Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour.
–Matthew 25:13
It was around the Spring of the year 2000 that the introducer of yoga in Spain recommended me to read In Search of the Miraculous to understand Gurdjieff, since I had asked him about the Armenian teacher and his music. I was barely 18 years old and bought the book immediately, realizing I had found what my soul was looking for. Of course, I did not fully understand all the book was telling, but a few passages got my attention and were somehow familiar, as if something in me had already come across this Teaching, somewhere, somwhow.
And while reading Ouspensky´s testimony of Gurdjieff way of teaching, it was shocking to me finding out how Master Iesous already told his disciples to wake up, remain awake.
And Gurdjieff related this to the third state of consciousness called Self-Remembering, different from dreaming sleep and dreaming waking:
Self-consciousness is the moment when a man is aware both of himself and of his machine. We have it in flashes, but only in flashes. There are moments when you become aware not only of what you are doing but also of yourself doing it. You see both ‘I’ and the ‘here’ of ‘I am here’- both the anger and the ‘I’ that is angry. Call this self-remembering, if you like. Now when you are fully and always aware of the ‘I’ and what it is doing, you become conscious of yourself.
–G.I. Gurdjieff ,Views From the Real World: Early Talks of Gurdjieff (New York: E.P.Dutton, 1973), pp. 79-80.
Initially I thought this was just part of a russian jargon, since Gurdjieff explained there is a russian expression mentioned when one forgets about something important and suddenly comes to his senses to remember it.
Yet nothing far from the truth. Right in the New Testament we see one of the two thieves tell the crucified Christ:
Yeshu, remember me when you come to your Kingdom (Luke 23:42)
Discovering the depth of that whole passage in all its details took me over twenty years of inner work and search, but it would take some in-depth explanations which might be too much for this brief introduction. Maybe in another occasion. Just keep in mind true Self-Remembering comes when we are touched by the vibration of the Witnessing Master within us. the Holy Spirit of Truth, having an uplifting of body sensations, feelings and mentation. A true common sense, as Pythagoreans would say.
As for the the two thieves, these represent the opposites and contraries of existence which drain our energy: something inside likes and does´t like, I sleeps or wakes up, says yes or no to one circumstance. Yet the true Master is the Intelligence of Life that reconciles in the middle.
Now, this is not something we can experience in the first state of consciousness, which is dreaming while sleeping on bed. A state not too disimilar to the wrongly called waking state, which is full of a stream of mechanical associations, and therefore is another type of dreaming.
Gurdjieff with Ouspensky and some others, early XXth century
According to the Armenian teacher of dances, self-remembering is the third state of consciousness, the only possibility to access a fourth state of consciousness he called Objective Conscience. Again, a brilliant term which finds echoes in the so called Fourth or Turiya in Vedanta Advaita, which speaks of a Witnessing State where we start seeing things as they really are; although the richness found in Yeshu´s teaching concerning awakening and later transfiguration exceed by far any oriental teaching.
The Buddha got close speaking of the middle way and the eighthfold path of right intention, right attention, right concentration, right thought, right feeling, right effort, right word, right action.
When the Awakened One walks, he´s aware of it; when the Awakened One lays down, he´s aware of it; when the Awakened One eats, he´s aware of it...(Canon Pali, Buddha´s Sermons)
Not one of you has noticed that you do not remember yourselves.You do not feel yourselves; you are not conscious of yourselves. With you, ‘it observes’ just as ‘it speaks,’ it thinks,’ it laughs.’ You do not feel:I observe, I notice,I see.
In order to really observe oneself one must first of all remember oneself. (He emphasized the see words). Try to remember yourselves when you observe yourselves and later on tell me the results. Only those results will have any value that are accompanied by self-remembering. Otherwise you yourself do not exist in your observations. In which case what are all your observations worth?
[...]
The very first attempts showed me how difficult it was. Atempts at self-remembering failed to give any results except to show me that in actual fact whenever remember ourselves.
“What else do you want?” said G. “This is a very important realization. People who know this (he emphasized these words) already know a great deal. The whole trouble is that nobody knows it.If you ask a man whether he can remember himself, he will of course answer that he can. If you tell him that he cannot remember himself, he will either be angry with you, or he will think you an utter fool. The whole of life is based on this, the whole of human existence, the whole of human blindness. If a man really knows that he cannot remember himself, he is already near to the understanding of his being.”
[...]
I realized that moments of self-remembering do occur in life, though rarely. Only the deliberate production of these moments created the sensation of novelty. Actually I had been familiar with the m from early childhood. They came in either new or unexpected surroundings, in a new place, among new people while travel- ling, for instance, when suddenly one looks about one and says: How strange!
I and in this place; or in very emotional moments, in moments of danger, in moments when it is necessary to keep one’s head, when one hears one’s own voice and sees and observes oneself from the outside. I saw quite clearly that my first recollections of life, in my own case very early ones, were moments of self- remembering. This last realization revealed much else to me. That is, I saw that I really only remember those moments of the past in which I remembered myself. Of the others I knew only that they took place. I am not able wholly to revive them, to experience them again.But the moments when I had remembered myself we realive and were in no way diferent from the present.
–In Search of the Miraculous, P.D. Ouspensky (New York: Harcourt, 2001), pp. 117-119.
After studying that wonderful work in depth my soul felt the need to work deeper and over a period of twenty five years I experienced many stages in the work, coming across different people in the field, from many countries. And of course, all my experiences led to develop ENArmonya, a project that keeps growing.
Now, here we have other interesting quotes on the magic of self-remembering. Enjoy and awake, if you dare:
“A man cannot remember himself because he tries to do so with his mind-at least, in the beginning. Self-remembering begins with self-sensing. It must be done through the instinctive-motor centre and the emotional center. Mind alone does not constitute a human being any more than the driver is the whole equipage. The centre of gravity of change is in the moving and emotional centres, but these are concerned only with the present; the mind looks ahead. The wish to change, to be what one ought to be, must be in our emotional centre, and the ability to do in our body. The feelings may be strong, but the body is lazy, sunk in inertia. Mind must learn the language of the body and feelings, and this is done by correct observation of self. One of the benefits of self-remembering is that one has the possibility of making fewer mistakes in life. But for complete self-remembering all centres must work simultaneously; and they must be artificially stimulated; the mental centre from the outside, the other two from inside. You must distinguish between sensation, emotions, and thoughts; and say to each sensation, emotion, and thought, “Remind me to remember you”, and for this you must have an “I”. And you must begin by separating inner things from outer, to separate “I” from “It”.” (14) C.S. Nott Teachings of Gurdjieff: The Journal of a Pupil (New York: Samuel Weiser, 1974), p. 37.)
“In a moment of self-remembering, body, soul and spirit are all aligned. Understanding flows between them. Therefore, in a moment of self-remembering we have no sense of time, we have no fear, we have no doubt. Forget ourselves again and time, fear and doubt return. But in self-remembering they have no place. It is true freedom.”
–Rodney Collin, The Theory of Conscious Harmony
“When true self-remembering comes, one does not want to alter oneself, or others; one somehow rises above their weaknesses and one’s own. There can be no blame anywhere. One swallows what is, and becomes free.”–Rodney Collin, The Theory of Conscious Harmony
“Now I begin to feel that that all that is important comes in quietness and waiting; activity should be only the working out, the digesting and putting forth of what one learned, so that one may become empty again to receive more.”–Rodney Collin, The Theory of Conscious Harmony
“To feel beauty, to feel truth, that is self-remembering. Self-remembering is the awareness of the presence of God.”–Rodney Collin, The Theory of Conscious Harmony.
In order to do this one must struggle with mechanical thoughts, and one must struggle with imagination.
If one does this conscientiously and persistently one will see results in a comparatively short time. But one must not think that it is easy or that one can master this practice immediately.
Self-remembering, as it is called, is a very difficult thing to learn to practice. It must not be based on an expectation of results, otherwise one can identify with one’s efforts. It must be based on the realization of the fact that we do not remember ourselves, and that at the same time we can remember ourselves if we try sufficiently hard and in the right way.
We cannot become conscious at will, at the moment when we want to, because we have no command over states of consciousness. But we can remember ourselves for a short time at will, because we have a certain command over our thoughts. And if we start remembering ourselves, by the special construction of our thoughts–that is, by the realization that we do not remember ourselves, that nobody remembers himself, and by realizing all that this means–this will bring us to consciousness.
You must remember that we have found the weak spot in the walls of our mechanicalness. This is the knowledge that we do not remember ourselves; and the realization that we can try to remember ourselves. Up to this moment our task has only been self-study. Now, with the understanding of the necessity for actual change in ourselves, work begins.”— Ouspensky, “Fourth Lecture,” Psychology of Man’s Possible Evolution, p. 93-94.
“Without the relationship with higher energy, life has no meaning. The higher energy is the permanent Self, but you have no connection with that. For that connection, a fine substance needs to be generated. Otherwise, the energy of the body is too low to make contact with the very high energy which comes from above. You must persist—stay in front of the lack. Gradually, arrange to be in conditions which help you.”
— Jeanne de Salzmann, Heart Without Measure
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