February 7th, 2012
first and third Wednesday of every month - February 15th
The last Sunday of every month - February 26
One Hundred Years of Gurdjieff’s Work
October 5th - 7th, 2012
Letter from Pierre Elliot
Rivauguier, France
I was asked: Is there anything we can do to prepare for our meeting? And I would like to attempt to answer the question. I think it all turns on whether those, who will come, are "people, who have decided to work on themselves". (last sentence from people... underlined). It is really necessary not just to read this underlined sentence but to understand clearly, what it means. You may have a true interest in the work, and a desire to make efforts. You may even feel very strongly, that it is necessary to change, but these things alone are not the same thing as the decision to work on yourself.
The decision to work on yourself only comes if you see for yourself, without any prevarication, that there is no hope for you to attain to something real and imperishable unless you can acquire a different Being. The one aspect about the need to work on oneself which you could set yourself to face until we meet is this: Every day until we meet, set yourself a period of time, not more than 15 minutes, to look impartially at your own future, and measure the time that is left to you for work.
If you do not use the time that is immediately in front of you, your power to make the necessary efforts will grow less and less until one day a time will come, when as Beelzebub puts it, however much you desire to work "It will already be too late".
Everyday confront yourself with this and do not allow yourself to slip away from this realization by any argument whatsoever. Without this, your decision to work on yourself cannot possibly have the necessary force. You must constantly remind yourself, that what is "difficult" today, may be "impossible" for you in one or two or five or ten years' time. Whatever your age may be, whatever experience you have had in this work, your hope of attaining something real is greater now, than it will be in the future. This is the meaning of the word "merciless" attached to the Heropass. Even one day lost or wasted will make your situation more difficult. You will say and have said for too long: I am aware of all this, but the general situation here is such, that we are divided, etc. etc. You must put aside the thought, that the circumstances here or
there and the particular people who happen to be there are somehow to be blamed.
The real difficulty lies in this - that your own "will" is too weak for your decision to work on yourself to be effective. Whatever "you" decide, you will fail to do it. Your situation would indeed be objectively hopeless, if you had only yourself upon whom to rely - and you might as well resume your search for a mythical guru. It is not hopeless, because you can receive help from a higher level of Being.
