Views From the Real World
America, March 29, 1924 – Essence and personality
Essence is I—it is our heredity, type, character, nature. Personality is an accidental thing—upbringing, education, points of view—everything external….
Essence does not change… I shall remain as I was born…
Here, when we speak of development and change, we speak of essence. Our personality remains a slave…
We always consider in essence, mechanically. Every influence mechanically evokes a corresponding considering… 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…
Inner Octaves – Michel Conge
The Lateral Octave and Influences
Essence appears on Earth naked; there is no personality at birth. Coming from another world to live an experience and be fed, essence coats itself in something: physical form and personality. Exchanges that nourish it will take place there. On its own, essence can do nothing. There must be a balance between these two organisms [*essence and personality]… Among the infinite number of essences that coat themselves with personalities in this way, only a few find a correct balance. Consider the image of innumerable seeds, of which only a few actually give birth to an organism.
In Search of the Miraculous
Chapter Eight
“A very important moment in the work on oneself is when a man begins to distinguish between his personality and his essence. A man’s real I, his individuality, can grow only from his essence. It can be said that a man’s individuality is his essence, grown up, mature…
” ‘To awake,’ ‘to die,’ ‘to be born’…
“…being ‘born’ … relates to the beginning of a new growth of essence, the beginning of the formation of individuality, the beginning of the appearance of one indivisible I.
In Search of the Miraculous
Chapter Twelve
“How can essence be separated from personality?” asked one of those present.
“How would you separate your own from what is not your own?” G. replied. “It is necessary to think, it is necessary to know where one or another of your characteristics has come from. And it is necessary to realize that most people… have very little of their own… (E)verything that they call ideas, convictions, views, conceptions of the world, has all been pilfered from various sources. And all of it together makes up personality and must be cast aside.”
…Personality has its own interests and its own tastes which have nothing in common with the interests and the tastes of essence. Personality in our case is the result of the wrong work of centers. For this reason personality can dislike precisely what essence likes—and like what essence does not like. Here is where the struggle between essence and personality begins…
Views From the Real World
Prieuré, February 28, 1923 – Separation of Oneself from Oneself
Our mind, our thinking, has nothing in common with us, with our essence—no connection, no dependence. Our mind lives by itself and our essence lives by itself. When we say “to separate oneself from oneself” it means that the mind should stand apart from the essence. Our weak essence can change at any moment, for it is dependent on many influences: …on our surroundings, …on the weather, and on a multitude of other causes. But the mind depends on very few influences and so, with a little effort, it can be kept in the desired direction. Every weak man can give the desired direction to his mind. But he has no power over his essence; great power is required to give direction to essence and keep essence to it. (Body and essence are the same devil.) Man’s essence does not depend on him:…
This Fundamental Quest – Henriette Lannes
Introduction: Encountering the Gurdjieff Teaching
Essence can be viewed as a spectrum of possibilities or as the egg from which develop the multiple, unsuspected possibilities received by each of us as we came into this world. Later, in the course of one’s life, the more or less complete and harmonious development of these possibilities will depend on encountering certain external conditions, but above all on an inner attitude that is resolute and increasingly conscious. This in turn relies on the need to question oneself again and again, and to live in depth certain questions: “What am I?” “What do I really want?” “What do I need to realize my inmost purpose?”
The Reality of Being
4. “I” am not here
Real “I” comes from essence. Its development depends on the wish of essence—a wish to be and then a wish to become able to be… In order to develop further, essence must become active in spite of resistance from the pressure of personality. We need to “remember ourselves” for our essence to receive impressions. Only in a conscious state can we see the difference between essence and personality.
Teachings of Gurdjieff: a Pupils Journal, CS Nott
Orage’s Commentaries on Beelzebub
‘Essence is truth about oneself …irrespective of time, place, and the feelings of anyone… It is truth before God. Personality is truth before men—before the world, conditioned by “What will people think?”…
‘Society chooses what shall be actualized of our inherited, essential, potentialities. I inherit an instrument; I, as psyche, will develop according to my ability to exploit the possibilities of the instrument. But, from early childhood, only a fraction of potentialities are actualized by the stimulus of environment…
‘At the same time, every personality is in accordance with essence, though only a part of essence. If, so to speak, I am a piano on which only jazz is played, I go through my whole life thinking I am a jazz instrument… I exploit only a fraction of my potentialities. But it is possible to play one role “as if” you were identified with it, and yet not to be. Circumstances may force you to play one role throughout life, but, so long as you are not identified with it, essence develops.
…’Gurdjieff speaks of essence “wish” and personality “want”. Since I have a three-centred essence, which is a minute replica of the world, of God, in my essence I cannot but have the same wish as he has. I must discover what this essence wish is.