The Shelves of Inner Memory

We think of yesterday and the day before in terms of time, not in terms of our inner states on those days. We do not think that the day before yesterday we were in a state of abysmal sleep but that yesterday we had a small moment of awakening. Because we think in terms of time, we have so little memory of states.

Yet that small amount of awakening you had yesterday should have been put into the room of your inner memory which is outside time and is in shelves, arranged vertically in scale of value. Such moments eventually begin to lift us. They enable us to remember ourselves—out of time and its cares.

Maurice Nicoll, “The Idea of Balanced Man" in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 5, p. 1528)