Mme. de Salzmann
When I think of myself and the rest, the others, I realize that others please me, make me afraid, threaten me. But I need them. It is by my reactions that I can see both myself and the others, not just me. In order to know what I really am, I must go from discovery to discovery… The only bad is ignorance, the only good, awakening. Yet everyone wants to direct or be directed as he likes, to judge and criticize before seeking to understand. This attitude is fundamentally false. What we have to seek is not to impose an order, but to enter into an order, an order that existed long before us. —The Reality of Being – 51. To organize
Gurdjieff
“Every man has a certain feature in his character which is central. It is like an axle round which all his ‘false personality’ revolves. Every man’s personal work must consist in struggling against this chief fault…
“The study of the chief fault and the struggle against it constitute, as it were, each man’s individual path, but the aim must be the same for all. This aim is the realization of one’s nothingness.
“The struggle against the ‘false I,’ against one’s chief feature or chief fault, is the most important part of the work, and it must proceed in deeds, not in words. —In Search of the Miraculous —Chapter 11
C.S. Nott
Chief Feature in each one of us is a key to our actions and manifestations. It tips the scales. Always the same motive moves Chief Feature. It is like the bias in bowling, which prevents the ball going straight. Always Chief Feature makes us go off at a tangent. It is something mechanical…and is found in the emotional part of essence. It gives the tone pitch to the three centres, and forms the pattern of our wishes. It arises from one or more of the seven deadly sins, but chiefly from self-love and vanity… —Further Teachings of Gurdjieff, C.S. Nott
A.R. Orage
Vanity, fear, etc. —these are some of the backgrounds of chief features. They will manifest according to the seventy-odd types. But even within these types, the features will not be exactly similar. For each point on the globe and each minute marks a different configuration of the planets… —Gurdjieff’s Emissary in New York —Orage Meeting, Thursday, 25 June 1925
The chief feature and the essential wish are identical. It is the mainspring of action. Why do you do things? For what do you do them? For example, Gurdjieff, when challenged to tell a distinguished Russian general what his chief feature was, said: Fear. The general finally admitted that he did fear to face his wife, unless he had been heroic. This fear in connection with his wife was the motor behind all he did. —Gurdjieff’s Emissary in New York —Friday, 20 March 1925
John Pentland
Your chief feature is the focus of all your mechanicalness. It represents all that keeps you in darkness…
Don’t believe anyone who tells you your chief feature. You work. A great teacher can give you guidance, but he can’t do the work for you. The best step for you is to try to come to a more deep separation, something which is under all this talk about chief feature… something separate from our feelings. —Exchanges Within, John Pentland
P.D. Ouspensky
People’s chief weaknesses are very different, and if we can resist something that another man cannot resist, because it happens to be his chief feature, this difference in weaknesses gives us the illusion that we can ‘do’… It is interesting that one can hardly ever find one’s own chief feature, because one is in it… But we can find what stands side by side with it, although it is not it…
Q. Can one ever find the chief feature by oneself?
A. At a certain moment in organized work it will come out, or you may be told. But if you are told, you will not believe it. Or sometimes it is so obvious that it is impossible to deny it, but with the help of buffers one can forget it again… You must come near to it yourself. When you feel it yourself, you will know. If you are only told, you may easily forget…
What we must study now is all our points of view, habitual emotions, the way we think, what we invent. These are all results of chief feature or chief features, for there may be two or three features which are the most important, not necessarily only one… As a theory, false personality in most cases turns round one axle, and that axle is chief feature… (F)rom one point of view it is an advantage, because if he can conquer this feature or weakness he can in one stride achieve many things… But chief feature is not always definable. Sometimes… in one person you can see it, in another not. But false personality you can see…
Q. Does chief feature always make decisions at important moments?
A. This is the best definition for it—that it always makes decisions…
Q. Are there many varieties of chief feature?
A. There are strange varieties and there are classical ones. One very common feature, described in many places in the New Testament, is when we see other people’s faults, but not our own. Then certain kinds of self-pity are very common… —The Fourth Way —Chapter 7
‘If you can look at the pattern of your whole life,’ (said) Ouspensky, ‘you may be able to see the same sort of problem continually recurring…and ending in the same sort of impasse. If you manage to do this, you are likely to be in the neighborhood of your Chief Feature. Understand that your Chief Feature is an axis in yourself, around which a great many other things are revolving, and that explains why the fruits of your chief weakness are continually recurring… —A Study of Gurdjieff’s Teaching, Kenneth Walker