A.R. Orage
The attainment of individuality, consciousness and will are the essential aims of man…
What is true of the megalocosmos is true of every particle. Every being must of necessity have a particle of God’s purpose — consciousness — individuality — will. . The scale of having it depends on the scale of ‘being.’ —Gurdjieff’s Emissary in New York: Talks and Lectures with A.R. Orage 1924-1931, Consciousness, Individuality and Will (Notes of Annette Herter)
G.I. Gurdjieff
Gurdjieff: Every man must try to accustom himself to being an individual, an independent person, a something, not shit – excuse this word not an animal, a dog or a cat… If you concentrate your presence in your thought, you are an individual; there are many degrees in people, but this is not important for now. You are an individual when you have your centre of gravity in the thinking centre; and if it is in another centre, you are only an automaton. It may be in your body and in your feeling, but if you work you must always have as an aim to be in your thought. And this, do it consciously. If you don’t, everything takes place unconsciously in you. Your work must be to concentrate yourself exclusively in your thought. This is a simple explanation.—G.I. Gurdjieff Paris Meetings 1943, Thursday, October 21
Your head is your ‘self’. It is your Reason. That is where your intelligence is. This is your individuality. Everyone has a body, everyone has feeling, but rare are those who have a head that lives an independent life—free, never influenced. Only the head can be just; only the head can be impartial. The head must have the initiative… —Tuesday, June 8
(S)eparate your individuality from the whole of your machine…Individuality is one thing; the machine and the functions, another thing. It must be separated so that it can become independent. It must become clear to you that you are made of two things, of two altogether independent parts. —Thursday, November 18
“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. But in order to enable essence to grow up, it is first of all necessary to weaken the constant pressure of personality upon it, because the obstacles to the growth of essence are contained in personality.’
‘If we take an average cultured man, we shall see that in the vast majority of cases his personality is the active element in him while his essence is the passive element. The inner growth of a man cannot begin so long as this order of things remains unchanged. Personality must become passive and essence must become active. This can happen only if ‘buffers’ are removed or weakened, because ‘buffers’ are the chief weapon by the help of which personality holds essence in subjection…
If a man wishes to create individuality of his own he must first free himself from general laws. General laws are by no means all obligatory for man; he can free himself from many of them if he frees himself from ‘buffers’ and from imagination.—In Search of the Miraculous —Chapter 8
“Such is the ordinary average man—an unconscious slave of the whole service to all-universal purposes, which are alien to his own personal individuality.
“And although this is the lot of every life, yet at the same time, Great Nature gave to some lives, as in the given case, to man, corresponding possibilities to be not merely a blind tool of…the all-universal aim, but at the same time, serving Nature and actualizing consciously what is predetermined for him, to produce what is required in excess, and to utilize this excess for his ‘egoism,’ that is to say, for the definition and manifestation of his own individuality.
“This possibility is given also for serving the common aim, as…such relatively liberated, self-constructed, independent lives, and in particular of human origin, are also necessary. —Life Is Real Only Then, When “I Am,” Third Talk
Mme. de Salzmann
What is important is the continual struggle between our head and our “animal,” between our individuality and our functions, because we need the substance that this conscious confrontation produces. —The Reality of Being, 116. Conscious struggle