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XXXVI
My "OTHER WORK"
consisted of several things: clearing
various areas of the property of stinging nettles, which had to
be done without wearing gloves; working, with one other
person, on the construction of a stone house which had been
partly built -- and never worked on -- ever since I had first been
at the Prieure; and, to my amazement, helping in the trans-
lation of parts of Gurdjieff's book from a preliminary French
translation into English.
After a few hours on the job of pulling out nettles, I soon
learned that with care, by pulling them out by the roots and
avoiding handling the stems or leaves, it was possible to up-
root them without being painfully stung by them. I also learned,
quite incidentally, that they could be used to make an excellent
soup. In any case, as I was still pondering about the American
lady's remarks about the value of work, the uprooting of
nettles did seem to have practical value as well as whatever
it might have been doing for my "inner being", since it
eliminated weeds and also provided soup.
As to the building of the house, I was convinced that the
lady was undoubtedly right -- no visible progress was made on
the building so I assumed that all the progress was "spiritual".
I was the helper on this job, and my "boss" decided that the
first thing we were to do was to move an enormous pile of
stone, located about fifty feet from the house, to an area next
to it. The only sensible way to do this, he informed me, was
for me to stand by the rock pile, throw individual rocks to
him, and he would then throw them into a new pile near the
building. When this was done, we would use the stones which
had been moved to construct partitions or walls inside the
building; the outer walls had been erected three or four years
previously. I was warned that there was a definite rhythm to
this rock throwing which had to be observed as it would make
the work much less tiresome; also that in order to keep the
proper rhythm it was necessary for us to sing. We only managed
to sing and throw rocks for about two hours when my com-
panion and "boss", distracted by something, failed to catch
a rock that I had heaved in his direction, and was felled by it
as it struck him on the temple.
I helped him to his feet and then walked with him as he
more or less staggered in the direction of the main building,
presumably to consult the doctor about the effect of this blow.
Gurdjieff saw us at once as he was sitting in front of the terrace
in one of his usual writing places, and when he heard what
had happened, examined the man, pronounced him in no
danger, but said that we were to discontinue working on that
particular construction. With a rather amiable smile in my
direction he told me that it was apparently impossible for me
to be involved in any kind of work without causing trouble,
and that I was a born troublemaker. Given some of my past
experiences at the Prieure I took this to be, if not exactly a
compliment, at least praise of a kind.
I was fascinated, however, with the work on his book. An
Englishman had been assigned to make a rough, preliminary
translation from the French version of the book, and my job
was to listen to it and read it and to make suggestions as to
vernacular and Americanisms that would correspond as
closely as possible to the French version which I was also to
read. The particular chapter was on the subject of the con-
tinent of Africa and dealt mainly with Gurdjieff's explanation
of the origin of monkeys. [1]
What began to interest me much more that summer than
any of my daytime tasks were the nightly readings of the
sections of Gurdjieff's book, usually in Russian or French
but sometimes in English -- depending upon the latest com-
pleted translations -- and Gurdjieff's comments on his aims and
purposes. In the simplest terms, he would usually reduce what
had been written in the chapter that had been read that
evening (his comments always followed the readings) to a kind
of synopsis or simplification of what he was trying to convey
in writing.
I was particularly impressed by his statement that his
purpose in writing this book was to destroy forever the habitual
values and ideas of people, which prevented them from under-
standing reality or living according to "cosmic laws". He was
then going to write additional books which would prepare
the ground, as it were, for the acquisition of new understanding
and new values. If, as I saw it, the existence of the Prieure had
the same aim; to destroy existing values, then it was more
comprehensible. If, as Gurdjieff had so often said, the world was
"upside down" then perhaps there was a definite value in what
he was apparently attempting to do at his school. It might be
quite true, as the American lady had suggested to me, that
one should not work for the immediate, obvious result of the
particular work one was doing, but for the development of
one's being. Even though I was not convinced that Gurdjieff
had all the answers to the dilemma of human life -- as someone
had called it -- it was certainly possible that he, as well as
anyone else, might have them. What he did do was at least
provocative, unpredictable, irritating and, usually, inter-
esting enough to arouse questions, doubts, and controversies.
In the course of his talks and comments on his writings,
he frequently digressed from the subject of whatever had been
read, to talk in general terms about almost anything that either
came to his mind, or might be brought up by one of the
students. When someone, through some association with the
chapter that had been read that evening, brought up the
question of the worlds of east and west, and the lack of under-
standing between the oriental and the occidental mentalities,
Gurdjieff talked at some length on the misunderstandings that
were created in the world by this lack of understanding, saying
that it was due, at least in part, to lack of energy in the east
and lack of wisdom in the west. He predicted that a day
would come when the eastern world would again rise to a
position of world importance and become a threat to the
momentarily all-powerful, all-influential new culture of the
western world, which was dominated, according to him, by
America -- a country that was very strong, to be sure, but also
very young. He continued to say that one should look at the
world in the same way that one looked at a man, or at oneself.
Each individual was a world, of itself, and the globe -- the big
world in which we all lived -- was, in a sense, only a reflection
or an enlargement of the individual world in each one of us.
Among the purposes of all leaders, messiahs, messengers
from the gods, and so forth, there was one fundamental and
very important purpose: to find some means by which the two
sides of man, and, therefore, the two sides of the earth, could
live together in peace and harmony. He said that time was
very short -- it was necessary to achieve this harmony as soon
as possible to avoid complete disaster. Philosophies, religions
and other such movements had all failed to accomplish this
aim, and the only possible way to accomplish it was through
the individual development of man. As an individual developed
his own, unknown potentialities, he would become strong and
would, in turn, influence many more people. If enough indi-
viduals could develop themselves -- even partially -- into
genuine, natural men, able to use the real potentialities that
were proper to mankind, each such individual would then be
able to convince and win over as many as a hundred other
men, who would, each in his turn, upon achieving develop-
ment, be able to influence another hundred, and so on.
He added, grimly, that he was in no sense joking when he
had said that time was short. Further, he said that history had
already proven to us that such tools as politics, religion, and
any other organized movements which treated man "in the
mass" and not as individual beings, were failures. That they
would always be failures and that the separate, distinct
growth of each individual in the world was the only possible
solution.
Whether one believed him whole-heartedly or not, he made
a convincing and passionate case for the importance of indi-
vidual development and growth.
_______________
1. Gurdjieff, G. I., All and Everything; (Beelzebub's Tales to his
Grandson;
or an Impartial, Objective Criticism of Man). E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc.,
New York, N. Y.
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