[quote author=Menna]Count Morona - So what you are saying is that things that we do are outside of us that they are out there in the world and we find them?[/quote]
Sometimes what we regard to be the real state of affairs just seems to be so.
[quote author=G. Gurdjieff's Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man]Every really conscious perception and expression of man must be the result of the
simultaneous and co-ordinated working of all three centres, each of which must fulfill its share of the whole task, i.e. furnish its quota of associations. A complete apperception in any given case is possible only if all three centres work together. But, owing to many disturbing influences affecting modern man, the working of the psychic centres is almost disconnected. Consequently his intellectual, emotional and instinctive or moving functions fail to complete and correct one another, but, on the contrary, they travel along different roads which very rarely meet, and thus allow of very few moments of consciousness.
The failure of the three centres to co-ordinate is due to the fact that there are, as it were, three different men in a single individual, the first of whom does nothing but think, the second only feels, and the third only lives by his instincts and motor functions: a logical man, an emotional man and an automatic man.
These three men in one never understand one another; consciously and unconsciously they frustrate the plans, the intentions and the work of one another; and yet each of them at the moment when he is in action occupies a prepotent position and calls himself "I".
Observation of the disunited and contradictory of the centres shews that man cannot be master of himself, since it is not he who governs his centres, and he himself does not know which of his centres will begin to function next. People do not notice this, because they are under the illusion of the unity of their "I's" and of their general psychic constitution.
If a correct observation of the psychic activities of man is made, it will be clearly seen that modern man never acts of his own accord, and for reasons within himself, but by his action merely expresses the changes that are induced in his mechanism by external causes. It is not man who thinks, but something thinks in him; he does not act, but something acts through him; he does not create, but something creates in him; he does not accomplish, but something accomplishes through him.
The psychic centres of a new-born child may be compared to blank phonograph rolls, upon which from the first day the impressions of both the internal and external worlds inscribe themselves. The matter thus impressed is preserved in each centre in the same order, sometimes absurd, and in the same relations in which the impressions were actually received in life.
The process of imagination, memory, judgement, reasoning and thinking are made up exclusively of the matter inscribed, which combines and associates in various ways under the influence of chance shocks. These shocks set in motion with more or less intensity one or another of the rolls whose contents (the matter inscribed on it) thus become the centre of association in the given case. A further shock, or a shock of a different intensity, evokes yet another association and, consequently, another train of thoughts, feelings and acts. And no centre can add anything from itself or anything new to the combinations thus formed, nor can it draw upon the material formed in the other centres.
It will be understood from this that man's world perception is always the work of only a part of his being, or, stated differently, that man has three different processes of perception. These processes have but little association with one another, or associate quite by chance and only partially. Therefore every judgment man forms about things is the work of merely a part of his psychic constitution and the expression of but a fraction of the matter at his disposal. Hence, man's judgments are invariably partial, and consequently false.[/quote]
[quote author=A remarkable woman named Laura] One cannot change the way one thinks with the way one thinks.[/quote]
