GURDJIEFF, G.I. – Life is real only then, when I am - Integral Book

matically formed or intentionally created conditions depending uponmental associations and feeling-experiencings, these three factorsengender in the general presence of man three definite impulses.Before continuing to explain just what is necessary and how onemust consciously, both inwardly and outwardly, manifest oneself inorder to obtain the arising in oneself of such data inherent only in man,which ought also to appear as lawful aspects of the whole individualityof a real man, I shall be compelled, on account of the absence in theEnglish language of any exact verbal designation of these threeimpulses, and as a consequence the absence of an approximate understandingof them, to waste my time, in order to give you anapproximate understanding of them and choose for them some more orless corresponding conventional names which we shall use in oursubsequent talks.For an approximate definition of the first of these three humanimpulses which must arise and manifest themselves in a real man, onemight employ the English word "can," yet not in the sense in which thisword is used in the contemporary English language but in the sense inwhich Englishmen used it before what is called the "Shakespeareanepoch."Although for the exact definition of the second of these humanimpulses in the contemporary English language there is a word, namely"wish," it is nevertheless employed by you Americans, as well as by theEnglish people themselves, only in order to vary, of courseunconsciously, the degree of the expression of that so to say "slavishimpulse" for which there are, particularly in this language, a multitudeof words as, for example, "like," "want," "need," "desire" and so on.And as regards a word for the expression and understanding of thethird definite aforementioned human impulse, in the