The Wheel of Life

A nineteenth-century Tibetan tankha portrays the Wheel of Dharma two and a half millennia after Buddha drew it on sand. Like a snowball, the wheel has accumulated layer upon layer of elaboration. The most striking impression of this composition is Yama, the fiery-red lord of death who hugs the wheel with his legs, arms and teeth. Whatever human life is, it is framed and dwarfed by death.

Buddha’s psychological wheel is comprised of four concentric circles. The first is a hub that bears three animals on a red background. The second shows eight monks ascending and descending. The third is divided into six densely populated worlds. And the fourth creates the rim with twelve oval-like scenes. In examining chief feature, our primary concern in this wheel is its hub.

Human psychology is layered—just like the Tibetan Wheel. We must first peel the outer layers before we can reach the axle. It takes extensive observation of oneself and others to understand the principle of chief feature. Ultimately, it is considered a weakness, not because it is necessarily in itself a bad trait. Indeed, chief feature can often be seemingly noble: a rigorous self-discipline, a deep desire for moral justice, or an inclination to consider the needs of others. What makes it our chief weakness is our relation to it. It is the last attribute of our illusory identity we will be willing to give up. We pride ourselves in it, fight to keep it alive, and take every opportunity to manifest it.

“Thinking and thinking,” continued Gurdjieff while examining his inner work, “I came to the conclusion that if I should intentionally stop utilizing the exceptional power in my possession… of telepathy and hypnotism… then undoubtedly always and in everything its absence would be felt.”ⁱ

Planetary Types

The most dominant planetary influences on the human psyche were taken to be the seven heavenly luminaries most visible to the naked eye: Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Each was associated with a specific psychological character or type, and each type with a corresponding chief feature. Although no longer popular, this teaching was influential during its time and brought into literary circulation terms such as ‘lunatic,’ ‘mercurial,’ ‘venereal,’ ‘martial,’ ‘jovial,’ and ‘saturnine’—terms found in mainstream works such as Cervantes’ writings and Shakespeare’s plays.

The framework of the planetary types helps us see our chief feature by outlining a pool of features we are likely to have. Once we grasp the theory, we can, through time and inner work, match that theory with practical observation. While we have difficulty seeing the hub that powers our psychology, it is obvious to everyone else around us. Our friends and family know if we are obsessed with ourselves, although they may not know to call this Vanity feature. They know if we consistently lose sight of the whole by getting caught up in details, although they may not know to call this Lunatic. They know if we typically disappear in a crowd, although they many not know to call this the Non-Existence of the Venereal type. They know if we are control freaks, although they may not know to call this Saturnine Dominance. “It is sometimes useful to collect opinions of friends about oneself,” said Peter Ouspensky, “for this often helps in discovering one’s features….”

[GURDJIEFF] The study of the chief fault and the struggle against it constitute, as it were, each man’s individual path, but the aim must be the same for all. This aim is the realization of one’s nothingness. Only when a man has truly and sincerely arrived at the conviction of his own helplessness and nothingness and only when he feels it constantly, will he be ready for the next and much more difficult stages of the work.” ⁱⁱⁱ

[PETER OUSPENSKY] “Whenever anyone disagreed with the definition of his chief feature given by Gurdjieff, he always said that the fact that the person disagreed with him showed that he was right.” ⁱⁱⁱ

The first layer of resistance is our reluctance to be categorized. We each feel special in our own way, and the prospect that our deepest traits stem from a finite number of features negates this illusion. If our characters differ only in the blend of features that power them, and in the somewhat accidental life experiences that etch themselves onto our memory, then nothing about us is unique. Our ability to see chief feature as the hub of our psychology will depend on our ability to acknowledge that we have no individuality, that we are borrowed beings, created seemingly different by force of circumstances.

[THOMAS DE HARTMANN] “From the first days Mr Gurdjieff had spoken with us about this chief weakness. To see it and to realize it is very painful, sometimes unbearable… A man must find in himself the strength not to run away from this pain, but boldly to turn the other cheek—that is, to listen and accept further truth about himself.” ^iv

Coming to terms with our lack of individuality, we overcome the first obstacle and bump into a second one: our inability to observe ourselves. Chief feature is stimulated in the moment and triggers attitudes that manifest in the moment. We can see it best when it is most active, but when it is most active we are most blindly asleep. A casual comment from a bystander; the realization that we will be late for an important meeting; the frustration of seeing our plans crumble—these all trigger reactions within us directly related to our chief features. To observe them, we must develop an observer separate from them. We must learn to see in real time.

Our growing ability to observe ourselves thrusts us before a third obstacle: underestimating the depth of chief feature. Disliking what we see, we are tempted to remove what we see. We hurry to clear the weeds without regard to their root. But since chief feature cannot be removed without damaging our psychology—as the hub of a wheel cannot be removed without damaging the wheel—so inevitably chief feature undertakes work on chief feature. A person with vanity feature interprets this diagnosis to mean they must eliminate vanity and become perfect; one with dominance plans how to dominate his feature; one with power how to overpower it. Thus, the serpent consumes its own tail and we continue revolving mechanically around the same psychological hub.

This hopeless revolution, by which we consistently end up at the same starting point, eventually reveals to us our chief feature, as well as the humility necessary for working with it consciously.

[BENNETT] “At last, I began to understand something. Gurdjieff was making greater and greater demands upon me. Some were absurd and even impossible. It dawned upon me finally that I could and must learn to say “No.” It was like a blinding light. The inability to say “No” was my greatest weakness. He had stretched this weakness to breaking point, without explaining why, or what he was doing. Of course he could not explain, or the task itself would have vanished.” ^v

One of the most well-known portrayals of chief weakness is featured in the Greek myth of Achilles.

Achilles’ mother, the goddess Thetis, immerses him in his infancy in the river Styx, holding to him by his ankle. The magical waters render him invulnerable wherever they touch his body; everywhere but the area covered by her dipping hand. As a result, Achilles becomes mostly invulnerable, while only his heel remains exposed to human attack.

The location of this vulnerability is meaningful. Physically speaking, we perceive danger through our five senses. Four of these are located on our heads facing forward: our eyes, nose, mouth, and ears. The heel is the part of our body farthest away from our faces, from our senses, and consequently, from our supervision. Anything that approaches us from our heel is bound to catch us off guard.

This physical vulnerability of Achilles corresponds to the psychological blind spot of chief feature. Blindness is a fundamental trait of chief feature. “One can hardly ever find one’s own chief feature” said Peter Ouspensky, “because one is in it, and if one is told, one usually does not believe it.” ⁱⁱ Blind to what determines our own conduct, we remain blind to our deepest traits unless shown by someone else. And indeed, Achilles is ultimately slain through an injury to this very spot, when an arrow pierces his heel.

A wound to the heel is bound to be painful but not fatal. What renders the arrow that slays Achilles lethal is poison. It is dipped in the blood of the Hydra, a mythological snake-like monster with several heads. This monster, too, relates to chief feature, for it is endowed with the peculiar trait that if any of its heads are cut off, two more spring out of the fresh wound. The image of endless heads cropping out of a single body echoes the principle of chief feature; a hub from which stem all the spokes of our psychology.

Chief Feature in Esoteric Christianity

In the Book of Genesis, God creates a Paradise and populates it with plant and animal life. He entrusts its keeping to Adam and Eve. They may enjoy Paradise on the condition that they avoid the fruit of the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The serpent tempts them to break this command, and consequently affects their fall.

Apart from losing Paradise, all parties involved in this crime receive personal punishment: Adam is cursed to labor for bread for the rest of his life; Eve to suffer in bearing children; the serpent to crawl on his belly. To the serpent, God says, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; it shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.

The mention of heel—the very blind spot so central in the Achilles myth—might be dismissed as coincidental, except that Orthodox Christian depictions of this scene emphasize it beyond doubt. In their presentations of the Last Judgment, Adam and Eve are shown crouching before Christ the judge, begging forgiveness for their sin of biting on the forbidden fruit. A large serpent is poised to pull Adam all the way down to the hell, if Adam doesn’t watch his heel, because that’s where the serpent’s fangs are headed.

The Biblical story of the fall of mankind sets the stage for its redemption. Through conscious labor (the curse of Adam) and voluntary suffering (the curse of Eve), Paradise can be regained. Taken as a whole, the story of Jesus—who labors and suffers and eventually pays the ultimate price of self-sacrifice—redeems Paradise, turning the weakness of chief feature into a strength.

In this way, Esoteric Christianity lays down the theory of renouncing chief feature, yet it remains up to each individual to translate this theory into practice. As chief feature differs from one person to another, so must its sacrifice. First, the blindness must be removed; one must uncover the hub of one’s psychology through extensive self-observation. Then one must repeatedly see and suffer its consequences. And only then, will one have the knowledge and will-power to renounce it.

[GURDJIEFF] “As soon as I realized the sense of this idea, I was as if reincarnated; I got up and began to run around… without knowing what I was doing, like a young calf. It all ended thus, that I decided to take an oath… never again to make use of this property of mine.” ^vi