Maurice Nicoll, little florilegium

"Often people who have listened to the teaching of the Work even for years do not understand what it means to work on themselves..."

"The only person you have to work on is yourself."

"Negative emotions keeps us where we are. If you are negative it is always your fault."

"The personal work of self-observation is for all one's life."

"Realization of mechanicalness is one form of Self-Remembering."

"Identifying is the enemy of Self-Remembering."

"Man must realize his mechanicalness before he can change... Work is a question of increasing one's consciousness, not imitating virtues like monkeys."

"No effort - no work : no work - no awakening : no awakening - death."

"When we begin to observe ourselves sincerely our whole fate begins to change. But this means noticing, over a long period, the way we talk, the way we think, the criticisms we make, the resentment of what is said to us, the way we react to others, the opinions from which we argue, the way we are flattered, how we judge others, our vanity, cruelty, moods, emotions. Unless we detach ourselves from these things, we remain mechanical. We have to have an observing part and an observed part. When the observing I is established in us, it is from this I that everything else follows. Small to begin with, it is like a window to let in the light."

"We project onto others what we cannot see in ourselves."

"To see I's in yourself, notice where you criticize others."

"To become conscious of something unattractive in yourself gives a sense of freedom."

"To talk about one's difficulties is a sign that one has not understood much."

"Our greatest danger is to crystallize out in our idea of ourselves."

"Which of you have observed yet that you are working more for greater comfort than for consciousness."

"A man must get to know himself before he can change... Our mental habits are to us not habits, but truths. They seem quite right to us. We cannot see them as habits and this is the tragedy."

"The secret lies in taking Life as an exercise."

A la votre Monsieur Gurdjieff !

"Only he is not a nothing who has understood his nothingness and has worked on himself to change it."

"It is only by grounding our awareness in the living sensation of our bodies that the "I Am", our real presence, can awaken."

Storing energy, negative emotions - Ouspensky

Q. Can energy be stored ?

A. Yes, energy can be stored when you are able to store it. But at first the question is not about storing but about not wasting. We would have enough energy for everything we want to do if we did not waste it on unnecessary things. For instance, the reason why we are so formatory is that we are too dull, we do not feel enough. We think we feel, but this is an illusion. And the reason why we feel so little is because we have no energy available for the emotional centre.
Leaks of energy were already spoken about, but the worst of all is expressing negative emotions. If you can stop the expression of negative emotions, you will save energy and never feel the lack of it.
We can only hope to become conscious beings if we use in the right way the energy that is now used in the wrong way. The machine can produce enough energy, but you can waste it on being angry or irritated or something like that, and then very little remains. The normal organism produces quite enough energy not only for all centres but also for storing. Production is all right, but expenditure is wrong. These leaks have to be studied, because with some kinds of leaks it is not worth going on until they are stopped, for the more one accumulates energy, the more will leak out. It would be like pouring water into a sieve. Certain negative emotions produce precisely such leaks. In certain situations some people go through a whole range of negative emotions so habitual that they do not even notice them. It may occupy only five minutes or five seconds, but it may be sufficient to spend all the energy their organism produced for twenty-four hours.
I want particularly to draw your attention to this idea of negative emotion and the state of negative emotion. This is really the second important point; the first referred to consciousness-that we are not conscious and that we can become conscious. It is necessary to realize that there is not a single useful negative emotion, useful in any sense. Negative emotions are all a sign of weakness. Next, we must realize that we can struggle with them; they can be conquered and destroyed, because there is no real centre for them. If they had a real centre, like instictive emotions, there would be no chance; we would remain for ever in the power of negative emotions. So it is lucky for us that they have no real centre; it is an artificial centre that works, and this artificial centre can be abolished. When this is done, we will feel much better for it. Even the realization that it is possible is very much, but we have many convictions, prejudices and even 'principles' about negative emotions, so it is very difficult to get rid of the idea that they are necessary. Try to think about it, and if you have any questions I will answer them.

Ouspensky in "The Fourth Way"

Being a sly man (or a sly woman of course)

The sly man is not a cunning man. He doesn’t deceive others. Being a sly man is not being a little smart ass.

The sly man knows that work on oneself is work on himself, not on others. The sly man knows that it is pointless and fruitless to try to correct others. The sly man only corrects himself.

The sly man doesn’t judge others’s negative attitudes or behaviours. The sly man knows through work on himself that he is filled as much as others with negative attitudes or behaviours, sometimes even worse than others.

The sly man doesn’t criticize others’s opinions, philosophy or religion.

The sly man knows that all philosophy or religion bear some truth worthy of attention.

The sly man doesn’t show off with his knowledge. He knows that he doesn’t know anything.

The sly man is seeking the Truth. He’s not trying to know the “truth” of the “behind the scenes” of the political or social games, about which he couldn’t care less.

The sly man knows he is going to die. He reminds himself constantly about it, so he doesn’t forget.

The sly man knows that he is not going to “save the world”.

The sly man strives to achieve peace, harmony and freedom within so that he can share peace, harmony and freedom with others.

In Silence...

Sly Man's Wisdom

Never forget that any stick has two ends.
The devil can lead you to Paradise, and God, directly to Hell.

Gurdjieff

A born seeker by Henri Tracol

Man is a born seeker.
Equiped as he is by nature for vibrating to a vast range of impressions, is he not predestined to an endless wondering?  Bound by necessity to select from these impressions those suitable for conscious assimilation– and thereby to approach a genuine perception of his own identity– is he not singled out for continuous self-interrogation?
Such is his true vocation, his birthright.  He may forget it, deny it, bury it in the depths of his unconscious being; he may go astray, misuse this hidden gift and increase his own alienation from reality; he may even try to convince himself that he has reached, once and for all, the shores of eternal Truth.  No matter; this secret call is still alive, promting him from within to try, and to try increasingly, to realize the significance of his presence here on earth.  For he is here to awake, to remember and to search, again and still again.
Search for what? it could be asked.  Surely there must be a definitie aim, a purpose, a mark to be hit in due course.  Have we not been warned only too often by modern scientists that “if you don’t know what you are looking for, you will never know what you actually will find”?  According to their view, mathematical predictability must always prevail over the fertile challenge of uncertainty.  And none of them will listen if you venture to remark that to “know” beforehand inevitably means that you will never “find” anything.  Indeed there is no escape from the old bugbear of “whatness” unless we remember Scotus Erigena’s distum, “God does not know what He is, because He is not any ‘what’.”
This cannot but remind me of my last meeting with an aging friend who was about to undertake what he sensed would be his last journey to sacred places and wise men of the East.
Bidding him good-bye, I said, “I hope you will find what you are seeking.”  He replied with a peaceful smile, “Since I am really searching for nothing, maybe I shall find it.”
Let us get rid at once of a possible misunderstanding and clearly state that no real knowledge can ever be attained by mere chance.  There is such fascination in the shifting lure of existence that it draws our interest away from the immediate perception of the essential.  Letting oneself drift into persuasive “visions” and “discoveries”, no “search for the sake of searching,” is merely to indulge in daydreaming–a form of self-tyranny very much at variance with man’s objective needs.
Then how is one set about an authentic quest?  Instead of surrendering at once to the call of any particular “way”, one should first try with humility to discern some of the requisites for setting off on the right foot.
Is it not the first essential an act of recognition–recognition of the utter necessity of search itself, its priority, its urgency for him who aspires to awake and assume as fully as possible his inner and outer existence?
Whenever a man awakes, he awakes from the false assumption that he has always been awake, and therefore the master of his thoughts, feelings and actions.  In that moment, he realizes–and this is the shadow side of recognition–how deeply ignorant he is of himself, how helplessly at the mercy of any suggestion that happens to act upon him at a given moment.
He may also awake–if only for a flash–to the light of a higher consciousness, which will grant him a glimpse of the world of hidden potentialities to which he essentially belongs, help him transcend his own limitations, and open the way to inner transformation.

Henri Tracol

Three-brained being, multiple 'I's

It became a “standard” to present the Reiki teaching together with an introduction to the chakras. For those of you who are not familiar with this, the chakras are described as wheels of energy forming the parts of the subtle energetic anatomy of man. Gurdjieff, when he started to introduce his teaching at the beginning of the 20th century, presented a model of the inner functioning of man that has a certain resemblance with the indian chakras system but which is actually different. One element that is similar to the chakras system is the number of centers which in both cases is 7. So far, the comparison stops here. To me, Gurdjieff model is more coherent and insightful to bring an understanding of the way man functions. It is truly a map that can help one understands oneself.

As was said, the system of centers presented by Gurdjieff is sevenfold. In this post, I will mainly focus on presenting three of them, which is more or less what Gurdjieff did at first with great ingeniosity, for it connects to other “ideas” that composed the whole teaching. “Ideas” that I intend to touch few words on in future posts.

The three centers I want to talk about can be acknowledged by anyone. They are what compose the fabric of our inner life : thinking, feeling, moving/sensing. These three elements are the means through wich we live our life. We have thoughts, emotions, sensations and movements. Unfortunately, these elements are not working in harmony towards one another and that is one of the reason why we bear much suffering and contradictions within. They actually run by themselves, in a mechanical way, by reacting to the influences of the outside world. It can be said these three centers have “minds” of their own. They have “independent” impulsions, reactions, towards the events that we have to face in the course of our life. Say we decided in our thinking, to wake up earlier the next morning to be able to have a longer meditation session, thoughts that brought with them a slight emotional response colored with enthusiasm, then the next morning when the alarm rings, we definetly don’t want to wake up and actually don’t. What happened ? Well, another “mind” took control of the situation that is not the same mind that decided the night before to wake up. This example shows how divided we are innerly without really being aware of it. We actually have multiple ‘I’s living inside of us due to the lack of harmony between the three fundamental aspects of our being. Those ‘I’s have their origin in one or the other center and combine or use the other two. And this without any form of consciousness or attention but mainly through mechanical reaction. One doesn’t acts, but reacts. And what reacts is one of the multiple ‘I’s that developed itself through one’s life and the situations one has had to go through. The only way to “see” this for oneself, so that it doesn’t remain just an information that we agree with, is self-observation over a long period of time. One has to recognize by “taste” how one or the other of these centers is at work in a given situation. That is, throughout one’s daily life. This is the object of work on oneself : first, acknowledging our inner divisions (the mess we call our inner life), then working towards unification.

This three-brained being model is really worth putting one’s effort to understand. Enounced by Gurdjieff almost a hundred years back, it matches today the discoveries made by science in the neurobiological field over the last fifty years with its three-fold brain description : reptilian brain, limbic brain and neo-cortex that developed in the course of evolution. And in the practical spiritual field, the alignment or unification of these three “brains” is probably the only way to reveal the most elusive, mysterious and quite not understood part of our being : Consciousness.

Resources :
Man - A Three-brained Being. Keith A. Buzzell. Fifth Press
Becoming Conscious With G.I Gurdjieff. Solange Claustres. Eureka Editions

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)

Self-remembering

Self-remembering is undoubtedly the “icing on the cake” of what Gurdjieff brought to the world in his incredible teaching. All that have been said and written by Gurdjieff or Ouspensky or other exponents of this teaching find its meaning and resolving in this one and only point : self-remembering. Without it all the theoritical aspect of the work (a term used to call this teaching) can easily remain on the level of the intellect only, and in this case will fail to bring one to a deeper understanding of oneself and one’s relationship to the world. I would even go further in saying that it can bring the opposite of the intention behind all this fabulous work that certainly demanded tremendous efforts from those who transmitted it. The opposite effect I have in mind is the inflating of one’s ego with all its pride and vanity instead of a diminution and an eventual eradication of these undesirable properties of oneself.
So what is self-remembering ? There are many aspects in the work that can refer to the term itself and also many ways of self-remembering but ultimately it points towards our own deeper nature, what or who really are. And the term itself implies that we forgot something that we have to remember; in this case : our own inner self. This is the state we leave in and that Gurdjieff calls “sleep”. Self-remembering can help us to awaken from this “sleep” we live in and moreover self-remembering is the state of awakening itself. It can be said that there is the practice of self-remembering and the state it leads to, the practice of self-remembering being tied to the exercise of self-observation. Genuine and persistent self-observation throughout one’s whole daily life will inevitably brings one to a first taste of the state of self-remembering. An awakening. One will be “puzzled” if I may say so. Awakening brings a total shift in the perspective in which one understand and view oneself and so in some ways we can say that one will inevitably get “puzzled” by this reversal in perspective and find oneself a bit like the Hanged Man of the Tarot. This is self-remembering. This is also connected to what Gurdjieff called “seeing one’s own nothingness”. Here I find meaningful connections with some teaching of the Ch’an tradition that, in how I understand self-remembering, can be very valuable to study. Some texts from the old chinese Ch’an masters are really amazing evocations of the state of self-remembering and also more recent ones. I think particularly of Xu Yun, and the verbatim of his talks called “The prerequisites of Ch’an training”. In this text he described at some point in a very simple and insightful way the practice of the hua tou which is a form of questioning one have with oneself. And he explains that this questioning, which is based on asking oneself when one is doing something “who” is doing this something, should gradually evoke a kind of doubt about oneself; and this doubt needs to be cultivated if one wants to find what one really is. This, I feel, is really evocative of self-remembering, which brings a feeling of uncertainty or more a form of questioning, but that in this case wouldn’t be coming from the intellect and covered with words but a direct feeling or cognition, of uncertainty. It’s not like panic what I try to convey, even if in panic itself, the state of self-remembering could happen. But true, like the chinese master said, from this point you can really get uplifted and have a glimpse of your true self, Real 'I'. Again, I recall, like Gurdjieff and even Ch’an masters did, it takes some time before getting to that and it takes a lifetime to mature. But they also say that it is our birthright.