90. This ties in with #89, and like that, is only possibly from Gurdjieff: “The Work says: “Try to observe your songs”. That is all it says.” (1107, 10 January 1948, 287th commentary).
Just before it, Nicoll has written: “Now impressions coming from outside via the senses fall on phonograph-rolls in centres and register themselves there. These rolls grow a new skin when filled, yet what underlies is still there and can speak, only most is now in darkness—that is, unconscious. They are really four-dimensional rolls. Let us take a simple example of one of the “dark sides” of oneself. Each of you sings your typical song or songs but does not know it.”
Now, consider the terms of #89: “The Work says, in speaking of the terrible power of imagination to keep mankind asleep, amongst the many other factors that do so, that people can roughly be divided as follows: (1) Some people dream their dreams passively; (2) Some people talk their dreams; (3) Some act their dreams.”
Taken together, they are enlightening, in that they suggest why Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (but especially Gurdjieff) said very little of night-dreams, and kept pointing their pupils to observations of daydreams and imagination: that is, both night- and day-dreams are (speaking generally) manifestations of an automatic process which is operated by moving centre. They are most dangerous to our potentially conscious existence when they manifest in the second state of consciousness, waking sleep. The very few instances when higher centres join in the dreaming process can be left out without any substantial distortion of reality. Besides, these are so impactful they demand our attention.
Gurdjieff also drew attention to the continuity between the dreams of night and day – something which the Adies forcibly reminded us of (and hence the great importance of the morning preparation, i.e. the collected state exercise with the plan for the day; thus, two related practices bring our aim into daily life). To put it in my own words, Gurdjieff perhaps saw a danger in people abstracting the narratives of their dreams (as they remember them) and then analysing them as if they were independent artefacts, i.e. out of the context of their own lives, and relating them to mythology, the imagined “collective unconscious” and so on.
For conscious development, the most significant dreaming is that which proceeds during the second state of consciousness; which are reflected in false personality (our fond notions of ourselves, more or less inarticulate). That is, the “songs we sing to ourselves” during the day are the material of our work – the critical point where automatism can be transformed into conscious action, something which is not possible in sleep (both physical and psychic).
91. “Now, as the Work teaches, it is necessary to say sometimes: “I can work”. To say to oneself: “I can work” is a good thing and gives a little shock to oneself. It scatters those stealthy negative ‘I’s that tend to come in through one’s unguarded spots.” (1109, 17 January 1948, 288th commentary). In items 40 and 51, (Parts V and VI of this series) Nicoll explicitly attributes this to Gurdjieff.
92. “Now we come to another Work-Phrase: “One must create oneself”. What then, is it that one must create? That is a big question. I will answer briefly: first of all, a mechanical man, who is a machine driven by external life and its events, has not yet created himself, however successful. And secondly, to create oneself one must create something in oneself that can gradually resist life and its effects and keep its inner balance. This latter begins only through some form of truth in which one believes and which one is tested by every day. There is life-truth and Work-truth. So it is said: “Between you and life the Work must stand.” This is really the First Conscious Shock, called Self-Remembering—but there are many other ways of defining what that effort called the shock of Self-Remembering means. You can get dragged down, you can get under the power of life, you can get identified with any of the experiences on the turning wheel of the events in life.” (1109-1110, 17 January 1948, 288th commentary)
93. “In a conversation with Gurdjieff a question was asked by Ouspensky about what he could do. Gurdjieff said: “You can do nothing. In order to do a man must be.” I have often
reflected on this remark which, like everything Gurdjieff said, is strange, brief, and arresting. In order to do a man must first be.” .” (1122, 7 February 1948, 291st commentary)
94. “Now, as Gurdjieff said once: “Such a man does not think. It thinks—not he himself. And so he lives and dies without ever having thought.” In another connection he said: “We must try to awaken the Intellectual Centre first of all. That is, it is necessary to begin to think for oneself. This Work is to make a man, a woman, think—and think in a quite new way.” (1124, 14 February 1948, 292nd commentary)
95. “”For mankind to change, for a better state of things, each man, each woman, must begin to work on themselves and try to awaken from sleep.” In such words did Gurdjieff many times indicate the conditions necessary for things to become better on this deep-down and unimportant planet.” (1125, 14 February 1948, 292nd commentary)
96. “But as people are losing all sense of understanding and do not wish to think at all, we can expect it will be more and more difficult to find people who wish to work on themselves. Everything is inevitably going mass—that is, no one thinks individually. Gurdjieff said once: “Nothing can stop the present movement of the pendulum. It will soon be either ants or bees.” But he added that now, since people are throwing away the small amount of consciousness they are given, it is possible for some people to collect this unwanted and unused consciousness and begin to awaken.” (1133, 28 February 1948, 294th commentary)
Joseph,
The topic of dreams in 90. brought to mind G’s immediate instructions to Nicoll at their first meeting, February 13, 1922.
Whether G. knew that, for the previous decade, N. had published a book, Dream Psychology, along with numerous articles on dreams, and as a Jungian used it in his consultancy practice, is unknown. It wouldn’t have mattered regardless. Nicoll left Jung after meeting O./G. yet relates G’s instructions to Jung the following year. G. told him, “Do not think about dreams or read any psychology. Stop all. Dreams come last, after many other preparations. You waste force every day studying how to change… very few dreams have importance… [and likely sensing N’s self-consciousness about his weight, ends with…] You are too fat!” Maurice Nicoll to C. G. Jung, April 9, 1923.
N. met G. only once more, yet, despite having kept an elaborate dream diary from 1919–1921, comprising approximately 460 entries, he abandons the practice within a month or so. He then sells his medical practice and, with his wife, newborn child, and nanny, relocates to G’s Institute. Such was the extraordinary force of G’s personal presence.
N. does not return to keeping a dream journal for nearly twenty years. His Latter “Dream” Diary (1941–1948), comprising approximately 1,200 entries, immediately suggests that he believed he had reached the “last” stages of regeneration. And though he had neither seen nor communicated with G. since 1923, and never would, he concluded that he was now permitted to engage dreams as a legitimate means of furthering his awakening.
I have long suspected, and believe it likely, that by “dreams” G. may also have meant visions, which “after many other preparations,” likewise “come last.” This may be a consequence of translation or interpretation when they met. At these “last” stages, the individual would be able to distinguish between mechanical day-dreaming or self-talk and genuine visionary experience or internal dialogues with a deeper self, perhaps Steward as Pogson writes in 1963: “Deputy Steward, this group of ‘I’s in us, has to be waiting expectantly to receive instructions from a Messenger, in whatever form he comes, which may be in dreams, in inner intuitions, or having your questions answered. It is Steward that answers questions.”
I have found no evidence that N. ever had a waking, visionary mystical experience, but his Latter Diary entries show him gradually transitioning from dreams, even a few “Big dreams,” to what he increasingly characterizes as visions, using phrases such as “vast internal world,” “I see into myself,” “see into interior dream,” “most extraordinarily clear, real dream,” “a state where words and images mingle in place of poetry,” etc. His dreams are increasingly described as electrical, vivid, clear, very clear, real, etc. and by 1942 he first explicitly characterizes them as visions.
However, for the most part, N. still sees his nightly experiences as representative imagery that must be interpreted, and less so, though not infrequently, as awareness of an objectively existing: spiritual world, afterlife, Heaven or Hell. This peaks in 1946 occurring in 50 of that year’s 275 entries. The same pattern holds true for beings in the spiritual world: Angels, Devils, Spirits, and a few times, deceased people he had known.
No less consequential, but far more prevalent, is N’s internal dialogues with some entity (soul, Steward???) that he does not consider himself, and to my astonishment, provides him insights and wisdom that are truly beyond N’s normal albeit already astonishing enlightenment. N. expresses appreciation with “Thank you,” or even, “Thank Almighty Jesus for all that I am seeing,” and “Thank God for the strength given me through the dream.”
Unlike Jung’s internal experiences and discussions with Philemon, however, Nicoll never names, sees, (or depending on one’s worldview) provides an embodiment for this voice.
Anyway, I digress, but for N. at least, “after many other preparations” over the course of twenty years, just as G. noted at their meeting, “dreams really did come last.”