Henriette Lannes
The education of the moving function begins very early, by imitation. Very quickly, we see the infant return our smiles, reach out to us with his arms, take and hold objects. Imitation and repetition allow the child to accumulate increasingly complex series of movements, which…become completely automatic…
(C)hildren very quickly seem to prefer imitating the lives of adults beyond anything else… Thus…and always with the unconscious complicity of its parents, the child begins to play at life and falls prey to a very strong tendency to continue doing so. “Perhaps the most difficult thing,” Mr. Gurdjieff said one day, “is to stop playing.” —This Fundamental Quest – The Role of Influences: In the Beginning
Maurice Nicoll
In life we try to be like something; we are always trying to be like something, always trying to imitate, always pretending to be something we are not. If a man were to find real ‘I’ in himself, which lies vertically above him in the scale of being, he would no longer be like anything but would be himself, what he is. —Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky. Maurice Nicoll, Volume 1
I cannot borrow someone else’s understanding… (H)is understanding and my understanding are two different things. They are both unique, individual. For example, I cannot borrow my teacher’s understanding… Remember that a growth of understanding can only come when new knowledge is applied to your own being… It would be no good my trying to imitate what my teacher does. That would be external imitation, and would become part of the False Personality… —Commentaries, Volume 3 – Great Amwell House, November 2, 1946 – A Note On Buried Conscience
I may, indeed, obey wonderfully and become a star-pupil, but I will remain asleep in myself before the eyes of Heaven. I will be nothing but an imitation person, however good and exemplary. This is the danger.. My understanding will be unawakened. I will be empty within, not fed by internal meaning. For if I do things by imitation and example and not from a developing understanding and perception of truth, I will remain dead inside, like an empty house… —Commentaries, Volume 5, Amwell, 20.8.53 – Unfinished Paper
A.R. Orage
Try to grasp the principles involved; not imitate somebody else’s behavior. Understanding the principles, try to act out of oneself.
Proposing to become a butcher in order to have that man’s wisdom would be no more foolish than trying to imitate any man’s external behavior; e.g. Gurdjieff’s. —Gurdjieff’s Emissary in New York: Talks and Lectures with A.R. Orage 1924-1931 —Tuesday, 13 May 1930
Jesus never made a model of himself…(H)is followers…would have striven to imitate him instead of living their own lives… They would worship the exponent…instead of practicing the method… Christ, said on one occasion: “Follow yourselves and you will find me. Follow me and you will lose both me and yourselves.” —Gurdjieff’s Emissary, Monday evening, 3 February 1930
G.I. Gurdjieff
“A group is a big thing. A group is begun for definite concerted work, for a definite aim… We shall prepare ourselves so as in the course of time to become a group. And it is only possible…by trying to imitate a group such as it ought to be, imitating it inwardly of course, not outwardly…
“But there are many imitation ways, imitation groups, and imitation work…
“(V)arious ‘occult’ and theosophical societies and groups’…work simply consists in aping… (I)mitation work of this kind gives a great deal of self-satisfaction. One man feels himself to be a ‘teacher,’ others feel that they are ‘pupils,’ and everyone is satisfied… —In Search of the Miraculous, Chapter Eleven
“… One of the chief properties of the moving center is its ability to imitate. The moving center imitates what it sees without reasoning… —In Search of the Miraculous, Chapter Four
Jean Vaysse
The…moving center…has no initiative of its own, and by nature it remains inert, but it obeys at once whatever is there to call upon it to serve. This explains why it is often difficult…to distinguish between what belongs to the moving center, and what comes from the part that is making use of it…
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. —Toward Awakening, Centers and Functions
Maurice Nicoll
As regards ourselves, we have to imitate a higher state. We have to be images of God. This may seem fantastic but I do not mean it to be so… He is comparable with the Man “created in the image of God”. He is an image: he is not in direct contact. He is not dead, nor is he a “living soul”, but in-between. —Commentaries, Volume 2 – Birdlip, February 27, 1944 – The Enneagram
G.I. Gurdjieff
(W)hen…a man who already has his real I, his will, and all the other properties of a real man, pronounces…the words “I am,” then there always proceeds…in his…”solar plexus,” a…”reverberation”…like a vibration, a feeling, or something of the sort…
If the ordinary man, not having as yet in himself…the natural reverberation, but knowing of the existence of this…correctly and frequently pronounces these same…as yet empty words, and will imagine that this…reverberation proceeds in him, he may…through frequent repetition gradually acquire in himself a…theoretical “beginning” for the…forming in himself of these data.
He who is exercising himself with this must at the beginning, when pronouncing the words “I am,” imagine that this same reverberation is already proceeding in his solar plexus. —Life Is Real Only Then When ‘I Am,” Fifth Talk …December 19th, 1930