The Fourth Way - part 2

Impressions

In the Work, it is taught that man's machine actually needs three kinds of food to survive. The first ..being food' is physical food, the second is the air we breathe, and the third kind is the external and internal impressions that flood into our organs of perception every second. But while we may be comfortable in our minds with the idea of the first two forms of food, we may not understand or have encountered before the idea of impressions being food.

Now since the Work is based on our personally verifying the truth of its ideas, we must not accept these statements as ..facts'. What is required is for us to investigate these ideas for ourselves. If the idea of impressions being food for us has evoked interest and curiosity in your mind, hopefully the following discussion will give you the force to ..try it on for size'.

Considering visual impressions from the viewpoint of science, it seems they are caused by light that has been scattered off distant objects entering our eye. It is quite hard to visualise this process, but if we look past a tree at a distant house, we can imagine the house being a beacon of ..house impressions', which the tree shields our eye from. As we move our head from left to right, we see different collections of these impressions. Science can measure in light the qualities of intensity, frequency, and wavelength, which correspond roughly to our qualities of brightness and colour. (Actually, light is a rather mysterious substance, seeming to behave like a particle at one moment, and like a wave at another. Light enters our eye through an organic lens, which relies on light being a wave, yet affects individual cones at the back of our eye, which relies on its energy being localised at a point, that is, light being a particle.)

At this point, we have not really started to look at impressions as food. But our consideration of the mechanics of vision has already given us material to use in our personal work. If we can remain aware that this is what it is going on when we are looking at something, we can self-remember, and avoid identifying with this external impression.

For instance, if we watch television, and remain aware of the facts that ..I am looking at a man-made source of electromagnetic radiation in the corner of my room', or that ..I am receiving impressions from my television', we may find that the quality of the experience alters drastically. Our ability to ..enjoy' many television programs depends exclusively on whether we are attached to anything that is going on on the screen. The actual impressions may be of very little value (see later), and merely push buttons inside us, evoking the associations and feelings that are the real show, the one that's inside our head and body, (using our energy, by the way!) In fact, it is possible to consider a television show as a program in the computer sense. A set of instructions are suggested to our machine; our identification at the time is equivalent to someone typing ..RUN GARBAGE.EXE', and hitting return.

When we consider a substance from the standpoint of ..food', we always bring a new factor into our description of things; namely, it's fitness as a source of nutrition for our organism. A freshly uprooted potato, slowly baked with the skin on, is very similar to a bag of ..Prawn Cocktail flavour' crisps, considered from the standpoint of organic material. But from the standpoint of food, the two are entirely different. And in the case of air, we can consider in the same way the difference between a breath drawn on a mountainside and one drawn in the London rush hour. So how can we look at impressions from the standpoint of food?

The Work introduces several terms at this point. Some impressions can be higher than others, taken from the standpoint of food, and certain impressions, those which are actually noxious for our organism, are called negative impressions. We perceive the difference between these impressions by observing the effect they have on our emotional apparatus (emotional centre). If we are identified with something or other (i.e. most of the time) we will not notice these effects, or will misinterpret them.

Additionally, if we want to discern fine gradations between the effects different impressions have on us, we will need to spend time observing the way our machine works. But we can get a rough feel for this idea if we consider the difference between the ..fine', ..delicate' or ..high' energy that we begin to feel inside after contemplation of a great work of art, and the ..sick', ..churning' or ..debased' feeling we have inside after contemplating pictures of war atrocities. If we then looked at a piece of indifferent art, the absence of any feeling inside would lead us to classify the great work as being a higher impression than the one we were currently receiving. These impressions are all foods, and are foods of a different order.

An analogy that may be useful is if we imagine our emotional centre as being a horizontal metal bar, supported at each end, which has a large collection of chimes hanging from it, of various shapes and sizes. These chimes are all free to move, should anything enter to disturb them. If we now imagine a sound falling across these chimes (a typical impression), we can imagine that those chimes which matched the frequency of the incoming sound would start to resonate in response, perhaps making a gentle ringing sound. Energy would be transferred to the chime in question, and our organism would receive this energy through the apparatus that was holding the chime, in the same way that our fingers ..buzz' when we hold a tuning fork. We might imagine some beautiful and slender chimes at one end of the rack, suspended by the finest threads, made of precious metals. Impressions that sounded these chimes would have to be sought out, yet the sound they made when they were sounded would suffuse our whole organism with gentle and fine energies.

At the other end of the rack, we might picture some old, rusty drainpipes. Impressions that sounded these ..chimes' would be very easy to find. If sounded, the pipes would make a noise that was so deep it was almost purely motion. This motion would seize the whole rack, shaking it this way and that. Other chimes would be thrown around, in particular the pretty little gold chimes, which would be rendered quite inoperable for some time. We might imagine ourselves wondering after the drainpipes had stopped swinging, how resilient our rack was to these impressions, especially our favourite chimes at the other end!

This is not, as they say, the whole story. The food diagram gives us a concise way of understanding just how and where all three types of food interact with and nourish our organism. We have also not really touched upon the role or awareness in thinking about impressions as being food. It turns out that whereas the benefits of the first and second being food are purely mechanical, the benefits of the third being food, that is, impressions, depends on our level of consciousness at the time we receive them. It we are present when impressions enter our organism, we can actually double their benefits for our organism. Additionally, we can ..stand guard', and protect our essence by acting quickly and decisively when we stumble across impressions that are noxious to us.


Suffering

The Work says that a man is willing to give up anything but his suffering; it is the last thing he wants to lose. But we must give up our unnecessary suffering in this work. On the other hand there is some suffering that it is necessary to endure, voluntary suffering.

So, which is which? How to tell the difference? From the point of view of the work, you can judge on the basis of your aim. If your aim is to awaken, then unnecessary suffering is the kind that sends you more to sleep, or at least, does not help you to awaken, whereas voluntary suffering is always useful for your work towards awakening.

Unnecessary Suffering

Unnecessary suffering sometimes is to do with various inner considering, you might feel embarrassment, say if you get something wrong in class, and suffer over it, feeling really bad. But this does not do anything to help you. A better way to use the situation would be to accept the suffering involved in seeing that you are not perfect as you liked to believe. Or you might have some aches and pains, and not go to the doctor from not wanting to admit your weaknesses and that you are ill. But it is not really helpful or necessary to let your body deteriorate. Or you might feel dreadful because you've just broken up with your boy/girlfriend. Might feel really painful. But beyond the initial grief at the loss, it's unnecessary. If you look more closely, you might find you enjoy feeling in the right, when he/she is in the wrong. You are identified over something. Need to give up this suffering.

Voluntary Suffering

Voluntary suffering is not about whipping yourself, or subjecting yourself to painful experiences, it's not about fasting, or enduring physical hardship. Those can be valid methods for other ways and religions, but they are not what one uses on this way.

Voluntary suffering is generally directly useful to your immediate aims. For instance, you order a certain colour table from a catalogue, and they send you the wrong colour. This colour will not do at all, but you have a fear of contacting them to complain, you are a timid kind of person, and do not want to face up to someone, for fear of what might happen. For you, it would be unnecessary suffering to put up with the wrong table. You might complain to all your friends, and be really upset about it, suffer over it, yet do nothing. A less mechanical suffering, a voluntary suffering, in this case, would be to go and complain, and get the thing put right.

For a different sort of person, quite some other kind of voluntary suffering may be more appropriate.

Voluntary suffering is primarily about seeing yourself as you really are, warts and all. Until you see where you really are, you can not begin to move to a better place.


Lying

One of the chief obstacles to inner development is our tendency to talk about things we do not know, or can not know, as though we do know.

Lying, in the work sense, is slightly different from lying as the word is usually used, a little more subtle perhaps. Perhaps we might think it is less damaging than what we normally consider as lying, but it is actually more damaging to one personally, as that without working to eliminate it, one can not expect one's personal work on oneself to go far.

Lying in the usual sense, is generally connected with a feeling of guilt and concealment. One knows one is doing wrong by telling something untrue. Lying in the work sense is often associated with a feeling of vanity, and it's easier to buffer that no harm is done by it.

By lying, in the work sense, I mean primarily talking about things one does not know, as though one does. Lying is associated with vanity, and also verification---verification being a possible cure. Lying comes from false personality, and the more you lie, the more you strengthen your false personality. Not lying can involve accepting humiliation, admitting one does not know everything, and thus opening the way to beginning to know things properly, especially oneself.

Someone was asking about the work of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, from a position of assuming it makes claims without proving them (making this assumption is lying, if you have not seen it to be true). He was saying ..There are people who claim that there are three old women who are hundreds of years old, who live in a cave in India, and I don't believe that sort of thing…'. The answer ..Well, you can go and look in the cave, see if they do or not, if you want to find out, and verify'.

The person was not interested in verification, he was lying, in a sense, even though common sense might indicate that it is unlikely there are no such old women. He was lying because he was talking from the point of view that he knew the truth, though he had not verified. Here, false personality is clearly evident, since really, the existence of such old women is neither here nor there, it was not really relevant to asking about this work, and would have probably no effect on this person's life or well-being.

There is lying to oneself, believing one is an expert, when one is not. It can prevent one from listening to people who really do know something, and can prevent one from learning, since one already believes one knows.

Lying to oneself can be a little different again from the above examples, that involved other people. In lying to oneself, one may believe, for instance, that one is always on time, when in fact one is always late. Buffers will prevent the truth from being seen, for instance, telling oneself that ..This occasion is quite exceptional'. ..I'm always on time, so this is excusable to be late for once.' ..It's all the fault of so-and-so, if it wasn't for them this would never have happened.' One may even call to mind some occasion when one was on time, and take that as the example one mentally refers to.

Lying such as this is difficult to deal with. One does not want to see one's faults (again, vanity would like to believe we had none). If one persists in lying to oneself, one will not see one's true position, and if you can't see your current position, you can't change. Through being invariably late, one may miss many opportunities. But if one does not even know that one is late, one will not work to change things.

How can things become visible that we are blind to? How can we stop lying? In the case of lying to ourselves, we need to be open to other people pointing out our faults to us. If your friend is annoyed---..You're late again', rather than start justifying, buffering, and disagreeing, one could ask oneself ..Is she right?'

We need to be willing to accept that we may not be perfect. Similarly in lying to others, one must be willing to admit to oneself that one does not know. To know, one must verify.


Unnecessary Talking

Unnecessary talking is one of the chief obstacles to awakening.
If we want to awaken, we need to reduce unnecessary talking, and if you want to reduce it, you need to know what it is, both in theory and practice.

Talking has many uses. We are the only animal on the planet that has this faculty. We can use it to communicate great ideas, to ask simple questions. To express emotions, in all kinds of forms, from simple greetings, to moving poems. We can use talking to ask someone to ..Please pass the salt', to give the instinctive-moving brain what it needs. There's a lot of useful, necessary talking.

On the other hand, there is also talking that has no use, that does not achieve any aim, that is simply talking for talking's sake. You aren't interested whether the other person is interested to hear what you're saying, you probably aren't aware of what's going on, engrossed in the conversation. You might well feel drained afterwards, and have no memory of what you said, it was so trivial.

Talking like this can use a huge amount of energy, and is a sure sign of sleep.

You don't even need to have another person around to be doing unnecessary talking. You can be talking to yourself, going over some old arguments, having an imaginary conversation in your head. You might be making mental notes on everything that you are doing. This should not be mistaken for self-observation---self-observation should involve all centers. If you just say what you are doing to yourself, you are probably missing a huge amount that can not be put into words.

There is no rule to tell you what is necessary and what is unnecessary talking. You have to observe yourself, see if what you are saying is of any use, and how does it make you feel? Some people are more prone to unnecessary talking than others, and will need to work on it more. For some people it may be that they do very little talking at all, and really need to speak up more often.

To work with unnecessary talking, you need to begin with self-observation, to find out if you are a person who suffers from it, and to observe what you lose by indulging in it, and what you gain by refraining.


Imagination

In its ordinary meaning, the term ..imagination' does not allow for the distinction as to whether or not its functioning is under our control. If imagination is under our control, then its uses may be distinguished by such names as visualisation, creative thinking, inventive thinking. But when it comes by itself and controls us so that we are in its power, it is ..imagination'.

Imagination may be just ordinary daydreams or, for instance, imagining non-existent powers in oneself. But it is the same thing in that it works without control, it runs by itself.

Negative imagination is imagining all kinds of unpleasant things, torturing oneself, imagining all the things that might happen to you or other people. This is distinct from real fear, an instinctive centre function, which is comparatively very rare. In most cases fear is imaginary---the fear is in you. Material is borrowed from the negative part of the instinctive function, and with the help of imagination, it creates negative emotion.

When trying to explain new experiences, imagination enters because one may feel with with one very good apparatus, and explain with a very clumsy machine which cannot really explain. So one must try to deal with facts, as when imagination starts one is lost.

Then one may be more completely under the power of imagination, imagining that one can decide what to do.

Imagination does not mean conscious or intentional thinking, but imagination without any control or result. The idea is to control imagination. If, instead of that, by certain methods it is transformed into imagination in higher emotional states, one may experience bliss, but it is after all, only sleep on a higher level. And there is no way out.

One must observe the many things that are in one's own imagination to see them. One can imagine that one is making efforts to awake. Only begin with the possible, with one step. Try to do a little and results will show you. There is always a limit. If one tries to do too much, imagination takes hold and one will do nothing. Everything cannot be changed at once. Struggle with imagination does not mean that it can be stopped, because this would require much more energy. One can only attempt to stop it.

In fact, imagination takes up very much energy and turns thinking in a wrong direction. This is why verification is necessary. Imagination causes people to easily accept mechanical influences and they begin to imitate one another so that people can spend their lives studying systems and system words and never come to real things. Without verification it is imagination or simply lying. A large proportion of our ordinary knowledge exists only in imagination. It is necessary that this work be first and foremost practical.

Life can provide a test as to whether personalities are imaginary or not. When life puts you into conditions where you can enjoy what you thought you liked, but instead you find that you do not enjoy it at all, only you imagined that you liked it, then you can see that this personality was imaginary. It does not really exist, but we imagine it exists. It exists in its manifestations, but not as a real part of ourselves.

So we imagine ourselves really. Only we are not what we imagine ourselves to be.

The right use of ..imagination' then would be to ..imagine', or use creative thinking and visualisation, to ..imagine' oneself conscious. How would you act, think, speak and so on?


Identification

In the Work we are told to observe identification as it is one of the most powerful forces keeping us asleep and prevents us from awakening. Because we do everything mechanically and are not properly conscious, we identify all the time. We identify with our thoughts, feelings and what happens in outer life.

What is identification?

It is a difficult thing to describe because, as we are, we are never free from identifying so we think it is a normal condition. The idea is similar to what is described in Indian and Buddhist literature as attachment to things either externally---for example your job, the television, food---or internally---for example your thoughts, your emotions. In other words all our activities are accompanied by a certain attitude; we become too absorbed in things, lost in what we are doing. This is called identification. It begins with being interested in something and the next moment you are in it and you no longer exist.

A good illustration of identification is the cat and mouse scenario, where the cat has spotted its prey and is oblivious to everything except catching the mouse. Other examples include:

    * being identified with a task one is doing on the computer so that one is not aware of anything else around one
    * cleaning the bath and you no longer exist---you have become the activity of cleaning the bath
    * identification with one's emotions so that if you think you are depressed, all you feel is depression, you are your state
    * identification with watching television where only the programme exists
    * feeling bored---identification with oneself
    * over-enthusiasm is also identification.

So, when a man is asleep he is identified with every thought that he has, every feeling and mood, every sensation, every movement, because he thinks this is what life is about and above all that it is a necessary part of life.

After observing yourself for a while and trying to remember yourself, you soon realise that you don't remember yourself and often do not even remember to remember yourself, the main obstacle to achieving this being identification with something or ourselves.

Working against identification

It's useful to think that we awake from sleep every morning with a certain amount of energy, probably quite a lot. In general this energy works by itself and makes us act in a certain way. The question arises why and how does it make us do the things we do and waste energy on useless things? Identification which glues us to the activity or thoughts or emotions is the link. Therefore, if we can stop identification we will have much more energy at our disposal.

The Work says we must struggle every day with identifying which can take different forms. One way is to apply a sense of scale to whatever you're identified with, i.e. turn your attention to something more important. Start by distinguishing important from less important, so that if you put your attention on more important things you become less identified with unimportant things.

Observation of ourselves also helps with identification because by doing this we start to have something that stands behind us and helps us see ourselves on the stage in front of us, so to speak. We begin to see different I's in us behaving in certain ways as something unreal; we see we are mechanical. Although we may have glimpses of this, the power of identification is so strong that we are quickly sucked back down and once again believe we are the I's we manifest.

As already mentioned, one of the main things we identify with is life events. Events bring objects and people into a relationship. For example, your neighbour may be someone you don't know very well, but when you hear he has said something bad about you, an event between you and him takes place.

To work with identification with events it is useful to ask oneself: ..What event am I in?' ..Am I totally identified with it?' This puts you in attention and helps you to be less identified with the event. We must try and draw back from the event we are identifying with and try to summarise what's happening in terms that take the feeling of ..I' out of it. For example:

    * ..This is called getting angry.'
    * ..This is called feeling hurt and left out.'
    * ..This is called being disappointed.'
    * ..This is called being disorganised.'

Moments of non-identifying

When you are in a moment of not being identified you seem to be in a quiet, central place in yourself and you are aware of the different I's and events trying to advance and capture your attention. It's like having this gap, maintained by an invisible policeman, between you and the crowd. This can also be called a ..Work-state' as opposed to a ..Life-state'. So, in order to experience the blissful experience of a moment of non-identification it is necessary to put yourself in a ..Work-state' every day, where you are protected from many unpleasant states which you would otherwise be in.

There are many ways of doing this including: remembering your aim and trying to remember yourself at the same time; reviewing in your mind something you have read in connection with the Work; going over in your mind what happened the previous day or remembering something you want to be more conscious of regarding another person or a certain situation; trying to see events and people in light of the Work.

In struggling against identification remember it needs practice first in easier moments. As P. D. Ouspensky said:

"You cannot learn to swim if you fall in the sea during a storm. You must learn in calm water. Then perhaps if you fall in you'll be able to swim."


Negative Emotions

Negative emotions are an example of the wrong work of the emotional centre. They are unnecessary, and an important part of awakening is to free ourselves from their grip.

Negative emotions are things like fear, anger, envy, greed, sloth, and also pleasant things like enthusiasms, passions, and certain forms of love. They are based on identification and imagination---they keep us asleep.

The pleasant type are characterised by a tendency to turn into their opposites---for example when we end up hating people we were formerly ..in love' with. Real emotions do not turn into their opposites.

Properly speaking, the emotional centre does not have a negative half. Negative emotions are tremendously powerful, despite being completely useless to us. We can poison our lives extremely quickly with them, destroying life-long friendships with a few words, or making disastrous choices because we are out to prove something.

When we study the Food Diagram, we can see that man is rather like a chemical factory, refining food, air, and impressions into much finer, more volatile energies. These finest energies are used by the higher emotional centre, and the higher intellectual centre.

When we express negative emotions, we plunder this store of finer substances. We can use up the factory's entire production for a day with one emotional outburst. It is possible to use even more energy, even damaging the factory beyond repair if we go too far (rather like the effect power surges have on computers). With this energy thrown away, we have no fuel available to think our highest thoughts, or to experience our highest feelings.

So the first part of work on the emotional centre is non-expression of negative emotions---to stop this energy leak. This practise is exceptional in the Work, in that it is permanent, and available to all. (The methods and form of the Work are continually evolving, so it is usual for an exercise to be set for a specific length of time, in specific circumstances to specific people, and then only on the basis that they understand exactly why they are doing it.)

As well as saving us energy, this practise also helps us in self-observation, because we need to resist our mechanics before we can see them.

The second part of work on the emotional centre is transformation of negative emotions. This is advanced work.

Briefly, we can see that the problem with non-expression of negative emotions is that we are still having the emotion---we are just not expressing it. If we are self-remembering at the moment when an impression enters that would normally cause a negative emotion, it is possible to use the resulting energy for ourselves, rather than seeing it disappear off down well-trodden paths. This is also known as the Second Conscious Shock. In the Work, long practice at non-expression of negative emotions and self-remembering are necessary before this becomes possible.

Negative emotions often originate in the instinctive centre. If we are tired, or hungry, or in pain, these inner sensations can often be converted into negative emotions by our imagination.

A cold, a headache, a late night or a missed meal are all enough to drastically alter our behaviour. We may be irritated by far less than usual. We may feel tearful at the slightest pressure. To work with this, we need to be more aware of the life of our instinctive centre. We need to remember our fatigue, our aches, and our appetite, so that we can digest impressions correctly. One way of doing this is to be small, to slow down, and be quieter. This gives our organism more time to operate, alleviating the unpleasant feeling of pressure everyday life creates in us when we are a little worse for wear.

Negativity towards others is often caused by us seeing in other people exactly what we dislike about ourselves (as coined in Jungian terms "shadow projection"). This negativity is usually accompanied by thoughts such as, ..I'm not like that at all!' and ..How on Earth could they do/say/think such a thing!' Such negativity will paint the victim as a ..something', where the ..something' label allows us to think of the victim as being different to ourselves---labels such as fool, drunkard, monster, and so on.

These attitudes prevent us seeing what we, as humans, are really like; they prevent us from learning about and understanding the full variety of human expression. This we must do if we wish to become balanced men. We can tell that our reactions to others' shortcomings are subjective, because usually we are only bothered by certain things, and are able to remain calm in the face of other faults.

We need to remember that negative emotions are a general law on this world. That is to say, virtually all people will express them, will glamorise them, will accept them as the normal. The violence of our ..civilised' societies stands testimony to this. After thousands of years of history, man can walk on the moon, can harness the power of the atom, but still is unable to avoid going into a rage when his food is not cooked properly.

So we should not be surprised when people are negative, and should not condemn them for it. We are all negative. To even begin to free oneself from this law takes great and continued efforts.

One problem arising from the ..normality' of negative emotions is that work on them sometimes involves behaving differently to conventional wisdom. Sometimes people do appear to behave badly towards us, and it is very easy to feel negative towards them. If we voiced our anger and frustration, people would assure us that they would feel exactly the same in our shoes.

At times like these, it is especially important to remember why we are trying not to express negative emotions. We are not doing it to ..be nice', or because it's ..bad' to express negative emotions. We are doing it because we wish to study ourselves, and to save energy and time. We are doing it because we wish to wake up.

We must observe the fact that we enjoy our negative emotions. Being in a towering rage can feel dramatic and exciting. We feel energised, passionate, and more alive. Sometimes we are moved to eloquence as our tongue lets fly, and caution goes to the wind. The truth is, when the Work tells us not to be negative, our unspoken reply is, ..But I don't want to stop being negative!' Giving up negativity is part of the price we pay for awakening. We have to give up something if we wish to make space for something new in our lives. We can hardly be receptive to higher forces when we are busy flaying someone alive with our tongue.

Also, we have to remember that being negative does not just mean having exciting passions. It also means being ruled by self-pity, depression, loneliness, boredom, dissatisfaction, inadequacy, and envy. We should not fool ourselves that saying we do not want to stop being negative means we could stop if we wanted to. We have no control, and cannot chose not be negative. Until we recognise this, we have no hope of changing.

Work on negative emotions becomes easier when we see that our repertoire of negative emotions is quite limited. Although our circumstances change throughout our lives, and we continually encounter different situations, the basic causes of our resentments do not change. This will be things like not being recognised for one's true worth, or thinking that one needs a change in one's life.

One student had been feeling bored and unappreciated in his job. He realised this was a negative emotion when he remembered that he had felt exactly the same about his college degree, several years ago. Although the justifications were couched in different term, the inner relationship to his main occupation had not changed. Recognition of these emotions can be enormously liberating, because we start to see where they are making the decisions in our life. We have an opportunity to live more intelligently, to stop fear and anger doing all our talking.

"To be in a passion you good may do,
But no good if a passion is in you."
- William Blake

It is important to distinguish expressing negative emotions from standing up for oneself. Non-expression of negative emotions does not mean allowing people to exploit you. If someone is rude to you, or dominates you, or starts to bully you, you have to defend yourself, or you will store up only more of the same for yourself in the future.

When we notice people probing for weaknesses, a shot across the bows at that moment can prevent a full-blown war in the future. It is possible to be firm and direct without becoming identified, without becoming negative. We can see this in the way a good mother treats a naughty child, or in the way a good dog-owner disciplines their pet.

Every situation has a certain amount of power. Sometimes you are in control, sometimes the person you are dealing with is in control. We should not become negative when we discover people using power; rather we should learn the rules of the game, and play it intelligently, according to our aims in a particular situation.

"To know when to stop is to preserve ourselves from danger."
- Lao Tzu

Sometimes in our lives, certain people become huge obstacles for us. Their shadow seems to fall across our whole existence. Every word they say acquires immense significance. We live in terror of them, and entertain all sorts of absurd fantasies about what they will say or do next.

In these situations, we can end up with the unnerving feeling that we are in a play. We start to see every moment of our lives in relation to this drama. In this state, we may still be reminding ourselves that we should not be expressing negative emotions. Perhaps we do not allow ourselves to voice our feelings or change our circumstances, because we do not want to be negative, because we do not want to ..fail'.

We need to be intelligent here, and consider our own capabilities. It is almost certain that there IS a charm for our fears, that we can change our inner relationship to this person. But remember that non-expression of negative emotions is just one line of work. If a situation really is making the rest of our work and our life impossible, we ought to consider the ..failure' option, be that walking away, or something else. We may need to learn more before we can deal with certain kinds of situation successfully.

It is very important to understand the difference between talking about negative emotions, and expressing them. It can often be useful to describe our negativity to someone else, so that they can help us see the attitudes behind this.

What is not useful, however, is when this discussion turns into a repeat of all the identification with unpleasant emotions originally experienced. Then we are simply re-expressing negativity, we are throwing more energy away, we are strengthening that certain undesirable something within ourselves. With enough repetition, this can become a negative attitude. This situation is actually far more common than the first.

We have all witnessed people describing their woes, and the intensity and passion with which they explain themselves. To describe an incident in one's past when one was negative dispassionately requires effort, because negativity is mechanical, and to avoid it, we have to cease being mechanical with respect to the circumstance that originally lead to our negativity. Often this involves changing our relationship to an event. It involves seeing something new, such as seeing that the person we are negative towards has done nothing unexpected---nothing we wouldn't have done in their shoes.

If we start to work in a group, we will certainly encounter and express negative emotions within that group. Sometimes we use work terminology to ..score points', or to hurt people we are working with, or to impress the teacher. This occurs because the Work ideas have to enter through the lower parts of centres, and they become food for misuse by these parts in the same way as any other ideas does.

Another form of negativity is resentment of the teacher or the Work when things start to get harder for us. Seeing this negativity can help us see that going to meetings is not the same as being more awake. When we realise that all of our petty resentments and motivations appear in a group situation, just as in real life (if not more so), we will begin to realise that the Work is not in the meeting room or the teacher, but is inside.


Knowledge and Being

Man's inner development is dependent on the growth of both knowledge and being simultaneously; knowledge assists development of being and vice versa. If one outgrows the other, inner development sooner or later stops.

Knowledge and Levels of Knowledge

Knowledge is the function of one centre, the intellectual centre, and involves the study of one or various subjects. The knowledge that people have can vary, in that they can know more or less about a given subject. On the whole, knowledge in the West is greatly respected, and someone who has an in-depth knowledge of a subject, or who has made scientific discoveries, is often admired and respected, even if his or her being is weak, that is, he or she is forgetful, moody and so on.

The work says there can be ordinary knowledge or real knowledge. Ordinary knowledge is knowing about details without understanding how they relate to the whole. For example, enormous amounts of detailed information on many branches of knowledge are available nowadays, and information is continually being added to it. However, this growing body of knowledge is not united by principles, and it is hard to see how the fragments of knowledge relate to the whole. Even knowledge that is united by principles, for example this Work, can degenerate into ordinary knowledge when certain ideas are only viewed from one side and others are omitted.

Real knowledge, on the other hand, is knowledge of the details or parts in relation to the whole, for example, looking at our daily experiences in relation to principles of the Work, consciousness, cosmic laws, processes, and so on.

Being and Levels of Being

The work distinguishes between mechanical being and real being.

Mechanical Being

Mechanical being is all that a man is, that is, his false personality (his imaginary I, which includes all qualities he attributes to himself, his many contradictory I's, attitudes), his personality, and his undeveloped essence. In other words, a man's being is characterised by multiplicity or lack of unity, lack of consciousness, lack of free will, lack of ability to do. This means that when life changes, circumstances change, at every event, our I's change and different ones surface; they take the centre stage and are unaware of the previous I or I's that were there; each I has its own desires and makes decisions accordingly; there is no control, no permanent Real I.  A person who changes rapidly between the I's, who is easily offended, or who easily beomes negative has a weak being.

Real Being

Real being is that of a conscious man. He is characterised by unity, by the possession of one permanent Real I; he has the power to be different, he can do. However, in extreme conditions a mechanical person may experience a moment of Real I. For example, in times of prolonged stress, great fatigue, extreme danger or illness, a person's usual fears, or worrying what others think of him, or usual self-preoccupations, disappear, and his feeling of himself changes. However, for such a state to become permanent a man must work very hard and long on himself.

Levels of Being

Different people have different levels of being. For example, someone doesn't know about self-remembering, but when told about it, thinks he can do it; another knows that he does not self-remember; and another is just beginning to self-remember. Each man represents varying levels of being.

Not only do men have different levels of being, but also within ourselves I's are on different levels, some better, some worse; some are connected to magnetic centre and others are immersed in life. Therefore, at a given moment we can be more conscious or more asleep; more divided or more whole; more or less interested in something; tell lies more easily or with embarassment; have a feeling of mechanicalness or not; have comparatively fewer negative emotions or be immersed in them.

The fact that our being is on different levels enables us to change our being, or at least experience things beyond our current level of being. For example, we can have flashes of understanding where we see quite clearly that certain I's are leading us down a well-trodden negative path, and also what we should do to avoid this, and yet we cannot do what we have seen. We are dragged down by our average level of being. This shows that our ability to see is often greater than our ability to do. Our knowledge is greater than our being.

The Relation of Knowledge and Being

If knowledge outgrows being, then a man knows a lot but cannot put it into practice. If being outgrows knowledge, then a man can do a lot but doesn't know what to do. Therefore, the aim is for knowledge and being to develop simultaneously. This means that knowledge must not just remain words, but should enter into being which feels and senses what it knows in words. For example, I had heard about the idea of identification for a long time and had my own intellectual description of this state. However, one evening as I lay in bed I heard my flatmates mention my name and I saw myself becoming sucked into identification, so that where I was didn't exist for me anymore; it felt like my body had bent towards the door and I was eaten up by this desire to find out what they were saying. When this happens, when knowledge is experienced in three centres (thinking, emotional and instinctive/moving), understanding results.

Likewise, being should also assist the growth of knowledge, so that when we have understood something about ourselves, we should be able to extract more from the knowledge we have. For example, rereading work books, we see something new in the ideas. Another aspect of being assisting the growth of knowledge, is that our being at a given moment is reflected in our state. That means that in one state we can receive knowledge, and in another state acquire even more. In other words, we make more connections with the knowledge we receive, we see connections on different levels.

Work on Knowledge and Being

Work on knowledge means study of the ideas, seeing how the separate ideas make up the whole; study of ourselves, study of the many I's to build up a picture of ourselves as a whole and how the I's are connected.

Work on being first requires seeing our own being; seeing we haven't got one permanent I, that we have many prejudices, our mechanicalness, how we are driven by false personality and that we can't choose to react differently. Sincere self-observation will show us we are really nothing, just a confusion of different I's.

Based on the self-knowledge we have gained of ourselves, work on being then requires a different effort; resisting certain manifestations in ourselves. Work on being means creating unity, not expressing negative emotions, self-observation, study of emotions, trying not to identify, trying to avoid unnecessary talking and so on. In other words, work and change of being requires payment in the form of inner efforts.

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For more go to http://www.geocities.com/fourthway.geo/index.html

suggested reading:

- "In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching" by PD Ouspensky (Harcourt Brace Jovanovitch).
[The best single-volume introduction to the Gurdjieff ideas].

- "Views From the Real World" by GI Gurdjieff (Arkana Books)

- "Meetings with Remarkable Men" by GI Gurdjieff (Arkana)

- "All and Everything: Beelzebub's Tales to his Grandson" by GI Gurdjieff (Dutton)

- "The Fourth Way" by P.D. Ouspensky

- "The Psychology of Men's Possible Evolution" by P.D. Ouspensky

- "Gnosis" by Boris Mouravieff

- Anything by Carlos Castaneda, but especially "The Fire Within" and "The Active Side of Infinity"

- "Freedom from the Known" by Krishnamurti or anything else by K.

Also check out the blogs on my front page under  METAPHYSICS, ESOTERICA, SELF-WORK, SPIRITUAL EVOLUTION, in particular Know Thyself , Reflections - The Importance of Self-Work and THE SHADOWS OF IDEAS - A Distant Glimpse of Gurdjieff