B1188 <=> B1190 (BTG XLVIII From the Author, p. 1189)

LECTURE NUMBER ONE

THE VARIETY, ACCORDING TO LAW, OF THE MANIFESTATIONS OF HUMAN INDIVIDUALITY

(Last read in New York in the Neighborhood Playhouse, January, 1924)

According to the investigations of many scientists of past ages and according to the data obtained at the present time by means of the quite exceptionally conducted researches of the Institute-for-the-Harmonious-Development-of-Man according to the system of Mr. Gurdjieff, the whole individuality of every man – according to laws and conditions of the process of life of people which have from the very beginning become established and gradually fixed on the Earth – of whatever heredity he is the result, and whatever be the accidental surrounding conditions in which he arose and developed, must already at the beginning of his responsible life – as a condition of responding in reality to the sense and predesignation of his existence as a man and not merely as an animal – indispensably consist of four definite distinct personalities.

The first of these four independent personalities is nothing else than the totality of that automatic functioning which is proper to man as well as to all animals, the data for which are composed in them firstly of the sum total of the results of impressions previously perceived from all the surrounding reality as well as from everything intentionally artificially implanted in them from outside, and, secondly, from the result of the process also inherent in every animal called “daydreaming.” And this totality of automatic functioning most people ignorantly name “consciousness,” or, at best, “mentation.”