The first thing, the very very first thing, "Find out what your greatest characteristic is, your greatest undoing, your central characteristic of unconsciousness." Each one's is different. Somebody is sex-obsessed. In a country like India, where for centuries sex has been repressed, that has become almost a universal characteristic; everybody is obsessed with sex. Somebody is obsessed with anger, and somebody else is obsessed with greed. You have to watch which is your basic obsession.

G. I. Gurdjieff

Categorized in : Sex Country Greed

Try to understand what I am saying: everything is dependent on everything else, everything is connected, nothing is separate. Therefore everything is going in the only way it can go. If people were different everything would be different. They are what they are, so everything is as it is.

G. I. Gurdjieff

different trying people

Awakening begins when a man realizes that he is going nowhere and does not know where to go.

G. I. Gurdjieff

awakening doe men

A man must first of all understand certain things. He has thousands of false ideas and false conceptions, chiefly about himself, and he must get rid of some of them before beginning to acquire anything new. Otherwise the new will be built on a wrong foundation and the result will be worse than before. To speak the truth is the most difficult thing in the world; one must study a great deal and for a long time in order to speak the truth. The wish alone is not enough. To speak the truth one must know what the truth is and what a lie is, and first of all in oneself. And this nobody wants to know.

G. I. Gurdjieff

men order lying

A considerable percentage of the people we meet on the street are people who are empty inside, that is, they are actually already dead. It is fortunate for us that we do not see and do not know it. If we knew what a number of people are actually dead and what a number of these dead people govern our lives, we should go mad with horror.

G. I. Gurdjieff

prayer numbers death

Self-observation brings man to the realization of the necessity of self-change. And in observing himself a man notices that self-observation itself brings about certain changes in his inner processes. He begins to understand that self-observation is an instrument of self-change, a means of awakening.

G. I. Gurdjieff

spiritual men mean

The crowd neither wants nor seeks knowledge, and the leaders of the crowd, in their own interests, try to strengthen its fear and dislike of everything new and unknown. The slavery in which mankind lives is based upon this fear.

G. I. Gurdjieff

slavery leader trying

Awakening is possible only for those who seek it and want it, for those who are ready to struggle with themselves and work on themselves for a very long time and very persistently in order to attain it.

G. I. Gurdjieff

struggle order long

The evolution of man is the evolution of his consciousness, and 'consciousness' cannot evolve unconsciously. The evolution of man is the evolution of his will, and 'will' cannot evolve involuntarily.

G. I. Gurdjieff

evolution-of-man insightful men

If you help others, you will be helped, perhaps tomorrow, perhaps in one hundred years, but you will be helped. Nature must pay off the debt. It is a mathematical law and all life is mathematics.

G. I. Gurdjieff

helping-others kindness life

If you meditate and the Devil comes, make the Devil meditate.

G. I. Gurdjieff

people-skills devil people

Let us take some event in the life of humanity. For instance, war. There is a war going on at the present moment. What does it signify? It signifies that several millions of sleeping people are trying to destroy several millions of other sleeping people. They would not do this, of course, if they were to wake up. Everything that takes place is owing to this sleep.

G. I. Gurdjieff

sleep war people

One may say that evil does not exist for subjective man at all, that there exist only different conceptions of good. Nobody ever does anything deliberately in the interests of evil, for the sake of evil. Everybody acts in the interests of good, as he understands it. But everybody understands it in a different way. Consequently men drown, slay, and kill one another in the interests of good.

G. I. Gurdjieff

evil doe men

That which is easy is bad for your inner life.

G. I. Gurdjieff

inner-life easy

If a man could understand all the horror of the lives of ordinary people who are turning around in a circle of insignificant interests and insignificant aims, if he could understand what they are losing, he would understand that there can only be one thing that is serious for him - to escape from the general law, to be free. What can be serious for a man in prison who is condemned to death? Only one thing: How to save himself, how to escape: nothing else is serious.

G. I. Gurdjieff

circles law men

Remember you come here having already understood the necessity of struggling with yourself — only with yourself. Therefore thank everyone who gives you the opportunity.

G. I. Gurdjieff

struggle remember-you opportunity

Never think of results, just do!

G. I. Gurdjieff

results thinking

You can never awaken using the same system that put you to sleep in the first place.

G. I. Gurdjieff

growth sleep firsts

Real love is a cosmic force which goes through us. If we crystallize it, it becomes the greatest power in the world.

G. I. Gurdjieff

real love-is world

Without struggle, no progress and no result. Every breaking of habit produces a change in the machine.

G. I. Gurdjieff

progress machines struggle

Two things in life are infinite; the stupidity of man and the mercy of God.

G. I. Gurdjieff

mercy-of-god things-in-life men