Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, Maurice Nicoll
The important thing to remember is that there is something awake in us because we are born only with Essence which is awake. Then Personality is acquired and imitation sets in, and something artificial is formed… But the fate of all of us born on this Earth is first to form Personality, and then perhaps later on, to work on this Personality and reach a new level of development. In other words, Personality must be formed before anything else can happen in the way of the true destiny of Man, which is to reach a higher stage of himself. —Volume 2, – Quaremead, Ugley, August 4, 1945 – A Note On Buffers
… If you remain in older life dominated by all the opinions, prejudices, buffers, attitudes, pictures of yourself, etc., that you have acquired in Personality, Essence cannot grow… One remains then an imitation or invented man or… woman… —Volume 3, – Great Amwell House, July 19, 1947 – Further Talk On Essence And Personality
In life… 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… —Volume 1, Commentary iii—Birdlip, January 17, 1942 – Commentary on Effort
This Fundamental Quest, H. Lannes
The education of the moving function begins very early…
(I)mitation plays a huge role: children very quickly seem to prefer imitating the lives of adults beyond anything else—up to and including their “process of mutual destruction.” Thus, very quickly, 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 touches, of course, on the infantile character of our essence. This idea needs to be understood in all its dimensions. —The Role of Influences: In the Beginning
Toward Awakening, Jean Vaysse
The characteristic of the moving center is its passivity. It 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… (I)t is often difficult…to distinguish between what belongs to the moving center and what comes from the part that is making use of it… Like the other centers… it has its own thinking (the intelligence of movement), its own instinct, its own emotionality, and the possibility of an activity of its own which, because of its extreme passivity, is only realized in exceptional circumstances… Again, because of its passivity, one of the moving center’s chief characteristics is its capacity for imitation. (It) imitates what it sees without reasoning; it is able to conform absolutely to a model, and to reproduce the model’s behavior exactly without changing anything…
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. —Centers and Functions
Gurdjieff’s Emissary in New York: Talks and Lectures with A.R. Orage 1924-1931
Jesus never made a model of himself. Had he been what we call a model man, he would have corrupted his followers, because they would have striven to imitate him instead of living their own lives. They would forget the technique. They would worship the exponent of the method instead of practicing the method. He, that is Christ, said on one occasion: “Follow yourselves and you will find me. Follow me and you will lose both me and yourselves.” —Monday Evening, 3 February 1930
Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, Maurice Nicoll
The trouble really is that none of us… sees that the trouble lies in the personality…
All this Work is about imitating Conscious Man. But if we do not work on personality, we remain mechanical men… —Volume 1, Birdlip, April 20, 1943 – Internal Considering and External Considering—On Being Passive (2)
Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson
“…(In) their common psyche, certain properties in each of them… are completely crystallized and become an integral part of their common presence, properties that exist under the names of ‘egoism,’ ‘self-love,’ ‘vanity,’ ‘pride,’ ‘conceit,’ ‘credulity,’ ‘suggestibility,’ and many others no less abnormal and unbecoming to the essence of any three-brained being whatsoever.
“Of these abnormal properties the most terrible one for them is ‘suggestibility.’ — Chapter 14 – Introducing a perspective that promises nothing very cheerful
“Thanks to this strange property… each of these beings… came to represent in themselves a peculiar type of cosmic formation which has the possibility of acting only if it is constantly under the influence of another formation similar to itself.
“And indeed, my boy, at the present time all these terrestrial three-brained beings, taken both as separate persons and as large or small groups, must infallibly ‘influence’ or come under the ‘influence’ of others. —Chapter 34 – Beelzebub in Russia
Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, Maurice Nicoll
(W)e have to overcome suggestibility… All advertising, propaganda, etc., are based on the suggestibility of Man or Woman. This suggestibility in ourselves is one of our greatest weaknesses and leads to imitation… —Volume 4, – Amwell, 6.11.48 – Commentary On Suffering
…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… I will remain dead inside like an empty house. This is the effect of using the wrong Neutralizing Force—that is, the Third Force of Life—in place of the Third Force of the Work… —Volume 4,- Amwell, 20.8.53 – Unfinished Paper
Gurdjieff’s Emissary in New York: Talks and Lectures with A.R. Orage 1924-1931
Being cannot be defined in terms of the intellectual or physical body. It is the kernel of their nut. It is what we are, not what we know…
…It is not developed personality but is developed essence…
…You are aware when you have made an effort which is an effort of being. This is the only way to improve being… —Tuesday, 13 December 1927