Slander Poisons the Slanderer
I will here remind you of what the Work says of life. It says that
under the 3rd force of life, things always divide, disunite, and are at
war - as life shews us. One party splits into two mutually hostile parties
and so on. Now the 3rd force of the Work unites. It holds people
together who in life would at once split and hate one another.
Through
the 3rd force of the Work - and, let me emphasize - the work done
by each person on himself or herself in the light of the Work - an
accumulator can be made, by uniting people in a common understanding through
a common language.
The supreme effort that has to
be made in the Work is to feel the Work. Seek the Work first, fight for
it, keep it alive - and then all the rest follows. Remember that all
temptations in the Work-meaning are about feeling, valuing, cherishing
the meaning and reality of the Work, of Esotericism. This is faith - a
thing requiring much and constant effort of mind - an inner daily
action in both mind and heart. Faith is what is unsupported by the
evidence of the senses - by seen visible life.
Now in ordinary seen life, where people, even religious
people, do not practically work on themselves each day, they
accumulate a substance which cannot lead to unity. For
example, they criticize one another, talk scandal privately,
slander each other secretly and hate each other - in short,
make every kind of internal account against one another.
They are mechanical people, and just because they do not
work they remain mechanical. As a result, there is formed a thick, heavy,
psychological substance which Gurdjieff called by one of his
strange words - something like ′Tzarvarno′. "This
substance," he said, in so many words, "accumulates in life
and makes all right relationship impossible. This substance
has no Holy Spirit in it. It is dead."
He said "Tzarvarno" was due to the unnatural outward
and inward manifestations of people to one another and was
an accumulation of evil actions, thoughts and emotions, of
which people do not understand the consequences. The Work
calls it simply "making internal accounts." Now remember,
the slightest, unworked on "evil" towards another mounts up
and makes this thick, dead substance. Where? In oneself. One
may suspect how often illness is due to this dead substance,
daily formed. Now everything the Work teaches us to
practice, to make effort about, is to prevent this heavy
dead substance from forming itself. A good daily and nightly
incinerator for negative states is necessary.