This is an extract from 'Some Questions and Answers from the French Group' and dates to the 1940's Paris.
Struggle
Gurdjieff, George Ivanovitch
Q: I have
discovered the same quality of emotions of which we spoke, but it gives me such
an interior fullness, such a sensation of happiness that I no longer feel
remorse; I grudge myself this happiness, for I have not deserved it.
Mr. G: You have imagination and fantasy. I have always said so.
You are a representative of art. Foufou. There is no weight. It is light.
Philosophy, imagination. A state is a result. It is this which gives weight.
This is the counter balance of real happiness which goes in step with it. At the
same time in order that it should be genuine, one must not have one without the
other. Your nature has a tendency (the result of inertia); you let yourself go
toward this tendency of having extraordinary states without a real basis,
without weight. You must eliminate this, drive it away. As soon as a state of
satisfaction arises, make "tchik." Crush it, eliminate it. Work on remorse,
remember yourself, revive the scenes when you were a bad child, when you made
your parents cry, perhaps. Feel again in all the details, find your faults
again. Search in your past. Suffer. In that suffering you can have real
happiness given by real love.
There are two different things under
different laws: 1) the organic body; 2) the psychic body. The organic body obeys
its laws. It only wishes to satisfy its needs - eating, sleeping, sex. It knows
nothing else. It wishes nothing else. It is a real animal. One must feel it as
an animal. One must feel it as a stranger. One must subdue it, train it and make
it obey, instead of obeying it.
The psychic body knows something other
than the organic body. It has other needs, other aspirations, other desires. It
belongs to a different world. It is of a different nature. There is a conflict
between these two bodies - one wishes, the other does not. It is a struggle
which one must reinforce voluntarily. By our work; by our will. It is this fight
which exists naturally, which is the specific state of man, which we must use to
create a third thing, a third state different from the other two, which is the
Master, which is united with something else.
The task is therefore
something precise which reinforces this struggle, because by struggle and ONLY
by struggle can a new possibility of being be born. For instance, my organism is
in the habit of smoking. That is its need. I do not wish to smoke - I elimintate
this habit. The need is always there but I refuse to satisfy it. There is a
struggle, a conscious voluntary struggle which calls the third force. It is the
third force which will be the factor - "I" - which will conciliate and make the
equilibrium.
The body is an animal. The psyche is a child. One must
educate the one and the other. Take the body, make it understand that it must
obey, not command. Put each one in its place. One must know oneself. One must
see what goes on. Take a task which is within your possibility, very small to
begin with. On eating. On a habit. Each one knows himself and can find a task;
it is his interior thing, a will which is opposed to a need and creates
struggle.
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.