My nature often led me into situations like this, time and again, with all the resulting human inconsequentialities: egoism, cowardice, dishonesty.

~ Solange Claustres “Becoming Conscious with Mr. Gurdjieff”

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WHAT INTERESTS YOU DIMINISHES IF YOU GIVE IT TO ANOTHER

Questioner: When I meet people who are slightly interested in these questions, or worried by this subject, as soon as I pass on what little experience I have, all that I have learned here diminishes and afterward I feel smaller.

Gurdjieff: Here there is a rule; here our life is exceptional. What we say here, what we do, no one must know.

Questioner: But I say nothing of what we do.

Gurdjieff: But this rule also concerns the ideas. What interests you diminishes if you give it to another and you feel empty. Keep the new ideas for yourself. In life you can use the ideas as instruments. But without identifying. Everything comes out of you with your words.

~ George Gurdjieff "Paris/Wartime Meetings"

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FORGET ABOUT MORALITY

“You should forget about morality. Conversations about morality would now be simply empty talk.

"Inner morality is your aim. Your aim is to be Christian. But for that you must be able to do—and you cannot. When you are able to do, you will become Christian.

"But I repeat, external morality is different everywhere. One should behave like others and, as the saying goes, when in Rome do as the Romans do. This is external morality.

"For internal morality a man must be able to do, and for this he must have an 'I'. The first thing that is necessary is to separate inner things from outer, just as I have said about internal and external considering.

"For instance, I am sitting here, and although I am used to sitting with my legs crossed under me, I consider the opinion of those present, what they are accustomed to, and I sit as they do, with my legs down.

"Now someone gives me a disapproving look. This immediately starts corresponding associations in my feeling, and I am annoyed. I am too weak to refrain from reacting, from considering internally.

"Or, for example, although I know that coffee is bad for me I also know that if I don't drink it I shall not be able to talk, I shall feel too tired. I consider my body, and drink the coffee, doing it for my body.

"Usually we live like that; what we feel inside we manifest outside. But a boundary line should be established between the inner and the outer, and one should learn to refrain from reacting inwardly to anything, not to consider outer impacts, but externally sometimes to consider more than we do now. For instance, when we have to be polite, we should if. necessary learn to be even more polite than we have been till now.”

"It can be said that what has always been inside should now be outside, and what was outside should be inside.

~ George Gurdjieff "Views from the Real World"

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CURIOSITY IS A DIRTY THING

GURDJIEFF: Curiosity is a dirty thing. That is why I am always angry for idiot questions, why philosophizing makes me nervous. In English not exist two words for two kinds of curiosity, as in other languages. Word for other kind of curiosity is needing-to-know. For this needing-to-know you must have material. Then you will not receive something empty.

~ "Gurdjieff and the Women of the Rope"