We have to know about ourselves and what is hidden in us, and what possibilities have been prepared for us from Creation. In this Work, for instance, we have to know from self-observation that we are asleep and in what sense. We have also to know that we can awaken from sleep, and how to.

Awakening is not quite pleasant. One suffers and also is so very glad. You feel you are at last doing what you wanted, but had forgotten. Now, in connection with self-knowledge, I return again to self-observation. Self-knowledge begins with self-observation. If you cannot observe a thing in yourself you can have no knowledge of it. If you have no knowledge of it, you are identified with it. You cannot draw force out of something in yourself if you do not know by observation that it exists in you.

The next point that I will mention is that you all justify yourselves very easily. To justify oneself means to take the view that you are right and maintain it. People even justify their negative states and discard the witness of inner taste. One way is to deny you are negative. People do not admit they are wrong. Do you know why ?

To be negative is to sin against the Work. It is to miss the Mark. Do you feel this? You can, and indeed, must, find and invent for yourself ways of circumventing negative emotions. To find something that requires directed attention is one way, if you can bring yourself to do it. Another is to remember and recall and go back in time to similar previous occasions—provided you have got a Work-memory based on genuine self-observation and not merely the usual illusory lying memory. Watching the state is always useful—if you can without joining it.

If you never identified, you would not mix what should not be mixed with what you do, and you would not be negative. If you always remembered yourself, you would never identify, and if you never identified you would never be negative. This simply means that if we lived at the level of the Third State of Consciousness we would never identify and so would never be negative. But we are asleep.

The Work teaches that negative emotions govern the world. They are extremely infectious. One man can make a thousand negative. One negative person can turn a house into a Hell. This ability to affect others gives the negative person a sense of power. It is an evil power. There is some invisible binding force that gets mixed up with everything we do—like a cord that we should have cut through long ago with a sharp knife.

In connection with the necessity of seeing the beauty of the Work-ideas so that they fall on the right place in us, let us now try to approach the most supremely beautiful idea—namely, the idea that we must remember ourselves. This idea is of such great density of meaning that it is impossible to deal with it in summary fashion.

The Work says that we must struggle every day with identifying and that this struggle takes very many forms, and very many directions. For example, you may through your observation realize that you identify with someone, and may for a time separate yourself from that particular form of identifying. But you will begin to identify with something else far more.

For most people, even for educated and thinking people, the chief obstacle to their attaining the state of consciousness called Self-Remembering lies in the fact that they think they possess it already. They think that they remember themselves in everything they do and in everything they say, and they not only think that they are conscious at every moment and aware of themselves but believe that they are conscious of their inner lives also and fully aware of all the thoughts and emotions that pass through them in a continuous stream.

We were created a self-developing organism. We were created not only to serve Nature, but to serve another order of laws, spoken of in every page of the Gospels. We were created with the possibility of remembering ourselves—that is, of giving ourselves the First Conscious Shock. But you will see that it is only he himself, she herself, who can do this. I will speak perhaps next time further about this.

You should always remember yourself but as you are you have not the force and even cannot remember that you have to remember yourself. The most important thing is to remember yourself. Self-Remembering puts us into a different state of consciousness. In that state of consciousness you cannot do certain things without going to sleep at once and you can see it happening—that is, you can see yourself becoming identified. Or, to put the matter differently, if you do certain things and remember yourself at the same time, you will do them in quite a different way.

Full Self-Remembering is consciousness of real 'I' which stands above all the 'I's artificially created by life in us. Finally, no one can remember themselves unless they feel that there is something higher than themselves. Unless you feel this, your Self-Remembering will always lead you into False Personality.

Now the Work teaches that you have to do certain things which takes the form of not doing certain things as, for example, in general, not identifying—that is, not putting your feeling of 'I' into all your mechanical reactions. So the Work consists for a long time in not doing things, according to the instructions laid down so clearly in this Work on its practical side.

The Work teaches we can awaken, we can remember ourselves, we can change ourselves. How then is all this possible? It is only possible by following what the Work teaches. The Work begins with self-observation whereby gradually we may realize how we are machines and how we react mechanically to everything.

The Work teaches us that we have to go against our mechanicalness and also how this is impossible unless by long observation we can see our mechanicalness. This is the introduction to the Work. A man, a woman, who cannot observe themselves and their mechanical behavior cannot work on themselves. They take their mechanical behavior for granted, being certain that their automatic condemnations, their criticisms, their prejudices, their contempts, and so on, are absolutely right. In short, they take life in the only way they can as long as they do not observe how they take it.

The Work says that you as you are cannot do and that this is one of the things you have to become aware of through self-observation. If you still imagine you can do, if you still think you can always remember and keep your aim, then you will make no room for the Work in yourself and the Work will not be able to help you. You will not feel your inner helplessness. If you begin to feel your inner helplessness in a right way, you will feel the need of the Work to help you.

The Work is about developing the internal side of you so that it is so governed by the power of the Work that you cannot behave badly to anyone in your mind, heart, and soul without feeling a loss of force. We stand between two realities, one given by the senses and the other given by our relationship to Higher Centers. One is external and the other is internal and, I would add, eternal. It has often been said that this Work is to prepare the lower centers for the reception of Higher Centers.

There are three lines of Work: (1) work on oneself, (2) work in regard to relationship to other people in the Work, and (3) finally work that helps the Work in general. The first two lines are really all to do with conscious relationship, which, as I said, is based on mutual understanding through the study of a system such as this Work which enables you to speak to one another in the same language and not in terms of Babel.

A person sitting in this room, appearing just as others, can be in a quite different inner state and experience quite different emotions and thoughts from everyone else and yet show nothing outwardly unusual. Often Mr. Ouspensky emphasized that there were better states of ourselves and that everyone knew it. Asked once what the Work is all about, he said: "It is about reaching a better state of oneself, learning how to, learning what efforts are needed and what to avoid and knowing how to maintain it. Reflect on all the Work-teaching practically, if you have not done so already.”

We must remember that we can do this Work. What would be the good of teaching a system of Work that no one could do? Gurdjieff once said: "All call out in loud voices and say: I can work." We did this and I think we all got force from it. So every one of you say to yourselves sometimes just this phrase: "I can work," because this is what we can do. I can remember myself according to my own level; I can separate from negative emotions according to my own state and my own level; I can stop making internal accounts; I can practice non-identifying; I can stop fantasies; I can stop self-justifying; and so on.