Could You Be Used By Something Higher?

What is the overall aim of the Work?

When we ponder this question, we realize that in sowing the seeds of the Fourth Way for our time, Gurdjieff was setting up groups all over the world that could channel higher energies and assist in the evolution of the universe.

Of course, we ourselves have our own personal aims, which are quite valid. Do you seek understanding? Wisdom? Enlightenment? To be able to be a real Christian - or Muslim - or Buddhist - or Jew? To be a compassionate, enlightened person? To serve God and humanity in the unique way you were created to do?

All these are legitimate aims for us. We always break them down into smaller steps, as to achieve this great a leap would be too much for us, and every year we review our aim in the light of our personal work, our group, and the Work as a whole.

One day my teacher, speaking of Aim, made what to me was a startling statement.

She said, "We need to make it possible for us to be used by something higher".

To be used? Wasn't that a rather negative idea? Nobody wants to be used by anyone or anything, in ordinary life. That would limit our freedom, wouldn't it?

But Mrs Davison went on to explain that Conscious Humanity, whom we may picture as being at the level of the Sun in our solar system relative to our own individual existence, needs to work through conscious men and women on Earth. In fact, that is our purpose - to be transformers of higher energy.

In a previous post I wrote how progress through political means is always an illusion. Only people whom we call "lunatics" in the Work believe that by changing anything in the material world we will bring about progress to mankind. Changes occur, yes, but they don't lead to better conditions for all; they eventually turn into their opposite, because they are directed by sleeping people.

The only real progress is achieved when people become more conscious. Then, the higher beings which guard the Earth and the Solar System can send their energies through them to enlighten the Earth and transform it, at the same time as they also transform us.

This is a wonderful aim, and it's an example of what Gurdjieff called "thinking longer thoughts", or "active mentation".

In each generation conscious men and women act as channels through which this enlightening and vivifying energy can reach the Earth. They have fulfilled their "earthly mission", as it were, and in the process have achieved personal enlightenment.

And this is the aim of the Work: to offer us the conditions so that each one of us may become transformed in this way, and be a living vehicle for God and His saints, known and unknown, to transform the universe with their energies.

Gurdjieff was clearly such a person. So, I believe, were Ouspensky, Dr Nicoll, Mrs Pogson and all the great Work teachers, both those who've become household names and many more whose names have vanished but whose work lives on in the form of their students' understanding.

Not only people in the Work may be used in this way, of course.

In our time, we have the example of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, the little Albanian nun who devoted her life to serving the poor and destitute who were dying on the streets of that city. Her work has spread to many countries and has brought light and love to hundreds of thousands of humanity's poorest members in their hour of greatest need. She was recently officially recognized as a saint by Pope Francis, but she was a saint long before anyone outside the church knew of her work.

St Therese of Lisieux, another nun, this time one who lived her short, adult life within the confines of an enclosed Carmelite community, also allowed herself to be completely transformed by God. She wrote of her experiences and of her way to holiness, "the Little Way", or "the Way of Spiritual Childhood", and her writings have changed the lives of millions of people all over the world, from all religious backgrounds and none. Her method bears great similarities with the Work.

Other world-changers whose names we know and revere would surely include Nelson Mandela, who became a vehicle for the forces of reconciliation in South Africa; Sir Winston Churchill, who inspired the Allied Forces in their extraordinary victory over the demonic forces of Nazism in World War II; Anwar Sadat, who as Prime Minister of Egypt defied death threats and persecution to achieve peace with Israel, a peace which cost him his own life, as he had feared, but deemed it worthwhile to pursue anyway; and Dag Hammersjold, the United Nations Secretary General whose Christian faith informed his life and work, and ensured that under his leadership the U.N. was truly a mediator for peace in the world.

The Catholic Pope Saint John Paul II, also known as Saint John Paul the Great, is yet another example of how an individual may be so transformed by personal evolution as to be used by Conscious Humanity; in this case, to liberate millions of people from the grip of the Iron Curtain, and set them free to practice their faith, both Catholics and Russian Orthodox Christians. The Russian Orthodox church is undergoing a tremendous revival in Russia and other countries that belonged to the Soviet Empire; so, too, is the Catholic church, which is flourishing today in countries that were officially atheist before this great Pope freed them from the tyranny of materialism.

Among us there are many great souls, some of them famous, most of them not. I would include my own teacher, Marian Davison, along with the other Work teachers I mentioned above, in this number. She devoted an enormous amount of time and energy to teaching the Work to her groups, which included those she inherited from Mrs Pogson and many which she herself started. Even after she officially retired from teaching, aged 70, blind and in poor health, she never turned away any sincere student who was prepared to undertake the difficult work of transformation. She taught us by telephone or through personal meetings long after her groups had been dissolved, and she remained faithful to the Work until her very last day on Earth, when she slipped peacefully away in hospital.

What does it take to be used by something higher?

First of all, the Emotional Centre must be so purified that it no longer experiences negative emotions. False Personality must wither away and become totally silent. Our Intellectual Centre must be able to contemplate the vastness of the universe and the power of God to transform all of it through evolution. Only when we realize the enormity of the task can we offer our small contribution, knowing that, in the words of the Talmud, "You may not be able to finish the task, but neither are you free to refrain from doing it".

Our Moving Centre must become more conscious, so that it helps rather than hinders our personal work.

Only then, when our lower centres are purified and working harmoniously, can our Higher Centres be heard.

Our entire Personality, though necessary for life and for many Work tasks, must become passive to Essence. Essence knows and understands our true purpose, but in most people it remains a silent, helpless, unheard voice.  When we become more conscious we don't insist on our own way any more, the desire of the Personality or False Personality. We no longer even desire it.

It is our Higher Centres which will guide us in our tasks and channel the energies of Conscious Humanity into our daily lives.

Our Essence becomes active, and we live more fully and more consciously. We know what has to be done, and we know how to do it.

Eventually, our aim is to come under the guidance of Real I, that part of us which is both human and divine, and which longs to bring to us and to the entire planet those forces of reconciliation, love and consciousness which alone bring progress.

At this time of year, the time of turning within, it's good to remember our aim and to form the intention that we, too, may be used by something higher.