The Enneagram
A Lecture by G.I.Gurdjieff
In every man there has been implanted a need of (desire for) knowledge, differing
only in its intensity. But the passive human mind, while utilizing every means possible to it
of taking in (and working over) impressions, often gets into an impasse in trying to find an
answer to the question "Why".
Man's eyes are dazzled by the bright play of the colors of multiformity, and under the
glittering surface he does not see the hidden kernel of the one-ness of all that exists. This
multiformity is so real that its single modes approach him from all sides - some by way of
logical deduction and philosophy, others by way or faith and feeling. From the most ancient
times down to our own epoch, throughout the ages of its life, humanity as a whole has been
yearning for a knowledge of this one-ness and seeking for it, pouring itself out into various
philosophies and religions which remain, as it were, monuments on the path of these searches
for the Path, leading to the knowledge of unity. These searches radiate to the Path just as the
radii of a circle join at the center, getting closer into contact with each other the nearer they
get to the center. The goal itself determines the direction of the paths and brings the
wanderers on the paths to a knowledge of the one-ness which reaches the depths where that
knowledge becomes a reality to the knower and cannot be communicated to another who has
not reached the same stage of development. The words and notions of conversational
language become dead and empty, conveying nothing to him who does not carry such
knowledge within himself. In the same way as the sensation of tooth-ache cannot be
impartial to one who has not experienced it, and just as the difference of colors cannot be
conveyed to one blind from birth, and the wealth of auditory sensation cannot be
communicated to the deaf, similarly you cannot tell or relate in words the depth of
knowledge which has become part of a man's being. The words and notions of different
epochs change according to conditions of place and time; unity is eternal and immutable. The
laws, acting in us, and producing the plurality assumed by us, are everywhere the same. From
the most, ancient times humanity has understood this, and by utilizing the language of
symbols and formulas, more perfect than our contemporary language, has gone on handing
its knowledge down to the succeeding generations. And everybody approaching the symbol
and possessing a complete understanding of it, possesses a perfect synthesis of it. Speaking
figuratively, he has this symbol within himself. A symbol, by expressing the knowledge of
the laws of unity, has at the same time expressed the path to it. Side by aide with the basic
symbols, as if they absorbed into themselves wider spheres, there started up and sprang into
existence in subjection to them other symbols and formulae. Everything in the world is one
and is governed by uniform laws, and for that reason the Emerald Tables of Hermes
Trismegistus put it; "As above, so below". All the laws of the cosmos we shall find in
the atom. And in any phenomenon existing as something complete according to laws. (That
is, in any whole.) The knowledge of the laws of the plurality of the One was always based on
the similitude of the microcosm to the macrocosm - of man to the universe, and vice versa.
The fundamental laws of the 3 and of the 7, of the active, passive, and neutral
principles, the laws of activity, are to be found and confirmed in everything, and therefore in
arriving at a knowledge of the world's structure, man was unable to AvoId the path of selfknowledge.
Man's nearest and always readily accessible object of knowledge was always
himself, he being the expression of the action of all the laws of the cosmos. The formula
"Know Thyself" is, in this respect, full off the profoundest meaning: it is one of the symbols
