Self-Knowledge: Inner exercises for the unfolding of consciousness

Gurdjieff’s students encountered a number of obstacles when working with the exercises he gave them.
door Tsenne Kikke - donderdag 11 december 2025 14:34

To be effective, exercises must involve not only the mind but also feeling and sensing. As Gurdjieff was fond of saying: “The head is only the director which shows the way.”

The exercises may be seen as vehicles to bring the lower centers into balance and harmony, which aligns them to the higher centers. This provides the foundation for the states of self-consciousness and eventually objective consciousness.

The importance of attaining a balanced development in which intellect, feeling and sensation all contribute to the process of inner development was highlighted by Jeanne de Salzmann in 'The Reality of Being': “When all the centers are engaged in the same question, they awaken and come closer. When they are truly together, I can be, and I can do something consciously. But only when they are together... What determines a collected state is that my thought does not wander. It does not leave me. With associations my thoughts wander, but when it is collected it remains in me. My feeling also does not project itself. I am occupied with feeling ‘I am’.”

All of Gurdjieff’s exercises have one feature in common: they require a high degree of attention to counteract the continuous flow of associative thoughts, feelings and sensations that characterize our mental life. Through self-remembering can one overcome the associations that carry one into imagination and identification. It is possible to focus the whole of the attention on either an inner or outer object without the interference of automatic associations. The exercises helped pupils to accomplish this inner task.

When practising an exercise, attention can be divided in a number of directions. For instance, one part of attention can be focused on breathing, on the cycle of inhalation and exhalation. Another part of the attention may be simultaneously directed to certain parts of the body.

- Read on in Eclecticus...

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