Great Amwell House, July 19, 1947
FURTHER TALK ON ESSENCE AND PERSONALITY
Essence is what we are born with: Personality is what we acquire
by contact with outer life. Essence is internal to Personality. Personality
surrounds Essence. It forms the outer man, as it were, and Essence
forms the inner man. The relations between the two are very com-
plicated. Both are necessary, for Essence, the real part of us, cannot
grow beyond a certain point without the aid of Personality, the artificial
part of us. One interesting thing is that the Work teaches that these
two parts of us are under different laws. Everything that exists is under
laws. Personality is under what is called in the Work the Law of
Accident and Essence is under the Law of Fate. We begin life under
the Law of Fate, but soon pass under the Law of Accident. But we
should, in later life, pass out of the Law of Accident and come again
under the Law of Fate. These phases correspond to change of sign-
that is, at first in early life Essence is active; then it becomes passive,
while Personality is forming ; finally it should become active again at
the expense of Personality. Thus one's task in general in the Work is,
after Personality is formed, to make Personality passive. If you remain
in older life dominated by all the opinions, prejudices, buffers, attitudes,
pictures of yourself, etc., that you have acquired in Personality, Essence
cannot grow. The unreal side of you gains the victory. Also you remain
under the Law of Accident. That follows from the unrealness of oneself
and from continuing to do unreal things. One remains then an
imitation or invented man or an imitation or invented woman. Not
only so, but all the worries and anxieties imitated by the Personality
torture the life. People then cannot see how many useless efforts they
make and how they rush after meaningless things. Essence cannot
deceive itself, because it is real. But Personality can deceive Essence.
A man may pretend to himself that he only wishes to help, say, the poor,
and Essence thinks it is so. But Personality wishes to gain power and
cares nothing for the poor. That is, the outer man deceives the inner
man. The power of distinguishing between real and unreal things is
lost in this kind of mill-race in which so often it seems that the ideal is
to "waste no time", etc. Waste no time for what? Now hurry, strain,
worry, anxiety, a wrong sense of duty, a constant inner uproar and all
such states lead only to wrong efforts in useless directions, and strengthen
the hold of Personality. Finally they destroy all connection with
Essence and the person becomes a sort of worried empty shell. For
these states are all illusions, all forms of hypnotism, all little tricks used
by those influences that seek to keep Man asleep on this Earth—and
which they do so successfully. A great cleansing of oneself from
Personality is required in this Work from those who can hear it. If your
name is Smith, then you must work against Smith, for that is the name
of your Personality which is active. For this reason you will find it
necessary really to study and obey what the Work tells you to do and so
apply it to yourself. Smith will be under the Law of Accident. By
beginning to make him passive through the power of this Work you will
draw force into Essence and it will be able to develop. Essence is under
the Law of Fate. A new growth of Essence is something that can never
be taken away from you. It can only happen through what is internally
and genuinely seen and done and never through the external action of
life. A new growth of Essence is not something which one knows or
plans. It takes place when the falseness of Personality is weakened by
genuine inner perception of its unrealness. It means a change in the
level of Being. So the life cannot repeat itself as before since, if Being
changes, it will attract a new life. But if it does not change, it will
attract the same life.
Now I will quote part of a talk on Essence and Personality given by
Mr. Gurdjieff and recorded by Mr. Ouspensky. It begins with a brief
reference to the subject of Will. Mr. Gurdjieff is speaking:
"The question of Will, of one's own will and of another man's will,
is much more complicated than it seems at first glance. A man has not
sufficient will to do—that is, to control himself and all his actions—but
he has sufficient will to obey another person—or obey the Work. And
only in this way can he escape from the Law of Accident. There is no
other way.
"I mentioned before about Fate and Accident in a man's life. We will
now take the meaning of these words in more detail. Fate also exists,
but not for everyone. Most people are separated from their Fate and
live under Law of Accident only. Fate is a result of planetary influences
which correspond to a man's type. We will speak about types later.
In the meantime you must grasp one thing. A man can have the Fate
which corresponds to his type but he practically never does have it.
This arises because Fate has relation to only one part of Man—namely,
to his Essence. It must be understood that Man consists of two parts—
Essence and Personality. Essence in a man is what is his own: Personality
in a man is what 'is not his own'. 'Not his own' means what has come
from outside, what he has learned, or what reflects all traces of external
impressions left in the memory and in the sensations, all words and
movements that have been learned, all feelings created by imitation
—all this is 'not his own', all this is in 'Personality'.
"From the point of view of ordinary psychology, the division of Man
into 'Personality' and 'Essence' is hardly comprehensible. It is more
exact to say that such a division does not exist in psychology at all.
"A small child has no 'Personality' as yet. He is what he really is.
He is 'Essence'. His desires, tastes, likes, dislikes, express his Being such
as it is. But as soon as so-called education begins, 'Personality' begins
to grow. 'Personality' is created partly by the intentional influences of
other people—that is, by 'education'—and partly by involuntary imita-
tion of them by the child itself. In the creation of 'Personality' a great
part is also played by 'resistance' to people around him, and by attempts
to conceal from them something that is 'his own' or 'real'.
"Essence is the truth in Man: Personality is the false. But in propor-
tion as Personality grows, Essence manifests itself more and more rarely
and more and more feebly, and it often happens that Essence stops in
its growth at a very early age and grows no further. It happens very
often that the Essence of a grown-up man, even that of a very intel-
lectual and, in the accepted meaning of the word, highly educated
man, stops at the level of a child of five or six. This means that every-
thing that we see in this man is really foreign. What is his own in Man,
that is in his Essence, is usually only manifested in his instincts and in
his simplest emotions. There are cases, however, where a man's Essence
grows parallel with his Personality. Such cases represent very rare
exceptions, especially in the circumstances of cultured life. Essence has
more chances of development in men who live nearer to nature in
difficult conditions of constant struggles and danger. But as a rule the
Personality of such people is very little developed. They have more of
what is their 'own' but very little of what is 'not their own'—that is to
say, they lack education and instruction, they lack culture. Culture
creates Personality and is at the same time the product and the result
of Personality. We do not realize that the whole of our life, all we call
civilisation, all we call science, philosophy, art, politics, is created by
people's Personality—that is, by what is 'not their own' in them.
"The element that is 'not his own' differs from what is Man's 'own'
by the fact that it can be lost, altered, or taken away by artificial means.
There exists a possibility of experimental verification of the relation of
Personality to Essence. In Eastern schools, ways and means are known,
by the help of which it is possible to separate Man's Personality from
his Essence. For this purpose they sometimes use hypnosis, sometimes
special narcotics, sometimes certain kinds of exercises. If Personality
and Essence are for a time separated in a man by one or another of these
means, two beings are as it were formed in him, who speak in different
voices, have completely different tastes, aims and interests, and one of
these two beings often proves to be on the level of a small child.
Continuing the experiment further it is possible to put one of these beings
to sleep, or the experiment may begin by putting to sleep either
Personality or Essence. Certain narcotics have the property of putting
Personality to sleep without affecting Essence. And for a certain time
after taking this narcotic a man's Personality disappears, as it were,
and only his Essence remains. And it happens that a man full of the
most varied and exalted ideas, full of sympathies and antipathies, love
and hatred, attachments, patriotism, habits, tastes, desires, convictions,
suddenly proves quite empty, without thoughts, without feelings,
without convictions, without views. Everything that has agitated him
before now leaves him perfectly indifferent. Sometimes he sees the
artificiality and the imaginary character of his usual moods, or his
high-sounding words, sometimes he simply forgets them as though they
had never existed. Things for which he was ready to sacrifice his life
now appear to him ridiculous, meaningless and unworthy of his atten-
tion. All that he can find in himself is a small number of instinctive
inclinations and tastes. He is fond of sweets, he likes warmth, he dislikes
cold, he dislikes the thought of work, or, on the contrary, he likes the
idea of physical movement. And that is all. Sometimes, though very
seldom, and sometimes when it is least expected, Essence proves fully
grown and fully developed in a man, even in cases of undeveloped
Personality, and, in this case, Essence unites together everything that is
serious and real in a man.
"But this very seldom happens. As a rule Man's Essence is either
primitive, savage and childish, or else simply stupid. The development
of Essence depends on work on oneself.
"A very important moment in the work on oneself is when a man
begins to distinguish between his Personality and his Essence. A man's
Real 'I', his individuality, can grow only from his Essence."
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