Real I as essence: a parallel between Gurdjieff and Mouravieff

[abeofarrell]

Forgive me if I am discussing something many of you probably already know. This is something which hit me today, which I felt to discuss just in case some of you like myself before have not yet joined the dots.

I am currently reading Gnosis I for the second time. Last time I read it as a PDF as I could not get my hands on the book, and I skipped parts I could not understand. This time a lot more is falling into place as I have been through ISOTM three times and have been doing the Work daily as much as possible within my time limitations.

Some parallels which I did not see before between Mouravieff's work and Gurdjieff's teachings in ISOTM are coming to me and I wanted to put it in writing and see if anyone has a different idea or not.

Both books discuss the General Law, and discuss type A and type B influences. Gurdjieff separates the concepts of essence and personality. The essence is what we are born with, and it is the part of us which belongs to us (is us?) from birth, but which is weak and passive and is under the personality. Mouravieff discusses the "real "I"". He says that the Real I is small and weak and it is a true part of us. He says that it speaks to us as a judge. Now here is the part that I found interesting: Mouravieff states that the Real I tells us what is right and wrong, judging our actions. We can therefore identify our Real I as being the source of CONSCIENCE. As the exterior man is asleep, hypnotized by his own imagination, he cannot hear his conscience. Therefore Gurdjieff also states that for the exterior man there is no conscience, that the exterior man without a system of morals to help him cannot decide between right and wrong.

Now here is where things started to make sense for me. You are all familiar with the concepts of psychopathy and Mouravieff's teaching on Organic Portals, right? Well, if we are to say that conscience comes from the Real I, which in G's words is the essence, then does this not mean that psychopaths especially, and probably also Organic Portals (referring to when Laura asked the Cs if she was an organic portal and they replied by asking her if she ever felt pain for another or regretted hurting someone) DO NOT HAVE AN ESSENCE?

If this is the case then are they truly born tabula rasa? I am familiar with the concepts discussed about a group or hive soul. Do they have a kind of essence which is part of the hive soul they come from? Extending it further, would it not be true that they would have no interest in Esoteric studies simply because there is no quiet voice coming from their Real I telling them they need it?

Another thing which really encouraged me was Mouravieff's discussion on imagination. He says that there are two sides to it: the positive side is the ability to create, the negative side is imagination which serves to hypnotize us and keep us asleep. They come respectively from the positive and negative parts of our lower thinking center. This connects to G's discussion on Kundalini energy as a form of imagination by which the world is held in hypnotic sleep. Mouravieff goes further into this in the third section of the book. He says that we must build a cage within ourselves, a cage to filter out type A influences. This cage comes about through: conserving energy, external considering, self-remembering. He says that we cannot directly resist outside A influences or we will be crushed by the powers of this world. But that the influences are also within us so we should resist those that are within us.

So how I see this is that the negative part of my Thought Center, as influenced by the world I have been brought up in and everything I have learned in my life, (in other words my personality) generates the hypnotic trance by which I am kept asleep. The power the world has over us then is due to our personality. So as we absorb type B influences and build our Thought Center then the level of hypnotic effect should diminish. But if we resist outwardly then we attract attention and the hypnotic effect is increased. I take that to mean that our Thought Center is influenced in some way to increase the negative imagination. This especially makes sense to me when considering Gurdjieff's emphasis on fighting against our personality.

Okay, those are just some thoughts I have had. Maybe you have seen something different or would like to add something? If I am getting it right then I hope it also can be of help to someone else.

Peace.

 

[Psalehesost]

Gurdjieff separates the concepts of essence and personality. The essence is what we are born with, and it is the part of us which belongs to us (is us?) from birth, but which is weak and passive and is under the personality. Mouravieff discusses the "real "I"". He says that the Real I is small and weak and it is a true part of us. He says that it speaks to us as a judge. Now here is the part that I found interesting: Mouravieff states that the Real I tells us what is right and wrong, judging our actions. We can therefore identify our Real I as being the source of CONSCIENCE. As the exterior man is asleep, hypnotized by his own imagination, he cannot hear his conscience. Therefore Gurdjieff also states that for the exterior man there is no conscience, that the exterior man without a system of morals to help him cannot decide between right and wrong.

Now here is where things started to make sense for me. You are all familiar with the concepts of psychopathy and Mouravieff's teaching on Organic Portals, right? Well, if we are to say that conscience comes from the Real I, which in G's words is the essence, then does this not mean that psychopaths especially, and probably also Organic Portals (referring to when Laura asked the Cs if she was an organic portal and they replied by asking her if she ever felt pain for another or regretted hurting someone) DO NOT HAVE AN ESSENCE?

If this is the case then are they truly born tabula rasa? I am familiar with the concepts discussed about a group or hive soul. Do they have a kind of essence which is part of the hive soul they come from?

Essence - to be a meaningful concept - cannot be all that is in our nature that we are born with - it has to be more specific. Because, as known from science, genetics and genetic expression (the latter also in part inherited) are a great part of our nature and of importance to who we are and can become in this life. Yet essence can "die" in a person, and/or be absent - but it is clear that everyone has genes. So essence must refer to some other part of our nature.

It is possible that OPs lack essence (though this depends on the definition of essence, which is not clear) - though if so, "what they are born with" in a wider sense is still of great importance - think of the inherited difference between a psychopath and a non-psychopath.

As for linking essence to the Real I, essence is indeed said by G. to be - in relation to personality - the real mind, but it is not necessarily the higher self/higher centers, which is what Mouravieff means by Real I. Because the higher centers are said to be perfect and fully developed to begin with, but essence may be "primitive" or "stupid" until "educated", in G.'s words; he even said (in Views from the Real World) that essence internally considers when we have an emotional reaction to someone or something, and so that we need to change our essence (that work on the self even consists of work on the essence), and that at the beginning personality is the only part of us that can remember our Aim.

I made a more detailed post here before, quoting and summarizing and drawing parallels mainly from Views from the Real World regarding one idea of what essence might be. In linking that post I should add the following:

Gurdjieff sometimes uses the carriage-horses-driver metaphor to describe the moving-emotional-intellectual center triad. But in Views from the Real World, he in one place (p. 144) explicitly refers to the essence as being the horse, though here he also says that essence has "many centers", while personality has only the formatory apparatus. In a different talk (p. 136-137) two years earlier, where he calls essence "purely emotional", he mentions body, essence and personality as "three separate machines" that are born with us and continue to form until our death, then says the respective "centers of gravity" and "souls" of these are the moving, emotional, and intellectual centers, respectively.

So to summarize, essence would be a "machine" we are born with, the emotional "horse" that we must tame as part of work on ourselves. According to this view, anyone with a functioning emotional nature would probably have an essence. So that would include OPs (except perhaps the defective ones known as psychopaths), though they would not have the potential to develop.

In contrast to this, the most expressed view on the forum seems to be one of essence as a vaguely defined, more subtle non-material thing - something perhaps vaguely akin to a soul, but not exactly the same as the soul.

This latter view makes some sense in light of the idea of some people missing an essence - unless those people missing an essence are strictly psychopaths. And if all OPs would lack essence, then essence would have to have - I think - some subtler quality or nature.

In terms of needing to get in touch with our essence, a "crust" having grown over it, the "essence-as-machine" concept still fits: Peter Levine describes how almost everyone in the world today is out of touch with their bodies, their experience of their inner sensations and aliveness replaced by imaginary images, along with the neurological basis for the dissociation and exercises to work on bodily awareness - this also ties into (and adds a lot of depth to the concept of) dissociation as described in the Myth of Sanity.

Mouravieff describes the lower emotional center as the connecting point through which we eventually may become connected to our higher centers, beginning with the higher emotional center. As such, if essence amounts to the emotional mind that is part of our machine, as Gurdjieff seems to suggest, it truly is of essence.

OSIT.

[...] would it not be true that [psychopaths especially, and probably also Organic Portals] would have no interest in Esoteric studies simply because there is no quiet voice coming from their Real I telling them they need it?

They would not have an interest which "resonates" with something truly Real within and might possibly lead them somewhere. There are however many possible reasons for esoteric interest - for example, wishing to have some magical, mystical "quick fix" to anything disliked about life, or some means of gaining "power" and "might" or whatever else, or even just a plain obsession with an obscure subject.

I think an OP could even become a theoretical expert, though without the depth of understanding of someone who has a modicum of being.

And a psychopath could probably learn all the words and use them more or less coherently - probably to manipulate people, and/or as part of dreaming up some hasnamussian (in G.'s wording) "teaching" of their own.

So as we absorb type B influences and build our Thought Center [...]

Here you seem to confuse thought center with magnetic center. The magnetic center, when built, is to take over the direction of the machine - control all the lower centers - and in turn eventually come in touch with the Real I.

 

[abeofarrell]

Psalehesost,

thank you for the reply/comment. I especially are grateful for the quotes from "Views from the Real World" as I have not yet read that. You have given me much to think about but right now my kid is crying to so I have to go. Will read and reply later.

thank you

 

[Mikey]

This time a lot more is falling into place as I have been through ISOTM three times and have been doing the Work daily as much as possible within my time limitations.

To my understanding, you can do the Work at any time, at any place, in any situation. That's the central characteristic of the Fourth Way. Either you do it will all your might, or it's better to not do it at all.