#gurdjieff

Nikolaj Konstantinovič Roerich (1874–1947) è stato un pittore, archeologo, diplomata e saggista russo, la cui figura s’intreccia in modo indissolubile con l’esoterismo, la teosofia e il misticismo tra Occidente e Oriente. Il Padre Konstantin e l’Ambiente di San Pietroburgo Nato a San Pietroburgo da una famiglia benestante di origini baltico-tedesche e russe, Nikolaj cresce sotto l’influenza del…

[Thanks Ian Sanders]

''I always make the mistake of trying to force my way toward being, as if I could oblige being to appear. The opposite is true. It is being that constantly strives toward the light of consciousness. It needs a passage that allows it to radiate. But on the way it meets the hard crust of the ego and is blocked by it. In order for being to have an action, a void must appear before it in which a finer vibration can be sensed. Only in emptiness can its vivifying power be felt, only when there are no tensions or any disordered movements of the ego wanting at all costs to prove its identity, to affirm its authority. Each tension is testimony of my ego. In each tension the whole of me is engaged.

I now understand that conscious sensation is the first sign of obedience to something greater, the first step toward a true feeling. Here I glimpse the possibility of a direct perception. My tyrannical “I” submits and no longer dominates, no longer trying to show its strength. I feel another force, not a power that I possess but one in which I am. At this moment there appears an energy coming from a higher emotional current, irresistible so long as it is obeyed. It is this energy, a cosmic force passing in us, that all traditions call “love.”

Running in Reverse: The Hedonic Treadmill and the Pessimist's Identity Trap

Monitoring yourself constantly to ensure you want nothing requires the exact same mental energy as chasing a million dollars—the machine is still overheating, only the program has changed.

According to Spinoza, joy doesn't come from having a million dollars, it comes from gaining another million on top of it. Or from your blog getting a thousand new likes. In other words, joy comes specifically from an increase in your life force, not from any fixed state. That's roughly his argument. We now call this the hedonic treadmill: to feel joy, you constantly need growth, because the feeling fades the moment the growth stops.

Gurdjieff's solution to escape the treadmill is to stop being an optimist. Stop expecting growth. Stop assuming things will keep working out. Stop having false hopes. Instead, become an "active pessimist", someone who steps back and sees the whole game of constantly expecting success as what it is: a trap that forces you to keep acquiring, keep growing, keep chasing, forever.

There's real logic to this. But here's the problem. If I start identifying as a pessimist or worse, if I adopt "pessimist" as my new identity what happens then? Do I just end up on the opposite treadmill: constantly trying not to want anything, constantly monitoring myself for signs of desire? That's still a treadmill. It's just running in reverse.

On top of that, this whole stance seems to require positioning yourself as smarter than everyone else, someone who's finally seen through the game that the rest of us are still blindly playing. And if that's the requirement, then this path only goes one of two ways: it pushes you toward genuinely deep understanding which Nobel Prize territory or it pushes you straight into narcissism, dressed up as wisdom.

Adequacy vs. Reward: Why Truth Does Not Guarantee Comfort

So after Buddha, Spinoza, Gurdjieff we can assume that seeing futility is rewarding. But our life suggests something more complicated. Understanding your childhood did not feel rewarding. Leaving your your spouse did not feel rewarding. It made your model of reality more adequate. It also can make you lonelier. That is a crucial distinction. Adequacy and reward are not the same thing. Becoming more adequate can increase suffering because reality itself is painful. So be here careful.

Spinoza claims that understanding via strengthening mental power produces a positive psychological state but there is no guarantee of that. Sometimes understanding produces grief. Sometimes relief. In other times freedom, isolation or all four at once. There is an irony here.

There are authors that criticize optimism for promising too much but treating pessimism as rewarding is itself a promise. It is almost an advertisement. Gurus preach, "Give up ordinary ambitions, and you'll receive this superior reward." The ego hears, "Wonderful! I'll pursue rewarding pessimism instead." The structure remains identical. Yu pursue. Not Lamborghini but what someone else tells you. so be careful

Recognizing the futility of many ambitions is not necessarily rewarding. It is often disillusioning, sometimes painful, and occasionally liberating. Its value does not lie in making us happier, but in making our predictions about reality less mistaken. Whether that ultimately feels rewarding depends on the person, the cost of the illusion they have lost, and the reality they discover in its place.

The Sophisticated Ambition: Gurdjieff and the Narcissism of the Active Pessimist

Trading a Lamborghini for a guru's cynicism is not liberation; it is just the ego buying a different luxury brand, terrified of the raw, unrewarded truth.

Gurdjieff taught that the cause of unhappiness is false ambitions and desires, and that we should abandon them because life is futile. So, if we let go of all this, it will be rewarding. Why giving up false ambitions should be rewarding?

So recognizing futility should withdraw energy from false ambitions. If you no longer believe that becoming richer, more admired, or more successful will permanently satisfy you, then you stop chasing them. The "reward" is not pleasure in the ordinary sense. It is relief from endless striving. In this view, you gain power because you are no longer constantly manipulated by every new desire. That is internally consistent.

But it is the whole story. The second possibility is psychological. For pessimists, disappointment itself is rewarding because it reduces predictive error. Imagine believing for forty years that your famly loved you unconditionally. Discovering that they did not is painful. Yet many people later say that it hurt, but at least now I understand. The reward is not happiness but coherence. Reality finally makes more sense. It's pure spinozism.

But there is a third possibility. Isn't Gurdjieff trying to substitute one ambition for another? We need to be vigilant here. He no longer wants wealth. Instead he wants to become an active optimistic pessimist. He no longer wants social success, instead he wants philosophical success. No ordinary power. He seeks the power of seeing through illusion. That is still power. Gurdjieff proposes that we become power possessing pessimists. Why "possessing"? Who wants to possess? The ego. Even pessimism becomes an acquisition. Even futility becomes something to own. That should immediately make us suspicious. This is a proposal to replace one ambition with another, more sophisticated one. Power comes from seeing ourselves as possessing greater knowledge than ordinary people seeking wealth.

The Double Optimism Of Intellectual Narcissism

The ultimate delusion of intellectual optimism is confusing the map of reality with a ticket to escape it.

The belief that we can fully grasp reality, and that this understanding will grant us a greater freedom of response, represents an extraordinary leap of optimism. To adopt a stance like G.I. Gurdjieff’s requires a double layer of arguably narcissistic confidence: first, an immense faith in the capacity of one’s own intellect to decipher the universe or understand reality or even to understand Kant, and second, the conviction that this insight will bestow a superpower-like autonomy upon the individual, a kind of freedom.

Spiritual systems often offer maps that promise to tame the unknown. They suggest that if you meditate correctly, awaken fully, surrender completely, or believe deeply enough, uncertainty will lose its power over you. Yet the world does not make such promises. The map is never the territory, and every map remains provisional because reality continues to unfold in ways no mind can completely predict.

True wisdom is therefore not the elimination of uncertainty but the willingness to live with it without replacing it with comforting illusions. The future is not hidden because we have failed spiritually. It is hidden because the future does not yet exist in a form that can be known. Uncertainty is experienced as suffering because the nervous system is built to anticipate what comes next. When it cannot predict reliably, it generates anxiety, vigilance, and the urge to regain control. This is not a defect in human nature but one of its evolutionary costs.

Religious practices often promise a sense of being protected by God, the universe, karma, or some cosmic order. But no practice can guarantee health, safety, or a favorable fate. A person may pray every day for good health while disease still comes. They may ask God to punish their enemies, and nothing happens. Reality does not negotiate with our wishes. It follows causal processes that are largely indifferent to what we hope or fear. Spinoza and kant are here geniuses.

Understanding this does not remove uncertainty. It removes the illusion that uncertainty can be abolished. The deepest change is not becoming immune to the unknown but recognizing that the unknown is a permanent feature of existence. We suffer not because uncertainty can be conquered, but because evolution gave us brains that constantly seek certainty in a world that can never fully provide it.