Faith And Understanding

This is an extract from George Gurdjieff's 'Meetings with Remarkable men', which I thought I'd share with you, as the words are resonating and timely.

On their travels through Asia, Gurdjieff and Professor Skridlov, a close friend, were staying at the World Brotherhood's monastery when they met an Italian man who had been at the monastery many years after a chance meeting. He was a wise man and they both sat often with him to listen to his wisdom. It is his words that struck such a chord within me, so here is his pearl.

The Words Of Father Giovanni

'Faith cannot be given to man. Faith arises in a man and increases in its action in him not as a result of automatic learning, that is , not from any automatic ascertainment of height, breadth, thickness,form and weight, or from the perception of anything by sight, hearing, touch, smell or taste, but from understanding.

Understanding is the essence obtained from information intentionally learned and from all kinds of experiences personally experienced.

It is a hundred times easier, as it is said, in the Gospels, "for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle" than for anyone to give another the understanding formed in him about anything whatsoever.

Understanding is acquired, as I already said, from the totality of information intenionally learned and from personal experiencings ; whereas knowledge is only the automatic remembrance of words in a certain sequence.

Not only is it impossible, even with all one's desire, to give to another one's own inner understanding, formed in the course of life from the said factors, but also, their exists a law, that the quality of what is perceived by anyone when another person tells him something, either for his knowledge or his understanding, depends on the quality of the data formed in the individual speaking'