Ideas and Understanding: The first remedy for abnormality
References and quotations for this article.
It seems good and useful to examine frequently the underpinnings of one’s own thought, and also the foundations of the ideas in this teaching of Gurdjieff, and of the way in which it seems each one of us, necessarily, subjectively interprets them. It is easy to have a superficial theoretical grasp of an idea and assume that is all there is to it, thus belittling it. But, as Maurice Nicoll pointed out,
• ideas have force [1],
• you have to apply your knowledge to your being [2],
• these ideas are to give us a new way of thinking [3],
• and the more one lets the ideas penetrate interiorly, the more is seen within them [4].
And Jeanne de Salzmann said,
Our way is to live these ideas in order to understand them [5].
One’s understanding necessarily changes with repeated “chewing” of these ideas and trying to apply them to life. And growth of understanding may often even be through the realisation that one does not actually understand.