Being Notes on Certain Mechanical Behaviors Witnessed in Contemporary Man
By G.I. Gurdjieff
I have observed with great interest the struggles of several individuals who believe themselves to be awakening, yet who demonstrate with remarkable consistency the very mechanical behaviors they imagine they have transcended. Their stories reveal the cunning of the false personality and the subtlety of the sleep in which ordinary man lives. Each believes himself to be working, yet each has substituted one form of sleep for another, more sophisticated perhaps, but sleep nonetheless.
Let me speak plainly about what I have witnessed.
Daniel has achieved something that most men never approach—he has developed will in the realm of the moving center. This is not nothing. Most people live entirely at the mercy of their impulses, their moods, their mechanical reactions. Daniel has created what we might call "artificial conscience"—a set of rules that govern behavior regardless of inner state.
But here is where Daniel reveals his fundamental misunderstanding: he has confused the development of one center with the development of being.
Daniel has trained his moving center to override his emotional center, but he has not developed his emotional center itself. When faced with questions of value and meaning, he finds himself empty because his emotional center remains as mechanical and undeveloped as it was before his "transformation." He can force himself to act consistently, but he cannot feel consistently or think consistently.
This is why he feels purposeless despite his discipline—he is constantly suppressing rather than harmonizing his centers. Real will comes not from the domination of one center over others, but from their conscious cooperation.
Daniel's trap: He has created a sophisticated mechanical response and calls it consciousness. He has become a more reliable machine, but he is still a machine.
What Daniel must understand: Consistency of behavior without inner development leads to crystallization in wrong being. He has built a house of habits, but the resident—his true self—remains absent. His next work must be the conscious development of his emotional and intellectual centers, not through suppression of spontaneity, but through the creation of genuine inner attention.
Daniel's prescription: He must learn to observe his inner state with the same discipline he applies to his outer behavior. He must develop what we call "self-remembering"—the simultaneous awareness of outer action and inner state. Only then will his consistency serve consciousness rather than mechanical habit.
Sarah has achieved something equally rare—she has seen through the illusion of fixed identity. She has recognized that what people call "self" is merely a collection of mechanical reactions, social conditioning, and borrowed ideas. This insight is valuable and necessary.
But Sarah has made the classical error of the intellectual center working alone: she has confused the absence of false identity with the presence of real identity.
Sarah believes that because she can see through her personas, she has transcended the need for any organizing principle of being. She mistakes fluidity for freedom, not understanding that without some conscious organizing force, she is simply at the mercy of whatever influence happens to be strongest in any given moment.
Sarah's trap: She has achieved what she thinks is freedom from mechanical identity, but she has not created conscious identity to replace it. She floats, thinking herself free, not realizing she is simply drifting.
What Sarah must understand: The destruction of false personality is only the first step. Nature abhors a vacuum. If conscious personality is not developed to fill the space left by the removal of false personality, then mechanical influences will simply fill that space in new and more subtle ways.
Sarah's prescription: She must begin the work of conscious construction. Having learned to dissolve, she must now learn to crystallize—but consciously. She must develop what we call "magnetic center"—a conscious organizing principle that can make genuine choices based on objective values rather than subjective preferences or external influences.
The conversation between Daniel and Sarah reveals something important: they represent two common deviations from the path of conscious development. Daniel has developed mechanical will without understanding. Sarah has developed intellectual understanding without will.
Each has what the other lacks, yet neither recognizes this. Their meeting could have been an opportunity for mutual enrichment, but instead it becomes a mutual confirmation of their respective limitations.
When Alicia appears and speaks of objective values based on the requirements of life, she offers something that could be useful to both of them. But notice how they receive her teaching: they treat it as another intellectual position to be evaluated rather than as practical guidance to be tested through direct experience.
The trap of the meeting: Both Daniel and Sarah mistake intellectual discussion about higher possibilities for actual work toward those possibilities. They enjoy the feeling of being people who consider deep questions, not recognizing that this enjoyment itself becomes a substitute for the real work.
What they must understand: Talking about consciousness is not consciousness. Understanding concepts about higher being is not higher being. Real work requires sustained effort against mechanical habits, not clever conversation about philosophical positions.
The Danish melancholic speaks truly about the necessity of choice without guarantee, but he speaks only to one center—the intellectual center that craves systematic understanding. His emphasis on "fear and trembling" points toward something real, but it remains too abstract, too philosophical.
Kierkegaard understands that choice must be made without rational certainty, but he does not provide practical methods for developing the capacity to make such choices. He points toward authentic existence but offers no technology for its achievement.
The limitation: Existential philosophy can diagnose the human condition accurately, but it cannot cure it. It can show us that we must choose ourselves into existence, but it cannot show us how to develop the being that is capable of genuine choice.
Maya's journey is perhaps the most instructive of all, because it reveals how even revolutionary consciousness can become a sophisticated form of sleep.
Maya has used her political awakening—which is itself valuable and necessary—as an escape from personal responsibility. She has substituted identification with collective victimhood for the work of individual development. This is a trap that catches many sincere people in our time.
But Maya also demonstrates something hopeful: she has the capacity for self-observation. When confronted with the contradiction between her philosophy and her actual experience, she can see it. This is the beginning of real work.
Maya's trap: She has made her political identity into a super-ego that governs all other considerations. She believes that having correct opinions about systems absolves her from the work of conscious self-development.
What Maya must understand: Objective conditions and subjective work are not in opposition. The development of individual consciousness is not selfishness—it is the only foundation upon which genuine social change can be built. A society of unconscious people, no matter how well-intentioned, will create unconscious institutions.
Maya's prescription: She must learn to work simultaneously on inner development and outer engagement. She must see that personal transformation and social transformation are two aspects of the same work, not competing priorities.
All of these individuals suffer from the same fundamental problem: they mistake partial development for complete transformation. Each has made progress in one area while remaining asleep in others.
This is the nature of contemporary seeking: people achieve genuine insights or develop real capacities, but they remain fragmentary. They develop one center while neglecting others, or they develop understanding without corresponding being, or being without corresponding understanding.
What is absent from all these stories is any mention of conscious school, of work with others under guidance, of submission to a teaching that is larger than personal preferences and individual insights.
Each character imagines himself or herself to be self-directing, self-teaching, self-transforming. This is like a person trying to see the back of his own head without a mirror. Certain things can only be seen from outside, can only be learned in relationship with others who are doing the same work.
For all these characters, I would prescribe the same fundamental practices:
First: Learn to observe without changing. Before you can transform anything, you must see what is actually there, not what you think is there or what you wish were there.
Second: Study the relationship between your centers. Notice when you think with your emotional center, feel with your moving center, act from your intellectual center. Begin to see these mixtures as they occur.
Third: Practice what we call "divided attention"—the simultaneous awareness of inner state and outer activity. This is the foundation of all conscious work.
Fourth: Find others who are engaged in similar work. Individual transformation is impossible without collective effort, just as collective transformation is impossible without individual work.
Fifth: Submit to conditions that go against your mechanical preferences. Comfort and convenience are the enemies of consciousness. Only through voluntary suffering can higher centers be developed.
These individuals believe themselves to be advanced because they have seen through certain obvious illusions. But seeing through illusions is only the beginning of work, not its completion. The path from sleeping personality to conscious individuality is long and requires constant vigilance against the cleverness of false personality, which can turn even genuine insights into new forms of self-deception.
Each of these people has touched something real, but none has learned to live from that reality consistently. They remain what we call "obyvateli with philosophical pretensions"—ordinary people who have read books about higher possibilities but who have not submitted to the conditions necessary for their realization.
This is not criticism but diagnosis. One cannot heal a disease by pretending it does not exist. The first requirement for conscious development is the accurate assessment of one's current state, without the consolations of philosophical sophistication or psychological insight.
The work begins when one stops being satisfied with understanding and begins to demand being.
These observations are offered not as final judgments but as working hypotheses. Each individual must verify through direct experience whether these suggestions correspond to objective reality or merely to the opinions of one old Greek who claims to understand something about the nature of human possibilities.
Remember: the map is not the territory, and the menu is not the meal. No amount of reading about conscious development can substitute for the actual work of development itself.
G.I. Gurdjieff
Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man