Customer Reviews

Practical Work on Self

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Practical Work on Self.

You used to have to seek, seek, seek, to find any concrete answers about work on self or practical aspects of the Fourth Way. You'd have to make an impossibly huge donation, or climb an unclimbable mountain, or join an organization with rigorously stringent membership qualifications -- just in order to get into a position to maybe possibly ask someone -- if they even knew -- for an exercise to "work on self." Or, if you were able to find a book, then you'd probably have to pass a qualifying test to be allowed to read it.

Now, with no questions asked, with no prerequisite donation or mountain-climbing experience, you can order -- and even get FedEx delivery on -- from amazon.com -- your own private, paperback technical manual of what insiders know to be "The Big 24" exercises, E.J. Gold's Practical Work on Self. (A very fine tool, IMHO :-). )

Before the publication of this book, "the Big 24" exercises were only available in restricted publications and in workshops.

E.J. Gold is bold. In Practical Work on Self, he radically lays out real-life exercises to leverage your attention to be able to observe that elusive human biological machine -- the one, Gold says, that is responsible for keeping us from the waking state of consciousness -- and, if all goes well, also the one that eventually becomes our partner in transformation.

I have had this book for almost a decade. Originally schooled in various 4th Way communities, I found this book struck me as too obvious...what I mean is that its exercises seemed to me to be so obvious, so to the point, that if one actually used them, rather than read about them, something would happen.

And something does happen. Using the 24 exercises, I have confronted myself in various ways...and for me, simply seeing myself, is a beautiful thing...not in the artistic sense, but in the mystery of self...I am on the surface a complicated & complex human...but once I see past the overly contrived & elaborate personality...past the fear of self discovery...reality becomes a little more real.

This book is not for the hobbiests...meaning, it actually gives you something to do, not just something to think about...

I use this text along with THE HUMAN BIOLOGICAL MACHINE in an on-line self-awareness/transformation workshop. I can only give this book my higest recommendation...working actively with it for 5 years has made "knowing thy self" seem plausible and real.

This book is quite exciting. Besides offering some ideas and theories about the conundrum of having a being in a body, it offers practical exercises to fine tune that unique and astonishing relationship.

It outlines some strategies for the ever challenging project of how to awaken the machine. The exercise are practical and inspiring. Well, okay, some of them are a less than obvious, but what fun would it be without having to work for it a little bit?

The exercises can be viewed as a course, so you can follow an organized structure. I like to do one exercise every week. Then start all over again. It is even better the third and fourth time around.

A must for anyone serious about developing attention and presence.

if you notice, almost all of the readers who panned this book are either anonymous or have cool made up names. On the other hand, those who lauded the book used their real names. that says something to me.

don't buy this book if you think it's a novel. don't buy this book if you think it might be a good read. it's not a take off on Gurdjieff; however if you're someone who got something from the Gurdjieff literature and are looking for that little bit more to take you over the hill, the things that will make Gurdjieff understandable in a modern context, then this book is for you.

given: all books are words... it's the experiencing of those words and the uttering of the sentence: "Oh, so that's what he meant by those words" that makes it all worthwhile. This is what is on offer between the covers of this book.

this book is slightly dangerous in that it is a portal to another way of life. It not only shows us that the only thing we have available to us to change is our own inner selves, it actually provides techniques of how to go about doing this.

good luck and choose wisely

This book is designed to help those who are interested in increasing their potential as a human being. It is for those who feel that the day to day grind of human existence is not enough and for those who have a wish to do something real. What tools are needed for this and how are they used.
Attention and Presence is the key...24 actual exercises to become aware of and develop your potential to work in a real way on your personal transformation.

A very useful book when you are ready for practical help. Reading books is a great way to get the ideas in your intellectual center but there is a point where reading needs the support of actual techniques that can assist one in their work. Very valuable to me, I highly recommend this book.

This book is far from "stripped down". The exercises are surrounded by sermonizing which becomes tedious for anyone having read the source materials: Gold not only uses Gurdjieff's terminology (which is forgivable) but apes his style, with much less finesse. The dogmatic presentation and lack of biographical detail make it hard to distinguish his experience from his speculations on what Gurdjieff "really meant". The drawings are the best part of the book, and give an idea of the man's force which, for me, didn't shine through the prose.

Chapter 24 of a private publication of VOLUME II of Secret Talks With G. It was published in 1979 by E.J.Gold:

Last Hour of Life

"Suppose you had only a few minutes to live, perhaps one
hour, and somehow you knew exactly when you would die.
What would you do with this last precious hour on earth?

"If you could complete all your business here in this last
hour, would you understand how to do this?

"Would you be satisfied with your last breath that you had
done everything possible in life to complete your obligation
to nature and also for your own Being-satisfaction ?

"Not only is the last hour important, but also the very
last impression. These 'final impressions' set the stage
for all your future manifestations if there are to be any.

"To attain liberations from lower cosmoses is nothing, less
than nothing. Eventually one forgets and is drawn back into
the world. Even the cause of liberation to a Buddha can be
forgotten.

"In the Real world all cosmoses are omnipresent, always
vibrating, always inviting, always waiting like tar baby.
in time it might end and have beginning, but in the Real
World it is always there and someday you may forget why
you hated it so much and left it 'forever'.

"Freedom is worth one million time liberation. Free man
can be slave and still be master of himself. I give you
something but it is like motor car with no petrol to make
it go. Your motor car needs special fuel, but only you can
discover what kind and how to refine it.

"You must discover how to work in relation to my ideas then
make them your own which belong to you. You cannot make your
motor car work with special fuel which is good only for my
car. I give you raw material. Your responsibility it is to
make from raw material something you can use. Drive your car.

"How fragile is organic life. At any moment the planetary
body can of itself just lie down and die like dog. Only one
hair's breath away from death it is. Each day you happen to
survive it is only by accident of nature. If you happen to
live even one more hour from now you lucky. We live since
conception on borrowed time.

"Really to live you must settle all your business before you
die, even in final hour of life if necessary. But how you
know exactly which hour will be your last ? To be sure, you
should settle up accounts with nature and with self each
hour which remains to you. Then you never caught with pants
down, so to say.

"To know how to settle accounts every hour is something
every man should have learned in school, just as to learn
to breathe, to eat, to move and to die like a real man
should be part of any genuine curriculum of education, along
with teaching how to manifest presence of 'I' and formation
of conscience."

Question: "What if you don't feel there is anything left undone ?"

G. did not respond at once. He sighed, and then answered
in this way:

"Ask self who would be hurt by your death if you die like
dog. At the moment of death you should have presence, clear
mind and conscience, and satisfaction that you have done
everything within your power to fully use your life.

"Now you not know much about self. Every day you dig deeper
into this bag of bones you find more detail. Day by day you
will discover those things which have been left undone and
those things you have done which need repair.

"It is a mark of a real man who has squeezed from life every
possible drop of quality that is can say 'I am able to die'.
You should strive to live your life so that someday you can
say each day, "Today I can die without regret.'

"Never waste the last hour of your life. Last hour will be
for you the most important. If you do badly you feel regret.
This emotion if you can feel it now can be for you a powerful
source of force to prepare for good death.

"If you knew this hour were your last you would have eaten
its impressions like gourmet. For Mr. Death you should always
be ready when he call on you. Connoisseur know how to
extract from every morsel the last drop of quality. Learn
to be connoisseur of life.

"When I was young I learn to be 'attar', who makes perfume.
I learn to extract essentials from life, all finer matter
from dross. Demand quality of everything, learn to separate
fine from gross. One who practices art of making essence
from every moment of life has special conscience. He cannot
do those things a savage would do to his world.

"For the last moments of your life you may not have a choice
over where you are or with whom, but you have a choice over
the quality of how you spend the time.

"To extract quality from life is the same in technique as to
extract from food, air and impressions those substances
necessary for higher bodies. If you wish for yourself real
quality of life it must be for the greater good. For your
self you can have very little. Work on self for benefit of
all beings is cunning technique to have quality of life for
self.

"If you are not satisfied with the quality of your last hour
of life, you will not be satisfied with your life as a whole.
To die is to move past something that will never come again.
To waste our dear time is to throw away possibility to
practice extracting quality from life.

"Every passing through this world results in another
manifestation of the One. All great philosophers practiced
for their last hour of life. Now I give you exercise to
practice for your final hour on earth. Take care to change
not one word of this instruction.

* * * * * * * * *

"Look back at the last hour just passed as if it had been your
final hour on earth and you have just now realized that you
have died. Ask your self if you are satisfied with your last
hour of life.

"Now come back to life and set yourself the aim to, during
the next hour if you live that long, extract just a little
more quality from life than you had during the previous
hour. Determine to have just a little more presence, a little
more inner fire.

"Now open your eyes a little wider; by this I mean open
your self just a little more to the possibilities ... be a little
more brave than you were for the past hour. You can afford
to have more courage now that you know it is your last hour
and you have nothing to lose. Of course don't be foolishly so.

"Know yourself a little more; see your machine just a little
more impartially. Now that you are dying there is no point
to saving face.

"Every hour from now on until your real final hour, demand
forcefully more quality of life, more from yourself in the
intuitive. Take a moment or two every hour on the hour to
appraise the previous hour impartially, then set yourself
the aim to extract even more quality from the hour yet to come.

"Taking each hour as a separate unit of you life, strive
to use each of these units of life with greater and greater
quality. Force yourself to find a way to make each succeeding
hour more profitable than the last and at the same time
find a way to settle all your debts up to the present moment.

"Increasing each hour the presence of 'I' and your authority
over your manifestations might in some way change some
activities of the machine which is misleading as indication
of real change. It does not matter what the machine thinks
of all this.

"To live the remainder of your life rehearsing hour by hour
for death is not morbid fascination. No one can extract more
from life than a man who has cancer and knows more or less
when he can expect to die. He will not, if he has thought
deeply on the possible ways in which he can spend his last
days, change his life radically although he may decide to
visit some places he had planned to travel to but did not
feel he could afford to under ordinary circumstances.

"But a man who knows he will soon die will extract from life
every hour remaining to him every possible drop of quality.
This is what Christ meant when he said the last days were at
hand, the days before Judgment. We all face Judgment not
from others but our own final appraisal of our lives with
impartiality. We must not fail to pass this test of the greatest
judge of all - our Self.

"Every single moment when taken not in relation to anything
else is an eternal part of Creation. In each moment it is
possible to extract a finer substance which we can call
'essence of life'.

"Draw for yourself a mental picture which represents for you
the substance 'air'. Now draw a picture of the substance
'food'. Now a picture of the substance 'impressions'. Finally
draw a picture of the substance of 'a moment'. Because
these can all be pictured as substances it should give you
the hint that they are really substances, even moments of time.

"If we are successful in extracting the finer substances
from these more gross material substances familiar to everybody
in general, then we must sooner or later pay something
for them. This law is called the Law of Equilibrium. We
must learn to pay in the moment for what we extract of life.
Then we not will be in debt. To pay in the moment is what
we call 'real doing'. You can imagine what it is 'to do'
with thinking, feeling or moving, but real doing is to pay
in the moment.

"to do can mean only this one thing; to extract essence
from every moment of life and then at the same time settle
all debts with nature and with Self. But only with presence
can one pay in thee moment. This is real, solid enneagrama.
Hermetic, self-contained, independent of all manifestation,
it is presence self-sealed.

"Real life is to change quality, not activity. Destiny is
destiny. We must all find our place in the scheme of things
but then extract from this to the most full. Not too late
even now, although much of our lives have been wasted in
sleep. From today you can begin to prepare for death and
at the same time increase quality of your life. But do not
wait too long, maybe one hour is really all that remains to
you.

Question: "Can I tell others about this? I think it is very
important, what we heard tonight."

"You could repeat even verbatim but unless you do for yourself
it I cannot mean anything to another. Being is the tool for
doing. Ponder this if you not yet know why this is true."

Question: "So we cannot really pay back unless we have being
and presence?"

"Why else you need to pay back? For what? If life is all by
accident, there is no profit to continuation. This not means
to commit self to suicide but to make greater effort to life.
Ordinary man has peculiar idea he can live just by drifting
down river. He is not just asleep but really quite dead. To
really live one must contribute to the effort of nature, to
take of life actively, not just passively muddle along.

"In extracting quality from life there must be 'controlled
gusto'. See how impartial you can become about self.
Taking positivist views at first, even though imaginary, see
in how many wonderful ways you can be impartial every day.
Look for possible moments of presence-with-gust. Change
nothing in manifestations. Do everything the same only more so.
Give the world a transfusion of your higher blood.

"At the end of each hour after having appraised the profit
of the previous hour, imagine you wake up suddenly in a
completely new world in which you are a total stranger even
though everything looks familiar to impressions of the world
of the previous hour. see that your seeming continuation in
life is not really the same at all from one hour to the next
even though objects and people look the same. You can learn
to see self as a ghost of some substance who is destined to
wander from world to world as uninvited guest of nature.

"From this vantage point, of what value is anything accomplished
in ordinary life? Seeing the results of all your strivings of
the past, consider what these are worth now in the last hour
of life. Those in the work are in many ways dead to the world,
and at the same time more alive than anything in it. Work ...
A strange thing indeed, a small thing, yet to some, life is
meaningless without it.

"Life is futile in the ordinary sense. Every accomplishment
no matter how great in the scale of planetary life, sooner
or later is lost in the big sense. Time grinds every grain
to dust. Even if you are a very big man in history sooner
or later your name will be forgotten. To understand the real
possibilities of life on earth you must discover what can
be accomplished in this world which would be of real use
in the Real World.

"Study the lives of all big men, who amass great wealth,
have armies. big influence and power over other men. Of
what use to them now if they are dead are their great
accomplishments? Even during life they were empty dreams.
Self-gratification is not why you are here. Too bad for
ordinary man; all he knows is urgency of organic satisfaction.

"Certain people have good excuse to not work on self. They
have overpowering weakness. You not have such excuse. Not
for followers am I actively looking but for organizers,
soldiers for new world. I realize how fragile is organization.
Not hoping for ordinary organization but for one which can
be self-initiating.

"Learn to use each hour to the fullest possible profit.
Write a detailed plan for your last hour of life. You will
then be forced to sink roots deep into life to understand
how to die. Then you die like real man, not like dog. Not
just anyone is able to die. can be fertilizer for the
planet, but not really die. To die forever to this world
is honor, must be paid for by conscious labor and intentional
suffering. We must earn the right.

"Think of some way to picture this last hour of life on
earth. Write for your self a scenario of the last hour as
if it were to be a cinema. You can strike a big 'doh' of
effort for the final hour by asking self 'Is this what I
wish to do with the last hour of my life?'. If not, you
must find a way to satisfy this question.

"Look at life as a business. Time to you represents the
money of life. You are given a certain amount to spend and
no more when you come into the world. Time is the only
currency you have for life. You can see now how stupidly
you have spent much of it.

"Even your aim in life to just relax has been defeated.
As businessman you are not good, and as consumer of life
you have cheated yourself. All your life you think everything
is free. Air is free, time is free. Now suddenly you
discover that these are not free. You pay for use of time.
Every moment you are here it cost you something.

"How can you ever recoup these losses? Is this permanent
or temporary damage to your bank account? Have you lost
everything or made good investment? If you spend all your
money on vacations nothing is left to you but nostalgia.

"For years now you spend time as if one endless allowance
from parents. Now after fortune is spent and you are
bankrupt you discover you are on your own. No more time
in bank account. Now you are forced to earn every hour
of life. All your life you are like a child, you spend
time like a newlywed.

"Despair is our greatest enemy in this effort. Many excuses
you will make not to practice for last hour of life. Habits
are very strong, but you can learn to do more and more once
you begin. Not even one day can go by without at least one
hour of effort or you may lose what you have gained. Think
of rehearsal for last hour of life as ballet for which a
lifetime of continual practice is necessary. I devote at
least four hours each day to this exercise. When I was
younger I gave twice as many."

I would like to preface this rather lenghty "review" with quotes from Gurdjieff and E.J.Gold by way of arguement, so to speak, as to "why work on ourselves at all".

"If a man could understand all the horror of the lives of ordinary people who are turning round in a circle of insignificant interests and insignificant aims, if he could understand what they are losing, he would understand that there can only be one thing that is serious for him - to escape from the general law, to be free. What can be serious for a man in prison who is condemned to death? Only one thing: how to save himself, how to escape: nothing else is serious." - G. I. Gurdjieff

"You really have so little choice - so little to decide. You get put through the machine and it chops you up and spits you out. Your life, it's all mechanical, of the machine, until you have free will. You can't be accepted into the Work until you have matured -- freed yourself and take responsibility for your life, become accountable for your every action. It's not just from coming to a school. It's an active process - you have to take the responsibility for yourself. When you're trapped in the machine, it doesn't matter what you do." - E.J.Gold

As a picture tells a thousand words, the following final chapter of "Practical Work On Self" describes one exercise (of twenty-four) which the author gives for those wishing to work on themselves toward awakening the machine for transformation of the essential self.

To quote Iven Lourie, Senior Editor of the publisher, Gateways, "This book is a lab manual, a portable toolkit for the essential self....These exercises never grow stale, and never lose their potency. In fact, they increase intensity over the years, and it should be regarded as a whole-lifetime work."

However, just like learning how to swim, reading about it won't do much good unless we get in the water and start practicing. Until then we are only dreaming.


Chapter 24 - Last Hour Of Life

To know how to settle accounts every hour is something every man should have learned in school, just as to learn to breathe,
to eat, to move, and to awaken the machine should be part of any genuine curriculum of education.

How would you like to discover just how precious life really is, but only in your last moment, just as the machine is taking
its last few breaths? What would you learn about life? What would you appreciate suddenly, that you had never really
appreciated - maybe never even noticed - before this moment?

Above everything else would be breath. Perhaps for the first time, you would notice that every inbreath was accompanied by
smells!

And what exquisite smells! Suddenly you cling to the experience of every aroma. You notice that each scent is a combination
of many different tones, and you may even be able, for the first time in your life - and also the last - to be able to
seperate and identify many of the individual tones and overtones which combine to produce what we call an olfactory chord.

Next, you may come to notice the physical sensations of the machine, and even though many of them may be painful, some will
suggest by association all those wonderful experiences of the past which suddendly seem so precious.

Every movement of the machine may be its last, and you may be struck by the beauty of machine-sensations, your attention
following each movement and involuntary reflex of the body intensely, thirstily, as a lover follows even the smallest
movements of the beloved.

You may think to yourself, "This is a fine time to begin this exercise!",but now there is nothing you can do to make up for
your past lack of will or enthusiasm before you became aware that the body was actually dying.

Why, suddenly, has life become so very precious? Why does your attention cling to every micromovement and every sight, smell,
sound, and sensation? Why does your brain recount with nostalgia all the main events of the life of the machine? Why,
suddenly, is everything you have failed to do in life inportant to you, even though there is nothing you can do about it now?

What is it that has really changed? You knew all along that someday the machine would die. Why was this knowledge not
sufficient to provide you with the motivation to exert your will to awaken over the will of the machine to remain asleep?

Why was it not enough to make you appreciate life to this extent: that just the mechanics of bodily survival and the passage
of time, which before this seemed to drag on interminably and now rushes by inexorably, can be easily followed in detail by
your attention, as if you had just now suddenly discovered a treasure you had never known existed. Yet you had it all the
time!
Can you explain to yourself why, although you were told about this years ago, you failed to treat every breath, every
movement, every sensation, every relationship, every activity as if it were the treasure it is now, at this moment, as you
lie here dying?

Now suppose you somehow learned that you had exactly one hour to live. What would you do with this last precious hour on
Earth? If you could use this last hour of life to complete all your business with the machine and with the organic world,
would you understand how to do this? Would you be satisfied, at your last breath, that you had really done everything
possible in life to complete your life to your own Being-satisfaction?

Not only is this last hour of your life the most important hour of your life at this moment; it sets the scene for the final
impressions received by the Being through the machine.

How fragile organic life really is! At any moment the machine is only a hair's-breath away from death. From the first moment
of conception, we live on borrowed time.

In order to really have the freedom to live, we must settle all our business before we die, even in the final hour of life if
necessary. But...how do we know exactly which hour will be our last? To be absolutely safe we should settle our accounts with
nature and with the machine at the beginning of each hour, then death can never catch us by surprise.

Exactly how to settle accounts every hour is something every human being should have learned in grade school, along with
breathing, eating, moving, invocation of presence and the awakening of objective conscience. One thing we can ask ourselves is
who would be hurt by our death if we died in our present condition.

At the moment of death we should have presence, a clear mind and conscience, taking our last breath with the definite
satisfaction that we have done everything within our power to fully use our life.

Day by day, if we should ever take the trouble to look, we will discover things which have been left undone and which are in
need of repair. It is a mark of a real human being who has really lived that he has squeezed from life every possible drop
of quality. We should strive to live our life so that one day we can say at any moment, " Today, I can die without regret."

Never waste what might very well be for you your last hour of life. No matter how long you live, this last hour will be for
you the most important. If you do badly at your last hour, you will certainly feel the sensation of regret. This sensation -
if you can allow yourself to feel it now - can be a powerful motivating force to prepare yourself for a clean passage out of
the machine. If you knew for a fact that this hour were really your last, you would eat impressions as if they were gourmet
food. A real connoisseur of life knows how to extract from every morsel of life the last drop of quality.

Demand quality in everything; do not live life as a savage.

During the last hour of your life, you may not have a choice over where you are, or with whom, but you definitely have a
choice over the quality of the time, because it is you - and you alone - who determine the state of the machine, whether it
is alive or dead, at any moment, including the last.

The extraction of the essential qualities from life utilizes the same technique as the extraction of higher substances from
food, air and impressions, which is to say, it is automatically accomplished by the awakening of the machine. If you wish
real quality from life, your life must be given up to the Work for the greater good. For just your personal self, you can
have very little. Working towards transformation of your Being not for your own benefit but for the benefit of the Absolute,
which is the same thing as saying for all Beings everywhere, is an effective technique for evolution.

If you are not satisfied with the quality of your last hour of life, you will not be satisfied with your life as a whole.

To die is to move past something that will never come again in exactly the same way. All great philosophers practiced for
their last hour of life. I will give you the same exact exercise which they used to practice for their final hour on Earth.
Take care not to change even one word of this instruction:

Look back at the last hour which has just passed as if it had been your final hour on Earth, and you have just now realized
that you have died.

First, ask yourself if you are satisfied with how you have used this last precious hour of life.

Now return to the stream of organic life and set yourself the aim during the next hour - if you live that long - to extract
just a little more quality from life than you had during the previous hour.

Determine to awaken the machine just a little more, to have just a little more presence in the present, a little more inner
fire.

Now open your eyes a little wider; by this I mean awaken the machine and bathe in its transformational effects...be a little
more brave than you were for the past hour. You can afford to have courage now that you know it is your last hour and you
have nothing to lose. Of course don't be foolishly so.

Know yourself a little more; see your machine just a little more impartially. Now that you are dying, there's no point in
defending the machine's personal vanity, is there?

Every hour, from now on until your real final hour, demand from the machine, by its awakening, more quality of life, more life
in the intuitive.

Take a moment or two, every hour on the hour, to appraise the previous hour impartially, then set yourself the aim to use
the hour yet to come even more fully than you used the previous hour.

Taking each hour as a seperate unit of your life, strive to use each of these units of life with greater and greater quality.

Force yourself to find a way to make each succeeding hour more profitable for your work than the last and, at the same time,
find a way to settle all your debts with the machine and with nature, up to the present moment.

To live the remainder of your life rehearsing for death, hour by hour is not a morbid fascination with death, but a method of
living life more deeply.

No one can extract more from every moment of life than a terminal patient who knows more or less when he can expect to die.
If we have thought deeply on the possible ways in which we can spend our last days, we change our lives radically.

If we know with certainty that we will soon die, we will bend every ounce of will available to us to the extraction from every
hour remaining to us of every possible drop of quality.

This is the real meaning of the ancient Essene saying, "The Last Days are at hand." We all face judgement not from others but
our own last-minute final appraisal of our lives. We must not fail to pass this test.

Every single moment is an eternal part of Creation.

In each moment it is possible to extract a finer substance which we can call "essence of life".

On a clean sheet of paper, draw a picture which represents for you the substance "air". Now draw a picture of the substance
"food". Now draw a picture of the substance "impressions". Finally draw a picture of the substance of "a moment".

Because these can all be pictured as substances it should give you the hint that they really are substances - that even
moments of time are a form of matter.

If we are successful in extracting the finer substances from these more gross material substances familiar to everybody in
general, then we must sooner or later pay something for them.

This is called the Law of Equilibrium. We must eventually pay for what we extract from life.

But to pay in the moment for our use of the moment is what we call "real doing".

In the beginning, we can only imagine what it is "to do" with the thinking, feeling or moving apparatus, but eventually, with
work-experience, we find that real doing is paying in the moment, leaving nothing for the future.

It is not too late even now, although much of your life has been wasted in sleep. From today you can begin to prepare for
death and at the same time increase the quality of your life with the machine.

But take this warning: do not wait too long; maybe this one last hour is in fact all that remains to you!

You may be able to glibly repeat this verbatim, but unless actually practiced, this cannot mean anything.

The awakened machine, functioning higher mental and emotional apparati, and radiation of one's presence are the only real
tools of communication.

At the end of each hour, having completed your appraisal of the work-profit of the previous hour, imagine waking up suddenly
in a completely new world in which you recognize the fact that you are a total stranger, even though everything looks vaguely
familiar to you.

Establishing a whole new working relationship with this new world demonstrates clearly that your apparent automatic
continuation in the flow of life is not really the same at all from hour to hour.

You could see yourself as a ghost destined to wander from world to world as an uninvited guest...From this vantage point, of
what value is anything accomplished in the course of ordinary life? Consider the results of all your strivings of the past.
What are they worth now?

We in the Work are in many ways dead to the world, and at the same time more alive than anything in it. Work...a small,
strange difference in our lives and yet, to some of us, life is meaningless without this little difference.

It should be easy to see that life is futile in the ordinary sense. Every accomplishment, no matter how great in the scale of
planetary life, sooner or later is lost in the big sense.

Time grinds every grain to dust. Even the biggest names in history sooner or later will be forgotten. To understand the real
possibilities of life on Earth, we must discover what can be accomplished in this world which would be of use beyond this
world.

Study the lives of those who managed to amass great wealth, armies, influence and power over others. Of what use to them, now
that they are dead, are their great accomplishments? Even during life they were empty dreams.

LEARN TO USE EACH HOUR TO THE FULLEST POSSIBLE PROFIT. WRITE A DETAILED PLAN FOR THE LAST HOUR OF LIFE.

By this little exercise you will be able to sink your roots of mentation deeply into the whole question of the real value of life as a prisoner in the human biological machine just to understand how to die.

Not just anyone is able to really die. The human biological machine can be converted to one form of fertilizer or another for the use of organic life on the planet, but, because the Creation is eternal, we cannot really die just because the biological machine dies.

To die forever to this world is an honor which must be paid for by conscious labor and intentional suffering through the process of Conscious Eternal Return.

Picture the events, sensations, thoughts and feelings of each hour of life on Earth. Ask yourself, "Is this really what I wish to do with the last hour of my life?" If not, you must find a way to satisfy this question.

Look at life as a business in which time is money.

Time literally represents the money of life. We are given a certain amount to spend and no more when we come into this world.

Perhaps now you can see how stupidly you have spent much of it.

Even your aim in life just to relax has been defeated. As a consumer of life you have cheated yourself.

All your life you believed everything was free. Air is free, time is free. Now suddenly you discover that these are not free, that you pay dearly for the use of the machine; you pay with precious time. Every moment you are here, it costs something, one moment is the price of each breath.

How can you ever recoup these losses? If you have spent all your money on vacations, nothing is left to you now but empty nostalgia.

For years you have spent your time as if it were one continuous, endless allowance from your parents.

Only now, after the family fortune has been spent down to the last penny and you find yourself bankrupt, do you discover that you are forced to earn every hour of life. All your life you were like a child, spending time, the money of transformation, like a newly wed.

You will find many excuses not to practice the last hour of life. The will and habits of the machine are very strong, but you can learn to do more and more once you begin.

Think of your last hour of life as a great ballet for which a lifetime of continual practice is necessary.

Gold presents his peculiar mix of stolen ideas from Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, sci-fi baloney, and truly bad modernist paintings in yet another fraudulent batch of recipes for self-deception. Anyone who thinks they are developing themselves using these basic, silly exercises is probably the sort of new-age experimenter who has previously thought the same of drugs, the absurd meditations of any of that gaggle of rich eastern gurus, or pehaps modern art and literature. Gold is at least as offensive as any of these; he has set himself up as a teacher of ideas that he cannot practice and does not understand even at an ordinary level; all without ever pausing to acknowledge them. Steer clear of guys like this the way you would a cliff's edge. There are plenty of vastly better books on the Gurdjieff system, if you want them; and plenty of religious ideas better than Gurdjieff's worn-out attempts - which are themselves a deviant version of far higher things, namely Sufism and Pythagoreanism of the Empedoclean line.