– Petri Laakso (19.12.2018)
Notes on Becoming is a very succinct summary of the whole of the path Gurdjieff brought, or rather of the essence of his teaching presented from the point of view of how someone interested in inner development can approach a spiritual path.
It is a curious book in the general spiritual market in that it presents few practices and makes few promises. What it does is look at life from the perspective of the whole of the universe and suggests man a place of another possibility and responsibility than the fleeting pleasures of everyday existence.
It is particularly systematic in explaining what psychological sleep means and how our roles and self-images get the best of us, how they split us in parts and make us unaware of the whole and keep us away from our possibilities. This idea of psychological sleep is introduced in the beginning and wrapped up at the end, drawing on everything that is discussed throughout the book. The practical core, the hypothesis that one may test, consists of the two statements about what inner work requires to have an effect. Ultimately applying the ideas requires engaging in the various facets of a path of becoming, but the key steps are very simple, only deceptively plain and unintuitive to our usual understanding.
The presentation is flexible and offers something for all the sides of man, from the thoroughgoing children’s tale metaphor of a toy becoming real by being loved for a long time — to outlining some of the key concepts reported in Ouspensky’s Fragmentsand connecting these with some key theorems of physics for the scientifically minded. The emphasis is, however, always on the importance of the moment, the body — and the stress is on the nature of true development being physical, a matter of bodily experience and change.
Gurdjieff’s rhetoric of the many ’I’s versus the Real I, and all the stages and counter variations on the vertical axis of Being are discussed and sufficiently elaborated to give an idea what the role of selfishness versus serving is on a path of the type being presented. At the same time, the Buddhist style of presentation is employed and used to complement the ’I’-talk by references to impermanence and the more real that rests behind manifestation. Indeed, in the end it is the Buddhist idiom that is used to express the fundamental truths of a living reality hidden from us due to psychological sleep and neglecting the laws of the universe. The practical sense is of a path that leads through years of observation of the patterns inside and outside us, developing an attention that is unaffected by these patterns, and finally arriving through a process of opening and distillation to another perspective where our usual lop-sided understanding of life turns around to reveal something entirely else. Finding individuality and being free take on quite a different meaning on a path of serving a deeper reality that we have always partaken of and that is always beckoning us, but that we in a way deny ourselves by lacking rigorous examination of the meaning of life and by not making the effort to find someone who could provide us with the tools and guidance required by a process of becoming something other than our society so readily serves on our plates.
The book gives the impression of being very basic and general, but this is misleading in that the scope and clarity of the synthesis can help contextualize many things to anyone feeling a call inside, whether only in passing or as a part of their life for a long time already. The most radical and difficult to appreciate proposition, which is presented as the basis of anything real, is that even though we conceive of inner development as a path and like to imagine being well on our way, this process is always subject to the same laws as everything existing. There is a just-suchness in each moment that we must submit to in order to awaken to what is, to be properly connected on all levels inside and outside. This requires understanding and refusing the usual rule of thought and emotion, and instead developing a sensitivity for a finer energy that can only come by being in the body, right now, from moment to moment, present to whatever occurs. That individuality and freedom are dependent on such a process is what we need to be shocked to realize again and again, for without the extra energy provided by another kind of look, a look from another level, we cannot hope to escape our psychological sleep and reach the other side, so to speak, and be seen and be claimed by what is missing in our lives.
I see the book as a stop sign that can be felt at the root of one’s being. It represents a call that can resonate inside us and in the far reaches of the universe. A call that has paradoxically been put by many traditions as our real selves calling us to take responsibility and to play the role that humanity is destined to have in the larger whole. This requires finding others who feel a similar call and this book is an emissary of one possible path towards realizing our proper place and possibilities as full human beings.
