What is the Soul in the Teachings of Geoges Ivanovich Gurdjieff and the Gospel of Thomas?

I’ve become comfortable with Essence and Personality as the twin pillars of internal and external in the philosophy of Gurdjieff, but not so clear with where and how the Soul fits into the Teachings. 

Several comments on the topic from Maurice Nicoll, drawn from his writings: 

“In a word, where you are most identified, there is your soul. The development of the soul is by a widening of it.”  Commentaries, p1534

“A balanced man will have lost his soul at one level and found it at another level of his being.” Commentaries, p1529

“The soul is the image of the life. But a man can begin to live differently in himself. He can begin to think differently and feel differently and desire differently and love differently. That is, his own relationship to himself can change so that what he went with in his thoughts and consented to in his desires, in short, all that he once thought was true and felt was good, can change.” The New Man, p. 98

“The soul in a man can be related to a lower or a higher level. A man must lose his soul in regard to its relationship to a lower level of himself in order to find it at a higher level. It is only by understanding the double meaning of the phrase to ‘lose the soul’ that many sayings about the soul in the Gospels can be understood.” The New Man, p. 97

Maurice offers a long riff on soul, which I’ve excerpted here:  ”The soul is the function of relationship to Higher Centers, The soul should be turned inwards, but ordinarily it is turned outwards towards some object or person in the world of the senses and remains undeveloped. This should not be. When the soul turns round, it finds its proper place and begins to exercise its proper functions inwardly, which have to do with the reception of meaning from Higher Centres. In the case of a man the soul is female. In the case of a woman it is male. If a man or a woman becomes related both to the external and internal worlds aright they are not half men or half women any longer. They are completed.” Commentaries, p1695

“What is a man’s soul? It is the concentration of his interests, his desires, his impulses. And all these represent where he believes what is best, and what is most true, lie. A man strives always towards all he thinks is most true and real and good and desirable.” The Mark, part 4 of Nicodemus, p129

My understanding from the Gurdjieff teachings is that Essence is something we are born with but is not active because of the dominance of Personality. For the soul to develop, a person must work to align and balance the physical, emotional, and intellectual centers. This alignment allows “help from above” or from “higher parts of Centers” to reach us. This resonates with the following quote from Cynthia:

Cynthia Bourgeault echoes the need for alignment and balance: “The three centers of awareness need to be in relationship and dialogue for you to think and be. This is what it’s all about kiddos.”

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Logion 112
Yeshua says...
Wretched is the flesh
that is dependent upon the soul,
and the soul that is dependent on the flesh.

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Page numbers for Maurice Nicoll refer to Psychological Commentaries on the Teachings of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Eureka Editions:2020) unless stated otherwise. 

All quotations from the Gospel of Thomas are from Lynn C Bauman, Ward J Bauman, Cynthia Bourgeault, The Luminous Gospels (Praxis 2008)

All quotations from Cynthia Bourgeault are from The Vocabulary of Wisdom.

Page numbers for Maurice Nicoll’s The New Man refer to Martino Fine Books, Eastford CT, 2019

Page numbers for Maurice Nicoll’s The Mark refer to Thomas Nelson & Sons, New York, 1954

Read the Impression introducing the Gospel of Thomas.