Struggle and Salvation

The Meeting began with a silence of one minute.

Then each person gave a two-minute account of relevant experiences over the previous month.

D recounted an incident where he had been explaining the meaning of acronyms used in text messaging, including "omg", which led to him being accused of blasphemy. D responded robustly, and the other person is now urging D to find salvation through conversion to Christianity. Observing his own reactions, D noted he had experienced an intensity of reaction in this exchange that touched something deep and unresolved.

M described being in conversation with people and noticing that they were not listening to what he was saying, and continuing to talk about their own interests as if he had not spoken. It was as if they were inhabiting another place rather than the present experience. He added that he observes himself doing the same thing too, on occasion.

Z spoke of resistance she has experienced with regard to reading Beelzebub's Tales.

BW has been trying to understand what the Work is about. He sets goals, but finds them hard to accomplish. His recent performance in theatre completed, he has been writing, but is not satisfied with the quality of his draft and feels he needs to rewrite it.

T had been to the Lucian Freud exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. Each painting had taken one to three years to paint, and yet looking at them in their entirety revealed no evidence of the passing of time, or of the struggle to reach the completed work. She has been working on one painting for a year, and has learnt more from this one work than in all her years of painting more short-term pieces. She felt encouraged by the magnificent exhibition of works by a "master" who stayed with painting one picture over a prolonged period of time.

RM spoke about his experience over the last few months of being on a 56 day cruise along the Amazon River. He had organised open meditation, morning and evening teaching and discussion meetings, creating a daily structure within which people attended and participated. Attendance grew over the weeks and there was enormous interest and enthusiasm. The strength of this experience has reinforced for him the idea to develop a similar course here, for which he is in the process of creating the structure and content, and feels there is a huge untapped appetite in the population.

L spoke of the illusion of free will, and how the the exertion of will power and self-awareness seems to incur stronger resistance. The creating of art could play a significant role in the Work, and Lucian Freud was an example of successful application of will-power.

[Removed at the request of BS.]

A discussion of the contributions followed.

BW asked D what he had not liked about the communications from the Christian. D thought it had triggered the same rebellious feelings in him that he recalled from childhood, when those in authority demanded that he think and act in a way alien to his own thoughts and feelings. L thought the message a little threatening in its symbology, and the implied consequence of not choosing salvation as urged. M said the word Christ comes from the Greek Χριστός, which means "saviour", which could be understood in any religion as that which would save you. Z knows a local Christian minister well, and respects him; everyone is in a different place.

Z suggested that BW think of his work in terms of struggle. The struggle can be interpreted as food in the Work. L commented that Gurdjieff uses the metaphor of food in Beelzebub's Tales, and that in writing, struggle is good. If there is no struggle, the writing might not be good enough. RM recommended using Ouspensky's Psychology of Man's Possible Evolution as a text to help people learn Gurdjieff's ideas. This was the book he had used in his sessions on the cruise, and it had been very effective. L said that the Meetings were "Gurdjieff Meetings", focusing on Gurdjieff, and asked why Ouspensky's interpretation of Gurdjieff's ideas would be better than Gurdjieff's own writings. T mentioned that even in the context of Beelzebub's Tales, it was difficult to locate the original version approved by Gurdjieff.

The reading of Beelzebub's Tales then resumed. A deck of cards brought in by BW was used to select randomly who would read next.

"I shall expound my thoughts ... (so) that the essence of certain real notions may of themselves automatically, so to say, go from this 'waking consciousness' ... into what you call the subconscious, which ought to be in my opinion the real human consciousness, and ... mechanically bring about ... the results ... which are proper to man and not merely to single- or double-brained animals."

RM explained that by "waking consciousness" Gurdjieff means the moving centre, or illusion. M said that humans are triple-brained as they have an intellectual centre in addition to emotional and instinctive ones. RM spoke of the speeds of the three centres, describing the instinctive centre as being 30,000 times faster than the emotional, which is itself 30,000 times faster than the intellectual.

It was decided that discussion of each paragraph be limited to five minutes, to promote passage through the book, and the reading continued:

"In the entirety of every man ... are formed two independent consciousnesses which... have almost nothing in common. One consciousness is formed from the perception of all kinds of ... impressions ...; and the other ... transmitted to him by heredity, which have become blended ..."

T found this paragraph mind-boggling, and wondered if this might have been Gurdjieff's intention. RM explained that Gurdjieff is referring to essence and personality, or nature and nurture.

Gurdjieff goes on to say that he is "... obliged to construct the general exposition even of this first chapter ... calculating that it should reach, and in the manner required for my aim 'ruffle', the perceptions accumulated in both these consciousnesses of yours."