Do the difficult times we find ourselves in hinder us or help us in the work?
Somewhere up there two or three planets have approached too near to each other. Tension results. Have you noticed how, if a man passes quite close to you on a narrow pavement, you become all tense? The same tension takes place between planets. For them it lasts, perhaps, a second or two. But here, on the earth, people begin to slaughter one another, and they go on slaughtering maybe for several years. ~ G. I. Gurdjieff
Our Current Situation
Clearly we are now in similar difficult times. The instability in the United States caused by the rise of Trump certainly has the most potential for a large-scale disaster, but the figures of hasnamuss have appeared in other countries as well. If Gurdjieff is right, current events are also the result of planetary influences that affect the earth as a whole.
Ouspensky observed that in difficult times it becomes next to impossible to organize a teaching and attract new people. And Gurdjieff believed that hard times were beneficial to people who have already adopted the fourth way as a way of life. So if we take both of these as correct, we can say that what hurts the organization of esotericism as a whole may benefit the individual.
The idea is that esoteric knowledge is material, and that it has a material limit. If a large number of people seek that knowledge, then each participant has less knowledge. So if the times are such that the politics of the day or the need to survive in difficult times waylays people who ordinarily would seek conscious evolution, then there is more knowledge for those who seek it.
If large quantities of knowledge are concentrated in a small number of people, then this knowledge will give very great results. From this point of view it is far more advantageous that knowledge should be preserved among a small number of people and not dispersed among the masses. ~ Gurdjieff
Transforming the Suffering of our Times
On top of that, the system of the Fourth Way suggests that we can profit, on a spiritual level, from difficulties–using the tools that it gives us. We can transform suffering, if we know how. We need to have the discipline to bring the appropriate tools to the situation in the moment. Non-identification, external considering, and self-remembering are powerful tools in ordinary situations. They become even more powerful in difficult or extraordinary situations.
The moment you suffer, try to remember yourself. ~ Ouspensky
Of course, a comparison to the 1930s and ‘40s to our time is not exactly correct. On a human level the stakes are much higher now. The hasnamuss, the lunatic, and the tramp are not only in a position to slaughter many, many people, and make many more suffer. They are in a position to destroy the entire human experiment on earth. The fact of global warming, unchecked pollution, extreme weather, and massive amounts of stockpiled weapons in countries that are now unstable is unlikely to make for a happy ending, or even a sustainable path forward.
A Broader View of the Self
The question for us is: Do we allow the reality of what is happening to force us into in a state of fear and instinctive desperation? Or do we use these difficult times to better understand that we are, in essence, spiritual beings?
For a long time we have taken self-remembering too narrowly. We have thought of our self as this body in this life, and have used self-remembering to further our worldly aims. But self-remembering can be more. If we can reach higher centers even for short periods of time, we will uncover a different being. This being may come from the experience of many lifetimes. It has roots in an understanding of spiritual worlds. This is the self we ultimately want to remember.
–William Page is the author of the blog BePresentFirst.
To see his full article on the concept of hasnamuss, see: https://bepresentfirst.com/the-rise-of-the-hasnamuss-in-contemporary-politics/. For another article relating to current events, see https://bepresentfirst.com/on-covid-19-or-scale-and-relativity/.
Other recent articles are https://fourthwaytoday.org/freedom-of-the-real/ and https://fourthwaytoday.org/memory-and-higher-states/.