Self-Remembering

When I began reading the Work in the mid nineteen eighties, one of the aspects that interested me most was Self-Remembering. I think it was Bennett who quoted Grudjieff as saying, “I am wish and I can wish, and I can wish to remember myself.” Gurdjieff believed that a man could do anything that he really wished to do. So I would repeat I am wish and I can wish, and I can wish to remember myself. And, something did happen in the moments of quiet when I tried to Self Remember. I actually felt vibrations in my chest as Bennett described them. But, that didn’t last very long. And I think for the most part that it was imagination.

I have been working on efforts to remember myself for some twenty-five years now. I still find it to the central aspect of the Work. I have made some progress, but it is very difficult to put into words. Each man must remember himself in his own way. Ouspensky says that to Remember Yourself you must empty yourself of yourself. And, I have found that Self Remembering only comes to me in moments of silence. Often when I remember myself, I am conscious of myself as a tiny being on a vast planet rotating from east to west.

Ouspensky says that if you could Remember Yourself for ten minutes, if you could keep that level of consciousness you would be astonished at the things that you would see. The third level of consciousness is Self Remembering. To reach this level, we must be conscious in at least three centers at the same time. Self Remembering is a state of self-awareness, self-consciousness.

We have rare flashes of this state during moments of extreme emotion. If some one is in a state of negative emotions and controls himself before committing and act of violence, we say, “He remembered himself in time.” If he commits the act, we say, “He forgot himself.”

In Self-Remembering, we separate our self from our self, we empty our self of the ego. All of our centers are quiet. We go beyond our every day self. Self-Remembering is catching the rope that lifts you out of the continuum of time into the eternal present moment, HERE AND NOW! Nicoll states that one difference between Self Remembering and Self Observation is that the feeling of Eternity enters into Self Remembering but not into Self Observation. Self-Remembering is in one way a form of meditation. It is meditating during your daily relations with life.

There are a number of obstacles to Self Remembering. One is that we believe that we are conscious of ourselves. Thinking that we have self -awareness, we make no attempt to reach this higher level. We cannot remember ourselves because we are always identified, lost in whatever we are doing. Another obstacle to Self Remembering is our passive attitude towards learning. Learning is either active or passive. Most of our learning is passive. In passive learning, we are not actively involved. We sit in front of the t. v. and need no directed effort. The material is there and we simply absorb it. We read an article without any active participant in the material that we are reading. We listen to an explanation without questioning it.

I'm sitting in my back yard. It's around five P.M. No one else is at home. I'm really into Self Remembering. Into the quiet of the evening, the bird song, the sound of the wind. All of a sudden, a thought comes to mind. For the next five minutes, I'm identified with the thinking that follows the first thought and lost to Self Remembering. Then, I catch myself identified deep in thought, and the Self Remembering comes again. And, then another thought. Most of us spend hours at a time engaging in haphazard thought just below our level of consciousness. And, in doing this, we lose conscious of here and now.

The wind awakens a cloudy morning dove that sings outside my widow. As I walk through the orchards, the wind blows away all the different ‘I’ ‘s that crowd my mind and body. A moment of Self Remembering spreads the silence until a life ‘I’ steps from behind a buffer. He is thinking about the money he’ll save by refinancing. He’s telling me that the money game is not all that bad. Maybe we should take the broker’s advice and do a home loan and invest the savings like he showed on the spreadsheet. We have to get out of credit card debt, this ‘I’ argues. And my moment of awakening is gone.

I catch the 'I' talking to me and go back into the silence of the morning. Hundreds, no thousands of acres of almonds, and walnut trees spread out the valley floor. One by one the tiny leaves climb upward to taste the sun. The wind caresses my mind and body as two black crows wing their way toward Mt Oslo. The pass between the lower and upper mountain ranges weaves toward the south. A flight of gray white starlings flits over the canal and circle the orchards to the south. The full waters of the canal rush down hill toward the coast some sixty miles distant. And, again I realize that in order to develop Essence, one must die to one’s ego. The death of the personality is essential to the development of the soul. And it is so difficult to make the leap, to leave behind all that one has accomplished.

As I walk through the orchards this morning, I try to put into practice the words that I’ve learned from the Work. I make a conscious decision to remember myself. Shutting off internal dialogue, my eyes sweep the vast expanse of truck fields and orchards that stretch the valley all the way to Mt. Oslo. The wind whips against my jacket, and flows through my hair. My heartbeat quickens as I lean into its force. A wave of joy bounces from the earth and fills my very being, as I stop a ‘writer I’ from putting it into words. First you must Remember Yourself, then you must die to yourself, a ‘work I’ tells me. My body continues to walk the dusty road, but there is no ‘I’ inside the brain. The brain being totally empty allows the Spirit to enter…

The use of certain hallucinogenic drugs can bring about a change of consciousness that comes close to the experience of Self Remembering. However, the drug experience is very short lived. And, once one returns to a normal state of consciousness, little if anything of the altered state can be remember. Another difference is that a drug-induced effort comes about as a chemical reaction without any work on yourself, without an increase in your consciousness. If through super effort, through long hard work on yourself, you reach a state of Self Remembering, it carries with it all the benefits of your work. Your state of being changes because of the conscious work of eliminating some of the obstacles to higher consciousness.

In everything we try to do, in every endeavor, we are Do... Ri... Mi... men. We start out in a certain direction, go a short distance, sputter out, and have to start again at the beginning. Ouspensky maintains that it is only works of genus that go beyond Mi... So, you have, Do... Ri... Mi... sputter out. Do... Ri... Mi... sputter out.

Work on oneself is an ascending octave. Do is valuation of the work It is a passive Do, but it is the most important part. Without strong valuation, the note Do does not carry enough force. If you value the work, you take nothing else in the world seriously. You, in a sense, renounce all of the values that you grew up with. Re is the application of the work to oneself; observing your mechanical everyday actions, not identifying, seeing your negative emotions, catching a glimpse of different ‘I's. Mi is finding personal difficulties. Finding your aim in the work. Discovering your chief feature and working on it. There is a gap between Mi and Fa. Super effort; conscious shock is needed to reach Fa. Fa is Self Remembering. dying to personality and experiencing real I. Real I is in essence. Self Remembering is both the conscious effort to bridge the gap, and the new state that one finds in the note Fa.

The work begins with four levels of consciousness. Man as he is has everything that he needs to function at the third level of consciousness, Self Remembering, and yet he functions at the second level. What does it mean to function at the second level? In our state of waking sleep, it means that we cannot do anything. Everything that happens to us is beyond our control. We are machines instead of men, and our lives signify nothing. These levels are not closed off they flow into one another. We can be nearer or further away from Self Remembering.

Bennett explains that Gurdjieff taught that man can give off higher energy vibrations that help keep the whole cosmos working for perfection. To give off this higher energy, he must develop higher centers. Man asleep loses all his energy in identifying and negative emotions. In order to awaken we must observe our negative states and not go with them. Once a man awakens and begins to remember himself, he is able to shut off the past and see what is. This seeing what is releases energy that can go into the development of Essence