January 18th, 2014

Essence and The Necessity of Personality

“In order to develop from any of the three ordinary types into higher orders of being it is necessary to crystallize and temper essence into a permanent and unifeid “I.”

This is done mainly by instigating a struggle between essence and personality.

Both essence and personality are necessary for this work: essence must have personality or it will not wish to develop. Personality provides the material to study, the obstacles to overcome, the temptations to resist, the delusions to invalidate, and in the process of struggling with and testing itself against personality, essence gains in strength and maturity.

This battle is what Islam calls the holy war (jihad) and in this war the more evenly matched the opposing sides, the greater the intensity of combat and the more thorough the destruction and renewal entailed.”

— Kathleen Riordan Speeth

from The Gurdjieff Work © 1989. Tarcher/Putnam


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