Self-remembering (bis)

Not pretending myself being an authority in the work, I wanted to add the voice of one of it to what I said about self-remembering in my previous post. Though it is short, this excerpt bears insightful indications about the practice of self-remembering.

“People keep on thinking about self-remembering, but they do not do it. It is necessary to stop the chain of automatic associations every day. This can be done by inner stop -- that is, stopping everything, all thoughts, etc. This is the beginning of self-remembering. But people, as I say, keep on thinking of remembering themselves, and never do. To remember oneself one must stop everything and lift oneself into total silence and total loss of all ordinary sense of oneself. This takes a little time. But most people cannot spare even one minute to do it because they are slaves to their machines, so they are bound and glued to the ceaseless and useless flow of mechanical thoughts, negative emotions, personal accounts, etc. It is a great pity, especially today, when the external hypnotism of life is so strong that people even think such toughts as that the war will make everything better, that people do not give themselves the first conscious shock. Help can reach a man only as the result of this shock. It cannot reach him in the flood of his personal thoughts and troubles and emotions. Help, wich comes from the direction of higher centers, cannot reach the Second State of Consciousness ; it can only reach as far as the Third State of Consciousness. Today, when so many people are hypnotized by war, there is more force available in the world than at other times for those who seek it, if they can only touch it. But it cannot be touched by associated thinking wich only keeps a man on the same level as if he were saying again and again : “I must jump”, not realizing that if he wishes to reach a higher level he must really jump. It is no use saying : “I must remember myself.” You must actually remember yourselves.”

Maurice Nicoll. Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (p.90)