149. I suspect that this is from Gurdjieff: “You must remember here a phrase once used in the Work—”No effort—no work: no work—no awakening: no awakening—death.”” (1643-4, 8 November 1952, 503rd commentary)
150. “He also said: “You think you are millionaires, but only by seeing you are nothing can you become real millionaires”.” (1647, 15 November 1952, 504th commentary)
151. “You will see why the waking state of Man is called by the Work the “so-called Waking State”—a state which G. describes as an evil one in which Man can do infinite harm to Man.” (1678, 7 March 1953, 519th commentary)
152. “you do not think often about the Work and its age-old significance, if you inwardly think little of it, if you are incapable of comprehending that it is esoteric Christianity because, as G. said, it is based on the inner meaning of the parables and words of Christ, then no Work attitude can be formed within you.” (1678 [1679 in one edition], 7 March 1953, 519th commentary)
153. “In speaking of “the three centres”, the Intellectual, the Emotional, and the Instinctive-Moving Centre are meant. … These three centres were called by G. “the three bosses”. In speaking of them he remarked that they do not understand each other’s language. It is as if one boss speaks Greek, another Italian, and the third Turkish. These three centres, he said, are connected with a secretary who rings them up as occasion arises, but unfortunately she does not understand much of the messages she receives and usually rings up the wrong boss, and makes a great many mistakes. The last time I saw G. draw this diagram, which he did long after midnight, in a freezing theatre, with the stump of a candle on the back of a Persian rug, he put the secretary just outside the three-storey house. The three centres were not drawn as full circles, but as segments of circles. Three lines connected the secretary with them.” (1685, 28 March 1953, 522nd commentary) Nicoll quotes from Gurdjieff’s talk all through this paper. It has to be read in full.
154. “The meanings by which they live will then consist mainly in what is found in the lower compartments of the three-storey house of man—namely, in sex, in movement, and in comfort and eating and drinking. G. taught that this triad of centres, with the meanings derived from them, supplies the stimulations required to keep the major part of sleeping humanity fairly satisfied. He compared it with living in the basement.” (1699, 25 April 1953, 526th commentary)
155. “People become mirrors for us and we become mirrors for them, as G. once said.” (1714, 6 June 1953, 532nd commentary)
156. “G. said that once you have really understood for yourself why you must not do something, it is a crime against yourself and against the Work to go on doing it.” (1725, 4 July 1953, 536th commentary)
157. “Now it is by such illusions that humanity is kept asleep and the pain-factory of life on this planet is kept going at full blast—needlessly now, as G. said, but owing to habit and our state of sleep.” (1728, 18 July 1953, 538th commentary)
158. I wonder if this is from Gurdjieff: “… it is said in the Work that some people should go into life and some should not.” (1755, March 1944, miscellaneous paper at the end of volume 5)
159. “G. once said to O., when O. had taken him into a London Club of ancient reputation: “Why do you bring me into the presence of cemeteries and graves and dead people?” This Club was very distinguished and a great many members were sitting round in different parts of the smoking-room. You will remember in this connection what I told you once that G. said as a rule when walking down the street you meet corpses, people who are long ago dead in themselves. These people who are dead are people who think they know. (1755-6, March 1944, miscellaneous paper at the end of volume 5)
160. “In a conversation that I once had with G. he tried to explain to me that we all have a cheap life composed of small ‘I’s, ‘I’s that lie on the surface—i.e. in the moving parts of centres. He went on to say that no one could begin to develop if he or she had lived this small superficial life. He said in his broken language to me: “Necessary be Man.” I was working with him at that time in the carpenter’s shop at the Institute in France. During a few hours of work there he repeated this phrase: “Necessary be Man”. The starting-point of this phrase was my irritation with some wood that I was trying to drill and which split. I began to take this as a reason for being negative—i.e. I blamed the wood. G.’s remark to me made me understand for the first time in a practical way what it means to be a man and not a piece of wood that splits. Now this was new knowledge to me. What I had known before was changed into a new knowing.” (1758, March 1944, miscellaneous paper at the end of volume 5)
161. “I remember once that G. or O. said it would be good to have a travelling circus under the facade of which the Work was concealed. I thought how marvellous it would be to be going to new places and leaving behind all the troubles that arose in the last place just as though one could escape from oneself by the constant change of environment. But later I realized this is not possible and that even constant change of circumstances becomes mechanical like everything else. G. always taught with great emphasis that everything in time becomes mechanical. You learn to work on yourself in a certain way, for example, and after a time it becomes mechanical and no longer gives you force. A change is necessary. He taught once in London that our task was to open up new parts of centres and that we have to take things in a new way, wherever we are. For example, he said that prayer is good if it is conscious, but if it becomes mechanical it is useless, and on one occasion O. said that a man living in a prison cell—that is, in continually the same environment—could do this Work by a continual change of his attitude towards his physical confinement.” (1761, April 1945, miscellaneous paper at the end of volume 5)
162. This may or may not be from Gurdjieff: “In another Eastern allegory, Man is compared with an assembly. In this assembly first one ‘I’ gets up and says something and sits down again. Then another ‘I’ gets up and says something contrary. For instance, a man says: “I am going out to-day”, and then he says: “No, I don’t think I will because it is too cold.” He does not see that two different ‘I’s are speaking. Then another ‘I’ gets up and says: “We must go out or we might lose our job because there is always the possibility of meeting someone important.” So now three ‘I’s have got up in the assembly. Other ‘I’s can get up and say different things. This is a picture of Man taken as a house containing many different ‘I’s. As a consequence Man is the resultant of all these different ‘I’s that form the assembly of himself.” (1762-3, Autumn 1950, miscellaneous paper at the end of volume 5)