Beelzebub
“As for their psyche, its fundamental traits have precisely the same peculiarities in all of them…
“(C)ertain properties in each… regardless of where they arise and exist, are completely…abnormal and unbecoming to the essence of any three-brained being whatsoever.
“Of these abnormal properties the most terrible one for them is ‘suggestibility.’ —Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson, Chapter Chapter 14, Introducing a perspective that promises nothing very cheerful
Maurice Nicoll
(I)n ordinary life…we have to overcome suggestibility. It does not require much self-observation to notice how one is extraordinarily suggestible…to what one hears or reads and sees or is told. You listen to a speech that you think very powerful, and then you listen to an opposite speech, and you think that is very powerful. All advertising, propaganda, etc. are based on…suggestibility… This suggestibility in ourselves is one of our greatest weaknesses, and leads to imitation. —Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, Vol. 4, Amwell, 29.10.49, Further Ideas About Self-Remembering
A.R. Orage
We…may wish to act differently, but our wills are not free. We behave according to the conditioning our environment has subjected us to… (W)e act or react always as it has been suggested we should act, either by example, tradition or education. It would be difficult to…locate one instance of unsuggested behavior. We have the potentiality, but at present…are unable to act apart from our conditioning. —Gurdjieff’s Emissary in New York: Talks and Lectures with A.R. Orage 1924-1931, Undated
(O)ur judgment is…directed under the influence of mass suggestion—or…equally fatal—by resistance to mass suggestion… —Ibid., Tuesday, 5 May 1931
No one’s example can ever be followed. Jesus, in the Uncannonical Gospels said: “Follow yourselves and ye shall find me; follow me and ye shall lose me and yourselves.” —Ibid., 13 May, Last Meeting
Maurice Nicoll
I cannot borrow someone else’s understanding… For example, I cannot borrow my teacher’s understanding… (G)rowth 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…be nothing but an imitation person, however good and exemplary. This is the danger… My understanding will be unawakened… 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 4, Amwell, 20.8.53 – Unfinished Paper
(A) man’s essential being depends on the development of his essence—what is real in him. This is what he is… 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…he would no longer be like anything but would be himself, what he is. —Commentaries, Volume 1, Birdlip, January 17, 1942, Commentary 0n Effort, Three Notes
G.I. Gurdjieff
If you only believe, without verifying… kill that belief, for you believe anything… (I)f you cannot be sure. Just take it as material to be checked afterwards, but don’t take anything without criticizing it. If you have verified that two times two is four, then you can afford to let it crystallize in you… The real man believes nothing but what he can prove either mathematically or by finding it by frequent experiments… Believe neither father, nor God, nor nothing, except yourself. Apart from you, have doubts, suspicions about everything. Don’t believe anything except what you can practically prove. The rest can remain as theoretical material… Among other things, since we are talking about statistics, three quarters of people who are engaged in self-perfection, and who live in monasteries are lost by faith. In the remaining quarter, there are many who are lost through their education and many other things. The result is that 1% stays on the right track… —Meetings With G.I. Gurdjieff in Paris 1944, Friday February 4, 1944
Henriette Lannes
All genuine work begins with doubt. I doubt myself. I have the courage to doubt myself. What are you afraid of losing? Obviously, there is something we love very much, and that we are going to lose—our lies. But apart from that, are you going to lose anything real? Lying is stronger than we think; a large part of our lives is based on it. If we do not lose our lies, the real cannot develop in us. —This Fundamental Quest, Further Exchanges: With a Young Group (1963-64)
Jean Vaysse
…Of all the impressions we have of our inner life, physical sensation is…the least given to fallacious imagination. To recognize it is easy…and this is why it can be considered one of the best tests for verifying the reality of efforts toward self-awareness. —Toward Awakening, Centers and Functions
Mme. de Salzmann
I need to recognize that sensation is an instrument of knowledge, an instrument of contact with myself. If I wish to know that I exist, I have to feel the force and energy in me by contact. If, for example, I wish to know the quality of my thinking, I have to come into touch with it through a certain sensation. It is the same with the energy of the body and the energy of the feeling. I need to have a sensation, not merely of the flesh, of tensions, but an inner sensation of the energy, a sensation that my body is alive. —The Reality of Being, 29. An instrument of contact