Life Is Real Only Then When I Am

186 Pages·1999·1.17 MB·English

by  G. I. Gurdjieff

G. I. GURDJIEFF

Life is real only

then, when "I am"

ALL AND EVERYTHING/THIRD
SERIES
ALL AND EVERYTHING
Ten Books in Three Series
FIRST SERIES: Three books under the title of
"Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson" or, "An
Objectively Impartial Criticism of the Life of Man,"
SECOND SERIES: Three books under the common title of
"Meetings with Remarkable Men."
THIRD SERIES: Four books under the common title of
"Life Is Real Only Then, When I Am."
All written according to entirely new principles of logical reasoning and
strictly directed towards the solution of the following three cardinal
problems:
FIRST SERIES: To destroy, mercilessly, without any compromises
whatsoever, in the mentation and feelings of the reader, the beliefs and
views, by centuries rooted in him, about everything existing in the
world.
SECOND SERIES: To acquaint the reader with the material required for
a new creation and to prove the soundness and good quality of it.
THIRD SERIES: To assist the arising, in the mentation and in the
feelings of the reader, of a veritable, nonfantastic representation not of
that illusory world which he now perceives, but of the world existing in
reality.
"No one interested in my writings should ever attempt to read
them in any other than the indicated order; in other words, he
should never read anything written by me before he is already well
acquainted with the earlier works."
G. I. GURDJIEFF
"... as regards the real, indubitably comprehensible, genuine
objective truths which will be brought to light by me in the third
series, I intend to make them accessible exclusively only to those
from among the hearers of the second series of my writings who
will be selected by specially prepared people according to my
considered instructions."
G.I.GURDJIEFF, Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson
(Third Book, p. 428)
PREFATORY NOTE

Although this text is no more than a fragmentary and preliminary draft
of what G. I. Gurdjieff intended to write for the Third Series, "Life Is
Real Only Then, When 'I Am,' " his family feel obliged to obey our
uncle's wish, as he emphasized in his introduction, "to share with
creatures similar to himself everything he had learned about the inner
world of man."
We consider we are being faithful to his intention when he wrote the
introduction and thus are also meeting the expectations of very many
people interested in his teaching.
On behalf of the family,
VALENTIN ANASTASIEFF
FOREWORD

"My last book, through which I wish to share with other creatures
of our Common Father similar to myself, almost all the previously
unknown mysteries of the inner world of man which I have acci-
dentally learned."
Gurdjieff wrote these words on the 6th of November, 1934, and
immediately started to work. For the next few months he devoted
himself entirely to working out his ideas for this book.
Then suddenly, on the 2nd of April, 1935, he completely stopped
writing.
One is bound to ask: why did he abandon the project at this point and
never return to it again?
Why did he leave this Third Series unfinished and apparently give up
his intention to publish it?
It is not possible to answer these questions unless one has been
oneself engaged in the intensive work which Gurdjieff undertook in the
last fifteen years of his life with a certain number of pupils, creating for
them day after day the conditions necessary for a direct and practical
study of his ideas.
He let it be clearly understood, on the last page of 'Beelzebub's
Tales to His Grandson, that the Third Series would be accessible only to
those who would be selected as capable of understanding "the genuine
objective truths which he will bring to light" in this Series.
Gurdjieff speaks to the man of today, that is, someone who no longer
knows how to recognize the truth revealed to him in different forms
since the earliest times—-to someone with a deep sense of
dissatisfaction, who feels isolated, meaningless.
But, given such a man, how to awaken in him an intelligence that can
distinguish the real from the illusory?
According to Gurdjieff, the truth can be approached only if all the
parts which make up the human being, the thought, the feeling and the
body, are touched with the same force and in the particular way
appropriate to each of them—failing which, development will inevitably
be one-sided and sooner or later come to a stop.
In the absence of an effective understanding of this principle, all
work on oneself is certain to deviate from the aim. The essential
conditions will be wrongly understood and one will see a mechanical
repetition of forms of effort which never surpass a quite ordinary level.
Gurdjieff knew how to make use of every circumstance of life to
have people feel the truth.
I have seen him at work, listening to the possibilities of un­
derstanding in each of his groups and also to the subjective difficulties
of each pupil. I have seen him deliberately putting the accent on a
particular aspect of knowledge, then on another aspect, according to a
very definite plan—working at times with a thought that stimulated the
intellect and opened up an entirely new vision, at times with a feeling
that required giving up all artifice in favor of an immediate and
complete sincerity, at
times with the awakening and putting in motion of a body that
responded freely to whatever it was asked to serve.
So what did he have in mind in writing the Third Series?
The role he assigned to it cannot be disassociated from his way of
teaching. At the precise moment he found it necessary, he would have a
particular chapter or a particular passage read aloud in his presence,
bringing suggestions or images to his pupils which put them suddenly
in front of themselves and their inner contradictions.
It was a way that did not isolate them from life but passed through
life, a way that took into account the yes and the no, the oppositions, all
the contrary forces, a way that made them understand the necessity of
struggling to rise above the battle while at the same time taking part in
it.
One was brought to a threshold to be crossed and for the first time
one felt that complete sincerity was required of one. It might appear to
be a difficult passage but what was being left behind no longer had the
old attraction. In front of certain hesitations, the picture Gurdjieff gave
of himself was a measure of what it was necessary to give and of what
had to be given up in order not to take a wrong turn.
Then it was no longer the teaching of the doctrine but the incarnate
action of knowledge.
The Third Series, incomplete and unfinished as it is, reveals the
action of the master—of the one who, simply by his presence, obliges
you to come to a decision, to know what you want.
Before he died, Gurdjieff sent for me to tell me how he saw the state
of affairs and to give me certain instructions:
"Publish as and when you are sure that the time has come. Publish
the First and Second Series. But the essential thing, the
first thing, is to prepare a nucleus of people capable of responding to
the demand which will arise.
"So long as there is no responsible nucleus, the action of the ideas
will not go beyond a certain threshold. That will take time ... a lot of
time, even.
"To publish the Third Series is not necessary.
"It was written for another purpose.
"Nevertheless, if you believe you ought to do so one day, publish it."
The task became clear to me: as soon as the First Series had been
published, it would be necessary to work without respite to form a
nucleus capable, through its level of objectivity, devotion and the
demands it would make on itself, of sustaining the current that had been
created.
JEANNE DE SALZMANN
Life is real

only then,

when "I am"
PROLOGUE

I am. . .? But what has become of that full-sensing of the whole of

myself, formerly always in me in just such cases of self-

questioning during the process of self-remembering. . . .

Is it possible that this inner ability was achieved by me thanks to

all kinds of self-denial and frequent self-goading only in order that

now, when its influence for my Being is more necessary even

than air, it should vanish without trace?

No! This cannot be! . . . Something here is

not right!