This is an open symposium and everyone is welcome to attend. This month, we have selected Talk of the Month #11: What is the Work and How is it Done. For the many of you who subscribed to this wonderful monthly publication - edited transcripts of talks given by E.J. Gold - these talks were a lifeline to the school, and provided a rich source of work material which could not be found elsewhere, as well as conveying the invocational atmosphere and intensity of a teacher working with his students.

All of the Talks of the Months are available directly from IDHHB.

This Talk of the Month focuses on what the great Work is and how a group might undertake to work together to accomplish it. On Sunday we can talk together and share any questions, experiences or thoughts we may have about it. See you then in G-Chat! (G-Chat download information to follow).

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HOW IS THE WORK AND HOW IS IT DONE (an excerpt)
"What is evolution?" asked O.
"Evolution is not for your own benefit, it just allows you more work of the same; the work is very boring, it is just like any other job, the danger of it is very great, and there is no end – unless you call an end – to your work.
"I have also mentioned to you that individual work is impossible until you can work in a group and that individual work is not desirable, nor is it possible until you no longer wish it. I do not think you will like it when you see it. I do not think you will like any of this. It is not pleasant. To do this work is the result of conscience toward the Absolute. If you have feelings for the Absolute, then you will do this work.
"If you see a baby crying, you pick the baby up, whether it is your baby or not; if you see a floor that needs to be mopped and you mop it; if you go to a restaurant the first thing in the morning and take down the chairs and set the tables for the people, without the thought of getting paid or having any favors given, just because it needs to be done, then perhaps you can sense, smell or taste why anyone would agree to evolution for the sake of the Work.
"If you are not the type who will pick something up that needs to be picked up or help a child who needs help, mop a floor that needs mopping, clear a table because it needs to be done, wash dishes because you happen to be available to do it, clean a bathroom – if you are doing this just because you want for yourself – you are in danger, and I will warn you, you could be damaged. I take no responsibility for you in that case; I do not offer evolution for your personal benefit.
"I am looking for people who are willing to stand underneath the altar and support it with their own backs, to become pillars of the altar, supporters of the throne. If everyone abandoned their posts, the temple would collapse.
"Suppose that pillars supported the throne and each of these pillars is what was called an angel, each frozen in eternity within its own chamber. In fact, each angel is forming its own chamber by itself, with its own volition. And imagine that some of these have fragmented, shattered or blown up. This work is in support of the throne. Really, even though just a beginning work, it is good practice for what comes next.
"But if you were not already looking for what comes next, you would never do this. It is not just another roadside attraction along the way to where you are going. The present is not just another place on the way to where you are going; it is your destination and your destination may change the next moment. Wherever you are, that is where you are going.
"Devote the next three or four years to the work-chamber, night after night... if you still do not understand in that time – and you will never understand by verbiage – then you might as well just give up and go do something to personally entertain yourself until the day you drop dead.
"Night after night after night such groups meet; nothing new occurs, no new revelation; nothing to amuse. The ideas exchanged are minimal. They just gather, do their work as in a factory, and then when they are finished, they go home. Three years, four years, five years is nothing to them. In three or four years you may be able to ask a real question, a serious question, based on your work not on conjecture.
"There is no way to warn you how it is going to be. There are no guarantees. Nothing may come of it. Three or four years down the drain. You will not know if there is any good effect, at least not from your own personal subjective view, that is to say, whether you are good for the work or not – by which I mean functional to the assembly – for at least five, more probably ten, years.
"The work-circle was the original function of monasteries, but knowledge is quickly lost; everyone forgets and then they just work automatically and throw out things that charge the chamber and quickly forget how to ascend. Soon it becomes like a social club for social, psychological and sexual reasons, serving something entirely different from its original intention.
"Look around – we need nine people to produce a working chamber, and there are more than thirty-five people sitting here, so do not feel obligated."
"I wasn't understanding the essence of what you were saying," O. said, "in the sense that this was not for our personal gratification; that this is work of service. What I understood was that if I spent three or four years doing it, then I would understand what you meant by this term or that term."
"Literal exact," G. said in reply. "Gather in a chamber, ascend to a corresponding chamber which looks exactly the same, only more so; different vibrations but the same chamber, nothing miraculous. Perform a certain type of work in the higher chamber; sometimes moving centrum, sometimes-triple centrum work must be performed. The purpose of many of our exercises is to show you how to work.
"The exercises themselves are not evolutionary, nor do they produce transformation. The evolutionary transformation comes from the work itself; the purpose of evolution is what is called enabling transformation, to enable you to continue your work, if it has real necessity to the Work.
"Whenever you decide to quit, then quit. Transformation is withdrawn and annihilation is given. It is not grace; grace is provided just by life, whether you choose work or annihilation, but Baraka, the feelings of conscience toward the Absolute, Baraka is the curse of the working class!
"You wish to know how to work? Then the chamber must be closed, cleansed, hermetically sealed, the same group must meet night after night, performing the same work night after night; during the actual working period, there may not be chatter; generally silence, stillness and intense concentration. It is actually in its most real form, the Shabat.
"The majority of karma is called organic karma. The non-organic karma – evolutionary karma – is called the curse because it makes someone lose their taste for their pursuit of pleasure. Without the pursuit of pleasure, life is boring until one learns how to really live. It takes time, and one must first give up the addiction to pleasure, entering a period of limbo, which we call purgatory.
"During this period the only force which makes you able to continue your work is Barak a. Do you have any other objection to what I am saying?"
"I wasn't objecting before," O. replied, "I wasn't understanding your terminology. My question was, what would happen if nobody worked – would the universe disintegrate, would everything cease to be?"
"Just experience it; like a mime, hold the wall up so it does not fall; put some energy into it. Feel the wall falling toward you. Now let it go. Is the wall falling?"
"No."
"It will stand?"
"Yes, it will stand."
"So if your work is not done, will the temple fall? Will the throne fall down? Can the throne possibly fall? The Throne of the King stands, whether the work is performed or not; the work is only a means to something higher."
"That is what I don't understand. I came 70 miles to be here, so obviously I have a taste for what you're talking about. In terms of doing this so I can have a boring next 50 years; I can't relate to that, so that's the essence of my misunderstanding."
"What would not be boring?"
"Well, to be in a state of mind where nothing was boring, I suppose. To be in that state of mind when you were talking about when you didn't want to leave the group, that's when you could leave the group."
"You are tacked up on the cross; it is very hard to masturbate – almost impossible. So if you lose your taste for masturbation and find other interests, maybe you will find something more interesting than masturbation. Otherwise, you are going to have to take your hands down or find a nun or an altar boy. You cannot come down from the cross. If you take the cross, you cannot come down from it. I do not mean a Christian cross; this has nothing to do with ordinary religion.
"There is no way you can descend from the cross, and you cannot masturbate. You must now develop something which would satisfy that same striving. Maybe if you transcend the urge to masturbate, to seek organic pleasures, you will discover something beyond masturbation, what we call The Work.

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