All Life Needs Love
Continuation from Magnetism and Love and Read Again.
For full citations of items referenced and meaning of abbreviations, see Introduction and Bibliography.
The importance of the part played by the Zirlikner, or physician, in the first series of All and Everything,1 and Gurdjieff's remark to a doctor, for instance, about how it is very serious thing not to be a doctor in quotation marks,2 point to his deep valuation of the role of the physician. Nevertheless, also in his first series, there are a number of disparaging remarks made regarding the usual kinds of representatives of contemporary physicians.3 He seemed to hold Nature in higher regard than such learned physicians, and said that, “Nature knows more than a hundred doctors.”4 He also told Katherine Mansfield in her tubercular illness that she should pay attention to the ministrations of two doctors:
When Katherine Mansfield returned to the Prieuré, Gurdjieff said that she must spend a lot of time in the cowshed, since the emanations of the animals and the fumes would help her.5
“There I go every day to lie and later I am going to sleep there. It's very warm. One has the most happy feelings listening to the beasts and looking…”6
On Sunday afternoon when I was in the stable [Mr. Gurdjieff] came up to rest, too, and talked to me a little… Then he suddenly asked me how I was and said I looked better. “Now,” he said, “you have two doctors you must obey. Doctor Stable and Doctor New Milk. Not to think, not to write… Rest. Rest. Live in your body again.”7
At least part of the interesting and important role of the Zirlikner seems usefully viewed as not just for the few, but as a call that we should be physicians for one another, in the way that a friend can themselves act as a kind of healing medicine, or a channel for it. The action and service of listening, of giving attention to the need of a friend, to a fellow human being, or even another form of life, is itself healing. This seems to give a hint as to where love and healing come together – love as giving attention.