The Arousing of Thought—p7 notes

Gurdjieff insists that humanity should be regarded as having three sexes, which he enlarges on at various points in the book.

“Sleeping with eyes half open or fully open” is an uncommon but known phenomenon called “nocturnal lagophthalmos-sleeping.”

It is unlikely that Gurdjieff is referring to this. More likely he is speaking metaphorically, implying a person in waking sleep who half notices things. If one writes a book, one needs to provide some content, but if it is data acquired while only half-awake it will have little value.

As regards “fertile soil for the growth of every kind of pimple,” in general, pimples form from excess oil becoming trapped in the pores of the skin, a condition that is particularly common in adolescence.

Gurdjieff associates pimples directly with masturbation. This becomes clear later in The Tales as illustrated by the following excerpt:

‘For instance, some mama’s darling, a young man, inevitably with a pimpled face—and he is pimpled because his mama considered herself a high-brow and thought it was “indecent” to speak of and to point out certain things to her son, whereupon this son of hers, not yet having formed his own consciousness, did that which was “done” in him, and the results of these “doings” of his, as with all such young people, appeared on his face as pimples, which are very well known even to contemporary medicine . . . (p547)

disease: early 14c., “discomfort, inconvenience,” from Old French desaise “lack, want; discomfort, distress; trouble, misfortune; disease, sickness,” from des- “without, away” + aise “ease”. Sense of “sickness, illness” in English first recorded late 14c.; the word still sometimes was used in its literal sense early 17c.

This is another often used term by Gurdjieff. It is metaphorical in almost every usage, referring to “the heart of something.”