The Gurdjieff Aphorisms

The Gurdjieff Aphorisms

What is an aphorism? Wiki definition

Like what “it” does not like.

The highest that a man can attain is to be able to do.

The worse the conditions of life the more productive the work, always provided you remember the work.

Remember yourself always and everywhere.

Remember you come here having already understood the necessity of struggling with yourself—only with yourself. Therefore thank everyone who gives you the opportunity.

Here we can only direct and create conditions, but not help.

Know that this house can be useful only to those who have recognized their nothingness and who believe in the possibility of changing.

If you already know it is bad and do it, you commit a sin difficult to redress.

The chief means of happiness in this life is the ability to consider externally always, internally never.

Do not love art with your feelings.

A true sign of a good man is if he loves his father and mother.

Judge others by yourself and you will rarely be mistaken.

Only help him who is not an idler.

Respect every religion.

I love him who loves work.

We can only strive to be able to be Christians.

Don't judge a man by the tales of others.

Consider what people think of you—not what they say.

Take the understanding of the East and the knowledge of the West—and then seek.

Only he who can take care of what belongs to others may have his own.

Only conscious suffering has any sense.

It is better to be temporarily an egoist than never to be just.

Practice love first on animals, they are more sensitive.

By teaching others you will learn yourself.

Remember that here work is not for work’s sake but is only a means.

Only he can be just who is able to put himself in the position of others.

If you have not by nature a critical mind your staying here is useless.

He who has freed himself of the disease of “tomorrow” has a chance to attain what he came here for.

Blessed is he who has a soul, blessed is he who has none, but woe and grief to him who has it in embryo.

Rest comes not from the quantity but from the quality of sleep.

Sleep little without regret.

The energy spent on active inner work is then and there transformed into a fresh supply, but that spent on passive work is lost for ever.

One of the best means for arousing the wish to work on yourself is to realize that you may die at any moment. But first you must learn how to keep it in mind.

Conscious love evokes the same in response. Emotional love evokes the opposite. Physical love depends on type and polarity.

Conscious faith is freedom. Emotional faith is slavery. Mechanical faith is foolishness.

Hope, when bold, is strength. Hope, with doubt, is cowardice. Hope, with fear, is weakness.

Man is given a definite number of experiences—economizing them, he prolongs his life.

Here there are neither Russians nor English, Jews nor Christians, but only those who pursue one aim ~ to be able to be.

~ G. I. Gurdjieff 1924

Alarm Clocks

Automatic Alarm      Wind Up Alarm

There are as many alarm clocks as there are 'types'.

At the beginning of Chapter 11 in ISOM Gurdjieff addresses the issues that block us from awakening consciously to being fully present.

G: "There is a book of aphorisms which has never been published and probably will never be published [here G is speaking about an esoteric text he had learned of but which had not been published in his time] "I have mentioned this book before in connection with question of the meaning of knowledge and I quoted then one aphorism from this book." 

'A man may be born, but in order to be born he must first die, and in order to die, he must first awake.,'
"In another place it says:
"'When a man awakes, he can die; when he dies he can be born.'

"We must find out what this means. 'To awake, 'to die', 'to be born'. These are three successive stages. If you study the gospels attentively you all see the references are often made to the possibility of being born, several references are made to the necessity of 'dying,' and there are very many references to the necessity of 'awakening' -- 'watch, for ye know not the day and the hour...' [Christ warns us in the new testament] and so on. But these three possibilities of man, to awake and not to sleep, to die and to be born, are not set down in connection with one another. Nevertheless this is the whole point. If a man dies without having awakened he cannot be born. If a man is born without having died he may become an 'immortal thing.' Thus the fact that a man has not 'died' prevents a man from being 'born'; and should he be born without having died, he is prevented from 'being'.


A few paragraphs later Gurdjieff begins to outline the obstacles:

"But there are a thousand and one things which prevent a man from awakening, which keep him in the power of his dreams. In order to act consciously with the intention of awakening, it is necessary to know the nature of the forces which keep man in a state of sleep. ..."

He speaks about what 'sleep' is and what keeps man from awakening; he speaks of 'shocks' and 'alarm clocks' and then he suggests what will help a man to fully awaken:

"... Only a man who fully realizes the difficulty of awakening can understand the necessity of long and hard work in order to awake."


To those who are struggling with understanding what is meant by awakening and what is required in order to awaken and remain awake, I strongly recommend reading and rereading this chapter regardless of where you are on your journey in the work.  


Excerpts taken from Chapter 11 of In Search of the Miraculous,
[the ISBN 0-15-644508-5 Harvest/HBJ : pbk printing].