Gurdjieff Studies

Exact and Inexact Gurdjieff apparently lays great stress on the exactness of language that is necessary for real communication, and on a new principle of relativity. Yet what is this principle really all about?

Gurdjieff seems to lay great stress on the exactness of language that is necessary for real communication, and on a "new principle" of relativity. Yet what is this principle really all about?

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"...in moments of self-remembering and work on oneself. When a man sees both into himself and into the object, or sees himself and the other person simultaneously, then the results of this higher psychic activity form associations of their own class."

(Maurice Nicoll)

"...But if a man labours at learning something and uses his directed attention, then voluntarily formed associations are laid down in him.

"The third class of associations is formed, briefly speaking...

Categories of Associations Further exploration of the bed on which one reposes

"Briefly speaking, all education is to lay down associations that are voluntarily formed, but these are not necessarily so formed. They may be partly laid down unconsciously—that is, involuntarily formed..."

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(Gurdjieff speaking in "In Search of the Miraculous" by P.D. Ouspensky, p.68)

"…And the chief thing is that, owing to the…vagueness and inaccuracy [of ordinary thinking], every word can have thousands of different meanings according to the material the speaker has at his disposal and the complex of associations at work in him at the moment."

Fragments, Chapter 4, pp.68-72 - Reading Club posting 13 "One of the reasons for the divergence between the line of knowledge and the line of being in life, and the lack of understanding which is partly the cause and partly the effect of this divergence, is...

"…the language which people speak…is full of wrong concepts, wrong classifications, wrong associations…"

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  - Journal of Gurdjieff Studies "...everyone is “a self-developing-organism” and must make individual effort. Each person must develop himself or herself on all sides."

"...However, you have heard that the Work tells you here to practise a certain definite thing on yourself—now, at this moment—yes, at this very moment."

(Maurice Nicoll - "Commentaries," Vol.I)

[Commentary continued in link]

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"...So it is said that if you merely listen to this Work and do not practise it, nothing will change in you. ...Well, of course, you can hear this day after day, and year after year, and say that you know all about that, and why is nothing else said..."

"You can either practise this Work or not. But you must all understand that if you practise this Work, now, at this moment (not tomorrow) you are making effort beyond mechanical effort. The point of the Work is to transform daily life..."

The Bed Upon what do we repose?

[Article in link]

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"...please think what you rest on most internally. There is something which cannot be taken away from you. Have you got to this place? Everything else can be taken away by these “bailiffs” that may come at any time and remove everything that is not your own."

(Maurice Nicoll - Commentaries, Vol.I)

"When my body comes to a state where there is no longer any tension, I feel the fineness of the sensation of stillness. It is like the birth of being."

(Jeanne de Salzmann

Healing Fire - 2 Continuation of an examination of intentional suffering in relation to healing. Looking especially at how attention may change the body; activation of emotion; and the idea of suffering “intension.”

How can one understand this peculiar idea and process of intentional suffering using the analogy of Gurdjieff’s burns treatments?

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Muddling and Befuddling A deliberately labyrinthine tale?

Ouspensky says that he thought that Gurdjieff, in his exposition of his ideas in his talks, would give things out initially in an incomplete way, little by little and from different angles, as if protecting these ideas from them.

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"Until we are free of automatism, we cannot learn anything else. We must do away with it temporarily."

(Gurdjieff - "Views from the Real World," p.171)

"…Consciousness is an electrical phenomenon which arises from a state of being which we can feel."

(Orage)

"Electricity: in our usual opinion there are two forms of it, positive and negative; but there is also a third form…the field within which the positive and negative forms are related to each other…"

Fragments, Chapter 3, pp.53-9 - Reading Club posting 10 G.'s fundamental ideas concerning man. Absence of unity. Multiplicity of I's. Construction of the human machine. Psychic centers. G.'s method of exposition of the ideas of the system. Repetition unavo...

"The first point, on which he laid stress, was the absence of unity in man."

(Gurdjieff in ISM)

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"There must be a sacrifice to sustain the feeling of Presence I have at the moment of an effort. I have to accept voluntarily to give up my ordinary will, to make it serve. Everything depends on my active participation."

(Jeanne de Salzmann)

How to read? It seems helpful, and necessary, to come back again and again to the question, How to read?

It seems helpful, and necessary, to come back again and again to the question, How to read?

journalgurdjieffstudies.substack.com/p/how-to-read

"…The door slowly opens and the father looks in. He doesn't do or say anything - just observes. The quarrelling dies down and each child goes on with what he was doing."

(A.R. Orage in "Teachings of Gurdjieff" by C.S. Nott)

"…Through self-sensing, self-remembering, self-observation, a change is brought about in the organism as a change is made in certain chemicals if a catalyst is present. From another aspect it is as if three children, brothers, were in a room quarrelling…"

"One of the extraordinary things about the Method is that, by its use, a change to normality is brought about indirectly…"

"...There is a different circulation for associative and for real thinking. We are really conscious only when we are trying to ponder."

(A.R. Orage)

"Contrast association with the effort to arrive at some personal understood truth… One effect is likely to be a momentary light-headedness, a shift of center of gravity. Blood tends to go to the back of the head. Pondering is a method of giving the back of the head a blood-bath..."

Piquant sources and other flavours - Section 1 Is it important to know the source?

"You have no business to believe me. I ask you to believe nothing that you cannot verify for yourself."

(Gurdjieff - Views From the Real World)

journalgurdjieffstudies.substack.com/p/piquant-so...

"...And without that love, we will never find the truth."

(Jeanne de Salzmann)

"In moments like this, in front of death, and being free from the known, we can enter the unknown, the complete stillness where there is no deterioration. Perhaps such moments are the only time in which we can find out what life is and what love is..."

(82.) Maurice Nicoll 1 - The Digestion of Impressions - p.336-40 "...impressions are the highest food that we take in and therefore the most important."

(Maurice Nicoll - Commentaries, Vol.I)

[Full Commentary in link]

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