~Maurice Nicoll
Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky
In reply to some questions asked on the last paper, you will remember that it was said that it was a very marvellous thing to experience a moment of not being identified. When you are in such a state you seem to live in a quiet central place in yourself although you are aware that on all sides things are trying to advance on you and seize hold of you.
It is like a crowd being kept at bay by some invisible policemen. In such a state you can see what one of the main objects of self-observation is. It is to separate oneself from so much that is continually going on inside the heart and mind and laying hold of oneself continually and in fact often dragging oneself down. All this is, from another angle the "house in disorder" in us. Now we can establish in this house a certain amount of order.
For this reason I wish once more to speak about what non-identifying means because I think that many of you get so far and then stick completely in understanding what it is necessary to do. So once more I will say to you that when you are trying to observe yourself you must not put the feeling of 'I' into what you observe. You are observing It, a machinery of emotions and thoughts, which is selfrunning and never still, and, if you look, you will observe an 'I' in you, a person in you. But this person is not you, although he lives with you, and feeds on you, and takes your name—i.e. your force. You will only get into a state of complete confusion if you think that you are one 'I' and think in some way that this 'I' can observe this one 'I'.
People have the illusion that only one thing acts in them and feels and thinks. Having this illusion, they can form no idea what self-mastery may mean. If we suppose that there is only one thing that acts in a man then it will be impossible for one thing to command, another to obey. When the Work says that Man is compared with a "house in disorder", a house that is full of servants who are under no proper control, it means what it says. It means that there are a great many people in Man, a great many persons, all quite different, whose master is absent, who speak through the master's telephone as if in his name and just act as they please in the house that does not really belong to them but to the master.
Now if one observes any part of this house in disorder and keeps on taking it as oneself, one is making a fundamental error in self-observation. One has to observe that one is many and not one. I have very often told you that this is a very difficult thing to do. I mean, it is difficult to realize it and to practise what results from the realization. At the moment it is one of the most wonderful discoveries that one can make in this Work. Now if you identify with everything you observe you will not be able to stop it, you will be continually standing in your own way, you will be continually holding on to what you should separate from.
Now listen once more: if you take yourself as one, you can separate from nothing that you observe in yourself. "Yourself" is not one thing, but composed of many, many selves. Self-observation is to observe these selves that we take so easily as "I myself". Now self-observation must not be done with identifying. You must not identify with the idea of observing yourself. It is very different from identifying with what you observe in yourself.
People sometimes get very identified with some word in the Work such as 'self-remembering,' 'self-observation', 'negative emotion', 'internal considering', and so on. This prevents them from understanding what such terms might mean. If you practise self-observation in a very identified way with a kind of anxiety or exaggerated tension, straining as it were to do it, then there will be no results. You cannot do anything in this way. You cannot do anything in an over-anxious state because you are at once in wrong parts of centres. You are really working in a negative state and so failure depresses you.
The practice of self-observation is done without shewing it to others and without shewing it to yourself in a certain way. I sometimes think that it is looking sideways at something—that is, going on as if one were not paying much attention to it. A great many processes taking place in the mind stop when you try to look at them too directly. This is of course specially true of the imagination. Selfobservation requires a very delicate touch because the machinery that it is touching is very sensitive and delicate. Then again, you must not expect that because you have observed yourself for a comparatively short time, you will get results right away.
There is a saying in the Work that we should not work for results. One reason for this is that if you work for results you get too easily disappointed and the second reason is that very often results do come but not the results that you expect. Self-observation gradually increases light. Sometimes in this Work a man's inner state is compared with darkness. Self-observation lets in a little ray of light. Now many things cease to be able to take place in the presence of light. It is merely this letting in of light that may begin to change in a person quite different things from what he or she is expecting to be changed. Sometimes we have heard it said, and it was said to me: "The light can cure you." Now I begin to understand what it means.
The practice of self-observation gradually lets in more and more light, so much so that when one turns one's inner sight backwards on to one's life it is as though one saw it lit up, though still faintly, by all these moments of self-observation that lie in the past. Now Man as a machine works better when he has some light in him. Mr. Ouspensky used to compare the centres in Man with very complicated machines of extraordinary delicacy that Man is trying to work in the dark. When he lets a little light into himself, when he begins to become more aware of himself along certain definite lines, he sees his machines better. He begins to know how to use them better and he also begins to see where they are wrongly connected and how many mistakes he made when he was working them in the dark.
Now this light that a man lets in through self-observation enables him to distinguish his inner surroundings, for, as I have often said, we live in two environments, one revealed to us through our external senses which contains a great many people, some good and some bad, and the second an inner environment which again contains a great many people, both good and bad. This second environment we live in and when we live in the darkness we really know nothing about it. So we take it as ourselves. But through self-observation light enters and it is this light that begins to separate us. Esoteric teaching is light, but only when it is understood, valued and applied. You will get no light without this valuation.
You cannot use esoteric teaching simply for personal reasons or to improve your memory or something like that. This light also begins to make many of the ideas of the Work much clearer. We cannot understand the ideas of the Work unless we work on ourselves. This is because understanding is the result of a development of knowledge and a development of being. Now your being will not change if you are completely identified with yourself. There is then no light. You are in a state of darkness. You cannot see that you have a single 'I' in you. You think that everything is "I myself". There is no light because you are identified with yourself. Then there can be no change of being. And if there is no change of being then there can be no change in your understanding of this Work. You may receive this Work as knowledge but you will not understand it. You will be unable to see anything in it at all. And this is because there is no light.
When you begin to observe yourself, to catch glimpses of yourself, to notice what is going on in you, you begin to separate yourself from yourself. This lets in light. Self-observation lets in a ray of light. This light is called in the Work Consciousness. The object of this Work is to increase Consciousness. We do what we do because we are not properly conscious. We are the people mentioned in the Gospels who live in darkness. One of the fundamental ideas of this teaching is that all mankind is asleep and this is why all these horrible things happen on the Earth. What is the real reason? The real reason is absence of Consciousness.
If Man would wake up, if he would become more conscious, everything would change. First, however, he must wake up to himself; his self-consciousness, his self-awareness must enormously increase. Now if he takes himself as one this is impossible. He will remain as blind to the many different things in him as ever. In speaking about identifying, Mr. G. said that it was one of the greatest evils, one of the most terrible diseases, and that first of all a man must struggle with identifying with himself. Man, he said, possesses all sorts of illusions, all sorts of pictures about himself and with these illusions and pictures he is identified. He thinks himself one person who has Will and full Consciousness. This is identifying with oneself. It is one form of it. Now you may know all this but the point is that you still go on acting and behaving as if you had Will and full Consciousness. This is because it has not yet penetrated but lies simply in the mind as knowledge.
You know it is said that the first form of self-remembering is the realization of one's mechanicalness. This is direct realization that one has no Will, but many wills, and no real Consciousness, but many intermittent small consciousnesses. Now people say that they observe themselves and get to a certain point and then they cannot bear to go on and turn away from what they see. If this is genuine, they will find they will be brought again to the same point by some other route. On the other hand, if this is not genuine, if it is merely a bit of self-dramatization, they will go to sleep at this point.
It seems to me that the general teaching of the influences of the Work acting on you, once you have sincerely begun to work, will always guide you if you do not interfere too much and think that you know best. Now I will say something that is of considerable importance, I speak again to those who wish to work sincerely. Every morning, or at least every day, you must put yourself deliberately under the influence of the Work. There are Work-states and life-states in us. Now if you are in a Work-state "you are, as it were, protected from a number of unpleasant states that otherwise you might very easily fall into. Sometimes when you are in a Work-state you reach momentarily this central position that I spoke about, where you have the marvellous experience of a moment of not being identified.
You must put yourself, I said, into a Work-state every day. To do so you must find the best way in your own case. There is, for example, the remembering of your aim and the attempt to remember yourself at the same time. There is going over in your mind something that you have heard and read in connection with the Work. There is going over in your mind the previous day or remembering something that you have to be more conscious about in connection with another person, and above all, there is the feeling of standing in the presence of the Work and seeing things in the light of the Work. This helps very much—in fact, to an incalculable degree. But it will depend upon the quality of the effort. If you give nothing you cannot expect to get anything.
[From Volume 2]