Psychological Commentaries

How Slander Poisons the Slanderer

Now in ordinary seen life, where people, even religious people, do not practically work on themselves each day, they accumulate a substance which cannot lead to unity. For example, they criticize one another, talk scandal privately, slander each other secretly and hate each other - in short, make every kind of internal account against one another. They are mechanical people, and just because they do not work they remain mechanical. As a result, there is formed a thick, heavy, psychological substance which Gurdjieff called by one of his strange words - something like Tzarvarno.  "This substance," he said, in so many words, "accumulates in life and makes all right relationship impossible. This substance has no Holy Spirit in it. It is dead."
He said "Tzarvarno" was due to the unnatural outward and inward manifestations of people to one another and was an accumulation of evil actions, thoughts and emotions, of which people do not understand the consequences. The Work calls it simply "making internal accounts." Now remember, the slightest, unworked on "evil" towards another mounts up and makes this thick, dead substance. Where? In oneself. One may suspect how often illness is due to this dead substance, daily formed. Now everything the Work teaches us to practice, to make effort about, is to prevent this heavy dead substance from forming itself. A good daily and nightly incinerator for negative states is necessary.

(Maurice Nicoll - Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky)