Gurdjieff Society of Virginia

A Natural Bridge

“MR. Gurdjieff”: The sadness one sometimes glimpsed in his eyes was that of all teachers faced with the impossibility of transmitting the truth. At the Prieuré, he seemed like an oriental prince; he was the intractable master. Later, toward the end of his life, years after his accident and the closing of the Prieuré, having finished his work as a writer, he placed himself completely at the service of his pupils and appeared even greater in stature, immense in his simplicity and renunciation. Dependent on all, he served each of them; this was freedom.
Gurdjieff made it clear that there existed a source teaching at the root of what he transmitted: a knowledge having the status of an objective science. He is thus like a bridge thrown down between ourselves and the world of objective reality, and this compels us to realize something essential: that, being the bridge, he thereby escaped being taken by us as the goal. It would be wrong of us, therefore, to betray him by making a god out of him. We must not make his teaching into a new religion. To me he appears all the greater for having known how to remain the one who prepares the way, indifferent to praise and blame alike.

Gurdjieff insisted on the fact that man forgets himself by forgetting the seed that is within him, by turning his back on reality, which is the One. In so doing he increases his suffering, worsens the state he is in, hastens his own downfall and that of his fellow men and adds to the suffering of the Creator, for, in some way, the Creator is he himself.

The only direction is: to connect. Our role, the role of man, is to understand the laws that govern the universe in order not to transgress them and to allow, if not to assist in, the process of transmutation. Shun all that dissipates, go toward what unites; flee from what dilutes, seek what concentrates; shun what degrades energy. Every being, at its own level, should “incarnate” the bridge between what is above and what is beneath itself. Man should find these three levels within himself. “Mr. Gurdjieff” came to bear witness, to remind, to make known, to prepare, to connect, to enable the link to be made.

A teaching is a two-way channel linking Heaven and earth, the invisible and the visible; the “visible” being everything in the universe revealed to us by our sense organs, and the “invisible” being what other, more discerning, organs of perception enable us to perceive beyond the surface, which until then seemed to be the sole reality. To say that a teaching belongs to the monastic way or to the “fourth way” means nothing more than to indicate the form, the particular section, the access point to the channel. Through the channel an influence can pe*****te and be conveyed further. The channel itself is of course made up of forms, but even more so of individuals. Forms or conditions or exercises, people of different levels of being forming an unbroken succession—and it is precisely because it is a channel that there must be no interruption. It could also be said that these individuals act as a junction or a link, that they are like neurons joined one to the next to form a circuit, along which a current can pass.
~Michel Conge Facing Mr. Gurdjieff

DISREGARD THE OBSTACLES, FOCUS ON THE SELF
Bhagavan: Don't focus on things that get in the way, trying to get rid of them, focus on the fact that you are already the Self and that the other things are only fictions created by your mind; dwell not on multiplicity and the Divine in each, but on the only One, nothing else existing.
Bhagavan Sri Ramana to Ethel Merston, A Woman's Work, p. 175

“The child wants to have, the adult wants to be. The wish to be is behind all my manifestations. To learn to see is the first initiation into self-knowledge. We struggle not against something, we struggle for something. I believe I need to pay attention when, in fact, I need to see and know my inattention. When I begin to see, I begin to love what I see. Where our attention is, God is.”
― Jeanne De Salzmann, The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff

ETHEL MERSTON MEETING BHAGAVAN

Ethel went to the ashram and, for the first time, saw Bhagavan.
“He was a tall white-bearded man, a long face almost as white as an Italian's, long beautiful hands, and eyes that twinkled and looked through you, though in a very different way from Gurdjieff's piercing gaze.”
The Maharshi sat at the east end of a long, narrow hall, on a couch raised so he could be seen by the devotees who sat on the floor, men on one side, women on the other. The atmosphere was peaceful, silent but for the occasional question and Bhagavan's reply.
At that time, if the question was in English, he answered in English; later, he used an interpreter for his answers.

So affected was Ethel, usually the extrovert, that she spoke to no one.

"The peace of his little hall, the beauty of the great hill towering up behind the ashram and the dynamic look and peace of the Maharshi all held me."

Ethel sat and meditated, and listened as Maharshi answered questions.

Instead of staying one day as planned, Ethel stayed three days.
She moved to a hut near the ashram where two other Europeans were housed—Miss Jackson-Ward, another English visitor, and Major Alan W. Chadwick, the first European to live at the ashram.

On February 7,1939, Ethel asked a question:

Ethel: I have read Who Am I? While inquiring who the 'I' is, I cannot hold it for any length of time. Secondly, I have no interest in the environment, yet I have hopes that I shall find some interest in life.

Maharshi: If there is no interest, it is good.

(The interpreter says that the questioner hopes to find some interest in life.)

Maharshi: That means there are those vasanas [habits of mind; latent tendency or impression]. A dreamer dreams a dream. He sees the dream world with pleasures, pains, etc. But he wakes up and then loses all interest in the dream world. So it is with the waking world also. Just as the dream world, being only a part of yourself and not different from you, ceases to interest you, so also the present world would cease to interest you if you awake from this waking dream, samsara [cycle of births and deaths] ) and realize that it is a part of your Self, and not an objective reality. Because you think that you are apart from the objects around you, you desire a thing - but if you understand that the thing was only a thought form, you would no longer desire it.

All things are like bubbles on water. You are the water, and the objects are the bubbles. They cannot exist apart from the water, but they are not quite the same as the water.

Ethel: I feel I am like froth.

Maharshi: Cease that identification with the unreal and know your real identity. Then you will be firm, and no doubts can arise.

Ethel: But I am the froth.

Maharshi: Because you think that way, there is worry. It is a wrong imagination. Accept your true identity with the Real. Be the water and not the froth. That is done by diving in.

Ethel: If I dive in, I shall find...

Maharshi: But even without diving in, you are That. The ideas of exterior and interior exist only so long as you do not accept your real identity.

Ethel: But I took the idea from you that you want me to dive in.

Maharshi: Yes, quite right. It was said because you are identifying yourself with the froth and not the water. Because of this confusion, the answer was meant to draw your attention to this confusion and bring it home to you.

All that is meant is that the Self is infinite, inclusive of all that you see. There is nothing beyond It nor apart from It. Knowing this, you will not desire anything; not desiring, you will be content. The Self is always realized. There is no seeking to realize what is already—always—realized. For you cannot deny your own existence. That existence is consciousness - the Self. Unless you exist, you cannot ask questions. So you must admit your own existence. That existence is the Self. It is already realized. Therefore, the effort to realize results only in your realizing your present mistake - that you have not realized your Self. There is no fresh realization. The Self becomes revealed.

Ethel: That will take some years.

Maharshi: Why years? The idea of time is only in your mind. It is not in the Self. There is no time for the Self. Time arises as an idea after the ego arises. But you are the Self beyond time and space; you exist even in the absence of time and space.

Thought Ethel:

All was new to me. I had known Krishnamurti, and Ouspensky and Gurdjieff, but never any Hindu Sage of the Advaitic tradition, yet, from the first moment in his presence, he made me feel at home, and the peace of the little hall drew me as nothing had before.... When, finally, I had to leave, I knew that sometime I should return. The return came only about two years later, and from then on, for five consecutive years, I visited the Ashram each summer to sit in Bhagavan's presence.

- A Woman’s Work, Mary Ellen Korman

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