It’s Up to Ourselves
A Mother, a Daughter, and Gurdjieff
By Jessmin & Dushka Howarth
(Excerpt from above article in www.gurdjieff.org/howarth2.htm)
A bordo del Queen Elizabeth, 1949.
Izquierda a derecha: Dushka Howarth, Cynthia Pearce, Lise Tracol,
Mme de Salzmann y Bernard Le Maitre.
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……One of the people who cared for Mme. O. during her last years was Daphne Ripman Matchelajovic, who, now widowed, leads a large, active group in Buenos Aires. She kindly sent me some of the notes she made at Mendham from 1946–1950 that illustrate the kinds of conversations that took place in Mme.’s room while they were choosing readings, discussing people’s questions and reporting on events of the day. Here are some excerpts that I particularly treasure:
Mme. said, “If our aim is not formed, we are not in the work yet. If a man has aim he makes demands on himself—a man in the work knows what he wants, knows right from wrong and is determined to achieve his aim—hates sleep and desires to remember himself and takes everything relative to that.”
Question: If one’s aim is not formed yet and one cannot start work until one knows what one wants, it seems to be a circle. How can one get out?
“It is a vicious circle but a way out does in fact exist. But for very few people. Only for those who realize that they are in a circle—have decision and determination to come out—and are willing to pay a high price to escape. You cannot come to consciousness unconsciously. If we see what we have not got we will know what we want—and what effort or payment we must make to get it.”
We can always gauge how much we want something by the price we are willing to pay for it. Mme. describes us now as “People without railway ticket who come up to the gate but who won’t be let through.”
Question: This house as arranged by Mme. seems to collect attention. If we use this house rightly it would help us to collect ourselves?
In fact, Mme. finds that on the whole we have less attention and are less conscious than people in ordinary life. She says that “today people in ordinary life have to have a certain degree of awareness—business people have to—they know they lose money if they don’t—people in jobs have to be alert or they lose their jobs.” But we in this house can do things with impunity and therefore in fact Mme. finds most of the time we are on a level lower than people in ordinary life.
“Making demands on oneself is not a question of activity. Some machines are made to be active.” To make demands on oneself, try to stop the machine in simple ways, which depends on whether one has energy.
“It should already be clear that you cannot create energy. Necessary save energy, stop wastage. This is possible only if it is your heart’s desire and you know what you want.”
We had been told many times that we could not do. Mme. said, “yes, in happenings, in momentum, impossible to do—only way of doing was by going against happenings, by stopping momentum. Aim is to be free to remember oneself. It is impossible to see anything or do anything without first stopping machine. She saw us as people without brakes. Even with car the first thing you check, before knowing what speed it goes at, are the brakes—while things were going at high speed, like a car going at high speed, no change of direction was possible.”
“Everything depends on whether you really want, or you only think you do. Work is not living in house or coming into special conditions, or reading books, or coming to lectures or listening to readings. None of this leads in direction of work or aim from system point of view. People are divided in two categories—those who think and those who really want. If one really wants, one does.” God gives one free choice. No one forces you to do it. But your choice places you “like the dog and the antelope, one goes for the bones and the other goes to the grass,” (in the anecdote it is carnal or spiritual). And all this has nothing to do with high ideas and imagination about yourself. Until one sees oneself as one is, and it may mean going many steps backwards from what one thought one was, one has no starting point.
By ourselves we do not examine ourselves. We have to be made to see. If we then see—“it is like a thermometer—we can throw away thermometer or refuse to put it in our mouth but it is a fact. What we do with what we see is our business but facts exist, thermometer exists, temperature exists.”
Before it is possible to work on attention a person must know why and what they want—to direct attention towards—because “attention is like a tool, like a knife which can be used for right purpose or wrong purpose.”
Analogy from Buddha reading: “From the same food and the same circumstances the hornet produces poison and the bee produces honey.”
“Directed attention supposes someone there to direct it—not just chariot without driver.”
Where one’s attention is caught, one becomes that thing and of the level of that thing. If one loses one’s attention in this table one becomes this table. Collecting attention is bringing it back and bringing it into a definite place in oneself.
Question: This feeling that one is nothing, to really feel it is a very rare thing.
Mme. answered that “you either have some feeling or have not. And what does it mean, nothingness? We come as beggar and we go as beggar. We have nothing—we have no consciousness, no ‘I,’ no will—are automatons. Question of seeing facts. Question of whether bigger ‘Idea’ exists for one or not. To be humble is natural, to be proud is absurd.”
Realization must grow as man examines himself, observes. Mme. said for her “big idea was that man was self-creative being, that exactly what one is depends on oneself.”
Man has in his nature all things from God to devil. They all have their place and their “note,” only which ones control is the question for us. “Not question of abolishing lower—have pig in oneself … it isn’t a question of killing pig, but keeping it in backyard.”
Mme. also said she didn’t want us to forget the parable of the talents—not to think that God had a sentimental attitude towards us. Those who had something could get more, but those who did not make use of what they had, would lose even what they had got. This was a principle and not sentimental.