38. It is extraordinary how many variations there are in Nicoll’s recollection of this one short saying.
“On one occasion G., speaking of Self-Remembering, said: “Which self do you wish to remember?” This gives one clue to the meaning of remembering oneself. On another occasion he said that Man is sub-normal because he is not conscious at the place of incoming impressions. “At this point,” he said, “where external impressions enter, it is necessary to create something.” (528, 14 October 1944, 129th commentary)
39. “G. once said in so many words: ‘Everything this Work teaches you will help your life and help you to attain your life-aim’.” (531, 14 October 1944, 129th commentary)
40. “I remember G. once making us all shout at the top of our voices: “I can work.” Now when you are minding something very much shout to yourself: ‘I can work’, and see what Work means at such a moment. That is, summon up the Work-mind.” (549, 18 November 1944, 133rd commentary)
41. “Do you remember the 11th Chapter of Genesis where it is said at the opening: ‘And the whole earth was of one language and one speech’. This means that there was a time, which I remember G. used to speak about, when people under the influence of esotericism were all one and so had a common speech. In this connection G. once said in France that when esotericism had a central control for a short time everyone was taught to write towards the centre of government, geographically speaking, and seemed to indicate that this is the reason why we write as it were from left to right and other nations from right to left or from below upwards and so on. I only understood the idea that there was some central government quite different from anything we know, in which all nations were under one jurisdiction and, as it were, always wrote towards it. Whether he meant this seriously or not I do not know.” (562, 2 December 1944, 136th commentary)
42. Gurdjieff may have said this, although Nicoll does not attribute it to anyone: “There is a saying in the Work that we should make important things important and unimportant things unimportant.” (571, 16 December 1944, 139th commentary) This is so redolent of Gurdjieff’s “making an elephant out of a fly” and vice versa that I am sure it directly or indirectly from Gurdjieff.
43. Although this is redolent of In Search of the Miraculous, this passage is not there in these very words: “I will in conclusion quote to you once again G.’s words about this: “To begin self-observation and self-study it is necessary to divide oneself. A man must realize that he indeed first of all consists of two men. So long as a man takes himself as one person he will never move from where he is. His work on himself starts from the moment he begins to feel at first two men in himself. One is passive and the most it can do is to register or observe what is happening to it. The other, which calls itself ‘I’, is active, speaks of itself in the first person, and is in reality only an invented, unreal person. Let us call this invented person in a man A.”
“When a man understands his helplessness in the face of A, his attitude towards himself and towards A in him ceases to be either indifferent or unconcerned. Self-Observation becomes observation of A. A man understands that he is not A, that A is nothing but the mask he wears, the part that he unconsciously plays and which unfortunately he cannot stop playing, a part which rules him and makes him do and say a thousand stupid things, a thousand things which he would never do or say himself. If he is sincere with himself, he feels that he is in the power of A and at the same time he feels that he is not A. He begins to be afraid of A, he begins to feel that he is his enemy. No matter what he would like to do, everything is altered and intercepted by A. A is his enemy. A’s desires, sympathies, thoughts, opinions, are either opposed to his own views, feelings and moods, or they have nothing in common with them. And at the same time, A is his master. He is the slave, he has no will of his own. He has no means of expressing his desires because whatever he would like to do or say would be done for him by A. On this level of self-observation a man must understand that his whole aim is to free himself from A. And since he cannot in fact free himself from A because he is himself, he must therefore master A and make him do, not what the A of the given moment wants, but what he himself wants to do. From being the master, A must become the servant.”
“The first stage of work on oneself consists in separating oneself from A mentally, in being separated from him in actual fact, in keeping apart from him. But the fact must be borne in mind that the whole attention must be concentrated upon A, for a man is unable to explain what he himself really is. But he can explain A to himself, and with this he must begin, remembering at the same time that he is not A.” (572-573, 16 December 1944, 139th commentary)
to be continued