Esteemed Reader

“Repair the past; Prepare the future.”
—G.I.Gurdjieff

I had the privilege of interviewing American Indian teacher Mary Thunder for this issue of Chronogram. Her speech was articulate, intelligent, and deeply personal. I had the impression that this was a person who speaks directly from her own experience. And that her experience has been formed by applying traditional teachings in the context of her life. This is what gives her the quality of being integrated; that is, her teachings, though traditional, are her own, because she has tested and validated them in her own experience.
This quality of being what one knows is genuine understanding. Its expression is very different from the specialized and particulated information we are force-fed in schools and by the media. It has the added quality of being processed within the alchemical furnace of a person’s life. This is what makes it genuinely useful.
Among other things, Mary Thunder spoke of humanity’s responsibility to the future. This is not something our society on the whole considers. Everything with us is about immediate gratification. How many can say we have lived differently, sacrificed some opportunity for ease or pleasure, out of concern for unborn generations? Instead we consume environmental resources and pave over nature at an astounding rate, as if we are daring catastrophe to strike. And though no one will say they do not love their children, we seem not to comprehend that our consumptive sins will be visited upon them.
The environmentalists and reformists make a noble effort, but their effect is akin to plugging leaks when the dam is about to break. They are temporarily staving off an imminent and dramatic demise. Big events are in the making. The social, political, economic structure will need to change utterly. The way we approach our use of food, education, ownership, family; all will need to shift if we are to survive the changes that are to come. Instead of caring only for ourselves or our tiny family units, our perspective will need to shift to see that humanity is one; and in so seeing to begin to care for the whole, and its future.
What is needed are people who have worked on themselves to be guided by truthful principles rather than passing impulses, who are emotionally stable, and who have been educated to see a larger picture instead of tiny, specialized parts.
Fortunately there are teachings and traditions available to assist in becoming such people. There are centers where this work proceeds in all parts of the world. It behooves us to find such a center of these teachings and begin to work with others, not only for our own self-improvement for the common good, and for the good of the future.
—JCS
Jason Stern will lecture on the work of G.I.Gurdjieff, who introduced a modern teaching for transformation in life, at an event entitled “A Taste of Discovery: an Introduction to the Discovery Institute,” Friday, September 15, 7:30 p.m. at the Sunwise School, 64 Plains Road in New Paltz. For more information, call (845)255-5548, or visit www.DiscoveryInstitute.org.