The Reality of Being Quotes

“It is only in the void that another reality can appear. At the same time, there is also in me an energy that is projected outward by my functions, taken by their inexhaustible reactions to impressions coming from both outside and inside. I do not have the attention necessary to confront all these impressions and reactions. But I am shocked when I see the speed with which I unknowingly react.”
― Jeanne De Salzmann, The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff

“The thought cannot open to another dimension, the vast space in which there is silence. And a feeling without limit cannot appear.”
― Jeanne De Salzmann, The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff

“If we do not feel deeply the beauty of life and its challenge, then life has no sense at all.”
― Jeanne De Salzmann, The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff

“If I wish to understand them, I must live with them, not as a spectator but with affection, and without judging or excusing them. It is necessary to live with my thoughts, feelings and actions, to suffer them, from moment to moment.”
― Jeanne De Salzmann, The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff

“So, the struggle is to live with the desire, not refusing it or losing myself in it, until the mechanism of the thinking no longer has an action on me, and the attention is free.”
― Jeanne De Salzmann, The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff

“We always dream of reaching a place in order to remain there permanently. Yet permanence can only be found in movement.”
― Jeanne De Salzmann, The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff

“We need to realize that our usual attention is not in contact with what it is perceiving, and as a result we do not really see.”
― Jeanne De Salzmann, The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff

“If I return each day to something absolutely sure, which I understand and of which I am convinced, I will see the way, the direction that will allow me to know how I am living. I will see myself enclosed in the narrow circle of my wishes and interests, taken by life. Yet by experiencing myself each day in another state, outside this circle, I will recognize that in reality I can escape, and I may even see that the circle does not exist.”
― Jeanne De Salzmann, The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff

“There is in me something mysterious that nothing is able to grasp, something that no thought or feeling can help me know. It appears only when I am not caught in the web of my thoughts and emotions. It is the unknown, which cannot be grasped with what I know.”
― Jeanne De Salzmann, The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff

“And it will remain lost unless I can relate to something higher. The first condition is to know in myself a different quality, higher than what I ordinarily am. Then my life will take on new meaning. Without this condition there can be no work. I must remember there is another life and at the same time experience the life that I am leading. This is awakening. I awake to these two realities.”
― Jeanne De Salzmann, The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff

“am writing a book on how to be in life, on the path to take in order to live on two levels. It will show how to find a balance, to go from one to the other, or rather to find the way in between. We have to see beyond, and through, our ordinary thinking in order to open to another mind. Otherwise, we remain at the threshold in front of the door, and the door does not open.”
― Jeanne De Salzmann, The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff

“The Fourth Way is a way of understanding, not of faith or obedience to a charismatic leader.”
― Jeanne De Salzmann, The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff

“We take consciousness as an object of observation. But we cannot see consciousness. It is consciousness that sees and that knows. I realize this if I experience it as coming from behind my body or from above. There is no observer, there is a knowing. Yet if I experience consciousness as in my body, it seems that the “I” is the body and consciousness an attribute of the body.”
― Jeanne De Salzmann, The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff

“In facing life, I am driven by the force of my ego. I take my life as a web of relations viewed from a center. I feel this center—it is me. I call this center “I,” and it is from here that I think and feel. The notion of “I” takes up all the room, and comes back even in my better moments of work. In this it is always a single part of me that takes over—sometimes my thought, sometimes my emotion, perhaps my body. They never act together. There is no sense of the whole.”
― Jeanne De Salzmann, The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff

“A work together is necessary, cooperation to produce something—like a chain of beings seeking to be more conscious, whose efforts assist one another. Each person joining the chain has to find his place, a place that is determined by his usefulness. Then, by his attitude and actions, he either maintains and vivifies the chain at the place where he is the link, or he falls away and no longer participates in it.”
― Jeanne De Salzmann, The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff

“What do I understand today, and what do I need to understand? Understanding depends on my state of being, on my state of Presence. It is absurd to pretend in my sleep that I wish to work, while all the time dreaming that I can. Our efforts to work in life are, first of all, to discover how far we are from our highest possibilities. At the center of our work is the wish to live in a more real way. My lie is affirming myself without having the taste of truth, the taste of reality. We can be either an unconscious slave or a conscious servant.”
― Jeanne De Salzmann, The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff

“Why is it that my mind never discovers anything new? I am a prisoner of all the impressions deposited in me. I am conditioned by the reservoir of my memory, the result engraved in me of the influences that have touched me. It is all that I have to answer with in life. Little by little, I unconsciously accept this state of conditioning, and the energy of my mind deteriorates. My mind is sapped in its vitality and strength. It simply accumulates more and more information. I can discipline my mind, polish my knowledge. It can even become brilliant. But I remain in the realm of the known. How could I go beyond this way of thinking so that something new could appear?”
― Jeanne De Salzmann, The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff

“Thought is made up of accumulated knowledge in the form of images and associations, and it seizes an experience only to make it fit into categories of the known. Although it can entertain the new when it is quiet, the thinking immediately transforms it into something old, with an image that has already been the object of an experience. The image awakens an immediate reaction. This always repeats, so that there is never anything new.”
― Jeanne De Salzmann, The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff

“I have a sensation of myself, which my habitual thought calls “body,” but I do not know what it is, I have no name for what is here. I am aware of tensions, even the smallest, but I do not know what tension is. Then I feel breathing, which I do not know . . . in a body that I do not know, surrounded by people I do not know. . . . My mind becomes quiet.”
― Jeanne De Salzmann, The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff

“When my brain can be active, sensitive, alive in a state of attentive immobility, there is a movement of an extraordinary quality that does not belong just to the thinking, the sensation or the emotion. It is a wholly different movement that leads to truth, to what we cannot name. The attention is total, without any distraction.”
― Jeanne De Salzmann, The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff

“Our effort must always be clear—to be present, that is, to begin to remember myself. With the attention divided, I am present in two directions, as present as I can be. My attention is engaged in two opposite directions, and I am at the center. This is the act of self-remembering.”
― Jeanne De Salzmann, The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff

“The first condition is to know in myself a different quality, higher than what I ordinarily am. Then my life will take on new meaning. Without this condition there can be no work. I must remember there is another life and at the same time experience the life that I am leading. This is awakening. I awake to these two realities. I need to understand that by myself, without a relation with something higher, I am nothing, I can do nothing. By myself alone, I can only remain lost in this circle of interests, I have no quality that allows me to escape. I can escape only if I feel my absolute nothingness and begin to feel the need for help. I must feel the need to relate myself to something higher, to open to another quality.”
― Jeanne De Salzmann, The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff

“an interval that allows my energy, my attention, to change direction. It turns back toward me, and the question now touches me. This energy brings a vibration, a note that did not sound until now. It is subtle, very fine, but nevertheless communicates. I feel it. It is an impression I receive, an impression of a life in me. All my possibilities are here. What follows—whether I will open to the experience of Presence—depends on the way I receive this impression.”
― Jeanne De Salzmann, The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff

“The child wants to have, the adult wants to be. The wish to be is behind all my manifestations. To learn to see is the first initiation into self-knowledge. We struggle not against something, we struggle for something. I believe I need to pay attention when, in fact, I need to see and know my inattention. When I begin to see, I begin to love what I see. Where our attention is, God is.”
― Jeanne De Salzmann, The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff

“What is necessary, in us and around us, is the creation of a certain level of energy, an attention that resists surrounding influences and does not let itself deteriorate. Then it has to receive a force that is more active, that will allow it not only to resist but to have an action and find a stable place between two currents of different levels. This possibility of equilibrium is the continuing challenge, the interval to be faced at every moment in the work for consciousness.”
― Jeanne De Salzmann, The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff

“Our way is to live these ideas in order to understand them, and to pass on the teaching to others if and to the extent we are able to live it with them. Sowing ideas without living them is sowing ideas that are empty. Gurdjieff left us not only words and ideas to be transmitted, but a certain life to be lived, a drama to be played out with others around us, without which the work will remain imaginary.”
― Jeanne De Salzmann, The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff