What I "Should" Do: On Obligations

Eye to Eye, from the Tympanum at St. Foy in Conques

The word should derives from the old English sceal, to owe. It carries the sense of obligation or necessity.

The word is almost certainly related to the german Schuld, which today means, roughly speaking, blame (responsibility is Verantwortlichkeit), but originally mean responsibility, as in, Ich bin schüldig, “I am responsible.” The word means, in its essence, to owe—what is owed—and presents as a question in itself: what do I owe?

It furthermore expands its meaning only in the context of relationship, presuming as it does that the potential of debt and the absolute of responsibility (the ability to respond) are both present in the transaction of relationship. It’s true: we probably don’t think this deeply about words as we use them; but perhaps we should. They come from deep roots in the cultural, societal and personal tradition of humanity, and using them too casually invites misinterpretations and misunderstandings.

Gurdjieff’s universe and attendant cosmology are founded on principles of responsibility, so we can argue, in the broadest of terms, that Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson is all about what mankind should do—as opposed to what he does, which turns out to be the subject of most of the book. The point is that the book, in its recapitulation of man’s miscreants, misdeeds, and misunderstandings, would miss its mark if it didn’t present alternatives.

Which it does.  

Gurdjieff’s metaphysics is one of caring; for each other, and for a higher good under the obligation that the very fact of life itself places us under. Life isn’t accidental or free; it’s a precious substance bestowed. The jewel in the crown of the universe is awareness itself; consciousness, and not what it perceives, is the most precious object for Beings.

Consciousness is the utmost gift given, and given freely; all other elements of the universe flow through it. It’s valued over all other things. 

There are understated—perhaps unstated— and underlying aspects to Gurdjieff’s teachings regarding consciousness. Receivers (vessels containing) of this force are clearly illustrated as existing in emergent hierarchies, each dependent one upon another; each one is a concentration of the force of consciousness that takes its place, successively, in a harmonic system. Implicit is a single entire consciousness, of which all the other concentrated harmonic waves are subsets; and in addition to the premise of set of scientific laws governing the cosmos, a series of obligations arises. Action within this cosmos, then, is not a random series of accidental events (as mechanistic rationalism would have it) but rather a series of contracts—objects, events, circumstances and conditions which are:

1. Subject to the rule of cosmic laws

2. Obligated to form relationships on specific terms relative to the existence of those laws. 

All this, of course, presumes a set of laws that arise from a source: and that source is consciousness itself, which places every creature possessing it under obligation to its requirements and conditions. Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson is, in summary, a complex series of snapshots of what takes place when a deviation from those obligations takes place. Gurdjieff’s premise is that the whole cosmos suffers from it.

The question of duty and obligation thus expands beyond the immediate, beyond the material, into the metaphysical entity of consciousness itself; and Gurdjieff would have us consider our obligations on that scale, as well as the scale of the immediate. We should, in other words, behave in a manner “becoming to three-brained beings”: we owe this in payment for our arising. Consciousness (awareness) is not free; it comes at a price.

To eliminate the word “should” from our exchange on the way we live our lives, both inwardly and outwardly, creates a relativism that pretends flexibility but actually collapses the balloon of responsibility within which our universe is supposed to exist. The ideas that the word conveys are inherent to Gurdjieff’s view of the universe; and they need to become inherent to our own personal sense of obligations, both inwardly and outwardly, in which we learn how to organically and instinctively meet the debts we owe as conscious beings to that which has given birth to us: both the cells we are composed of (for surely we owe them our attention and respect) and the higher energies which flow through us, without which nothing at all would exist. We stand between these two sets of forces, above us and beneath us, in the midst of a field of forces that ask us to meet both dimensions — the higher in the lower — with an active sense of what we must pay to help each of them continue their own existence, as well as contribute to our own.

 It’s our responsibility, our duty—our obligation—to determine how to achieve this.

We should.

Wishing the best for you on this day,

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.