C.S. Nott
(Gurdjieff) said, “People in general have no real attention. What they think is attention is only self-tensing. First you must strive to acquire attention. Correct self-observation is possible only after you have acquired a measure of attention.” —Teachings of Gurdjieff: A Pupil’s Journal, New York and Fontainebleau 1923-5
Mme. Ouspensky
For consciousness, collection of attention is necessary. Attention is as oil in the lamp. Consciousness is the light. Where there is consciousness things are illuminated.
All work begins with the control of attention. At first it is sufficient to concentrate on preventing the eyes from straying. Then enters the struggle with wandering thoughts and negative emotions. Always one must give account to oneself and remember that one thing can only be had at the expense of another…
God…provided man with material to develop himself if he so wished. Man has in him the machinery for development, but as everything in the Universe is limited as regards the amount of energy allotted to it, so man can only grow if he uses his energy rightly. The whole struggle centers round one point, direction of attention. —Conversations with Madame Ouspensky 1939-40 at Lyne, from Notes of Robert S. de Ropp
Christopher Fremantle
(R)ightly directed attention…promotes the production of the specific materials necessary to fully connect the centers, and it has a crucial action in allowing impressions received through the senses…to be absorbed on an adequate scale… This controlled attention never occurs automatically, and is the very antithesis of the over-involved attention characteristically found in everyday living, in which the attention is hypnotically drawn to the outer world, so that almost no inner movements are experienced, and no objective knowledge of them can arise…
When a man’s attention is not entirely taken by associative movements, and these movements are allowed to die down, he experiences… either a passive state, or one accompanied by an active attention, perhaps in the thoughtless form of a question without an answer… Such, for example, is the state of a man listening, trying to catch an almost inaudible sound as his whole body, feeling and thought are concentrated in the attempt to catch the sound. —On Attention
Mme. de Salzmann
If my force of attention is entirely taken, I am lost in life, identified, asleep. All my capacity to be present is lost. I lose myself, the feeling of myself. My existence loses its meaning. So, the first step is a separation in which my attention is divided…
With the attention divided… as present as I can be…(m)y attention is engaged in two opposite directions, and I am at the center. This is the act of self-remembering. I wish to keep part of my attention on the awareness of belonging to a higher level and, under this influence, try to open to the outer world… I wish to see, and not forget that, I belong to these two levels. —The Reality of Being, 5. Where our attention is
A right effort to be present requires… attention coming from the different centers… But it is constantly threatened by what draws it outside. We need to become conscious of this attraction…
It is only by working to be present that my attention will develop… I struggle to keep it from weakening… to prevent its being taken. I try but cannot, and I try again… I see that when my attention is completely taken, it is entirely lost to me. But if it does not go too far, it can be pulled back… In that movement of my attention, I learn something of its nature… I will always lose myself, unless my attention goes both toward life and toward the inside.
We think it is one attention divided equally, but in fact the parts are not equal, not the same. There is a great difference that I need to experience. If I cannot center my effort in a certain way, I am bound to lose myself. I must see that I cannot do it because I do not have the quality of attention that is required. Here is my effort, here is what I have to exercise. This is the only thing that matters.—The Reality of Being, 19. An echo of “I”
William Segal
Attention is an animating principle in each living organism which serves to connect and relate energies with systems of higher and lower orders…
The need to experience a different level of being may be seen as initiative, as active force. Inertia, passivity, which characterize our habitual way of being, exists in opposition to this initiative… Conscious attention reconciles the active and passive forces within us… —Opening
While an instrument for one’s use, it is clear that the attention is not “mine” in any narrow sense… One is there to serve it, not the converse.
There is the attention, and there is one’s service to it. Though its source is surrounded by mystery, the attention communicates higher, finer energies, ones beyond the mind’s capacity to represent. When a person is able to…receive these vibratory energies, they pass through him, and into the coarse, denser substances of ordinary life. The life is then enriched, refined, and made also to serve a higher intelligence…
The attention lives in, and through the body. Returning to the body is a gesture of welcoming the attention. Welcomed by a person, the attention is then ready to serve its cosmological function. —”What Is the Attention,” from the papers of William Segal
Michel Conge
..(T)he fundamental idea is: I am the attention. Where my attention is, there am I. If the attention is weak, I am weak, if it is mechanical, I am mechanical, if it is free, I am free. —Attention and Two Natures
Mme. de Salzmann
Attention is the conscious force, the force of consciousness. It is a divine force… —The Reality of Being, 24. Coming Together
I believe I need to pay attention when, in fact, I need to see and know my inattention… —The Reality of Being, 8. The watchman