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Copyright TRIANGLE Editions.
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EXCHANGES

(The following texts are related to four group meetings which took place in 
Gurdjieff's home, in Paris, in 1943.
This evenings of exchanges have been reconstructed, as true to their original 
as possible, with the help of notes taken with Gurdjieff's approval.)
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Third Evening
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H. - Sir, I would like to ask you a question. Having finished, several
weeks ago now, the tasks that I have given myself, I since find myself in a
sort of happy inbalance, not missing anything nor wanting anything in
particular. I would like to continue, beacuse I know that there is a
universe above this one I live in at the moment. But I cannot advance and I
feel like I cannot do anything by myself.

G. - You are satisfied with little. You feel this is a bad sign. It is
exactly now that you should make efforts. You must not take it easy. You
have to create an inner struggle between your individuality and your
functions.
The fact that you could not work anymore is in itself an excellent
condition: it is the opportunity to push yourself. If you pass this crisis,
this small crisis, you will be able to advance again.

H. - I cannot see clearly what way to follow or what aim to make.

G. - A 'way' is not necessary. What is necessary is that a certain
substance accumulates in you. A substance that cannot be created other than
by struggle.
Work, gather, put together the results of this struggle. You have in you
accumulators in which this substance can be accumulated; like electricity.
You have to create a battle between your head and your animal. Do not stop.
Help yourself with impulses coming from the outside world. When we struggle
inside with thought, body and feeling, this substance is formed. You need
it in order to continue. Let it gather where is convenient. For now it is
not important to know where it is located. Accumulate it, this is what you
are missing.
You are still young, you don't have experience, you are empty. But you are
on the right track and you should not, above all, stop. Start the struggle
again. THIS IS THE TRUE WAY*. Are you looking for ways to do it? These are
not important. Struggle. You know better than me what to pick on.
For instance, what your body likes, whatever it is you usually give to it,
stop giving it anymore. This way it will learn to serve. You will see that,
until now, whatever your individuality really liked, your body never
consented to it.

L. - Sir, in order to remember myself, you gave me the task to work with
someone who is close to me. I observed, and so did my wife, that this aim
has changed our relationship, but only up to a certain point. You told us
that it is a blessing to work together - but there is an obstacle that none
of us can overcome. You told her that you will tell us what to do to to
succeed.

G. - Do you have children? Then, there is a first thing to be dealt with.
Like for all parents, these children are creating for you special
obligations. Well then, tell yourselves that living for yourselves is over!
Now you should, you and your wife, set this common aim: live for your
children. You shall impose yourselves, in everyday life, to sacrifice
everything for your children. This aim will create in you a true contact
with work - because it is an objective aim, and the work is objective too.
Start this. Talk about it with your wife. Discuss it together, easy and
openly. Here, nothing shall strain your relationship. Aim to this: all for
your children. Not forever, for an established length of time.
A struggle will be necessary for both. Because if you both set this aim,
since your type is different, each one of you shall have to carry on a
personal struggle inside.
The one that will fulfill this aim will 'pass' his exam. And if you do this
for a week or two, I will be able to give you further indications.

P. - I would like to know how to avoid imagination taking over, outside the
moments when I work  myself, which last only for a certain time.

G. - For this, I am going to give you a very simple advice, a very ordinary
one. You are also on the right track. What I am going to suggest to you
will amaze you. Trying to understand it beforehand, with your usual logic,
will not give you anything. Later, you would see why this advice was good.
Every time you have some spare time, count 1,2,3,4,5,6... to 50. Then count
backwards 50,49,48,47,47,46, etc. Do this seven times without stopping, and
then tell yourself the following words:

        'I AM, I WANT TO BE, I CAN BE.
        Not to serve evil... But to serve the good. To help my fellow man when
        I will be capable of BEING.
        I AM.'

After this, start counting again, not mechanically, but consciously. Do
this during all your spare time. The first time this will look like an
absurdity to you. But when you had done it for two or three weeks, you
would thank me with all your heart.
Did you understand me?

Ms. L. - Sir, both here and with close ones, I experience a lot of
difficulty in expressing myself, in manifesting my ideas and my feelings.
This is very important for me. It is like being paralyzed. What can I do to
ged rid of it?

G. - You have to be IMPARTIAL.

(One should never do what I advise somene else to do. It is you I am
talking to now.)

You are *you*. You want to work, you want to have an 'I',  a true 'I'. Yor
aim is an independent 'I am'. If you don't have it yet, *imagine* that you
already have it.
One who has an 'I' is impartial to all external things. He is impartial to
all other people. For instance X. is mad. Nature made him so: heredity, his
father, his grandfather... He is mad, but I don't get upset because he is
mad. I take him as a fool. I have pity. This is called being impartial. You
look at all X's manifestations, and you try to understand: where are the
manifestations of a mad person coming from?
There are different kinds of madmen. (G. lights up a cigarette). For
instance, one holds his cigarette like this (he puts the burning end into
his mouth). A normal person would never do that. But I don't get upset: I
have pity.

Dr. - But there are different kinds of pity. We can have pity while having
contempt.

G. - You, you have this pity. Me, I don't have it. Either I have pity, or I
don't have pity. There are two possibilities: either he is mad, or he is
insolent. If he is mad, I have pity. If he is insolent, he will never
forget me.
But pity is a necessity: everybody deserves pity. If you look at your
manifestations in detail, you will realize that a part comes from heredity,
another from the damages of education and the third one from the sins that
you have committed when young. This makes three categories.
The one that comes from heredity, I pity it, the second category, less
pity, but  the third one I never forgive. I only speak here of subjective
things. But if you apply this in your life, you will never be mistaken. A
part comes from heredity, the second one from education, the third from the
behavior of youth.

J. - Sir, a while ago I was very interested by P.'s question and your
answer. In my life, usually very agitated and vulgar, I observe how little
space there is for the Work.
I feel lost many times, which is normal. But what is less so, is that I
belong to this agitation, to this vulgarity that fits the ordinary person
that is stronger in me. And I am asking if, for my own work, it wouldn't be
better for me to apply the advice you gave to P., because I think there is
something there that can liberate me, in a simple and neat way, from the
narrow cage I turn in continuously.

G. - No, that doesn't fit you at all! It is very difficult to count like
this: 1,2,3, to 50. I am going to give you something simpler.
Do you have family? a father, a mother, a brother?

j. - And a sister.

G. - A sister too! You are five then!
Starting tomorrow morning, take this task: every ten minutes - a little
more, a little less, it doesn't matter - you will remember one of them in
sequence. First your father, the ten minutes after your mother, and so on.
You will remember them and you will portray them to yourself. To end,
another ten minutes after, do the exercise 'I AM... I WANT TO BE' with the
sensation of your whole presence.
Ten minutes after, you start again: your father, your mother, etc. And you
spend all your spare time like this. This is even simpler. Do you
understand?
More, everytime it is your mother's turn, you'll think of her coming here
with silvery things on her ears, cheap things... and you will give your
word that when you will 'grow up' and you will have enough money, you will
take the task of buying her new ones, of gold. (With a wink to the mother:
10% to me!).

Ms. E. - Would you allow me to ask you for advice?
When I try to remember myself, I am always bothered by an idea: how to
organize my day so that everything goes well, that everybody will be happy
at home? From another side, during my day, I am bothered by the ideas
refering to the inner work. I think to what I hear here, and it bothers me
constantly.

G. - One has to assign and sacrifice for this work a special time during
the day.
Life is one thing. Inner work another: their substance is different. When
you start working, you have to be actively aware. Your only task is your
Work. Before you start, you have to prepare yourself, to let go, to gather
yourself. And then, with all your presence, you do the work.
Be an absolute egotist. Forget everything else. Forget your God, your
husband, your son, the money. After, leave the work aside and come back to
the things of life.
It is difficult. In the beginning one cannot do it for long, on tires
easily. If you work five minutes more, you are empty of all energy. It is
because of this that one has to increase little by little, to get used to
it: five minutes, six minutes, the ten minutes. Only in this way you will
get a good start, to prepare yourself to aquire the state corresponding to
a real man.
If you work longer, it proves that you are not working with all your
presence, but only with your head. And this you can do for thousands of
years without gaining anything.
Work for a short time, but work well: with all your presence. Then let life
take its mechanical course, as usual, otherwise you will become a
psychopath.
Five minutes of real work are better than twenty-four hours of ordinary
work. Again, it is not the quantity, but the quality that counts: short but
substantial.

H. - I would like to be able to follow a schedule: do what I decided when I
sheduled it.

G. - For you, today, it is impossible to achieve that. Later, you will be
able. You are therefore a man, like all men, not very strong. It is the
law.
Today, you can be active for a third of your waking state. Start by asking
yourself if what you are going to do will give you sooner or later remorse
of conscience. Think about it with all your presence. If you are not sure,
don't do it; if you are sure you will not have them, then you can do it.
In preparation, you relax, you calm yourself. Then you actively think and
you force yourself to make a program to achieve what you have decided to
do.
Afterwards, you will lose this state, you will become again the slave of
your associations. But what you have decided in that special state, take it
as a task, as a service. Do not believe in you in your ordinary state: you
will always justify yourself, you will believe in you. You should not
believe... you should not especially forget *how* you have decided your
program.
Without this, you will have the 'tomorrow illness'. Beware of that. Decide.
And when the time comes, do what you have decided. The most unhappy man in
the world is the one that has the 'tomorrow illness'. He will never change.
Destiny is just, objectively just. It always produces what you deserved.
What you have planted grows. But if have not planted anything, nothing that
you want grows, something else grows: you need radishes and you get
horseradish. Horseradish is sometimes a delicacy. Sometimes not...

Z. - May I ask you a question? I think that to arrive at knowledge, one has
to be able to risk. Many times, I don't have the courage to be wrong and I
hide myself in my room.
I would like to have the courage to be mistaken and go towards knowledge.

G. - For this not much is necessary! If for instance you know that you are
a zero, if you have really understood that you are a 'nulity', that you are
'shit', and you don't want to be shit anymore, then you have to risk:
either this or nothing. But if you already felt that you are a nulity and
you could become something else, why have fear? You have nothing to lose.
And now, my dear host, seriously, do you understand?

B. - Mister Gurdjieff, when one is taken by a profound feeling of sadness
which is impossible to escape, what is the mechanical way to free oneself
from that?

G. - If you don't know the cause of it?

B. - Yes.

G. - There is no such sadness, this is idiotic. See the medical specialist!
I can recommend you to a neuropathologist. I know him very well, he gives
me 10% (laughs).

B. - Sometimes I observe this after lunch.

G. - Oh! Oh! But this is a symptom! You eat a litlle too much. For a week
eat less. Observe what is happening and let me know. And if it is not this,
we will find something else. Let's verify first.

B. - But it is not always after a meal...

G. - I repeat. Eat less, in general. Not much less. Do not eat the last
piece: you understand? Bravo, then! Verify and next time we will talk about
it.

B. - How can I cease to mistake what comes from my intellectual center and
what comes from the emotional one?

G. - Take things in a simple way. When you think, you think. When you are
warm, or cold, these are your sensations. When you are angry, upset, when
you love, when you don't love, these are your feelings.

B. - But in my actions, how can I stop the centers to impede on one
another: to think with my feelings and reason instead of feeling? How to
not let them act for the other?

G. - This is weakness, this is an illness.
You should not think with your feelings. You should think with your head.
But to think with a *true* thought, otherwise the intiative comes from the
feeling and the thinking center is only a function then.
The center of gravity should be the true thinking. If not, you are not an
individual: you are a machine.
Every man should try to get used of being an *individual* on the inside, an
independent person, something which is not 'a dog's tail'.**
There is here a very characteristic symptom: if your presence concentrates
on your thinking, then you are an individual. (Of course, there are
different levels of individuals, but this is not important for the moment).
You are an *individual* when you have your center of gravity in the center
of *true* thinking. If your center of gravity is in another center, in your
body or in you feelings, you are only a robot.
When you are working, you should always have as an aim to be connected to
true thinking. Do it consciously. Otherwise, everything in you will proceed
unconsciously.

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Autres paroles de Gurdjieff
Question de Gurdjieff (no 50) ed. Albin Michel, 1989, p.93-100
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