For the sake of clarity I will explain that what many others have called ego or mind, I am going to call personality. The division is not exactly the same, but is it is close enough. I don’t like ego because it comes with too many psychoanalytic connotations, and I don’t like mind because the mind is a separate and legitimate function.
The way of dividing man into three parts, personality, essence, and consciousness is from the Gurdjieff / Ouspensky system. In reality personality and consciousness can be further divided. Personality can be divided into false and true personality and consciousness can be divided into higher emotional center and higher intellectual center. These five levels can be seen as separate inner worlds. False personality is the heaviest and under the most laws, higher centers are the lightest and under the fewest laws, and essence is in between.
Personality is not a function, and therefore easily distinguished from mind. Personality is a collection of opinions, instinctive habits, education, negative emotions, and habitual postures and movements. It is in a sense all our programming. It is what we were taught to think and feel, not what we would necessarily think and feel if essence had been left to develop without the intrusions of personality. Essence is what we were born with, our talents, our limitations, and our natural preferences and aversions. Nothing in personality is hardwired; everything in essence is hardwired. In a perfect world preferences in personality would reflect preferences in essence. But our world is far from perfect.
A child may be naturally creative and artistic, but be told from an early age that art is not practical. His parents and teachers may even convince him to forgo art. Perhaps the child’s father is a businessman and expects his son to carry on the family business. Essence will rebel, but if essence is opposed and beaten down enough, it will eventually give way. The child may grow up and become a decent businessman, but no matter what happens to him, his essence will always be artistic. He is a businessman in personality only. He may live his whole life feeling unhappy and lost, and not understand why. Another young man may be a natural carpenter, but have greed in personality. He decides that he wants to make a lot of money and that being a carpenter does not pay enough. Or perhaps he feels that working with his hands is beneath him. So he goes into business and learns to use his mind to make a living. Perhaps his greed will motivate him enough to be a good businessman. But, again, he will never be happy. Another man may be good a businessman in essence and find satisfaction and joy in the business world. Essences are different. What gives one person joy, will give another only frustration. The main point here is to understand that personality is incapable of being happy.
It sometimes happens, though it’s becoming rare, that essence overshadows personality. It’s unusual to see this in mainstream cultures in the west; though it can occur in pockets of underprivileged or minority groups within the culture at large. This imbalance occurs more frequently in underdeveloped cultures where there is little or no education, where there is no communication with the outside world, and where the problems of survival overshadow other concerns. In these cases essence dominates because personality has never been given a chance to develop.
The tendency of personality to overshadow essence is far more common, and it has been made more common by our mechanized and increasing violent and alienated way of life. Essence can be fed by many different kinds of activities, but human contact is essential to its well being and growth. In our times, where much of human interaction is facilitated through computers and phones, it is not unusual that essence atrophies at an early age. A grown man can have the essence of a spoiled child. In undemanding circumstances he may seem mature and even intelligent—he may be the CEO of big company or a senator—but if you press him a little, make his life uncomfortable, his essence will react. It will squirm, complain, and be revengeful like a little boy.
Essence can atrophy for many reasons. It can, for instance, be stunted because of an infatuation with sport or games or because of an unhealthy preoccupation with activities or professions that are artificial in the sense that they alienate a person from basic human relationships and nature as a whole. It is not unusual for a forty year old man to have the essence of a seven year old child. This is sometimes more apparent in famous or successful people. For Instance, in our times it is almost expected that actors, performers, and athletes will be demanding and childish in personal matters. It is even thought that infantile behavior is somehow necessary for the creative process; this, of course, is nonsense. Childish behavior means an immature essence; that is, an essence that has stopped developing during childhood.
It is curious that modern psychology recognizes the fact that experiences that change us and determine our psychological make-up are most often encountered in early childhood; that is, before personality has had a chance to develop. In reality formative experiences are closed to adults not by nature, but because essence is dominated too much by personality. There is no reason why experiences in our adult life cannot be instrumental in defining who we are. The only thing that is required is that these experiences be allowed to reach essence. When personality dominates it means that events are deflected, that they are not allowed to enter us in a way that affects us deeply. Self-remembering and being present change that; they create a shock in the body that allows experiences to enter essence and affect us, what Gurdjieff called the ‘first conscious shock.’ Self-remembering is the shock that allows essence to grow and become vibrant again; it is the first step to connecting to higher centers.
If essence is ‘what we were born with, our talents, our limitations, and our natural preferences and aversions’ and if it is ‘hardwired’ there seems to be a contradiction, even if only an apparent one, with the idea that essence can either develop and grow, or atrophy. Is it just that the practice of presence is the exception that will allow further growth of essence? Is growth the right metaphor or is it more a question of making contact/reconnecting with essence?
James, it’s a good question. There are certain aspects of essence that cannot be changed. For instance your ethnicity is part of your essence, and that obviously cannot be changed. Your ‘type’ is also part of your essence, and that also cannot be changed. But essence can grow. There is no contradiction. We can say, for instance, that an ash tree is hardwired to be an ash tree. It cannot become an oak or an apple tree. But it can grow. Given certain conditions, it can grow to its full potential as an ash tree. Given other, worse conditions, it may be stunted and never achieve its full potential. In the same way we all have certain abilities and talents built in. I may be good at mathematics and you may be an artist. The question is whether or not those abilities are given the right conditions to develop. Being present is best way to see and understand your essence, but it is possible for certain talents to develop without consistent efforts to be present.
Note: ‘Type’ is explained in the article Human Individuality and Attraction.
I would also say that growth can be pictured as health. whereby our essence is unhealthy because we are driven by un healthy drives. Much like the enneagram institute gives a “health spectrum” of a persons essence by how functional or dysfunctional they are.
Matt: This is a good way to think about it, as long as it is understood that to have a healthy body and to have a healthy essence are not the same. They can go together, which, of course, is best. But it is possible to have one without the other. A healthy body means strength and lack of illness and injury. A healthy essence means a capacity to see one’s self and to know one’s limitations. It means, really, a capacity to do the work, to be present and to not express negative emotions. It is a door to higher centers. This distinction may not seem important when we are young, but old age and death comes for all of us, so we must not pin essence to bodily health.
At the same we must not undervalue health. Montaigne considered it the greatest gift of all.
You think Gurdjieff (or Ouspensky – or any of the original Gurdjieff ‘lot’) would think that the personality enneagram system describes some psychological truth in objective reality? I certainly do not -having been super-sensitive to temperament/character a lot of my life -and how myself and those I know are in REALITY!
I was at a Gurdjieff ‘school’ with one of his ‘disciples’ so-to-speak, a delightful woman called Rina Hands, and they -she and her fellow ‘teachers’ seem to think it was dangerous nonsense, or so they first thought (I do not think they studied it at all). I would agree -for all those who IDENTIFY with its system as how things are. (‘Dangerous’ in that it holds some truth and wisdom, but then believes in that it is the full truth somehow!)
I suggest observe and see ourselves- how we are honestly, and we’ll see that we are a collection, a suggestion, of ‘types’ -or mixtures of ‘types’ in reality. No one is a typical ‘4’ or ‘8’ or ‘2’ as it is described -day-in, day-out, though they may be sometimes: I acknowledge that I myself can be very ‘4’ like on occasions; also very ‘9’ like on others, and ‘7’ like on other occasions -and all these are ‘me’ (In Chinese elements terms, which is not a system, this would be like witnessing respectively, -metal, earth and fire in myself) and I can see more if I look further (someone, rigidly adhering to the stereotypes of the ennegram would think I was a ‘5’ or a ‘1’ with all this – maybe it is expressing these sides of me as well!).
Let us put the reality of how we are first -of just how I am, then looking for what fits sometimes (Only sometimes!)… I think people can glimpse themselves in one or two or three, then think they have to be only one! -as if all those genuine contradictions then fall by the wayside because they have ‘finally’ typed themselves! I think if we observe and experience ourselves over a long period of time, most of us will find we are like 4 or 5 or 6 ‘types’, depending on all sorts of inner-states and external contexts… I would suggest character based on many conditions is a mystery and very nuanced. Our essence-character is even more subtle and impossible to objectify, although we can taste and recognise it ourselves when we are in it, and we feel ‘oh – of course, this is my nature, this is really me’ but it will not conform to any of the 9 types, which are, after all, PERSONALITY-types (or they way they are absurdly rendered nowadays, sterotypes…!)
The system is rigid, largely established by Don Richard Riso, I think, -indeed, an intuitive and intelligent, perceptive guy, I think, but one -I also think -greedy, or needy, for a system for it all to capture his scattered insights: but human character is vast, subtle, changeable and variable; and like any system that believes it is what is ‘so’ or ‘true’, it really does not fit with our actual reality, I strongly suggest to anyone open to reality and interested in/perceptive of character
To gvr you an example of where reality and the system are incompatible: around now (2019-2020), enneagram enthusiasts debate endlessly – is the Psychopathic, extremely unhealthy Trump, which Gurdjieff would surely label a ‘Hasnamassus’, is a ‘3’ or an ‘8’!? He has to be one OR the other, they think. Well, just to make this point, entertaining the reality of the 9 types -as I know them well, one can clearly SEE he has both the traits of the ‘3’ and the ‘8’ And that is about all he is; but they cannot and will not see this, because of the system denies that possibility -so back-and-forth it goes! It is Bizarre, irrational to our experience, and why does no one else see this!? (I am aware of the huge amount of adherents -most of whom are in the U.S. -some of whom will be intelligent + perceptive -and must have undelying confusions about this!?!)
I am sure that our ‘essence’ knows these things, but it is subtle and experiential; for some reason our personalites/egos/everyday, conditioned selves seem to NEED such Systems, sadly…
I find the (already, earlier touched-upon) Chinese elements are a good way, tool, to see character, perhaps the best way, better than Myers Briggs, for they don’t need to conform to a ‘stereotype’ but a very General temperament: and with them, one needs no system or Birthchart, or whatever; and we all have all 5, but some are much more native to our essence more than others, but we need to have some of all of them to life a satisfying, and fulfilled life: someone might be ‘wood’ predominant or ‘wood and metal’ predominant, but they can still show signs of ‘water’ or ‘earth’ or ‘fire’ at other times… and that is just the way that particular being is… It is just being in touch with the ever-shifting reality of what we actually are! Reality is multi-faceted and subtle, even when it does not appear so…
I would love someone to right a really persuasive counter-argument to what I am saying; but I have never heard one… For instance, I might be wrong, I might have overlooked something… It is quite ‘lonely’ being like this… But no one has done this. Moreover, so many current ‘spiritual teachers’ also ‘identify’ with their ‘type’ which makes me wonder about them to be honest, to some extent.
So -my ultimate conclusion about the enneagram is that a flawed system in believing one person is just one ‘type’. What it is quite astute abut it is the personality archetypes. Occasionally, all of us can be true to one of them, but never on a day-to-day basis! Don Richard Riso believed in and only these 9 types -albeit with wings; and THAT was the original problem I guess! They are stereotypes; although there is some genius of awareness in spanning the whole of human character with these nine types -i.e. there are very few ‘pure thinkers’ or pure ‘artists’ although many people will/would choose them as one of their closest ‘types’.
The Fourth Way School which I participated in studied the type system explored by Rodney Collin in Theory of Celestial Influence based on glands and planetary influences. I believe this is one that originated in the ancient alchemical sciences. Myself and my friends in the Work found it to be extremely efficient at revealing our types and essence natures.
I also do not find the enneagram types to be accurate. There is an excellent book about this written by Anthony Blake entitled the Intelligent Enneagram which explains the true application of the Enneagram and why Palmer’s version misuses its meaning. Blake, a student of Bennett who was a student of Gurdjieff, is very careful not to attack Palmer personally and only refers to her system in a footnote, but to anyone who has studied the enneagram in a Gurdjieff setting, the erroneousness is obvious.
I would love to read this article but the link seems to be broken. V
G.Gurdjieff said that, in a certain way, the ‘Self’ can be seen
as one’s own essence become adult, mature.
It is the tale of the ‘Fair Asleep’ or ‘Snowwhite’: essence
overshadowed by personality (thus a ‘false personality’: as personality in its fit place follows essence but forego)_ until some Higher Influence or Power, through
the effort to Be Present, ‘awakens’ her.
Well, actually this is the content of any fairy-tale, or myth.
And the whole and only business of one’s life.
I’ve always been on the fence about the Work’s seeming aversion to sport – I don’t fully understand it. An infatuation with it could certainly be crippling – I see it being used as an avoidance mechanism, or as a substitute for real engagement; its fervency, I can see, can make it particularly poisonous. But then I see Djokovic play, for example, and I’m struck by the real-time, in the body presence he brings to his game when he succeeds. There’s no time for wasted movement or energy, no time for emotional identification or any thinking beyond the most necessary. There’s likely not the intent that goes into practicing the Movements – or maybe there is something like that, I don’t know the man – but there’s worse ways to spend one’s time. Is identification with sport necessarily more toxic than religious zealotry, or identification with sex or Facebook? Is self remembering watching a baseball game more or less possible than when reading a novel? In baseball, I’m often struck by how the obviously identified players, with their ticks and posing and chew, don’t seem to do as well as the ones who bring more of a relaxed presence to the game; in a good novel, I’m deliciously lost. Thoughts?
Jeff: Sport or more particularly games can be seen as an artificial world set within the world that we live in. It has it’s own rules and aims. But compared to life the rules and aims of a game are simplistic. For instance the aim of sports is to win, to beat the other opponent or team. But life on earth, or essence, which includes our relationships with nature and with other people, is far more complicated. For instance, it not unusual to hear athletes or coaches say that ‘winning is everything.’ But if you bring that attitude to your relationships with other people and with nature, you’re going to have, well pretty much what we have today: a society that is destroying the planet that it lives on and a society that solves its problems by killing its opponents and bombing towns and cities.
This is not to say that sport or games are the root of our problems. They are not. Games can be enjoyed by essence. Sports, particularly outdoor sports, can helps us connect to our bodies and to nature in a more focused way. It’s a question of the attitude we bring to the game. If we only care about winning, to the exclusion of all other experiences, then certainly essence is going to suppressed. And if we bring these kinds of attitudes to our lives, then essence will certainly atrophy.
Jeff: All the other other identifications you mention are also detrimental to essence. In general we try to avoid activities that alienate us from basic human contact and nature as a whole.
Consciousness is not identified with particular centers. Usually our attention revolves around the three everyday centers; intellectual, moving and emotional. Occasionally the life centers that operate on a more longterm basis emerge into awareness temporarily. Thirst, hunger or tireness is the instinctive center speaking.
Hi!
Will you kindly name me some kinds of Essence?
Best
Almost any characteristic can be a kind of essence. You can have an intellectual essence, an emotional essence, a direct essence, a nurturing essence. The trick with essence is to distinguish it in yourself from personality because all the same traits that can be in essence can also be part of false personality. What is essence for one person may be in personality for another. In other words what is real and natural for you can be artificial and false for someone else.
This is really quite good, and perhaps clearer than Gurdjieff, Ouspensky or even Maurice Nicoll/JG Bennett ever was on the subject (-or is a good, modern summarising and synthesis of all three or four) – in suggesting this subtle area, using Gudjieff system…
I would say that perceiving ‘essence’ is ultimately an intuitive thing – we know-it-when-we-know-it, which is of little use to explaining it objectively, but I do not think it can be objetified at all, like most of the important and intimate things that we Know and feel in life!
‘Essence’ -to me, is what is truly ALIVE also NATURAL in myself, that – as you say, is kind of permanent, and has its own laws/rules, rhymes-and-reasons, to it… I think it is a VITAL reference point for people in this age when labels, obejctification, sterotyping and the like are the unfortunate norm, at least on social-media… However, one useful (for me – very much so) -also modern thing -‘self-care’ can be really addressed here, as caring for our esssence, like a healthy and wise and good set of ‘inner’-parents – who are rich, perceptive, creative and resourceful.
It also feels good and is extremely mentally Healthy to live in or near, at least with access to one’s essence; being in touch with it gives one self-power (in a healthy way), self-freedom and clarity that is useful for our own lives.
Moreover, I think it is key to who we can-be-ourselves with – especially when we are looking for a long-term marriage/partner… There are some people in this world, maybe 1 in 500, or 1 in 800 (just a random imagined number) will be so fully compatible with us on an essence-level, -where no only do we ‘get’ each other, but we can mutually really ‘be ourselves’ with each other, -with some differences with which to grow through and be honest about. Same with friendship in general. I.e. not people exactly LIKE us, but there is such an essence affiity and understanding, then all the differences are interesting and ‘bridge-able’
[I came across this when people on an Alan Watts social-media discussion, were saying ‘but isn’t everything we are, ourselves?’ and have sited it about twice in the conversation -it being very apt for this)
I notice you feel though that personal contact is necessary for healthy growth; while I don’t want to contradict this, I remember Gurdjieff himself implying it can grow when we are alone and have to fend for ourselves in nature – though I suppse that is a relationship with something LIVING, natural -hence its healthiness and inevitability for growth.
I also like how you refer to Consciousness as merely being in/of higher centres; but I don’t think that all ‘negative emotions’ are wrong, or ‘false’ for us and our essence, or even ‘Unspiritual’: anger, sadness and fear can be interesting and healthy, and not based ouround our own ‘ego-me-self’, but be much larger, Deeper and include all other beings… For example, in view of politicians lack of action on climate-change, and the devastating effects this will inevitably have for us, brings in a certain healthy rage and Sadness and fear…
Just my thoughts 🙂
As to your last paragraph, I had a teacher who used to say “Never fear to hate the odious.” It seems pretty easy to discern what is odious to us. How we hate, however, I think is the question. I listen patiently to my husband who is constantly compelled to verbally and explosively hate government officials appearing to do ridiculous, childish and harmful things as portrayed on the television. I know this is because they are odious in his mind. He is a good man who would love to fix the world’s problems. But because he is not in any position to do so, his anger substitutes for his ability to do anything about them. But the fact that I understand his situation is one thing, and the work he is doing on himself is another. I feel the vehemence flowing from him as a loss of energy that could be applied much more usefully. I feel the waste and self destruction of negative emotions. I recognize that this desire to “do something” is in the nature of active types and men it seems in particular, who feel responsible in so many ways, and we do love them for that. I have said this directly to him, by the way. One problem is that this can become a habit. I often feel he is more eager to attack than to listen. My experience is that learning and awareness stop when negative emotions take over.
As a woman I find it easier to separate from the craziness of politics. I can do little except to vote and pester my representatives. I am not in any position to do anything else. I put it on the “back burner” and keep my eye out for opportunities.
In the Work I learned to “first be present” in the sense that we take in impressions and allow them to enter and be acted upon by our essence and by whatever conscious ability we have to assess them. Not to be reactive. I am so grateful to the work for giving me the knowledge that I don’t have to act on everything I think or feel; and I don’t have believe anything I happen to think or feel. In my mind, this is one of the causes of the shortsighted and bigoted attitudes that create many of today’s problems. People hear a thing and react before they digest or assay its validity in any way. All of us are vulnerable to this trap.
But we can feel. And on this subject, if there is any lack in the work as I have experienced it in a Fourth Way school for five years, it is that there is not nearly enough attention on emotions. The attention emotions received was primarily on non-expression of negative ones. We worked to feed the emotional function high impressions, fine music, good art, etc. but we did not fully explore emotions in our own being. The important role of emotions in waking up seems to require more attention.
I write fiction and in my process I once looked up how many emotions there are. Life seems capable mainly of acknowledging and talking about five or six of these: hate, anger, love, sorrow and joy. I was happy to read William’s comments on nostalgia. What about awe, sympathy, aversion, devotion, confidence, etc and many unnamed in our own language: Han (Korean): A combination of hope and despair at the same time; the collective acceptance of suffering combined with the quiet yearning for things to be different, but combined with the very grim determination to see things through, even to the very bitter end; (sounds like the note Sol) or Kaukokaipuu (Finnish): The craving for a distant land; the desperate yearning to be somewhere you’ve never even visited, or the desire to be anywhere but where you are right now; or Saudade (Portuguese): A deep emotional state of nostalgic or profound melancholic longing for an absent something or someone that one loves.
I have only found such exploration in very fine poetry, such as some of the Sufic and mystic writers. I like that you, Guilian, used the terms interest, affinity and intuition. I also explore intimacy in all the functions – isn’t emotional and intellectual intimacy interesting? We usually only think of physical intimacy.
I find it especially informative to try to deeply define the emotions that parade in front of me as I sit at the television or read a novel. Living in a world of “I liked that” or “I didn’t like that” is just too boring and useless.
Well I have gotten wordy on some favorite subjects of mine. There must be a word for that. V
It seems to me I cannot ‘think’ my way to the growth of essence. I spent 5 and a half years in university in addition to the usual schooling. You get to the end of that, how many unhelpful personalities and mind tendencies have then developed! I seem to observe in myself that letting go of all these ideas I have of myself allows essence room to breathe. Then I taste a different state. A more real experience of the ‘I Am’. Then aspects of personality, sensing a threat, try to reassert control. Perhaps everything struggles to survive, even aspects of false personality.
It seems I cannot think my way to essence. But if I am present and allow myself to have a real experience, free of ‘should’ or ‘ought’ or opinion, I just might taste it again, and glimpse the insanity of the wodern world.
No wonder Nicoll referred to the ‘horror’ of our usual condition. We waste our lives in fantasy and false personality. Not experiencing what is, merely our idea of what is.