if nothing changes ... nothing changes

8/6/2019 If Nothing Changes ... Nothing Changes

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Journey to Essence

If Nothing Changes ... Nothing Changes"What is happening in our world is nothing less than the disintegration of conventional culture, aprocess that is irreversible and one that constitutes humanity's moment of truth. We grow dizzy froman avalanche of change, and risk losing our way in history because we remain unclear about theunderlying dynamic of history and oblivious of its determining forces.

Unless we better understand what is happening to us, we will continue to be buffeted by wave afterwave of this disintegration, reluctant to recognize its scope, unable to appreciate its spiritual meaning,and unprepared to meet its historical challenges. Coming to grips with the depth of the crisis is adaunting task but it is also one that is full of promise, and the price to be paid by shrinking from it istoo horrendous to contemplate."

Rene Girard

Why Don't You Change?J. Krishnamurti

"Why don't you change? What prevents you? If each one of us asked that question, not verbally ormerely intellectually as an entertainment, but asked that question most seriously and deeply, what'syour answer? What's your answer to this problem that human beings have lived this way for millenniaupon millennia? Why haven't they changed? Why haven't you changed? If you don't change what arethe consequences? You'll be nationalistic; you'll be tribal, insular, isolated. And therefore, having norelationship globally, always fighting, fighting, fighting, building up more and more armaments todestroy each other. Now, why don't you, if you are at all serious in this matter, ask yourself thatquestion?

Why am I, a human being who has been through all of this, why haven't I changed? What would be youranswer? Either, you are not serious and want to live a very superficial life, and that superficialitytemporarily satisfies you, or you really don't care. As long as your immediate pleasures are satisfied,you really don't care. You don't care for your children, if they are murdered, if you really have no deeplove and affection for them. If you had, you'd prevent all wars. So, apparently, none of these thingsreally mean anything at all to you. Or probably, you're so deeply conditioned psychologically and notaware of itand unless there is freedom from that conditioningyou'll go on this way.

After all, life is what? It is one global unity movement. In the same way our consciousness is commonto all mankind. If I radically change, surely to fix the rest of the consciousness of man, why don't youchange?"On A, B and C Influences - PART IMaurice Nicoll: Psychological Commentaries


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It is necessary for everyone to think often about what he understands for himself of the meaning of thissystem of teaching. What does this teaching imply? What is it about? Why, for example, is itnecessary to struggle with identifying, with negative states, with imagination, with internalconsidering, with self-justifying and other forms of mechanical lying, with mechanical talking, and soon? Why should one try to observe and break buffers or notice mechanical attitudes, or detect picturesof oneself? Why must false personality be struggled with in all its unpleasant manifestations? Whyshould it be necessary to remember oneself?

In the first place, you must understand that this system forms an organic whole. To take a small partwithout connection with the rest is not enough. To take a small part without connection with the restis not enough. It is not enough because the meaning of the whole teaching reflects itself into everypart of it, and in order to feel the meaning of any one part of itsuch as what it says about self-justifying, for instanceit is necessary to have some ideas of the whole. Merely to say to oneself: "Imust observe self-justifying in myself and try to stop it", while it may not be useless if it is donesincerely, and may show something to oneself that one had not realized, can easily become amechanical actionthat is, one that is done without conscious meaning.

Consider, for a moment, what it means that this system is an organic whole. The meaning of this workas a whole and the related meanings derived from the general meaning, right down to the smallest

meanings, all stand in connected relation to and within one another. Its organization is like that of allliving things, as for example that of the body. In the body the smallest parts unite to form largerparts, and these combine to form the body as a whole. Everything is connected with and related toeverything else.

Knowledge of this system demands knowledge of the details and the parts and the whole; and if thissystem were not organic in the sense explained above, this would be impossible. People often say ofone or another detail or part of this system: "Oh, that is like something I read in a book," or they say:"Oh, that is like what so and so teaches, or what this or that philosophy or religion says," etc., etc. It isquite true that if you read certain kinds of literature you will find a sentence here or a sentence therewhich reminds you of something in this work. but all these are fragments. They are merely separatebits, no in any organized relation with any whole, and, isolated by themselves, are useless. Let ussuppose someone comes across a sentence in some old book in which it is said that "man is asleep". He

may imagine for a moment that he has found the system in the book, but if he looks more closely hewill see that it is an isolated statement. It is without connection, and so without any organic relationswith any other ideas. And if he compares this detail with all that this work says about sleep and aboutawaking, about different states of consciousness, about mechanical and conscious humanity and aboutall that it is necessary to do in order to awaken out of sleep, he will realize that the man who wrotethe book had merely heard something, but had no real knowledge. What, then, is real knowledge?

Real knowledge implies a knowledge of the part in relation to the whole that is, real knowledge isrelative in this sense. This is the real meaning of the principle of relativity in knowledge, from thestandpoint of this system. A rough illustration of what is meant is as follows: A man may know allabout the little village he lives in, but nothing about the town or country or country he live is, or ofother countries, or the world in general. He has no relative knowledge and so can neither see anythingin its right proportion, nor can he have greater knowledge. This is very important to understand. By

have real knowledgethat is, relative knowledgea man's knowledge can grow in a right way,otherwise only one-sidedness results, with all the evils that follow, that are more obvious today than atany time in the world.

Now let us apply what has been said to any single part of the work. Let us take the example of self-justifying. As you know, it is said, in connection with practical work on oneself, that it is necessary toobserve self-justifying. But if a man does not see why he should observe self-justifying in himself andwork against it, he is trying to do what has no meaning for him, save that he is told to do it. It that isthe case, he will be working in the most external way possible. What he is doing will be superficial,


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not really connected with him through any inner meaning. To work in this way is little else than togive a sort of lip-service to the work. And, still worse, he may be doing it for the sake ofmeritoriousness just to say that he is working, especially if he speaks of it. And he will not see that itis exactly self-justification that is at the root of feeling pleasure in meritoriousness, which onlystrengthens false personality, having nothing real or genuine in it. You will now understand why it wassaid at the beginning of this commentary that it is necessary for everyone to think for himself aboutthe meaning of this teaching. Unless he does so, he will do everything in a vague external way,without seeing or understanding what it is all about, and without having any force to work. Meaninggives force and the ore meaning this work has for you the more it will affect you emotionally and themore force will you obtain from it. for it is from the awakening of the emotional center that thegreatest force is derived.

Now, let us begin with the meaning of this work on the highest scale. Let us begin, as it were from thetop. What does this work mean? You have all heard it said that there are two quite different kinds ofinfluences existing in life, entitled respectively "A" and "B" influences in this system. "A" influences arecreated by life. They arise within the life of mechanical humanity from the interests of business,money-making, science, sport, politics, from the interest of conquest, intrigue, crime, power, from theinterests of wealth, position, display and possessions, and from all the necessary interests of food,clothing, housing, law, order, and so on. You have only to open the newspaper to see what "A"

influences are and to understand how they are created by life and arise within the life of humanity. Allthese interests develop personality, and in time, from personality, especially false personality, otherinterests arise, which become part of human life and which again are "A" influences. But there existalso in life influences of a quite different kind, called in this system "B" influences. These do not arisefrom life. Their source of origin is different. They have nothing to do with business, money-making,politics, sport, and so on. They come from outside the circle of mechanical life.

In all ages and at all times we can find evidence of their existence in a certain class of literature, incertain religious ideas, in many ancient writing, in teaching that have been preserved to us, often in allsorts of disguised forms, in allegories, in fairy-stories, and so on. It is a very startling experience foranyone who has become familiar with the ideas of this work and has begun to understand something ofits real significance to open a book written, say, a thousand or two thousand years ago or even more,and find some sentence which is so to speak, "the pure work". What is the explanation? Why is there

so great a background to the ideas of this system? What does it mean? It means, to begin with, thatthis system of work which we are studying is nothing new. It is nothing new in the sense that it is notsomething that some man or other invented recently and concocted out of his own mind, like somepassing modern psychological theory. The system we are studying is the presentation in a formadapted to the times of something that was long ago understood, and long ago taught, about man andhis inner possibilities. It has been understood and it has been taught not only since the beginning ofknown history, which is only a brief portion of all human history, but long before it, reaching us only inlegendary form, in myths and allegories. The same teaching has always been given, but it has beengiven in different outer forms, in different dress, according to circumstances, according to the timesand according to the nature of the people or race to which it is being given. It has changed only inregard to the general state of peoplethat is, their level of being and the depth of their sleep in thethings of the external sense an so of their opportunities in respect of inner evolution.

On A, B and C Influences - PART II

Last time the existence of two distinct kinds of influences in life, called "A" and "B" respectively, wasspoken of. In this commentary, of which this is the second part, we are speaking of the need forconnecting any part or detail of this system with the whole meaning. In order to get force to work,what you do in working on yourself must have meaning and the more meaning the system conducts foryouthat is, the more it means to you and the more the evaluation of it growsthe more force you willget from it. If you do not value it, if you like to doubt it, if you never really think about it, and do nottry to see it significance more and more as time passes, by working along both the line of knowledge


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and the line of being, and soon, then whatever you do in connection with the work will have nomeaning for you and so no force.

At present we are speaking of the general meaning of this workthat is, on the highest scale. In thisconnection it is now necessary to speak of the source of "B" influences. As was said in Part I, "B"influences do not arise within life and do "A" influences. Their origin is from a source outside

mechanical life. Actually, their source is in "C" influences. What does this mean?

As you know, in the teaching of this work, mankind is not taken as being all on one and the same level.Man is divided into different categories. Quite different kinds of men exist. The is, first of all, thecircle of mechanical humanity, as it is called, in which No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 men exist. They arerespectively men in whom mainly one center is usedthe instinctive-moving center in the case of No. 1man, the emotional center in the case of No. 2 man, and the intellectual center in the case of No. 3man. These instinct-moving men, emotional men and intellectual men, because they are mainly "one-centered", see everything differently, each from one side, from one center. They form together thecircle of mechanical humanity which is characterized by the fact that people belonging to this circleare base on violence and do not understand either themselves or one another. It is sometimes calledthe circle of "confusion of tongues" or Babel, in which misunderstandings, quarrels, strife, persecutions,and war of every kind must always exist with leading to anything different. Next come an intermediary

circle formed of No. 4 man. This circle does not arise in life but as the result of work. No 4 man isdeveloped in all the ordinary centers so he is not one-sided and so is called "balanced man". No 4 menbegin to be able to understand one another and begin to overcome violence in themselves. Thencomes the conscious circle of humanity formed by No. 5, No. 6 and No. 7 men who understand oneanother, who are not based on violence, and who are not only developed in the ordinary centers butwho have the power of being conscious from a lesser to a greater extent in "higher emotional" and"higher mental" centers.

These centers transmit influences to which mechanical humanitythat is sleeping humanityareinsensitive, or rather, which they cannot "hear". It is from the circle of conscious humanity that "B"influences originate. but they originate, not as "B" influences, but as "C" influences. It is only whenthey are sown into mechanical life that they become "B" influences. This happens, because, as "C"influences, they cannot exist in mechanical life, but become changed and altered in such a way that

they only approximate to their original form. Just as the ideas and emotional perceptions belonging tohigher centers cannot be caught or understood by the "formatory center", so conscious teaching cannotexist in the sphere of mechanical life by itself. but it can be kept alive and transmitted orallythat is,by oral teachingfrom one person who understands, to another, who begins to understand, and so toanother who does not yet understand. This chain must exist. And in such a case, these influences canbe transmitted orally as "C" influences, handed on from one person to another.

Let us take the example of the Gospels. As was said in the first part of this commentary on "A", "B" and"C" influences (which was read last time) the Gospels constitute an example of "B" influences Peoplesometimes ask a question of the following nature: Why, they say, are the Gospels an example of Binfluences? Surely Christ was a conscious man? Why, then, are the Gospels not an example of Cinfluences? We must remember that the Gospels appeared a long time after Christ diedfrom fifty toone hundred years after. It is not at all certain who were their authors. It is incorrect to suppose they

are merely records written on the spot by eye-witnesses. Luke, for example, never heard Christ. Hewas a pupil of Paul, who of course never heard Christ, and who quarreled with the school at Jerusalemand apparently got his teaching in some school in Damascus. But it is unnecessary to go into historicalquestions. You have only to read the Gospels to see that it is said that Christ taught his disciples inprivate and only said a certain amount to the public, and nearly always in the form of parables. In theGospel of Matthew, after the Parable of the Sower has been related, it is said that the disciples askedChrist why he spoke to the people in parables: "And he answered and said to them, 'Unto you it is givento know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given. for whosoever hath, tohim shall be given, and he shall have abundance but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken


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away, even that which he hath. Therefore speak I to them in parables; because seeing they see not,and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand.'" (Matthew 13: 11-13)

The kingdom of God is the circle of conscious humanity. It means the circle of those who have evolvedbeyond violence, of those whose knowledge is practicalthat is, what they know, they will, and so doof those who understand one another because they speak a common language(and let us remember

that we, in this work, are learning a common language). Everyone knows and feels that there must besome place, some society, some beings who live without mutual violence, criticism, dislike or hatred. Iwill quote, in this connection, a passage in the Mahomatan esoteric literature. A pupil came toMahomet for instruction. Mahomet said: "What is the substance of thy faith and the reality of thyunderstanding of it?" The pupil said: "I have seen Hell and Heaven three times in a vision. In Helleveryone was attacking his neighbor. In heaven they were visiting one another." Mohamet said, "Thouhas seen aright".

I have said enough in this commentary now to show you what is the supreme meaning of the work.Everyone who wishes to can read and think for himself about the parables in the Gospels concerningthe Kingdom of Heaventhat is, the circle of conscious humanity. These parables are veryextraordinary when you think of them in the light of the work. For the work is necessary to understandthe fragments of teaching given in the Gospels. It is then possible to understand why it is said, in this

system, that what we seek above all things is Lightand Light means consciousness. We seek to livemore consciously and to become more conscious. We live in darkness owing to lack of Lightthe Lightof consciousnessand we seek in this work Light in ourselves. Everything in this system says aboutwork on oneselfabout self-remember, about struggling with negative emotions, about internalconsidering, about self-justifying, and so on, has as its supreme aim to make a man more conscioustolet Light dawn in him. And it is a very strange thing, this Light. It is first to become more conscious ofoneself and then more conscious of others. This is a strange experience. I mean by this that thedirection in which the work leads you through increasing consciousness, increasing light, is not at allthe direction you might imagine as a person asleep, a person who knows only ordinary consciousnessthat is, the first two states of consciousness in which humanity lives.

To become more conscious of yourself is a strange experience. To become conscious of other is just asstrange and even more strange. The life you yourself lead with passions and jealousies, meanness,

dislikes and hatreds, becomes utterly ridiculous. You wonder, in fact, what on earth you have beendoing all your life. Have you been insane? you ask yourself. Yes, exactly. In the deep sleep we live in,in the light of the Kingdom of Heaven, we are all utterly insane and do not know what we are doing.

The work begins to teach you what to do. To awakenthat is the object of the work. And for a manwho awakens even to one single thing that the work teaches it means that he is no longer the sameman. In this way the work changes us. But the work cannot change anyone unless its meaning is felt.You can feel the meaning of the work through another at first, but the time comes when you must feelit through yourself. And then every detail of the work becomes alive to you because you see it as abook of instructions, as a plan, as a map, and as a compass, that must be followed if you wish toawaken to another life and another way of living on this earth. Take quite simply this one singleinstruction: do not identify. Follow this instruction. Follow it to the end and see what happens andwhat changes take place in you and what Light begins to reach you. but if this work has no real

meaning to you and if the meaning of life is always far greater and more real to you than the meaningof the work, then no change in yourself can ever happen and you will only know life-emotions andremain in the circle of mechanical life, in the circle of confusion and strife and quarrels anddisappointments and complaints and war.

Who Are You?J. Krishnamurti


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"Who are you? Is that an important question? Or, would you say, 'Who am I?' If I tell you who I am,what does it matter? To tell you who I am is quite meaningless. First of all, I am nobody. It's assimple as that; I am nobody. But, what is important is, who you are. When you ask me, 'Who are you?',in that question is implied somebody who is very great, and therefore I'm going to imitate you. Thereis the hero, or the man who is enlightened or the guru, and you say, I'm going to copy everything youdo. It's become so absurdly silly, childish, to imitate anybody." To find out who you are is far moreimportant, and to find out, you have to inquire. You are the story of mankind. Listen to J.Krishnamurti's talk, Who Are You athttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7G-7-ZiiM-o.

The Gurdjieff WorkJacob Needleman

Portions of this introduction have been drawn from "G.I. Gurdjieff and His School" and "The GurdjieffTradition" by Jacob Needleman.

It has been nearly a hundred years since G.I. Gurdjieff first appeared in Moscow in 1912, bringing withhim a teaching unlike anything known or heard of in the modern world. And although his ideas havesince then been explored in hundreds of books and articles, and now exert a significant influencethroughout the Western world, both the teaching and the man himself remain essentially as new and

unknown, and as astonishing, as when they first appeared.

Gurdjieffs fundamental aim was to help human beings awaken to the meaning of our existence and tothe efforts we must make to realize that meaning in the midst of the life we have been given. As withevery messenger of the spirit, Gurdjieffs fundamental intention was ultimately for the sake of others,never only for himself. But when we first encounter the figure of Gurdjieff, this central aspect of hislife is often missed. Faced with the depth of his ideas and the inner demands he placed upon himselfand upon those who were drawn to him, and becoming aware of the uniquely effective forms of innerwork he created, we may initially be struck mainly by the vastness of his knowledge and the strength ofhis being. But sooner or later what may begin to touch us is the unique quality of selflessness in hisactions, the sacrifices he made both for those who came to him, and for all of humanity. We begin tounderstand that his life was a work of love; and at the same time that word, "love," begins to take onentirely new dimensions of meaning, inconceivable in the state of what Gurdjieff called waking sleep.

In most major cities of the Western world men and women are now trying to live his teaching. It is nottoo soon, therefore, to consider what this teaching has brought or can bring to the world. As humanlife in our era spirals downward toward dissolution in violence and illusion, one central question risesup before us in the shadow of which all teachings, including the Gurdjieff work, must now bemeasured: How can humanity reverse the process leading to its seemingly inevitable self-destruction?

In the face of this question, the heart is restless, but the mind soon falls silent. It is as though theunprecedented crisis of our modern world confounds and all but refutes thousands of years of religiousdoctrine and centuries of scientific progress. Who now dreams of turning to religion for the answerwhen it is religion itself that lies so close to the root of war and barbarism? Who dares turn to sciencefor the answer when it is advancing technology, the very fruit of scientific progress, which has soamplified the destructive powers of human egoism? And who imagines that new theories of society,

new social programs, new ideologies can do anything more than wrap the falling earth in dreams offlying?

The Mind Falls Silent

But in that silence something within can awaken. In that moment an entirely new kind of hope canappear. The Gurdjieff work may in part be understood as the practical, painstaking cultivation of thatsilence and that hope, that state of embodied awakening to the truth of the human condition in theworld and in oneself. The unanswerable question about the fate of humanity and the world is
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7G-7-ZiiM-ohttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7G-7-ZiiM-ohttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7G-7-ZiiM-ohttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7G-7-ZiiM-o


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transformed into the question, also unanswerable: What is a human being? Who am I? But it is now aquestion asked with more of oneself, not only with the mind alonethe mind which, with all itsexplanations, has so little power to resist the forces of violence and brutality; nor with emotion alone,which with all its fervor often ends by making the most sacred of doctrines into instruments ofagitation and death. Nor, so the Gurdjieff teaching also shows us, can the question of who and whatwe are be answered by giving way again and again to the endlessly recurring obsessions rooted in thephysical body. That is to say, the great question of who and what we are cannot be answered by onlyone part of the whole of ourselves pretending to be the master. This self-deceptive state of the humanbeing is precisely what Gurdjieff meant by mankinds state of waking sleep. In this sleep, he tells us,we are born, live and die, write books, invent religions, build monuments, commit murders and destroyall that is good.

One thing and one thing only is therefore necessary. It is necessary for individual men and women toawaken, to remember who they are, and then to become Who they really are, to live it in the serviceof Truth. Without this awakening and this becoming, nothing else can help us.

But it is very difficult. An extraordinary quality of help is needed. To this end, Gurdjieff created whathas come to be called the Work.

The Gurdjieff Work

Before his death in 1949, Gurdjieff entrusted the task of transmitting the teaching to his chief pupil,Jeanne de Salzmann, and a small circle of other pupils in France, England and America whoacknowledged her leadership. Under her guidance, the first centers of the Work were established inParis, London, New York and Caracas. Over the past half-century other centers have radiated fromthem to major cities of the Western world. Most of the groups maintain close correspondence with theprincipal centers and most have developed under the personal guidance of one or two of the first-generation pupils of Gurdjieff. The general articulation of all these groups is a cooperative one, ratherthan one based on strictly sanctioned jurisdictional control. There are also groups which no longermaintain close correspondence with the main body of pupils and operate independently. And there arenumerous other organizations led by individuals who claim no historical lineage with either Gurdjieff orhis direct pupils.

In what follows we limit ourselves to the teaching as it has been studied and transmitted by groups thatmay be historically designated as representing the direct Gurdjieff lineage. These groups now exist ineach specific location under the name of "The Gurdjieff Foundation," or, in The United Kingdom, "TheGurdjieff Society."

A central focus of the Gurdjieff teaching is the awakening to consciousness and the creation of propercommunal and psychological conditions that can support this multi-leveled process. For this, apreparatory work is necessary, as stated by Jeanne de Salzmann: "According to Gurdjieff, the truth canbe approached only if all the parts which make the human being, the thought, the feeling, and thebody, are touched with the same force in a particular way appropriate to each of themfailing which,development will inevitably be one-sided and sooner or later come to a stop. In the absence of aneffective understanding of this principle, all work on oneself is certain to deviate from the aim. The

essential conditions will be wrongly understood and one will see a mechanical repetition of the formsof effort which never surpass a quite ordinary level."

Gurdjieff gave the name of "self-remembering" to the central state of conscious attention in which thehigher force that is available within the human structure makes contact with the functions of thought,feeling and body. The individual "remembers," as it were, who and what he really is and is meant tobe, over and above his ordinary sense of identity. This conscious attention is not a function of themind but is the active conscious force which all our functions of thought, feeling and movement canbegin to obey as the "inner master."


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Consistent with the knowledge behind many contemplative traditions of the world, the practice of theGurdjieff work places chief emphasis on preparing our inner world to receive this higher attention,which can open us to an inconceivably finer energy of love and understanding.

The Gurdjieff work remains above all essentially an oral tradition, transmitted under specially createdconditions from person to person, continually unfolding, without fixed doctrinal beliefs or external

rites, as a way toward freeing humanity from the waking sleep that holds us in a kind of hypnoticillusion. The moving life of the tradition thus supports the individual search and helps to overcome theseemingly universal impulse of resistance or inertia: the tendency toward attachment, and the gradualfixing on partial aspects, institutionalized forms, dogmatic doctrines and a habitual reliance on theknown rather than facing and entering the unknown. According to the Gurdjieff teaching, the formsexist only to help discover, incarnate, and elaborate a formless energy of awakening, and without thisunderstanding the forms of the teaching become an end in themselves and lose their meaning. Atpresent, the general forms of practice in the Gurdjieff tradition may be characterized as follows:

Group Meetings

Gurdjieff taught that alone an individual can do nothing.

In group meetings students regularly come together to participate in a collective atmosphere that ismeant to function as a principal means for the transformation of the individual state of consciousness.Although, with the help of more advanced pupils, questions are shared and responded to in words, thefundamental support of the group is directed to the individual work of facing oneself and consciouslyrecognizing ones own inner lack, until the appearance of a new quality of energy is possible. Themore experienced pupils, helping the group as part of their own search, strive to be sensitive not somuch to the content of the exchange, but to the process of the developing energy and the mutualteaching that can take place under its influence. In their turn, more advanced pupils just as urgentlyneed to work in groups, and in this way a redefinition of the conventional image of the "leader" isinevitable. At each level of inner work, what has been understood needs to be individually andcollectively re-examined and verified in the movement of a dynamic, living esoteric school.

The dances and movements which Gurdjieff taught were partially a result of his research in the

monasteries and schools of Asia, and are of a nature that seems unique in the modern Western world.In certain respects, they are comparable to sacred dances in traditional religious systems (for example,the Cham dances of Tibetan Buddhism or the dervish dances of the Sufis). Like them, the GurdjieffMovements are based on the view that a series of specific postures, gestures, and movements,supported by an intentional use of melody and rhythm and an essential element of right individualeffort, can help to evoke an inner condition which is closer to a more conscious existence, or a state ofunity, which can allow an opening to the conscious energy of the Self. The Movements are nowregularly given at major centers of the work by carefully prepared pupils who emphasize the need forexactitude and a special quality of feeling, without which the Movements cannot provide the help forwhich they were brought.

The practice of sitting is difficult to characterize apart from observing that, in accordance with theoverall aim of the work, it is not a "form" in and for itself, but is fundamentally a preparation for the

inner search within the midst of life. With or without spoken guidance, the aim is ultimately to helpindividuals search for an embodied presence that sustains the attempt to enter more deeply into anawareness of all the opposing forces constantly moving within the body. Madame de Salzmann gavethis special work to her older pupils in the way Gurdjieff had given it at the Prieur. Later, in thel960s, when groups had become more advanced, she gradually introduced it more broadly.

Work in Life


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To be able to work in life in the full sense would be considered a very high achievement. The struggleto be "present" in everyday life constitutes a major aspect of Gurdjieffs teaching, a struggle whichleads to a full engagement in the duties and rewards of human life, now and here. In this context,Gurdjieff created conditions to help his pupils experience the fundamental practice of self-observation. Through such experience, a man or woman can begin to come into contact with an ever-deepening sense of inner need which allows an opening to a powerful conscious influence withinoneself. According to Gurdjieff, without a relationship to this more central aspect of oneself, everydaylife is bound to be an existential prison, in which the individual is held captive, not so much by the so-called forces of modernity, as by the parts of the self which cannot help but react automatically to theinfluences of the world. The help offered by the special conditions of the work is therefore understoodnot as replacing our life in the world, but as enabling us, in the course of time, to live life withauthentic understanding and full participation.

Briefly, the movement toward awakening which is meant to be supported by the ideas and these formsof practice becomes in fact an organic process in life and movement, and for that reason, dogmaticapproaches will inevitably fail. The process of awakening requires not only an understanding of theconstituent forces and laws which govern mans psyche and actions, but also a deep sensitivity andappreciation of individual subjective needs and conditions. In other words, for an effective guidance,the principle of relativity must be recognized in the transmission of the teaching: individuals must be

approached according to their respective levels of development and experience. Gurdjieff might havestressed one view to a student at a certain level of understanding and quite another view when thatstudent had reached another level. This might give the appearance of contradiction, but in fact it wasconsistent in applying only those aspects of the whole teaching truly necessary at a given moment.The same principle applies to the ideas, some of which seemed more accessible at one period whileothers still remained to be revealed in the unfolding life of the teaching.

For example, the work of "self-observation" acquires a completely new meaning as the developingattention lets go of its effort, joining and willingly submitting to a higher conscious seeing. The actionthat might take place in this conditionin the quiet of meditation or even in outer actionreflects thesimultaneous dual nature of both an impersonal consciousness and a personal attention which has anew capacity to manifest and act in the world. The qualities of both these aspects of consciousnessand attention are quite unknown to the ordinary mind. In this new relationship of individual attention

and a higher impersonal consciousness, a man or woman can become a vessel, serving another energywhich can act through the individual, an energy which at the same time transforms the materiality ofthe body at the cellular level. This understanding of inner work introduced by Jeanne de Salzmann canbe found today in many of the Gurdjieff Foundation groups worldwide.

The Life of Gurdjieff and the Principal Ideas

What we know of Gurdjieffs early life is based mainly on what he has revealed in the autobiographicalportions of his own writings, especially "Meetings with Remarkable Men". Although there is no reasonto doubt the accuracy of his account, the fact remains that the principal aim of Gurdjieffs writingswas not to provide historical information, but to serve as a call to awakening and as a continuingsource of guidance for the inner search that is the raison dtre of his teaching. His writings are cast informs that are directed not only to the intellectual function but also to the emotional and even

subconscious sensitivities that, all together, make up the whole of the human psyche. His writingstherefore demand and support the search for a finer quality of self-attention on the part of the reader,failing which the thought contained in them is unverifiable at its deeper levels.

Gurdjieff was born, probably in 1866, to a Greek father and an Armenian mother in Alexandropol (nowGumri), Armenia, a region where Eastern and Western cultures mixed and often clashed. Theenvironment of his childhood and early adolescence, while suggesting a near-biblical patriarchalculture, is also marked by elements not usually associated with these cultural traditions. The portraitGurdjieff draws of his father, a well-known Ashokh, or bard, suggests some form of participation in an


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oral tradition stretching back to humanitys distant past. At the same time, Gurdjieff speaks of havingbeen exposed to all the forms of modern knowledge, especially experimental science, which heexplored with an impassioned diligence. The influence of his father and certain of his early teacherscontrasts very sharply with the forces of modernity that he experienced as a child. This contrast,however, is not easily describable. The difference is not simply that of ancient versus modernworldviews or patterns of behavior, though it certainly includes that. The impression, rather, is thatthese "remarkable men" of his early years manifested a certain quality of personal presence or being.That the vital difference between human beings is a matter of their level of being became one of thefundamental elements in Gurdjieffs teaching and is not reducible to conventional psychological,behavioral, or cultural typologies.

Meetings with Remarkable Men shows us the youthful Gurdjieff journeying to monasteries and schoolsof awakening in remote parts of Central Asia and the Middle East, searching for a knowledge thatneither traditional religion nor modern science by itself could offer him. The clues to what Gurdjieffactually found, inwardly and outwardly, on these journeys are subtly distributed throughout thenarrative, rather than laid out in doctrinal form. Discursive statements of ideas are relatively rare inthe book, and where they are given it is with a deceptive simplicity that serves to turn the reader backto the teachings woven in the narrative portions of the text. Repeated readings of Meetings withRemarkable Men yield the realization that Gurdjieff meant to draw our attention to the search itself,

and that what he intended to bring to the West was not only a new statement of what has been called"the primordial tradition," but the knowledge of how to conduct a search within the conditions ofcontemporary life. For Gurdjieff, as we shall see, the search itself, when rightly conducted, emerges asthe principal spiritualizing force in human life, what one observer has termed "a transforming search,"rather than "a search for transformation."

As has been noted, Gurdjieff began his work as a teacher in Russia around 1912, on the eve of the civilwar that led to the Russian Revolution. In 1914 he was joined by the philosopher P. D. Ouspensky andsoon after by the well-known Russian composer Thomas de Hartmann. Ouspensky was later to produce"In Search of the Miraculous", by far the best account of Gurdjieffs teaching written by a pupil oranyone other than Gurdjieff, while de Hartmann, working in a unique collaboration with Gurdjieff,would produce what has come to be called the "Gurdjieff/de Hartmann music."

Soon after, as the Revolution drew near and the coming breakdown of civil order began to announceitself, Gurdjieff and a small band of dedicated pupils, including Thomas and Olga de Hartmann, madeperilous journeys to the Crimea and Tiflis (now Tbilisi). There they were joined by Alexandre andJeanne de Salzmann, the former a well-known artist and theatrical designer and the latter a teacher ofthe Dalcroze system of rhythmic dance who was later to emerge as Gurdjieffs greatest pupil and theprincipal guide under whom his teaching continued to be passed on after his death in 1949. It was inTiflis, in 1919, that Gurdjieff organized the first version of his Institute for the HarmoniousDevelopment of Man.

The account by Ouspensky and notes by other pupils published in 1973 under the title "Views from theReal World" show that in the Moscow period, before the journey out of Russia, Gurdjieff tirelesslyarticulated a vast body of ideas about man and the cosmos. It is appropriate here to interrupt thehistorical narrative in order to summarize some of these formulations, which played an important role

in the subsequent development of his teaching, even as Gurdjieff changed the outer forms and certaininner emphases in his direct work with pupils. Also, to a limited extent, these ideas throw light ondevelopments that came later, some of which have given rise to unnecessary confusion in the minds ofoutside observers. One caveat, however, is necessary. If, in his writings, Gurdjieff never soughtmerely to lay out a philosophical system, all the more, in his direct work with pupils, did he mercilesslyresist the role of guru, preacher, or school teacher. In Search of the Miraculous shows, withconsiderable force, that Gurdjieff always gave his ideas to his pupils under conditions designed tobreak through the crust of emotional and intellectual associations which, he taught, shut out the voiceof conscience in man. The often awesome precision with which he was able to break through that


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crustways of behaving with his pupils that were, in turn, shocking, mysterious, frightening, magical,delicately gentle, and clairvoyantremains one of the principal factors around which both theGurdjieff legend and the misunderstandings about him have arisen, as well as being the element mostwritten about by those who came in touch with him, and the most imitated in the current age of "newreligions."

The Gurdjieff Ideas

It is true enough to say that Gurdjieffs system of ideas is complex and all-encompassing, but one mustimmediately add that their formulation is designed to point us toward a central and simple power ofapprehension which Gurdjieff taught is merely latent within the human mind and which is the onlypower by which we can actually understand ourselves in relation to the universe. In this sense, thedistinction between doctrine and method does not entirely obtain in Gurdjieffs teaching. Theformulations of the ideas are themselves meant to have a special action on the sense of self and maytherefore be regarded as part of the practical method. This characteristic of Gurdjieffs teachingreflects what Gurdjieff perceived as the "center of gravity" of the contemporary subjectivitythe factthat modern civilization is lopsidedly oriented around the thinking function. Modern mans illusoryfeeling of I is to a great extent built up around his thoughts and therefore, in accordance with thelevel of the pupil, the ideas themselves are meant to affect this false sense of self. For Gurdjieff the

deeply penetrating influence of scientific thought in modern life was not something merely to bedeplored, but to be understood as the channel through which the eternal Truth must first find its waytoward the human heart.

Man, Gurdjieff taught, is an unfinished creation. He is not fully Man, considered as a cosmically uniquebeing whose intelligence and power of action mirror the energies of the source of life itself. On thecontrary, man, as he is, is an automaton. Our thoughts, feelings, and deeds are little more thanmechanical reactions to external and internal stimuli. In Gurdjieffs terms, we cannot "do" anything.In and around us, everything happens without the participation of an authentic consciousness. Buthuman beings are ignorant of this state of affairs because of the pervasive and deeply internalizedinfluence of culture and education, which engrave in us the illusion of autonomous conscious selves. Inshort, man is "asleep". There is no authentic "I am" in his presence, but only a fractured egoism whichmasquerades as the authentic self, and whose machinations poorly imitate the normal human functions

of thought, feeling, and will.

Many factors reinforce this sleep. Each of the reactions that proceed in ones presence is accompaniedby a deceptive sense of "I"one of many "Is", each imagining itself to be the whole, and each bufferedoff from awareness of the others. Each of these many Is represents a process whereby the subtleenergy of consciousness is absorbed and degraded, a process that Gurdjieff termed "identification."Man identifiesthat is, squanders his conscious energy, with every passing thought, impulse, andsensation. This state of affairs takes the form of a continuous self-deception and a continuousprocession of egoistic emotions, such as anger, self-pity, sentimentality, and fear, which are of such apervasively painful nature that we are constantly driven to ameliorate this condition through theendless pursuit of social recognition, sensory pleasure, or the vague and unrealizable goal of"happiness."

According to Gurdjieff, the human condition cannot be understood apart from considering humanitywithin the function of organic life on Earth. The human being is constructed to transform energies of aspecific nature, and neither our potential inner development nor our present actual predicament isunderstandable apart from this function. Thus, in the teaching of Gurdjieff, psychology is inextricablyconnected with cosmology and metaphysics and, in a certain sense, biology. The diagram known as the"Ray of Creation" provides one of the conceptual keys to approaching this interconnection betweenhumanity and the universal order, and as such invites repeated study from a variety of angles andstages of understanding.


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The reader is referred to chapters 5, 7, and 9 of In Search of the Miraculous for a discussion of thisdiagram, but the point to be emphasized here is that, at the deepest level, the human mind and heartare enmeshed in a concatenation of causal influences of enormous scale and design. A study of the Rayof Creation makes it clear that the aspects of human nature through which one typically attempts toimprove one's lot are without any force whatever within the network of universal influences that actupon man on earth. In this consists our fundamental illusion, an illusion only intensified by thetechnological achievements of modern science. We are simply unable to draw upon the consciousenergies passing through us which, in the cosmic scheme, are those possessing the actual power ofcausal efficacy. We do not and cannot participate consciously in the great universal order, but insteadare tossed about en masse for purposes limited to the functions of organic life on earth as a whole.Even in this relatively limited spherelimited, that is, when compared to mans latent destinyhumanity has become progressively incapable of fulfilling its function, a point that Gurdjieff stronglyemphasized in his own writings. This aspect of the Ray of Creationnamely, that the "fate of theearth" is somehow bound up with the possibility of the inner evolution of individual men and womenresonates with the contemporary sense of impending planetary disaster.

How are human beings to change this state of affairs and begin drawing on the universal consciousenergies which we are built to absorb but which now pass through us untransformed? How is humanityto assume its proper place in the great chain of being? Gurdjieffs answer to these questions actually

circumscribes the central purpose of his teachingnamely, that human life on earth may now stand ata major transitional point, comparable perhaps to the fall of the great civilizations of the past, andthat development of the whole being (rather than one or another of the separate human functions) isthe only thing that can permit us to pass through this transition in a manner worthy of human destiny.

But whereas the descent of humanity takes place en masse, ascent or evolution is possible only withinthe individual. In Search of the Miraculous presents a series of diagrams dealing with the sameenergies and laws as the Ray of Creation, not only as a cosmic ladder of descent but also in theirevolutionary aspect within the individual. In these diagrams, known collectively as the "Food Diagram",Ouspensky explains in some detail how Gurdjieff regarded the energy transactions within the individualhuman organism.

Again, the reader is referred to Ouspenskys book, the point being that humanity can begin to occupy

its proper place within the chain of being only through an inner work which within the individualhuman being may be subsumed under the general term "attention". The many levels of attentionpossible for man, up to and including an attention that in traditional teachings has been termed Spirit,are here ranged along a dynamic, vertical continuum that reaches from the level of biologicalsustenance, which humans require for their physical bodies, up to the incomparably finer sustenancethat we require for the inner growth of the soul. This finer substance is termed "the food ofimpressions," a deceptively matter-of-fact phrase that eventually defines the uniquely human cosmicobligation and potentiality of constantly and in everything working for an objective understanding ofthe Real.

The Ray of Creation and the Food Diagram, extraordinary though they are, are only a small part of thebody of ideas contained in In Search of the Miraculous. They are cited here as examples of howGurdjieff not only restated the ancient, perennial teachings in a language adapted to the modern

mind, but also brought to these ancient principles something of such colossal originality that those whofollowed him detected in his teaching the signs of what in Western terminology may be designated anew revelation.

However, as was indicated above, the organic interconnection of the ideas in In Search of theMiraculous is communicated not principally through conceptual argument but as a gradual unfoldingwhich Ouspensky experienced to the extent that there arose within him that agency of inner unitywhich Gurdjieff called "the real I"the activation of which required of Ouspensky an ego-shatteringinner work under the guidance of Gurdjieff and within the general group conditions he created for his


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pupils. Each of the great ideas in the book leads to the others. The Ray of Creation and the FoodDiagram are inseparable from Gurdjieffs teaching about the fundamental law of three forces and thelaw of the sevenfold development of energy (the Law of Octaves), and the interrelation of these lawsas expressed in the symbol of the enneagram. These ideas are in turn inseparable from Gurdjieffsteaching about the tripartite division of human nature, the three "centers" of mind, feeling, and body.Likewise, the astonishing account of how Gurdjieff structured the conditions of group work isinseparable from the idea of his work as a manifestation of the Fourth Way, the Way of Consciousness,distinct from the traditionally familiar paths termed "the way of the fakir," "the way of the monk," and"the way of the yogi."

The notion of the Fourth Way is one of Gurdjieffs ideas that have captured the imagination ofcontemporary people and have brought quite a new meaning to the idea of esotericism. The meaningof this idea is perhaps best approached by resuming the narrative of Gurdjieffs life, with specialattention given to the conditions of work which he created for his pupils.

The Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man

After a brief period in Constantinople, Gurdjieff and his group of pupils made their way through Europeand finally settled in France where, in 1922, he established his Institute for the Harmonious

Development of Man at the Chateau du Prieur at Fontainebleau near Avon, just outside Paris. Thebrief intense period of activity at the Prieur has been described in numerous books, but even for thosefamiliar with these accounts, the establishment and day-to-day activities of the Prieur still evokeastonishment. It was during this period that Gurdjieff developed many of the methods and practices ofgroup work that have retained a central place in the Work throughout the world today, including manyof the Movements or sacred dances.

All serious accounts of the conditions Gurdjieff created at the Prieur give the impression of acommunity life pulsating with the uncompromising search for truth, engaging all sides of humannaturedemanding physical work, intensive emotional interactions, and the study of a vast range ofideas about humanity and the universal world. These accounts invariably speak of the encounter withoneself that these conditions made possible and the experience of the self which accompanied thisencounter.

The most active period of the Prieur lasted less than two years, ending with Gurdjieffs nearly fatalmotor accident on July 6, 1924. In order to situate this period properly, it is necessary to look backonce again to the year 1909, when Gurdjieff had finished his twenty-one years of traveling throughoutAsia, the Middle East, Africa, and Europe meeting individuals and visiting communities who possessedknowledge unsuspected by most people. By 1909 Gurdjieff had learned secrets of the human psycheand of the universe that he knew to be necessary for the future welfare of humanity, and he sethimself the task of transmitting them to those who could use them rightly. After trying to cooperatewith existing societies, he decided to create an organization of his own. He started in 1911 inTashkent, where he had established a reputation as a wonder-worker and an authority on "questions ofthe Beyond." He moved to Moscow in 1912 and after the revolution of February 1917 there began hisremarkable journeys through the war-torn Caucasus region, leading a band of his pupils toConstantinople and finally to France, where he reopened his institute at the Chateau de Prieur at

Avon. His avowed aim during this period was to set up a worldwide organization for the disseminationof his ideas and the training of helpers. The motor accident of July 1924 occurred at this criticaljuncture.

When he began to recover from his injuries, Gurdjieff was faced with the sheer impossibility ofrealizing his plans for the institute. He was a stranger in Europe; his health was shattered; he had nomoney; and many of his friends and pupils had abandoned him. At that point he made the decision tofind a new way of transmitting to posterity what he had learned about human nature and humandestiny. This was to be done by writing. His period as an author began in December of 1924 and


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continued until May 1935. It was during this period that he produced the monumental expression of histhought, "Beelzebubs Tales to His Grandson"; the subtle, crystalline call to inner work, Meetings WithRemarkable Men; and the profoundly encoded, unfinished "Life Is Real Only Then, When 'I' Am." It wasalso during this period that he culminated his collaboration with the composer Thomas de Hartmann,rounding off the unique corpus of music that now bears both their names.

In fact, although the period of the Prieur had ended, and although struck by numerous personal blowsand tragedies, Gurdjieff by no means limited himself to writing. Quite the contrary. His travels toAmerica, and his seeding of the work there, accelerated and intensified. The creation anddevelopment of the Movements continued. And, perhaps above all, assisted by Jeanne de Salzmann,his work with groups and individuals in Paris not only attracted from Europe and America the men andwomen who would later carry the work to the cities of the Western world, but at the same timeallowed him, within the silence and energy of his Paris apartment, to transmit a portion of hisunderstanding of inner work to many other men and women from many parts of the world.

After his death in Paris in 1949, the work continued under the guidance of Jeanne de Salzmann andnow rests largely in the hands of the second generation of his circle of direct pupils.

In conclusion, and returning to the idea of the three centers, a succinct statement of this fundamental

aspect of what Gurdjieff brought to the modern world as "the Fourth Way" may be cited from thedescriptive brochure published at the Prieur in 1922:

The civilization of our time, with its unlimited means for extending its influence, has wrenched manfrom the normal conditions in which he should be living. It is true that civilization has opened up forman new paths in the domain of knowledge, science and economic life, and thereby enlarged his worldperception. But, instead of raising him to a higher all-round level of development, civilization hasdeveloped only certain sides of his nature to the detriment of other faculties, some of which it hasdestroyed altogether.

Modern mans world perception and his mode of living are not the conscious expression of his beingtaken as a complete whole. Quite the contrary, they are only the unconscious manifestation of one oranother part of him.

From this point of view our psychic life, both as regards our world perception and our expression of it,fail to present a unique and indivisible whole, that is to say a whole acting both as common repositoryof all our perceptions and as the source of all our expressions.

On the contrary, it is divided into three separate entities, which have nothing to do with one another,but are distinct both as regards their functions and their constituent substances.

These three entirely separate sources of the intellectual, emotional or moving life of man, each takenin the sense of the whole set of functions proper to them, are called by the system under notice thethinking, the emotional and the moving centers.

It is difficult conceptually, and in a few words, to communicate the meaning of this idea of the threecenters, which is one of the central aspects of Gurdjieffs teaching. The modern person simply has noconception of how self-deceptive a life can be that is lived in only one part of oneself. The head, theemotions, and the body each have their own perceptions and actions, and each in itself can live asimulacrum of human life. In the modern era this has gone to an extreme point, and most of thetechnical and material progress of our culture serves to push the individual further into only one of thecentersone third, as it were, of our real self-nature. The growth of vast areas of scientific knowledgeis, according to Gurdjieff, outweighed by the diminution of the conscious space and time within whichwe live and experience ourselves. With an ever-diminishing "I," we gather an ever-expanding corpus ofinformation about the universe. But to be humanto be a whole self possessed of moral power, will,


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and intelligencerequires all the centers, and more. This more is communicated above all inGurdjieffs own writings, in which the levels of spiritual development possible for human beings areconnected with a breathtaking vision of the levels of possible service that the developing individual iscalled on to render to mankind and to the universal source of creation itself.

Thus, the proper relationship of the three centers of cognition in the human being is a necessary

precondition for the reception and realization of what in the religions of the world has been variouslytermed the Holy Spirit, Atman, and the Buddha nature. The conditions Gurdjieff created for his pupilscannot be understood apart from this fact. "I wished to create around myself," Gurdjieff wrote,"conditions in which a man would be continuously reminded of the sense and aim of his existence by anunavoidable friction between his conscience and the automatic manifestations of his nature." Deeplyburied though it is, the awakened conscience is the "something more" which, according to Gurdjieff, isthe only force in modern mans nearly completely degenerate psyche that can actually bring the partsof his nature together and open him to that energy and unnamable awareness of which all the religionshave always spoken as the gift that "descends from above", but which in the conditions of modern lifeis almost impossible to receive without an extraordinary quality of help.

Are You a Thinker or a Seeker?Do you seek, or do you think and search for sensations?

"You have worked and suffered all these years, but you never knew how to work, how to let the desireof your mind become the desire of your heart."

"Who are you? How do you know me so well?"

"Does it really matter, who I am or what I am? Isn't your curiosity one of the chief reasons that your lifehas come to nothing? Is it still so strong that even now all you want is an explanation of who I am andhow I know you?"

"Yes Father, you are right. I have seen many miracles and tried to explain them but it has brought meno real understanding. Yes, I am empty...it's too late."

"Perhaps it is not yet too late. If you feel with all your being that you really are empty then I advise youto try once more. If you agree to one condition I will help you. The condition is to die consciously tothe life you have led unto now."

Gurdjieff: "Ever since I was a child, I had a feeling that something is missing in me. I felt that apartfrom my ordinary life there is another life; a life which is calling me. But how to be open to it? Thisquestion never gives me any peace and I've become like a hungry dog chasing everywhere for months."

Prince: "You should be happy that you had that experience."

The above are excerpts are taken from the video, Meetings with Remarkable Men, based on Gurdjieff'sbook by the same name, is a classic spiritual movie of G. I. Gurdjieff's struggles, beginning with his

childhood until his discovery of The Fourth Way. Visithttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14Jgk1pNMus&feature=player_embeddedto watch the full video.

One Great QuestionJacob Needleman

One of the most tormenting questions of our time and of all times and cultures, has to do with our ownhuman identity; what we are or the question is sometimes simply, Who am I? A more abstract versionof it is, What is man? What is a human being? A very personal version of it is, Who is this human being?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14Jgk1pNMus&feature=player_embeddedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14Jgk1pNMus&feature=player_embeddedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14Jgk1pNMus&feature=player_embedded


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What am I? Am I what I am told by my environment? Am I my ethnic identity? Am I my nationalidentity? Am I my sexual identity? Am I my physical characteristics? Am I the opinions which havecome into my mind from hearing people speak, from television, from newspapers, from my peers? Am Ithe desires to buy this, to have that, to own that, to succeed in that, desires which themselves mayhave been conditioned into me from outside? We dont necessarily know where these desires comefrom, whether they were "injected" into us from outside ourselves. But, nevertheless, we say "I" to allthese things: I want, I am, I am this, I am that, I am a Republican, I am a Democrat, I am a boy, I am agirl, I am an Indian, I am black, I am white. But is that I? Or is there something behind all that,something more intimate that is truly myself, something that these things aren't necessarilyrepresentative of, which in fact sometimes this thing which I usually call "I" and "myself" actually arecovering over this intimate reality called "I"? Read One Great Question by Jacob Needleman.

If you have any comments or questions please e-mailClick for Email Address.

I trust that your journey through the GurdjieffWork.com website will lead you back to yourEssence...back to your 'Real I'.

Know thyself,

Jeff Meyerswww.GurdjieffWork.com

The beginning of spiritual transformation is seeing your own psychology in action. Previous Editions of Journey to Essence

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