G.I.Gurdjieff

One of our greatest errors is our illusion in regard to our “I.” Man such as we know him—the “human machine” who cannot “do” and all of whose seeming actions simply are “done”—cannot have an invariable and unified “I.” Our “I” changes as frequently as our thoughts, feelings and moods, and we make a serious mistake in considering ourselves always the same person, when actually we are always someone else and never the same person as a moment ago. Man has no constant and invariable “I.” Every thought, every mood, every desire, every sensation says “I.” And, in each case, we assume that this “I” speaks for the Whole, the whole person, and that a thought, desire or aversion represents the expression of this Whole. In actual fact this assumption is entirely baseless. Each thought and desire appears and lives quite separately and independently of the Whole. And the Whole never actually expresses itself, for the simple reason that it exists, as such, only as a material entity in a physical body and as an abstract concept. In his psyche, man has no unified “I,” but rather hundreds of separate small “I’s” that are very often either entirely unknown and inaccessible to one another or, on the contrary, hostile to one another, that is, mutually exclusive and incompatible. Each minute, each moment, we are saying or thinking “I,” and each time, our “I” is different. First it is a thought, then a desire, then a sensation, then another thought and so on, ad infinitum. Man is a plurality; his name is Legion.

The alternation of “I’s,” their constant struggle for supremacy,
is directed by accidental external influences. Warmth, sunshine, nice weather—all these things immediately call up an entire group of “I’s.” Cold, fog, rain, call up another group, with different associations, feelings and actions.

In fact, when a machine knows itself, it is no longer merely a machine, or, at least, not such as it was before. It already begins to be responsible for its actions. To know our machine, we must realize our own situation. We are in prison. All we can wish for, if we are sensible, is to escape. But how? The only way out is to tunnel under a wall. This is too great a task for one person alone. But if there are ten or twenty people, working in shifts, some digging, some covering for others, then they may be able to tunnel out and escape. Furthermore, no one can escape from prison without the help of those who have already escaped. Only they can tell how to get out, or provide whatever tools might be needed. But there is no way one prisoner acting alone could find these people or communicate with them. What is needed is an organized group.