Extract from Forewords to Deeper Man

A.G.E. Blake

Communication is different in the different worlds. Gurdjieff made much of the

importance of communication between people who come together to work, but it is
barely understood. As a consequence, work efforts fall apart once the authority figure has
gone, much as in any enterprise. Yet, at the same time, most of us have experienced a
realm of communication that transcends time and space. People can only freely work
together if they are prepared to sacrifice their subjective experiences. Then they can
meet. We are, however, too accustomed to getting together on the basis of similar
experiences. What matters more is where we are coming from. This is usually referred to
as “motivation” but, more importantly, it is having contact with our own will-pattern.

The study of worlds is, therefore, of supreme importance for us. It has to do with the very
meaning of our lives. It engages with human history, the work of groups and our contact
with ourselves. The first rule is to find out “where you are.” We needs must become
voyagers and learn now to traverse the depths of our human nature. This is open to
everyone who so chooses, though the result is never assured. Thus, it was promised by
Bennett at the end of this book. It is up to all of us to “dig deeper” and make our own
contribution to the path of discovery on which we hope to tread. We cannot take this path
by simply following what others have formulated for us. We have to help to build it.

[…] One of Gurdjieff’s most powerful urges was to convey to people the guts of a creative
life. Nothing was to be taken for granted. Everything was to be personally verified. At the
heart of it all, the individual man or woman had to “work on themselves” and transform
the very substances of which they were made.

Many people who have heard about these ideas have developed a wrong picture of what
“work on oneself” means. The picture we have of “work” is derived from what we do to
things; but in a world of things nothing can change what it is.

Gurdjieff insisted that first we must study the phenomena of the inner world in our own
experience at firsthand. It is only then, when we are able to recognize different kinds of
“doing,” that our efforts can be useful. What doing or effort or action is, is quite different
in the different worlds. The ordinary human life in its labors and sufferings probably
contains the complete range of possibilities, but the vast majority of the opportunities
that come are wasted. Gurdjieff studied the possibilities of action, their conditions of
arising and their mutuality, and created a method of intentional life.

[…] We can start by seeing that whatever is accommodated easily into our thinking is not
what the idea is about. When we are in what Bennett calls the natural world, even words
are different and speak to us differently. It is the same for everything, including the
numerous “spiritual exercises” which are proliferating in the world. The whole problem is
to come into the world where things are what they are. This is the true starting point.
Until we are established there, we are almost condemned to feed ourselves on nonsense
and imitate the poverty of things.