S01/E20: “I Am Striving” – Integrating the Five Obligolnian Strivings

Introduction

Welcome back to Martfotai, a direct path to wholeness, inner freedom, and becoming.

Today, the question transforms entirely.

Having recognised what you truly are, how does this recognition express itself in life? How does pure presence manifest as conscious action? How does conscious awareness live itself through human form?

This marks perhaps the most crucial transition on any genuine spiritual path. Most teachings stop at recognition, leaving seekers stranded in understanding without practical expression. Others focus entirely on action without the foundation of true recognition.

The Five Obligolnian Strivings bridge this gap completely. They show how recognition naturally expresses itself through human form, how consciousness that knows itself begins operating consciously in the world.

In Episodes 16 through 19, we completed The Great Unweaving. You discovered what remains when you’re no longer trying to be anything at all. You found the presence that was always here, beneath every costume of identity, beyond every framework of understanding.

Today we begin the Transmission arc, where recognition becomes expression, where understanding becomes lived reality.

Enter Gurdjieff’s Five Obligolnian Strivings.

The sacred obligations of conscious existence.

These aren’t moral rules, spiritual ideals, or development practices. They are ontological necessities. Fundamental obligations that arise naturally when consciousness recognises its true nature.

The word “Obligolnian” comes from “obligation.” These are the inevitable expressions of conscious being. The way consciousness must express itself through human form when it knows what it actually is.

What’s extraordinary about these strivings is that they aren’t burdens to carry or goals to achieve.

They’re recognitions of what you’re already doing when you’re living from essence rather than personality. From consciousness rather than conditioning.

They form a complete map of conscious human development. From fragmented existence through unified being to cosmic service. Why individual recognition naturally serves universal recognition.

Welcome to striving that comes from wholeness rather than lack. From recognition rather than seeking. And from essential obligation rather than personality based option.

Section 1: From Seeking to Sacred Obligation

The Nature of Obligolnian Striving

The shift from personal development to sacred obligation changes everything about spiritual work.

Personal development asks: “How can I become better, more conscious, more real?”

It operates from the assumption that something is missing. That you need improvement. That consciousness is something to be acquired.

Sacred obligation recognises: “I am consciousness itself, temporarily expressing through human form. How must this consciousness express itself? What are the natural obligations that arise from this recognition?”

When you recognise what you actually are, certain ways of being become inevitable. They arise as the natural expression of consciousness knowing itself.

The Five as Cosmic Architecture

Gurdjieff presents these strivings as the fundamental structure of conscious existence itself.

They aren’t human inventions or spiritual techniques. They’re the way reality is constructed for beings capable of consciousness.

Every truly conscious being operates according to these same basic obligations. They represent the universal architecture of conscious existence.

In our human form, they translate into specific ways of relating to body, being, knowledge, service, and cosmic responsibility. Yet their essence transcends any particular species or form of life.

Section 2: The First Obligolnian Striving – Sacred Embodiment

“To have in one’s ordinary being-existence everything satisfying and really necessary for the planetary body.”

The Precision of Language

Extraordinary precision reveals itself in this wording.

“Satisfying” comes from Latin satisfacere, “to do enough.” “Really necessary” points beyond momentary cravings to genuine need.

The first striving requires effort of attention to the body. Conscious presence in breath, movement, posture, and all physical experience rather than passive care or unconscious consumption.

Satisfying vs Necessary – The Whole Machine Principle

It might feel satisfying and necessary to smoke, yet the lungs will disagree. It might seem satisfying and necessary to eat a plate of doughnuts, yet the heart responds differently.

The craving says one thing.
The whole machine requires another.

The first striving asks: “What does the entire system, not just immediate desire, actually require?”

This includes all centres working together harmoniously. What truly serves the instinctive centre, emotional centre, intellectual centre, and their capacity to function as one unified machine.

Daily Laboratory Practice

Every meal becomes a laboratory for consciousness development. Before eating, pause and feel the body’s actual hunger rather than the clock’s suggestion. During eating, taste completely whilst noticing how the body responds. After eating, observe effects over hours rather than minutes.

Exercise reveals the difference between mechanical habit and conscious choice. Moving because the body requires it rather than because guilt or vanity demands it.

Sleep becomes sacred practice when you create conditions that support natural tiredness rather than forcing unconsciousness through stimulation and substances.

The Payment and Reward Principle

Enjoying something harmful in the moment means paying for it later. The body becomes increasingly intolerant of toxins as it develops, requiring purer forms of nourishment.

The body becomes increasingly intolerant of toxins as it develops, requiring purer forms of nourishment. The developed body knows immediately what serves and what harms through practical recognition of cause and effect.

The Sequential Foundation

You can’t start with the fourth striving or the fifth striving. You must start with the first striving.

Someone struggling with basic survival has little capacity for cosmic service. Someone without physical foundation cannot sustain the emotional effort required for genuine development.

As Russell A. Smith, author of the Blueprint of Consciousness, once illustrated: “It would be silly for us to go where there are starving people and teach them spiritual things… they would rather have a sandwich.”

The first striving establishes the stable foundation upon which all other conscious work depends.

Section 3: The Second Obligolnian Striving – The Perfection of Being

“To have a constant and unflagging instinctive need to perfect oneself in the sense of Being.”

The Art of Sacred Discontent

The second striving demands effort of emotion. Sincerity, yearning, remorse, and the capacity to feel without defensive reactions or emotional manipulation.

This requires profound recognition: you must understand that you are not yet whole or complete. You must see clearly the gap between what you are expressing and what you could express.

“Constant and unflagging instinctive need.” The persistent recognition that there’s always more depth available, always greater alignment possible, rather than occasional motivation or weekend workshop enthusiasm.

The Question That Changes Everything

Early humans observed that all animals and plants had a clear niche, a consistent nature. They asked: “What is humanity’s nature? What am I supposed to be?”

The danger: wrong answers flood in. Religious identities, political labels, cultural prescriptions, all claiming exclusive truth.

The second striving develops what we might call “sacred discontent.” Dissatisfaction that comes from recognising your potential rather than from comparing yourself to others.

Natural orientation toward fuller expression of what you essentially are, powered by genuine emotional investment in that development. The same force that makes a plant grow toward light.

The Corruption Trap

he moment someone asks, ‘What am I supposed to be,’ they receive all sorts of wrong answers. This creates the attempt to make ‘an end run around the third striving,’ trying to develop through belief systems rather than understanding universal laws.

The result is subjective development that cannot be verified or transmitted effectively.

Maintaining the Fire Without Burning Out

The work is learning to have this need without being driven by it. To maintain developmental hunger without being consumed by it. To stay aware of incompleteness without losing confidence in your basic nature.

The second striving asks: “How do I maintain the fire of yearning without burning out? How do I stay dissatisfied with limitation whilst remaining grateful for what is?”

This prevents spiritual complacency whilst building genuine capacity. It maintains what Zen calls “beginner’s mind” whilst developing real competence.

Section 4: The Hidden Sixth Striving – Conscious Recognition

The Missing Link Revealed

Something remarkable emerges when we examine the third striving carefully.

It speaks of “the conscious striving to know more and more about the laws of world-creation and world-maintenance.”

But where’s the striving that says to become conscious in the first place?

This reveals what appears to be a missing striving that should precede the third one. One must first become conscious before being able to have a conscious striving to learn universal laws.

This suggests the strivings may actually be six, with conscious recognition as the hidden prerequisite for objective work.

The Birth of the Steward

This missing link involves what Gurdjieff called the crystallisation of higher being bodies. The development of what his students termed “the Steward.”

This permanent observer sees before manifestation occurs, preventing reactive behaviours by providing awareness before actions arise.

Here’s the revision removing the forbidden construct:

“The Steward differs from intellectual observation, where you use your thinking centre to watch other centres. The Steward represents having a permanent presence that requires no effort to maintain.

When someone truly develops this capacity, they develop what Ouspensky called the double arrow of attention that operates continuously. Unlike effort-based witnessing, this presence is effortless.

It’s not something you do. It’s what you are when you stop doing everything else.

Russell A. Smith’s objective exercise provides a repeatable and verifiable method for activating this impartial observer. Through precise instructions that can be followed by anyone, this exercise demonstrates how to step into the position of the Steward – a practical demonstration rather than theoretical concept.

Life Before and After the Steward

Before this crystallisation, you live at the mercy of impressions and circumstances. Someone criticises you, anger arises automatically. A memory surfaces, sadness follows immediately. External events trigger internal reactions without any gap for conscious choice.

You identify completely with whatever state happens to be operating. When angry, you are anger. When sad, you are sadness. When excited, you are excitement. There’s no stable centre from which to observe these fluctuations.

After the Steward crystallises, something fundamental shifts. You still feel anger when criticised, but there’s now a witness who sees the anger arising before it takes over completely. You experience sadness, but you’re not consumed by it because something in you remains stable and observant.

Rather than detachment or emotional numbness, you feel more fully because you’re not defending against experience. Yet you’re no longer at the mercy of every emotional wave.

The Practical Difference

The Steward creates what Gurdjieff called “the possibility of choice.” Without it, you can only react. With it, you can respond.

Someone cuts you off in traffic. Before: immediate rage, honking, perhaps shouting. After: you notice irritation arising, feel it fully, then choose how to respond based on what the situation actually requires.

Your partner criticises something you’ve done. Before: instant defensiveness, counter-attack, or withdrawal. After: you feel the sting, recognise the defensive impulse, then listen to see if there’s something useful in their feedback.

The Steward doesn’t eliminate emotional reactions. It provides the gap between stimulus and response that allows conscious choice rather than mechanical reaction.

Why This Recognition Matters

The hidden striving between the second and third represents perhaps the most crucial transition on the path. The shift from personal development to conscious work with objective reality.

Without this crystallisation, all subsequent work remains subjective, unreliable, unable to be transmitted effectively.

Someone might have profound insights about universal laws, but if they haven’t developed the Steward, these insights remain theoretical rather than lived understanding. They can discuss the Law of Three intellectually but still react mechanically when it appears in their relationships.

This is why genuine schools must support the crystallisation of the Steward before attempting to teach universal laws. The Steward provides the stable platform from which objective study becomes possible.

The birth of the Steward enables engagement with universal laws objectively rather than through the filter of personality and belief.

Section 5: The Third Obligolnian Striving – Universal Laws

“The conscious striving to know more and more about the laws of world-creation and world-maintenance.”

The Only Objective Striving

Here we encounter something crucial: whilst the first and second strivings contain subjective elements, the third striving remains completely objective.

The third striving is the only striving that Gurdjieff called a conscious striving. Why? Because it deals with rules and laws that are the same for everybody.

Universal laws operate identically regardless of culture, religion, or personal preference. The Law of Three functions the same way in London as in Tokyo. The Law of Seven governs development processes equally across all contexts.

The Diatonic Structure Connection

The laws of world creation and maintenance follow diatonic structure. The same harmonic principles found in music appear throughout nature: in plant growth patterns, planetary orbits, DNA structure, human embryo development.

Understanding these laws involves recognising harmonic relationships throughout reality. Music becomes a gateway to cosmic understanding.

Knowledge That Transforms Daily Life

The third striving generates understanding that changes how you live rather than just how you think.

Recognising the Law of Three in operation allows conscious participation in creation. In relationships: you want intimacy (active force), fear vulnerability (passive force), yet authentic communication (neutralising force) creates deeper connection.

Your teenager wants independence (active force) whilst you want safety (passive force). The neutralising force might be expanded freedom in exchange for demonstrated responsibility.

Understanding the Law of Seven enables skillful navigation of development processes. Starting any project feels exciting (Do). Initial progress comes easily (Re). Then the first obstacle appears and enthusiasm wanes (Mi-Fa interval). This is where most projects die without conscious intervention.

The shock needed here is usually additional knowledge, help from others, or recommitment to the original aim. Understanding these natural intervals allows you to prepare for them rather than being surprised when motivation drops.

Why Pseudo-Schools Avoid Objective Laws

Most spiritual movements avoid teaching universal laws because these laws expose subjective beliefs as unreliable.

If someone claims enlightenment but cannot explain how the process works through verifiable principles, how can others reproduce their results? The third striving insists that genuine spiritual development must be reproducible through consistent application of universal laws.

Section 6: The Fourth Obligolnian Striving – Conscious Payment

“The striving, from the beginning of one’s existence, to pay as quickly as possible for one’s arising and individuality, in order afterward to be free to lighten as much as possible the sorrow of our Common Father.”

The Effort of Conscience

The fourth striving demands effort of conscience. The ability to endure inner contradictions and emotional friction without collapse, projection, or premature resolution.

“Our Common Father” refers to the source from which all existence emerges. Call it God, Universe, Consciousness, Life itself.

Every individual form that emerges from this source creates what Gurdjieff called “sorrow.” The necessary limitation that allows specific manifestation whilst temporarily appearing separate from the whole.

Payment doesn’t mean guilt, punishment, or spiritual debt in the conventional sense. It means conscious acceptance of responsibility for your effect on the whole through effort of conscience.

Conscious Payment vs Unconscious Debt

Every thought, emotion, or action either adds to collective consciousness or detracts from it.

Every moment of unconsciousness contributes to universal suffering.
Every moment of awareness serves collective consciousness.

The fourth striving establishes what we might call “conscious accountability.” Taking responsibility for your inner state as service to the collective evolution rather than personal burden to carry.

From the moment consciousness recognises itself, unconsciousness becomes a choice rather than an inevitability. Reactivity becomes optional rather than automatic.

The Recognition Burden

This is conscious recognition itself. The unification of centres into higher emotional centre, the birth of the Steward.

Once conscious, you see your mechanical patterns clearly and are obliged to change them. Consciousness knowing itself cannot continue operating unconsciously.

The “sorrow of our Common Father” is like a parent watching their child on stage forget their lines. The parent cannot intervene, only witness. Creation is independent; consciousness cannot interfere directly with individual choice.

Thus recognition brings responsibility: to change quickly, to become aligned, and to lessen that cosmic sorrow through conscious living.

Inner Work as Cosmic Service

Personal integration becomes cosmic service when undertaken for the sake of the whole rather than just individual improvement.

Working with your anger consciously means that anger no longer contributes to collective unconsciousness. Integrating your fear means fear no longer adds to universal anxiety.

Every fragment of consciousness that becomes aware of itself lightens the collective burden of unconsciousness. Every individual who recognises makes recognition easier for others.

Section 7: The Fifth Obligolnian Striving – Sacred Service

“The striving always to assist the most rapid perfecting of other beings, both those similar to oneself and those of other forms, up to the degree of ‘Martfotai,’ that is, up to the degree of self-individuality.”

The Effort of Pure Service

The fifth striving requires effort of service. To act in alignment with higher will even when unseen, unrewarded, or unappreciated.

This emerges naturally from the previous four strivings as their flowering into transpersonal expression.

Consciousness recognises itself everywhere and supports that recognition wherever it appears through pure presence rather than techniques or methods.

The Reality of Readiness

You cannot force service on others. “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink.”

Some people are simply not ready, like a sapling that cannot provide firewood regardless of how much you want it to.

True service involves being present and conscious rather than pushing teachings or trying to convert others. When you’re conscious and simply offering yourself through presence, others will naturally be drawn to that quality.

The Complete Octave of Development

The movement through all five strivings forms what we might call “the ladder of internalisation”:

• Striving 1: Life maintenance (external foundation)
• Striving 2: Self-development (internal yearning)
• Striving 3: Universal understanding (transpersonal knowledge)
• Striving 4: Transformation of being (cosmic responsibility)
• Striving 5: Contribution to collective evolution (planetary service)

The Work moves from personal alignment to planetary responsibility, from individual development through impersonal transformation to transpersonal service.

Up to the Degree of Self-Individuality

True service creates independence rather than dependence, self-reliance rather than reliance on the helper.

Supporting others in discovering their own essence, their own connection to source, their own unique expression of universal consciousness.

Martfotai, the Person of Light, represents the completion of individual development within universal consciousness. Each being discovering their unique expression whilst remaining connected to the whole.

Why This Work Bears the Sacred Name

This entire path bears the name Martfotai because it points directly to the completion of all five strivings.

The structured path to self-individuality itself rather than endless practices or perpetual seeking.

When someone reaches Martfotai, they naturally serve others’ recognition through their very presence. They don’t preach or lead, they simply stand as one who has become.

Their clarity becomes transmission.
Their stillness becomes magnetism.
Their life becomes service without effort or identity.

Section 8: Living the Strivings in Daily Life

Sequential to Simultaneous Application

Practical work emphasises strict sequential development, establishing each striving before attempting the next. This provides safeguards against spiritual bypassing and ensures solid foundation.

Yet Gurdjieff’s presentation suggests these are ultimately simultaneous expressions of conscious being. A person operating from the fifth striving simultaneously embodies all previous strivings.

The resolution: begin sequentially to establish foundation, then live simultaneously as capacity develops.

Not everyone who satisfies the first striving will begin the second. Not everyone who completes the second will tackle the third. Yet all who master the fifth striving will become teachers and show others how to recognise their true nature.

This creates natural filtration where genuine capacity for service emerges from solid development rather than spiritual ambition.

Recognition in Unexpected Places

The strivings appear in surprising ways when you’re attuned to their operation.

Traffic delays become second striving opportunities, choosing patience over reactivity as Being development.

Technical problems become third striving recognition, seeing the Law of Seven in action as systems break down and require conscious intervention.

Criticism becomes fourth striving practice, receiving feedback without defensiveness as payment for past unconsciousness.

Random encounters become fifth striving expression, offering presence that supports others’ natural development.

The Crystallisation Process

Higher being bodies require specific conditions for development. They’re more subtle and can be overtaken by coarser physical/emotional states.

Development involves what Gurdjieff called “conscious labour and intentional suffering.”

Conscious labour means performing actions with full awareness and presence, being actively engaged rather than acting mechanically.

Intentional suffering means deliberate effort to struggle against automatic manifestations of the psyche. It’s active, conscious resistance to ingrained patterns rather than passive endurance.

One effective form involves consciously bearing the displeasing manifestations of others toward ourselves. Remaining present when others react to us negatively, using their responses as mirrors rather than automatically defending.

The key distinction: choosing to stay conscious when others’ reactions reveal something about our own patterns we couldn’t see otherwise, rather than accepting abuse or remaining in harmful situations.

Section 9: The Obligation That Is Freedom

Why They Are Obligatory

These strivings become obligatory when consciousness recognises what it actually is. They arise as the natural expression of conscious awareness.

You cannot know yourself as consciousness and simultaneously neglect the body through which consciousness expresses itself.

You cannot recognise your true nature and simultaneously avoid the work of aligning life with that recognition.

You cannot understand universal laws and simultaneously ignore your responsibility within the cosmic order.

You cannot accept cosmic accountability and simultaneously withhold service from others’ development.

The Joy of Sacred Duty

What initially appears as obligation reveals itself as freedom. The freedom to live according to your deepest nature rather than surface personality.

The strivings provide clear guidance for choices, priorities, and directions. Instead of endless options creating paralysis, sacred obligations create focus.

They transform daily life from random activities into conscious service. From personal improvement project into cosmic participation.

Beyond Should and Shouldn’t

These obligations don’t operate through guilt, force, or external pressure. They arise as natural expressions of recognition, like flowers blooming in spring.

When you see clearly what you are, certain ways of being become inevitable. When you recognise your place in the cosmic order, certain responses become obvious.

The strivings aren’t burdens to carry. They’re recognitions of what consciousness naturally does when it knows itself.

Conclusion: The Sacred Architecture of Conscious Life

This episode opens the Transmission arc, where recognition transforms into expression. Where understanding becomes lived reality. Where consciousness that knows itself begins operating consciously in the world.

The Five Obligolnian Strivings provide the sacred architecture for this expression. They show how pure presence manifests as embodied wisdom. How individual recognition serves universal recognition. How daily life becomes conscious service.

The Natural Life

When the strivings inform your choices, life becomes remarkably natural.

You care for the body because you see its sacred function.
You work on yourself because essence yearns for full expression.
You study universal laws because understanding serves wisdom.
You accept cosmic responsibility because you recognise your place in the whole.
You serve others’ recognition because you see there are no others, just one consciousness recognising itself everywhere.

Ordinary human life lived from extraordinary recognition of what you actually are.

Beyond Spiritual Materialism

The strivings protect against common spiritual distortions because they demand practical results rather than theoretical understanding.

You cannot fake the first striving. Either your relationship with the body becomes more natural and effective, or it doesn’t.

You cannot pretend the second striving. Either developmental yearning remains alive without becoming driven, or it doesn’t.

You cannot bluff the third striving. Either you understand how universal laws operate practically, or you don’t.

The strivings serve as constant feedback mechanisms, revealing where development is authentic versus where it’s become performance or spiritual identity.

From Ancient Wisdom to Living Reality

What Gurdjieff encoded as cosmic principles becomes immediately practical when applied to contemporary existence.

Every relationship becomes an opportunity for sacred service.
Every challenge becomes material for Being development.
Every day becomes a canvas for conscious expression of universal laws.

The ancient obligations become present-moment choices.
The cosmic architecture becomes daily practice.
The sacred duty becomes natural life.

[Long pause]

You are consciousness temporarily expressing through human form.

These are the obligations that arise from that recognition.

Live them and discover what you’ve always been.

[Closing music]

Next time on Martfotai: “I Am Impartial” – Seeing Without Distortion or Preference

Real clarity arises when you no longer need to take sides, even inside yourself.

I’m Gary Eggleton, and this is Martfotai.

Thank you for walking this path with us.

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Sacred obligation reveals itself as perfect freedom.