Mum never talked about religion, but they’d got me christened and I’ve a professionally taken photo of Mum with me in a christening robe. I had godparents, but the main thing was to get me "done" and no one bothered about all that God business. Dad was the only boy with five sisters, and his dad was a local employer (in the1920s) who was also big in freemasonry and on good terms with the vicar. They had a family pew so they had to all be there every Sunday, and hear the vicar give his sermon and all that. My dad told me that one Sunday after the service the vicar had come back home with them, and he had heard his dad and the vicar talking. Whatever was said, the contrast between what he overheard and what he had heard the vicar saying in church, in the way that sermons are (or were) given, gave him the lasting impression that religion was hypocrisy and sham. So this became my input on religion and the church, and I learnt not to put too much trust in it all. Later, in trying to find some answers for myself, I would accuse him of "throwing out the baby with the bathwater", whilst still feeling his critical attitude to religion was basically sound.

At boarding school, at age 13 or 14, I was soon subjected to "confirmation". I was required to think seriously about Christianity. This ceremony was in front of the whole school, and there was confession and so on and I took it seriously. I became a bit religious, and went with my mum’s auntie to church at Christmas once or twice (an unusual occurrence).

It became clear to me that there was something, some message, some reality behind religion, but that it had become distorted over long periods of time. In Christianity, which has been my background, it seemed that people in church just went through the motions. The clergy either repeated things parrot fashion which they did not even try to understand, or they tried to "modernize" it and talk about current affairs, losing any trace of the essentials in the process. What did it all mean? What were we actually supposed to do? I did feel that there was something genuine behind all those Christian traditions, but they just said the words, which was only in effect putting labels on things that no one actually understood. For example the Trinity was Father, Son and Holy Ghost, but they just kept repeating this and left it at that.

There were many indications, both in Christianity and in other religions, that some individual people, through the ages, had found something that may be called real faith. It so directed their actions and guided their whole lives that they had clearly found "something" quite out of the ordinary.

At the age of 20, not finding any real answer to the basic question I had of what to do with my life from anyone with whom I’d had any contact, I decided to try and work things out for myself. So I searched in any so-called field of knowledge I could think of, with new determination. Because religion was supposed to be about how to live a life the way it is meant to be lived, I tried that.

So mainly I started reading books. These books touched on various religions and the occult. They included the Bible, Mystic Christianity and others (Yogi Ramacharaka), Bhagavad-Gita, Tao Te Ching, Initiation (Elisabeth Haich), The Pilgrim’s Progress (John Bunyan), The Inner Reality and others (Paul Brunton), A Treatise on White Magic and others (Alice Bailey) and The Phenomenon of Man and others (Pierre Teilhard de Chardin).

A friend of mine who I came to know in my early years of employment, about 1970, had told me of his interest in yoga, and lent me books on this and various related subjects. Many years later, after having met the person who took me forward on my personal quest, we talked again about those interests. I said that of all these subjects the one that had been the closest to the essence of it for me were the writings of Max Freedom Long about the Kahunas of Hawaii, which more than anything else had put the human condition in perspective for me. What is still real to me now from those Huna traditions is that you should treat yourself, your nature, rather like a child, disobedient often, needing help and guidance in a perplexing world. Be kind, and help it, it relies on you. Without you it is helpless. And also, remember we are all like this.

At the age of 30 I made what was for me a major breakthrough, by finding the teachings of G.I.Gurdjieff, and being able to participate directly in the Gurdjieff Work. I began to see more clearly how human beings are not living in a way proper for beings such as we are, and so are not fulfilling our life obligations. I became aware that we all live mechanical lives that serve only the purpose of nature. It is possible however, due to events in the past of whatever kind, for a person to recognize his or her life as being lived mechanically, and so to seek and find "something else". To me the Work provides this "something else".

As we do not live as we should, at certain times more advanced beings are born on our planet to try to correct this. These beings have included Moses, Buddha, Christ, and Mohammed. They have been Teachers, and have found and taught small numbers of pupils, who in turn pass this on to later generations.

Unfortunately the truth of the original teachings of these advanced beings does not spread throughout humanity, and the teachings come to be interpreted mechanically. However the truth of those teachers can be found in, for example, the sayings of Jesus Christ. Also the truth can and does transmit through small numbers of people throughout the generations. These people may not be religious at all. There are many indications in the writings of the Sufis of how it can be transmitted, for example:

This of course does not imply such a person must be a Sufi, or male, or a tradesman, or live in the East, or anything else! The Work is not about lifestyle. It is something to add to the ordinary life with which one finds oneself.

One thing I recognized, and indeed felt reassured by, was that in joining a Gurdjieff group I was not asked to believe in anything. The Work books say the same thing:

From "Views from the Real World", G.I.Gurdjieff:
I ask you to believe nothing that you cannot verify for yourself.

At no time did I ever feel this was anything like those churches, particularly those with all the hype of evangelism, that wanted to convert me, in the nicest possible way of course, to their beliefs. Was I joining some kind of cult? I should be so lucky! Kept out, more like!

I had looked at religion and they asked me to believe in God, to pray for this, that and the other, and told me that Jesus Christ had died for my sins. This made no sense to me at all. It was so irrational. But when I was fortunate enough to find a group of people in whose presence I was able to wake up, it began to make sense. Without the need to find such a group I would never have found them and I would have continued my life in sleep.

People expect that by reading a book they should be able to understand what the author is writing. If they don’t understand it, they judge it to be written badly, or they feel quite justified in forming some superficial opinion about it. They delude themselves. A serious book like the Bible is not easy to understand, or rather it contains truth on a number of different levels. Likewise Mr Gurdjieff put a great deal of effort into writing his book, "Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson", and it is the task of the interested reader to understand it.

I must make an aside at this point on the religiously inclined people who come to the door. I see them talking at me like parrots - well meaning and in their own minds "sincere" parrots. But they do not see me! If I ever needed confirmation of the mechanical and rather pitiable nature of man, such are these occasions. They speak. I speak. And whilst I am speaking they look at me with their benign faces just like tape cassettes on "pause". They wait for me to stop, and when I do, that signals "play" and they carry on where they had left off. This continues a while, after which I suggest we are just going round in circles, and then I kindly say goodbye and close the door.

Even so, they are searching the same as I am; we’re all in the same boat, we’re all human beings. I’ve learnt to play a role on these occasions. It’s acting. On the outside I listen to what they say, but inside I think they’re parrots.

There are all kinds of local traditions, cultures and customs that are the basis of some kind of social morality, whether based on religion or anything else. It is only necessary to recognize an essential equality in human beings to accept such social morality for what it is and to conform where it is appropriate to do so. Sir Thomas Browne wrote: No man can justly censure or condemn another, because indeed no man truly knows another. At the same time I am not called to believe in such values myself, not even for an instant.

The first and most essential thing in the pursuit of that which those advanced beings taught and what is missing from religions in general relates to "waking up". There are several references to sleep and waking up in the Gospels, but we assume these are in the ordinary meaning of the words. If you can wake up you can see things differently. Of course, you probably think or believe you are awake now, but this is likely to be a delusion, in a similar way to when you are dreaming. Most people, and westerners in particular, live in sleep practically all their lives.

"Waking up" is about "self-consciousness" and without it there is no hope of "objective consciousness". In a state of self-awareness one can begin to distinguish - not just think or believe one can distinguish – between "I" and "it". "I" is the individuality you do not have, and "it" is the creature with which you identify that rules your life.

Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father but by me." (St. John 14:6). Who is "I"? Not the "I" that we use in ordinary speech. There are several statements using the word "I" in this way. The Bible and other sacred writings are full of sayings by people who have developed their own "I". The written word alone cannot transmit those truths through the generations. People can only believe in them as something unattainable, and I have no wish to deny them that.

It is said that sacred writings relate the truth but not how to find it for oneself. This is because this is not possible to relate through sacred writings alone nor through believing in them. It is only, in my experience, through direct contact with a Teacher by means of his own practical method of transmitting his understanding to subsequent generations.

The price to pay for any persons who, maybe to their worldly misfortune, feel such inadequacy in their ordinary lives that they wish to be able to "pick themselves up by their own bootstraps" appears high. Any such person would need to die to their present life. Only then would it be possible to come under "finer" "cosmic" influences instead, which is the Hope of their Creator. Such a person would then live as a man, not as a kind of thinking animal.

C.S.Nott in his book "Journey through this World" refers to death:

Gurdjieff constantly told his pupils that only by keeping the fact of our mortality before us, and the inevitable death of others, could we be delivered from the egoism, vanity and self-love that spoils things for ourselves and our relations with others.

In the "Gospel of Thomas", Jesus said:

I have tried to make it clear that unless I had come in contact with a special group of people through whom a teaching - very real to me - is transmitted, I would not have found that which is so valuable to me. I would not have finally realized that I, and to my understanding anyone, cannot achieve anything significant by way of self-development on his or her own.

From "The Mirror of Light", Rodney Collin:

Nothing is done by ourselves; others help us in everything we do. When we understand that we have to help other people, give to other people, then we are safe, for we are already stamped with what we have to be. The divine in us wants to become what it is supposed to be. The divine in us realizes itself in wanting to help others, and this is love.

 From "Meetings with Remarkable Men", G.I.Gurdjieff:

I feel I must note incidentally, as a matter of our language, that in general whenever I say "man", and "he", I might equally say "woman" and "she". A quotation I remember - that in relation to man, "woman is equal – but opposite".

People are drawn to a teaching in which they find something real for them from faiths of all kinds. Within the Gurdjieff tradition there are elements from Christianity and other faiths. The most important way in which the universal nature of truth became clear to me was in the celebration of Easter, which is also an important part of the Gurdjieff tradition. I began to realise something of the real significance of Ash Wednesday, Lent, Good Friday, Easter Sunday, Pentecost, and about death and rebirth. Easter is indeed about death and rebirth, which is important to me.

I noted incidentally how the whole procession of events commemorated about Easter in the Christian calendar feels to be at the time of year that it should be, including its variation according to the lunar cycle. We know there are energies relating to the Sun and Moon whose effects we see in nature, for example the seasons and the tides, but we are only vaguely aware of their influences on what we are ourselves. So we look forward to the end of winter without considering that the energy flowing back in nature also flows in us. We are unaware that such energies can be, and are meant to be, for us to partly transform into finer energies for our own use, our own evolution, by surrendering things that make us their slaves in order to allow in other influences.

Likewise I feel Christmas is at precisely the time of year it should be. In the weeks leading up to Christmas energy in me and in nature around me feels to be ebbing away throughout November, and by early December it feels to have almost reached "rock bottom". The 21^st December is round about the shortest day, and by Christmas day we have "turned the corner", and it’s the birth of a new cycle of life energies.

If the traditions of Easter and Christmas were otherwise, would I be aware of these things? Is it my imagination? Well, I know it’s helped me. It is one way that I have verified the Gurdjieff Method. It is why I respect Christian traditions, without uncritically "believing" in any of it. There is one Truth that is kept alive throughout the generations, throughout millennia. So far as I understand the role that Mr Gurdjieff set himself, having sought out the universal truths in his earlier life, it was to interpret them for the benefit of people in the West. In doing so he fulfilled a role vitally necessary for our times.

I write as someone brought up in England and loosely in the Christian tradition. What about Australians, or anyone living in the Southern Hemisphere? There, Christmas and Easter come at the exact opposite point in the annual cycle. To have any real meaning, surely their Christmas would be just after their shortest day, about 25^th June. But all their Christmas of commercialism focuses on 25^th December as it does in the Northern Hemisphere.

The timing of the Islamic festival of Ramadan is based on the lunar cycle, it can occur at any time of the year. I can only suppose here that this custom originated in lands nearer the equator where the contrast between the light summers and dark winters is not so great as in more northern regions, and so the effect of the solar cycle on individuals is similarly less significant.

From "Auguries of Innocence", William Blake:

From "Meetings with Remarkable Men", G.I.Gurdjieff: