Life Without Buffers

Life Without Buffers

Under the title, “A Note on Buffers,” Maurice Nicoll begins a chapter from his second book entitled, “Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky,” as follows:

“A little child has no buffers. A little child is awake although of course it is all on a very small scale. The Work says that children are born awake and that they are born into a world of sleeping people and very soon they fall asleep themselves in the Work-sense and they lose a kind of integrity that belongs to small children.”

Nicoll goes on to describe how Personality is acquired through imitation of those around us such as teachers, parents, relatives, etc. Personality is necessary to protect essence, and no psychological evolution can take place without first forming Personality through life experiences.

Nicoll continues, “A child … born into a world of sleeping people, very soon learns to have buffers because he is surrounded by people who have nothing but buffers, people who no longer see their contradictions. Buffers make things easy for us. They prevent us from seeing what we are really doing and saying. A well-buffered man or woman has no doubts about himself or herself … people with very strong buffers usually cannot observe themselves at all” and they “lack insight into what they are really like or what they are doing.”

The ideas of self-awareness and self-reflection – Know Thyself – are at odds with the development of buffers. Buffers exist between the worlds of our sleep and our possible evolution. Buffers are powerful partly because of their invisibility. When I am in a moment of remembering myself, I can see the buffers that have formed in me to cover up the very facts about myself that keep me asleep, to keep contradictions from disturbing my comfortable, easy life.

Only a man who possesses will, that is, conscious control, can live without 'buffers'. — P.D. Ouspensky

It is buffers that leave me contented after criticizing another driver for the same driving error I make but conveniently excuse in myself; it is buffers that will not back down from confrontation even when I am clearly in the wrong; I have watched people stay in an unhealthy relationship because the risk of seeing themselves unloved or having to face a life change is too painful. A cousin of mine used to argue about some intellectual idea that was cleared up by looking in the dictionary and they continued to insist that their point of view was correct, and the dictionary was wrong; or another relative who always had a bigger and better widget because they could not see themselves as less than first in everything. Many of us can give examples of couples where one of the partners are verbally abused in our presence and yet, if I were to defend the victim, I would be corrected or chastised by the victim and they might defend them by explaining that the bully had every right to be unhappy with them and that it was their own fault. Buffers are protection against change, difficult situations, problems, angry people, etc.

What should make a man happy is being present to his life, but people do not know about presence, what makes them happy are the things that keep them asleep. They buffer time and the opportunity to introduce presence and make it permanent. — The Teacher

I justify behavior because I see change as risky or uncomfortable, and the reawakening of real conscience through self-remembering means a whole new plane of awareness comes into view. With preparation and self-remembering, I can begin to see my contradictions and choose to move in the direction of consciousness rather than stay asleep.

This Work begins as an inner journey toward rebirth, a reawakening of the child with real conscience. Through presence, I return to the clarity of essence and begin intentionally building protection around essence that is not based on imitation and other people, but on my own verifications and higher states of consciousness.

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The Injured Child, Gustave Doré, 1874