16-Incontro del 13 luglio 1944

Incontro del 13 luglio 1944

Mme de S: Ci sono delle domande?

Dr. Blano: Mentre lavoro ho l'impressione della completa sparizione del mio corpo fisico. Sento due cose distinte; una di proporzioni più grandi del mio solito e della quale non conosco i limiti. L'alta più interna, più limitata capace di dirigermi e che non ha una forma precisa, anche se è comparabile al mio corpo. 

Gurdjieff: Quello che spieghi ora, non sembra il nostro lavoro. Se continui, hai una buona possibilità di diventare una candidato per il manicomio. È lo stato che conoscono gli spiritualisti e i teosofi. Fermati immediatamente. Non devi dimenticare che tu sei un corpo. Devi sempre ricordare il tuo corpo. Non hai ancora un "io", nessun "me". Non dimenticarlo. Soltanto così puoi avere un futuro. Più avanti il tuo corpo avrà un vero "io", un vero "me" come dovrebbe averli ogni persona normale. Ora tu senti l'assenza del corpo, no?

Blano: Sì

Gurdjieff: Bene, devi sentire il tuo corpo dieci volte tanto. Non è necessario lasciare il tuo corpo. È necessario rinforzarlo. C'è tanta gente come te; sono degli psicopatici.

Blano: Come posso intensificare la sensazione del mio corpo quando sento che se ne sta andando?

Gurdjieff: Lavati la testa con acqua fredda. Fai una ginnastica difficile. Per esempio, tieni le braccia a croce per quindici, venti minuti, mezz'ora, mentre pensi "io sono", "io voglio essere". Pensa come con il corpo. Senti il tuo corpo. Caccia via tutte le associazioni psicopatiche; queste sono malattia, debolezza.

Yahne: A me sembra di essere sempre più fisico. La mia sola coscienza è quella delle sensazioni. Nella mia vita ordinaria e nei miei esercizi, provo la scomodità di essere incollato alle mie funzioni e di non essere capace di staccarmene. Come posso raggiungere una vita più spirituale?

Gurdjieff: Yahne, quello che chiedi, che vuoi, lo capisco. Non hai lo psichismo interno del sentimento. Lo vuoi rafforzare. Sto per darti due esercizi che sono solo per te, per nessun altro. È necessario separare le tue funzioni organiche dalla tua individualità. Al momento, quando stai lavorando, quando ricordi te stesso, hai un altro stato rispetto al solito. È necessario separare questi due stati. Per questo c'è un esercizio, una serie intera di esercitazioni persino.

Here is the first: you do it, for example, seated, leaning comfortably

installed in an arm-chair or on a couch. There is a spot where the arms are

attached to the body, (region of the shoulders) and a spot where the legs are

attached to the body, (hip-joint); feel and control these four spots all the time. All

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your attention must be concentrated there. Send everything else to the devil.

When you say "I am" imagine that these four spots are like four pillars on which

is supported your "I am". Focus your attention; not on the extremities nor to the

interior of the body. All your concentration is fixed on these four places. Do this

for your future real "me". To begin, learn to know this state; it is like a measure,

a clue. You will self-remember when you can feel well these four places. Leave

all the rest. Live life as before. This is your only exercise, but do it very seriously

so that all of the most concentrated moments of your work be based on those

spots. After, you shall have title to a real individuality. These things could only

serve as a barrier between your individuality and your ex-functions. I say "ex"

because you must have a new quality of functions. The whole world must have a

new quality of functions - because of an abnormal life in the past. It is necessary

to create a barrier. For you, it shall be the result of this exercise. When you feel

and are conscious of this definite barrier, your ground shall be prepared for a

new exercise; then you will be able to have a new interior, independent, and a

new exterior, independent. You shall have a normal body and a normal

psychism, without the abnormal ex-functions. This is solely for her and for no

one else. Do not try to do it out of curiosity. It is a very dangerous thing.

Hignette: I would like to ask how I could be sure that I am self-remembering and that I am

working with my three centers. I have understood, theoretically, the necessity for

this operation, but I would like to know if there exists a criterion for it. (Later) It

was less a question than a doubt; I do not know if it is worth asking.

Gurdjieff: You have understood that it was a naive thing which you asked? Never read

spiritualistic books. This leads to psychopathy, to insane asylums. Who has a

question to ask?

Mme Dubeau: After each time that I work, I have a big revolt and at the same time I am very

. tired in my body. The physical carries along the psychical, and I do not succeed

in emerging from it.

Gurdjieff: It is the scarcity of cold water. You do not like to do this. It is important reason

for bringing up a conflict. The organism does not like it. The head alone,

perhaps, asks it. It is the real reason for your revolt. It does not know it perhaps,

but this is so. The head looks for explanations, for reasons.. The body is very

spoiled, very indolent. Each day now you have a different psychic

state. Continue a week, and now with the coldest water.

Mme Dubeau: I gave up everything two days ago.

Gurdjieff: Forget now that you have not done it for two days. Your body must ask excuses

from your spirit. If it pardons, I shall pardon also. Act as if you had been sick

during these two days. Now I advise a new thing: each day buy, for five francs,

some "flace" and put it in water.

Mme Dubeau: But, Gurdjieff, it seems to me that all this that I am doing, the whole instruction

depends on the will of the head. This grows weaker, and in a moment all

snaps.

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Gurdjieff: Your head cannot will for a long time. When the accumulator is discharged, stop.

Only, you decide; I do not want this animal to dominate me. Pardon, it is your

indolent animal: it is like a cat, a dog, a mouse. Now you know that you cannot

be in yourself along time. All that is dignified in man is submissive to this

animal.

Mme Dubeau: Yet, I find good reasons for being in revolt against the work. I lose all

my illusions and I have nothing tangible in exchange.

Gurdjieff: The whole world submits to it. You are part of your stool, and you are not still

seated on another. We regret it. It is a very bad state to be between two stools.

Believe me. Buy a mirror; after that, another life shall begin and another illusion.

Mme Dubeau: In life, when people do you harm, must one say to oneself, "I don't care; it is

not harmful", or defend oneself against them?

Gurdjieff: A bit of good advice: look at each of these occasions as a way of working in order

to enlarge your will. It is very easy. You know what relations you used to have

earlier, automatically. Today reply consciously, make yourself known

consciously.

Mme Dubeau: But in the same way?

Gurdjieff: As you wish. Bad, Good. This does not exist. The result of this shall be to

charge your accumulator for the next demonstration. The more consciously you

do this, the more energy you shall have; and that which appeared impossible to

you will appear better than expected.

Boussik: Indeed, these last times, I have tried that. I ascertained that at that time I had no

more identifications or negative emotions, that I had closed off impressions of the

other kind and that I was accusing myself.

Gurdjieff: First you must feel clearer and stop your "idiocy". Then you will increase the

energy in your accumulator.

Mme Dupre: Can everybody do this exercise?

Gurdjieff: That is a good object. I am happy that you perceive it. Control each act. If you

remember to do it consciously and not automatically, you shall have a result quite

different.

Aboulker: I would like to ask you a question on remorse. It is very difficult for me to feel

remorse. Example: one imagines that he loves his parents. The work shows you

your egotism and this assists you in stirring up remorse; but for me, I have not

had any illusions about myself for a long time, since the age of 14 or 15 perhaps.

The work has showed me that there were in some things that I believed entirely

egotistical, something other than egotism.

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Gurdjieff: You cannot have the future that you want without retrieving the past. If you

remain as you are, you can have no future. For example, you say that the work

has showed you a part in you that is not absolutely egotistical.

Aboulker: I don't feel, today, a grain of love for my neighbor.

Gurdjieff: Ah, that is another question. Take something other than egotism.

Aboulker: (asks in answer to his question) Having never had illusions about the value of my

sentiments as a son, as a brother, these ascertainings do not give me impulse to

stir up remorse.

Gurdjieff: You have looked here only at big things. It is necessary to look now at the small.

Your worthlessness is related to small things. Certain, positive little things, by

degrees. One must make a beginning; egotism is a big thing.

Aboulker: I do not want to venture out in a hackneyed way. This is why I ask assistance.

Gurdjieff: I understood, doctor, I sincerely understood your need. When you change, when

you become different, you cannot see it. When you say I could not see it; who

cannot, which one? You are many; in you, there are not one but many people.

Try to make some statistics. You are four people. Which can see, which cannot?

When?

Aboulker: In the biggest majority of cases, it is the habitual me that sees the habitual me.

Gurdjieff: The "habitual me" is not always the same; for example, when you have eaten

well .... Usually we speak of the three functions. Today I tell you that you are

four. There are even seven of them in all. In you, there is a function: that of sex.

Take these four functions; thoughts, emotions, instinct, sex. When the one is

boss, when it directs and governs all, how does it see, or does it not see?

Aboulker: I do not understand well

Gurdjieff: Reflect for two days. It is not necessary to reply immediately. Until the present I

had spoken of your three functions, today I speak of the fourth which influences

you even more than your food. Food has less influence for the individual than

this fourth, than sex. Today, your power is below its subordination. You are a

function of this thing.

Aboulker: How does one overcome this thing? Isn't that "to see oneself'?

Gurdjieff: I have given you this principle. Perhaps you have chosen, in order look at your

past life, a line in which this quality of yourself or ego was absent. Now I advise

you to usher it in, to take it into account; also in your observations of your past.

Even in your relations with your father.

Aboulker: Madame, I do not completely understand what is this fourth factor?

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Mme de S: Sex.

Aboulker: My attitude with my patients; absence of love, professional sentiment. One time

last year I felt something else. I would like to discover it.

Gurdjieff: I have given you a key to search your past. You have a sexual state always

different. What result do you have in one state? What results in another?

Observe from this point of view. These results will give you a different value.

Now do you understand?

Aboulker: Yes, Monsieur.

Gurdjieff: He who had initiative in the past was this Monsieur. The observations will unfold

for you a secret and this secret will open up a hole from which will depart the

remorse of conscience.

Aboulker: I apologize but I am always afraid of not being understood.

Gurdjieff: Sometimes I have the appearance of not having understood. It is because I want

to bring you to understand something else.

Aboulker: I fear that I am being laughed at:

Gurdjieff: I haven't dealt a single blow to your body with my feet. Doctor, I want to make

you see in your life two sides; one side, filthy, and one side, filthier. What

interests me is that you see yourself. I would not even desire to give you the

impulsion for that. That must come from you, from you alone. Until the next

time, you shall think about this new idea which I give you. You shall put your

question to me again, later; perhaps I shall reply to you aside.

Mlle de I would like to know from where comes this internal voice which dictates to us

Gaigneron our acts and which is more sure and steady than instinct.

Gurdjieff: Philip, how are you? You have grown again a little bit. Three months of

absence; now you are already all changed. When one does not see children for a

certain time, one notices that they grow. I know many children that have become

young women, men. There are even some who have aged.

15-Incontro del 25 maggio 1944

Meeting of May 25, 1944

Not many people today.

Mechin: I did rather regularly the exercise of "filling up". It fatigued me. I had headaches

during the day. Must I continue?

Gurdjieff: Continue. You shall pass this crisis, your salvation is within. You must succeed

in breaking down something. Do not be sparing; this fatigue can give you

subtlety. You are strong like a pig. But for our work one must be a goat, a young

goat is very good, an old goat, a bad odor. (To the doctor) I am sorry that you

arrived late; I spoke concerning a medical question. I do the contrary of the usual

doctor; he is not nervous; I make him nervous; the doctor nurses this; I aggravate

it. He has everything except this thing. He is a bull, but not a purebred bull. It is

necessary to change into a purebred bull. If you do not change, you will remain

like an old goat. A moveable source of horrible emanations. Often you see,

doctor, among your patients ….

Pomereu: I have the impression of having more and more difficulty in the exercise of

Sunday. I do not succeed in giving a shock to the chest and the vertebrae column.

Gurdjieff: You know why it is difficult?

Pomereu: I don't know; probably because I work too much with my head.

Gurdjieff: You have not interest; you do not work with your being. You want to do it only

theoretically.. not you. You have decided by chance with your head, but it is not

you who desires. It is necessary now for you to have one aim with all your being;

if you walk like this, then you shall wake this function up a little; you do not feel

because you have not sentiment.

Among others, I say a thing that is not for you and at the same time is for you. I

have ascertained this afternoon a thing which can render great service to all of you.

It is an instinct which is not decayed. They are of good breeding. You are of a

degenerate class. When you say "simple persons", it is that they are not yet

degenerated. You do not have that normal thing that all the animals have. You

notice it is simple people; for this I say, they are purebred, not degenerate; it is

badly educated, it is simple. This thing that we have begun with you, it would be

well to return to something ancient or it would be well for something new to be

born in you. You can already begin to see on the 7th time that you come to me.

You do not have contact or you do not poison yourself, one or the other, in order

to go toward your aspirations. It is possible to have a common contact through the

aim. It is possible with practice. For example, when you are seated together do not

spend your time internally like in life. Use this occasion to do an exercise; suggest

to yourself that this atmosphere about you, wakes up the desire to go toward the

aim ...everybody here. This atmosphere is warming for an aspiring

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with all your being toward a common aim. When you find yourselves

together, suddenly, automatically it produces this heating. You can have a

reciprocal action on a whole city. Paris is big; but if you begin it will

become, little by little, possible that, if one movement is produced in a

corner of this atmosphere, it will start an unrest which will spread over all.

You have knowledge of different telepathic acts. It is as if the atmosphere

became large; a material is formed like in the web of a spider. If, in one of

the meshes, a new force enters, this can correspond in the whole network,

like in a electric conduit. It is necessary, when you are accidentally

together, that you do an exercise. You create a factor of inclination for

succeeding in your aim with all your mass. For this it is necessary that two

things happen, auto-suggestion and representation by forms, but subjective

forms. In the beginning you will understand what is happening; it is not

important to picture it to oneself exactly. Imagine that in you there is a

network. If one current comes in one point, it shall arrive everywhere, if

one sensation of warmth is in one point, all the points shall feel the heat,

the cold. Picture how what happens in one place happens everywhere.

Lanctin: In the weeks that just slipped away, I tried to make two parts well-carved in my

life. I tried to arrange my external life as a function of the internal work that I had

decided on, and to no longer do this work in the moments, left free by life. The

center of this work is the exercise of "filling up" which allows me to reach a form

in which I can always find myself. But I encounter, as soon as I have life, two

obstacles. My body and my head. My body is an obstacle that I know. I know

how to conquer it. But what I cannot conquer is my head, my attention. I do not

see how to destroy this obstacle. In forcing, I succeed always in a result, but I

feel that I force wrong.

Gurdjieff: You know that with your body you could sooner or later succeed. The head does

not exist; it is the result of the body.

Lanctin: But when the body is completely passive

Gurdjieff: With your head you can; with your head you cannot.... but head is body.

Lanctin: With the body I see what to do; not with the head.

Gurdjieff: Work with the body; for your body.

Lanctin You forget the head.

Gurdjieff: If the body changes, the head will change ....with another body, another head. If

you feel already something with your body, continue. The head shall follow the

body.

Mme de S: The head must do nothing; it must be there as a witness. It shall train

itself to remember.

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Gurdjieff: It will serve you as an aid to recall. The role of your head is to be present. The

service of your head is to be a constant witness. Bit by bit, it will no longer be

away. With this you can change. It is very good advice.

Kahn: I have the feeling of this exercise. I feel things, I filled. But I lose the inspiration;

I have nervous contractions which I cannot conquer.

Gurdjieff: You do not have the rhythm. It is necessary to do different things. (1) Inhale

normally; (2) Retain the air while becoming discontracted; (3) Exhale without

becoming contracted. It is not necessary to relax when you retain.

Kahn: I always have contracted exhalations.

Gurdjieff: You do not have rhythm, perhaps you have other disharmonies.

Kahn: You had told me to breathe some water; I have always one nostril that stops up.

Gurdjieff: You must continue. If you have been ill all your life, it is not possible to recover

in one week. You have already change; before, it was always the same nostril

that stopped up. Doctor, it is an original thing that this organic thing disappears.

It goes to another place, thus there is no illness; and nevertheless illness. All

doctors that here, there is sickness; I say that this thing can disappear and go

elsewhere, here or here... If not illness, then what is it? It is an absurd original

thing, but the patient understand it.

Kahn: Already before, I had the impression that if I was guided I would succeed in

making this contraction disappear.

Gurdjieff: Continue that and do the new special exercise. To begin you take your watch and

you divide your time exactly into three parts, not more than 10 seconds each

between 5 and 10 seconds; and not often, 2 or 3 times in 24 hours.

Kahn: Not in life?

Gurdjieff: With the exercise it is best. You put half the attention.

Paquer: How can I know and determine if I am identified with the work?

Gurdjieff: You must never work more than one third of your state of awakeness; if during

the other two-thirds you think about it, then you are identified. It is easy to

recollect.

Aboulker: You told me that there are some times to detest my parents .......now I can do it.

Now I understand that I must detest the idea that I have of them and that I ought

to live as if I had always been an orphan.

Gurdjieff Do you pity yourself in these moments?

Aboulker: On the contrary, I receive some force from them.

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Gurdjieff What force?

Aboulker: The force of having to rely only on myself

Gurdjieff: You have heard my explanation? You have felt that I was content or not content?

Aboulker: Since you spoke to me of it a long time ago, you must know what must happen.

Gurdjieff: Remember to ask Mme de S.

What time is it?

Try now to do this exercise of forming a web.

The whole brotherhood also did the same thing. You know the proverb: "one for

all, all for one". In ordinary life, this is a lie, because it is not realizable. But here

is a brotherhood. They all have one common aim. One of them is there; but he

must desire that all attain it, and inversely, the others are also obliged to help him.

This example approaches that which one must do. This shall assist you in

receiving a contact. Even egotistically one must desire it, because, in every feeble

state, one shall be aided. One could say that, word for word, it is like in a

cobweb.

Mme

Thezenas: Can the weakest be aided thus?

Gurdjieff: This is not the subject. One is only excited. There exist two things; matter and

force. This exercise is to urge, to excite, to animate.

AFTER DINNER

Gurdjieff: Blond #2, is there something new with your health?

Gurdjieff: Good or bad, this does not exist. Only change exists.

Mme Vie: I have more headaches.

Gurdjieff: One sometimes calls bad that which is good. Before, you never had headaches;

thus, it is very good. Perhaps what I have has produced an awakening. Your

brain had not blood. The blood never passed through there; now the blood passes

through, and so you have pain.

Mme Vie: I await …

Gurdjieff: It interests me to know this. You must not wait; sometimes the unhappiness of

others makes me happy.

Mechin: I forgot to ask you something. In the exercise of "filling" , I have difficulty in

filling up the thighs.

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Gurdjieff: What did you call it? Oh, the legs. We are going to speak about the legs. Change

nothing in what I have explained. You have only to conquer the pig more and it

must become a goat. Perhaps now the pig is in a very good path. Perhaps it only

remains for the leg to change. Do not put special attention on that which concerns

your leg. Sooner or later it shall be done. You have another quality now; do not

separate the thighs from the head. All that shall be done.

Mme T: I succeed in doing the "filling" with a very very strong acuteness.

Gurdjieff: It is perhaps the first time that you have put all your conscience there. But first,

what exercise are you doing?

Mme T: The "filling".

Gurdjieff: You were there when I explained it? .

Mme T: No, Mme de S explained it to me.

Gurdjieff: Oh, Mme de S. The whole process happens without me. I am as if I fell from the

moon.

Mme T: I feel the exercise very well, but I have the impression that it is a drudgery. In the

beginning it interested me because it was new.

Gurdjieff: Do you have an aim for which you are doing, in general, all these things?

Mme T: Yes, I have an aim.

Gurdjieff: I have always regarded you as a visitor. It is now necessary to have a little

knowledge. What is your aim?

Mme T: To succeed in being oneself.

Gurdjieff: You are not? You have a suspicion that you can succeed in being? So ............It is

still too soon for you to do an exercise. You can receive much from them but you

do not have sufficient preparation to do them. You shall do only one exercise - 2 or 3

times in 24 hours: Relax consciously. You allow your thought, like a policeman, to

verify everywhere that your muscles are not contracted. There exist three qualities

of muscles: large, medium, small. You shall spend a week in relaxing each

category of muscle. When you are sure that you can really relax completely, then

you shall return to me and you shall re-ask your question. Not "Lay down", ask

.....Can you explain to me in French; "lay down" and ask? To "lay down" is already

for definite internal things. You can never "lay down" a question. A cigarette alone

can "lay down"; never "lay down" a question. We are speaking of what concerns

bread "lay down"; but a question is of different quality; ask a question, not "lay

down". Definite things you can "lay down".

If you are a French language professor, Mme, I am ..............

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