The Gateway to Self-Remembering: Wonder and the Miraculous

Through Self-Remembering we come under new influences which otherwise cannot reach us. If you feel the extraordinariness of your own existence, if you feel the miracle of your body, of your consciousness, of the world that surrounds you, if you begin to wonder who you are, then you are in the state necessary for Self-Remembering. On the other hand, if you are completely identified with yourself and take everything for granted, you are not in the state that is necessary for the act of Self-Remembering.

I often said to you in the past things such as "Look at your hands, do you know what they are or how they move?" or "Look at the trees and ask yourself how it is you see them", and many other things of a similar nature. In all this the sense of mystery is in us, the sense of the miraculous. It is not necessary to go to Tibet to find the miraculous. You can find it here, now at this moment.

Maurice Nicoll, "Self-Remembering" in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 2, p. 601-2)