It could be said that Personality is a result of acting upon A influences. Essence (the real I) is a result of tuning into B influences. Personality is a conglomerate of identities we mistake for true Identity. These are projected onto a person by the World, by others with whom we’ve lived and learned from/with, via A influences. Some of these we can clearly distinguish as ‘what so-and-so thinks of me, not what I think of myself’, and other projected bits of consensus I, we may have accepted as our own. These latter type can be somewhat trickier -or at least more involved- in trying to investigate and sort through the various connections.

According to Mouravieff et al Fourth Way student-teachers,

Personality can be broken into 3 centers: intellectual, emotional, and motor/instinct. Each of the three ‘lower centers’ is split into several sections. The intellectual has purely-intellectual, intellectual-emotional and intellectual-motor facets, which in turn each have positive and negative versions, and so on for each of the lower centers. The higher centers in the Intellectual and Emotional portions of personality show that these factions have been reconciled, balanced and sorted. The following is a diagram that shows these centers when one is at the point of beginning the transition from external man to internal man (and one I added labels to).

Long before I knew anything about esoteric philosophy, I had a very unexpected experience of seeing my Personality as distinctly separate from my Essence or True Self.

I was giving a book report presentation in front of the class in sixth grade. Up to that point I had been a very outgoing kid who didn’t hesitate to get up in front of people and talk or otherwise express myself. I guess we all have moments of sudden self-consciousness, but this came with many additional and completely new perspectives. I had not prepared a formal presentation; I’d read and really liked the book, so I thought I’d just get up there and talk about it. I remember looking over at the student teacher to see she had a very disapproving, sort of fuming look on her face –like she knew I hadn’t prepared, hadn’t put forth the right kind or enough effort (something like that: she didn’t like me). That distracted me a bit. I kept talking and looked back at the classroom of other kids.

Suddenly the experience changed a LOT. I *saw* (it’s like errr a symbolic mental sight) something like a cloud of holograms overlapping each other here and there, making up this consensus what/who other people think I am. Next, I realized that it was quite different from my idea of myself. And then, that there was very little I could do to influence the consensus Cassie. It seems like I tried to reach for some of the consensus projection of my personality that I’d actually found to be useful (such as being good/smart at tests/school, or charismatic ), but they just didn’t hold up with those x-ray lenses in place. The charisma and joy of sharing was impeded by the daunting view that I couldn’t make anyone see the real me and plenty of them didn’t care / wouldn’t be able to see the difference between those two types of self, even in themselves.

It seems like all the rest (trusted Personality bits) fell away as equally illusory as the inaccurate representations projected onto me, even if I had chosen to accept some of them –because I don’t remember exactly what happened in class except for what I’ve just related.

The experience also seemed to magnetize toward me a series of similar social meltdown moments here and there through junior high and high school. //It changed me deeply, went on to engender many interesting and useful insights toward deeper understanding of my place in the scheme of things -mostly I was inspired by all the possibilities and infinite evolution I saw beginning to unfold around me.

As a 14-16 year old, I was very absorbed in digging through and poking/turning around/getting rid of any/all personality bits so I could get started being me.

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Once I had a little game
I liked to crawl back in my brain
I think you know the game I mean
I mean the game called ‘go insane’

Now you should try this little game
Just close your eyes forget your name
Forget the world, forget the people
And we’ll erect a different steeple.

This little game is fun to do.
Just close your eyes, i’m going too.
And I’m right here, no way to lose.
Release control, we’re breaking through

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Personality as a Cocoon we must emerge from if we are to continue to grow and evolve

Gurdjieff describes Personality as a shell similar to the one I saw projected onto me during my presentation. This shell is meant to protect the developing Essence, like the hull of a piece of grain or nutshell protects the developing meat/substance within. Over time, entanglement with external influences, unmediated by introspection, the shell of Personality grows into an immovable armor that begins to impede progress. Gurdjieff uses slightly different labels than Mouravieff. Rather than ‘real I’ being a degree closer to greater Consciousness, there is true Personality and false personality, where true personality is closer to Essence/Consciousness than false Personality. True personality is something that best protects the Essence while also allowing it to expand and evolve until the time when  Personality as one distinct and rigid ‘I’ is outgrown, whereas false personality is armor/scaffolding that is hinders the development of Essence -it’s all the negative result of defining ourselves too much by A influences and materialistic standards.

The infant’s dream-like association of ideas is slowly won over to an agreement of what should constitute reality. By the time our reasoning has developed enough to reflect on the process by which our reasoning has formed, we are part and parcel of the whole process, caught up in and sustaining it. By the time the young rebel reaches the age of rebellion his is inevitably that against which he would rebel

Pearce

Going back to the diagram of the Personality,

Mouravieff talks about external man as having 3 distinct types: Man 1,2, and 3. These are correlated to the intellectual, emotional and action/motor aspects of personality. Man 4 is still considered to be external man, but a balanced one in much more control over the direction that is taken, more resistant to A influences, resonating more with B influences.

Man 4

When the magnetic center finally takes shape, it establishes an undisputed authority over the three centres of the Personality. He who was man 1,2 or 3 becomes man 4. Throughout this stage of his evolution such a man will have the task of recognizing the mode in which each of these three mental centres is functioning, assigning its proper role to each of them, and equilibrating them. This is how the magnetic centre’s growth is perfected and how its development commences. The latter is a function of conscious efforts to develop the lower centres up to their limits. The further this development is continued, the more the magnetic center absorbs the lower emotional centre, at the same time identifying itself more and more with the higher emotional centre. Once the three lower centres are fully developed and equilibrated, the magnetic center oce and for all identifies itself with the hgiher emotional centre, dragging with it the lower emotional center, with the magnetic center, will form an integral part of the higher emotional centre.

Another interesting thing shown in Mouravieff’s diagrams is how one moves from being easily influenced by external influences, and how as Man 1,2, and 3, the three centers (intellectual, emotional and motor) are deeply connected.

In the above diagram there is either little or no magnetic center formed yet. Without a sense of true Self that the magnetic center provides, a person is influenced heavily by many unseen aspects of their lower intellectual, emotional and motor centers.

For example, a shock to the intellect effects the emotional aspect via it’s ties to the positive and negative aspects of the emotional-intellectual portions (2 of the wedges in the lower emotional center). I believe this also explains the bouts of utter cacophony of thoughts, emotions and reactions that manifest and are sorted through as one moves through the experiences of covert oppression.

As one sorts through the aspects of the lower centers nad/or tunes into B influences, a magnetic center is formed. As the magnetic center develops it makes it possible for a person to detach somewhat from the lower centers; to be able to analyze and consider each aspect from a larger perspective:

For now we’ll leave off from the progress of personality>essence in Mouravieff’s diagrams, with one final figure, a glimpse at the next stage:

Mouravieff says about this diagram,

This scheme of a man who has become complete and immortal in accordance with the meaning of the words of St. Paul: ‘We shall not all die but we shall all be changed?’ The higher emotional centre, now placed in the centre ofthe figure, has absorbed the lower emotional centre. The significance of the dotted lines in this –as well as the link with the sexual centre– will be explained later.

And, additionally, about Man 4, 5, 6 and 7:

This union [above] realized, he who has carried out this work on himself will become Man 5.

In contrast to men 1,2, or 3 who are called exterior men, men 5,6, and 7 are interior men.

By establishing a link between the higher emotional centre and the hgiher intellectual centre, man 5 will become man 6, after which all that weill be left for him to do is to consolidate the results. This consolidation is the last stage of esoteric evolution.

The tasks for each stage of evolution can be defined as follows:

Man 4 – to recognize the existence of the three lower centres, make them grow and develop to the limit, and regulate their functioning;

Man 5 – to acquire new faculties and powers;

Man 6 - to develop the faculties thus acquired to their utmost limits;

Man 7 – to consolidate the results obtained.

We’ll come back to this process of moving from personality to essence, dealing with the tangled aspects of the lower centers and transforming negative aspects to positive ones to enhanced the development of the magnetic centers. Welcome to the Process,

The “ego” – in the negative sense- is that ossified sense of a stable, unchanging ’self’ which people use as a defense against the Fear of Change and Death. It’s SELF as a suit of armor; protective or comforting at times SELF doesn’t allow much room to maneuver, make effective contact or adapt to new situations. Otherwise, the Ego, with a big ‘E’ can be a useful tool like everything else lying around here. Ego creates the heroic drive towards the Transcendence which CONSUMES AND RESOLVES that drive into a higher context.

It must be remembered that you can’t go beyond ego until you’ve developed on to go beyond. The ego, as Individual Self, is scaffolding for what we can call superself or the memeplex (to use Susan Blackmore’s revolutionary theory). Scaffolding is a necessary part of any construction project but for the last couple of hundred years we’ve been encouraged to mistake the scaffolding for the building. The individual sovereign self once seemed such a developmental prize that it’s now very difficult to let go of it without incurring amusing existential extinction traumas, but like all other stages of growth it IS just a stage and must be surpassed.

Demoting the concept of the ‘individual’ by deliberately engineering multiple, conferring ‘egos’, personae, memeplexes or selves is intended, at least by me, as a method if breaking up the existential, calcified, individual ‘Self’ into more fluid Multiple Personality constellations, by exposing ‘the personality’ as just one behavioral option from a menu of many.

Pop Magic! by Grant Morrison