Tag: Life

J.G. Bennett: The life of Creativity

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J.G. Bennett, on what has been called the Gurdjieff work, and Bennett describes as being concerned with the transformation of substances in various forms:

“The notion of the Fourth Way is wholly bound up with these two principles; the first is that of complete involvement in life externally, and secondly, in the acceptance internally of responsibility for certain work that is required for a great Cosmic Purpose.

According to Gurdjieff, this purpose is concerned with the transformation of substances whereby the destiny of mankind as a whole can be kept moving in the right way. This takes many forms. It can take the form of activities of artistic creation; it can take the form of certain kinds of social organizations; it can take the forms of the transmission of specialized forms of knowledge, or research into the conditions of mankind, and preparation for the future, and certain other tasks, more specifically connected with what I said; that is, the transformation of substances.

I am personally confident, from long years of study of this matter and having been in contact with a rather unusually large number of people who have been concerned in this particular field, that there really is such Work and that there are people who understand it in a way that is not obviously visible on the surface. This means that there is in effect a Twofold Life on the earth. One is the visible, external life in which we all have to participate, and the other is an invisible life in which we can participate if we choose. In a sense one can say the first life is a causal life; that is to say, in that life causes that exist in the past produce results that are being experienced in the present and which will be carried forward in the future. It can also be called the stream of happenings. It is of course called by such names of Samsara and the Wheel of Life, and so on, but in a very simple way it is the ordinary life that we all live. The second, the other life, is non-causual, which means that it exists only in so far as it is created. It is the life of Creativity. Every creative act rightly performed is a means of participation in that life. And the search for creation is the search for that life.

Creation is infinitely varied in its content and its forms. Everything that is going on everywhere is also a field of possible creativity, and therefore there is no limit to what can be found in the field of creation. But the great majority of mankind are content to live in the first life. A few are searching for the other, because there is a feeling of a need to participate in creative activity and a realization that one is only half alive, and perhaps not even that, if one is not participating.

That is what is meant by the word Work, and when we talk about ‘the work’ or the Great Work — Magnum Opus — it refers to the invisible world which has to be perpetually created in order that it should be. And it is that that we are called to if we are destined for accelerated completion. In order to enter that world, we have to earn the right to be in it, and for that we have to bring to it something made by ourselves. The first and simplest thing we can bring is our own capacity for work; our own capacity for transforming energy, and therefore for participating in the Creation. This can afterwords be converted into specific forms of creativity, according to objective needs and our own subjective powers.

There is no doubt that the Fourth Way is the direct application of the principle of creativity in life. That is why I called it non-causal. It always has to start without an antecedent cause. It is a spontaneous call from beyond that makes this possible.”

(From a lecture at Denison House in the summer of 1963, published in 1973 in “Gurdjieff: A Very Great Enigma”)

Desert lessons

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The desert does not fear death. The desert mouse fears the hawk, the desert deer fears the human, the human fears itself. But the desert is not afraid. It is beyond fear, larger than every life in it; and at the same time, the desert is every life in it.

The desert is not separate from lives filled with fear, and hunger, and contemplation. It holds these, and every step and screech, every birth and death, every flight and stand, every shift and growth; it holds them but it is not held by them. It is not trapped by them.

In the desert, death is natural. A carcass drying in the sun, a prickly pear cactus decaying into the ground, an insect serving a snack to a bird. There is no shame, no judgment, no restraint, nothing but what is.

What is natural in me is co-opted by discontent, desire, doubt, uncertainty. And this, too, is natural. But unlike the prickly pear, or the prey, living shoulder to shoulder with death, I push away anything I don’t want to face. Sensations and feelings arise and I step aside, half here and half somewhere else, watching uncomfortably.

But what I feel needs me in order to be felt, like the desert soil needs the prickly pear’s dry husks, like the hawk needs the mouse. If I’m unwilling, what I need to feel doesn’t go away, it slumps between life and death, not lived and not let go either.

As nature ourselves, why is it so hard to live naturally? Why do we serve ego over essence, building layers and barriers between our minds, our bodies and what is? Why do I fight against the process that is my life, that is life — the process that I have no choice about inhabiting, from the moment I’m conceived to the moment I die?

How much easier it would be to surrender to what is, as nature calls so softly, and sometimes harshly, for me to do. As God calls so tenderly, and sometimes forcefully, for me to do.