Gurdjieff, Views from the Real World:
Man is a plural being. When we speak of ourselves ordinarily, we speak of ‘I.’ We say, ” ‘I’ did this,” ” ‘I’ think this,” ” ‘I’ want to do this”—but this is a mistake. There is no such ‘I,’ or rather there are hundreds, thousands of little ‘Is in every one of us. We are divided in ourselves but we cannot recognize the plurality of our being except by observation and study. At one moment it is one ‘I’ that facts, at the next moment it is another ‘I.’ It is because the ‘I’s in our- selves are contradictory that we do not function harmoniously. … When a certain level of being is reached we can really control every part of ourself—but, as we are now, we cannot even do what we decide to do.
Gurdjieff:
There are several states of consciousness:
1) sleep, in which our machine still functions but at very low pressure.
2) waking state, as we are at this moment. These two are all that the average man knows.
3) what is called self-consciousness. It is the moment when a man is aware both of himself and of his machine. We have it in flashes, but only in flashes. There are moments when you become aware not only of what you are doing but also of yourself doing it. You see both ‘I’ and the ‘here’ of ‘I am here’— both the anger and the ‘I’ that is angry. Call this self-remembering, if you like. Now when you are fully and always aware of the ‘I’ and what it is doing and which ‘I’ it is—you become conscious of yourself. Self-consciousness is the third state.
As long as a man does not separate himself from himself he can achieve nothing, and no one can help him. … No one can help him in this remembering, in this separation of oneself from oneself. A man must do it for himself. Only then, from the moment a man has this separation, can another man help him.
Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous:
Even a momentary awakening of conscience in a man who has thousands of different I’s is bound to involve suffering. And if these moments of conscience become longer and if a man does not fear them but on the contrary cooperates with them and tries to keep and prolong them, an element of very subtle joy, a foretaste of the future ‘clear consciousness’ will gradually enter into these moments.
There are many qualities which men attribute to themselves, which in reality can belong only to people of a higher degree of development and of a higher degree of evolution than man number one, number two, and number three. Individuality, a single and permanent I, consciousness, will, the ability to do, a state of inner freedom, all these are qualities which ordinary man does not possess.
Rodney Collin, Theory of Conscious Harmony
August 4, 1944
‘Constantly perform action which is duty . . ‘ (Bhagavad Gita)—this seems to be the way out of the impasse where man’s impulses and personal ambitions constantly push him into activities which still further feed these same ambitions and impulses.
November 12, 1951
How does desire grow? The wider the vision the greater the desire. We desire little because we see little. As we see more, desire grows. If we see enough, it becomes uncontainable.
Death and Rebirth
All work for development has two sides—something old in man has to be killed and something quite new has to be born. Preparation for the one and the other must go side by side, and they require quite different work. It can happen (though very rarely) that the old can be killed in a man without the new being born; then he is lost, at sea, at the mercy of every outside influence, open to ‘seven devils worse than the first’. It can also happen that the new can be born without the old being killed; then all his new perceptions, understandings, powers will be flavoured with a personal outlook, will serve his chief weakness. The balance is very tricky. This is exactly why school is necessary at a certain point.
Further Reading
Read more on the development of Real I in P.D. Ouspensky’s book, In Search of the Miraculous: www.amazon.com/Search-Miraculous as well as the writings of G. I. Gurdjieff. For another issue on the theme of distinguishing the lower centers from higher states, see: https://fourthwaytoday.org/category/lower-centers-and-higher-centers/