crawl along until we meet an obstacle, turn and go the other way. Our antennae search out anything that seems pleasant. But we should be directed toward a real aim. Standing up all day without sitting down or getting up early when we don’t have to are simple ways to start getting a taste of will. Try to think ahead during your fifteen minute morning quiet time, think about the Work and what it means to you and what the Christmas story means. Mary is the same in all real religions, I think it is Mara in Buddhism, Maya was the mother of Mohammed, it means “sea”, the great solution of dissolved materials which can become us. All the mothers of the great prophets were “virgins”, blank slates. Christ’s mother had to go to the stables to give birth, where the animals feed, think about what that means. Present were only two

1 animals in the original, an ox and an ass – two animals that work without reward, without sex, without complaint. In the early Christian art, when the artists still had some ideas about what the story meant, until around 1,200 AD, they included only these animals, now you see an entire zoo. What do the three wise men represent? They represent the higher centers coming to be born to a new “I”. It is no accident that all religions have holidays at the Winter Solstice, the darkest time of the year, when the new year is born, it is also when things are the most negative, depressing, a time to make a conscious effort. You know a Man #1 is an excellent mimic of Man #3. Man #3 really uses very little of his real thinking center, he mostly operates from his formatory apparatus. So it is not difficult for Man #1 to imitate the unconscious manifestations of Man #3. A good exercise to try is to see how a Man #1, #2 and #3 would react to a given situation. This is a good method to develop observation in all three centers. 12-18-73 ALS. The basic chief features: Self love, vanity, greed, lying, fear and sex. Self love is when you think of yourself as the center of everything. It if is raining, it is raining to spite you. Vain means empty, it is a state of pretending to have what you do not, in fact, possess. Lying, likes to puff up events, to make dramas, pretending to be “men” and “women” when we are not. You should begin to practice compassion on animals. Caring for an animal, actually taking care of one, is a good exercise. As we are we are incapable of real compassion, it’s all mixed up with self love or self pity. Christ and Buddha had true compassion for the sorry state of humanity. In England, which has a good deal of bad weather, I remember having to go back and forth to work on the bus. I’d be waiting for it on a windy, rainy corner. Sometimes it was full and it would splash by without stopping and I’d feel awful. Sometimes I’d be on and we’d pass some poor slob and I’d feel smug, aw, too bad. You must be able to see both points of view. There is now a current beginning, Gurdjieff saw it coming and helped it along. You have a chance to make something, your parents did not. Gurdjieff travelled very far gathering up the wisdom of the ages and including a definite technique for achieving inner goals. Other schools exist which have great teaching, but no way to personally realize the teaching. We may have sat in this room many times before. You might think that coming to this Work, in retrospect, was easy, as if it just happened, but you will have to pay for it later. Anger and fear are closely related. Note your body’s reaction to fear. See what you do, not just instinctive fear, but psychotic fear. Shocks are an excellent means of observing yourself. Self observation and developing a Work memory are the two main ways of breaking out of the prison of everyday life. When you begin to see just how much you are a slave to habits and personality patterns you can start to avoid repeating the same things over and over again. You see, when you are in a state of forgetfulness every thing you have done ten thousand times seems to be new to you. This is what helps keep you in prison, this illusion of freshness.

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Lord Pentland was out walking once in Scotland and came to this steep hill, on top was a stone cottage. There were three paths winding up the hill, each eventually reached the top but took a different route and much effort, but only one path could be taken at one time. 12-24-73 (Christmas Eve with Mrs. Staveley, three people present) ALS. There are times, like this evening, I feel like socializing. Gurdjieff came in one day, while I was in his apartment, wearing that red fez he often wore, sat down and with a great sigh said: “Ahhhh, time to be Christian!” and took off the fez. Gurdjieff did most of the cooking, but he would never cook the same thing the same way twice. He would always change a dish slightly no matter how many times he had cooked it. He asked me when we first met: “What can you DO?” I thought and thought and finally said: “I can cook.” I expected him to pooh-pooh that, but he replied: “That is important to know, good skill.” Q. I feel awkward asking you questions, I think it has something to do with feeling inferior….. ALS. Could be. I remember Jane Heap was asked once by a woman in our group, I can’t remember exactly who, but she said: “I always feel like a fool asking questions….” Jane answered: “Well, then, you ARE a fool.” Airplanes are the most insane way to travel ever devised by