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He is marking time, and he lives and dies like one of the million things he produces. He thinks of God, instead of experiencing God.
I am as free as Nature first made man, ere the base laws of servitude began.
True philosophy is that which renders us to ourselves, and all others who surround us, better, and at the same time more content, more patient, more calm, and more ready for all decent and pure enjoyment.
A thinker erects an immense building, a system, a system which embraces the whole of existence and world-history, etc. And if we contemplate his personal life, we discover to our astonishment this terrible and ludicrous fact, that he himself personally does not live in this immense high-vaulted palace, but in a barn alongside of it, or in a dog kennel, or at the most in the porter’s lodge. If one were to take the liberty of calling his attention to this by a single word, he would be offended. For he has no fear of being under a delusion, if only he can get the system completed… by means of the delusion.
The mystic ocean of existence is not to be crossed as something outside ourselves. It is in oneself.
What greater pleasure is there than to find myself the one thing that I ought to be, and the whole thing that I ought to be?
Every failure teaches a man something, if he will learn.
The wise man recognizes the idea of the Good within him.
Lovers do not themselves seek and yearn. In all the world there is no one seeking but He!
Five remembrances Buddhist monks chant each day: I will lose my youth, my health, my loved ones, everything I hold dear and, finally, life itself… by the very nature of being human.
If you did not desire your present position, you would not be doing everything possible to maintain it… If you cease doing those things which maintain your position, you will lose at once that position which you claim is forced upon you and which is your burden… It is impossible for any man to be placed against his own will in a condition which is contrary to his conscience.
Those who have the gale of the Holy Spirit go forward even in sleep.
What is the use of the most sovereign of medicines while they stand on the sick man’s table? What is the mightiest of truths so long as it is not believed? The spiritually sick still mocks at the medicine offered; he will not know its cure.
It was the very essence of Gurdjieff’s teaching that the pupil must stand on his own feet and he took every measure, sometimes apparently harsh and brutal, to break down any tendency towards dependence upon himself. He would go to the length of depriving himself of much-needed helpers in his work rather than allow a relationship of dependence, or subordination. At the same time, he took for granted that a teacher is necessary and made it clear why this is so.
No man can work alone until he knows himself, and no one can know himself until he can be separate from his own egoism. The teacher is always needed to apply the knife, to sever the true from the false, but he can never work for his pupil, nor understand for him, nor be for him. We must work, and understand, and be, for ourselves.
Philosophy is, to tell the truth, a homesickness, an effort to return to home.
But where can man find the truth? If he seeks deep enough in himself he will find it revealed. Each man may know his own heart. He may send a ray of his intelligence into the depths of his soul and search its bottom; he may find it to be as infinitely deep as the sky above his head. He may find corals and pearls, or watch the monsters of the deep. If his thought is steady and unwavering, he may enter the innermost sanctuary of his own temple and see the goddess unveiled. Not everyone can penetrate into such depths, because the thought is easily led astray; but the strong and persistent searcher will penetrate veil after veil, until at the innermost center he discovers the germ of truth, which, awakened to consciousness, will grow into a sun that illuminates the whole of the interior world, wherein everything is contained.
We often try to banish the gloom and despondency of the present by speculating upon our chances of success in the future; a process which leads us to invent a great many unreal hopes. Every one of them contains the seed of illusion, and disappointment is inevitable when our hopes are shattered.
It seldom happens that a man changes his life through his habitual reasoning. No matter how fully he may sense the new plans and aims revealed to him by reason, he continues to plod along in the old paths until his life becomes frustrating and unbearable… he finally makes the change only when his usual life can no longer be tolerated.
A capacity for self-recollection — from withdrawal from the outward to the inward — is in fact the condition of all noble and useful activity.
Does anyone do wrong? It is to himself that he does the wrong.
