G.I.Gurdjieff

Christ and the others spoke of the death that can take place in life, the death of the tyrant from whom our slavery comes, the death that is a necessary condition of the first and principal liberation of man.

If we were deprived of our illusions and all that prevents us from seeing reality—if we were deprived of our interests, our cares, our expectations and hopes—all our strivings would collapse. Everything would become empty and there would remain an empty being, an empty body, only physiologically alive. This would be the death of “I,” the death of everything it consisted of, the destruction of everything false collected through ignorance or inexperience. All this would remain in us merely as material, but subject to selection. Then we would be able to choose for ourselves and not have imposed on us what others like. We would have conscious choice.

Yet the same order of relationship is possible among the functions in a person with only a physical body. The physical functions may control feeling, thought and consciousness; feeling may control the physical functions; thought may control the physical functions and feeling; or consciousness may control the physical functions, feeling and thought.

We have something like magnetism in us, consisting of not only one but several substances formed when the machine is working. When the machine works mechanically, a first substance is produced. When we work subconsciously, another kind of substance is produced. And when we work consciously, a third kind of substance is produced. In terms of the connections between our centers, the first substance corresponds to the “shafts,” the second to the “reins,” and the third to the substance that permits the driver to hear the passenger, remembering that sound cannot travel in a vacuum.