Rolls and Impressions

          These impressions are perceived in a man's common presence by means of three apparatuses in him which act as perceivers of the seven what are called "planetary center-of-gravity vibrations," found in him as in all animals.

     The structure of these three perceiving apparatuses in man is the same for each part of the mechanism.

     They resemble clean wax gramophone "disks"; and on these disks or, as they might otherwise be called, "rolls," all the impressions received are recorded, from the first days after a man's appearance in the world, and even before, during the period of his formation in his mother's womb.

     And the different apparatuses constituting this general mechanism also possess a certain automatic device, thanks to which newly entering impressions, in addition to being recorded alongside similar ones previously perceived, are also recorded in chronological order.

     Thus every impression experienced is recorded in several places on several rolls, and on these rolls it is preserved unchanged.

     These recorded perceptions have the property, on contact with vibrations of the same nature and quality, of becoming "animated," and an action is then repeated in them similar to the one that evoked their first arising.

     And it is this repetition of previously perceived impressions that engenders what is called an "association"; and the parts of this repetition that enter the field of a man's attention condition what is called "memory."

 Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson, G.I. Gurdjieff, Viking Arkana Edition, 1992, from the introductory chapter "Friendly Advice."