Gurdjieff & Voices in the Dark: Esoteric, Occult & Secular Voices in Nazi-Occupied Paris 1940–1945 by Patterson William Patrick

Author:Patterson, William Patrick [Patterson, William Patrick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arete Communications
Published: 2014-12-20T16:00:00+00:00

MEETING NINETEEN

Questioner : I never do a task thoroughly. I think about it, I do it, but only for a second. I cannot hold a thought or a feeling. [6]

Gurdjieff: You forget, you have not memory, you forget. You must repeat, repeat, repeat. You wish to say that you have no power of concentration. It is the same with everybody. This is the aim of the Work. If a man could really concentrate for a quarter of an hour only, he would be bigger than your Notre-Dame, than Christ. I should ask him to be my teacher. If everybody could do this, everybody would be saints. In three centuries there have been perhaps one and a half saints. You must try to achieve gaining perhaps one second a month by repeating, repeating, repeating.

Questioner: When I see a negative emotion, I see very clearly that it is not the object that counts. It does not exist, it is the covering. As soon as I have seen it, it disappears but the negative emotion remains and becomes occupied with another object, no matter which, then something else. I have noticed the same negative emotions come back again and again by association and they seem to correspond to a tendency. By seeing them, can I think of them as “I”s?

Gurdjieff: Not so many complications. For example, you are hungry. There are different kinds of hunger; the hunger of the morning, of midday, of the evening. They are not the same. The English eat a lot in the morning, the French at night. You have the opportunity to have this material. It is ready-made for you. Others will have to make it.

Mme de Salzmann: Through [observing] negative emotion one knows something which one cannot know without having it. Envy, fear, anger, etc. One must separate this from oneself so that it does not remain in the essence and can be used when necessary by remaining apart.

Questioner: I see how empty I am, full of small mundane desires, contradictions, like a mill where everything comes in and goes out. I have no will and I have no remedy for this. I lack force.

Gurdjieff: The task has been given for that. If you do not do the task, then let yourself go; open a vein, it will be easier. I can give you a pill to make you sleep forever. A pill is cheap to sleep well alone. One night is much more expensive. If one sleeps well for one night, one can then have a good waking state.

Questioner: When I see my nothingness, I am completely discouraged. Then to see that I have seen it gives me back hope and great satisfaction of myself. Should I allow myself this?

Gurdjieff: No. Look, always learn to see more and more. Search back into your past. Into your whole life. Suffer for all your failures. Tell yourself you are already twenty-five, that it is too late to do anything; that time is measured. Even when one is one year old, it is already late.

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