=> BTG II

I. The Arousing of Thought (pgs. B3 – B50)

Chapitre 1 – Eveil du penser

I. O Despertar do Pensar

ORAGE’S COMMENTARY:

‘The preface to the book,’ Orage said, ‘is what an overture is to an opera; the ideas to be developed are indicated lightly, they are expressed, not by direct statement, but by parable. The preface is called “The Arousing of Thought”. The book opens with an invocation to all three centres, to wholeness, but especially to the Holy Ghost. The book is to be read from the real heart, that is, with emotional understanding. Normal people would begin any serious venture in an attitude of wholeness, but, on this remote lunatic planet we never do, but only partially. Gurdjieff places his hand on his heart, that is, his solar plexus, which to us is heart, since we have no Holy Ghost, no neutralizing force, since we are third force blind. He has no wish to write; he compels himself to write by will, which is indifferent to personal inclination; and this is the attitude in which each one of us ought to approach the Method. The book is an objective work of art. Objective art consists of conscious variations from the original according to the plan of the artist or writer who strives to create a definite impression on his audience. The art we know is as natural as the song or the nest of a bird. The nest of the oriole seems more perfect to us than the nest of the snipe-but we attribute no conscious value to the bird. So with John Milton and Michelangelo, “Milton sang but as the linnet sings”. Gurdjieff will not use the language of the intelligentsia-ideas in the book will not be presented in our habitual thought patterns. Our intellectual life is based on chance associations which have become more or less fixed. Only when these are broken up can we begin to think freely. Our associations are mechanical; a whole mood can be destroyed by the use of one word which has a different group of associations. In a serious discussion, for example, an unthinking person, by letting drop a vulgar word, can destroy the mood of that group.

‘Gurdjieff asks: “What language shall I write in?” He has begun in Russian, but cannot go far in that, for Russian is a mixture of essence and personality; Russians will philosophize for a short time, then drop into gossip, into yarns. English is useful for practical matters but inadequate for meditation and pondering on “the Whole”. The psychology of the Russians and the English is like solianka, a stew in which there is everything except the essential “you” and the real “I”. They cannot tell the truth about themselves.

‘Armenian is essence-the Armenian of our childhood, when we spoke from essence. As we grew up we learnt “Russian and English”. But one cannot express modem ideas in the language of essence. There remains Greek: but again, Greek of today is not like the Greek of one‘s childhood; as one grows up, one‘s behaviour is different. To a conscious person behaviour is a language.

‘Many of the books that are written, even literary works, are manifestations of a pathological state; there is, for example, the cancerous style; the tubercular style; the syphilitic style.

‘Can you, as literary critics, tell the difference between a style which is only words, and a style which is words plus content? The Song of Deborah in the Old Testament is an example of the latter. But this, though written out of the fulness of a heart, is still not objective art, because its content depends on accidental associations.

‘Beelzebub‘s Tales is a book that destroys existing values; it compels the serious reader to re-value all values, and, to a sincere person, it is devastating. As Gurdjieff says, it may destroy your relish for your favourite dish-your pet theories, for example, or that form of art you happen to follow. It will be like red pepper-disturbing to your mental and emotional associations, your inertia.

‘For myself, I realize now that for two years I tried to use these ideas, tried to assimilate them into my own set of values, hoping to enrich the values without giving them up. I thought that the new ideas would widen the scope and extend the perspective of the old and give variety to the content. But now I feel that the actual framework is becoming valueless. There comes a time to almost everyone in this work when he asks himself, “Shall I lose the old values that gave incentive, and shall I then be able to go on to new ones, ones of a different order?”