Dorothy Caruso on Gurdjieff 1952

Citation preview

contents

LAMBS AND SHEPHERDS

11

CONVENT WALLS

19

“brother”

54

A DREAM

60

BURIED STATUE

69

DIARY OF WAR

89

BREAKING WORLD

112

MAGNIFICENT ARMY

1 36

A CONVERSATION

145

THE ROSE-STONE HOUSE

149

EXPERIMENT IN NEW ENGLAND

16o

GURDJIEFF

172

SEA-CHANGE

188

part eight :

a conversation

I was wrong. Two nights later on the ship, twenty-four hours out of New York, I sat unconscious of time and sea, con­ scious only of a conversation. In darkness, on a deserted deck, I looked up into the black unmoving sky and listened to words that lighted the universe. They were words that contained thoughts of such power and abstraction, such virtue and vastness, that I sat speechless, overwhelmed by the magnitude of ideas of a kind I had never heard. All my own thoughts, all my uneasy unsuccessful efforts to create within my troubled mind a mental chart that I could follow toward what I hoped would be a wonderful experience, became puerile, pitiful, in the face of an immense unknown world that was open­ ing before me. It reached far beyond the mind and yet was a part of it, or the mind a part of its immensity. In my flash of understanding, the words I was hear­ ing were consumed, forgotten forever, and I saw in­ stead a way of life, a road as clear, as straight, as the road I saw in that instant when I looked at Enrico Caruso from the top of a flight of stairs.

*

*

* 145

DOROTHY CARUSO: A PERSONAL HISTORY

At two o’clock I went to my cabin. The children were waiting for me. “Something has happened to me,” I said. “I have heard things tonight that may change the course of opr lives.” But I could not repeat the words I had heard—even today I cannot ) nember a single phrase of that con­ versation. It had to do with a system of knowledge concerning man’s relation to God and the universe, as taught by a man called Gurdjieff. He lived in Paris and for many years had been teaching there. From a name, and an outline of an “unknown doctrine,” there arose for me a total vision of a new world. What was im­ portant, now, was how soon I and my children could enter this world. And suddenly I realized, as if through revelation, that on this night, on a ship sailing toward New York, I had come at last within sight of a land I had sought since childhood. The magnitude of the revelation, the quality of the disclosure and the immensity of its effect upon me, erased from my mind all dread of the future. Nothing could ever take from me this night’s apperception of a new world; and my only wish was to meet the man called Gurdjieff who had explored to its limits this unknown world, who had traveled all the way along its roads and welcomed all those in need who came to him to learn. * * *

The person who made this conversation was Mar­ garet Anderson. Later she told me of her life—how she 146

A CONVERSATION

had founded the first of the little magazines, the Little Review, and how, after publishing it for u.r years, had left America and gone to live in Franc , to be near Gurdjieff. She had stayed there for twenty years, had written a book called My Thirty Years’ War, and was now writing another * describing her experience of the Gurdjieff teaching. “What will you do in New York,” I asked, “after twenty years and the war?” “I don’t know. Friends are meeting me—1’11 stay with them until I can decide. I can’t imagine what it will be like.” “And will you go on writing?” “I have the manuscript of my new book with me but it isn’t finished. People around me ... I can’t work unless I can be alone . . . one room, a closed door . . . I’ll have to wait. I don’t know.” “If you should feel desperate at any time . . .” “Yes. But there’s always that other world. Nothing really matters except that.” ♦

*

*

I never lost sight of it, even during those first weeks in a New York hotel, when the overcharged nerves in my emaciated body increased my senses to points of pain. The size, sound, brilliance and speed of objects, of vibrations; voices, colors, the taste and smell of food, the dreadful length of stem and thorn of Ameri­ can Beauty roses, the jungle richness of their petals; * Published under the title of The Fiery Fountains by Hermitage House, Inc., 1951.

DOROTHY CARUSO: A PERSONAL HISTORY

the monstrous circumference and texture of porcelain bathtubs, the niagara roar of water running into them —these tilings were torture. And on all the streets walked men and women in uniform, and sirens blew for black-outs, and some­ where there was war.

*

*

*

I want to go away to a quiet place—I want to sit alone under a tree,” Gloria said. “I’m in a guest-room where I see seven doors, always opening,” Margaret Anderson said. “I’ll be eighteen in September,” Jackie said. “I’ve always wanted to be eighteen.” “Tomorrow morning I will find a house,” I said.

U8

part mne : the rose-stone house

237 East 61st Street, Nezu York. It was a rose-stone house with a rich plane tree shading the front entrance and a brick-walled garden at the back. And on Jackie’s birthday we were all seated around Enrico’s old re­ fectory table, in the candle-lighted dining-room, hear­ ing at last only our own voices and the wind in the wisteria outside, and gentle Sadie passing behind us, to and fro, with footsteps quiet as a nun’s. In her father’s chair, opposite me, Gloria looked like a Florentine portrait in copper velvet and ecru lace, her thin cheek resting on her hand, her brown hair bronze in the glow of the birthday candles. And as her fine reflective eyes moved slowly from face to face they seemed to absorb all Jackie’s soft delight, and Mar­ garet’s lovely laughter, and offer it back to me with such confiding tenderness that I knew she had indeed inherited her father’s heart.

*

*

*

Night after night I listened to his records until his presence seemed to fill the house and we spoke of him as if he were living in it with us, invisible but defined. His music, the harmony and understanding between 149

DOROTHY CARUSO: A PERSONAL HISTORY

my children, Margaret and myself produced an atmos­ phere so warm, so flaming in affection and aspiration, that everyone who came to the house caught fire and talked with brilliance and elegance. Even their appear­ ance changed as if, when they crossed our threshold, they left outside in the street all their cares and the frenzy of New York. Early each morning, through frost-lace on my win­ dow-panes, I looked up at the immense design of winter stars, then across the back gardens of opposite houses. Here and there behind a lighted window-shade a shadow passed, blurred and gigantic, like the shadows I had watched in despair from my bedroom in father’s house thirty years ago at nightfall. Now I saw them in the dawn; and when I turned back to my room I saw a friendly snapping fire, with a pot of coffee and a plate of toast warming before it on the hearth. I put them on the table, sat down in an arm-chair, drew a fur rug over my knees and looked at the green tin box on the floor at my feet. It was locked, tied with a heavy string and sealed with red wax. On the table beside my breakfast lay a little key. Written in faded ink on the label: “Rico’s letters to me. To be burned unopened after my death.” The treasure of his letters was the portrait and the stature of the man. I bought a typewriter and learned to type. Day after day I copied his letters, and,day after day my delight and amazement grew. As I worked I thought: “In wis150

THE ROSE-STONE HOUSE

dom and in poetry these letters are more beautiful than any letters I have ever read. Here, in his own words, singers can learn from the greatest singer of them all. If I could incorporate these letters in a book, the world would know and understand the man they have loved and idolized so long. And if I can write our story, speaking of him as I am at last able to speak, I will have expressed my heart’s full gratitude to all who loved him, and we will have written a book together, he and I.” Thus, in a rose-stone house, came the first concep­ tion of a book I was to write two years later.

*

*

*

Swift were the courtships of war, and swift the wed­ dings. Some friends, some relatives, some wine ... a bridal cake and her father’s costume-sword to cut it with . . . Then she w’as gone. For weeks I wakened in the night thinking I heard Gloria calling me.

*

*

*

A year had passed since I had first heard Gurdjieff’s name. At that time the knowledge revealed in his ideas had seemed lightning-clear; now it seemed as if the more I heard about the man the less I understood of his ideas. I had not only lost the sense of understand­ ing, I had almost forgotten the way I had felt. Yet the impression that something had happened to me that night remained as strong as ever. 151

DOROTHY CARUSO: A PERSONAL HISTORY

Sometimes Margaret read aloud fragments from her notes—conversations in Paris between Gurdjieff and his pupils, or brief formulations of his teaching. But I understood little. One night four of Gurdjieff’s pupils came to dinner. I tried to question them. ‘What do you mean by his ‘work’?” I asked. “What work do you do?” One said, “It’s always a three-fold work. When he had his school in Fontainebleau pupils helped in the translation of his book, worked in the vegetable gar­ dens, cooked ... all studied.” Another said, “Nearly everyone took part in the sacred dances he taught—he composes the music for them on a small accordion­ piano. They are based on the sacred temple dances he had seen in Thibet.” Another said, “The important thing is ‘inner work.’ You do that all the time.” “What is inner work?” I asked. “Work on yourself.” “How?” “There are many ways—it is very difficult. That is the real work.” “I don’t understand,” I said. “Of course not. You can’t understand until you do it.” “Isn’t there anything I can do?” “Not until you sec him.” “You have told me about a book he has written. You say you listen to it read aloud. Can’t I get that book and read it, so that I can be prepared beforehand?” 152

THE ROSE-STONE HOUSE

“No. It isn’t published.* It is a manuscript—typed copies of certain chapters are read aloud.” “May I borrow yours0” “We aren’t supposed to lend them.” “Why not?” “Because you wouldn’t be able to understand.” “How will I ever understand then?” “When you go to him you will see. Everything he says, every word he utters, is teaching. Gradually you come to understand.” “And if you don’t understand,” I said, “can’t you ask him to explain?” “He rarely explains. He wants you to make great efforts to understand, from the hints he gives you. He purposely makes it hard. In his book he says that the key is always hidden far from the lock.”

*

*

*

So I continued to think and ponder, as I listened to talk and terminology that were beyond me. I tried to find a similarity between my convent life and the Gurdjieff way. I could find none. I tried to compare the teaching of Mother Sands in Christian Doctrine with the teaching of Gurdjieff as his pupils described it. I could not connect them. All my efforts toward understanding led only to con­ fusion of mind and, in the end, to despair. Despair . . . but never doubt. It was my fault, I was sure, because of my ignorance. I was ignorant of * Since this conversation the first volume of Gurdjieff’s work has been published by Harcourt, Brace, under the title All and Everything.

15S

DOROTHY CARUSO: A PERSONAL HISTORY

the simplest esoteric terms. I had read no mystic litera­ ture—I didn’t know the Bhagavad-Gita or the Upani­ shads, not one of the great books except the New Testament. That I knew by heart—I had read it all my life. Long ago in father’s library I had discovered that religious discussion led only to conflict. Was Gurdjieff’s teaching a religion? I didn’t think so. It appeared to me to be the essence of all religions, with something added—if I could only find out what . . . Sometimes during these months I wept in the night. Once having heard of Gurdjieff, I couldn’t go backward; but I couldn’t go forward without meeting and talking with him. And yet what could I say to him when we did meet? What question could I ask that would be worthy of his answer? What was it that I wanted him to tell me, what was it that I wanted to know? I knew only that whatever I said, or however I said it, he would understand what I meant. On this I based all my belief, and it was enough. *

*

*

While this struggle went on within, another took place without. It had to do with the book I was trying to write about Enrico. My first conception remained clear, but I couldn’t carry it out. I had lost confidence in myself, realizing now how little I knew about literature. And from Mar­ garet I had heard about the craft of writing in a way that father, with all his erudition, had never spoken of. I learned of the work that goes into the making of 154

THE ROSE-STONE HOUSE

a book—the search for words, the measuring, weighing, selecting, rejecting of material, and the tremendous effort always to keep a balance of emotions: to know how and when to use evocation, description, dialogue or straight narrative; and how, in no matter which idiom, never to let the spark of vitality die, “You must make every word count,” Margaret said, “but first of all you must find your form—the form that will be you and no one else.” There were too many rules to remember. I wasn't a writer. I called a professional ghost-writer, and began to tell my story. She wept. When I had finished she said she was incapable of reproducing in a book the emotion I had made her feel. “You must write it yourself,” Margaret said. “No one else can ever do it—not the life you knew; it will always sound second-hand.” In the restaurant where we were dining I sank from discouragement to desperation. There was nothing at which I would ever succeed. Neither Gurdjieff’s work nor my book. I was too uneducated. “In all my life I have accomplished only two things. I made Enrico happy and I’ve brought up my children well. Even that I didn’t do myself—he set the example for me.” “Learning from books, or from another person, isn’t all there is to education,” Margaret said. “You don’t know what you have inside yourself—you’ve never tried to bring it out.” “blow can I ‘bring’ a book out of me when I don’t know how to begin?” 155

DOROTHY CARUSO: A PERSONAL HISTORY

Margaret looked up at the balcony above the room. “Suppose there was a screen stretched across that bal­ cony. Suppose you were looking at a motion-picture of your life with Enrico. Begin anywhere and tell what you see.” The next morning I began to write. I did not re­ member—I saw. And as I wrote even the picture that I was seeing vanished. All my other senses became in­ volved; I smelled the hot Italian air; I heard Enrico speak again, and sing. My hand moving across the paper, writing words, was actually resting on his shoul­ der as I stood behind him while he made-up in his dressing-room, each smiling in the mirror at the reflec­ tion of the other. As if propelled by powers beyond my own, I fin­ ished the first draft of my book in six weeks. Three months later, after I had edited and revised it, the manuscript was ready for publication.* When I read it over for the last time, before sending it off, I knew that the tragic end of the story I had told was not its ending. * * * March 26, 1945. I had waited long for this day. At eight o’clock in the evening Gloria’s son was born, and she named him Eric. Neither his resemblance to Gloria, nor his relation­ ship to me, stirred me as deeply as the knowledge that within his bloodstream, bones and brain moved the same forces that had formed Enrico Caruso. * Enrico Caruso: His Life and Death, published by Simon & Schuster, New York, 1945.

156

THE ROSE-STONE HOUSE

Before she fell asleep Gloria looked at me with grave eyes. “I must remember what Mr. Gurdjieff teaches,” she said. ‘I must take good care of his little psyche.”

*

*

*

June, 1945. It was our last evening in the rose-stone house. The drawing-room was still filled with the spring flowers of Jackie’s wedding, three days before, and the garden where we sat still hung with lively paper lanterns. ‘What made the feeling in this house different from that of all the other houses we’ve lived in?” I asked Jackie. “Creation,” she said. “All the time something was being created. The excitement that comes from crea­ tion made the house a breathless place, charged and yet quiet. I felt it going on around me all the time. During the day there were no discussions except of the books you and Margaret were writing. No general conversation broke your book lives—Margaret used to say ‘Keep it for dinner,’ and this made dinner and our evenings thrilling. Everyone talked from the inside of herself and everything had an equal intensity and one felt vivid and safe and quiet all at the same time. And because no one ever forgot the subject of a conversa­ tion, we could always say ‘I’ve thought some more about that’ and go on without having to repeat or remind anyone what we had said before. We lived in a continuity of thought. “Do you remember the night Ben Hecht came, after 157

DOROTHY CARUSO'. A PERSONAL HISTORY

he had read the galley proofs of your book? He talked about writing with you and Margaret, and that talk snapped and sparkled as if it were made of electricity. “But all our evenings were exciting. They were a ritual—they had form and reason. And the chess games in the library under the red lamp—the exhilaration of those games took the place of the nursery rhymes you used to read to us when we were little—they gave me the same sense of security. The repetition was im­ portant, night after night, to balance the new thoughts of each day ... If Gloria and I stayed out of the house for a single day we felt we had been on a long journey to some place where nothing was happening.” “I wonder why we have been so blessed,” I said. “I know that it started on the boat when Margaret first told you about Gurdjieff. Everything happened after that. I don’t know why—I only know it’s true,” Jackie said. Snapshot, 1946

The war ended. One of Gurdjieff’s pupils who had managed to get to France brought back the first au­ thentic news of him since 1940. He had remained in his flat in Paris, always teaching. He had ignored the Germans and they had not mo­ lested him. “How did he get enough to eat?” I asked. “There was scarcely any food in France when we left.” “He always had food, he told me, and enough to help other people too. Where he found it no one knew. 158

THE ROSE-STONE HOUSE

And when I asked him he only said, ‘They knew me. I had no money but they trusted me.’ ” There were other guests for lunch the day she saw him—an old Russian, a French couple and a young boy with his sister. “No one talked,” she said, “and after lunch he invited me into his little store-room for cof­ fee. I sat opposite him, as in the old days, while he poured the coffee into tiny cups, out of a battered thermos bottle—‘the same,’ he said as he put it down. I suddenly felt as if nothing had changed anywhere, in spite of six years of war.”

159

part ten :

experiment in new

England

The rose-stone house had been sold. The children had gone. For two years I had lived in New York without liv­ ing in New York—I might have been buried in the French provinces, so great had become the distance between me and the city I once loved. I had loved it when it was a town instead of a machine; when hand­ organs played under my windows and vendors strolled the pleasant streets in spring, singing of cherries and fresh strawberries. It was inconceivable to live in a machine after our friutful life of happy isolation in the rose-stone house. My forefathers came from New England. Years ago at a time when newspapers were scarce and books lux­ uries, my grandfather, Park Benjamin, traveled from town to town in New England, lecturing on current events and literature and reciting his poems and the poetry of his friends. The same kind of people who had made his audiences must live there still—fundamental, productive people, unloquacious yet articulate; de­ scendents of the early settlers, proud of their ancestry, who passionately loved their land, and who were named the greatest patriots in all America. 160

EXPERIMENT IN NEW ENGLAND

I decided to look for a place in New England—a white farmhouse with a red barn, or a salt-box on a village green—and live among people of this kind while waiting to return to France, to see Gurdjieff. *

*

*

I found it in Sudbury, Massachusetts, eight miles from Concord. And I felt I had never known what spring could be until I saw white lilacs in full bloom beside our door. We were welcomed by a May morn­ ing—the air alive with trembling young sounds, an ancient apple orchard on a slope of lawn, and drifts of tulips and violets and daffodils as careless as wild­ flowers. This land was ours down to the center of the earth, and a universe arose upon an acre.

*

*

*

There were no restaurants in Sudbury, no motion­ pictures, no country clubs; no entertainment was pro­ vided because no entertainment was needed. But there was a little red post-office . . . two hundred feet of excitement at noon—the hour when the world outside came to the village. It was like Christmas every morn­ ing when the postmistress said, “I have a package of books for you and the New York papers.” Letters came from all over the world—hundreds of people asking, ‘‘What has become of Gloria and you?” Sometimes we saved them to read in the garden after dinner. As night came down the white peonies grew large and luminous and lost. Then from our upstairs terrace we listened to the wood-wind whistle of the midnight train and 161

DOROTHY CARUSO: A PERSONAL HISTORY

watched a blond skunk move across a patch of moon­ light. On August nights northern lights made the world stand still while the heavens swirled. But the light of our personal universe grew dimmer day by day. I had gone to Sudbury not as toward a dream but with a conviction. I was certain that in a community of thoughtful, natural, understanding people I could express my own reality, and that among realistic New Englanders I would be allowed to be my authentic self. In New York I had often listened to Gurdjieff pupils talking about their “inner life.” I was unconscious of an inner life. “Either I have none,” I thought, “or else it is buried too deep in me to be felt” . . . buried under reflections of everyone I had ever known, a thousand reflections superimposed upon my own re­ flection. It was as if I wore ten hats at once. What would I look like, I wondered, without any hat at all? And so from the beginning I was natural in Sud­ bury. I answered the usual questions about Enrico and told all my stories; but I also talked from myself, from my own ideas, not only in relation to him and the chil­ dren; I talked as a separate entity. But soon I discovered that my way of being natural was not the Sudbury way, and that my kind of conver­ sation belonged to a different category from Sudbury conversation. On the day I heard a woman say, “We don’t care about all those ideas and things—tell some more stories about your life with Caruso,” I realized how much the Gurdjieff teaching had sharpened my appetite for real communication—talk that led toward 162

EXPERIMENT IN NEW ENGLAND

something—and how dissatisfied I felt telling stories or listening to the dry-leaf rustlings of flat events. Unexpectedly I had come upon my inner life. *

*

*

The people of Sudbury made no demands on me; they weren’t inquisitive, they weren’t obsequious; they had an inborn unaffected courtesy. And they left me free—I could watch them while they talked. They were like illustrations in a book. On all subjects their point of view was wholesome, hearty, direct. They either liked what they read or didn’t like it, liked music or didn’t like it. They weren’t interested in books in the way we were. Our approach to books was from a direction that started at the center of ourselves; their approach allowed discus­ sion and stopped conversation. Their minds were fresh and firm—bins full of fine red winter apples. But to sustain an inner life another kind of food is necessary —imagination, ideas, interchange of thought. To Sud­ bury these elements were not only redundant; they were unrecognized. And so, though it was pleasant to be treated neither as outsiders nor as intimates, neither as celebrities nor as interlopers, it was disconcerting not to be treated as people at all. We were treated rather as migrating thistledown. What really happened was that people came toward us and we listened, without being asked to enter into the situation, as we would listen to short stories. When the story ended, the story-tellers went home. They didn’t regard us in one way or the other. 163

DOROTHY CARUSO: A PERSONAL HISTORY

There was no substance, no stimulation, in any of it. Therefore I slowly starved. And I couldn’t understand, since these people were so lively and humorous and agreeable, why I always felt that each time I saw them would be the last time; as if each time they came they had come to say goodbye. *

*

*

It was a wild hard winter even for New England. Icicles four feet long hung from the eaves and starving bluejays and sparrows found sanctuary on our porch. 1 could imagine how Saint Francis felt among his birds. Surrounded by light and stillness, there are moments when a handful of seeds becomes a sacrament. Uninterrupted, undisturbed, my thoughts moved quietly over material for a new book. Birds and books were my companions that winter. Rimbaud wrote his poems at my desk—they were not what I had been told: to me they were delicate soft creations, like pasteltinted powder-puffs. James Joyce read me his Portrait of the Artist and I wept for him. But the thorn-pain in his poem, Ecce Puer, entered my spirit and remained there. And then one day there came to my study a man of such overpowering proportions that the town and all its people became flat and unsubstantial, like a card­ board village filled with paper dolls. This giant with his heavy shining heart arrived in our house on Christ­ mas day in a volume of letters—letters to his mother. His name was I homas Wolfe. He was a mountain of a man; he was like the Alps in spring—words as touch164

EXPERIMENT IN NEW ENGLAND

ing and graceful as Alpine flowers sprang up in his prose, turning it to evocation. He had been very poor, and ill, and needed warm clothes; his mother had sent him three neckties and two pairs of socks. “Thank you for these fine presents,” he wrote, and you knew he meant fine—because it was Christmas and his mother whom he loved had thought of him. Outside the world turned to amethyst ice, but inside the hours passed warm and real as those hours when Enrico and I sat at a long table, working at our stamps and coins. The idea for my second book was taking form. As I planned it, I began to look back at my life again. I began at the beginning of my insignificance and traced the emotions of my life up to the present moment—relived my time, my personal history, minute by minute beneath the years. Slowly, carefully, as if unrolling a Chinese scroll, I followed myself in pic­ tures along a road ... I saw the road as a book. But “events” would not be the subject of the book; they would be merely the photographs in the travel-folder. The real subject would be not what I had seen, not what I had learned, not even what I had felt in all those places, but what I had become from seeing, learning and feeling ... a mysterious journey. I saw a stage­ coach drawn by four black horses . . .

*

*

*

In Boston there is a publisher of books who asked me to lunch. He had been impressed by my book about Caruso and wanted to talk about it. He expressed sur­ prise that I had been able to put into writing my 165

DOROTHY CARUSO: A PERSONAL HISTORY

“capacity for feeling.” His enthusiasm so carried me along that I confided to him, as if he were an old friend I could trust, my plan to write another book— to tell what had happened to me after Enrico’s death. His face closed. His expression changed from warm appreciation to the sheathed look of a locked port­ folio-secret documents that must be suppressed. He skimmed off his words . . . “You are like all amateur authors whose first book has been a success—they al­ ways want to write another. People were interested in what you had to tell about your husband; no one is interested in what you may write about yourself. The few pages at the end of the Caruso book told the reader all he needed to know about your life. I hate to dis­ courage you, but I know that no publisher would take a new book-/ wouldn’t. One success doesn’t make you into a writer, and your life as an individual, without the famous name, is, honestly, not important enough to publish.” I wasn’t discouraged. I was humiliated. I had felt the same way years ago when people had denied me my identity, preferring to remember me as a tragic monu­ ment. A week later two friends came from New York. We walked in silence and spring rain up the hill toward our house. “The rain leaves no traces on our clothes,” Lynn said. “Only a slight perfume,” said Solita. 166

EXPERIMENT IN NEW ENGLAND

“Like Paris, when it’s raining in the Bois,” Margaret said. At the last turn we stopped to rest on a low stone wall. If J could write another book,” I asked Solita, ‘ would you like to read it?” “Yes.” “What would you like it to be about?” “You. The past twenty-five years since Caruso died.” “How shall I begin?” “Your conception must be the opposite of your book about Caruso. There you focused on him and not on yourself—the reader knew you from what you did not say about yourself. Now you must talk about yourself and talk of others only in relation to you. This will be hard at first because you’ll be afraid to be thought self­ centered and egotistical.” “Why don’t you begin by stretching your emotions?” Margaret said. “You hide everything you feel behind good manners. Let go—so that you can move from one state to another.” “That’s clear in a wide abstract way. What I want to know is exactly how 1 should begin?” “First,” Solita said, “try to find out the qualities you have which make you different from other people. Those qualities will be your limits and you must write within them.” “I don’t know my qualities,” I said. “No one can name her own qualities.” “Oh yes, she can,” Margaret said. “My love for my children?” 167

DOROTHY CARUSO! A PERSONAL HISTORY

“Lots of people love their children,’’ Solita said. “I mean special qualities. I think your outstanding quali­ ties are judgment, justice and observation. These might be the limits to impose upon your writing.” “But how will you begin?” said Lynn. “I don’t see how you know how to begin.” I looked from one face to another: my three friends. Margaret’s eyes, full of strength and confidence in me. How often during five years had I rested on that look. And Solita’s eyes, coming to life in the life of a book. And Lynn’s—eager, encouraging, helpless . . .

*

*

*

During the next two months I listened to talk about Gurdjieff that brought him nearer and made his mean­ ing clearer. I began to feel that I had already met him and that, from some uncovered part of me, I could speak of myself with right of growth—as if the seeds planted had taken root and pushed up through the earth. Summer passed and I struggled on, trying to make a book without a clear conception of that invisible evo­ lution which was to be its subject. But as winter came again to Sudbury I had an experience that transformed my nebulous ideas into a picture and a pattern. It was an experience of anger, and it still stands out against the hazy silence of trees, the rush of small soft animals, and the dazzling dignity of pheasants treading on crusted snow. It was a fortunate experience: not only because it made my book possible but because it 168

EXPERIMENT IN NEW ENGLAND

forced me, perhaps for the first time in my life, to evaluate myself. For years I had accepted without complaint the world’s swift judgments and run-of-the-mill percep­ tions. I had conciliated and appeased and bowed my head because I learned, too young, to turn the other cheek. The act which began as a defense continued as a habit. But there is no virtue in always turning the other cheek; and there is no virtue in seeing only the good in everyone and ignoring the evil. There are times when the acknowledgement of evil has more vir­ tue in it than the search for good. I'his is one of those times ... I stand beside my­ self: I see a child trembling before the unconscious cruelty of children; I see her trembling before the inflexibility of gentle nuns; I see her trembling before the unleashed fury of a father. She had built a wall around herself; but the mortar that cemented the stones was a corrosive and dangerous substance. It was fear. Some people are born with claws instead of hands, and some with poison fangs instead of tongues. This sickens me, but I don’t speak out against them. They smile and tear deep wounds . . . deep runs the poison in my blood ... I turn the other cheek. I don’t pro­ test; I don’t denounce them; I simply wish that they were different and hope that if I smile and agree they won’t strike at me again. And in my relief, if they don’t strike, I give them again all my confidence, flood them with friendship, pour gifts on them, and gratitude, tell them what I think and feel . . . believing that they 169

DOROTHY CARUSO: A PERSONAL HISTORY

believe me. They are part of the public before whom I must always play a role; but they are also behind the scenes with me in my private and inner being . . . They may have believed me or not—even today I don’t know. What I do know is that in the end they have always betrayed me. Yet in the past I never revolted—not outwardly; I even felt I had no right to revolt. The other cheek— that rigid religious law ... it had cut a deep groove. Forty years have passed . . . and suddenly I have fin­ ished forever with turning the other cheek: because I, who am never angry, am standing beside myself in anger. I am the protector of my inner life. I have at last discovered that life and I will no longer allow it to be violated—either by claws or fangs or smiles. I will never placate again. I am as I say I am. My own truth mat­ ters to myself, more than my fear, and I will impose my truth. Neither their pinpointed politeness nor rolls of rich round laughter can win me back, because through their blandishments I can now see the worms eating out their hearts ... fat worms of envy, jealousy, hypoc­ risy, greed; and those on whom the worms feed talk of human charity and loving-kindness. I have finished with fear—I have experienced consuming anger. I shall never again keep silent, or turn away my head. I shall speak out and call the liar liar and the fraud fraud. The incident that starts world wars is in itself insignificant. Somewhere in the forest lies a charred match . . . 170

EXPERIMENT IN NEW ENGLAND

Once again I have found the way through thunder­ ing trees to that sunlit place where for three years 1 walked in courage and companionship with a man of good-will. Enrico’s sweep of spirit . . . But he didn’t forgive and forget. “I forgive and remember,” he said, and then went back to his singing. So I shall forgive and remember, and go back to my book, and write the statement of myself—as I wrote Enrico’s after he was gone.

*

*

*

The snow melted from the hills, and life stood green and strong, and the days grewT sweet with sun and ap­ proaching summer. I realized that what was happening in the world outside had also happened within myself. This was my subject-matter. I began the first chapter of my new book. Autumn passed with golden paper leaves on trees. Wild geese heralded the winter on pounding wings, and I wrote on. Then blizzards tore across New Eng­ land and flattened soundless landscapes into hissing plains. And at the end of March we drove away between iridescent walls of snow, back to springtime in Paris, and to my first meeting with Gurdjieff.

Ill

part eleven :

gurdjieff

Paris, June 1948. In spite of all I had been told, I had made my own conception of Gurdjieff. He would have the tongue of St. John, the inspiration of St. Paul, the sanctity and remoteness of the Reverend Mother. I would be filled with awe and exaltation, and when I left it would be with a high sense of humility for the privilege of having met him. It was in this fervent and expectant state that I en­ tered his Paris flat in the rue Colonel Renard on the last day of June. But when I saw Gurdjieff all my preconceived ideas vanished. For I saw an old man, grey with weariness and illness, yet whose strength of spirit emanated with such force from his weakened body that, save for a sense of fierce protection, I felt no deep emotion at all. I could not understand his English. His low voice and muffled Asiatic accent formed syllables that had no meaning to me, and at the same time I realized that at this moment ordinary speech was unimportant. It was as if we had already spoken and were continuing to speak, but in a language without sound. There were twenty pupils lunching with him that first day. Except for an occasional low murmur they 172

GURDJIEFF

sat in silence, watchful, unsmiling. When Gurdjieff spoke they sat up straighter, tensed as if their back­ bones had suddenly solidified. He sat relaxed, with one foot folded under him, on a divan opposite us, slowly eating morsels of lamb and hard bits of goat cheese and fresh tarragon leaves with his fingers. His eyebrows rose above his lowered lids when a murmur reached him, but he did not turn his head to look—he seemed to see without looking. At the end of the meal he began to talk. I scarcely understood a word, but I was galvanized to a zenith of attention: every expression of his face and each small movement of his body 1 found heartbreaking. I thought, “The kind of force he is using is wearing him out. Why must he go on doing it? Why do they let him? We should go home, we should not ask this tired man for anything.” But as we left he said, “You come tonight for read­ ing at nine o’clock. Then dinner after.” I thanked him, told him I thought he was too tired. I might have been speaking with one of my children instead of to a man of eighty-one—a magus, a possessor of super-knowledge. *

*

*

I sat in the corner of the salon before dinner, listen­ ing to a chapter from his manuscript read aloud . . . an expressionless voice going on and on, pupils seated on the floor, motionless and intense. The next night I listened again, and the night after. Day after day and night after night I listened to that unimpassioned voice and watched those immobile faces 173

DOROTHY CARUSO: A PERSONAL HISTORY

—some with open unseeing eyes, some with eyes closed. There was no continuity in the reading—chapters read the week before were repeated the following week, or sometimes a chapter read half through was never re­ sumed. After a while my attention wandered, but that of the pupils on the floor did not. The concentration of those motionless bodies began to irritate me. What were they concentrated on? Surely not on the manuscript which they must have heard a hundred times. Perhaps they were reflecting on the great ideas of Gurdjieff; but I couldn’t detect ideas in the allegory of Beezelbub’s Tales to His Grandson that was being read aloud.

*

*

*

A month passed. I had learned to understand Gurd­ jieff’s broken English but I had not once heard him present a great idea. I was told that he was no longer teaching through ideas, as he had done at the Prieure twenty-five years before. But I could in no way relate the man I saw every day to the mystic Gurdjieff I had heard about from Margaret, on a boat, six years ago. Of course he talked, but chiefly of countries and na­ tionalities, and always in a large derogatory way, as repetitious and boring as the readings. Or else he scolded the pupils who prepared the food. He spoke harshly and, I thought, unjustly; I felt it was humili­ ating to be reprimanded before everyone. Usually the pupil remained quiet but when, during the tirade, he dared to defend himself, Gurdjieff’s voice grew louder, angrier, and his eyes flashed. Then at the peak of rage 1U

GURDJIEFF

he suddenly smiled, relaxed, and said “Bravo!” and offered the culprit his favorite sweet. Why? What had all this to do with the universe and man and his im­ mortality? And if those pupils seated on the floor during the interminable readings were not pretending, what then were they thinking, with their lost rapt faces? I had brought my body into a world of thought. I was an alien in an incomprehensible world. Self-con­ scious and bewildered, I sat in my corner, listening, trying to understand.

*

*

*

At last a day came when I told Margaret that I had had enough: it was useless for me to go on seeing Gurdjieff. “I might as well fly back to America. I’m not learn­ ing anything. He isn’t teaching anything. What is there to learn, just listening to that book, watching the others who never speak to me, whose names I don’t even know, and watching Gurdjieff eat or play that little organ? I’m going home.” “You must do as you think best,” Margaret said. She neither urged me to stay nor seemed concerned about my going. For five days I stayed away. Then I went back to Gurdjieff. I went back because he had been so kind to me. He hadn’t railed at me, or frightened me. Indeed, at our third meeting he had said—apropos of nothing, it seemed to me—“Inside you are rabbit.” I had won­ dered at the time how he knew. I still wondered. 175

DOROTHY CARUSO: A PERSONAL HISTORY

Another reason for going back was a conventional one: I had dined with him every night for a month; it was boorish to leave without saying goodbye or thank­ ing him. Besides, I had missed him more each day I stayed away. After all, if he wasn’t teaching in the way I had expected, perhaps he was teaching in another way. He did not reproach me for my absence. He simply smiled, and pretended to be surprised to see me. And at the crowded table he even teased me a little about my size. It was a warm and vibrant welcome, and dur­ ing lunch I felt a glow as if there had been established between us a new and special bond—a kind of un­ spoken sympathetic understanding. After lunch he invited me to have coffee with him in his store-room. There, in the midst of fruits and sweets and wines, with slender sausages of camel’s meat, bunches of scarlet peppers and sprays of rose­ mary and mint suspended like a canopy above, as I watched him pouring coffee out of the battered old thermos bottle, I suddenly felt as young and trustful as I had felt when Mother Thompson watched over me in the Convent. Years of worldly experience fell away and I was a child again. Gurdjieff offered me a piece of sugar. “You want to ask me something?” he said. I didn’t want to ask him anything—I wanted to tell him something. But I was unprepared for this direct and simple opening. I could not quickly think of any abstract or esoteric question, so instead I blurted out what had troubled me ever since 1 had been going to his house. 176

GURDJIEFF

“Everyone here seems to have a soul except me. Haven’t I any soul?’’ He didn’t answer immediately, or look at me. He took a piece of sugar, put it into his mouth and sipped some coffee through it. Then he said, “You know what means consciousness?” “Yes,” I said, “it means to know something.” “No. Not to know something—to know yourself. Your ‘I.’ You not know your I’ for one second in your whole life. Now I tell and you try. But very difficult. You try remember say T am’ once every hour. You not succeed, but no matter—try. You understand?” At this first interview I said none of the things I had planned to say. Instead 1 told him about my child­ hood in my father’s house, of the goodness of Enrico and my despair when he died, and about my children and how deeply I loved them. And then I said, “I don’t know anything about the things all the others know. I don’t even know what to ask you. What can I do when I have nothing to start from? What shall I do?” “You must help your father,” Gurdjieff said. I thought he had not understood, that I had spoken too quickly; so I told him again that my father was dead. “I know. You tell already. But because of your father you are here. Have gratitude for this. You are your father and you owe to him. He is dead. Too late to repair for himself. You must repair for him. Help him.” “But how can I help him when he’s dead? Where is he?” “All around you. You must work on yourself. Re277

DOROTHY CARUSO." A PERSONAL HISTORY

member what I tell—your ‘1/ And what you do for yourself you do also for me.” He said no more but I felt as if he had spoken great things, and not in ordinary words; and when I left it was with something rich and strange and full of mean­ ing*

*

*

No matter how late, each night in the salon after dinner Gurdjieff took his little accordion-piano on his knee and, while his left hand worked the bellows, his right hand made music in minor chords and haunting single notes. But one night in his aromatic store-room he played for five of us, alone, a different kind of music, although whether the difference lay in its sorrowful harmonies or in the way he played I do not know. I only know that no music had ever been so sad. Before it ended I put my head on the table and wept. ‘‘What has happened to me?” I said. ‘‘When I came into this room I was happy. And then that music—and now I am happy again.” ‘I play objective music to make cry,” Gurdjieff said. “There are many kinds such music—some to make laugh, or to love or to hate. This the beginning of music—sacred music, two, three thousand years old. Your church music comes from such but they don’t realize. They have forgotten. This is temple musicvery ancient.” Once when he played I thought the music sounded like a prayer—it seemed to supplicate. And then I 178

GURDJIEFF

thought, “It is only my imagination and my emotion,” and I tried not to feel what I was feeling. But when he had finished, instead of smiling and tapping the top of the instrument with his hand, he sat quite still and his eyes stood motionless, as if he were looking at us through his thoughts. Then he said, “It is a prayer,” and left us. *

*

♦

Midsummer. Gurdjieff was leaving by car, with some of his pupils, to take the baths at Vichy. I was happy to be free for a while, away from the heat of his flat and the smell of heavy soup cooking. I longed to breathe fresh air again, to see fields and animals instead of people. I was tired of people and their inner lives, and I was most tired of thinking about my own. I would go to Normandy with Margaret, to a small hotel in the village of Giverny. There we would walk along coun­ try roads in sunshine, look through a gate into Claude Monet’s garden—scarlet poppies, marigolds, delphini­ ums, daisies, under arches of bright roses. We would sit beside his pool, where pale and pointed water­ lilies lay and long willow branches touched the water. We would work again on our books—we hadn’t thought of books since we left Sudbury. In my room at the Hotel Baudy my work-table faced a window. I saw peasants mowing hay on a quiet hill­ side. The smell of new-mown hay and the chirp of sun-drenched birds came in at the open window. I began once more to write . . . Three days passed and a message came from 179

DOROTHY CARUSO: A PERSONAL HISTORY

Paris late at night. Gurdjieff had been injured in a motor accident. His condition was critical; he was lying unconscious in a hospital. When we arrived in Paris he was already at home. He had fractured ribs, lacerations on his face and hands, and many bruises. There was a danger of in­ ternal injuries. “Is he conscious now?” “Oh yes,” they said, “and he wants the readings and meals to continue as usual. He came in for a little while after lunch. He’ll be at dinner—thirty are com­ ing” But the next day he was worse and the doctors held out slight hope that he would live. We stayed that night in a small hotel near his flat, waiting for the telephone to ring. It never rang. On the third day he was seated again at his dinner table. His head was still a shining dome, smooth and high, but his face was a dark shadow. There were purple bruises on his lips and he wore a piece of gauze around his throat to hide a wound. “I cannot eat,” he said, “my mouth all cut inside.” Painfully, with his lacerated fingers, he divided a trout, handed me a piece across the table. “You like?” he said. “Then take.” For the rest of the meal he sat in silence. In his eyes was the same blind look he had when he played the prayer music. As we rose to leave he got up too. He lifted his hands against his ribs. “It hurts,” he said, “great suffering I have.” I could only stand there look180

GURDJIEFF

ing at him. Before I could wish him well, he said, “I thank you. I wish for you all that you wish for me.” *

*

*

He cured himself, no one knew how. He had refused X-rays and the medicines prescribed by doctors; yet his recovery was so complete that he looked younger after the accident than before, as if the shock had strengthened his whole organism instead of weakening it. In the late afternoon he sat, immaculately dressed, outside a cafe near his flat, with a panama hat shading his eyes and his cane lying across the table in front of him, talking with pupils, drinking coffee, watching people pass. At other times he sat alone, speaking with no one, noticing no one until at last he rose and, in the long dusk, through quiet shuttered streets, walked slowly home. There, after resting for a while, he changed into a loose grey cashmere suit, open white shirt and soft kid slippers, gave instructions in the kitchen, then came to sit with us and listen to the reading of his book, looking from one face to another, recognizing yet with­ holding recognition. At dinner he welcomed us as he had always done, talked of the same subjects in the same words; and, as usual, halfway through the meal, placed on his head his tasseled magenta fez. It was good to know that he was recovering, and it was good to see and hear intimate small ceremonies repeated—the ritual of the toasts, the offering of bread, or fish, across the table in his hand. And as I sat observing, absorbing, 181

DOROTHY CARUSO: A PERSONAL HISTORY

rejoicing, I grew aware of a swelling sense of harmony that related everything within the room to everything else—gestures, faces, voices, food, my thoughts vibrated in unison like a chord in music. I began to understand something that I longed to go on understanding. I wanted to achieve the “I” he had told me about. Long before his accident Gurdjieff had said, “I can­ not develop you; I can create the conditions in which you can develop yourself.” For weeks I had fought against the conditions he created—I had been angry, impatient, judicial. But I had concealed these emo­ tions; raging inside, I had appeared outwardly calm . . . the habit of a lifetime—good manners, instead of an effort to act honestly. It would have been better to burst forth in defense of what I thought unjust, to ask him point-blank why I should sit through endless meals, eating food I neither liked nor wanted. That I had felt compassion or anxiety or even deep affection for him was beside the point. It was good to be con­ cerned about him; it would have been better to have been concerned about myself: to have begun to change, to develop myself. Once he had spoken to me about my great aim. ‘‘I haven’t any aim,” I said; “what should my aim be?” He said, “Do you want to perish like a dog?” I answered, “Of course not.” He didn’t explain, he simply repeated what he had said before: “Remember your ‘I’.” *

* •

*

Christmas, 1948- Back in America, I told my chil­ dren all that had happened to me in Paris. Gloria 182

GURDJIEFF

listened, holding her new son, Colin, in her arms. Be­ fore his birth Gurdjieff had said, “Good that mother should worry for her child—he will be strong.” And Jackie listened, with three-year-old Dolly sitting beside her. I had asked Gurdjieff Jackie’s question: “How shall I introduce God to my baby?” His answer was, “All babies near God. Later, bring to me and I will tell.” Gurdjieff had arrived in New York in time for Christmas. Instead of fifty pupils, as in Paris, he now sometimes had a hundred in his hotel-apartment—often as many as eighty for dinner. He worked with them constantly, never resting, never sparing himself. At the same time he was arranging for the publication of his book, All and Everything. Each night it was read aloud; each night until two in the morning he played his music for us. After we left he slept for three hours, then rose and drove down to the big bright markets at the end of the city, to choose fresh food for the feasts of the coming day. He stayed in New York for two months, and when he went back to France we fol­ lowed him. * * *

It was May in Paris, but for us there was no spring. There was no time to notice horse-chestnut trees blos­ soming in the Bois, or illuminated fountains sparkling in the Place de la Concorde in the soft sweet night. There was time only to drive as fast as possible by the shortest route to Gurdjieff’s flat in the rue Colonel Renard—a street with as little French distinction as a 183

DOROTHY CARUSO: A PERSONAL HISTORY

page in a dictionary; a flat without sunlight or a single flower, where the motionless air reeked of Asiatic cook­ ing and the heat was almost unbearable. The contrast between Gurdjieff’s strong decisive bearing and the deep hollows in his face alarmed me. “I am very tired,” he said, “I work too hard.” “You should take a vacation,” I said. I have no time—many people come from England to see me in these days. There is still much to do.” Later he said, “I would like to go to Chamonix—to hear water running; there I could sleep.” Another month of pupils, meals and heat. Then one night he said, “We go to Chamonix tomorrow.” He asked us to go along. Four motorcars were crowded with pupils, with boxes of Russian croquettes, bags of croissants, melons, apricots, chocolate bonbons and big thermos bottles of black coffee. Gurdjieff drove his car all the way, lead­ ing the caravan. He used no maps, gave no directions; he simply said, “Follow me,” and started off, stopping only to nap for a half hour by the side of the road when he could go no farther. In Chamonix he wakened in the mornings refreshed by the splashing icy stream beneath his window. But his days were as active as in Paris—devoted to his work, his business affairs and the responsibility of new young pupils. At the week’s end, in spite of the cold thin air, the healing pines and fresh snow-winds from the moun­ tains, he was still tired. I sat beside him on a bench outside the hotel the day we left Chamonix, watching the porters arrange 184

GURDJIEFF

luggage in the cars. At last I said, “May I tell you something, Mr. Gurdjieff? I wish I had met you twenty years ago. Today it’s too late. I realize now that I am nothing, and it’s the loneliest feeling in the world.’’ He turned and looked at me. “Ah,” he said, “you are no longer blind. Your eyes now open—you begin to see.” He took some bonbons from his pocket, handed them to a porter passing by. I had often seen him do this, and always wondered why. “Why do you offer candy to people?” I asked, “and why does everyone looked pleased—policemen, waiters, strangers, and that young mother last night sitting in the salon with her baby—why?” “I do not know if I will see again that mother, but if I do she will not forget me—she will remember the surprise of bonbons for her baby. Perhaps she will need help and I not be a stranger. You understand?” “Yes, I understand about the mother, but the police­ man . . . ?” “The policeman stopped me. I did not wish to wait —I gave bon-bons and he was very surprised. So he let me go. That is being clever man.” He was also an ill man—coughing, in pain. Yet back in Paris at his table he still had room for all who came —pupils from England, Scotland, Switzerland, Austria, as well as America. To spare him we went less, but he noticed our ab­ sence and bade us come as usual. He had grown thin­ ner and the grey pallor had returned. One day at lunch he said, “I have worked hard. My book will soon 185

DOROTHY CARUSO.- A PERSONAL HISTORY

be published for everyone to read. After I will go away, far, where I can rest.” ‘‘But you will come back?” someone asked. He did not answer. Another said, “We will follow you wherever you go—will you go to Cali­ fornia?” It was the kind of question Gurdjieff never answered, but this time he looked at the speaker and smiled. ‘‘Perhaps California, perhaps farther,” he said.

*

*

*

It was the middle of October—a gold crimson coun­ try day when chipmunks rush to gather nuts, and horses, free in pale gold fields, race with each other and the wind. I left Giverny to see Gurdjieff in his cafe in Paris—to say farewell until we should meet on the boat that was to take us all to America on the twentieth. He was sitting alone. “You take coffee?” he said. For a moment I didn’t speak, then when the coffee came I said, “You are not coming on the boat with us after all.” “No. Perhaps later.” We sat in sdence. Finally I said, “Mr. Gurdjieff . . . the ‘F which I am trying to develop—is this the soul that survives after death?” He waited so long that I wondered whether he had heard me. Then he said, “How long you have been with me?” “Almost two years,” I said. ‘‘Too short the time. You not able yet to understand. Use the present to repair the past and prepare the future. Go on well; remember all I say.” I did not press him—he looked so ill. “You should 186

GURDJIEFF

take better care of yourself,” I said; “what are you doing for your cough? Does something hurt you?” He moved slightly in his chair and for the first time I heard from him a sound like a groan. “I must take habit of pain,” he said. Then he held out his hand and I said goodbye, and left him sitting there, alone, in the shrill sunlight.

187

part twelve :

sea-change

I never saw Gurdjieff again. He died in Paris, two days after we landed in New York. And so, scarcely before it had begun, a great experience ended. Whatever I may have learned about his work, during the two years I knew him, might, as time passed, grow hazy in my mind; but what I felt when I was in his presence, whether he spoke or sat in silence, I would remember clearly always. Those feelings live forever that are born in the soul’s heart. Gurdjieff was gentle with my soul. It was a soul that had not grown up, as I grew up. It had been timid, but trusting. Often it had been betrayed, but it had not been murdered. Nanna had found it first, and she too had been gentle with it. Enrico had loved, moulded, sustained and protected it. Brother had fought for it. Gurdjieff gave it courage. From his mysterious and conscious world he guided it with the kind of under­ standing he called “objective love”—the “love of every­ thing that breathes”; and “it” responded with unlim­ ited trust—the highest type of love there is, I think, in this immediate and unconscious world. Nothing is so great or so true as the trusting love of a child. It doesn’t matter whether he has understood 188

SEA-CHANGE

your words or not—it is the way they are spoken that matters. And the way they are spoken creates in the child the love and trust he returns to you. This is the emotion that Gurdjieff, and the “conditions he cre­ ated,” created in me. I can repeat our conversations, interpret his silences, describe his appearance, define his doctrine, yet I can only give the slightest indication of the change that took place in me after knowing him. I was aware, before he died, of this process of active and increasing change. His death, instead of ending the process, accelerated it. And then, one day, I under­ stood what had been happening. I had transformed something in myself: the change was Me.

A mystery is something that cannot be expressed, something beyond human comprehension. Man is a mystery. The cosmos is a mystery. Man in relation to the cosmos is a mystery. Everything is a mystery, and everything is a paradox. To understand this takes more than human compre­ hension, and more than human comprehension means: to know. Gurdjieff knew. He knew from his “being,” as he called it. And he knew all the time. I know only for an instant at a time. That instant is a spark of understanding—it belongs to the person of my essence. During those instants I am aware of a divi189

DOROTHY CARUSO: A PERSONAL HISTORY

sion of identity—a separation between my essence­ person and what I have always called “myself.” When those moments are past they do not become simply memories like other memories. Something else raises and widens and deepens the perceptions. The substance of that “something” I do not knowall I know is that it is a substance; it is not merely an idea. Thus far have I gone. What is to come next is, for the present, another mystery.

*

*

*

All my time is not spent in pondering these things, nor are my thoughts always on eternity or death. But I am actively aware of everything today, instead of passively aware as in the past. I can see each feather on a bird that flies by—it doesn’t just fly by. I have been told that I am simply using my five senses. I am, as always; but the knowledge that I am doing it belongs to that second self. Therefore I can live in splendor in a little house beside a walnut tree in Maryland where everything 1 touch, or hear, or see, has its reverberations in that world where no one lives except those who have also been as fortunate as I. Early this morning I went out into the flowering woods behind our house, to think out an ending for this book. I was alone ... no one passed. The fra­ grance of uncurling violets, the nursery pink-and-white of dogwood blossoms, my rustling footsteps in the leaves ... all this young spring I felt, and more than 190

SEA-CHANGE

fifty other springs besides, with gratitude to everyone I have known, and an aspiration to love everything that breathes. Riderwood, Maryland. April, 1951

191