The problem with the issue of so-called "self-remembering" or "self-observation" is that Ouspensky seems to have made more of a focus of it than it actually required. Or at least, there seems to be some context missing.
Those of you who have read "Meetings With Remarkable Men" and "Life is Real, Then, Only When I Am," and have looked for clues, may have noticed that Gurdjieff's ideas of "self-remembering" came about as a result of experiences he had during very shocking, even life-threatening, experiences. In Life is Real, Gurdjieff describes how this idea came to him, during a period of recovery from a life-threatening injury which came about under interesting circumstances:
Continuing to think about this under the influence, from one side, of a distant hollow din formed from sounds of milliards of lives of all possible outer forms and, from the other side, of an awesome silence, in me gradually rose in relation to myself a critical faculty of unprecedented strength.
At the beginning there were recollected in me all my blunders in my former searches.
While from one side I constated my blunders and in general the imperfections of the methods previously applied by me, from the other side it became clear how I ought to have acted in this or that instance.
I remember very well how my strength waned from these tense thoughts and, during this, some part of me time and again ordered me to get up quickly and rouse myself in order to stop such thoughts, but this I could not do, so strongly had I been involved in these same thoughts.
I don't know with what this would have ended if at the moment when instinctively I began to feel that I must lose consciousness, the three camels near me had not sat down.
At this I came to myself and got up.
By this time day was already dawning. Awake also were my young companions, who were already busying themselves with the usual preparations for morning life in the desert.
After talking with the old man, we decided to take advantage of the moonlight and set out in the evenings. Moreover, the camels could rest well during the day.
Instead of lying down to sleep awhile, I took with me a rifle and a traveling pail made of canvas, and went to a nearby spring of very cold water on the very edge of the desert.
Undressing, I began very slowly to pour this cold water over me.
After this, though I felt quite well mentally, physically I became so weak that after dressing I was compelled to lie down there near the spring.
And then, being so weak physically and very well refreshed mentally, there proceeded in me that same self-reasoning, the essence of which became impressed in my consciousness forever and concerning which, on the evening of November 6th, 1927, flashed the mentioned idea.
Due to its remoteness, I do not remember the exact words of that first self-reasoning so discordant with my usual general state.
But, having preserved in myself the, so to say, "taste" of it, I can recollect it exactly, though in different words. It consisted of the following:
Judging by my fitness during the last few days, it seems I again have come to life and willy-nilly will have to drag on and drudge as before.
My God! Is it possible that I will have to experience again all that I lived through during periods of my fully collected active state, for the half-year before this last misfortune of mine?
Not only to experience feelings alternating, almost regularly, between remorse for the inner and outer manifestations of my ordinary waking state, and loneliness, disappointment, satiety, and the rest, but primarily to be everywhere haunted by the fear of "inner emptiness"?
What also have I not done, what resources have I not exhausted in my determination to reach a state where the functioning of my psyche in my usual waking state would flow in accordance with the previous instructions of my active consciousness, but all in vain!
In my past life, being forever merciless to my natural weaknesses, and almost all the time jealously keeping watch over myself, I could attain almost anything within the limits of man's possibilities, and in some fields attained even to such a degree of power as not one man, perhaps not even in any past epoch, had ever attained.
For instance, the development of the power of my thoughts had been brought to such a level that by only a few hours of self-preparation I could from a distance of tens of miles kill a yak; or, in twenty-four hours, could accumulate life forces of such compactness that I could in five minutes put to sleep an elephant.
At the same time, in spite of all my desires and endeavors, I could not succeed in "remembering myself in the process of my general common life with others so as to be able to manifest myself, not according to my nature but according to the previous instructions of my "collected consciousness."
I could not attain the state of "remembering myself even sufficiently to hinder the associations flowing in me automatically from certain undesirable hereditary factors of my nature.
As soon as the accumulation of energy which enabled me to be in an active state was exhausted, at once associations of both thoughts and feelings began to flow in the direction of objects diametrically opposite to the ideals of my consciousness.
When I found myself in a state of complete dissatisfaction with food and sex, the leading factor of these associations of mine appeared to be primarily vindictiveness and, in a state of full satisfaction, they proceeded on a theme of the forthcoming pleasure of a meal and sex or of the gratification of self-love, vanity, pride, jealousy and other passions.
I thought deeply myself and tried to find out from others about the reasons for such a terrible situation within my inner world, but could not clarify anything at all.
From one side it is clear that it is necessary to "remember myself" during the process of ordinary life also, and from the other side that there is a necessity for the presence of attentiveness which is able to merge, in case of contact, with others.
Though in my past life I had tried everything, even had worn reminding factors of all kinds on my person, nothing helped. Perhaps these did help a little, while I carried them on me, but if so it was only at the beginning, as soon as I stopped carrying them or got used to them, in a moment it was as if before.
There is no way out whatsoever. . . .
However, there is; there is one exit only-to have outside myself, so to say, a never-sleeping-regulating-factor."
Namely, a factor which would remind me always, in my every common state, to "remember myself."
But what is this!!! Can it be really so??!! A new thought!!!
Why hitherto could there not have come to my head such a simple thought?
Did I have to suffer and despair so much in order only now to think of such a possibility? . . .
Why could I not, in this instance also, look to a "universal analogy"?
And here also is God!!! Again God! . . .
Only He is everywhere and with Him everything is connected.
I am a man, and as such I am, in contrast to all other outer forms of animal life, created by Him in His image!!!
For He is God and therefore I also have within myself all the possibilities and impossibilities that He has.
The difference between Him and my self? must lie only in scale.
For He is God of all the presences in the universe! It follows that I also have to be God of some kind, of presence on my scale.
He is God and I am God! Whatever possibilities He has in relation to the presences of the universe, such possibilities and impossibilities I should also have in relation to the world subordinate to me. He is God of all the world, and also of my outer world.
I am God also, although only of my inner world. He is God and I am God!
For all and in everything we have the same possibilities and impossibilities!
Whatever is possible or impossible in the sphere of His great world should be possible or impossible in the sphere of my small world.
This is as clear as that after the night must inevitably come the day.
But how could I have failed to notice such a startling analogy?
I had thought so much about world creation and world maintenance, and in general about God and His deeds; and also had discoursed with many others about all these matters; but never once had there come to my mind this simple thought.
And yet, it could not be otherwise.
Now, in the Wave Series, I have written about "programs" to some considerable extent, describing in some clinical detail how they are created and maintained. This is precisely what Gurdjieff is talking about, as you can see from his description of his own states above:
I could not attain the state of "remembering myself even sufficiently to hinder the associations flowing in me automatically from certain undesirable hereditary factors of my nature.
As soon as the accumulation of energy which enabled me to be in an active state was exhausted, at once associations of both thoughts and feelings began to flow in the direction of objects diametrically opposite to the ideals of my consciousness.
When I found myself in a state of complete dissatisfaction with food and sex, the leading factor of these associations of mine appeared to be primarily vindictiveness and, in a state of full satisfaction, they proceeded on a theme of the forthcoming pleasure of a meal and sex or of the gratification of self-love, vanity, pride, jealousy and other passions.
As I have said, this is the same state described by Castaneda as "the Predator's Mind." Gurdjieff said that, unless a man can crystallize a "soul," he is "food for the moon." Castaneda put it a slightly different way:
We have a predator that came from the depths of the cosmos and took over the rule of our lives. Human beings are its prisoners. The predator is our lord and master. It has rendered us docile, helpless. If we want to protest, it suppresses our protest. If we want to act independently, it demands that we don't do so. ...I have been beating around the bush all this time, insinuating to you that something is holding us prisoner. Indeed we are held prisoner! This was an energetic fact for the sorcerers of ancient Mexico. ...They took us over because we are food for them, and they squeeze us mercilessly because we are their sustenance. Just as we rear chickens in chicken coops, the predators rear us in human coops, humaneros. Therefore, their food is always available to them.
I want to appeal to your analytical mind. Think for a moment, and tell me how you would explain the contradictions between the intelligence of man the engineer and the stupidity of his systems of beliefs, or the stupidity of his contradictory behavior. Sorcerers believe that the predators have given us our systems of belief, our ideas of good and evil, our social mores. They are the ones who set up our hopes and expectations and dreams of success of failure. They have give us covetousness, greed, and cowardice. It is the predators who make us complacent, routinary, and egomaniacal....
In order to keep us obedient and meek and weak, the predators engaged themselves in a stupendous maneuver - stupendous, of course, from the point of view of a fighting strategist. A horrendous maneuver from the point of view of those who suffer it. They gave us their mind! Do you hear me? The predators give us their mind, which becomes our mind. The predators' mind is baroque, contradictory, morose, filled with the fear of being discovered any minute now. ...
'I know that even though you have never suffered hunger... you have food anxiety, which is none other than the anxiety of the predator who fears that any moment now its maneuver is going to be uncovered and food is going to be denied. Through the mind, which, after all, is their mind, the predators inject into the lives of human beings whatever is convenient for them. And they ensure, in this manner, a degree of security to act as a buffer against their fear. ...
They reasoned that man must have been a complete being at one point, with stupendous insights, feats of awareness that are mythological legends nowadays. And then, everything seems to disappear, and we have now a sedated man. ...
What I'm saying is that what we have against us is not a simple predator. It is very smart, and organized. It follows a methodical system to render us useless. Man, the magical being that he is destined to be, is no longer magical. He's an average piece of meat. There are no more dreams for man but the dreams of an animal who is being raised to become a piece of meat: trite, conventional, imbecilic.
Now, of course, what has always intrigued me is the question as to whether or not Castaneda borrowed some of his ideas from Gurdjieff and simply gave them a Southwest spin. That's not really important, what is important is having the same thing described in different ways so that it becomes possible for people with different thinking styles and semantic fields to be able to get it.
But I think you can agree that Gurdjieff and Castaneda are both describing essentially the same problem that I have described in terms of imprinting and social programming, etc. Gurdjieff and Castaneda also spend some time talking about it in these terms, though I have added the clinical descriptions of how such programming is "fixed" in the brain and how difficult it is to overcome it and find that which is truly of the SELF, of the true CONSCIOUSNESS and lay new circuits.
Now, the important thing to notice is that Gurdjieff came to this idea under great shock and stress. Castaneda's Don Juan mentions that the "Three phase progression" which led to becoming free of the predator was learned during the "conquest." Well, Gurdjieff was also in a "war" situation, running and hiding from combatants, getting shot, fearing for his life daily, and so on.
Don Juan's three phase progression, described as the mode of approach to becoming a Warrior who is Free, consists of:
1. Holding your own in facing petty tyrants.
2. Facing the unknown with courage.
3. Standing in the presence of the unknowable.
Now, Gurdjieff attempted to teach the idea of "self-observation" to people and he also talked about the necessity of doing this in a group, with a teacher, and that it must be done with the proper application of shocks. Somehow, Ouspensky seems to have not placed the proper emphasis on that part or it gets lost in all the other words. In fact, it seems that when certain shocks were applied to Ouspensky himself, for the purpose of getting him to the "real deal," he was not able to go there. That was the point at which he broke with Gurdjieff. (To get a full idea of this issue of Ouspensky, read "Struggle of the Magicians.")
In
Life is Real, Gurdjieff mentions the fact that different people, depending on their own make-up, took different parts of his ideas and considered them to be the "whole cheese" while, in fact, they didn't realize that they were already lost. One of these that he specifically mentions as being taken out of its proper context, is the idea of "self-remembering."
Putting it all together, utilizing the material I have assembled in The Wave regarding how neurological systems are patterned, and what is necessary to make or break these circuits, it is clear that the issue of shocks, struggle with the self (yes and no, I want, I don't want), is crucial. And this is represented by Don Juan as petty tyrants.
The point is, just going around trying to "self-remember" as Ouspensky talks about it is probably a waste of time. Also, playing with so-called "occult methods" is also a waste of time. Notice particularly what Gurdjieff said about so-called "occult teachings":
In my past life, being forever merciless to my natural weaknesses, and almost all the time jealously keeping watch over myself, I could attain almost anything within the limits of man's possibilities, and in some fields attained even to such a degree of power as not one man, perhaps not even in any past epoch, had ever attained.
For instance, the development of the power of my thoughts had been brought to such a level that by only a few hours of self-preparation I could from a distance of tens of miles kill a yak; or, in twenty-four hours, could accumulate life forces of such compactness that I could in five minutes put to sleep an elephant.
At the same time, in spite of all my desires and endeavors, I could not succeed in "remembering myself in the process of my general common life with others so as to be able to manifest myself, not according to my nature but according to the previous instructions of my "collected consciousness."
The work of "self-remembering" has to be done in a group, under certain circumstances that include regular shocks; the process has to be carefully observed and directed, and the circumstances of life itself are, in general, when wisely utilized, the perfect instruments of attaining this "godlike" state. (Though, as Gurdjieff noted, godlike to SCALE. Anybody who thinks that they can become "godlike" to another, is on the WRONG track!)
As it happens, we live in a time when this type of work is greatly facilitated by the conditions of our world. In Gurdjieff's case, he lived through various tribal altercations on a local scale. Don Juan talked about the seers of the conquest developing their ideas under extremely difficult circumstances probably similar to what we experience today - at least psychologically, though for some, in physical fact. (Unfortunately, the conditions of their own lives did not facilitate this development in either Ouspensky or Castaneda.)
Of late, we have an additional way of understanding the process: psychopaths vs. normal man. That certainly maps to Don Juan's "petty tyrants" and Three Phase Progression.
So, in conclusion, let me just say that the most important time to observe yourself is when you are in an emotional state, when you are acting prompted by your "programs," or your "predator's mind" or in some stressful situation. As Gurdjieff described it:
Continuing to think about this under the influence, from one side, of a distant hollow din formed from sounds of milliards of lives of all possible outer forms and, from the other side, of an awesome silence, in me gradually rose in relation to myself a critical faculty of unprecedented strength.
At the beginning there were recollected in me all my blunders in my former searches.
While from one side I constated my blunders and in general the imperfections of the methods previously applied by me, from the other side it became clear how I ought to have acted in this or that instance. I remember very well how my strength waned from these tense thoughts and, during this, some part of me time and again ordered me to get up quickly and rouse myself in order to stop such thoughts, but this I could not do, so strongly had I been involved in these same thoughts.
Mouravieff has given to us the "Doctrine of the Present" which is the method by which one exerts the self, under conditions of shock, to do precisely that. It consists in shining the light of consciousness on any situation, while holding the emotions of the shock at a certain "level" so that the energy of the emotional center does not flood the intellectual center.
But again, this practice - which effectively begins to re-wire the neurological circuitry (as I explain in some clinical detail in my alchemy lectures) - must be assisted. Most people cannot stop, at the instant of a shock, and apply consciousness to a situation without some serious help from others to keep them focused.
I'll give you an example: I learned from my pediatrician a nifty trick for dealing with a crying child: ask a question. No matter what the child is crying about, a boo boo or hurt feelings, if you ask them a question, ask them to describe for you what happened, with repeated questions about the details, they will stop being "lost in the emotion" and will begin to think. And as they begin to think, the whole issue changes for them, the light of consciousness is brought to bear on the problem and you are then able to add input to the newly forming circuit that helps them to heal internally or, at least, to prevent the formation of a "crybaby circuit." It can turn the entire event into a mode of consciousness raising.
But when a person is adult, is acting on old, strong circuits of programming, and something from the environment triggers those old programs, it can be VERY difficult to get them to stop the emotion from flooding the intellect and to actually shine the light of consciousness on the matter with full objectivity.
Certainly, you can observe yourself as you become emotional about something, notice how you say and do things that are exactly against your conscious aims, or which lead you into situations where you just screw up again and again. Heck, some people aren't even aware that it is their programs that lead them into creating messes in their lives over and over again. They think that they are really thinking and that the thoughts they are thinking are accurate reflections of reality.
That's where the tuning of the instrument comes in.
Surely you have had the experience where some emotional upset has occurred between you and some other person. Maybe it creates a break in relations that is very hurtful. So, years go by in which you think about it again and again. And each time you think about it, as time passes, you find that the emotional content fades away until finally, one day, you see that you did a very dumb thing and the whole problem was your own ideas that something was a certain way, that you misunderstood, and then - after all that time - you finally see that it could have turned out so differently if you had just not been under that emotional cloud that twisted your thinking.
Now, imagine being shocked into such situations and having help from others to go through this process very, very fast, to be able to work through the emotional layers and get to the objective truth by having the light of consciousness - without emotion - directed on the event.
In short, THAT is the process of self-remembering: it can really only be done under conditions of shock for it to be useful to you, however. Though, for a time it is helpful to just observe yourself and take note of all the programs in you that you can identify... all the ways in which you react mechanically to things based on the emotional programs set in you by your familial and social programming, as well as based on certain tendencies of your physiological nature, and of course, varied experiences.
