Remember yourself always and everywhere. – Aphorisms
The Reality of Being, Mme. de Salzmann
138. Conscience
…Since we entered the Work, we have known the idea of self-remembering, and we have tried to remember ourselves. We have accepted this idea. It has a certain place in our lives, especially in our thinking. Yet it has remained only an idea. It is not alive, it does not apply to our whole life. We do not live the teaching. The different parts of ourselves are not profoundly touched by this idea. They remain unengaged, unconcerned.
4. “I” am not here
…We need to “remember ourselves” for our essence to receive impressions.
Attention—Wish—Will—Free Will
A Talk by Mr. de Hartmann, From the Diary Notes of Thomas C. Daly
…Man has two natures: a lower, and a higher. The lower nature is like an animal’s—more subtle and complex, perhaps, but nevertheless it works in the same way. The higher nature is the real one. It is incomplete, but capable of growing into a full and complete Man. For the higher nature, there is another Attention, and another Will, not born outside of us, but born in us. This Attention is the beginning of real Consciousness; and this Will is the beginning of Free Will. With this Attention, we can observe ourselves; with this Attention we can remember ourselves…
Views From the Real World
Prieuré, January 19, 1923 “To all my questions…”
It is impossible to remember oneself. And people do not remember because they wish to live by mind alone. Yet the store of attention in the mind …is very small. And other parts of the body have no wish to remember.
This mind of ours wants to do something, has set itself the task of working differently from the way it worked before, of remembering itself. All the interests we have related to self-change, self-alteration, belong only to the driver, that is, are only mental.
As regards feeling and body—these parts are not in the least interested in putting self-remembering into practice. And yet the main thing is to change not in the mind, but in the parts that are not interested.
When we say “remember yourself,” we mean yourself. But we ourselves, my “I,” are—my feelings, my body, my sensations. I myself am not my mind, not my thought. Our mind is not us—it is merely a small part of us. …Our separate parts have different attention; its duration and its power are proportionate to the material received. The part which receives more material has more attention.
Since our mind is fed by less material, its attention, that is, its memory, is short and …if we …continue to wish… to remember ourselves only with our mind, we shall be unable to remember ourselves longer than our material allows, no matter how much …we may wish it… When this material is spent, our attention vanishes.
…But it is possible to increase our self-remembering, …by bringing in other parts with their own accumulators and making them participate in the general work.
…My problem is to bring my other parts to a point where my thinking center would be able to prolong the state of self-remembering as much as possible, without exhausting the energy immediately.
It should be pointed out here that self-remembering, however full and whole, can be of two kinds, conscious and mechanical—remembering oneself consciously and remembering oneself by associations. Mechanical, that is, associative self-remembering can bring no essential profit, yet such associative self-remembering is of tremendous value in the beginning. …such a self-remembering, however complete, does not result in any real, concrete doing…
There exists another, a conscious, self-remembering which is not mechanical.
Transcripts of Gurdjieff’s Meetings, 1943-46
Meeting 28
Gurdjieff: …you forget to remember yourself when it is necessary; but when it is useless you remember yourself automatically. This is not our aim at all. One must accustom oneself to self-remembering consciously. You will not succeed unless you make the task of remembering yourself with your whole presence
The Reality of Being
86. First and second conscious shocks
In the ascending octave toward consciousness, remembering oneself is the shock that is necessary to pass the interval between mi and fa— the first conscious shock. It brings a force that can only come from the wish, the will. We must make the will grow degree by degree, step by step….All the centers are involved. …
7. Can we become conscious?
…The practice of being present is self-remembering. Instead of being taken outward, the attention of the functions is turned toward the inside for a moment of consciousness. I need to recognize that I can understand nothing if I cannot remember myself.
…To remember myself also means to be present to my situation—to the place, the conditions, the way I am taken by life. There is no room for dreaming.
…A conscious man is one who is always vigilant, always watchful, who remembers himself in both directions and has his two natures always confronted.
5. Where our attention is
Our effort must always be clear—to be present, that is, to begin to remember myself. With the attention divided, I am present in two directions, as present as I can be. My attention is engaged in two opposite directions, and I am at the center. This is the act of self-remembering.
36. Love of being
The attention that leads to the moment of consciousness is the fire which brings about a blending of forces, a transformation. To become conscious simultaneously of both these movements requires a greater activity of my attention. The effort awakens it, awakens a force that was asleep. My attention is entirely mobilized, including at the same time the higher centers and the lower centers, the functioning of my whole Presence. This depends on a new feeling that appears, the feeling of being. Remembering oneself is above all remembering this other possibility, the search for a force in myself that is more active. I wish to know, I wish to be.
45. To “know myself”
At each step in remembering ourselves, we encounter doubt. I doubt myself, I doubt a more real part of me, I doubt that I can find help… It is not necessary to come always to an exalted state, only to a level at which I can stay present a little longer. Simply remaining above the level of sleep—a little higher but in a way that has some stability—is itself extraordinary. It constantly jars something in us that awakens. We need to know what we are—either an unconscious slave or a conscious servant.