truth is the most precious thing

Truth is the most precious thing; how to serve it in the right way? I attach importance to it, but there must not dream about it.

Each time it comes it must bring me back to effort. I tried to keep it simple, bringing the attention as much as I can back to myself, being concerned about here, now, not expecting it to give me any result.

Here – now – I myself – alive.

What is myself? Something which has always been there, lost in the thoughts, feelings, sensations, never realised as distinct – the essence 'I'.

Nothing in us is able to hold attention in the way it is needed, to really centre our attention, to keep it for ourselves, for a real pulling together of all the powers which have been given to us to be. But the incentive for trying again can become a little stronger if it corresponds to something we need. I have not got it but I need I know it.

We must not forget our infinite capacity for lying to ourselves. Inner sincerity is somewhat costly and takes a long time to acquire. I am more than one, that is what is so difficult to take; I am a collection of people who have different aims and wishes, and they hide from one another like antagonistic tenants in the same house. I cannot believe this until I have proved it to myself repeatedly. I am like a lunatic inside; I begin to question myself and I get no answer which could be constructive. I go to my own house but I am not received; I am a foreigner at home, the whole of my house is in the hands of foreigners.

But I know there is something fundamentally wrong. I try to wish that I am given a moment of a more real approach to my situation; I knew all my attention to that question. And in my life I may catch something if I am open to receive it.

The only thing I can do is to know something about myself, my reaction is; am I only that reaction? There is something in me which observes it, I must fight tried to feel myself there with that reaction. I have to be concerned, but in a different way and I need to find a place where this could be. This is the effort.

I tried to listen inside to discover my attention. I need attention of a quite different order, different kinds of attention to come together; mind attention, feeling, sensation. Then relaxation opens to a kind of field.

I am always the prisoner of my tensions and for a long time I can only let go limited amounts. But I can turn towards my wish, towards my search, towards the inside. I can come to a quieter experience of life – not as a turmoil thoughts and obligations, but to a relative silence in me. In this silence perhaps I can wish much further inside; I wish to see something of my reactions, of the way I live. I don't know how I live, living in sleep – do I live in sleep? Honestly I then know; I can only know from sure when I have had moments of real awakening.

The urge of a man is to turn ordinary life into a comfortable bed in which to sleep, an impulse we all share. We experience life like a sleeper in a bed full of prickles. We are people who are trying to accept the prickles as something fundamentally necessary, but we are awkward and mixed up in making use of them. The more we accept the prickles. The more sincerity we will obtain. But then the moment arises who is there to experience it?

Sensation is not an end, it is a means, a means to keep related with the inside of our life. Impressions never stop: if I were shut in the Coffin with enough at, I could live for some time because impressions come back as associations. If I am to be given self-knowledge, it will not be from observation, it will be because attention can be rooted inside. Then every kind of impression, including my own associations and feelings, will enable me to become relatively present from inside, not from the mind.

I have not to believe: I have to know I am absent from my life. Every time I am thinking of the teaching, without trying to have some experience of it, I am dreaming.

Man is much less than he believes and infinitely more. As a person he is nothing; in what is potential, is being is immense. But what is the use of saying that, do I believe it, as it make any sense?

I have to be did in myself. How do I spend each day of my life, what am I achieving that is really useful? I begin something and I go on for three hours. What has taken place? Then the next three hours? We can distinguish between outside, and inside time. Our hands engage in things which do not demand much thought and inside, on another line of time, I am dreaming. Or I maybe bored. This is like going on two different lines of time. Gradually I come to be able to use that inner time for something constructive and useful. "I'm sorry I have no time" – this is one of our biggest lies, mostly unconscious, most of the time we have no idea that we have more time. How do I use time and what is time? It has a certain duration but it has suddenly passed. It has no duration for us, it is something abstract which is gone. And then sometimes we try to kill it when it is killing us! Slowly perhaps, but surely.

We are in a very extraordinary position when we are able to hear ourselves from inside. I listen from a quite different place, taking great care not to interfere with the situation. I let it be. What I want is to have different impressions which I can distinguish. We grope in that unknown world and we receive information that is difficult to pacify in our ordinary files. We know something has a taste of something genuine, a taste of life. I receive it as a direct impact, a direct experience; I receive it from something different from my head. Then I do my best not to disturb it. I respect that state of things in me just now it will not last very long. I cannot do anything to lengthen it; I have to be as open as possible to receive it.

Inner friction brings in us, to a different kind of energy. We cannot create the conditions for that friction, but I may try to accept something that some part of me is reluctant to tackle, while another part has a different wish. I don't overcome the resistance with brutality, I experience it. Yes and no in me can create something new. Together, not in collision, an acceptance to bad both of them although they are antagonistic. Sometimes it may create in me that state where I can be there and know myself. It must always be treated with great respect and care. I cannot deal with that as I do, things in life.

Henriette Lannes

Now, I wish to tell you that if you do not go deeper into attention, you will achieve neither your inside nor your outside aim. I had it from Mr Gurdjieff that in all we do we must have an inside and an outside name.

Something that we do in life without an inside aim will never sustain our work and the two names must help each other. I trust that our people to take that most seriously, to really try to bring in their ordinary work. Some relationship with what they try to be. If they achieve it, and I'm sure that something of quite a different order would be possible.

So wroteHenriette Lannes in her book, inside a question which is an invaluable and extremely practical aid to anyone trying to understand and practice the ideas of Mr Gurdjieff.

Henriette Lannes

Henriette Lannes

YouTube - Puppetji Speaks: "WHO AM I ? "

YouTube - Puppetji Speaks: "WHO AM I ? "

Gurdjieff International Review, Vol. III No. 1

Gurdjieff International Review, Vol. III No. 1

FAITH, HOPE, AND LOVE

Faith of consciousness is freedom
Faith of feeling is weakness
Faith of body is stupidity.
Love of consciousness evokes the same in response
Love of feeling evokes the opposite
Love of body depends only on type and polarity,
Hope of consciousness is strength
Hope of feeling is slavery
Hope of body is disease.

consciousness

from fragments, ch 8:


AT ONE of the following lectures G. returned to the question of
consciousness.
"Neither the psychical nor the physical functions of man can
be understood," he said, "unless the fact has been grasped that they can
both work in different states of consciousness.
"In all there are four states of consciousness possible for man" (he emphasized the word "man"), "But ordinary man, that is, man number one, number two, and number three, lives in the two lowest states of consciousness only. The two higher states of consciousness are inaccessible to him, and although he may have flashes of these states, he is unable to understand them and he judges them from the point of view of those states in which it is usual for him to be.
"The two usual, that is, the lowest, states of consciousness are first, sleep, in other words a passive state in which man spends a third and very often a half of his life. And second, the state in which men spend the other part of their lives, in which they walk the streets, write books, talk on lofty subjects, take part in politics, kill one another, which they regard as active and call 'clear consciousness' or the 'waking state of consciousness.' The term 'clear consciousness' or 'waking state of consciousness' seems to have been given in jest, especially when you realize what clear consciousness ought in reality to be and what the state in which man lives and acts really is.
"The third state of consciousness is self-remembering or self-consciousness or consciousness of one's being. It is usual to consider that we have this state of consciousness or that we can have it if we want it. Our science and philosophy have overlooked the fact that we do not possess this state of consciousness and that we cannot create it in ourselves by desire or decision alone.
"The fourth state of consciousness is called the objective state of consciousness In this state a man can see things as they are. Flashes of this state of consciousness also occur in man. In the religions of all nations there are indications of the possibility of a state of consciousness of this kind which is called 'enlightenment' and various other names but which cannot be described in words. But the only right way to objective consciousness.