NOTE ON THE EFFECT OF EARLY IMPRESSIONS
Our earlier impressions tend to have a stronger effect than later ones. This can produce in us a feeling of unreality as we get older. In earlier life the impressions laid down on rolls in our centres entering via the senses, and also those from inside originating from the imagination, are more vivid and intimate and real. So when we return to scenes of earlier life and find everything altered by new buildings and shops, and trees cut down, lanes vanished and so on, it seems unreal and we cannot believe it, as it were-cannot believe the evidence of our senses-because the strength of our earlier impressions on rolls contradicts the impressions entering us at the moment. A sense of unreality results. It is the same with earlier imaginings. In youth a person may identify with many intimate imaginings of what he or she is going to
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grow into, what position, what palace, they will possess, and how many servants and what chorus of praise and sympathy will surround them. These and similar imaginings can form very strong impressions on rolls in centres. The result will be that in growing up a sense of discontent or of disappointment, or a sadness, pervades the outlook, the cause being unknown to the person although it is still evident in the imagination. The tendency will be to look backwards because life as it is experienced will seem in some way unreal, the reason being that in view of the forms of expectancy laid down by the early imaginings the life is not what was expected. The cure for both of these sources of unreality is the idea of recurrence and the thoughts that come from it when we realize that the life will return as before and if we want it different we must work on ourselves now. As we know, work on imagination is one of the things that we have to do. It is some time since imagination has been spoken about. Among the many things that uselessly consume force, one is undirected imagination-where we lie passive to our imagination and bathe ourselves in it. This gives a distaste for life. Try to observe at least one form in yourself. Then try to observe something laid down in rolls by imagination that causes you to expect in a way that does not correspond with what you get. This makes you unable to appreciate what you have. In this connection another Work-thought that cures is that one's Being attracts one's life and that therefore it is no good blaming life.
1Maurice Nicoll
“Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky” Vol 3