GURDJIEFF, G.I. – Life is real only then, when I am - Integral Book

inherent only in man, I wish to give you the information about such anaspect of the objective truth for the precise and broad understanding ofwhich it is indispensable to make such a digression of general character."I consider it important and for you very useful to note that such anaspect of objective truth in the process of human life was always, sinceancient times on Earth, one of the fundamental secrets of initiates of allepochs and ranks, and the knowledge of it, as it is already established,might contribute by itself to increase the intensity of assimilation of theresults deriving from this first, as well as other similar exercises."I wish to explain to you just about that totality of cosmic substancesand properties inherent to the totality which, not only in our human lifebut also in the other external forms of life, is the chief actualizingfactor, and which, being the 'second substantial food,' is nothing otherthan the 'air' we breathe."The air, from which are eliminated the elements necessary for ourlife, to be transformed afterwards in our organism into other cosmicsubstances for the needs of the general universal actualization, likeevery definite cosmic concentration is composed of two kinds of activeelements with two properties, quite contradictory in their totality."One kind of active element has a subjective process of evolutionarystriving, and the other, of involutionary."The air, like every definite cosmic concentration, formed owing toall kinds of common-cosmic laws and to various ensuing secondarylaws depending upon the position and the reciprocal action, as in thegiven case of our planet, with the other large cosmic concentrations ofthe totality of substances, acquires and possesses a multitude of specificparticularities.