44. “On one occasion Mr. G. said, in so many words, in speaking of the First Conscious Shock: “Man should remember himself and he was born to do so. If you ask me what the Work is about at this stage, it is about Self-Remembering. At this place in the three octaves, something is missing in the present state of humanity. Therefore it is necessary now to give the shock of Self-Remembering—which should be given naturally. The trouble is that even when people begin to understand what Self-Remembering means, they forget to remember themselves. It is necessary to create a memory for Self-Remembering and for this reason one must make many alarum clocks to wake oneself up. People may even wish to remember themselves but they forget to remember that they have to remember themselves”.”
“On another occasion he spoke about the different kinds of memory that we have, and in his earlier teaching Mr. O. explained to us that we must try to observe different kinds of memory in ourselves. He said each centre, each part of a centre, and each subdivision of a centre had its own kind of memory.” (581, 7 January 1945, 142nd commentary)
Nicoll goes on to say more about Ouspensky’s explanation. Incidentally, the PDF from the earlier edition is slightly different from, and preferable to, the modern editions. Thus Nicoll’s “alarum clock” has become “alarm clock.” “Alarum” is better, not least because it reminds us that the word is a univerbation from the Italian all’arme, “to arms, to weapons.”
45. “I remember G. saying one night: “Remember, remember, remember, remember why you are in the Work.” (594, 7 January 1945, 142nd commentary)
46. “On one occasion G. said that a man must insulate himself from life in order to work. This is very easily misunderstood. Its deeper meaning is that he must insulate himself from mechanical self so that he is not exposed to every change of external circumstances.” (605, 27 January 1945, 145th commentary)
47. “On one occasion we were passing a church with people coming out and he (Ouspensky) said the same thing—namely, to the effect that a church does not do what it pretends to do, to make people like Christ. And I was reminded of what G. once said about Christianity that there was only one Christian, called Christ.” (608, 3 February 1945, 146th commentary)
48. This “parable,” as Nicoll terms it, is obviously from Gurdjieff, but I am not that much of the commentary is not also from him: “We are told in the Work parable that the human race on earth are like sheep under the charge of two farmers who are magicians, and whose object is to prevent the sheep from escaping from their power, and that, being very mean, not wishing to use any expensive methods of retaining the sheep, they hypnotised the sheep and told them they were lions and eagles, and, in fact, supermen. This is a parable about the power of imagination, connected with Imaginary ‘I’ which eventually creates the False Personality. The False Personality is entirely pretence, entirely imagination, and its origin is from the Imaginary ‘I’, that is, the imagination that we have a real ‘I’ in us. With this form of imagination, which keeps us as sheep asleep, we gain the most extraordinary ideas about ourselves. We think we can do, for example, we think we have real will, we think we can decide our own lives and we can never see that everything happens, even our own lives. We form in ourselves a kind of secret imagination and although life itself does not correspond to this secret imagination we still cling to it, feeling we are lions, eagles, supermen etc., and never realise what we actually are like. The imagination that we have ‘I’, the imagination that we are doing everything from ourselves, the inability to see that we are mechanical and that everything happens to us, the non-realization of this Imaginary ‘I’ and all the fantasies that it builds up in the False Personality, and this inability to see where we really are, this inability to see what our lives have been, all this keeps us fast asleep in a continual self-lying, a continual pretence, a continual self-hypnotism.” (608, 3 February 1945, 146th commentary)
49. This may be from Gurdjieff: “You remember this phrase in the Work – no one is happy …” (624, 17 February 1945, 149th commentary)
50. This, too, may be from Gurdjieff: “This is one meaning of the Work-phrase: “We are machines driven by life”.” (626, 24 February 1945, 150th commentary)
51. “I Remember again another phrase that G. sometimes used: “I can work,” which can help you, especially when you feel defeated by having to tack North or South.” (631, 24 February 1945, 150th commentary)
52. “G. once said: “Bring all things into the Work. Do not go into life as a relaxation from the Work but connect your relaxation in life with the Work.” This may sound strange and yet it contains a very important idea.” (632, 24 February 1945, 150th commentary)
53. “G. used to call the French Institute an incubator in which we ourselves were the eggs and the friction was the heat that could transform them.” (664, 31 March 1945, 156th commentary)
54. This is known to be from Gurdjieff, although Nicoll does not explicitly attribute this to him: “Now I will bring in the Work-phrase that whatever you do mechanically is lost for ever and whatever you do consciously remains with you.” (668, 7 April 1945, 157th commentary)
55. I very much suspect that this is from Gurdjieff, as it is so similar to something Bennett said came from Him: “There is first of all the symbol of Christ on the Cross, which gave a tremendous force to the world at that time.” (668, 7 April 1945, 157th commentary)
56. This may be from Gurdjieff: “It is sometimes said that this Work is imitating the work of Higher Centres.” (672, 14 April 1945, 158th commentary)
57. Once more, if this is not from Gurdjieff, I cannot conjecture who the source could be: “There is something in us called the soul about which the Work rarely speaks but which it acknowledges. The Work says that the soul is a very small thing in us at present and is merely a point of intensity. The Work says that where we are most identified is where this point of intensity goes into some desire, some ‘I’. The Work also says that this small thing called the soul must get much bigger and that this is only possible through not identifying with oneself and not always going with one’s self-will, so perhaps you will see from this hint how it comes about that if ‘I’ and Myself are in agreement no surrounding ‘I’s in me have any power.” (679, 14 April 1945, 158th commentary)
58. “As you know, the pendulum swings always between opposites whether literally, as in events of life, such as war and peace, or summer and winter, or psychologically, between love and hate, and so on. G. once said that Man lacked Third Force, He meant first of all that Man, who is created to become a conscious being, swings between the opposites in himself and is governed by the swing of opposite events in life. For example, war starts, and we are governed by it.” (699, 20 May 1945, 165th commentary)
59. “Now G., in teaching this Work, always emphasized that we were not yet conscious but could be so and were made to be so. Sometimes he explained this by saying that a man was not conscious in Third Force. He said on one occasion that everyone must bring the Third Force into his life in order to develop.” (699-700, 20 May 1945, 165th commentary)
60. This is another sentence which I think must be from Gurdjieff: “I remind you here of a Work-phrase: “Life cannot be explained by life.” Life cannot be explained in terms of itself, nature cannot be explained in terms of herself, and you cannot explain yourself in terms of yourself.” (716, 16 June 1945, 168th commentary)
61. Likewise, I suspect this is from Gurdjieff: “… we spoke of the necessity of increasing consciousness so that it begins to embrace the whole circle of human life. For that reason it was once said in the early teaching that we must get to know every ‘I’ in us and it was added that why we are all wrong and cannot grow further is because we are conscious of one ‘I’ at a time which we take as our consciousness, as ourselves. Therefore we see no contradictions in ourselves and live, so to speak, always in a very small place at a time.” (721, 23 June 1945, 169th commentary)
62. “You can do this Work, remember. You cannot do in life, but you can do this Work. I remember it was once said a long time ago by G. that 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? He said: “All call out in loud voices and say: I can work.” We did this and I think we all got force from it.” (729, 30 June 1945, 170th commentary)
63. “G. once said: “If you want to change yourself, you must change your grandfather.” What does this mean? One meaning is that by changing your attitude to your father and to your grandfather you will change them also, although apparently they are dead, and so when you are born once more in visible life, on the circle of your own life, when you meet your father and your grandfather again you will change them.” (753, 28 July 1945, 175th commentary)
64. This passage quotes something Gurdjieff said in the presence of Nicoll, but although it is similar to a passage on p.147 In Search of the Miraculous, it is not identical: “Now I will quote from what G. taught. He was asked once how it was that we could not change. He said first of all: “No one can change, whether man or woman, as long as they take themselves as one person.” (760, 4 August 1945, 176th commentary)
With this we have completed volume 2 of the Psychological Commentaries.