Man the Machine
by Peter Shepherd
One of the most upsetting and insulting remarks made by Gurdjieff was his statement that Man is a machine. Unfortunately, Gurdjieff was right; for practical purposes we are machines in multitudes of ways we fail to recognise. We should be upset!
A person may appear to be acting intelligently and consciously, but he may be mechanically "running on automatic". By mistakenly thinking he is conscious, he blocks the possibility of real consciousness. Gurdjieff constantly emphasised that almost all human misery results from the fact that our lives are automatic, mechanical affairs. You (your behaviour, thoughts and feelings) are then the effect of external and historical causes, rather than the cause, the initiator of desired actions.
Problems occur when reality changes but your automated responses carry on. Identities and defences are reactively dramatised. Though appropriate for the time they were set up, these are usually inappropriate for the present situation. When the situation fits an internal stereotype, your automated reaction then follows.
If you have an emotional investment in the stereotype (feeling superior, dominant or safe) that makes it even more rigid, and you are unlikely to perceive that reality differs significantly. The automated stereotypings we know of as racist, ageist, sexist, classist, nationalist and so on, are enormously costly. Automatised perceptions, emotions, thoughts, reactions and particularly identities, frequently become associated with many situations, so we can be lost for long periods - a lifetime in the extreme - in automated living, rarely being the mature Adult, the truly awake Self.
Man is a machine, but a very peculiar machine - a machine which can know he is a machine - but having fully realised this, he may find the ways to cease to be a machine.
First of all a man must know that he is not one, he is many. He has not one permanent and unchangeable "I" but he is always switching from one sub-personality to another. Every thought, every feeling, every sensation, every desire, every like, every dislike and every belief is another "I". Each of them depends on the change in external circumstances and on the change of impressions. When a person says "I" it sounds as if he means the whole of himself but really, even when he considers it represents the whole, it is only a passing thought, mood or desire. In most cases a person believes in the last "I" which expressed itself, as long as it lasts: that is, as long as another "I", sometimes quite unconnected with the preceding one, does not express its opinion or desire louder than the first.
The illusion of unity of Self is created firstly by the sensation of one physical body, secondly by one name and thirdly by a number of mechanical habits which are imposed on him by education or acquired by imitation. Having always the same physical sensations, hearing always the same name and noticing in himself the same habits and inclinations he had before, he believes himself to be always the same.
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