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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