What is this ideology, of which you have presumably heard, since you have come here tonight to find out more about, called the “Work”? You may have read or read about or referenced in another book, something about this man called Gurdjieff, who brought to the west a spiritual practice or system, which involves “work on oneself”. How does one start or go about such a strange and challenging task and what can it mean? Must I stop being me? Must I become something different? Certainly such work does not mean implants or transplants or new parts such as work on a car would entail. So how can we break this suspiciously simple phrase down and give it meaning?
Let’s begin with what we already know. First, let us examine the idea of ‘work’ in general. You certainly know what that means. Most of us go off to work in order to earn money to pay for the necessities of life, for food and shelter, clothes to keep us warm, schooling, health care and other necessary items. We also work for little or big things which make our lives easier or more pleasant; luxuries, vacations, dinners out at a nice restaurant, gifts for friends and family. Most of us spend two-thirds of our adult life working in some form of remunerative or productive work. This usual and familiar form of work involves ‘earning something”. Yet another form of ‘work’ involves ‘maintenance” of our daily surroundings. This form we are also familiar with, as if we did not participate we would soon be drowning in the detritus of our lives.
Every day (hopefully!) we arise and brush teeth, perhaps shower, clean our body. We cook and clean the house, wash, dry and fold laundry, walk the dog. Lawns get mowed and cars get washed. Repairs are made on various objects. We provide services for our children if we have them or perhaps elderly parents. These activities maintain our personal world, the tasks of daily routine that need to be done for order and organization. Otherwise, we could not find clean clothes for our professional or outside work life. We could find nothing to prepare for a meal, nowhere to sit except in dust and chaos. The leaks in the roof would go unrepaired and rain would come in. The necessary daily work, not just the earning work, is important to our personal world’s well-being.
So from our ordinary existence, we all have some concrete, practical idea of what ‘work’ means. It is not leisure or playtime but an absolute necessary part of life. Work is needed daily, hourly or even minute by minute, part of the creation and maintenance of our little personal world and that of our families, friends, pets and immediate community. It is also how we earn enough to ‘pay’ for what goods are needed in everyday life and to pay our debts, mortgage, credit cards, electricity and power that we use which is provided by the earth and the labor of others. We owe a debt to those who labor upon our behalf and pay for it with currency from our own labor. There is certainly reciprocity in this system, one that with some thought is easily understandable. I do my work and buy your stuff and with my money, you buy those things you need, perhaps produced by me. So it is with any form of inner or spiritual work. Our society has reduced the invisible life to once a week, on Sunday or whichever day a particular brand of religion chooses. It has, in many cases, ceased to be a daily, hourly or minute-by-minute experience to be in touch with your inner self and the greater world. This Work, however, pursues such an objective. Of course, we fall into forgetfulness, the opposite of mindfulness , frequently. These are observable incidents of what Gurdjieff termed ‘sleep’. Although we profess to be conscious, awake and in charge of ourselves; the opposite is often true. We live our lives not in command of self but in reaction to events outside ourselves, to feelings and intimations from other sources, negativity based on faulty perception. We err constantly. Maurice Nicholl, a psychiatrist and student of Gurdjieff’s called this a state of “missing the mark.”, the original definition of the Greek word for sin.
It is more difficult to frame what this unknown ‘self” is, this entity of which Gurdjieff talked about working upon. As previously mentioned, we are not talking about work on appearance or fitness. It is not about the gym or liposuction. Nor is it about the personal psychology that is sometimes promoted as ‘spiritual work’. This is not to denigrate the pursuit of self-knowledge through psychological systems, whether Freudian, Jungian or any other approach. These strivings to know oneself better, to understand, recognize and assimilate one’s personal past may be the ground upon which spiritual work may grow but in itself, psychological work seeks to make us whole in this world, not to approach a metaphysical truth. To say one is on a spiritual path is to presume a greater reality beyond the ordinary world. Psychology is of this world. It tells you what goes into your personal unconscious., the ingredients that make up your personal cookie, so to speak. Sometimes, as in Jungian theory, this may mean inherited images of a shared path; such as the archetypes he described and may involve some sort of self-development, working against one’s weaknesses, as in Jung’s theory of the fourth function. If you are interested in such, I can recommend some books later but now we are speaking about Gurdjieff’s system of self-work and that is not in the ordinary psychology of the individual but in the overarching situation of mankind itself, one in which we ALL participate. It postulates a larger meaning to our existence and a purpose to life itself, something we would all like to hear. It also gives us tools to test this theory. The Gurdjieff work may or may not help you in personal issues but you should not expect it do so. This Work is not about fixing you but helping you see how it really is, and how you really are as a member of humanity.
Perhaps it would be good at this to explain what is meant by a system before we talk about humanity’s place in this system. For, like all spiritual systems and religions, Gurdjieff posited meaning for man in his cosmology. And isn’t that why you are here tonight, looking for meaning in your lives? And isn’t that really the proper pursuit of men and women, not the chasing after things, power and fame? We all need to develop a worldview that serves us and seeks to serve the world. Otherwise we will remain totally bound to self-interest, which is never the basis for a spiritual life.
So let’s talk a bit about systems. A system needs to hold together; it needs to be interrelated and logical to the mind. But true understanding is not just in the mind. You can study Gurdjieff’s ideas until the cows come home. You may read his books over and over and know each jot and tittle but even in doing so, you will not truly understand; Gurdjieff’s system of self-work will remain an attractive and complex hypothesis. As in all hypotheses, they must be tested to be observed and ascertained. You yourself become the experiment. You may be asked to do things, which make no sense on the surface but never anything untoward or dangerous and then report upon the results. By this method, you may come to know part of what Gurdjieff meant by ‘work on oneself.’ They system can only be tested by you, using methods which are taught to you by those more experienced and bringing the results back to the group. This is not a method, which requires obedience or blind faith. We learn the system by doing it and observing the results in ourselves.Gurdjieff was concerned with two interlocking ideas, human beings as they are and have the potential to become and human life in its rightful place in the greater cosmological schemata of the universe. There are some parts of Gurdjieff’s ideas, which are not available to you now, especially his ideas about how the universe works. This is the ‘maintenance’ work. These cannot be tested yet. However, what a human is and how it is with you as a human can be tested. Gurdjieff considered mankind to be unfinished, asleep to his potential and purpose. Animals are what they are. A dog is a dog; a horse a horse. Man, however, is neither true to his nature as a primate nor entirely directed towards his potential to fulfill a greater goal. So humankind remains muddled, neither fish nor fowl, with no real window on the world or his or her possible purpose in life. So how does this process of ‘finishing’ oneself proceed? How does one take up this ‘work’ of conscious evolution?” The best way is to discover where one is at the present moment. A journey, especially a spiritual journey, needs to begin where one is, without illusion. So first the illusive presumptions of human society must be confronted and put to rest.
So how to discover where we are at this moment? According to Gurdjieff, we live in illusion, which he termed “sleep.” How can one see this as true? It is hard to reject the idea that I am myself, I am conscious, I have free will. Yet to begin to study oneself, one has to put all these ideas up for examination. It is actually rather simple to observe that we are conflicted about some things; I want chocolate but it will keep me up and I need to sleep. We do not always choose in out best interest. The Greek philosophers called this state ‘Akrasia”. It means ‘weak-willed.” Because our desires frequently lead us into situations where we know it is not in our best interest, we can be said to be without real ‘will”. Therefore we can speak of having more that one “I”, an ‘I” that knows what is best, no sweets, exercise, low fat diet, and one that feels it needs to be comforted by a pint of chocolate ice cream and good novel. Which to listen to? This is merely one example of how we are pulled from one ‘I” to another. So we may safely put away the illusion that we are one and own to the fact that no one integrated inner voice guides our life.
What about the idea that we are conscious of or awake to the world around us? How many times have we all been made aware that we have committed some sort of social gaffe or offended someone unawares? Or simply put out keys down and forget where? Or forgotten an agreed-upon appointment?
Worse than these simple examples are when we make ourselves right at the expense of others, never seeing the repercussions. Or brag about our children, implying our own high breeding status. Or attribute bias to one person while naming ourselves astute. Our opinions, our families, our things, our jobs, our lives, all superior to others. Our egos let us live in a fantasy world, valuing our side of things and dismissing the validity of others. We attribute virtue to ourselves and vileness to the other. If one honestly works on oneself, and, again, that means a daily laboring at the task, one begins to see the fog of egoism in which we live our lives.
You may say to yourself “oh, that’s not me, I’m kind and fair, not bigoted or insensitive” Or you may say to yourself, “that’s right, I’m a worthless piece of human garbage, not fit to presume a spiritual life or even an ordinary. I suck.” Both statements and everything in between is indeed false in Gurdjieff’s view. The only important word in either sentence and in all our sentences is the pronoun “I” It fills our waking moments, this “I” which is the center of our ordinary self-drama in which we star. Is it, even for one moment, possible to free from this overwhelming, self-congratulatory, self-deprecating, self-loathing “I”? For that are what we are really about here-Freedom and how this work can lead us there.
How to attain such a precious idea of freedom? Not freedom from labor nor from the obligations of family or community but freedom from the egotistical and reactionary self, the judge, the scoffer, the critic, both outer and inner. Until one can begin to glimpse this possibility and its desirability, then no one can start on any spiritual path. So much of any new pursuit is unlearning what we have been taught before. So it is with a spiritual system, of which this “work” is one of many.
What? I’m not begging you to do is come on in to this work of Gurdjieff’s? Not at all. Proselytizing is for those who wish to attain something, such as body count. I cannot convince you of the rightness of this path, as it is not for everyone. You are all seekers. It is said “seek and ye shall find.” So come to a weekend; visit an on-going group; learn about the commitment necessary to have real practice. This work of Gurdjieff’s is a life-long path and an everyday practice. It is not a feel-good New Age weekend seminar. As one would perhaps say, it has legs and opportunities not usually met in the west. But it is work, for and on oneself and it works.
Thanks you for listening.