Influences

On the ordinary level, in ordinary life, the word influence has definite meanings that relate to ordinary life. This week we are asked to consider what Gurdjieff meant by influence.

Here is a short excerpt from ISOTM, Ch 10. A longer excerpt is posted here. (Please read as part of this week's work."

Influence : From: ISOTM: Chapter 10

"ONCE there was a meeting with a large number of people who had not been at our meetings before. One of them asked: "From what does the way start?" The person who asked the question had not heard G.'s description of the four ways and he used the word "way" in the usual religious-mystical sense. 

"The chief difficulty in understanding the idea of the way,"' said G., "consists in the fact that people usually think that the ‘way’  (he emphasized this word) "starts on the same level on which life is going. This is quite wrong. The way begins on another, much higher, level. This is exactly what people usually do not understand. The beginning of the way is thought to be easier or simpler than it is in reality. I will try to explain this in the following way. 

"Man lives in life under the law of accident and under two kinds of influences again governed by accident. ..."