The section ‘A call to consciousness’ unfolds over twelve chapters and gradually sharpens the reader’s capacity to observe themselves without illusion. In the next chapter of this section, Jeanne de Salzmann turns attention toward what feels most familiar and at the same time most unstable, the sense of I.

We speak of ourselves as if there were one continuous subject behind our thoughts, feelings, and actions. I think. I decide. I feel. I act. Yet when we observe honestly, this I does not remain. One moment an I wants something. The next moment another I is afraid. One reacts emotionally. Another withdraws. Another explains. These I’s replace one another endlessly, each claiming to be the whole.

Jeanne de Salzmann describes this condition without judgement. The problem is not that these I’s exist. The problem is that we believe they represent a unified being. This belief creates a false sense of continuity and prevents us from seeing our inner fragmentation. We live as a collection of parts, while imagining ourselves to be one.

At this point in the section, she introduces a distinction that becomes increasingly important, the difference between personality and essence. Personality is formed through impressions received mechanically. It is shaped by education, imitation, memory, and reaction. It is useful and necessary for life in the world, but it has no depth. Essence, by contrast, is what is alive in us before conditioning, the capacity to be present, to sense directly, to receive impressions without distortion.

Essence cannot be strengthened through willpower. Any attempt to produce presence through effort only activates personality. Jeanne de Salzmann insists that the work begins with seeing, not with doing. Seeing how the false I asserts itself. Seeing how easily presence is replaced by an image of oneself. Seeing how quickly we want to conclude, to understand, to be someone.

When this seeing becomes sincere, moments of a different quality can appear. She describes brief impressions of presence, not emotional, not conceptual, but sensed in the body as a quiet fact of being here. These moments are fragile and easily lost. They cannot be held or repeated at will. But they leave a trace, a recognition that another way of existing is possible.

This is not yet what she calls real I. It is only a taste, a signpost. Everything depends on how impressions are received in each moment. When impressions are met mechanically, fragmentation continues. When they are met with a degree of presence, essence is nourished.

For Breath4Balance, this has direct practical meaning. Breath is not used to generate presence. It is used as a reference point for sincerity. When attention rests in breath or bodily sensation, even briefly, the automatic claim of the false I loosens. Something simpler and more stable can be sensed, without naming it, without claiming it.

A short practice for this week, observing the many I’s

Pause once or twice during the day
Notice what you are doing or feeling
Listen inwardly for the I that is present
Notice how quickly another I replaces it
Do not try to correct or stabilize this movement
Return to a simple sensation in the body or to the breath

This practice does not aim at unity. It aims at truth.

Gurdjieff described awakening as a gradual process that unfolds within the conditions of ordinary life. Jeanne de Salzmann offers a way of approaching this process with precision and restraint. The section A call to consciousness continues well beyond this point. What has been introduced here is not a conclusion, but a direction, the possibility of questioning the I that says I, and of remaining open to a deeper presence that does not yet belong to us.