Correspondence with
Dorothy Fitzgerald

I was very much impressed by what you said about John Greenleaf Whittier.¹ I am very strong on this man. The poem you quote is very good, and there are many others which have moved me. What is comparatively little known about Whittier is his active political and social interests. In reading about Whittier, I have been struck by the likeness of his last home to my own Four Oaks. I particularly remember that once, when he had returned from a drive, he said something to the effect that he had never seen on his drives anything more beautiful than this home spot.

We must always struggle, but the main struggle is to empty ourselves and live in a condition of holy insecurity, doing what we must, but leaving the development of the ultimate end to the Ground of Being.

I don't quite understand when you speak about hostility and confusion whether you mean in the country or in you. I believe that in our social state there is no more hostility and confusion than there always has been although sometimes unrecognized. If there is hostility and confusion in yourself, which I doubt, you must remember that we hold the ultimate treasure in earthen vessels. We are really living in a state of what has been called holy insecurity.

As to holy insecurity as I understand it this is absolutely essential to becoming, becoming in the sense of finding one's real self. This can never be done unless one gives himself up entirely to the will of reality, this reality represents Gurdjieff's HIS ENDLESSNESS. We must realize that this reality by whatever name called is the active portion in everything. In other words we must accept the facts of life actively and consciously not resentfully. The Lord's Prayer has at the beginning "Thy will be done" and this is the root of the matter. We must cooperate and give up all our personal notions. As you intimate, the first step in this process is recognizing the hostility in oneself. The Apostle Paul says that one cannot fight in the dark. He must know who his enemy is. A great deal of the confusion to which you refer is due to our not having, by awakening, recognized the basic conditions.

I believe that there is That of God in every man and the Water Of Life is free to all and nothing opposes the operation of That of God in us except our failure to become aware of this solar particle which is in us. This to my mind involves the absence of Real Wish. In Gurdjieffian terms this means the failure to awaken [the] magnetic center.²

This awakening must be complete, involving all three of our functions. There must be ultimate concern or nothing is accomplished. Understanding is a positive and wholehearted acceptance of the facts of life. This is substantially what Paul Tillich means by ultimate concern.³ It goes far beyond mental thought. Mental thought depicts only the structural "without" but not its functional "within." Thus science can depict an atom but not its functional potentialities. The situation is well set forth by the Chinese ideogram [for] "understand" which also may be read "stand under." The "stand under" means to comply with and accept the facts of life, excluding one's own personal notions. This leads to understanding.

The facts of life must be recognized and accepted if we are to have understanding. Not only the mental and emotional part of man must be brought in but the active part if the situation is to be complete. For instance, William James has said that if you have what you consider a real emotion you must do something about it.⁴ When the whole being is thus united, the being does not merely ruminate about something but actually the man places himself as a whole in the heart of the situation and actually becomes something.

¹ Ms. Fitzgerald had written, "Allan — by simple associative thinking Amesbury always brings to mind John Greenleaf Whittier. His thinking has always had an effect on me. Do you know the poem beginning

Our Friend, Our Brother, and Our Lord,
What may Thy service be?
Nor name, nor form, nor ritual word,
But simply following Thee.

And there my struggle begins."

² Note by Mary Brown: "Magnetic center is a combination of certain interests and emotional associations which makes him (a man) turn in a definite direction." P. D. Ouspensky, The Fourth Way. [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1957], p. 84, & also the index.

³ See Paul Tillich, Dynamics of Faith: Faith and Belief: What They Are & What They Are Not. New York: Harper & Bros., 1957. In chapter 1 Tillich defines faith as "the state of being ultimately concerned."

⁴ It is not clear whether James ever expressed this idea so directly, but Mr. Brown's pithy expression does convey a possible take-away from James's discussions in The Principles of Psychology, particularly the sections "EMOTION FOLLOWS UPON THE BODILY EXPRESSION IN THE COARSER EMOTIONS AT LEAST" (esp. pp. 453–54); "EMOTIONAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN INDIVIDUALS" (esp. pp. 474–75); and "THE GENESIS OF THE VARIOUS EMOTIONS" (pp. 477–85 passim).