THE FIVE OBLIGATIONS (five strivings for daily effort)

1. Preserve your life. Be just to the body; satisfy its needs; treat it as a good master treats a good servant.

2. Find your place in the scheme. Understand the meaning and aim of existence. Know more and more concerning the laws of world creation and world maintenance.

3. Develop yourself. Constant, unflagging need for self-perfection in the sense of Being. Improve your being. Make being efforts.

4. Help others to develop. Assist in the most rapid perfectioning of other beings.

5. Pay back. To lighten the load of the Creator, pay back in gratitude and effort for the fact that Evolution has helped you to get this far.

From the book The Unknowable Gurdjieff by Margaret Anderson.