Notes from Bob Sabath:
Inner Practice and Movements Exercise
One of the difficulties in practicing Self-Remembering is that or a long period of time we must see our sleep — our inability to Self-Remember. Seeing our inability to do this, seeing our own inner poverty and lack, is the beginning of Self-Remembering.
This week’s reading states that Self-Remembering creates new energies by the transformation of the food of impressions. How do you sense new energies in your own practice of Self-Remembering?
We have no given organ for transforming impressions. By Self-Remembering, we create an “organ” for the digestion of our life problems, our life situations, our life conundrums. How is Self-Remembering creating this new digestive agency in you? How are you learning to transform your own life impressions? Are we learning to receive life events in a new way? How do you react to your psychological life, your own problems and worries in the tumble of everyday life?
We we remember ourselves at a difficult moment, when we “eat the impression” rather than the impression eating us, we are beginning to give ourselves the First Conscious Shock. What are some ways that you are giving yourselves the First Conscious Shock this week?
Self-Remembering creates cellular changes and coats our inner being body with finer substances that allow help from Above to reach us. In the diagram at the end of this week’s reading, the mechanical or sleeping individual will have some of this finer substance created automatically (substance 12 in the diagram). When we know how to give ourselves the First Conscious Shock by Self-Remembering at the point of the intake of life impressions, more of this sacred substance accumulates.
We will lightly continue with our core inner work practice:
Become aware of the natural flow of your breathing for a few breaths, noting the sensation or presence of the physical body as the air comes in and goes out. Relax the body as you breathe out.
Let a feeling of gratitude or wonder arise. Relax into a feeling of gratitude or wonder for life or for whatever you may feel gratitude for. Do this for a few more breathes.
For the next few breaths, say inwardly “I”, as you inhale, breathing with the intention of taking in finer energies or substances in the air and feeling a connection to Higher help. When you breathe out say inwardly “AM”, with an awareness of your whole body physical presence.
Finish in three breaths with Inner words: “Lord Help Me”; “Lord Help Us”; “Lord Have Mercy”.
The exercise itself is a form of self-remembering — returning from “all these other things” back to ourselves. Its aim is to practice three-centered awareness — observing (seeing), sensing, feeling. Engaging all three centers and having a sense of whole body awareness is essential. Activating gratitude, wonder, a sense of our own being, or our own inner poverty and need for higher help — all are good catalysts for self-remembering.
As part of your practice this week, you might also explore connections between the weekly lectionary reading for the current week and the Nicoll commentary reading for this week, as well as choose a logion from the Gospel of Thomas as part of your weekly meditation.
Week Thirteen Reading from Nicoll’s Psychological Commentaries
The following reading is taken from Maurice Nicoll, Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, Vol. 3, 1996 Edition: Samuel Weiser Inc., pp. 1136-1139.
NOTE: This week’s reading is edited to reflect more inclusive language.
Further Commentary on Self-Remembering Work-Idea
You are not properly conscious. To become so, you must begin by remembering yourself. But first you must through observing yourself for a long period realize that you are asleep.
COMMENTARY
The Work speaks of Self-Remembering from several different angles. The first is that we, capable of 4 States of Consciousness, know only two states, the so-called waking state, which we take as full consciousness, and sleep. However, both of these states are called sleep by the Work. For this reason it speaks of Humanity asleep, of the evils of life being incurable as long as we are asleep, and so on.
We were born to be in the 3rd State of Consciousness — Self-Remembering
It says that we should, normally, be in the 3rd State of Consciousness which it calls the State of Self-Remembering, Self-Awareness and Self-Consciousness, and were born to be in this state. But we fell asleep, through hypnotism.
Hypnotic sleep is the problem
This part of the teaching we are studying is of such importance that it must be repeated often. In observing other people, in observing the world, in observing ourselves, we gradually realize that the reason why things are as they are is because we are in hypnotic sleep. This is the real explanation. And this idea has been taught for thousands of years.
We are hypnotized into believing we are awake
But so powerful is the hypnotism playing on humankind on Earth that it is not realized. We are hypnotized into believing we are awake, fully conscious, that we have Real Being, Real Will, Real ‘I’, and that we know ourselves and can do. We cannot see that we are a machine and that everything we do the machine is doing and that we ascribe to ourselves a thousand and one things that we do not possess. “For”, as Gurdjieff said once, “this sleep of Humanity, of which I am speaking, is not ordinary sleep, but hypnotic sleep.”
Now let us speak of Self-Remembering from another angle. The question might be asked:
What is the difference between one who Self-Remembers and one who does not?
“If, as you say, the Work teaches that the normal state of consciousness in us should be that of Self-Remembering, could you express in some way the difference between one who remembers themselves and a one who does not remember themselves and lives in the so-called waking state of consciousness?”
The act of Self-Remembering creates new energies
The answer that the Work gives to such a question is: “Yes–the difference can be expressed in a very clear way. The act of Self-Remembering creates new energies which are not formed in one asleep.”
The three foods
Now to begin with, to understand what is meant, it is necessary to study the 3 foods of Humanity and the transformations of these 3 foods that take place in the human machine. I will begin, in this commentary, by asking you if you believe that a person by Self-Remembering could keep themselves alive for a longer time than another person who did not self-remember, supposing they were experiencing the same difficulties such as inadequate food, exposure, etc.
The food of impressions
From the Work point of view the answer is–Yes. Why? Because the person who self-remembers actually creates energies by the transformation of the food of impressions. The Work teaches that we live on 3 foods–not one food.
The most important food is called “Impressions”; the next important is “Air”; the least important is “Food”–ordinary food. Without impressions we cannot live for a moment. Without air we cannot live for a minute. Without food we can live for a month or more.
Everything in nature works by transformations
Now ordinary food on entering the body undergoes successive transformations into finer and finer substances. Everything in nature works by transformations. The egg is transformed, stage by stage, into a bird or snake, the seed into a tree.
It is strange how many people look on this word transformation with suspicion, not seeing that their very existence was brought about by a series of transformations in the womb, of which they know nothing, and that the fact that they are alive is due to transformations going on at every moment in their bodies.
The wonder of our own existence
They take themselves for granted and see no mystery anywhere. This is the trouble. Humanity, taking everything for granted, cannot grow, cannot develop. The sense of the miraculous is stifled. The wonder of our own existence simply does not enter our limited consciousness.
Let us speak further about transformation. The fire on your hearth is burning by transformation. The grass is growing through transformation. The grub turning into a butterfly is transformation. The thought in your mind is transformed into speech. Everything, seen psychologically, spiritually, is transformation.
Everything is transformation except at the place where impressions are received
Yes–everything is transformation save, in regard to Humanity, at one place. That place is where impressions are received. We do not transform what our eyes see and our ears hear.
Food received from the mouth is transformed first by the stomach. Air is transformed by the lungs. But impressions entering the brain are not transformed. This is the point that the Work lays such emphasis upon. Here (at the point where the entry of impressions is marked), you will notice that they do not pass on to anything finer. They remain as an energy level of 48.
The First Conscious Shock
The Work teaches that if we remember ourselves this energy level of 48 will pass on to a more refined energy of 24 and 12. At this place the First Conscious Shock is given and is called the Shock of Self-Remembering. From what has been said you will see that this shock must lead to transformation. As ordinary food is transformed for us without aid–so the food of impressions must be transformed in some similar way.
We receive our life-problems and life-situations as impressions
But as we are it is not transformed. Beef steaks, as it were, remain beef steaks. Well, if that were the case as regards ordinary food we would die. Now you receive your life-problems, your life-situations, your life-conundrums, as impressions. This aspect of life enters not as physical beef steaks, but in another form.
We are exposed to the food of literal beef steaks occasionally and we have the apparatus given us to digest–that is, transform them. But we do not–and, I notice, cannot–take in the corresponding idea that we are exposed to situations, problems, and so on psychically, spiritually.
Can you see that a situation arriving suddenly as: “How awful, X has quarreled with his wife,” or “I have lost a packet on the Gold Cup”, etc., etc., are all “beef steaks”, as it were, coming in via impressions–that is, mainly through the eyes and ears–those other mouths in our faces distinct from nose and mouth?
We have no transforming organ for impressions — we have to create it ourselves
Each aperture takes in different material. And, as was said, we have for nose and air a transforming thing called the lungs, and for mouth and food a transforming thing called the stomach. But, to repeat, we have no transforming thing for impressions–and we have to create it ourselves. This is why the Work is called psycho-transformism.
We have to learn how to transform impressions
We have to learn how to transform impressions, which are psychological. Otherwise life will remain undigested, untransformed, in which case there will be no inner development. Remember that Humanity was, according to the Work, made a self-developing organism.
To transform life it is necessary to receive impressions in a new way
Now to transform life it is necessary to receive impressions in a new way and this is called the First Conscious Shock–given the name of Self-Remembering. Now a person asleep identifies with every situation– that is, with every impression coming in via eyes or ears.
How do we react to our psychological life, our problems, our worries?
If you had no eyes or ears the situations that you suffer from all day long would not exist for you. So do you see that your psychological life, your problems, your worries, and so on, are all due to impressions entering the eyes and ears–and, let me emphasize–how you react to these impressions?
Once you begin to grasp this, once you see what is meant, you begin to enter this Work in a real sense. When you remember yourself at a difficult moment when you might easily identify with everything, you are beginning to give yourself the First Conscious Shock.
In answer to the question: “Could you express the difference between a person asleep and a person self-remembering in some way?” the difference is expressed in the two diagrams that follow:
Share your work with this week’s lesson
Join our Group Discussion in Facebook, join our substack group chat, or use the comments to share your work with this lesson.
← Previous Lesson | Table of Contents | Next Lesson →
Please note that the top or latest posts following comments are Daily Quotes, not lessons for this course.