Individual Progress

     It is usually in this way that, once having defined particular goals which we consider it important to attain, instead of reaching them we are surprised to find ourselves deviating so far from our route that we do the opposite of what we want.
     It is like this, says Gurdjieff, with everything that man undertakes. What democracy does not eventually turn into tyranny, what faith does not breed intolerance, what disinterested search for truth does not culminate in the rigity of a system?
     It is worth pointing out that the word 'turn' is used as a synonym for 'deteriorate'. What is there  in human relations that does not 'turn sour'? Even abundance may 'turn to excess'!
     We are like weathercocks, and I wonder whether the ellipse shown above does not at some point open out into a spiral, that same spiral which for ever ornaments the 'august and tubiform belly' of Père Ubu, whose triumph over this century is evident enough.
     Gurdjieff exclaims:
     'Think how many turns the line of development of forces must have taken to come from the Gospel preaching of love to the Inquisition; or to go from the ascetics of the early centuries studying esoteric Christianity to the scholastics who calculated how many angels could be placed on the point of a needle.' [P.D. Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous, p. 129]
— Michel Waldberg, Gurdjieff: An Approach to His Ideas, pp. 104/105/106.

....The talk was then about the latest inventions of science and so of Man's apparent progress. Gurdjieff said: "Yes, machines are making progress, but not Man. "In answer to a question whether Man had not progressed far beyond what he used to be, even in historical time, Gurdjieff said: "It is strange how you so easily believe in this word progress. It is as if this word hypnotized you, so that you cannot see the truth. Man does not progress. There is no progress whatever. Everything is just the same as it was thousands, and tens of thousands, of years ago. It is only the outward form that changes. The essence does not change.... "Civilized" and "cultured" people live with exactly the same interests as the most ignorant savages. Modern civilization is based on violence and slavery....
— Maurice Nicoll, Psychological Commentaries on the Teachings of Gurdjieff & Ouspensky, Volume I, p. 241.

....primary reason for Man's creation on earth is not fulfilled. The primary reason is individual evolution. If the conditions for the individual evolution of an individual man are destroyed, then the experiment of Man on earth will prove a failure. And if Man tampers with himself, with his body, with his glands, and so on, as the ants appear to have done, then one of the conditions of evolution will be destroyed.... Man is created a self-developing organism and if the conditions for his self-development are destroyed, then Mankind, as an experiment, becomes useless.... Evolution is possible for a man: but it is not possible for Mankind....
— Maurice Nicoll, Psychological Commentaries on the Teachings of Gurdjieff & Ouspensky, Volume I, p. 245.

     One difficulty in thinking in this way, in the above example, is due to the fact that people think that the masses do things. They do not realize that only individuals do anything. Cultures have been founded by individual men, never by the masses. Humanity, the masses, never do anything save that they destroy often enough what individual men have built. All progress in the sciences is the work of individual men, not of the masses. All art, architecture, music, is due to the work of individual men. The explanation is that a mass of people is on a lower level than a single individual and so, from this point of view, evolution is only possible for individuals and not for the masses.
— Maurice Nicoll, Psychological Commentaries on the Teachings of Gurdjieff & Ouspensky, Volume I, pp. 245-246.