Citations of the analogy of horse, carriage, and driver

 by G.I. Gurdjieff

 

 

Citations of course, carrots, and driver analogy by Gurdjieff

 

In Search of the Miraculous: 3 citations

 

“In the terminology of certain Eastern teachings the first body is the ‘carriage’ (body), the second body is the ‘horse’ (feelings, desires), the third the ‘driver’ (mind), and the fourth the ‘master’ (I, consciousness, will).

 

-P. 41, as recounted by P. D. Ouspensky. Paul Crompton Ltd. Edition, 2004

 

He again used the Eastern comparison of man with a carriage, horse, driver, and master, and drew the diagram with one addition that was not there before.

 

“Man is a complex organization,” he said, “consisting of four parts which may be connected or unconnected, or badly connected. The carriage is connected with the horse by shafts, the horse is connected with the driver by reins, and the driver is connected with the master by the master’s voice. But the driver must hear and understand the master’s voice. He must know how to drive and the horse must be trained to obey the reins. As to the relation between the horse and the carriage, the horse must be properly harnessed. Thus there are three connections between the four sections of this complex organization [see Fig. 5b]. If something is lacking in one of the connections, the organization cannot act as a single whole. The connections are therefore no less important than the actual ‘bodies.’ Working on himself man works simultaneously on the ‘bodies’ and on the ‘connections.’ But it is different work.

 

“Work on oneself must begin with the driver. The driver is the mind. In order to be able to hear the master’s voice, the driver, first of all, must not be asleep, that is, he must wake up. Then it may prove that the master speaks a language that the driver does not understand. The driver must learn this language. When he has learned it, he will understand the master. But concurrently with this he must learn to drive the horse, to harness it to the carriage, to feed it and groom it, and to keep the cariage in order--because what would be the use of his understanding the master if he is not in a position to do anything? The master tells him to go yonder. But he is unable to move, because the horse has not been fed, it is not harnessed, and he does not know where the reins are. The horse is our emotions. The carriage is the body. The mind must learn to control the emotions. The emotions always pull the body after them. This is the order in which work on oneself must proceed. But observe again that work on the ‘bodies,’ that is, on the driver, the horse, and the carriage, is one thing. And work on the ‘connections’--that is, on the ‘driver’s understanding,’ which unites him to the master; on the ‘reins,’ which connect him with the horse; and on the ‘shafts’ and the ‘harness,’ which connect the horse with the carriage--is quite another thing.

 

 

-ibid, p. 90

 

But he wants to be one ‘I’--the master; he recalls the carriage, the horse, the driver, and the master.

 

-ibid, p. 301

 

Views From the Real World: 5 citations

 

Inside us we have a horse; it obeys orders from outside.  And our mind is too weak to do anything inside.  Even if the mind gives the order to stop, nothing will stop inside.

 

We educate nothing but our mind. We know how to behave with such and such.  “Goodbye.”  “How do you do?”  But it is only the driver who knows this.  Sitting on his box he has read about it.  But the horse has no education whatever.  It has not even been taught the alphabet, it knows no languages, it never went to school.  The horse was also capable of being taught, but we forgot all about it. . . . And so it grew up a neglected orphan.  It only knows two words: right and left.

 

What I said about inner change refers only to the need of change in the horse. If the horse changes, we can change even externally.  If the horse does not change, everything will remain the same, no matter how long we study.

 

It is easy to decide to change sitting quietly in your room.  But as soon as you meet someone, the horse kicks.  Inside us we have a horse.

 

The horse must change.

 

If anyone thinks that self-study will help and he will be able to change, he is greatly mistaken. Even if he reads all the books, studies for a hundred years, masters all knowledge, all mysteries—nothing will come of it.

 

Because all this knowledge will belong to the driver.  And he, even if he knows, cannot drag the cart without the horse—it is too heavy.

 

First of all you must realize that you are not you.  Be sure of that, believe me,.  You are the horse, and if you wish to start working, the horse must be taught a language in which you can talk to it, tell it what you know and prove to it the necessity of say, changing its disposition.  If you succeed in this, then, with your help, the horse too will begin to learn.

 

-E.P. Dutton, 1973 edition, p. 96 : New York, Feb. 22, 1924 (this piece contains far more material on the subject.)

 

Remember our example of the carriage, horse and driver.  Our essence is the horse.  It is precisely the horse that should not consider.  But even if you realize this, the horse does not, because it doesn’t understand your language.  You cannot order it about, teach it, tell it not to consider, not to react, not to respond.

             

With your mind you wish not to consider, but first of all you must learn the language of the horse, its psychology, in order to be able to talk to it.  Then you will be able to do what the mind, what logic, wishes.  But if you try to teach it now, you will not be able to teach it or to change anything in a hundred years; it will remain an empty wish.  At present you have only two words at your disposal:  “right” and “left.”  If you jerk the reins the horse will go here or there, and even then not always, but only when it is full.  But if you start telling it something it will only keep on driving away flies with its tail, and you may imagine that it understands you.  Before our nature was spoiled, all four in this team—horse, cart, driver, master—were one; all the parts had a common understanding, all worked together, labored, rested, fed, at the same time.  But the language has been forgotten, each part has become separate and lives cut off from the rest.  Now, at times, it is necessary for them to work together, but it is impossible—one part wants one thing, another part something else.

 

- ibid, p. 144: America, March 29, 1924

 

If we want to cross the room, we may not be able to go straight across, for the way is very difficult.  The teacher knows this and knows that we must go to the left, but does not tell us.  Though going to the left is our subjective aim, our responsibility is to get across.  Then, when we arrive there and are past the difficulty, we must have a new aim again.  We are three, not one, each with different desires.  Even if our mind knows how important the aim is, the horse cares for nothing but its food; so sometimes we must manipulate and fool the horse.

 

-ibid, p. 191: New York, February 29, 1924

 

Maybe you remember it being said that man is like a rig consisting of passenger, driver, horse and carriage.  Except there can be no question of the passenger, for he is not there, so we can only speak of the driver.  Our mind is the driver.

             

This mind of ours wants to do something, has set itself the task of working differently from the way it worked before, of remembering itself.  All the interests we have related to self-change, self-alterations, belong only to the driver, that is, are only mental.

             

As regards feeling and body—these parts are not in the least interested in putting self-remembering into practice.  And yet the main thing is to change not in the mind, but in the parts that are not interested.  The mind can change quite easily.  Attainment is not reached through the mind; if it is reached through the mind it is of no use at all.

             

Therefore one should teach, and learn, not through the mind but through the feelings and the body.  At the same time feeling and body have no loanguage; they have neither the language nor the understanding we possess.  They understand neither Russian nor English, the horse does not understand the language of the driver, nor the carriage that of the horse.  If the driver says in English, “Turn right,” nothing will happen.  The horse understands the language of the reins and will turn right only obeying the reins. Or another horse will turn without reins if you rub it in an accustomed place—as for instance, donkeys in Persia are trained.  The same with the carriage—it has its own structure.  If the shafts turn right, the rear wheels go left.  Then another movement and the wheels go right.  This is because the carriage only understands this movement and reacts to it in its own way.  So the driver should know the weak sides, or the characteristics, of the carriage.  Only then can he drive it in the direction he wishes.  But if he merely sits on his box and says in his own language “go right” or “go left,” the team will not budge even if he shouts for a year.

 

-ibid, pp 228-229:  Prieure, January 19, 1923 (this passage contains more material on the subject.)

 

First, to speak about chemico-physical influences.  I said that man has several centers.  I spoke about the carriage, the horse and the driver, and also about the shafts, the reins and the ether.  Everything has its emanations and its atmosphere.  The nature of each atmosphere is different from others because each has a different origin, each has different properties, and a different content.  They are similar to one another, but the vibrations of their matter differ.

             

The carriage, our body, has an atmosphere with its own special properties.

             

My feelings also produce an atmosphere, the emanations of which may go a long way.

             

When I think as a result of my associations, the result is emanations of a third kind.

             

When there is a passenger instead of an empty place in the carriage, emanations are also different, distinct from the emanations of the driver.  The passenger is not a country bumpkin; he thinks of philosophy and not about whiskey.

             

Thus every man may have four kinds of emanations, but not necessarily.  Of some emanations he may have more, of others less.  People are different in this respect; and one and the same man may also be different at different times.  I had coffee but he hadn’t—the atmosphere is different.  I smoke but she sighs.

             

There is always interaction, at times bad for me, at other time good.  Every minute I am this or that, and around me it is so or so.  And the influences inside me also vary.  I can change nothing.  I am a slave.  These influences I call chemico-physical.

 

-Ibid, p. 263: New York, February 24, 1924

 

Beelzebub’s Tales To His Grandson- 1 (lengthy) citation

 

     A man as a whole, with all his distinct and separately functioning localizations, that is to say, his independently formed and educated "personalities," is almost exactly comparable to that vehicle for transporting a passenger which consists of a carriage, a horse, and a coachman.

    

It must be remarked, to begin with, that the difference between a real man and a pseudo man, that is, between a man who has his own "I" and one who has not, is indicated in this analogy by the passenger sitting in the carriage.  In the first case, that of the real man, the passenger is the owner of the carriage; and in the second case, he is merely the first chance passer-by who, like the fare in a "hackney carriage," is continually changing.

    

The body of a man, with all its motor-reflex manifestations, corresponds simply to the carriage itself; all the functionings and manifestations of feeling of a man correspond to the horse harnessed to the carriage and drawing it; the coachman sitting on the box and driving the horse corresponds to what in a man people usually call "consciousness" or "thought"; and finally, the passenger sitting in the carriage and giving orders to the coachman is what is called "I."

 

-pages 1092-1101, Viking Arkana edition 1992.