STATE OF MIND IN MARTIAL ART

In the science of martial arts, the state of mind should remain the same as normal. In ordinary circumstances as well as when practicing martial arts, let there be no change at all-with the mind open and direct, neither tense nor lax, centering the mind so that there is no imbalance, calmly relax your mind, and savor this moment of ease thoroughly so that the relaxation does not stop its relaxation for even an instant.

Even when still, your mind is not still; even when hurried, your mind is not hurried. The mind is not dragged by the body, the body is not drugged by the mind. Pay attention to the mind, not the body. Let there be neither insufficiency nor excess in your mind. Even if superficially weakhearted, be inwardly stronghearted, and do not let others see in to your mind. It is like to be large, and for those who are physically large to know what it is like to be small; whether you are physically large or small it is essential to keep your mind free from subjective biases.

Let your inner mind be unclouded and open, placing your intellect on a broad plane. It is essential to polish the intellect and mind diligently. Once you have sharpened your intellect to the point where you can see whatever in the world is true or not, where you can tell whatever is good or bad, and when you are experienced in various fields and are incapable of being fooled at all by people of the world, then your mind will become imbued with the knowledge and wisdom of the art.

There is something special about knowledge of the art of war. It is imperative to master the principles of the art of war and learn to be unmoved in mind even in the heart of battle.

PHYSICAL BEARING IN MARTIAL ART

As for physical appearance, your face should not be tilted downward, upward, or to the side. Your gaze should be steady. Do not wrinkle your forehead, but make a furrow between your eyes slightly. The idea is to keep a serene expression on your face, nose straight, chin slightly forward.

The back of the neck should be straight, with strength focused in the nape. Feeling the whole body from the shoulders down as one, lower the shoulders, keep the spine straight, and do not let the buttocks stick out. Concentrate power in the lower legs, from the knees down through the tips of the feet. Tense the abdomen so that the waist dose not bend.

Generally speaking, it is essential to make your ordinary bearing the bearing you use in martial arts, and make the bearing you use in martial arts your ordinary bearing. This should be given careful consideration.

FOCUS OF THE EYES IN MARTIAL ARTS

The eyes are to be focused in such a way as to maximize the range and breadth of vision. Observation and perception are two separate things; the observing eye is stronger, the perceiving eye is weaker. A speciality of martial arts is to see that which is far away closely and to see that which is nearby from a distance.

In martial arts it is important to be aware of opponents weapons and yet not look at the opponents weapons at all. This takes work.

This matter of focusing the eyes is the same in both small and large-scale military science.

It is essential to see to both sides without moving the eyeballs.

Things like this are hard to master all at once when you are in a hurry. Remember what is written here, constantly accustom yourself to this eye focus, and find out the state where your eye focus dose not change no matter what happens.

SICKNESS

It is sickness to be obsessed with winning, it is sickness to be obsessed with using martial arts, and it is sickness to be obsessed with putting forth all one has learned. It is sickness to be obsessed with offense, and it is also sickness to be obsessed with getting rid of sickness. To fix the mind obsessively on anything is considered sickness. Since all of these various sicknesses are in the mind, the thing is to tune the mind by getting rid of such afflictions.

THE SENSE OF ELEMENTARY AND ADVANCED

LEVELS OF REMOVAL OF SICKNESS

The elementary level of removing sickness is when you get into thought to be free from thought and get into attachment to be free from attachment.

The meaning of this is that the wish to get rid of sickness is thought; to wish to get rid of the sickness in your mind is to be "in the midst of thought."

Also, even though we use the term SICKNESS, this means obsessive thought. To think of getting rid of sickness is also thought. therefore you use thought to get rid of thought. When you get rid of thoughts, you are free from thought, so this is called getting into thought to be free from thought.

When you take thought to get rid of the sickness that remains in thought, after that the thought of removal and the thoughts to be removed both disappear. This is what is known as using a wedge to extract a wedge.

When you cannot get a wedge out, if you drive another one in so as to ease the tightness, the first wedge comes out. Once the stuck wedge comes out, the wedge driven in afterward dose not remain. When sickness is gone, the thought of getting rid of sickness no longer remains; so this is called getting into thought to be free from thought.

To think of getting rid of sickness is to be attached to sickness, but if you use that attachment to get rid of sickness, the attachment will not remain; so this called getting into attachment to be free from attachment.

In the advanced level, getting rid of sickness means having no thought what so ever of getting rid of sickness. To think of riddance in itself sickness. To let sickness be, while living in the midst of sickness, is to be rid of sickness.

Thinking of getting rid of sickness happens because sickness is still in the mind. Therefore sickness dose not leave at all, and whatever you do and think is done with attachment; so there can be no higher value in it.

How is this to be understood? The two levels, elementary and advanced, have been set up for this function. You cultivate the state of mind of the elementary level, and when this cultivation builds up, attachment leaves on its own, without your intending to get rid of it.

Sickness means attachment. Attachment is despised in Buddhism. Mendicants who are free from attachment can mix in with the ordinary world without being affected or influenced; whatever they do is done freely and independently, stopping where it naturally should.

Masters of the arts cannot be called adepts as long as they have not left behind attachment to their various skills. Dust and dirt adhere to an unpolished gem, but a perfectly polished gem will not be dirtied even if it falls into mud. Polishing the gem of your mind by spiritual cultivation so that it is impervious to stain, leaving sickness alone

and giving up concern, do as you will.

THE NORMAL MIND

A monk asked an ancient worthy, "What is the Way?" The ancient worthy replied, "The normal mind is the Way."

This story contains a principle that applies to all the arts. Asked what the Way is, the ancient worthy replied that the normal mind is the Way. This is truly the ultimate. This is the state where the sickness of mind are all gone and one has become normal in mind, free from sickness even while in the midst of the sickness.

To apply this to worldly matters, suppose you are shooting with a bow and you think you are shooting while you are shooting; then the aim of your bow will be inconsistent and unsteady. When you wield a weapon, if you are conscious of wielding a weapon, your offense will be unstable. When you are writing, if you are conscious of writing, your pen will be unsteady. Even when you play the harp, if you are conscious of playing, the tune will be off.

When an archer forgets consciousness of shooting and shoots in a normal frame of mind, as if unoccupied, the bow will be steady. When using a weapon of riding a horse as well, you do not "wield a weapon" or "ride a horse". And you do not "write", you do not "play music". When you do everything in the normal state of mind, as if is when totally unoccupied, then everything goes smoothly and easily.

Whatever you do as your Way, if you are obsessed with it, or think that this is of importance to you, then it is not the Way. It is when you have nothing in your chest that you are on the Way. Whatever you do, if you do it with nothing in your chest, it works out easily.

This is like the Way everything reflects clearly in a mirror precisely because of the formless clarity of the mirror's reflectiveness. The heart of those on the Way is like mirror, empty and clear, being mindless and yet not failing to accomplish anything.

This is the "normal mind". Someone who does everything with this normal mind is called an adept.

Whatever you do, if you keep the idea of doing it before you and do it with singleminded concentration, you will be uncoordinated, you will do it well once, and then, when you think that is fine, you will do it badly. Or you may do it well twice and badly only once, then you will do it badly again. There is no consistency at all, because of doing it with the thought of doing it well.

When the effects of exercise build up unawares and practice accumulates, thoughts of wishing to quickly develop skill disappear quietly, and whatever you do, you spontaneously become free from conscious thoughts. At this time, you do not even know yourself; when your body, feet and hands act without your doing anything in your mind, you make no misses, ten times out of ten.

Even then, if it gets on your mind, you will miss. When you are not consciously mindful, you will succeed every time. Not being consciously mindful dose not, however, mean total mindlessness; it just means a normal mind.

LIKE A WOODEN MAN FACING FLOWERS AND BIRDS

This is a saying of Layman Pang: "Like a wooden man facing flowers and birds". Although his eyes are on the flowers and birds, his mind dose not stir at the flowers and birds.

Because a wooden man has no mind, it is not moved; this is perfectly logical. But how dose a person with a mind become like a wooden man?

The wooden man is metaphor, an illustration. As a human being with a mind, one cannot be exactly like a wooden manikin. As a human being, one cannot be like bamboo and wood. Even though you do see flowers, you do not see them by reproducing the consciousness of seeing the flowers.

The point of the saying is just to see innocently with the normal mind. When you shoot, you do not shoot by reproducing the consciousness of shooting. In other words, you shoot with the normal mind.

The normal mind is called unminding. If you change the normal mind and instead reproduce another consciousness, your form will also change, so you will stir both internally. If you do everything with a stirring mind, nothing will be as it should.

Even if it is only a matter of speaking a word, people will praise it if and only if your manner of saying it is unstirring and unshakable. What they call the unstirring mind of the Buddhas seems truly sublime.

THE FREE MIND

Master Zhongfeng said, "Embody the free-minded mind". There are elementary and advanced levels of applying this saying.

When you let the mind go, it stops where it has gone; therefore the first level of practice is to get it to come back each time, so that the mind dose not stay anywhere. When you strike a blow of the weapon and your mind lingers where you struck, this teaching has you get it to return to you.

At the advanced level, the message is to let your mind be free to go wherever it will. You release your mind after having made it such that it will not stop and linger anywhere even if it is set free.

To embody the free-minded mind means that as long as you use the mind that releases the mind to rope the mind and keep dragging it back, you are not free and independent. The mind that dose not free-minded mind.

When you embody this free-minded mind, you can act independently. You are not independent as long as you are holding on to a halter. EVEN dogs and cats should be raised unleashed. Cats and dogs cannot be raised properly if they are tied up all the time.

People who read Confucian books dwell on the word SERIOUSNESS as if it were the ultimate, spending their whole lives on seriousness, thus making their minds like leashed cats.

In Buddhism as well, seriousness dose in fact exist. Scripture speaks of being singleminded and undistracted. This would correspond to seriousness. It means to place the mind on one thing and not scatter it elsewhere.

There are, of course, passages that say, "We seriously declare of the Buddha...", and we face a Buddha image in what we call reverent obeisance. These usages all have meanings congruous with that of seriousness.

However, there are in any case expedient means for quelling distraction of mind. A well-governed mind dose not use expedients to pacify it.

When we chant "Great Sage, Immovable One", with our posture correct and our hands joined in a gesture of reverence, in our minds we visualize the image of the Immovable One. At this time our three modes of action, physical, verbal, and mental, are equal, and we are singleminded and undistracted. This is called "equality of the three mysteries". In other words, this has the same import as seriousness.

Seriousness corresponds to a quality of the basic mind, yet it is a state of mind that lasts only so long as it is practiced. When we let go of our reverential gesture and stop chanting Buddha names, the image of Buddha in your minds also disappears. What then remains is the former distracted mind. This is not a thoroughly pacified mind.

People who have successfully managed to pacify their minds once do not purify their physical, verbal, and mental actions; they are unstained even as they mingle with the dust of the world. Even if they are active all day, they are unmoved, just as the moon reflected in the water dose not move even though thousands and tens of thousands of waves roll one after another. This is the state of people who have consummated Buddhism; I have recorded it here under the instruction of a teacher of that doctrine.

MARTIAL ARTS AND BUDDHISM

There are many things in martial arts that accord with Buddhism and correspond to Zen. In particular, there is repudiation of attachment and avoidance of lingering on anything is considered quintessential.

A courtesan wrote this poem in response to one by the Buddhist priest Saigyo:

If you ask as a leaver of home,

I simply think you should

not let your mind linger

on a temporary dwelling

In martial arts we should deeply savor the last lines, and see if we are not like this. No matter what kind of secret transmission you obtain and what move you employ, if your mind lingers on that move, you will have lost in martial arts. It is essential to practice an attitude of not dwelling on anything, be it the actions of an opponent, your own skills, or

slashing and stabbing.

THREE CENTRES

We are flatteringly called three-centred beings, but we have no future because we have two centres filled only with our past habits.

Our centres are empty because we haven't filled them consciously. Everything we have is passive. The effort of this method is to make the three centres work together.

Any activity for a human being that is less than three-dimensional is sub-human. We spend our lives wandering -- escaping from one error into another.

Life becomes always a discussion between three centres: like or dislike, yes or no. All our time and energy is wasted by this discussion.

Man is three different persons, three different upbringings, three different contents. We grow up lop-sided -- with each centre out-balancing the others.

Only a small part of our life is under control. As we are, we have no will. Will is a state of development -- a possibility in a higher centre.

All we call development now is but an extension of one of the three centres. All our art is but an extension of the emotional centre, etc.

By wishing you can't add anything to your three centres -- "By wishing a man cannot add a cubit to his stature". You must have a method, a technique. Christianity was put into the Bible, but no technique for development was given. The technique is never written down.

Christ's public teaching was given in parable, leaving out the theory and the technique. {In Gurdjieff's private teaching he presented both theory and technique.}

Every science has to draw upon a special vocabulary. The Gurdjieff vocabulary is as precise as that of any other science. All the terms in the Bible were once precise scientific terms: "In my Father's house are many mansions", "Turn the other cheek", "An eye for an eye", "The cross"....

This method: a mathematical and material explanation of the creation, maintenance and purpose of the universe, man's place in that universe, his function and duty.

Man's obligation: to operate with the laws which operate the universe. Because man has a unique place. The obligation goes with that.

The awareness of your place is not a gift of nature. You must find it by conscious effort, not by hope. Man has a potentiality he knows nothing about. The science of ancient times. We have lost all idea of these potentialities.

Life provides no outlet for certain potentialities {Paul: the "wall of partition"}. Some people have forcible proof that they have potentialities for development.

Make an effort to develop a major organ: mental and emotional development.

Nature wanted to produce a self-evolving form. Man is the highest possible development of a self-evolving form. Nature can do no more; we must do it. All further development requires conscious effort. This requires labor comparable to that which nature has expended on our development so far, millenniums of it.

In all nature's creations, a certain activity follows a certain form.

We are an animal with a formless psyche. A psyche to have form must be three-fold.

There has been all knowledge in the world, but vast bodies of it have been wiped out {wars, calamities, etc.} as chalk off a slate. But all over the knowledge: Atlantis, Stonehenge, Pyramids, Mayan architecture, temples, etc.

Great cathedrals were built with a CONSCIOUS PURPOSE -- to elevate for a moment the vibrations of people. This was a conscious attempt to leaven the masses.

The Gurdjieff method: A method of Conscious Effort and Voluntary Suffering against INERTIA and REPETITION.

DEVELOPMENT AND GROWTH

(THE DIFFERENCE}

A person is small, then he grows up.

Development is stages. A development takes place in our body: teeth. They're there, lying in the gums.

We've only become more educated; we haven't developed.

The beaver building its dam: physical-centre extension, not development.

Metamorphosis of caterpillar into butterfly: development, possibility of a soul.

Why does one follow this Method, the Fourth Way? If you feel dissatisfaction you'll try something -- if you have a need. A need is an internal disequilibrium. You can tell by all your interests what your disequilibrium is. Because your interests are set going by your needs.

If we desire to develop, we do something about our two undeveloped centres. But if we don't find a method we run down scale. All our acts are appeasement because we haven't developed.

You've investigated methods, but you haven't worked in any method.

We all start equal before this unique activity.

You are sitting in a chair, comfortably. If you leave that chair without meaning to do this method's work, it is better not to leave it -- you'll be standing all your life. Because you never get back to that first chair once you leave it -- since life doesn't stand still.

ASLEEP

Man is asleep.

In every religion, in all great literature, you find references to the dream state. Must wake up {asleep in Adam, awake in Christ}. All religious talk about being born again. We're asleep in the animal: the body is awake, the "I" not.

This sleep is comparable to a hypnotic state. A child is put under the power of suggestion. Later in life, auto-suggestion. Complete mechanical state. Adults absolutely under a hypnotic spell -- like fakir hypnotizing the rabbit; he controls the circulation of the blood. A river has a flow that's not so fast as the current. The hypnotist suggests to you a little faster than life suggests to you.

It's almost a desire of man to be asleep. we're so asleep that unless life becomes too difficult we don't wake up. A shock can waken you.

But you must find your reasons for wanting to wake up.

Study human mechanicality. When you see how mechanical you are you begin to awake -- just as at the moment of waking from a dream you know you've been asleep.

Begin to compare your sleep and your waking state. After a dream you're embarrassed at exposure. In life you're exposed in the same way. You're willing to tell what a sorry figure you cut in a dream, but in life you excuse and gloss over.

No one can say how he's going to act under certain conditions. "I know just how I'll act in that situation" -- this is as wild as to say how you'll act in a dream.

In dreams you're running-down energy you didn't use up in the day.

If you've finished your day -- if your centres have finished -- you don't dream.

Study your dreams. There is a self-contained energy left over in one of the centres. You can discover in which centre you contain unused {during the day} energy: do you have predominately physical, emotional or mental dreams?

Emotional dreams wear us our most.

The three centres fall asleep separately. Sometimes at the beginning of sleep you jump violently. This is one centre letting go of another.

Our subconscious brain should be our conscious brain. Everything that has happened to us in life is there, penned up in the cerebellum, escaping only in sleep, trances, etc.

The conscious brain is polluted. Make an effort to tap the subconscious.

"The artist sometimes does this."

"No, only fortune-tellers -- sometimes; and unconsciously. To touch it unconsciously is dangerous."

A CONSCIOUS effort to tap CONSCIENCE in the back brain.

SELF-OBSERVATION

All great schools, all great systems of thought, all great religions have always striven to give man two freedoms: inside freedom {from vanity, self-love, etc.}, and outside freedom {from "education", etc.}.

The first steps towards freedom are self-observation, to "know thyself". Gurdjieff's system begins with neutral scientific observation of one's self -- taking notes on the body in the scientific manner. First the physical; later, notes on the mental and emotional centres.

The centre of gravity of change: you can't change by the mind alone; you must begin with the body, bring body and emotions into line.

The body is the only tool you have to work with. Make is a good tool. Resent the body's control of you.

Try to establish the physical as something apart from the "I". The beginning of adult life is the knowledge that we have an "I".

Our bodies are fertilizers for a soul.

The personal equation between you and your body is pernicious.

If you woke up in the body of a unicorn you wouldn't know how to act. You are just as much at the mercy of your own body. You're not responsible for your behavior -- you're born embedded in an animal. {Yeats's poem: "I am buried in a dying animal".}

You think you know your body, but you don't even know when you scratch your head.

Our body is as much an object of the outside world as a tree, a plant, or a stone.

Say "I am; I have a body". The French have a better expression -- they say "I have cold", not "I am cold". We should be conscious of our bodies, aware of our emotions, mindful of our thoughts. Say "I am having a passive thought", or "I am having an active thought".

Guard against self-deception, subjectivity, introspection. Introspection is bad -- we have nothing to look into.

You've found how difficult it is to manage your body. Our minds don't move; our environment has paralyzed our minds. Try exercises of mental stretching.

"We live bound in by our gestures. See how limited you are when you do the exercises. None of us has individual or essential gestures."

"Won't doing a lot of self-observation make you self- conscious? Unnatural?"

"Are you natural? Break the mask. You can find our what is authentic. You'll enlarge your gestures, you'll enlarge your emotion, you'll eventually be able to control your environment."

Our environment plays upon us. When Gurdjieff says "Don't do as others do", he means: don't simply let your environment act upon you: think up something active to do.

CONSCIOUS SUFFERING

Self-observation is conscious suffering.

We live only seventy years because of the useless suffering we submit to.

We must sacrifice automatic suffering.

Dig out your essence. Discover your type. This will be an active alternative against unconscious behavior.

Behaviorist phenomena is instinctive speech. It can be read by everyone around you.

HEREDITY has nothing to do with development. Heredity is simply: inclinations. Don't worry about it, just go on observing yourself.

Cast yourself for the role of a conscious human being. Act this role in public and private. Recondition yourself. Make every act purposive. Give play only to those ideas and emotions which are unassociated with "personality". This will counteract repetition.

Unconscious effort defeats us.

Most exercises only deplete your energy. Gymnastics that are not made to store energy {sport} wear out the physical centre. Boxers no good after thirty. Artists -- who use emotion unintelligently -- become pathological: have wasted their emotional centres. One-half the maladies treated by doctors only mean that the centres have been badly spent. Self-observation is the hardest of all things to do. It's the effort that counts -- the remembering to do it.

"But how do you do it -- by self-control?"

"No, not self-control -- that uses up energy. Self-observation stores energy."

"Do you do it by using suggestion?"

"No, suggestion won't help at all. Suggestion is simply keeping an idea in your mind. It is a passive thing. You must do an active thing."

"Give an example."

"Live a life of friction. Let yourself be disturbed as much as possible, but observe."

"We're not accustomed to make such effort. We don't like friction."

"Then no emotions are aroused. When there is no friction there is no development."

"When you're upset can you observe better?"

"Yes. You're in a high state and can do it better."

"But we self-observe all the time. It never stops."

"On the contrary it never happens. It's the greatest effort man has ever undertaken. It's not congruous with the rest of our activities."

"Actors self-observe."

"An actor is the very worst observer. An actor may be aware of what he is doing, but there is a difference between self-awareness and self-observation. Self-observation is a self-directed activity; awareness is simply of the outside."

"To SEE is passive. To LOOK is active."

CHEMISTRIES

The Gurdjieff method: to release you from your inertias, to turn you against your obvious chemistries.

When you begin to do self-observation you have to admit you're helpless, you have to admit that everything governs you. The reason: because you are either attracted or repelled by everything, not only animate but inanimate.

Your whole life is a blind reaction to attraction and repulsion. Your world outlook can be changed by the slightest suggestion.

You are at a disadvantage with a person who repulses or attracts you.

Why are we always victims of certain people's chemistry? Everyone is, unless he's a catalytic. We are bundles of chemistry, of which we know perhaps ten chemical elements instead of 1.500.

With conscious effort a new chemical substance is made in one's organism that makes for understanding. You must make personal effort with a newly received idea -- you create substances that way, a deposit of new chemical substances. Ideas are like food -- must be eaten, digested, even cause nausea. To be sympathetic to ideas is nothing; sympathy is merely chemistry, not understanding. Sympathy = law of fusion of similarities; nothing new is deposited.

CONSCIOUS suffering is arrived at by putting yourself in a situation agreeable to one centre and very disagreeable to the two others. Object: to get stretch, to get out of mechanicality, to find out what happens to your chemistry.

The exercise of self-observation produces a deposit in higher centres -- higher mental, higher emotional, higher physical. It helps you to accumulate a force, a power -- not a force that slides off you like water, but emanations that crystallize in you. You can do many thing with this force.

What do you think you've done up to now? What have you rescued from this machine of repetition? What have you become purposive about, instead of being pushed into it by your chemicals, type, etc.?

Self-observation: you store energy for another purpose: quality rather than vibrations.

"CHIEF FEATURE"

One of the great chief features is always self-love -- complete self-love.

Scales. The little thing you put on the scales that tip them down is usually your chef feature. Your chief feature is an outgrowth of your emotional attitude towards yourself.

Chief feature is never a good thing, but once found, it can be used consciously.

Our questionnaires: to discover the motivating force when you find it, but use it to study yourself.

An investigation of pretences. Are you proud of your greatest weakness? Are you always stating your outstanding weakness in terms of strength?

The best way to begin to "remember" what we are is sincerely to stop inventing those things we are not. We invent to hide ourselves.

Under very strong emotion sometimes we really do see ourselves.

Your development depends on your willingness{and speed} in acknowledging what's in you.

Vanity = a foolish display of what you haven't got.

Pride is more legitimate; it is in relation to what you've earned.

Vanity belongs to the body.

Self-pride is psychical pride.

Don't mix them.

No method can help you until you can get rid of vanity and self-pride.

There's something in you that is never fooled -- you have an exact valuation of what you are.

Most of our troubles are caused by the inability to realize emotionally what we understand intellectually. That causes in us a clash of tempos -- one centre is raised to high intensity, the two others out of harmony with it. This depends on your chief feature.

ESSENCE AND MASK

We are 1 per cent ourselves, 99 per cent sociological.

There is the essence{the "I"}, and the representation{the personality}.

The personality is the mask you've made to hide your essence.

The mask. Very difficult of discovery. Everyone has reasons for protecting himself.

You don't have to lose your mask if you don't want to. But know it. You can't alter it when you know it. You can't alter anything without knowing it.

It's practically impossible for anyone to arrive at his essence. But by slow and patient work essence can be developed. It's developed by conscious effort.

Essence is the material of which the universe is made. Essence is divine -- the particle of God in our subconscious is called Conscience.

Understanding is according to essence, not according to personality.

A person gives off radiations and emanations. The essence of a person is an emanation.

Man has octave upon octave of emanations.

EMOTION

An examination of the emotional centre, in view of producing a higher emotional body:

Emotion is a force, a chemical agent, a heat. We have only wishes, impulses, and appetites.

Emotions are the most valuable things we have but they can be very cheap in expression. What kind of emotion are you trying to express? Try to know what you're feeling.

Is the emotion justifiable? Inappropriateness of emotion is embarrassing. Often when people think they're intense it is painful for the onlooker -- like the arrow that is spent instead of going to the target.

Then there is the degree of expression -- the articulateness of it. Has the person finesse in expressing his emotion? elasticity?

Intensity is of value and it should be obvious whether the emoting creature has it or not -- or whether he is just making a noise, giving his solar plexus gymnastics. Professional tears.

The human race is in decline because of useless emotion. Make a gratuitous experience one day -- do something that's too hard to do: a conscious emotion.

Your physical body changes according to your emotions. It is the real barometer of your emotions. Temperament usually means lack of decision. Vascillating emotions make temperament.

We're occupied with ephemeral emotions. They come to us -- we don't bring them on. Think certain thoughts, do gratuitous acts -- this brings on emotions consciously -- emotional stretching. List how many emotions come to you automatically, mechanically.

Emotion today is merely fermentation. Observe and you may get an idea during the observation. This changes the centre of gravity: a "conversion".

Self-feeding: to seek out emotions, thoughts, that are apropos to a mind.

The universe feeds itself.

With us: everything eats everything else.

When we don't do self-observation we eat ourselves.

A cat has a fully developed emotional body. A cat is spirited. Also a horse. "Spiritual" is bad use of the word "spirited".

The emotional body makes the spiritedness of a person. The spiritedness of a spirited horse is obvious in relation to the disguised and veiled spiritedness of a cat. The flaming nostril is the end of the horse's spiritedness, but a cat flies into a towering rage. Same thing with people. Don't confuse sprightly gestures with spiritedness.

One hasn't muscles, only flesh, if one hasn't stress.

In America and England the emotional centre is repressed. A furtive emotional life. Anglo-Saxons have no education in the emotional centre, no training.

The mental centre has a vocabulary: spirit.

The emotional centre has a tempo: heat.

The physical centre has a power: force.

The psychology of the future will focus upon the emotional centre. Very difficult to do anything about the mind until we know more about electricity.

MIND

Intelligence is an arrangement in the nervous centres -- not arrived at by life but given you at birth.

Mind is posterior and superior to speech. Mind is the faculty of taking thought. Its real process is pondering. The subject-matter should be large true facts: the organization of the universe, etc. Its object is to group these ponderings into great wholes. But we cannot hold before our minds for one second the whole evidence about anything.

Divine reason: everything seen at once. Simultaneity. Ideas with form.

Mind is an active faculty. Take your impressions actively.

Our mind is like an intricate mechanical arrangement -- electricity. Calls and responses {stimuli} -- without a master.

Our reason at present: simply a post-mortem on an irrational act. Real reason is developed by opposition to repetition and inertia.

We waste our lives in associations, chiefly associations of words. Think at night of your words. Our words are aped.

The greatest poets have no experience of nine-tenths of their words. Sometimes a simple peasant can say in ten words something that a poet says in a hundred words full of air. The poets have been our downfall.

Artists, religionists, scientists have tried to think in forms {not formulas, but form -- like painting}. An idea of three centres = a form.

The idea of man as an idea is a form.

Every situation in the world is like a problem in mathematics -- has a positive, a negative, a neutral force {active, passive, neutralizing}. The neutralizing force is the form-giving force.

RELIGION

"All the great general religions {created, as history itself testifies, by men of equal attainment in regard to the perfecting of their Pure Reason}, are always based on the same truths. The difference in those religions is only in the definite regulations they lay down for the observance of certain details and of what are called rituals; and this difference is the result of the deliberate adoption by the great Founders of those which suited the degree of mental perfection of the people of the given period."

Gurdjieff has also written: "It is not a question of to whom a man prays, but it is a question of his faith Owing to faith alone there appears in a being the self-consciousness necessary for him and also the valuation of personal Being as a particle of everything existing in the universe. Faith is conscience, the foundation of which is laid in childhood. If a man changes his religion he loses his conscience, and since conscience is sustained by his faith and his faith by his religion, therefore I respect his religion and for me it would be a great sin if I should judge his religion or disillusion him in it and thereby destroy his conscience which can only be acquired in childhood."

You must formulate your idea of GOOD and EVIL. If you are holding up a cosmic scheme you are evil.

Objective Good and Evil: Understanding and effort = Right.

Failure to achieve them = Evil.

By Objective is meant: permanent knowledge.

By Subjective is meant: someone sits down in his armchair and makes up a system.

Obedience to any sociological system, to any religion, or to anything else not arrived at objectively = police regulations, traffic rules only.

The Bible: the self-regeneration of man.

We should spend our lives upgrading energies.

This is the hidden meaning behind alchemy. To be born again.

For rebirth there is an exact science, the greatest in the world, and its technique is sacredly concealed. {"Bind up the testimony, seal the law among My disciples".} The prohibition was laid upon our race because information gives mind knowledge only, and mind knowledge tends to reduce the possibility of acquiring knowledge of one's being.

"Testament" means "I will to you". The Old Testament, the New Testament = knowledge willed to us.

What is this knowledge? It is the fulfillment of potential Being in every being: three-brained beings. This is the purpose of the universe.

The universe made flesh: Christ.

John the Baptist is the "I" crying in the wilderness of the body.

Adam: the unregenerate man -- living in the first do of the octave, living mechanically.

Development cannot begin until degeneration is arrested.

This is a method to obliterate death. Our supreme effort is reproduction: a succession of bodies in ourselves -- a psychological objective continuance of individuality.

Two kinds of immortality -- the two births: {1} automatic and {2} conscious.

Horizontal line: physical reproduction: heirs.

Vertical line: succession of one's self; the self-generation of man.

Immortality is a potential fact. The potential is always more full of possibilities than the actual.

We prepare our future by the way we use our energy. Every 24 hours we're given a supply of energy. If we don't do something about it today, we can't in a year.

"Sins of the fathers": you did something yesterday, you pay for it ten years hence. You are your own fathers in this.

When we die the vibrations that hold us together go into space. The vibration of the physical organs run down the scale and go into the earth.

But the "I" comes and comes until it develops.

If you develop yourself, Gurdjieff says, you become an individual instead of one of the thousand leaves on a tree. You become a seed.

The Gurdjieff theory:

All things in life work on two laws -- 3 and 7.

All psychological things fall within the law of 3 {the Trinity}.

All material things fall within the law of 7 {the octave}.