The Clear Impressions Exercise
This exercise was taught by George Adie. It is almost certainly an otherwise unknown example of Gurdjieff’s Transformed-contemplation, being referred to in nothing which has previously been published. It was given as an exercise to help one come to a sense of one’s own being, reality, and presence by looking about one while sensing parts of the body in a definite order, and stopping thought (stopping what Gurdjieff called “formatory thought” or “mechanical thought”, so as to allow a higher level of thought to operate). According to the theory, by stopping formatory thought while receiving impressions, the impressions can be received more consciously, and so serve as a better quality “food” the alchemical human “food factory.” This also aims to have the effect of allowing a feeling of oneself, rather than negative emotions, to appear. By facilitating consciousness of the sensation of one’s body, freedom from negative emotion and from mechanical thought, we are believed to become more open to higher influences, and hence to a higher state of being.