Machine
Every one of you is a
rather uninteresting example of an animated automaton. You think that a “soul”
and even a “spirit,” is necessary to do what you do and live as you live. But
perhaps it is enough to have a key for winding up the spring of your mechanism.
Your daily portions of food help to wind you up and renew the purposeless
antics of associations again and again. From this background separate thoughts
are selected and you attempt to connect them into a whole and pass them off as
valuable and as your own. We also pick out feelings and sensations, moods and
experiences and out of all this we create the mirage of an inner life, call
ourselves conscious and reasoning beings, talk about God, about eternity, about
eternal life and other higher matters; we speak about everything imaginable,
judge and discuss, define and evaluate, but we omit to speak about ourselves
and about our own real objective value, for we are all convinced that if there
is anything lacking in us, we can acquire it.
If in what I have said I
have succeeded even to a small extent in making clear in what chaos is the
being we call man, you will be able to answer for yourselves the question of
what he lacks and what he can obtain if he remains as he is, what value he can
add to the value he himself represents.
I have already said that there
are people who hunger and thirst for truth. If they examine the problems of
life and they are sincere with themselves, they
soon become convinced that it is not possible to live as they have lived and
to be what they have been until now; that a way out of this situation is essential
and that a man can develop his hidden capacities and powers only by cleaning
his machine of the dirt that has clogged it in the course of his life. But
in order to undertake this cleaning in a rational way, he has to see what
needs to be cleaned, where and how; but
to see this for himself is almost impossible. In
order to see anything of this one has to look from the outside; and for this,
mutual help is necessary.
…you will see how blind a
man is when he identifies with his moods, feelings and thoughts. But is our
dependence on things only limited to what can be observed at first glance? These things are so much in relief that they
cannot help catching the eye…As a man gets to know himself, he continually
finds new areas of his mechanicalness---let us call
it automatism—domains where his will, his “I wish” has no power, areas not
subject to him, so confused and subtle that it is impossible to find his way
about in them without the help and the authoritative guidance of someone who
knows.
[…]
Our thinking machine
possesses the capacity to be convinced of anything you like, provided it is
repeatedly and persistently influenced in the required direction.
[…]
Crumbs of truth are
scattered everywhere; and those who know and understand can see and marvel how
close people live to the truth, yet how blind they are and powerless to
penetrate it. But in searching for it, it is far better not to venture at all
into the dark labyrinths of human stupidity and ignorance than to go there
alone. For without the guidance and explanations of someone who knows, a man at
every step, without noticing it, may suffer a strain, a dislocation of his
machine, after which he would have to spend a great deal more on its repair
than he spent damaging it.
G.I. Gurdjieff,
Essentuki, 1918, from “Views from the Real World.”
1973.
Man, such as we know him,
is a machine. This idea of the mechanicalness of man
must be very clearly understood and well-represented to oneself in order to see
all its significance and all the consequences and results arising from it.
First of all, everyone should
understand his own mechanicalness. This undertaking
can come only as a result of a rightly formulated self-observation.
But before passing to the study of these principles a man must make the decision
that he will be absolutely sincere with himself, will not close his eyes to
anything, and will not turn aside from any results, wherever they may lead
him, will not fear any deductions, will not limit himself to any previously
erected walls. For a man unaccustomed to thinking in this direction, very
much courage is required to accept sincerely the results and conclusions arrived
at. They upset man’s whole line of thinking and deprive him of his most pleasant
and dearest illusions. He sees first of all, his total impotence and helplessness
in the face of literally everything that surrounds him. Everything possesses
him, everything rules him. He does not possess, does not rule anything. Things
attract or repel him. All his life is nothing but a blind following of those
attractions and repulsions.
G.I.
Man is a plural being. When
we speak of ourselves ordinarily, we speak of “I.” We say, “I did this,” “I
think this,” “I want to do this”—but this is a mistake.
There is no such “I,” or
rather there are hundreds, thousands of little “I”s
in every one of us. We are divided in ourselves but we cannot recognize the
plurality of our being except by observation and study. At one moment it is one
“I” that acts, at the next moment it is another “I.” It is because the “I”s in ourselves are contradictory that we do not function harmoniously.
We live ordinarily with
only a very minute part of our functions and our strength, because we do not
recognize that we are machines, and we do not know the nature and working of
our mechanism. We are machines.
We are governed entirely by
external circumstances. All of our actions follow the line of least resistance
to the pressure of outside circumstances.
Try for yourselves: can you
govern your emotions? No. You may try to suppress them or cast out one emotion
by another emotion. But you cannot control it. It controls you. Or you may
decide to do something—your intellectual “I” may make such a decision. But when
the time comes to do it, you may find yourself doing just the opposite.
If circumstances are
favourable to your decision you may do it, but if they are unfavourable you
will do whatever they direct. You do not control your actions. You are a machine
and external circumstances govern your actions irrespective of your desires.
I do not say nobody can
control his actions. I say you can’t because you are divided. There are two parts
to you, a strong and a weak part. If your strength grows your weakness will
also grow, and will become negative strength unless you learn to stop it.
If we learn to control our
actions, that will be different. When a certain level of being is reached we
can really control every part of ourself—but, as we
are now, we cannot even do what we decide to do.
[…]
A:…If
you go no further than to see that you and all men are machines, you will
simply become cynical. But if you carry your work on, you will cease to be
cynical.
Q: Why?
A: Because you will have to
make a choice, to decide—to seek either to become completely mechanical or
completely conscious. This is the parting of the ways of which all mystical teachings
speak.
G.I. Gurdjieff,