Chief Feature

Our Hidden Enemy

Within the content of books written by and about Mr. Gurdjieff and P.D. Ouspensky, as well as Gurdjieff’s other direct students, it can be observed that the way in which some Fourth Way ideas are conceptualized and presented have, to varying degrees, evolved since they were originally introduced. This article will deal with one such idea, what Gurdjieff called in Russia; chief feature.

The earliest presentation, that has been recorded, of Fourth Way ideas comes from Ouspensky’s Search in which he dutifully recounts the ideas in the form he received them from Gurdjieff during what has come to be called the Russian period. Search coversOuspensky’s contact with Gurdjieff from 1915 until late 1923 though the book is primarily focused on the period before Gurdjieff left for Constantinople. Ouspensky after many breaks with Gurdjieff finally decisively left Gurdjieff 1924 and after an unrecorded meeting at a café in Fountainebleu in 1931 the two men had no further direct contact for the rest of their lives. Yet after the break in 1924 Ouspensky continued to teach the Work for nearly 25 years using many of the ideas he acquired in the Russian period while adding to and extrapolating from this base. As to Gurdjieff, he for many years seemed to be engaged in a continual experiment. While the essential ideas of the Work never changed, his method of teaching, the “packaging” and presentation certainly did. Gurdjieff acknowledged his experimentations in his first published work, Herald of the Coming Good. These experimentations began before Ouspensky met him and continued while Ouspensky had contact with him. Indeed such experimentation may be partially responsible for Ouspensky at times being dumbfounded by Gurdjieff’s actions. Gurdjieff notes in Hearld that he gathered people of various types together at his nascent institute to both observe them for his continued exploration of the human condition and to also allow them a chance, likely their only chance, to come to “objective-conscience.”

Was this Gurdjieff’s aim? Perhaps. Perhaps to create a core group of adepts to carry on his work? If so that was not terribly successful. It seems that Gurdjieff clearly saw the difficulties of working in Western cultures, that they had truly dysfunctional “conditions of external being existence.” (much worse today) First he saw the education of children for what it was, rote leaning which turned children into conditioned autonomations. These not yet spoiled beings, almost without exception, reaching the age of responsible existence without having created an “I” and being a part of the great mass of humanity that was psychologically asleep, and operated as biological machines with fragmented and multiple “I”s. Any natural process was of no value with men/women of responsible age and so he searched to find ways to bring adults to that which, though buried in their subconscious, had not been corrupted.

There is no reason to believe that Gurdjieff ever completely stopped in his quest to find a better way to help bring people come to objective conscience, though it appears that with the completion of his writings his period of overt experimentation had, to some degree diminished. Today, there is at times a confusing divergence in that some ideas that seem to have been almost abandoned by Gurdjieff  some time after Russia were essentially kept in their original form as a part of the so-called Ouspensky line. Were these ideas actually abandoned by Gurdjieff or simply repackaged and changed in form due to his experimentations? Starting in Russia let’s look at chief feature..

Gurdjieff begins his explanation to his Russian group by immediately equating chief feature with chief fault.  He speaks in the context of rules for Work groups. That there are both general rules of group behavior and individual conditions of work and that there must always be, in any system that has a positive result no “general rules of work.” But rather there must be given individual conditions because each man has … “a certain feature in his character that is central. It is like an axle round which all his ‘false personality’ revolves. Every man’s personal work must consist in struggling against this chief fault.” (Emphasis added) This is a very big statement. But it seems to have been not really worked with directly by Gurdjieff in later years.

A question arises if chief feature and chief fault are the same things why not just use the term chief fault? The term chief feature seems to be used as a general descriptive in a mostly passive sense. Chief fault is used to describe an individual’s chief negative feature of false personality against which men must struggle. The chief feature of some men could, in ordinary life circumstances, be considered a positive or neutral trait but by equating it from a Work point of view to ones chief fault, it becomes an enemy to be actively struggled against and controlled, this changes any possible perception of positivity. Gurdjieff uses much the same language dichotomy with his use of the terms personality and false personality. Is the false personality that revolves around chief feature like a wheel around an axel any different than personality? Fourth Way Teaching divides men into personality and essence. Gurdjieff says, “Essence in a man is what is his own. Personality in man is what is ‘not his own.’ ‘Not his own’ means what has come from the outside, what he has learned, or reflects, all traces of exterior impressions left in the memory and in the sensations, all the words and movements that have been learned all the feelings created by imitation – all this is ‘not his own,’ all this is personality.” So it would seem this definition certainly would fit with the term false personality. So is all personality false personality? By the above definition it would seem yes. While Gurdjieff doesn’t really define a difference, Ouspensky does make a distinction. False personality is not real. Whereas ordinary personality, made up of the multiple “I”s is real. The “I”s themselves are real. False personality is not deeply attached, and can be relatively easily discarded, not so the “I”s of personality. Additionally, it is certainly possible that one’s essence can manifest in the world and create features of its own, in effect creating real personality. In fact Gurdjieff by use of certain means was able to put personality “to sleep” and so observe essence manifesting in two of his students. The result was the unmasking of two people that were, while in this state of essence, perceived in a way that was completely different then they typically appeared and acted.

So given that in modern man almost all that represents the outward manifestations of man may simply be false personality it would seem that any part of a person as strong as ones chief feature should be easy to observe in oneself.  Yet, Gurdjieff says this is not the case “… a man cannot find his chief feature, his chief fault by himself. This is practically a law. The teacher has to point out this feature to him and show how to fight against it.” Not only can oneself not see chief feature, but also when a chief feature is pointed out by a teacher it is often denied and denied vociferously.  Additionally, Gurdjieff said that though we cannot see our chief feature people around us often can observe it. Though they can’t always identify it per se they, by use of nicknames, can often cleverly reveal it. A few examples that reveal how closed off we are to our chief feature were written in Search. Gurdjieff said to a student “…  that his chief feature was a tendency to always argue with everybody about everything. “But then I never argue,” the man very heatedly at once replied.” To another man “…G said that he had no shame, and he at once cracked a rather amusing joke against himself.”  Search has direct quotes of the teaching regarding chief feature that Gurdjieff himself read and he also spoke of the general accuracy of the book. It is from this point on that the record of direct quotes of Gurdjieff speaking on the subject, using the term chief feature, end.

In Ouspensky’s other books it is often unclear what material is Ouspensky’s and what is Gurdjieff’s but regarding chief feature Ouspensky maintains the essential meaning that Gurdjieff gave and expounds upon it. In The Fourth Way, which is a collection of transcripts of lectures, questions and answers of Ouspensky’s group meetings from 1921 to 1941, specific dates of the meetings are not given. In one lecture Ouspensky begins by calling it chief weakness “ Chief feature or chief weakness is in false personality.  In some cases it is possible to see definitely one, two or three features or tendencies, often linked together, which come into everything like an axis round which everything turns. This is chief feature…It is interesting that one can hardly ever find one’s own chief feature, because one is in it…But we can find what stands side by side with it, although it is not it.” When asked by a student to tell him what his chief feature is Ouspensky replies, “ This is not necessary for starting to work. In the beginning, what is important is not chief feature itself but what is produced by it, and that you can study in the form of attitudes. We do not know our attitudes because we have not thought of ourselves in the right way.” Ouspensky is asked a question about whether chief feature makes our important decisions “This is the best definition of it–that it always makes decisions…And imaginary personality, or false personality, is chief feature for everybody.”

The idea of an axel or axis around which false personality revolved was the original general definition Gurdjieff gave but the specific chief features that were given varied enormously. Ouspensky says, “These features or weakness may be very simple or very complicated. One man maybe able to resist everything except good food; another except talk. Or he may be lazy, or too active.” In an interesting statement documented in the book A Record of Meetings Ouspensky is asked about why in a crowd of people emotions are often intensified, he replies “… Sometimes, particularly with moving people No.1 it is so, because their chief feature is imitation. But only with Man No.1.  As the majority are No.1 it may be so.” This brings up the relationship of chief feature with what center dominates a man. It implies and logically so, that men that have different dominate centers will likely have quite different chief features. His own chief feature was perhaps indicated in the nickname Gurdjieff gave him  “wraps up in thought” and obviously reflects Ouspensky as a man with a dominate intellectual center. Another time Gurdjieff refers to Ouspenky’s chief feature as “Pytotr Demianovich” that it is the person himself that is the chief feature. And Ouspensky acknowledges his “extreme individualism” which he observed was weakened by his experiences in Finland which were at base emotional in nature.

While Gurdjieff says we can never, by ourselves, find our own chief feature, that it must be told to us by our teacher, Ouspensky is not so solid in that determination and provides a view with more nuance. In a 1938 lecture Ouspensky says  “…in some cases you can see definitely a kind of chief feature coming into everything…It can be shown, but the person will say: ‘Absurd, say anything but not that!’ Or sometimes it is so obvious that it is impossible to deny it, but with the help of buffers one can forget it again… You must come near to it yourself. When you feel it in yourself, then you will know. If you are only told you will forget.”  So how can one come near to it? “By studying false personality.” Regardless of some divergence regarding the seeing of chief feature there is no distance between the men in the essential importance of studying our false personality

While Ouspensky for the most part stayed with the original presentation of the idea of chief feature, changing it a bit and adding to it. What happened to Gurdjieff’s presentation? The idea as it was originally stated doesn’t directly show up in Gurdjieff’s own writings. We get a hint of Gurdjieff’s change of presentation in some of his student’s reports. Kenneth Walker who worked with both Ouspensky and Gurdjieff quotes Ouspensky quoting Gurdjieff speaking about a question that was raised, wondering if there was a particular fault (chief feature) that provided the greatest obstacle to self-development. “Ouspensky replied without hesitation that vanity was an outstanding hindrance. He said that G had always laid special emphasis on the importance of vanity and had used these words about it: ‘the fundamental cause of almost all their misunderstandings arising in the inner world of man…is chiefly due to the psychic factor found in mans being (emphasis added) at an early age, and due to wrong education, the stimulation of which gives birth in him to the impulse of vanity…”  So Gurdjieff is saying that vanity is a fundamental chief feature and that it arises from man’s being which would be his essence. Do all chief features arise from essence to become the axis of our false personality?

 Another of Gurdjieff’s students, Kathryn Hulme, in her notes, records what Gurdjieff said regarding chief feature “It is mechanical, of the essence but in the emotions. In bowling balls there is a pellet of lead added, so that the ball must be thrown with a special quirk to make it go straight.  Look for it in five things greed, self-pride, lying, fear and sex. It can often be a combination of these five things…It is imaginary, not real, and is not ever a good thing. But once found it can be used consciously. Chief feature is an outgrowth of our emotional attitude toward ourselves.”

In a talk by Gurdjieff titled Liberation leads to liberation given at the Prieuré in 1923 he doesn’t use the term chief feature. He speaks of inner influences and inner slavery and that we have many enemies on our way to liberation “…but the chief and most active are vanity and self-love… there are many enemies. I have mentioned only these two as the most fundamental.  

Though Gurdjieff does not use the term chief feature in All and Everything  he continues to use the concept and now gives a specific location where the “axel” of false personality once arose.  Wrote Gurdjieff, “… caused to grow there, in a special way, at the base of their spinal column, at the root of their tail…this ‘something’ they then first called the ‘organ Kundabuffer.’” The organ Kundabuffer was implanted to serve a specific function and this was the blinding of human beings to their situation as pawns relating to the maintenance of the Earth/Moon. By potentially averting a catastrophe for parts of the universe Kundabuffer became a catastrophe for human beings. After serving the purpose for which it had been implanted Kundabuffer was removed, unfortunately the properties of the Kundabuffer had become crystallized in human beings and passed down by heredity while being further strengthened by the abnormal conditions of being existence of human life, particularly by education. Gurdjieff lists many of these vestigial properties humans are carrying as our inheritance from kundabuffer: “self-love,” “vanity,” “pride,” “swagger,” “imagination,” “bragging,” “arrogance,” and others. But if one looks at this list, the first two listed, self-love and vanity are at the core and underpin the others. The others are really manifestations of the self-love and vanity that forms the foundation of man’s egotism.

So the fundamental base of false personality, that which we take as who we are, the falsely perceived unity amidst a multiplicity of “I’s” is an egotism radiating from the inherited properties of Kundabuffer. The chief feature or chief fault or chief weakness of false personality in all of humanity manifests from this deeply embedded egotism, essentially self-love and vanity. From this base may arise our individual “quirks” and these need to be first observed in the correct way and then worked with to begin acquiring a real self-knowledge. Gurdjieff succinctly sums up this work “The study of chief fault and the struggle against it constitute, as it were, each man’s individual path, but the aim must be the same for all. This aim is the realization of ones nothingness. Only when a man has truly and sincerely arrived at the conviction of his own helplessness and nothingness and only when he feels it constantly, will he be ready for the next and much more difficult stages of the work.

—Richard Myers— http://www.growingchoongary.com

1. A certain feature. P.D. Ouspensky In Search of the Miraculous, 226.
2. Essence in a man. Ouspensky, 161.
3. A man cannot find. Ouspensky, 226.
4. That his chief. Ouspensky, 268.
5. Chief feature or chief weakness. P.D. Ouspensky, The Fourth Way, 177-179.
6. Sometimes, particularly with moving. P. D. Ouspensky, A Record of Meetings, 71.7.It can be shown. P.D. Ouspensky, A Further Record, 246-247.
7. 8.Ouspensky replied without hesitation. Kenneth Walker, A Study of Gurdjieff’s Teaching, 97
8. .9. It is mechanical. William Patrick Patterson, Georgi Ivanovitch Gurdjieff: TheMan, The Teaching, His Mission, 571.
9. But the chief. G. I. Gurdjieff, Views from the Real World, 267.
10. Caused to grow there. G.I. Gurdjieff, All and Everything, 89.
11. “self-love,” “vanity,” “pride,”. Gurdjieff, 356.
12. 13.The study of chief fault. Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous, 226.

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