Why work—what is it all for, anyway? What was Gurdjieff or for that matter, Bennett, on about? How does this body of ideas and practices relate to the world today?
Someone asked me a question along these lines last week. Honestly, an answer did not come trippingly off my tongue. And I wondered about that in the moment. How do I explain why I find this work so relevant? I’m not sure I remember why. I just knew when I started, fifty years ago, that it was the answer to what I was looking for. Which was not about finding a financially stable man to marry, so I could live a comfortable suburban life and attend PTA meetings. I did want a husband and I did want children, but I wanted something more. I wanted substance.
The Gurdjieff Work, the Fourth Way, provides substance to the act of living. When one’s daily tasks don’t matter as much as remembering oneself at some point in the day, there’s another dimension to the day. I work because it feeds something in me, which feeds something more than me.
Gurdjieff outlines Reciprocal Maintenance as “the higher feeds the lower to actualize the middle.” Bennett clarifies this with his scientific and mathematical approach. In a nutshell, germs enrich the soil, from which plants get nutrients. They in turn feed animals. Both animals and plants feed humans. Each life form is fed by a lower life form which feeds a higher life form. “Plants, Animals, and Humans, all must eat to live and nourish one another,” as Bennett’s grace elegantly says.
But again, Why Work? What does that have to do with Reciprocal Maintenance? It seems that could go on by itself, it always has.
Does anyone ask the obvious question, “What do we Humans feed?” Gurdjieff did. He asked, “What is the significance of life on Earth, and in particular, Human life?” What is the role of humanity on this planet?
There seems to be a two-fold answer to this question, and they both have to do with releasing energy for the planet and the cosmos. Humans are organic matter, just like everything else that lives and dies. En masse, humanity is compost. But individually, a human can become much more.
Why Work
Human Beings have the potential to transform energy consciously, producing a finer energy. Transforming negative emotions is an example. Most of us either don’t know how or don’t want to go there, because strangely enough, there’s something in us that likes being mad. It was through work that I discovered this about myself.
Even more strange, is that it’s the struggle against this very resistance to change that creates the friction that is work. And that friction creates finer energy when we work consciously.
By studying and practicing the work of transformation, we become more than organic matter. We create energy that feeds the cosmos.
As I understand the Pentad of Reciprocal Maintenance (e.g. ecology with a spiritual twist) for humans, the human’s lower nature is animal (which is where most humans reside, not being human but animal), higher nature, demiurge (what humans can achieve, man number five?), humans should eat germ (grains, beans, seeds and nuts are germinal essences, which is why humans should be closer to vegetarian/vegan than meat eaters) or invertebrates (that would mean eating insects and creatures like lobsters, crabs, etc. which are more like insects than fish), and is eaten by the cosmic individual (God or the Universe) that eats the finer energies produced from the Work and/or the creative activity of self actualized humans.