Exploring the Teachings of Gurdjieff: THE INCONSTANT "I"

"It is the greatest mistake to think that man is always one and the same.  A man is never the same for long.  He is constantly changing.  He seldom remains the same even for half an hour."

"Man has no permanent and unchangeable I.  Every thought, every mood, every desire, every sensation, says “I”.  And in each case it seems to be taken for granted that this 'I' belongs to the Whole, to the whole man, and a thought, a desire, or an aversion is expressed by this Whole.  In actual fact, there is no foundation whatever for this assumption. ... The Whole never expresses itself, for the simple reason that it exists as such only physically, as a thing, in the abstract as a concept.  Man has no individual 'I'."

"Our principal error is that we think we have one mind.  We call the functions of this mind ‘conscious’; everything that does not enter this mind we call ‘unconscious’ or ‘subconscious’….[but] the activity of the human machine, that is, of the physical body, is controlled not by one but by several minds, entirely independent of each other, having separate functions and separate spheres in which they manifest themselves. "

In Search of the Miraculous, P. D. Ouspensky

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