According to Osho, Gurdjieff called the spiritual search “the work”: a rigorous, sober, transformative labor meant to ‘crystallize’ one’s being, because everything else is futile. He framed it as ‘a terror to behold, a joy to experience’—the disciplined process that closes the secret gap between all and nothing, forging an indivisible, enduring self.
It’s a serious, disciplined effort to make your inner self solid and real, scary at times but leading to deep joy and wholeness.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, in the book dialogues with gurdjieff, george gurdjieff is said to have described the work as: "it is more than all words, less than all dreams. It is a terror to behold, a joy to experience. It is the connecting ends of a great and secret circle closing the gap twixt all and nothing, it is the work." beloved master, how would you define the work?
In the middle of the night, when he had filled the ditch completely, he was so full of energy as he had never been in his life, even in the early morning after a full, deep sleep. And Gurdjieff called everybody: "Breakfast is ready." He was a great cook. The people who lived with him had never known such a great cook, because he had learned the art from different tribes, different nomads, and he had such a big kitchen... full of strange, weird things that people had never seen. And then the breakfast was served and Gurdjieff for the first time in the whole day spoke to Bennett. "Have you learned anything or not? Man has one layer of superficial energy that he uses in day-to-day work, and he thinks this is all. If he exhausts it... which is really rare, unless you make an effort to exhaust it.…
Osho, most religions have a negative attitude towards work, as if it is a punishment and a labor and not at all spiritual. Could you speak to us more about working?
And the most fatal misinterpretation has been that all affirmative teachings have been turned into negative ones. In fact, you live in a negative darkness. When Buddha speaks he speaks from a positive state of light; by the time his words reach you they have reached into a negative darkness. Your negative darkness changes the color of those words, the meaning of those words, the connotations of those words, the nuances of those words. And then YOU create the church. You create Christianity, Hinduism, Mohammedanism, Jainism; you create all kinds of "isms" and you create all kinds of religions. Yes, Parmananda, most religions have a negative attitude towards work because they are against life. Hence they can't be FOR work, they can't be creative. They teach renunciation of life -- how can they teach creativity? And they teach that life is a punishment, so how can they say life is…
[The sannyasin says that experiences he used to find heavy in the Gurdjieff movement, to which he used to belong, have now become okay.] It is far more difficult than Gurdjieff's work. People can manage work very easily because they are all workoholics; their whole life is full of work so there is not really much change. Maybe the direction changes but the same attitude, the same approach and the same work attitude remains. But to be playful is really difficult; that is a real change, a transformation, because it has to change your total life and its habits. So it looks easy when I say to be playful, that work is not needed, just play is enough. It appears easy, it is not. That is the really difficult thing: simple things are the most difficult things.
[A visitor says that he was at John Bennett's school in England, where they did Gurdjieffian exercises: Actually I left there quite confused -- I suppose there's no way out of that. I never had much ability to do any of the exercises or things like that.] It may not have suited you because Gurdjieff's work is for a particular type, the will type -- people who can work hard and very persistently, almost madly... because the whole thing depends on a very deep crystallisation of the ego. Once the ego is crystallised then further steps can be taken. But the whole Gurdjieffian system depends on you having a centre, a self. Ordinarily you don't have a centre. In fact Gurdjieff says you don't have a soul -- that is only a possibility; you may die without attaining it.
Beloved master, would you please speak more about the new phase of your work? Sri ramakrishna, sri raman, and even j. Krishnamurti, appear one-dimensional. Did gurdjieff attempt a multidimensional approach? Was it the cause of his being so greatly misunderstood?
In the Middle Ages the mystics disappeared behind the garb of alchemy; they had to disappear because of the Christians. The Christians were destroying all kinds of sources which were in any way in conflict with Christian ideology. They were not allowing anybody to practice anything else; even to talk about anything else was not permitted: "Christianity and only Christianity is the way." The mystics had to disappear. They created a beautiful deception, they created the idea of alchemy. They started saying, "We are alchemists; we have nothing to do with spirituality. All that is rot. We are seeking and searching for the secret of immortal life, of eternal youth. We are trying to find ways and means to transform base metals into gold." And just to deceive the public they made chemistry labs. If you had entered into an alchemist's world, you would have encountered jars and medicines and…