What we’re about
“I wished to create around myself,” Gurdjieff wrote, “conditions in which a man would be continuously reminded of the sense and aim of his existence by an unavoidable friction between his conscience and the automatic manifestation of his nature.” Deeply buried though it is, the awakened conscience is something more that, according to Gurdjieff, is the only force in modern man’s nearly completely degenerate psyche that can actually bring the parts of his nature together and open him to that energy and unnameable awareness of which all the religions have always spoken as the gift that descends from above, but which in the conditions of modern life is almost impossible to receive.
As human life spirals downward toward dissolution in violence and illusion, one central question rises up before us in the shadow which all teachings, including the Gurdjieff work, must now be measured. How can humanity reverse the process leading to its seemingly inevitable self-destruction?
One thing and one thing only is necessary. It is necessary for individual men and women to awaken, to remember Who they are, and then to become Who they really are, to live it in the service of Truth. Without this awakening and this becoming, nothing can help us.
But it is very difficult. An extraordinary quality of help is needed. To this end, Gurdjieff created what has come to be called the Work.
