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.

Consider for a moment what the Work says—that you have no Real I and you are nothing but a mass of mechanical reactions to life. I say, think about this, and think about it deeply, and you will begin to see what the Work is about, but of course if your ordinary associative paths of thought are never challenged by yourselves you cannot progress

Most people are satisfied with themselves, although not with their circumstances. So when they are told they must work on their Being, they either do not understand what it means or do not see why they should. Now if a person in the Work is capable of observing themselves sincerely, they cannot remain satisfied with themselves for long in the light of the Work.

A person in the Work must come to the realization that they are nothing. We look vaguely at the diagrams or write down notes. Or we say: "Oh, yes, I have heard that before," and go on thinking just as we always do, often thinking we are sure of our own worth and sure that we really know what is right or wrong.

This knowledge must be understood, before we can be what we know. For example, you can ever remember yourself unless you understand, through self-observation, that you are asleep. To try to self-remember without understanding that you are asleep is useless.

This is most important— you cannot remember yourself unless you know through sincere observation that you are asleep in some specific sense. Then you must awaken in this part of yourself and try to be what you know. It is necessary to be what you know by working on yourself.

It is only by applying the Work to oneself in one's own particular case that one can realize what Self-Remembering is. If you do not know what it is to observe you are asleep, how can you remember yourself? In this connection I will add something.

You must come to the realization that you are nothing. We look vaguely at the diagrams or write down notes. Or we say: "Oh, yes, I have heard that before," and go on thinking just as we always do, often thinking we are sure of our own worth and sure that we really know what is right or wrong.

Why do we think that things should always go right and why are we upset when they do not go in this way? Why is it we never remember about Second Force? The reason is that only 'I's that are in the Work can remember such things and that there lives in us a vast crowd of 'I's that have never heard of the Work and simply take things in their own way. It may sound very strange that we have in us crowds of 'I's that have never heard of the Work.

A man, a woman, in this Work, must learn by self-observation that what they seem to be, what they pretend to be outwardly, is not what they are internally. Realizing this, they begin to suffer from the sense of contradiction. This is useful suffering. The outer and inner must conform eventually and become one—a unity.

The object of uncritical self-observation is to collect facts about oneself. For this reason Observing 'I' must not be right in front of oneself in the sphere which False Personality influences but further back. The power of self-observation increases as Observing 'I' moves more internally. This partly depends on the deepening of feeling or valuation of the Work when surface enthusiasms are seen through.

For this reason it is said in the Work that the light will cure us. Have you ever thought what it means, this extraordinary phrase: "the light will cure us"? When I first heard it said to me by Gurdjieff it had such an emotional effect upon me that I was unable to speak to anybody for some time afterwards. I think perhaps I understood that we could not cure ourselves but that there was something that could cure us if we could gradually reach it.

Aim must be made consciously, with insight, after long observation, in view of realizing what is putting you to sleep and what helps you to keep awake.

Past moments of sleep, past moments of identifying with wrong 'I's in ourselves, can be to a certain extent cancelled by consciously going over the whole situation in our minds afterwards. You must never think that you cannot work on a thing in your past. Never think that you cannot alter it. You can alter the present, you can alter the past, and you can alter the future.

It is only by applying the Work to oneself in one's own particular case that one can realize what Self-Remembering is. If you do not know what it is to observe you are asleep, how can you remember yourself?

It is only through a feeling of something higher that you can separate from something lower, and, after a time, when you have experienced what this means, you will do everything you can to keep the feeling of something higher alive in you at all costs and you will begin to hate those periods in which you are totally identified with external things.

One of our unused inner senses is the faculty of self-observation. We have to train ourselves to use this internal camera. If used, it eventually presents us with full-length portraits of ourselves entirely different from what we should ever have expected.

It is only by means of observing myself uncritically and over a considerable period that I begin to understand that I do not remember myself.