YOU CAN DO THIS ONLY LITTLE BY LITTLE. NOTHING HAPPENS ALL AT ONCE

Questioner: Can one sleep consciously—remain conscious during sleep.

Gurdjieff: It is possible, but not for you now. One can remember something so that it enters into you automatically. Auto-suggestion. One can suggest to oneself during sleep. Before being able to sleep consciously one must have a different quality of sleep. There are gradations. There are four kinds of sleep; one can sleep a sixth, a quarter, a half, or completely. It depends on what your waking state has been. If you dream while you sleep, you only sleep half. You then need seven and a half hours' sleep. If you do not dream, four and a half hours are enough. It is the quality that is important. You sleep seven and a half hours. You take two hours to relax at night, two hours to contract again in the morning. That leaves you three and a half hours of sleep. You do not relax consciously but automatically, and that takes time. You can relax yourself consciously until you sleep, while on the other hand you establish the necessary relation between your body and your consciousness. In the morning when you wake, do the same thing.

Make a program immediately, reflecting, suggesting to yourself the way in which you are determined to spend the day. Do the same work which you have thought about. Your activity will double itself. Make a real program, not a fantasy. You must create the habit. You can do this only little by little. Nothing happens all at once. Change the quality of your sleep. Give yourself a good cold rubdown before you sleep. When you are going to sleep, pray for your near ones who are dead. These things are a good preparation for sleep. Otherwise, you will continue your dreams and fantasies in the evening.

~ George Gurdjieff "Paris/Wartime Meetings"

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AFTER GREAT SUFFERING THERE IS PROPORTIONATELY GREAT REACTION

Question: Is it necessary to suffer all the time to keep conscience open?

Answer: Suffering can be of very different kinds. Suffering is also a stick with two ends. One leads to the angel, the other to the devil. One must remember the swing of the pendulum, and that after great suffering there is proportionately great reaction. Man is a very complicated machine. By the side of every good road there runs a corresponding bad one. One thing is always side by side with the other. Where there is little good there is also little bad; where there is much good there is also much bad. The same with suffering—it is easy to find oneself on the wrong road. Suffering easily becomes pleasurable. You are hit once, you are hurt; the second time you are less hurt; the fifth time you already wish to be hit. One must be on guard, one must know what is necessary at each moment, because one can stray off the road into a ditch.

~ George Gurdjieff "Views from the Real World"

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“Conscious labors and intentional suffering are the same thing — they cannot be separated.” ~ "Gurdjieff and the Women of the Rope"

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REMEMBER, YOU MUST EXPERIENCE THESE FEELINGS

In the Cafe de la Paix, he [Gurdjieff] gave the following exercise to Miss Gordon and Kanari, in nearly perfect English.

“Take any object and put it to your feeling; represent it to yourself with feeling. Then answer these questions. Remember, you must experience these feelings, Kanari. And you. Miss Gordon, you must stir (up) your mind, and police with feeling. As you continue this exercise, you must diversify your objects. Here are the questions.

“1. Its nature and beginning.

“2. The reason for its arising and the aim of its service,

“3. Its dependents and if anything else can be used in its place,

“4. Personal opinion of it and objective opinion.

“5. Its end and its following actualization.

“6. Its legitimate use and the most great and most small use to which it can be put,

"7. Its objective inevitability and its subjective property of service.”

~ "Gurdjieff and the Women of the Rope"