Blog: What’s there to live for?

So, What the Heck is Self-Remembering?

Some would say the essence of the Gurdjieff Work is the practice of self-remembering [SR] self-observation [SO]. SR goes hand in hand with the practice of SO. It is to be aware that for SO to be at least relatively impartial one must be first remembering oneself. Without relative impartiality SO is worthless from a self-knowledge standpoint, it is only a one centered activity. So, we need to start with SR. It is also to keep in mind, so to speak, that there are many different levels of SR and SO. From my personal standpoint I recollect reading Search years ago and having no real sense of what Mr. Ouspensky was conveying. He had felt Mr. Gurdjieff had given him the something very important, something he had never come to on his own or in his studies. “…the center of the whole system and of all work on oneself…” (In Search of the <Miraculous p.121) [Search] But he explained his experiences, his attempts at SR in a way that didn’t really resonate on a practical level, though his writings stuck for many as the only written explanation publicly available for many years. He writes:

“I am speaking of the division of attention which is the characteristic feature of self-remembering.

I represented it to myself in the following way:

When I observe something, my attention is directed towards what I observe—a line with one arrowhead:

I −−−−−−−−−−−−−► the observed phenomenon.

When at the same time, I try to remember myself, my attention is directed both towards the object observed and towards myself. A second arrowhead appears on the line:

I ◄−−−−−−−−−−−−► the observed phenomenon.

Having defined this I saw that the problem consisted in directing attention on oneself without weakening or obliterating the attention directed on something else. Moreover this “something else” could as well be within me as outside me.” (Search page119)

Slings and arrows

Gurdjieff himself never defines SR in a way similar to this, though he did approve the publication of Search. In fact Gurdjieff, after the Russian period, doesn’t much speak of SR as the center of his teaching rather something used in conjunction to other exercises. the terminology given to Ouspensky and which Ouspensky passed on to others is missing from the First Series. Ouspensky, as he began teaching the “system” continued to teach SR and it became a main practice of most (not all) “orthodox” Gurdjieff groups as well as the Ouspensky groups and their off shoots.

From the beginning of being introduced to SR by Gurdjieff, and through his many years of teaching, Ouspensky describes the results as similar, though not identical, to the practice of stopping thought. And stopping thought or more accurately “guarding the mind” is part of SR but not a mental stopping and certainly the experience goes well beyond a simple quieting of the mind/stopping of thought.

It is not the purpose of this post to detail a process of how one remembers oneself. I write this post partly because the methodology that is given by “orthodox” Gurdjieff groups is confusing as it derives from the double arrow/divided attention which Ouspensky taught. Ouspensky himself at some point seems to have realized what he wrote in Search and taught was “off,” confused and too complicated. What orthodox groups added, either through Gurdjieff (likely) or in some other way is what Gurdjieff said and Ouspensky didn’t take to heart. “Everything begins with the body” And this includes SR and SO. The remaining Ouspensky groups/people seem to have also given up on the method that Ouspensky taught and have moved toward a more meditative so-called self-remembering. This apparently based on mixing with a form of Advaita Vedanta that one of Ouspensky’s successor students worked with and has become the primary teaching of certain Ouspensky groups. This new form of SR bears little resemblance to Gurdjieffian SR or what Ouspensky taught.

The body

To truly experience SR & SO one must be embodied, that is the attention must be redirected out of the head brain onto the body. However, one must have the tools to do this. Attention of course, but also a sensation of the body, much preferably a global sensation. Note the use of the word of the body not in the body. What is this sensation? Is this sensation of the neuro-muscular system of the physical body? No. Is it the same sensation Gurdjieff experienced on the artillery range when he first experienced “a full sensation of myself.” I would say yes. (see previous posts)

There are two basic ways to acquire a global sensation 1. Organically, you may have it to a degree and are not aware it from birth or it can just appear in awareness, perhaps the result of certain actions, experiences or shocks one has taken intentionally or received accidentally through the happenstance of life 2. One can artificially create and or aware it through certain intentional actions/exercises. To my knowledge this aspect of SR was either not given to Ouspensky or he ignored it. There has been relatively little written about sensation, it simply is. As was said about SR & there are many different degrees of sensation that can be experienced. When I asked my teacher what it was after I began to experience a global and very intense sensation of the body, I got: if you have it you know it. But going a bit further than the obvious, the experience is related to the transformation of physical food into what Gurdjieff calls si 12, a fine energy which has settled in the testes and ovaries. The sensation we are exploring is always pleasurable or possibly awared as neutral. If someone has an unpleasant or negative experience with “sensation”, this is not what is being written about. Sensation has begun to be incorporated into different practices. That said the Ouspensky SR, given in his books, is purely a mental exercise with attention. Without global sensation of the body, one cannot truly experience SR, SO, or acquire a real knowledge/self-knowledge that one has verified. Does everyone have bodily sensation? Yes, but it is often very weak and limited to a few areas and is not a global sensation. People in this situation IMO cannot fully experience SR. We can amp up our sensation through our work but for some it is very difficult to reach a full awaring of a global sensation of myself.

Nyet to divided attention

As was said most Gurdjieff groups, those that practice SR, essentially use Ouspensky definition and idea of divided attention but have added sensation as part of the practice. Attention is first directed onto global sensation to whatever degree that is available and divided between the global sensation and an external object, a tree, a person, a mountain or an internal object, the spine, breath, solar plexus and so forth. The essential problem is that it is impossible to divide one’s attention on two objects. “Consciousness is one with its object”. One may think they can divide their attention but if observed closely the attention is moving back and forth between the objects—SR becomes a ridiculous struggle and no one can maintain the state, much as Ouspensky noted. The effort to divide the attention, that is to have two truly separate “streams” of attention originating from the same seat of attention is not possible. After years of hearing about dividing the attention and asking many questions, which were essentially ignored, I came to see that SR is not divided attention on two objects (the sensation of the body, as well as the body itself are objects), that is an illusion. However, one can have a simultaneous attention/awareness of two objects; if one of the objects is sensation, global sensation. So, we are always aware of the global sensation of the body— we are here— embodied within sensation. In effect, or perhaps in reality this attended sensation is presence. This is the base, the anchor from which one can work. And one can weight or if you like accent attention on the global sensation and on the other object differently. For example, one can be in a conversation which demands attention and the weight of attention is more toward the other persons words while simultaneously taking in ones global sensation. With sensation in this case being more in the background, while the person/conversation is in the foreground, but generally the weight is upon the sensation. We are present to the conversation but not totally taken by the conversation. With a strong organic sensation of the body this is essentially an effortless, seamless experience. From here we can begin SO with the possibility it will be impartial SO. Sensation is the key to SR &SO. SR is an artificial experience. This is because it is volitional and requires direction and intention and cannot be maintained without some degree of “effort”. At first this effort can require a lot of attention in order to come to even a relative state of SR, later it takes a minimal yet still intentional movement of attention. We are in SR and then we are not, it is therefore a state. We come into and out of states. There are times when we are remembered and find ourselves in the state for some period of time. However, because our default conditioned state is the waking state, the conditioned movement is toward the waking state and away from SR. So why is sensation so important? Because once one has come into sensation in the fullest sense, that is as a globality, it is a continuum. It is simply there, always, and it takes only a redirection of attention to instantly be aware of sensation as the base for SR. End post