“All the beings of this planet then began to work in order to have in their consciousness this Divine function of genuine conscience, and for this purpose, as everywhere in the Universe, they transubstantiated in themselves what are called the ‘being-obligolnian-strivings’ which consist of the following five, namely:“The first striving: to have in their ordinary being existence everything...

Metaphorically, man’s usual state of awareness when he is up and about can be characterized as a “waking sleep.” In such a state he is capable of many sophisticated actions. Nevertheless, he has very little attention – so little that this state can be characterized as a kind of sleep. He can drive a car, cook and eat food, have conversations, write novels, paint paintings, and so on. And yet he...

Associations work in a definite way in each person. I see a man making a certain movement. This gives me a prompt, and from this, associations start. Perhaps I am a policeman and I assume from the movement that the man wants to pick my pocket. But supposing the man never thought of my pocket, I, as the policeman, would not have understood the movement. If I am a priest, I have other...

The only difference between a child and a grown-up man is in the mind. All the weaknesses are there, beginning with hunger, with sensitivity, with naivete; there is no difference. The same things are in a child and in a grown-up man: love, hate, everything. Functions are the same, receptivity is the same, equally, they react, equally, they are given to imaginary fears. In short, there is no...

The more an actor acts, the more the work of centers becomes separated in him. In order to act, one must first of all be an artist. We have spoken about the spectrum producing white light. A man can be called an actor only if he is able, so to speak, to produce a white light. A real actor is one who creates, one who can produce all the seven colors of the spectrum. There have been and are even...

… we do not possess ourselves nor do we possess genuine self-love. Self-love is a great thing. If we consider self-love, as we generally understand it, as reprehensible, then it follows that true self-love—which, unfortunately, we do not possess—is desirable and necessary. Self-love is a sign of a high opinion of oneself. If a man has this self-love it proves what he is. As we have said earlier,...

The Work offers the idea that the human being can be viewed as having three controlling functions or brains: The intellect which resides in the head, the moving-instinctive brain which resides in the spine and the emotional brain which is centered in the solar plexus, but disperse to some degree throughout the abdomen. Gurdjieff presented this in an analogy of a horse, carriage and driver. Here...

There are two kinds of love: one, the love of a slave; the other, which must be acquired by work. The first has no value at all; only the second has value, that is, love acquired through work. This is the love about which all religions speak. If you love when “it” loves, it does not depend on you and so has no merit. It is what we call the love of a slave. You love even when you should not love....

Man is a plural being. When we speak of ourselves ordinarily, we speak of ‘I.’ We say, ” ‘I’ did this,” ” ‘I’ think this,” ” ‘I’ want to do this”—but this is a mistake. There is no such ‘I,’ or rather there are hundreds, thousands of little ‘I’s inevery one of us. We are divided in ourselves but we cannot recognize theplurality of our being except by observation and study. At one moment it is...

Liberation leads to liberation. These are the first words of truth—not truth in quotation marks but truth in the real meaning of the word; truth which is not merely theoretical, not simply a word, but truth that can be realized in practice. The meaning behind these words may be explained as follows: By liberation is meant the liberation which is the aim of all schools, all religions, at all...