Gurdjieff Brasil

His Father Commandments

 
My father had a very simple, clear and quite definite view on the aim of human life. He told me many times in my youth that the fundamental striving of every man should be to create for himself an inner freedom towards life and to prepare for himself a happy old age. He considered that the indispensability and imperative necessity of this aim in life was so obvious that it ought to be understandable to everyone without any wiseacring. But a man could attain this aim only if, from childhood up to the age of eighteen, he had acquired data for the unwavering fulfilment of the following four commandments:

First - To love one's parents.
Second - To remain chaste.
Third - To be outwardly courteous to all without distinction', whether they be rich or poor, friends or enemies, power-possessors or slaves, and to whatever religion they may belong, but inwardly to remain free and never to put much trust in anyone or anything.
Fourth - To love work for work's sake and not for its gain.

G.I.Gurdjieff, «Meetings with Remarkable Men»