"If you wish to hear new things in a new way, you must listen in a new way. This is necessary not only in the work but also in life. You can become a little more free in life, more secure, if you begin to be interested in all new things and remember them by new methods. This new method can be understood easily. It would no longer be wholly automatic but semi-automatic. This new method consists in the following: when thought is already there, try to feel. When you feel something, try to direct your thoughts on your feeling. Up to now, thought and feeling have been separated. Begin to watch your mind: feel what you think. Prepare for tomorrow and safeguard yourselves from deceit. Speaking generally, you will never understand what I wish to convey if you merely listen.

"Take all you already know, all you have read, all you have seen, all you have been shown — I am certain that you understand nothing of it. Even if you ask yourselves sincerely, do you understand why two and two make four, you will find that you are not sure even of that. You only heard someone else say so, and you repeat what you have heard. And not only in questions of daily life, but also in higher serious matters, you understand nothing. All that you have is not yours.

"You have a garbage can and, until now, you have been dumping things into it. There are many precious things in it which you could make use of. There are specialists who collect all kinds of refuse from garbage cans; some make a lot of money this way. In your garbage cans you have enough material to understand everything. If you understand, you will know everything. There is no need to gather more into this garbage can — everything is there. But there is no understanding — the place of understanding is quite empty.

"You may have a great deal of money that does not belong to you, but you would be better off to have far less, even a hundred dollars that is your own, but nothing you have is yours.

"A large idea should be taken only with large understanding. For us, small ideas are all we are capable of understanding — if even these. Generally it is better to have a little thing inside than something big outside.

"Do it very slowly. You can take anything you like and think about it, but think in a different way than you have thought before."

~ George Gurdjieff "Views from the Real World"

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WITHOUT WANTING IT, WITHOUT KNOWING IT, YOU HAVE ALREADY ADVANCE OBJECTIVELY

Questioner: If something wounds me, instead of being angry or offended, I am indifferent.

Gurdjieff: Normal — it is small, but normal. Before, you had your own love. It is cheap, it is an ordinary thing; now you have understood it. You see that it is idiotic, a nullity, an excrement; before, you did not know it. Today you see it; you are not angry. You see the manifestations of excrement. If it is like this, I am very content. Without wanting it, without knowing it, you have already advance objectively, mechanically advance. Soon, you can be our estimable comrade.

~ George Gurdjieff "Paris/Wartime Meetings"

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MUST HAVE MUCH KNOWLEDGE TO BE A GOOD COOK

“It is as important to compose a dish in its correctly-blended elements as a composition of music or the colors in painting. Harmony in scale. Must have much knowledge to be a good cook. A culinary doctor.”

~ "Gurdjieff and the Women of the Rope"