The Movement of Being

Jan. 10, 2021

Reading the Gurdjieff wartime meeting from Thursday, June 20, 1944.

My first reaction to this text was a summary, in some senses, of all the texts in this book, still available as I write this in French only.

That impression is one of so many exercises being given, very specific exercises person by person, according to who they are and what they say. 

It’s certain that this particular practice has died out in the Gurdjieff work; in fact, perhaps only Gurdjieff himself could have done it. 

One begins to wonder whether the heart of what he was trying to do with people died with him in this respect.

One worries, equally, about how every Tom, Dick, and Harry adopts one or another exercise for themselves or gives it to others, thinking it will “help” them, in the face of the incontrovertible evidence that no one really knows what they are doing in this regard. The fact that Gurdjieff frequently warns his followers that what is good for one person in terms of an exercise could be dangerous for the next underscores the folly of this approach; and yet it continues. Those who propagate such practices do so on a foundation of self-justification that withers in the light of plain facts. 

It raises the question of whether reading this book will help people at all if they believe that somehow this or that applies directly to them. One needs to be quite careful with that idea.

Caveat emptor.

A second impression. Gurdjieff’s methods had changed considerably by this time. The intense pressure of the war, the crucible of oppression and fear that surrounded everything, transformed him into a deeper and deeper and more and more humanitarian creature, one more than ever focused on the inner well-being of those who came to him for help. Underneath his gruff behavior and his curses, his outright dismissal of questions, a loving heart.

The third impression. Gurdjieff repeatedly tells people not to work too much. One third of the time. That’s all. Anything more, one exposes oneself to the danger of the idee fix, the obsession. One should learn to let go of this work as well as hold onto it. That requires a deft touch and an active intelligence.

And this fourth impression. 

We are very confused inside. The outer world isn’t going to give us answers for this. There aren’t any there. The July 20, 1944 meeting is in some senses a signature meeting for this question. 

I translated it last night and was somehow removed from what it said. My personal reaction was, “it isn’t interesting.” I critiqued his attitude towards those who questioned him and felt a generalized lack of connection with the proceedings. Admittedly, I was a bit tired and did the translation toward the end of the day, and I'm a morning person who tends to concentrate their attention and experience of Being in the earlier part of the day and let it relax later. 

This morning I woke up and came back to the meeting because I was looking for a piece from the translations to share with some others for a discussion group later in the week.

The fourth impression, of how Gurdjieff keeps turning people back towards the repair of their own inner car, was now a much stronger and more compelling one. I saw at once how absolutely right he was in everything he said. The text is important not because of the minutia of his exchanges and exactly what he says to others, but in the gist of his message, which is that we keep looking outside ourselves for answers—where there aren’t any. 

We aren’t even prepared to receive answers; if a real one came to us, we’d mistake it for something else, trip over it and then pick ourselves up and carry on as though nothing had happened. One has to prepare a ground from within to receive something true; and yet we all definitely want to have everything true without a prepared ground to rest it on.

This is directly related to Christ’s admonitions about those who build their houses on sand. (Matthew 7:24) If my own inward being isn’t in order, if I don’t manage to bring my relationship with the personal under some kind of control and into some kind of order, everything from outside that comes into me is instantly transformed into subjective material, and no matter how true or untrue it may be, what is certain is that it will make me more, not less, subjective. A subjective mechanism can only give subjective results.

This is the critical issue regarding Gurdjieff’s methodology. If we do not ruthlessly examine how we are from within, and constantly question our attitudes, opinions, behavior, everything we do, in a healthy — not destructive — way, we are doomed to a collapse into the selfishness of our personality, we are slaves to what has been created in us from without. 

The house of "I am" is destroyed by the rain, floods, and wind.

I live in a world where I am watching people collapse in exactly this way. I am watching friends I have known for many years collapse into bizarre forms of subjectivity in which they believe objective untruths with a zeal I never could have imagined. Their belief that these things, which they seize on as intensely as Gollum clutched the one ring, are true is nothing short of incredible. 

Yet there it is.

I have pondered this for some months. There's no way to fix the damage that this kind of subjectivity does. Observing it, I note that most of it comes from a beginning root that says “I am this. I am that.” 

It never, ever, comes from the root of my own premise for life, which is, “What am I?”

To this, the simple statement, “I am.” 

Between the polarity of “I am this” and “what am I?” we find “I am.” So the formulation becomes: 

I am this.

What am I?

I am. 

Holy affirming, holy denying, holy reconciling.

This is a deeply inner process, which we must take responsibility for ourselves. No one part of it can be ignored. It is what creates the movement of Being.

 May you be well within today.

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.