With the Third Striving - The Conscious Striving to Know Ever More and More About the Laws of World-Creation and World-Maintenance - we think first of all about the external application, the need to understand and care for the environment.
J.G. Bennett on several occasions drew attention to Gurdjieff's prescience concerning environmental knowledge. Gurdjieff wrote "All and Everything" at a time when few people paid any attention at all to the subject. In the early and middle years of the 20th century it was generally assumed that the environment - nature - was there for mankind to use as desired. Resources were thought to be inexhaustible. Pollution was undiscovered. Capitalism depended on the process of limitless growth in order to prosper; growth, therefore, must be good.
It wasn't until 1962, when Rachel Carson published her seminal work "Silent Spring", that public attention was drawn to the harm we were wreaking on the environment by our careless use of pesticides. Carson postulated a world where, as in the poem, "no birds sing"; hence the "silence" of the book's title. The unrestricted use of chemicals would, she thought, eventually destroy or warp wildlife beyond redemption. We were poisoning the planet we live on.
Such views were seen as almost heretical to begin with, but as scientists turned their attention more and more to the effects of such potent, destructive substances as DDT they saw that we were indeed in danger of killing off both plant and animal life, the very entities on which our own survival depends.
Later, with the pollution studies which followed, the public began to be aware of the need for a more restrained use of chemicals, and in the 1970s the need to care for our environment began to be accepted and promulgated.
With the close of the last century the effects of global warming were also becoming more known, until today, most scientists, along with the general public, have realized that mankind is in a perilous position. If we continue to misuse science and to seek unrestricted economic growth, then we face an uncertain future. We may render our own habitat sterile.
All of this, I believe, can be seen in Gurdjieff's formulation of this Third Striving.
He was so far ahead of his time in his knowledge and his sense of urgency about the situation we face that the full implications of this Striving were not understood until many years after he had written his masterpiece.
Gurdjieff hinted that civilization itself was in danger because of the overuse of chemicals and of electricity.
To begin with, his warning was not understood. Chemicals were surely a blessing - look at the convenience they offered, the shortcuts to achieving just about everything, from cleaning floors to curing illnesses.
And how could electricity possibly pose any threat? It was a huge forward leap; we now had instant light, instant heat, machinery to do just about everything that had previously necessitated huge physical effort or had been impossible, such as the speed of calculation now achievable with artificial intelligence.
Yet it's only recently that we have begun to realize the full extent of the problems posed by those very machines, including, first and foremost, computers.
Cyber attacks, terrorism, irreversable climate change, atomic weapons - these are the fruits of our scientific experiments, just as much as convenience and speed; or, as George Ohsawa said, "The bigger the front, the bigger the back".
We need to study the "laws of world-creation and world-maintenance" more than ever before, because if we don't, we will destroy our own home. And it could happen sooner than we think.
One of the workings of Nature, which science has not so far proved but which Gurdjieff taught, is the necessity of receiving certain vibrations from organic life, and most importantly from mankind. The vibrations in question are those released involuntarily at death. They can, however, be created and released voluntarily in our lifetime if we work on ourselves, and - as Jesus taught - learn to "die to ourselves".
If Nature receives insufficient vibrations of this type, which Gurdjieff says is needed to feed the atmosphere of the Moon and possibly to facilitate other processes as yet unknown to us, then she will cause large numbers of deaths to take place.
With this teaching, Gurdjieff anticipated by many years the "Gaia" hypothesis of James Lovelock; that the Earth is a living organism, acting and reacting to our presence, intent on preserving her own existence and that of Nature.
We have seen in our lifetime huge natural and human disasters. The bombing of the Twin Towers on 9/11, devastating earthquakes around the world, the biggest hurricanes ever seen, and the unimaginably huge catastrophe which claimed the lives of more than 250,000 people around the Indian Ocean in the Boxing Day tsunami, all released these very fine spiritual substances by their destructive effects on human beings.
The terrorist attacks are manmade, of course, caused by the misapplication of religion and abetted by mechanical interplanetary influences, but others are caused by Nature alone. And the scale of disasters is increasing.
Gurdjieff points out that if sufficient people were conscious, then such loss of life would not be necessary. With beautiful symmetry, he is saying, if we work on ourselves in accordance with his teachings, which are akin to the inner teachings of all the great religions, then we benefit ourselves, we benefit Nature, and we lighten the sufferings of God.
What a awe-inspiring teaching - and how timely.
The concomitant inner evolution that may take place as we grow in consciousness reflects the orderly state of the greater cosmos. Gurdjieff tells us that we must become to our own inner world what the Sun is in relation to the solar system. The Sun, mystically, symbolizes Christ, the creator and maintainer of the universe. We can achieve authority over our own inner universe by imitating Him and working on ourselves.
And we must also create a "Moon" in our inner world, a permanent centre of gravity governing our actions, an inner point of growth and stability towards which our work efforts can contribute.
If we work on ourselves according to the precept given in the Third Striving, our growth will be assisted - and so will the evolution of the Universe.
Mrs. Pogson taught that each one of us may become a cell in the mystical Body of Christ. We can, if we choose, become incorporated into - "eaten by" - something higher.
If we do not, we will still contribute when we die, but this will be an involuntary contribution, a sort of tax on living that will be exacted without our consent.
And, Gurdjieff said, organic life on Earth is an experiment; the Sun wants something from us, some contribution in return for giving us our existence; and if we do not work on ourselves, then the experiment may fail.
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