Nostalgia for Being
deSalzmann
Photo courtesy of Warren Baker"Man remains a mystery to himself. He has a nostalgia for Being, a longing for duration, for permanence, for absoluteness— a longing to be. Yet everything that constitutes his life is temporary, ephemeral, limited. He aspires to another order, another life, a world that is beyond him. He senses that he is meant to participate in it.
He searches for an idea, an inspiration, that could move him in this direction. It arises as a question: "Who am I? Who am I in this world? He cannot answer. He has nothing with which to answer— no knowledge of himself to face this question, no knowledge of his own. But he feels he must welcome it. He asks himself what he is. This is the first step on the way. He wants to open his eyes. He wants to wake up, to awaken."
de Salzmann, Jeanne. The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff. Boston: Shambala Publications Inc., 2010, page 9.
Conscience
Conscience calls me to be myself.
To be myself begins with self-knowledge.
Self-knowledge begins with work on myself.
Work on myself is based on the sensation of myself.
Jean Vaysse. Toward Awakening: An approach to the teaching left by Gurdjieff.
San Francisco: Harper & Row Publishers, 1979. Page 169.
Faith, Hope and Love
Faith of consciousness is freedom
Faith of feeling is weakness
Faith of body is stupidity.
Love of consciousness evokes the same in response
Love of feeling evokes the opposite
Love of body depends only on type and polarity.
Hope of consciousness is strength
Hope of feeling is slavery
Hope of body is disease.
G.I. Gurdjieff. Beelzebub’s Tales To His Grandson. New York: E.P. Dutton & Co. Inc., 1964. Page 361.