What We Are Obliged To Do: Thoughts on the Strivings. Introduction Throughout Gurdjieff’s tome, Beelzebub’s Tales to his Grandson , we are told that the inhabitants of this planet do not act in ways which are ‘becoming to three-brained beings.” Humans, rather than fulfilling their lawful role in the cosmic and universal scheme of Reciprocal Maintenance, according to Beelzebub, are subject to negative behaviors such as “cunning, contempt, hate, servility, lying, flattery and so on.” (pg. 384) How we got this way is described over and over as the “consequences of the properties of that maleficent organ, Kundabuffer, which unfortunately their ancestor possessed.” (pg. 119) Although relieved of this organ, we still operate in ways which do not recognize our place in the universe and so have no ‘genuine conscience.’ Gurdjieff postulated a ideal age, called the Ashiatian Epoch, after his divine messenger, Ashiata Shiemash. During this time, human organization changed for the better, so that all the “chiefs, directors and specialists’ “ were chosen by “objective merits which they personally acquired and which could be really sensed by all the beings around them.” (pg. 385) Gurdjieff makes it plain that whatever the manifestation of this personal work was, it was perceptible to others. Although not specified there, some examples are given before and after. For instance, and, of great meaning to those of us who strive to ‘work’, is the following. During this more spiritually appropriate era , humans began to ‘pay respect to each other only according to the merits personally attained by means of ‘Being Partkdolg-duty,’ that is by persons of personal conscious labor and intentional sufferings.” (pg. 384) Also ‘there ceased to exist there the two chief maleficent forms of their ordinary existence, namely, their separate independent communities and the division of themselves in these communities into various castes or classes” This had the effect that people now looked upon each other, not as members of separate group affiliations or ‘Thems” , but as beings ‘bearing in themselves particles of the emanation of the Sorrow of our Common Father Creator.” We can extrapolate from this statement that all the divisions, whether social or religious are false when one begins to follow the Strivings with rigor. For instance, Christianity, as well as all other major religions,