Gurdjieff:
“Knowledge of oneself is a very big, but a very vague and distant, aim. Man in his present state is very far from self-knowledge. Therefore, strictly speaking, his aim cannot even be defined as self-knowledge. Self-study must be his big aim. It is quite enough if a man understands that he must study himself. It must be man’s aim to begin to study himself, to know himself, in the right way.
“Self-study is the work or the way which leads to self-knowledge.
“But in order to study oneself one must first learn how to study, where to begin, what methods to use. A man must learn how to study himself, and he must study the methods of self-study.
“The chief method of self-study is self-observation. Without properly applied self-observation a man will never understand the connection and the correlation between the various functions of his machine, will never understand how and why on each separate occasion everything in him ‘happens’.
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“There are two methods of self-observation: analysis, or attempts at analysis, that is, attempts to find the answers to the questions: upon what does a certain thing depend, and why does it happen; and the second method is registering, simply ‘recording’ in one’s mind what is observed at the moment.
“Self-observation, especially in the beginning, must on no account become analysis or attempts at analysis. Analysis will only become possible much later when a man knows all the functions of his machine and all the laws which govern it.
“In trying to analyze some phenomenon that he comes across within him, a man generally asks: ‘What is this? Why does it happen in this way and not in some other way?’ And he begins to seek an answer to these questions, forgetting all about further observations. Becoming more and more engrossed in these questions he completely loses the thread of self-observation and even forgets about it. Observation stops. It is clear from this that only one thing can go on; either observation or attempts at analysis.
“But even apart from this, attempts to analyze separate phenomena without a knowledge of general laws are a completely useless waste of time. Before it is possible to analyze even the most elementary phenomena, a man must accumulate a sufficient quantity of material by means of ‘recording’. ‘Recording’, that is, the result of a direct observation of what is taking place at a given moment, is the most important material in the work of self-study. When a certain number of ‘records’ have been accumulated and when, at the same time, laws to a certain extent have been studied and understood, analysis becomes possible.”
Gurdjieff:
“A man who wants to awake must look for other people who also want to awake and work together with them. …… The work must be organised and it must have a leader…… Other members of the group serve him as mirrors in which he sees himself…… The exchange of observations is one of the purposes.”
“In properly organised groups no faith is required: what is required is simply a little trust and even that only for a little while, for the sooner a man begins to verify all he hears the better it is for him.”
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