NOTE: These words need to be taken in context - he is speaking to pupils at his Institute who have taken on a serious program with a holistic aim - SteveGurdjieff on Movements [COMPARE TO QIGONG]
Gurdjieff wrote sparingly about movements. The following excerpt taken from Views from the Real World is reprinted by the kind permission of Triangle Editions, Inc.
First Talk in Berlin
November 24, 1921
You ask about the aim of the movements. To each position of the body corresponds a certain inner state and, on the other hand, to each inner state corresponds a certain posture. A man, in his life, has a certain number of habitual postures and he passes from one to another without stopping at those between.
Taking new, unaccustomed postures enables you to observe yourself inside differently from the way you usually do in ordinary conditions. This becomes especially clear when on the command "Stop!" you have to freeze at once. At this command you have to freeze not only externally but also to stop all your inner movements. Muscles that were tense must remain in the same state of tension, and the muscles that were relaxed must remain relaxed. You must make the effort to keep thoughts and feelings as they were, and at the same time to observe yourself.
For instance, you wish to become an actress. Your habitual postures are suited to acting a certain part—for instance, a maid—yet you have to act the part of a countess. A countess has quite different postures. In a good dramatic school you would be taught, say, two hundred postures. For a countess the characteristic postures are, say, postures number 14, 68, 101 and 142. If you know this, when you are on the stage you have simply to pass from one posture to another, and then however badly you may act you will be a countess all the time. But if you don't know these postures, then even a person who has quite an untrained eye will feel that you are not a countess but a maid.
It is necessary to observe yourself differently than you do in ordinary life. ...Everyone has a limited repertoire of habitual postures, and of inner states. She is a painter and you will say, perhaps, that she has her own style. But it is not style, it is limitation. Whatever her pictures may represent, they will always be the same, whether she paints a picture of European life or of the East. I will at once recognize that she, and nobody else, has painted it. An actor who is the same in all his roles—just himself—what kind of an actor is he? Only by accident can he have a role that entirely corresponds to what he is in life.
Views from the Real World, pp. 167–170
Saturday, March 1, 2008
Re: Gurdjieff on Movements (compare to qigong)
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3 comments:
My understanding and knowledge of myself includes...now I can't remember what I was going to say. My little boy, who is sick, summoned me from Gurdjieff cum quigong for a moment and I lost my thought. Does that make me a mere collection of new information? Or will my almost-daily regimen of walking and yoga make my centers one? Yes, I'm being sassy, but at the same time, I really do want to know what this article means.
Okay, Lisa - I see your point! I need to go back and post a preferatory context remark, and maybe delete the last part not specifically about movements. He was speaking to his resident pupils at his Institute, who had seriously taken on the task of trying to become more holistic. He found their approach to the teaching side of their regimen had veered away from their overall aim. Outside that context his words sound overly harsh and one-sided (very similar to Plato though, on knowledge versus understanding - understanding is a composite of knowledge and being)but they are for people trying to learn (by observation - very scientific in approach) about their mechanicality versus conscious action and to become more conscious and whole. My motive for the post is the first and one-or-two following paragraphs where he speaks about some of the underlying principles and premises behind "sacred movements" which are essentially universal and apply as well to qigong and Tai Chi. Those premises are largely overlooked or hard to track down, mostly confined to practice and oral tradition. We all have a certain amount of one-center myopia and mechanicality that may be suitable enough for most ordinary life purposes but may get in the way of anything that could legitimately be called a further evolution. We have to decide between the acorn and the oak tree: if we are really intent on becoming an oak tree, we have to give up some acorn behavior and acorn ideology. I hope this helps. (And your regimen is good - it will bring you closer, but the goal is distant for all of us. Perhaps be content with a less ambitious goal?) I'll amend the post. Steve
Thank you, Steve. This concept is new to me. I would like to be an oak tree, but I feel like my yard is full of acorns even though it is almost spring. I do know how to practice being a tree :-)Not sure I have enough time this time around to become one, though.
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