Annunciation, by Hans Memling

Metropolitan Museum, NY

Photograph by Lee van Laer

 

Desires and non-desires

 

" "Well then, it was to those same 'great initiates' who were first set apart that the Very Saintly, now Most Saintly, Ashiata Shiemash then explained in detail, among other things, what this being-impulse of Objective Conscience is, and how factors for its manifestation arise in the presence of three-brained beings.


"And concerning this he once said the following:


"'The factors for the being-impulse of Objective Conscience arise in three-brained beings from the localization in their presence of particles of the "emanations of the sorrow" of our All-Loving and Long-Suffering, Endless Creator; that is why the source of manifestation of genuine Conscience in three-centered beings is sometimes called the "Representative of the Creator."
"'And this sorrow is formed in our All-Maintaining Common Father from the struggle constantly proceeding in the Universe between joy and sorrow.'


"And he said further:


"'All the three-brained beings of the entire Universe including us men, owing to the data crystallized in our common presence for engendering the divine impulse of Conscience--in the whole of us and the whole of our essence--are and must be to the very root nothing but suffering.


"'And we must be suffering, because this being-impulse can come to its full manifestation in us only through the constant struggle between two quite opposite complexes of functioning issuing from two sources of quite opposite origin, that is to say, through the constant struggle between the processes of the functioning of our planetary body and the parallel processes of the functionings arising progressively in accordance with the coating and perfecting of our higher being-bodies within this planetary body of ours, which processes in their totality actualize every kind of reason in three-centered beings.


"'Consequently, like all three-centered beings of our Great Universe, we men existing on the Earth, owing to the presence in us also of the factors for engendering the divine impulse of Objective Conscience, must always inevitably struggle with the two quite opposite functionings arising and proceeding in our common presence, the results of which are always sensed by us either as "desires" or as "nondesires."

 

—Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson, G.I. Gurdjieff, first edition, pages 372-373