Hail thy mother

"Protestants"

Lmao

It is the anniversary of Gurdjieff's death.

This is one disciple's recollection of her time with him:

"A young American guest and I were washing up late at night and amusing one another with rather uncharitable comments on one of our fellow guests. We were thoroughly enjoying ourselves and feeling definitely superior to this man in every way, but suddenly I caught myself and said, "Nevertheless, Mr. Gurdjieff likes him." My fellow worker looked horrified. "What makes you think that man LIKES anybody ?" he said. I thought, "Well he likes me," but I had the sense not to say it out loud and he went on, "Don't you know what he wrote about such things ?" My answer came out pat : "Love of consciousness evokes the same in response; Love of feeling evokes the opposite; Love of body depends on type and polarity." But I don't understand all this talk about objective love.

"And I don't want it either," I added, but silently.

"This conclusion of our conversation had a very strong effect on me. I really meant what I thought about objective love. I wanted none of it. It seemed cold and comfortless - human love would be good enough for me - but why was love of feeling supposed to evoke the opposite ? I was really disturbed by the questions all this aroused in me and saw how I did not understand anything at all about it. I spent a very restless night and was tormented all through the next day. Why should we be called upon to reject what seemed to me to be one of the very few truly desirable things available to us ? I could not resolve the question. I could not see that objective love could be anything but some cold and impersonal attitude and I wished for none of it. I was all for the pleasure of love of feeling, which did not in my experience, seem at all fated to "evoke the opposite."

"That night, I did the reading before dinner and then helped with the washing up. When I was going home after everyone else had already departed, Mr. Gurdjieff, who was still sitting in the salon, called to me as I passed the door, inviting me to come in and talk to him. I went and sat on the floor beside him and he began to talk to me about reading aloud. He said I was not bad - could even be good - but I had much to learn. For instance, I should not go on reading without taking a break. I should pause from time to time and take a drink of water. I said I did not need to do this. He said I must learn to think of other people. "When you stop to drink, those who are asleep will wake up." I later followed this advice and found it quite correct.

"All the time he was talking to me, I felt very strangely that a quite different conversation was taking place between us. He was really telling me what I wanted to know about objective love. I began to understand how the greater does not preclude the lesser, but includes it and, in fact, the greater could not exist without the lesser. I saw how his love was not at all a personal love, but love for all humanity, for all living beings, perhaps even for all creation.

Although this was something quite beyond anything I could aspire to or attempt to understand, when I came into contact with it, as I did now, it could only appear to me as personal love, answering the personal love which was the best I had to offer.

"The whole question became wonderfully clear to me and I was flooded with peace and happiness. It did not last long. When I stood up at last to go, I was already thinking, "You have imagined the whole thing. You are remembering Ouspensky's account of the strange episode in Finland when he heard Mr. Gurdjieff's voice talking to him when he was quite alone in his room." (I had typed this chapter of Ouspensky's just a day or two ago.) I told myself, "You are just being foolish and letting your imagination run riot." Then, just as I reached the door, he called me back and as I stood beside him, he took my hand and asked me very quietly, "You understand what I tell?" There was no mistaking his meaning now and the whole thing was restored to me.