Gurdjieff’s books, transcripts of his meetings and his first-generation pupil’s memoirs with him are full of instructions and key phrases, phrases coined by Gurdjieff himself, emphasizing the necessity of continuous effort for the disillusionment with what one think what one is, and for the conscious actualization of potentialities not yet developed. Although one’s understanding of what all that mean, and what kind of efforts are required, is expected to progressively expand and deepen to degrees that were not possible once, (and can accommodate contradictions in the totality of the process for the same reason; as in the case of super-efforts done with one centre vs super-efforts done when the three-centres-become-one, with the whole of us) still the emphasis on the necessity of effort is undisputable.[1] In the few instances where Gurdjieff indicates to the possibility of ‘help from “Above”,’ still the emphasis is on the necessity of a certain level of ascension that should come first. Gurdjieff explains: 

 

The way begins … on a level much higher than the ordinary level of life.[2]

 

Higher beings can only reach us and help us through ‘higher centers,’ we must reach upwards.’[3]

 

To enter the way one must reach upwards, and in order to reach upwards, in order to be able to receive, one must have a container and a great part of the Work is about crystallizing this first container, the body Kesdjan. Gurdjieff states:

 

The only possibility of creating a second body is by an accumulation of a different substance. The only aim is that everything should serve this aim.[4]

 

Reflecting the necessity of unceasing efforts for a certain level of permanent ascension above the level of ordinary life that is accompanied with a certain level of purification of the emotional centre, ‘help from “Above”,’ which in this study is equated with the concept of grace, is not a central notion in the Work literature. It is mostly unspoken about as well. 

 

Warning

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Defining

 

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[1] In writing that, what I have in mind is the key phrases like: ‘only super-efforts are counted,’ ‘being-partkdolg-duties’ (personal conscious labours and intentional sufferings), ‘being-obligolnian-strivings’ (in order to have in their consciousness this Divine function of genuine Conscience), inner frictions/the struggle of yes-and-no for the fusion of many “I’s”, and the list can be extended.

[2] Ouspensky, P.D., In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching (New York: Harcourt Inc., 2001 [1949]) pp. 201-202.

[3] G.I. Gurdjieff, Gurdjieff’s Early Talks: in Moscow, Petersburg, Essentuki, Tiflis, Constantinople, Berlin, Paris, London, Fontainebleau, New York, and Chicago, 1914-1931 (Book Studio, 2014) pp. 115.

[4] G.I. Gurdjieff, Transcripts of Gurdjieff's Meetings 1941-1946 (London: Book Studio, 2008) Meeting Eighteen, pp. 98.

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