The Heart of Joy: Soliloquies on Sorrow

Notes For the Reformation: an Appendix, part I: Introduction

Christ says: "Whoever would follow me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me" (Matt. 1 6 : 24, Mark 8 : 34 ).

That is, cast out all grief so that perpetual joy reigns in your heart.

—Meister Eckhart, Sermon 7

…conscience is not suffering; on the contrary it is joy of a totally new character which we are unable to understand…

Gurdjieff, as quoted by P.D. Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous.

There can be no purity without vigilance, an extraordinary vigilance where there is no longer higher or lower, no more struggle, no more fear. There is only consciousness, joy.

—Jeanne de Salzmann, The Reality of Being, p. 292

What exactly does Gurdjieff mean when he says “joy of a totally new character?”

Gurdjieff isn’t long on discussions of joy. He personally uses the word only 3 times in the entire text of In Search of the Miraculous; and he only mentions it 6 times in Beelzebub’s Tales in a context that sheds any meaningful light on its nature.

In Tales, Sorrow features more prominently with a total of 28 occurrences. These instances mostly occur in his critical passages on conscience, placing it near the center of his work; but the footprints of joy in his writing are vanishingly rare. The number of times he actually mentions it seems diminishing relative to Jeanne de Salzmann’s comment “the Work is joy.”

Yet there is a growing agreement among certain longtime members of the Gurdjieff Work—

joy is Real.

And it is everywhere.

The issue, perhaps is that it is discussed so very little—both in the literature and in groups themselves. Is that because we dare not speak of it? We should take courage, then; because if we do not speak of joy, why bother speaking? I say this: we need not say the same old things again and again, when love and joy are so tangibly present in the pregnant air of our work.

Forensics

De Salzmann’s comment about the work ”being” joy isn’t found in The Reality of Being, where the word is only mentioned 5 times. Contrast this with conscious, a word used 309 times in Beelzebub and 490 (!) times in The Reality of Being.

… apparently, it is more important for us to be conscious than joyful?

Are they different?

In this series, my inner evangelist investigates that question.

…The aim?

A call to joy.