MARCH 27 — GEORGE GURDJIEFF QUOTES
WE MUST HAVE WITHIN US, UNCHANGEABLE SOURCE
GURDJIEFF: We emanate all the time. This flows out from us – task is to keep from flowing out.
At first, can only imagine you not let emanations flow out – but this imagination makes begin data for second body and all this will pass over into the real thing, later.
We must have within us, unchangeable source.
This holding-in of emanations will make energy for unchangeable source. Now, as average man, we have many sources instead of just one from which flow all active initiative. Unchangeable source for which we work can be compared to the "I", though not same thing. Just as we have many I's which each day, each hour take the initiative with us, so we have many sources which give my kinds of impetus and so we have disharmony. We have not one strong central aim with one strong corresponding impetus, but many aims, many sources for impetus. Unchangeable source important, also for harmony.
~ "Gurdjieff and the Women of the Rope"
...
PREPARE YOURSELF TO PLAY EXTERIOR A ROLE AND INTERIOR NOT TO IDENTIFY
Questioner: When one begins to work here (here and outside) the relations that one can have with different persons seem as before to be modified, halting. Must one keep the same expression as formerly (and one is embarrassed for one feels oneself changed), or must one change one's face and engage oneself in a confusion and an improvement that one isn't capable of carrying out?
Gurdjieff: Well, you haven't understood the task I gave you. I told you to learn, to prepare yourself to play exterior a role and interior not to identify yourself. Interior, you do the work given here. Exterior, you change nothing, you should be as before. Before you were doing like that, now you do the same. Play a role without anyone noticing that something is going on in you. Change nothing. You remain as you were before, but you play a role. Well then, you will understand what it is to play a role. You will do the same thing you did six months ago. You change only interior.
Questioner: You gave me that advice for one person, but it's like that in general.
Gurdjieff: For that person also it should be like that. Until you are interior changed, completely changed. Then at that moment, if the other notices that you have changed, he can only respect you. Otherwise, if he remembers it today that you have changed, he will take you for an idiot; he will believe that you have a new idee fixe. You will give him the impression of gaiety, sadness, or idiocy, or that you've fallen in love, or that you've lost at cards. People must not notice you have changed. Be for them the same as before. Doctor, you have understood. He hasn't. The two things must be considered, interior and exterior.
~ George Gurdjieff "Paris/Wartime Meetings"
...
EACH LIFE IS A REPRESENTATIVE OF GOD
"Love may be of different kinds. To understand what kind of love we are speaking about, it is necessary to define it. Now we are speaking about love for life. Wherever there is life — beginning with plants (for they too have life), animals, in a word wherever life exists, there is love. Each life is a representative of God. Whoever can see the representative will see Him who is represented. Every life is sensitive to love. Even inanimate things such as flowers, which have no consciousness, understand whether you love them or not. Even unconscious life reacts in a corresponding way to each man, and responds to him according to his reactions."
~ George Gurdjieff "Views from the Real World"
...
PRISON
NEW YORK
MONDAY, 17 MARCH 1924
The main cause of all misunderstandings in the relationships between people lies in the mistaken idea of the structure of what is called man’s individuality. It is a great mistake to use the word “man” in the singular and to regard him as a single entity which manifests and sees itself as one whole.
When we say “man,” we mean: I am a man, you are a man, he is a man; I wish, I can, I do; you wish, you can, you do; he wishes, he can, he does, and so on. In other words by this form of speech a man wishes to show that he does, he speaks, he feels, with the whole of his organization contained within his skin: the head, the trunk and the extremities.
If this were so, we would indeed he justified in using the word man as defining a separate individual with the basis and causes of all his manifestations and perceptions concentrated in one place in himself.
But actually this is not so. Man's functions, the results of which constitute all his manifestations and perceptions, have their origin in completely separate and independent places and have nothing in common either in their nature or the laws which bring them into action. Moreover, the time of their action or inaction is not dependent on the action of the others.
Man, taken together as a whole, is simply the lodging place of several independent individuals. The actions which we see as arising from the man are not necessarily the joint action of all the individuals who are in this lodging, that is, in man. These actions can be the manifestations of one or another or a third or fourth of them, or of two together, of three, four or more together.
Manifestations which proceed from a man and which superficially may appear identical, do not always come from one and the same center but have their origin in different sources representing independent centers of formation of ideas and experiences.
There are, as it were, several men living in a man, independent of one another, locked together by somebody in one lodging. Imagine that somewhere there has been a revolution, street riots and arrests, and a few people, all completely different, have been taken in one place and locked up in the same cell. They have been living a long time in it and have completely forgotten the time when they were free.
All these people came from the most varied circles of society and race and have different upbringings and different habits.
~ "Gurdjieff's Early Talks 1914-1931"