The Gurdjieff Work. What is it, when did it begin, what is it about, and how does it pertain to our lives in this world that we are living in now? The work began with George Gurdjieff coming to Europe in approximately 1900. As a young man, he traveled for many years all over the world searching for an answer to the question of what was the purpose of life on the planet and what was the specific purpose, if any, for humankind. These questions become more important each year as our planet and its inhabitants suffer, and the quality of life on the earth continues to diminish.
Gurdjieff’s great gift to us was his recognition that humanity is basically asleep, that is, not the sleep where they can do little damage in our beds at night, but a sleep that interrupts consciousness every moment. This sleeping-waking consciousness that we are afflicted with allows us to do good things and extremely terrible things. Gurdjieff wondered why our consciousness had become a waking-sleeping one, if there was an objective and truthful reason for this situation. How was it that the existence of human life, such as we are, can create masterpieces and still continue to destroy each other's existence?
Today, we have made all the gadgets we desire and strive wholeheartedly to create new ones. Yet do not recognize the damage that we to to our planet in our addictive desire for all the material things that we want. Our air quality, water quality, soil quality and wildlife are all declining in quality over the last 50 years, and now we are faced with climate change due to industrial pollution and the over-production of CO2 gas. This is a planet that is running out of a healthy atmosphere and the planet’s health is deteriorating. Gurdjieff brings the cause of this planetary deterioration back to human beings, but he does not bring it back to faulting them due to economic, social, historical, or other such causes. Instead, he brings the problem back to something wrong in our inner psyche. His writings and system explain what has happened to the human psyche and how to begin to make the repairs.
We need to understand how in our lives the effects of living under a sleeping-waking state of consciousness curtails the length of our existence physically and narrows our emotional and cognitive lives. The “work: as it is called is a practical means available to its practitioners that is to be practiced in the midst of life. It does not require a person to go off to a retreat for a week or two weeks or longer. It also does not require that you have faith in some imaginary God or faith in a church or a set of beliefs. In fact, the work says that you shouldn't believe anything unless you yourself have verified it for yourself and this verification comes from your own self-study.
The Work is concerned with a system of inner development whereby you learn to study yourself in a non-judgmental and compassionate way. The reason for the need for compassion in your study is that human beings have a tendency to become negative easily. The latter is especially true when we begin to study ourselves. It is important to understand, at the beginning of our study, that each of us is made up of a multiplicity of subpersonalities—we are more complex than we appear on the surface. Because we are multiplicity, our self-study requires a special method to learn how to get to know and understand our different parts.
The Gurdjieff Work brings us his written material, plus inner practices that involve a change in consciousness and emotional life, and physical practices such as the Movements to allow you to study yourself. You learn to apply your attention and develop it. This work also requires collaboration with others and cannot be done in isolation. You need other people to be able to discuss the actual efforts of self-study that you make. We begin to see how our efforts and what we're trying and working on through our discussions with others.
Many of the concepts that Gurdjieff brought us are connected to a larger cosmological framework. These concepts concern the role of our planet in the universe and the specific role of human beings on this planet. We are not here accidentally, but we are here as an integral part of nature to provide a very special energy and vibration that is needed for the maintenance of our planet, solar system and even the Universe. Gurdjieff is very clear about our state of consciousness and that we live our lives in a sleeping-waking state, and only rarely wake up. Therefore, we do not ever reach our full potential as human beings. This Work is concerned with being able to wake up in the midst of your everyday life and to learn to study yourself and find out about all the different parts that you have so that you can really align them to a particular aim that you may have. In this way, you may find your purpose in this life.