Lecture I

The Diversity, According to Law, of the Manifestations of Human Individuality

Last read at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York, January 1924

     The investigations of many scientists of past ages, and also the data obtained at the present time by means of the quite exceptionally conducted research of the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man according to the system of G.I.Gurdjieff, have shown that the whole individuality of every man--according to higher laws and the conditions of the process of human life, established from the very beginning and gradually fixed on earth--of whatever heredity he is the result, and in whatever accidental conditions he arose and developed, must consist from the beginning of his responsible life, in order to respond to the sense and predestination of his existence as a man and not merely as an animal, of four definite and distinct personalities.

     The first of these four independent personalities is nothing other than the totality of the automatic functioning proper to man, as to all animals, the data for which are composed, on the one hand, of the sum total of the results of impressions perceived since birth from all the surrounding reality, as well as from everything intentionally implanted in him from outside and, on the other hand, of the result of the process, also inherent in every animal, called "daydreaming."  And this totality of automatic functioning most people ignorantly call "consciousness" or, at best, "thinking."

     The second of the four personalities, functioning in most cases entirely independently of the first, is the sum of the results of data deposited and fixed in the common presence of every man, as of every animal, through the six organs called "receivers of vibrations of different qualities"--organs that function in accordance with the new impressions perceived, and whose sensitivity depends upon heredity and upon the conditions of the preparatory formation for responsible existence of the given individual.

     The third independent part of the whole being is the basic functioning of his organism as well as the play of the motor-reflex manifestations acting upon each other within the functioning--manifestations whose quality likewise depends on heredity and the circumstances prevailing during his preparatory formation.

     And the fourth personality, which should also be a distinct part of the whole individual, is none other than the manifestation of the totality of the results of the already automatized functioning of the three enumerated personalities separately formed in him and independently educated, that is to say, it is that part of a being which is called "I."

     In the common presence of a man, for the spiritualization and manifestation of each of the three separately formed parts of his entire whole there is an independent "center-of-gravity localization," as it is called, that is to say, a "brain"; and each of these localizations, with its own complete system, has for the totality of its manifestations its own peculiarities and predispositions proper to it alone.  Consequently, in order to make possible the all-round perfecting of a man, a corresponding, correct education is indespensible for each of these three parts--and not such a treatment as is given nowadays under the name of "education."

     Only then can the "I" that should be in a man be his own "I."

Excerpt from "Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson," G. I Gurdjieff,

Viking Arkana Edition 1992, pp1089-1091