Without some kind of non-causal action outside of time and space, nothing could really be started. If we look at how we came into contact with the Work, we must admit that it is quite inexplicable in causal terms.

 

This unasked help that comes to us can sometimes appear in the form of extreme difficulties in life. It presents itself to us in a painful way. We feel stripped: all our natural tendencies are to rebel against what has happened and to try and convince ourselves that it has made the Work impossible for us. Later, sometimes much later, we can see that this which we took to be a disaster or cruel turn of fortune was the only way in which a step could have been made. Nothing that we or some other person could have done, could have brought us in front of that opportunity. All that is needed at that moment is our acceptance to go through with it and not reject. Then the impossible becomes not merely possible but just goes.[1]

 

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When I made contact with the Work it had nothing whatever to do with anything that I did. Of course, I was certainly searching for something; but I thought I was capable of finding it out for myself, by my own experimentation and through acquiring knowledge from other people. In other words, I thought it all depended on my own initiative and powers. It was not for a long time that I was able to appreciate the gratuitous nature of the events that brought me into the Work. I simply met people, by sets of independent coincidences; Ouspensky, de Hartmann and Gurdjieff in Turkey, and Forbes Adams in London. Forbes Adams began talking to me about the Work -he had met Ouspensky- and was determined to bring me into the Work; he had no idea of my previous contacts. Then I saw that the Work would not let me go and I had been “hooked” without realizing it.

…

I remember a case when this happened to me during the war. Many real troubles came in my life in every way. I suddenly found myself in total misunderstanding with Ouspensky and cut off from all contact with his work. I had no contact with Gurdjieff and my life was going badly. I was turned out of my job. I was struggling with how to make things come right and suddenly I saw that if all goes wrong then I am free from the whole lot. I felt such a relief that I felt myself going through the sky and I will never forget the feeling of complete joy when I saw that it didn’t matter if everything went wrong! I then saw how this thing does work and all that is needed from us is just a moment of acceptance, of unconditional acceptance, of the situation and quite new things begin to happen. But it can’t come about the other way round. It does not come by one accepting difficulties, allowing things to go wrong.[2]

 

 

 

[1] J.G. Bennett, The Sevenfold Work (Daglingworth: Coombe Springs Press, 1979) pp.110.

[2] Bennett, The Sevenfold Work, pp.117-118.

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