If you already know what is wrong and do it, you commit a sin that is difficult to redress. The chief means of happiness in this life is the ability to consider outwardly always, inwardly never.
Views From the Real World
New York, February 22, 1924
We have two lives, inner and outer life, and so we also have two kinds of considering. We constantly consider. .When she looks at me, I feel inside a dislike of her, I am cross with her, but externally I am polite because I must be very polite since I need her. Internally I am what I am, but externally I am different. This is external considering. Now she says that I am a fool. This angers me. The fact that I am angered is the result, but what takes place in me is internal considering.
This internal and external considering are different. We must learn to be able to control separately both kinds of considering: the internal and the external. We want to change not only inside but also outside.
…Internally one should be free from considering, but externally one should do more than one has been doing so far. An ordinary man lives as he is dictated to from inside. When we speak of change, we presume the need of inner change. Externally if everything is all right, there is no need to change. If it is not all right, perhaps there is no need to change either, because maybe it is original. What is necessary is to change inside.
…The work needs nothing external. Only the internal is needed. Externally, one should play a role in everything. Externally a man should be an actor, otherwise he does not answer the requirements of life.
…Inside us we have a horse; it obeys orders from outside. And our mind is too weak to do anything inside. Even if the mind gives the order to stop, nothing will stop inside.
We educate nothing but our mind. We know how to behave with such and such. “Goodbye.” “How do you do?” But it is only the driver who knows this. Sitting on his box he has read about it. But the horse has no education whatever. It has not even been taught the alphabet, it knows no languages, it never went to school. The horse was also capable of being taught, but we forgot all about it. . . . And so it grew up a neglected orphan. It only knows two words: right and left.
What I said about inner change refers only to the need of change in the horse. If the horse changes, we can change even externally. If the horse does not change, everything will remain the same, no matter how long we study. It is easy to decide to change sitting quietly in your room. But as soon as you meet someone, the horse kicks. Inside us we have a horse. The horse must change.
If anyone thinks that self-study will help and he will be able to change, he is greatly mistaken. Even if he reads all the books, studies for a hundred years, masters all knowledge, all mysteries—nothing will come of it.
Because all this knowledge will belong to the driver. And he, even if he knows, cannot drag the cart without the horseit is too heavy.
First of all you must realize that you are not you. Be sure of that, believe me. You are the horse, and if you wish to start working, the horse must be taught a language in which you can talk to it, tell it what you know and prove to it the necessity of, say, changing its disposition. If you succeed in this, then, with your help, the horse too will begin to learn. But change is possible only inside.
America, March 29, 1924 – Essence and personality
In order to understand better the meaning of external and internal considering, you must understand that every man has two completely separate parts, as it were two different men, in him. These are his essence and his personality.
Essence is I—it is our heredity, type, character, nature. Personality is an accidental thing—upbringing, education, points of view—everything external….
We always consider in essence, mechanically. Every influence mechanically evokes a corresponding considering. Mechanically, you may like me, and so, mechanically, you register this impression of me. But it is not you. It does not come from consciousness; it happens mechanically…
But we have the possibility not to consider inwardly. At present you cannot do this, because your essence is a function. Our essence consists of many centers, but our personality has only one center, the formatory apparatus.
Remember our example of the carriage, horse and driver. Our essence is the horse. It is precisely the horse that should not consider. But even if you realize this, the horse does not, because it doesn’t understand your language. You cannot order it about, teach it, tell it not to consider, not to react, not to respond.
…The point is to reestablish what has been lost, not to acquire anything new. This is the purpose of development. For this one must learn to discriminate between essence and personality, and to separate them. When you have learned to do this you will see what to change and how. Meantime, you have only one possibility—to study. You are weak, you are dependent—you are slaves. It is difficult to break all at once the habits accumulated in years…
In the beginning of the work one exercise is very useful, for it helps one to see oneself, to collect material. This exercise is: entering into the position of another. This should be undertaken as a task.
In Search of the Miraculous
Chapter 8
…a man is identified with what others think about him, how they treat him, what attitude they show towards him….—all this acquires for him an immense significance.
“And he ‘considers’ not only separate persons but society and historically constituted conditions. Everything that displeases such a man seems to him to be unjust, illegal, wrong, and illogical. And the point of departure for his judgment is always that these things can and should be changed. ‘Injustice’ is one of the words in which very often considering hides itself. When a man has convinced himself that he is indignant with some injustice, then for him to stop considering would mean ‘reconciling himself to injustice.’
“There are people who are able to consider not only injustice or the failure of others to value them enough, but who are able to consider for example the weather. …People are able to consider climate, heat, cold, snow, rain; they can be irritated by the weather, be indignant and angry with it. A man can take everything in such a personal way as though everything in the world had been specially arranged in order to give him pleasure or on the contrary to cause him inconvenience or unpleasantness.
“All this and much else besides is merely a form of identification. Such considering is wholly based upon ‘requirements.’ …Requirements in their turn are based on a completely fantastic notion about themselves …
“There is still another form of considering which can take a great deal of energy from a man. This form starts with a man beginning to think that he is not considering another person enough, …All this is simply weakness. People are afraid of one another. But this can lead very far…
“It is the same case, only perhaps worse, when a man considers that in his opinion he ‘ought’ to do something when as a matter of fact he ought not to do so at all. ‘Ought’ and ‘ought not’ is also a difficult subject, that is, difficult to understand when a man really ‘ought’ and when he ‘ought not.’ This can be approached only from the point of view of ‘aim.’ When a man has an aim he ‘ought’ to do only what leads towards his aim and he ‘ought not’ to do anything that hinders him from going towards his aim.
“The opposite of internal considering and what is in part a means of fighting against it is external considering. External considering is based upon an entirely different relationship towards people than internal considering. … By considering externally a man does that which makes life easy for other people and for himself. …external considering requires a great power over oneself, a great control over oneself.
Very often a man desires sincerely to express or somehow or other show to another man what he really thinks of him or feels about him. And if he is a weak man he will of course give way to this desire and afterwards justify himself and say that he did not want to lie, did not want to pretend, he wanted to be sincere….It very often happens that a man begins with a blessing and ends with a curse. He begins by deciding not to consider and afterwards blames other people for not considering him. This is an example of how external considering passes into internal considering.
But if a man really remembers himself he understands that another man is a machine just as he is himself. And then he will enter into his position, he will put himself in his place, and he will be really able to understand and feel what another man thinks and feels. If he can do this his work becomes easier for him. But if he approaches a man with his own requirements nothing except new internal considering can ever be obtained from it.
“Right external considering is very important in the work. It often happens that people who understand very well the necessity of external considering in life do not understand the necessity of external considering in the work; they decide that just because they are in the work they have the right not to consider. Whereas in reality, in the work, that is, for a man’s own successful work, ten times more external considering is necessary than in life, because only external considering on his part shows his valuation of the work and his understanding of the work; and success in the work is always proportional to the valuation and understanding of it. …
Transcripts of Gurdjieff’s Meetings 1941-1946
Meeting One Sunday, 7 December 1941
Question: I see my powerlessness and my cowardice. I can say nothing and do nothing for another. …
Gurdjieff: You cannot say anything or do anything for another. You do not know what you need for yourself, you cannot know what he needs. Work with purpose for him. But play your role. Be apart internally: See. Externally speak as he does, so as not to hurt him. You must acquire the force to do this. Play a role. Become double. For the present you work as overseer. Do what I tell you, you cannot do more. Love of your neighbour; that is the Way. Bring to everyone that which you felt for your parents…
Meeting Six
Simone: I feel that I must introduce in my task, in my work, a person close to me,… I don’t know …what attitude to take.
Gurdjieff: You must pay no attention to the exterior. …You must only know your task and do it interiorly. The other person, consciously or not, plays her role, acts her character. You do not know her, you do not know who she is, whether it is Moses, or some other person. It is not important. What is important for you is your inner task.
Gurdjieff: …play a role exteriorly. Interiorly, recognise your nonentityness. You don’t know anything. If you have the habit of doing things in a certain way, do them in this way. …At present, everyone is like you: nothing, zero. Whether he be a workman, or a senator, he is merde like you. Get to work at not being a nonentity; work, so that in a day, a month or a year you will not be a nonentity. Do everything exactly as you are accustomed to doing. But you must play a role, …without identifying yourself interiorly; and remember what your value is—nothing. Work, work and again work, in order to change that nothingness into something definite.
…Only he is not a nothing who has understood his nothingness and has worked on himself to change it. That man is another quality of merde: with “roses.” It is still merde but it has not the same odour. Work, put everything towards it, and be sure that all who do not work are nothings like you. You are nothing, but he also is nothing. He is a general, a colonel, these are exterior things: they cost nothing.
In life, everything is accidental—occupations, position, all obligations; whether one is the mayor or the corner policeman. It is life which creates these abnormalities. Interiorly, everything is always the same thing. Exterior things do not change the interior things. Only conscious work is able to change the interior—conscious labour and voluntary suffering.
zenyogagurdjieff.blogspot.com: Lee Van Laer
…If we examine the concept of inner considering, we may see that it almost always consists of some form of judgment. It is either the judgment of ourselves, or the judgment of others, but in almost every case, inner considering consists of one kind or another of fault finding.
We are immediately reminded of Christ’s admonition, “Judge not others, lest ye yourself be judged.” In the Old Testament, we see a God of judgment — a deity that disperses fire and brimstone according to the whims of his anger. The teaching that Christ brings is new: it transcends this form of …negative judgment, and replaces it with a practice of outer considering, or compassion.