Foreword IN his introduction to Meetings with Remarkable Men, Gurdjieff puts into the mouth of an elderly, intelligent Persian a long tirade against all forms of modern Western literature, which he says contain nothing substantial for the perfecting of humanity. “It is all exterior,” the Persian says… “An Asiatic, having lost to a lesser degree the ability to feel, that is to say, standing closer to nature, half-consciously feels and instinctively senses the [Western] writer’s complete lack of any knowledge of reality and of any genuine understanding of the subject he is writing about.”
Jean Vaysse was born at Le Mans in France in 1917. Following his father and grandfather in the medical profession, he became one of the best surgeons in Paris, well-known for his care and ingenuity, a pioneer in the development of open heart surgery and transplantations. He was a polished speaker and lecturer. With dark, searching eyes and a somewhat hard, pitiless face, even a brief acquaintanceship with him left an impression of great intensity. His patients trusted him. He was deeply sensible of their anxiety and spent hours discussing their health and talking with them about Far Eastern art and his collection of antiques. In his spare time he was an abstract painter, as well as a student of metaphysics. As he himself says about Gurdjieff’s ideas, which he met through a student friend before any of the books were published, “whoever approaches them for the first time without prejudice feels touched to the core by a truth which he cannot deny and called upon to put in question all the values his life has been based on until then.”
Vaysse’s book is based on Gurdjieff’s own books and Ouspensky’s In Search of the Miraculous but it must not be dismissed as a mere paraphrase of Ouspensky. In Search was written and meticulously revised by Ouspensky over a period of at least ten years in order to give as honest and objective an account of the teaching as possible. Probably his achievement will never be equaled. In any case it was intended to preserve the teaching in as pure and impersonal a form as possible.
But we are going too fast. Learning the new language, as Jean Vaysse says, is the first payment that has to be made in approaching our work toward awakening. Vaysse adds the word “presence” to the new words that are needed.
that I am here now in this immediate space in contact with a life-force which supports, enlightens and unifies my presence.
From this point of view, the knowledge we are searching for is much more than what can be written in books or told in words. It is an immersion in experience.
Faith of consciousness is freedom Faith of feeling is weakness Faith of body is stupidity.
Introduction
THE ideas we shall deal with here represent only one aspect of the teaching transmitted during his life by G. I. Gurdjieff. They acquire their real sense only as one of the elements of a greater whole upon which—for every man who recognizes its necessity—the work of inner transformation is based.
Questions
Being endowed with thought, how can a man go through life without questioning himself? and, being endowed with feeling, how can he remain indifferent to such questioning?
III Once a man has realized that he ought to get to the root of things, and that he can no longer be content with living in accordance with the demands of the ordinary world, then a question arises about what he himself is and about the meaning of his own life. In the beginning, the way he searches and the way he puts this question to himself can take very different forms. But finally, beyond the partial aspects, which appear at first to be the only ones, does not all search in this field come to be seen as one—that of knowing, behind appearances, what is true? And, in the end, is not every man who asks himself this question, definitely and essentially a seeker of the truth?
From the moment a man turns toward himself like this, questions himself, and struggles to understand both what he is and what he could be, it becomes clear that he can turn in either of two ways and have two kinds of so-called “activities,” two kinds of life going in different directions. One is entirely oriented toward the outside, and is centered chiefly on the efficiency, usefulness and productivity of “the individual” within the framework of his society.
The other way to turn, the other kind of “activity,” concerns the inner life: it is centered above all on the “realization” of the latent possibilities contained within the individual. It develops the faculties and qualities characteristic of his human nature, and hence the accession to (or return from) levels of life or worlds of which outer life has no suspicion. This way of living, while very little known in western civilization, is what has been specially developed in certain strata of Oriental civilizations. For those who take it up, its development demands even more time and care, more learning, research and methodical studies, than are required by outer life.
But we have no need at all of such moments in order to live, and, if we want to feel comfortable again, we have only to forget them—which we are all the more prone to do because everything around us is so arranged as to encourage this forgetting. However, if a man wants to be fully himself one day, the re-establishment of the lost balance between his two natures and his two ways of living is certainly the first work which is necessary. This is why all that follows is addressed only to those who are attentive to these special moments, and, wishing to be clearer about what they stand for, accept the ensuing discomfort in their lives.
in the resurgence within us of our second nature which was neglected or forgotten in our upbringing, and for the inner contradictions and conflicts which this resurgence engenders. Nothing is ever given free—to accept this inevitable discomfort is the first payment man must make when he sets out in search of himself. In this search there is perhaps a risk of oscillating between an imbecilic bliss (which would be deliberately ignoring the discomfort) and a kind of masochism (giving it undue importance—has it not been called by some, metaphysical anguish?). The only right attitude, a difficult one to be sure, is somewhere between the two—recognition of the precise nature of our uneasiness and our inner conflict, such as they are, in the hope of resolving them.
But all this accumulated information, these experiences and the conclusions drawn from them, belong to other people. For us, all this is theoretical. We may perhaps believe it insofar as it does not conflict with our experience or with ideas we have already acquired; but, in fact, the conclusions of others can really convince us only to the extent that we discover them again for ourselves. Books can help guide our experience, but we can never be sure except of that which we have verified and lived through ourselves.
It gradually becomes clear that the study of man has no meaning unless it is placed in the context of life as a whole and of the whole world in which he lives. The study of man is inseparable from a living study of the cosmos. Thus, obstacles never cease to arise, and this search, which at first may appear straightforward, opens up finally onto horizons of which a man could hardly have had the slightest idea when he began.
But to these moments of awakening to a state of presence far greater than the one that is usual to him, he practically never gives attention, because he thinks that his presence in the waking state is the fullest and most complete that he is capable of. It satisfies him and is enough for him. He may perhaps seek to improve it, but the idea does not even occur to him that a higher presence is possible for him and could be searched for. Even if he were to suspect its quality, he is not capable of understanding correctly the flashes of self-knowledge given him by certain shocks in life, so long as his attention has not been drawn to what these represent in reality.
On the whole, a very great mechanicalness prevails throughout the totality of our ordinary lives, without our even realizing it. Ordinary man is, in fact, a totally conditioned machine, but he does not see it, and if he is told so he does not wish to believe it.
We live in self-forgetfulness, and it all happens without leaving any trace, life lives itself, but there is no “fruit” for the one who lives
To struggle with this habit of talking, which we all have in one degree or another, is also an excellent means of self-observation available to us at all times; the rule of silence is part of certain monastic disciplines. Struggling with the habit of talking and against all unnecessary words forces us to see what it is that arises in us and uses language, and in this way we may collect important observations as to what we are made of.
To the extent that he observes himself and his self-knowledge increases, he gradually becomes aware how completely mechanical his ordinary life is and how totally powerless he is in the face of it, so that no direct change is possible for him. These mechanical processes are what they are and neither observing them nor analyzing them can bring anything more. Little by little he understands that any change in these processes can never be more than a limited one, and that real change, or rather transformation, can come to him only by going beyond these ordinary processes through the development of an inner being that will be truly himself.
Personality, built up by the environment in which we live, constantly interferes, and prevents the expression of our being. The functions, supported by the body, are at the service of the personages that we have acquired, and not of our inner being, our real self, which can no longer make itself heard.
The state of deep sleep has a significance and importance which ordinary man does not as a rule suspect. In ancient traditions, the Hindu tradition in particular, it occupies a major place as a state in which the subject no longer experiences any desire and has not a single dream, and thus may be regarded as a return to the primordial state of serenity. The being (the essence) withdraws into the primordial formless realm—the source of future manifestations in the other states—where, all conflict of form having died down, it enjoys in “bliss” (Ananda) the fullness of itself and returns in itself to the realm of pure being (Ishwara).
Because it keeps enough consciousness of its own possibilities, it retains a connection with its form of being and is able to return to its own way of manifesting in the realm of form.
Fully developed beings can consciously break this connection when they choose. We are told that they know, or choose, the moment of their physical death.
And in such a state an individual man, having returned to the confines of universal, non-individual, unmanifested Being, enters there into resonance with the essential life forces which re-equilibrate and regenerate him.
Theoretically, dreams can be divided into three principal categories: associative (or reactive) dreams, compensatory dreams and symbolic (or archetypal) dreams. But there are many other kinds, such as premonitory dreams, or telepathic dreams, the significance of which it would be interesting to examine from the point of view of the breaking or non-breaking of the connections between centers. Inevitably, one tends to relate the three principal categories of dreams to the three levels of ordinary human life: associative dreams correspond to mechanical life, compensatory dreams correspond to a personal aspect colored by emotion, while symbolic dreams may offer obscure glimpses into the life of the real self, when the higher emotional center (working on another level) is able to make itself felt, owing to a sufficient disconnection between the lower centers, which ordinarily hide
The effect of these new impressions is that the mental apparatus, now active again, sends toward each of the centers the impulses that result from its associations; they are the responses of the mental apparatus to the requirements of the moment, and these mental responses, in which the centers play no direct part, constantly substitute for the responses of the real I, which is asleep. The result is that the mental apparatus on its own takes on an appearance of reality and continuity; and it assumes an illusory personality which takes the place of real individuality, that of the I.
So long as his real I is asleep, he cannot understand that the authority and the decisions of his mental apparatus are those of a usurper.
influence of the surrounding world—the education received, the established habits. This “life” is entirely reactive and associative; it may remain purely functional or take place under the domination of one or other of the
the essence, with the real I, in fact receives nothing, plays no part, remains asleep, does not live, and does not grow. The real I is disconnected from it all. From the point of view of a real I and real individuality, the waking state is a passive state. The incessant activity of the functions makes life possible, but this activity goes on in the sleep and passivity of the I.
They live in sleep without knowing it and do not under stand that the first thing they have to do is to wake up, that is, succeed at any cost in awakening their I.
The quality of daily life, activities and behavior thus remains entirely reactive, and the three great fundamental faculties which might provide meaning only exist there as yet in a reflected form: a fragmentary consciousness (only in one center or dominated by one center) changing from moment to moment; a dispersed attention moving from one thing to another or on the contrary caught by some “fascinating” aspect; a “will” that is constantly weakening or taking the form of sporadic whims. Finally, a variety of personages occupy the stage, all made up of the same familiar collection of qualities and functions, but differing in each case in their number and proportion: now in constant change, now held captive by some idea or some fixed emotion, they are always without any direct relation to what could be a stable and permanent I. But man does not spontaneously see this state, and even if he is told about it, it is the last thing he is willing to accept. When the facts of life make it obvious, he immediately finds some explanation (a good excuse or what may perhaps be better called a “buffer”) which allows him to go on with his dream and to continue taking himself for what he is not. Yet such a state is worse than sleep. A man asleep is entirely passive and can do nothing. In the waking state, on the contrary, a man can act, and the results of his so-called conscious actions have a repercussion on himself and his environment.
He does not see it even when it is pointed out to him because he has no idea what could be his “self”: he does not know himself and, for better or worse, is satisfied with his present state. He has very little useful information about himself: in its place there are dreams and imagination. Dreams and imagination about what one is and what life is are two other major obstacles. The power of imagination in particular keeps a man in a constant state of actual hypnosis in which the false ideas which he invents about himself, and the self-love with which he defends them, prevent him from ever having a chance to see himself as he is.
Lastly, in this state a man has none of those properties that he so readily attributes to himself: unity in himself and, in life, clear consciousness, will, freedom, the ability to do.
A man’s individuality, his real “I,” can only start to grow from his essence: it could be said that the individuality of a man is his essence fully grown up.
This amounts to saying that the only place where such growth is possible is in a school where a man can work on the awakening and development of his real I. Failing these conditions, if a man is left to himself and to his own initiative, little by little the flashes of truth die out and the glimmers of true consciousness fade away. His personality takes up all the room. All hope of individual evolution is finally lost for him. In spite of possibilities of another order, he is, and will have been, only a specimen of higher animality; and having served the ends of great nature, all that is left for him is to “die like a dog.” Ordinary man, man the machine, is only dust and to dust he returns.
For ordinary man, this is an experience in which one senses in oneself immediately and completely how little one knows, how many contradictions there are in what one knows, and what is the direction of the movement toward “Truth.” In a completely realized man, this experience unites with the objective Great Knowledge, characteristic of the fourth state.
The four states of presence possible for man in his life are individual states, however vast and formless they may be. This last state is the supreme Realization (the Buddhist paranirvana, the cosmic mind of Zen, the Yahweh in the Kabbalah, the unconditioned Absolute of metaphysics—beyond all form and all individuality).
Centers and functions
What we hear spoken of as ecstasy, samadhi, cosmic consciousness, illumination, and so on, may refer either to one state or the other—sometimes to experiences of self-consciousness and sometimes to experiences of objective consciousness. Paradoxically, it is about the highest state, objective consciousness, from which we are totally cut off, that we are generally given more information.
As a matter of fact, the functions are the expression in life of the centers, their manifestation; taken all together they give each human being his own particular character. The functions are more accessible to us than the centers, so self-study must begin with them: they are our way of responding to life, and therefore we can observe them.
Each center, in reality, pervades the whole body, penetrating as it were our entire organism. At the same time, each center possesses its own center of gravity, or brain, which forms in us a distinct and independent “being-localization.” These localizations manage the potential of the vital energy, undifferentiated at first, which is made available to each being at birth or assimilated by him during his growth and life.
Such ideas, when we first hear them, may strike us as fantastic. However, if we are attentive to them, we may recognize that we have in ourselves intimations which should be enough to prompt us toward a deeper study of the sources of our vital energy and the conditions for refining the qualities of our life. Thus we are well aware that a coarse and heavy diet does not tend to improve the quality of our work or the subtlety of our psychic perceptions. We also know that the environment in which we live and the degree of refinement of our social circle are important factors in the development in ourselves of the corresponding qualities of understanding.
However, in a case of pressing necessity and provided the importance of the work is deeply felt, a man can go beyond even this fatigue and find a new supply of energy. Through the center being directly connected to the large accumulator. The large accumulator contains an enormous amount of energy, and when a man is connected to it he can make apparently superhuman efforts.
This taking in of energy by the human machine, and the way in which these energies can be made digestible, gives us a glimpse of a complex inner alchemy, which, to be understood, requires special and difficult study.
These two automatic processes of association need to be known by any man who wishes to have his machine serve his own evolution.
The idea is that by repeatedly observing these functions, it becomes possible for us little by little to be aware of the characteristic features of each of them at their source, that is, in the moment the function arises from the center as an original impulse, and thereby we may perhaps arrive at knowledge of these centers,
that is, a knowledge of our own essence, without which there is no self-knowledge. But this is not possible at the beginning, and to avoid the risk of serious mistakes observation of ourselves can only begin by observing our four primary functions: intellectual, emotional, moving and instinctive.
The emotional center becomes capable of real feeling only when a stable presence, relatively independent of the surrounding circumstances, has been developed. This presence is built up around a feeling of self which animates it and gives to its life at every moment a sense of being what it is. Schematically, we may say that emotions belong to personality and feelings to the real being—I.
So long as a stable and thoroughly coherent presence has not been established, and is not there to direct it, the work of
the moving center cannot be effective in ordinary conditions or participate in a real “doing,” an authentic act.
Hope for a genuine change can come only with the realization of a true I, of a stable unified Presence, in which the center of gravity of one’s life has been permanently established. The shocks and the real positive or negative feelings of ordinary life are not suppressed as such, but, for a man who has realized this permanence, they no longer affect his presence at the same level. Actually, this change takes place in the region of the higher emotional center, and is accompanied by the true feelings, which have no negativity, in this center. The feelings constantly induced by life, which would otherwise become subjective emotions, are correctly placed within an objective framework. There is no negative feeling at the level of the higher emotional center, nor, as we have seen, any negativity within this center, any more than there is in the higher intellectual center. Neither is there normally any negativity in the sex center.
Thus each center is made up of a selective (or intelligent) aspect, an affective (or motivating) aspect and a mechanical (or executive) aspect.
Last but not least, we come to the important point which self-observation can enable us to discover, namely, the large part played by the wrong work of centers and the obstacle this raises for our evolution. This wrong work has three aspects which, moreover, interfere with and have repercussions on each other.
On the one hand, in ordinary man there is a slowing down of the lower centers, especially the emotional center, which work far below their normal speed. On the other hand, the functions are constantly putting out an excessive expenditure for whatever work they have to do, and this results in a considerable waste of energy. Finally (but this is more difficult to catch in ourselves), substitutions are continually taking place. The centers substitute for each other, with the result that some do not do the work they should do, and it is carried out by the others. There are also substitutions of one level of functioning for another; certain centers (particularly on account of slowing down) begin to use the energy of other centers, an energy which is not suitable for them, and with which their proper function is done badly, or with which they begin to do useless, even harmful, work. In observing our functions in ourselves, and consequently the work of centers, we can come to know little by little their correct work and their incorrect work.
When the emotional center works for another center, it brings with it its sensitivity, its speed, its intensity and above all an egocentric quality that gives it away more than any other sign does. When it works instead of the intellectual center, it produces nervousness, feverish and unnecessary haste, exactly where, on the contrary, calm judgment and deliberation are called for. When it works instead of the moving center, it produces impulsiveness and a tendency to be carried away rather than making the right movement. In the place of the instinctive center, it produces exaggerated effects and too much or too little activity. When the intellectual center works for another center, it produces discussion, equivocation, and slowing down. It also brings with it its taste for dreaming and imagination. Finally, it produces a certain inflexibility, for, on the one hand, it is the slowest of all the centers and, on the other, it is not subtle enough to perceive the particularities and more delicate aspects of a situation, still less to see how the situation progressively changes. Thus its interference ends up by producing inappropriate or faulty reactions, attitudes which are rigid, too generalized and often completely fixed.
The moving center, when it tries to take over the work of another center, produces its regularity, its power, its submissiveness, its talent for imitation, but it also brings with it its laziness, its inertia, and its inclination for what is habitual and automatic. Often it does the work of the intellectual center, or, still more often, continues (by inertia) work that the intellectual center had begun; in fact, the intellectual center, while carrying out some work which it has undertaken, often allows itself to be distracted by something that captures its attention—sometimes by some other useful work, more often by dreams or imagination; then the moving center takes on the work instead, or continues alone with the work that the two centers had started together. This results, for example, in mechanical reading or mechanical listening where we read words (sometimes aloud) or hear phrases without understanding their meaning: we remain unconscious of them and do not even remember them. The attempts of the moving center to feel are perhaps less obvious, yet they also play a very important role; for example, they introduce mechanicalness and habits into human relationships and all that this entails.
When a man commits himself to work on himself with the aim of developing his higher parts, it is almost always necessary to put the sex function back in its proper place. Its energy—which is the finest—and a proper functioning of the center are indispensable to this work: and if it proves to be impossible to put the function back in its right place, there is then an insurmountable obstacle to all progress.
To sum up, the wrong functioning and interferences of the centers, which are habitual, represent such a waste of energy and loss of quality that for most people a whole preliminary work of putting in order is generally necessary before real work on oneself can begin. To economize the energy of our organism and to balance and regulate the work of the centers whose functions constitute our life is the first stage in re-establishment of a rhythm of right work and of contact with the higher centers which is the basis for all evolution of man.
Essence and personality
From this point of view, we are divided into two parts. One part is what we are born with; it contains the seed of the qualities rightfully belonging to us—our capacities, our incapacities and more generally everything that has been given to us as our own. We shall call it our “essence”—a term which cannot fail to arouse discussion in present circumstances but which is here restored to its original meaning, the one which is used by Gurdjieff. Essence, almost entirely potential at birth, develops to a certain degree afterward and becomes what we shall also call man’s “being”—his inner being, the core of his “individuality.” This development, to the extent it takes place, is the development of our real being; it corresponds in degree to our experience of reality in the world, and by this fact it is almost entirely real (keeping in mind among other things that it still contains an unrealized potential).
The other part is what we have acquired—all our knowledge and most of what attracts us, most of our behavior. This is non-existent at birth and is formed in us gradually due to all that the surrounding conditions superimpose on us. For this reason, Gurdjieff uses the term “personality” (from Latin persona, a mask) for this part of us. Its development is as a rule only remotely connected (according to what we have taken in) with the reality of the surrounding world and in certain cases may even be made up almost entirely of imaginary notions.
In an ordinary man, these two parts are almost always so inextricably mixed as to be indistinguishable. However, both of them are there, each with its own life and “significance.” Both are necessary for life; and if a man wants to know himself, to know “his life,” he must first become able to differentiate between them in himself.
A man’s personality is “what does not belong to him”; that is, he mirrors the movements, words, and the language which have been taught him, all the traces of external impressions recorded in the memory of his different centers, sensations, the feelings
he has learned, the ideas he has acquired by imitation or by suggestion—all this is personality.
Their development in the course of life may take place or may not take place. They may be accentuated or modified. This development of essence, its growth, represents the “being” of man. Essence and being in man are “what are really his,” what really belong to him and go with him everywhere. As opposed to personality, essence cannot be lost and cannot be modified without, at least, the tacit consent of the man in question.
Changes in essence are slow and call for much more work, more time and more depth than changes in personality.
In one way or another, “consciously” or “unconsciously,” whether wished for or not, the human being acquires, little by little, many tastes, feelings, ideas and judgments which are artificial, that is, which are not related to those that would be natural to him and would express his own essence. All these traits acquired by education, by imitation, by opposition and by imagination come to take up more and more room; and to the degree that this artificial personality increases, essence manifests more and more seldom, more and more indirectly and feebly.
This substitution comes about unconsciously as a man grows up, due to his natural inertia, and because of a lack of sincerity with himself—a complacency constantly reinforced by the usual education. Our functions are ceaselessly answering to life, but it is easier for us to reply as the outer world requires than to experience our actual situation and reply “out of one’s soul and conscience.” Eventually, it becomes easier to go back to answering in the way that was already learned than to question everything each time and adapt the response according to what one feels inwardly to be right, as if for the first time on each occasion. The formation of habits leads to this taking the easy way out. Thus “by force of circumstances” various personages are built up in us who get into the habit of dealing with each of the usual situations in which we find ourselves. Because it is easier to imagine than to act and easier to believe than to look and see, these personages gradually get saturated with illusions which make contact with reality more and more remote. And because these personages have such contradictory relationships, both with each other and with reality, that there is a danger of generating destructive shocks, this entire structure is protected by a system of “buffers.”
Moreover, this formation, our personality, is jealously guarded by a “feeling” which is supported by them as much as by ourselves, namely, a hypersensitive self-love, which insures that the formation and its functionings manifest through each of our personages according to rigidly fixed ideas and images.
His personality claims to know all about himself, about life, God, the universe, everything; but in himself, in his essence, in his being, he knows nothing about any of it and has not verified anything.
Thus the common tragedy of man in our civilization is that his personality has taken the place of being. It forms a shell that isolates the essence and prevents anything from reaching it any more.
Essence is not able to react. When an impression reaches it, essence confronts it immediately with lived experience, “understands it” and, according to this understanding, responds.
Essence lives and feeds on this process of understanding and response by which it assimilates the content of new experience; it is thus that essence grows. But its way of responding is much slower than the reacting of personality. In man’s usual state, personality seizes on an impression as soon as it is received; it reacts immediately. Nothing has time to reach essence, which in a certain sense is robbed, “short-circuited.” Each time, by however little, personality grows and essence declines. Finally, personality forms a matrix that takes up all the space, while essence sleeps and atrophies inside. Deep down in a man, as long as it is not yet too late, a feeling may appear now and then and warn him of the situation he is in—if he turns himself toward himself, he may feel that his inner responses, those of his essence, are truly his own and are sincere, whereas his habitual reactions, coming from his personality, seem to belong to an alien world outside himself and to obey rules or laws of this outer world which are not his own.
Usually, man is completely unaware of this situation and, if his life goes by without too serious difficulties, he may never become aware of it. In order that something may change, has life must have disappointed him deeply enough to put into question his personality and the whole structure which it represents. To tell the truth, it would be enough for him to see himself as he is, inescapably to see himself reacting as he does to different circumstances with his contradictory personages, each of which lives for itself, egotistically, according to what pleases it with no regard for the rest, and even less for reality. To observe himself like that would make him see that something is false in his way of life and that his values are upside down. But a whole system of dampening devices—excuses and buffers—well-established in his person prevent him from seeing this. The excuses are different from buffers in the sense that they are an artificial development, always changing, always different and depending on what is expedient at the moment.
Buffers are permanent automatic mechanisms within the structure of personality, with whose development they have been built up. They have made its development possible and thus it is they who maintain its predominance. This mechanism, however, is accidentally sometimes held in check by life—at times of violent shock (such as an accident or the death of a loved one) or at a moment of great disillusionment or of a new and unforeseen situation. If he is still able to have a certain sincerity, a man is then led to put in question again his usual way of living, and for a moment he feels a need to “understand.” A special interest awakes in him to understand the causes of his situation, and for an instant he finds again in himself the wish to understand his being and to understand his life.
It is an interest for oneself, turned toward the understanding of oneself, whereas ordinarily all the interests of man are turned toward the externals. It is personality’s interest in this latent demand for being that gets covered over—an interest turned toward himself, but nevertheless an interest like others; and a man generally has many interests of this sort in his personality. Such an interest for self, belonging to the person, is entirely different from self-consciousness, which develops in an awakened man and belongs to his being. However, interest in oneself, properly guided, may lead to self-consciousness.
The magnetic center cannot take this place in man except at the expense of other elements of his personality, because, being turned toward the inside while everything else is turned outward, it is not compatible with them; it is a question of one or the other. A struggle ensues between these two aspects of the person; this is always a difficult moment and the struggle can remain undecided forever. Nevertheless, if a man’s magnetic center receives enough impressions, if the other sides of his personality, resulting from influences created in life, do not give too much resistance, and if the wish to be, rather than to make a good appearance, begins to awaken in him, the magnetic apparatus does start to have an influence on his orientation; it can become his principal interest and oblige the man to turn around and even bring him to set out toward the source of its influence. Essence and being enter into all this only to the degree that they are mixed with personality. Up to this point a man has no means of his own of distinguishing them and of working on them.
he free himself from personality. The personality finds its sustenance in imagination and lying. When the lies in which man lives are fewer and the imagination has become weaker, personality itself will soon weaken and stop exercising control. Being is set free and a man can then come under the control either of his own “fate” or of a line of work directed by the will of another man. In this way, man can be brought to the point where will can be formed in him, a will capable of confronting both accident and, if necessary, “fate.” “Fate” is a word whose real meaning has been lost. In fact, fate is connected with essence and its development. The essence of each man has its own particular characteristics linked with the original influences (often held to be planetary or astral) which form his “type” and govern his principal tendencies.
Man’s “destiny” is usually not fulfilled because his being is not developed; personality has taken over its place and put man under the law of accident.
The development of individuality and the appearance of a permanent “I,” which is the first stage of the normal development of man, results in the growth of essence and the harmonious development of being and personality.
Awakening to oneself and obstacles to awakening
A man must have an exceptionally active inner consciousness, an implacable inner demand, and a wish to be himself which nothing can suppress, or he must have been beaten and disappointed by life to the point that its value and meaning have come into question; otherwise he has no reason to undertake a study of this kind.
This “self-forgetting,” this powerlessness to remember what is truly himself, is indeed his most characteristic trait and probably the true cause of all his behavior. Not having any fixed basis in himself, his theories, his opinions and his behavior are constantly changing, and are totally devoid of precision and stability. He has only an artificial stability supported by associations educated into him, settled habits and conditioning stemming from mental concepts such as “honor,” “honesty,” “duty,” and law, artificially created by the surrounding culture. These have no relation, except accidentally, with what would be his real honesty and his true honor, if he were conscious of himself.
For the man who has undertaken to be himself, identification is in fact one of the most terrible enemies. At the very moment he believes he is struggling against it, he is still in its clutches. The more he is interested in things, and particularly in work on himself, the more he gives them his time, his interest, his attention, the greater is the risk of identifying with them; thus a man who wishes to free himself from them must be constantly on guard. He who wishes to work to be himself must first remember himself and stop identifying. So long as a man identifies or is susceptible to identification, he is the slave of everything around him and almost anything can happen to him.
First of all, it must be understood that the sleep in which man lives is not ordinary sleep, but a hypnotic sleep. Man is as if hypnotized, and throughout his life this hypnotic state is continually maintained and strengthened. Everything happens as if there were a combination of “forces” for whose sake it would be useful and profitable to keep man in a hypnotic state in order to prevent him from seeing the truth and understanding his position. These are the forces of “life on earth” which require that man “feed” the earth, make it live, and that he not separate from it, which he might be inclined to do if he became aware of what in reality he is.
This tale is a very good illustration of man’s position. The vital force which animates him throughout life, rather than feeding the capacity for understanding through right seeing, feeds instead a capacity for imagination resulting from a hypnotic seeing which falsifies the appearance of things. Instead of a vision of reality in which he is part of a whole, in a place that is his own, man sees himself as an autonomous being ruling over this totality according to the flow of his own fantasy, and his fantasy usurps the place of his true consciousness.
Under its sway, men lose the sense of what they are, and soon—just as with “drugs”—they can no longer free themselves from it—they believe it is useful, even necessary, for their development while in fact it is a hindrance. If men could really see their true position and become aware of what it is, this view would be completely unbearable for them. They would seek a way out and they would find it,
because one exists. But the force and the attraction of imagination, which keeps them in this state of hypnosis, prevents them from seeing what Gurdjieff calls the “terror of their situation.” It prevents them at the same time from seeing the way out and prevents their escaping en masse, which would risk upsetting the balances of life.
Thus to awaken, for a man, means first of all to be dehypnotized—to escape from the power of imagination and to see things—and himself—freshly as they really are. In that lies the principal difficulty; but there is also the certainty that such an awakening is possible, because this hypnotic state comes from a deviation that is artificial and superimposed. Hypnotic sleep is not justified by organic laws, and without giving up the conditions necessary for the maintenance of organic planetary life, to which in one part of himself he belongs, a man can wake up. Theoretically he can, but practically it is almost impossible because as soon as a man opens his eyes, and awakens for a moment, all the forces that keep him asleep begin to act on him again with tenfold energy, and he falls back immediately into sleep, very often dreaming that he is awake or awakening.
The first film is interpretive; it appears when a man is attentive to the external world and tries to adapt himself to its demands and its modifications. Starting from the necessarily relative perceptions he has of the world and from the relatively appropriate responses which he makes, he constructs an interpretive film which is more or less copied from the real world: it would be better to say more or less far removed from that real world.
The second film is imaginative, and it appears as soon as a man is attentive to his inner psychic world. It is fashioned entirely from materials of this psychic world which are received and originally recorded from elements of reality, but in forms more or less distant from it. This second film thus has no direct correspondence with outer reality, thus no confrontation with reality can have spontaneous control over it; it may be completely cut off from reality, wandering wherever it pleases.
These two films, the interpretive and the imaginative, are being superimposed on real perceptions all the time by man’s psychic activity. Both films are ceaselessly being fabricated by the mixing of these present perceptions with old material, and both are recorded simultaneously on the various rolls. In fact, without our knowing it, simple perception, interpretation and imagination are always present in us simultaneously. We live with the three kinds of seeing close together and nothing takes place in one of the three which does not cause a reverberation in the two others.
man were a completed being, knowing himself as he is, able to see reality directly and respond to it fully and harmoniously so far as he himself is concerned, his life would flow without shocks with the satisfaction of a task that has been fully assumed. He would have a constant vision of things as they are, a constant sense of the relativity of everything; and so these films would serve no purpose. But because man is an incompletely developed being, incapable of facing the realities of life and responding to them only in a partial or confused way, he would live in discord, anxiety and remorse for not being what he ought to be if his imaginative power did not ceaselessly wedge in this double film. Thanks to these films, man justifies himself for being what he is, stops noticing all his shortcomings, or, at least, finds them “normal” and stops suffering in relation to them.
Actually, imagination in all its forms is one of man’s worst enemies and one of the main obstacles to his awakening and his evolution. A man can undertake nothing so long as he does not begin to see things simply as they are. Then he can acquire an understanding and only later does an authentic “imagination” become possible for him, that is to say, that law-conformable “previsioning” which is indeed one of the major faculties of a man worthy of the name.
These three fundamental feats—man’s forgetfulness of his real I, his automatic fabrication in its stead of imaginative constructs, and man’s constant identification of himself with everything that happens to him—explain in large part his ordinary way of living.
In place of the real I which is absent (it is asleep), a surface personality develops with many facets more or less connected with one another, but often contradictory to each other or turned in different directions. These are the different little I’s, each one of which enables a man, according to rules that have been learned, to face one of the…
What gives man the illusion of his unity or his integrity is partly the sensation he has of his physical body which always appears to stay the same, and partly his name, by which he is “known” and which in general does not change in spite of the succession of different personages. Moreover, there are a certain number of mechanisms and habits implanted in him by education or acquired by imitation and, last but not least, the system of buffers which neutralize in him all sense of self-contradiction. Always experiencing the same physical sensations, hearing himself called by the same name, finding the same habits and inclinations in himself that he has always known, not feeling his inner contradictions and never putting anything in question, man imagines that he is always the same. In reality, aside from external appearance, there…
Man is weak. He is as weak as a child and in his own being, in his essence, he is really nothing but a child. In moments of sincerity he knows this, and events in his life make him feel responsible for feeling it. But instead of recognizing this and undertaking the necessary efforts (but he does not know which efforts, and he is lazy) and asking for the help that he needs (but he does not know where or how to ask, and he has lost the necessary simplicity), a man prefers to defend before and against everything this picture he has of himself and his “ideal” of “what he ought to be.” Every time this image, which he believes in, is threatened, he feels as if he were personally threatened. He reacts immediately in its defense in exactly the same way as a child defends a doll. This senseless attachment to an image, which is largely fallacious and on behalf of which all his…
As this image is generally “idealized” and somewhat exaggerated, he always considers that he is not appreciated enough, that he is not given his proper place, that people are not polite enough to him, that he is not appreciated at his true worth. How people look at him, what they think of him, takes on an enormous importance in his eyes. All this worries and preoccupies him; he wastes his time and energy on conjectures and speculations. If he feels a little bit misunderstood he becomes suspicious, distrustful, even hostile toward others and in this way he develops a negative attitude which only aggravates his situation. But things can go still further—a man can feel himself thwarted by his surroundings, by the society he lives in, the events that…
When a man becomes aware of his real situation in a sudden glimpse of truth or is affected by an unexpected shock which blocks his protective mechanisms, such as a
sudden setback or serious danger, he has an opportunity for an instant to understand two things. The first thing is that he has none of the qualities which he prides himself on; and the second is that he is dual, that he has two natures and that behind the ordinary man sleeps a real I which contains the possibility of these qualities and which the shock has awakened for an instant. For an instant he sees that a surface personage, an artificial “personality,” is in charge, and, endowed with illusory powers, is answering in his stead to everything in life. In these glimpses he can understand that he needs to become truly himself and that if he really “wishes” to become himself, henceforward only one thing is important—to wake up, to attain self-awakening, the awakening and growth of being. And he can see that this personality, this personage which he believes in so firmly, which takes up all the room and under whose influence he lives, is the chief obstacle to the awakening of the real I.
Each moment when he sees that he is asleep, and that to become himself he must at all costs wake up, a man, if he is honest, experiences in himself the need to dislodge this personality which gets in his way and he begins to struggle against it. From then on, a new scale of values appears for him—all that helps his awakening is good for him, all that prevents it is evil. The only real “sin” for such a man comes to be whatever prevents his inner being from awakening.
A man who wants to awake must look for other people who also want to awake and work together with them.
People can invent all kinds of methods and means, they may even undertake “asceticisms” and torture themselves; but all these efforts will be useless if they are not carried out in “a certain way,” precisely that way which will lead to transformation. For many people, this is the most difficult thing to understand. It is not every effort that leads to awakening. Efforts of a special kind are needed and these vary according to the surrounding conditions and the time.
But for a long time the work itself will be only a preparatory work. So many things in the human machine are broken or rusty that preliminary repairs are first necessary. Real work toward awakening can only be undertaken later on a solid and balanced foundation.
It is only in beginning to “remember himself” that a man really begins to awaken: in trying to rediscover, collect, and live what, behind these personages, he feels to be more truly himself. This effort brings an “impression of oneself” with a special “taste” which cannot be mistaken—when a man experiences it, he begins to be less imposed upon by his personality. What this effort actually implies cannot be described in words:
The first step in self-study: inner quiet, relaxation, sensation of oneself, and the attempt to remember oneself
THE ideas presented in the preceding chapters may have shown us how superficial is the “knowledge” we have about ourselves and our lives. If we want really to live our life, perhaps we now feel the need to deepen our understanding of it.
Even our “prayers” turn out most often to be directed outwardly, to an external God.
We need to develop in ourselves a strong, lucid, stable presence, one that is capable of achieving its goals, making use of the forces that can help us, and resisting the forces in life that carry us
away. And, first of all, we need to be continuously and fully ourselves in front of and in the midst of life.
What we need immediately is a stable sensation; that is, we need to develop a more steady and longer lasting consciousness of our body and its situation. The first idea which then comes to mind, of course, is to try to follow this awareness of our body in the midst of the movements and activities of our life.
We must therefore put ourselves in conditions where complete relaxation is possible. Having realized this is necessary, we must promise ourselves to try it every day, so far as this is honestly possible, at least once, if not twice, and perhaps even, more.
Accepting to sacrifice one’s ordinary life to the extent necessary for freeing oneself from it and trying to have it serve the work on oneself.