(47.) Maurice Nicoll 1 - ON HYDROGENS IV - THE FIRST CONSCIOUS SHOCK - p.195-200
This is number (47.) of our sequential postings from Volume 1 of Maurice Nicoll’s Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky.
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Birdlip, December 5, 1942
ON HYDROGENS - IV - THE FIRST CONSCIOUS SHOCK
Introduction
To-night we will speak of the First Conscious Shock, by means of which extra Hydrogens are created in the Body. The point at which the First Conscious Shock is given is at the place of incoming impressions reaching consciousness where Do 48 enters the upper storey of the factory and where the Hydrogen Mi 48, coming from the beginning of the Air Octave, is present. The Air Octave, at the stage Mi 48, cannot proceed to Fa 24 unless a shock is given it, and the Octave of Impressions, starting from Do 48, does not even begin to develop unless it is activated by a shock. The shock that is required at this place in the upper storey is called in general the shock of Self-Remembering. But before we proceed, it must be clearly understood that this shock does not happen mechanically, as does the shock of breathing. It is a shock that must be given deliberately, by certain kinds of efforts, all connected with awakening, and these efforts are in general called Remembering Oneself. If this shock is successfully given, Impressions coming in to the upper storey as Do 48, and reaching consciousness, are transformed into Re 24 and later into Mi 12. At the same time the Air Octave can pass from Mi 48 to Fa 24 and later to Sol 12. The result therefore of giving the First Conscious Shock is to create the extra Hydrogens Re 24, Mi 12 and Fa 24 and Sol 12. You will notice that there are now, in the lower storey, three Hydrogens 12, where there was formerly only one—namely, Mi 12, Sol 12 and Si 12. Here is then a picture in the form of a Diagram shewing what extra energies can be created in Man when he begins to live more consciously and work on himself and remember himself—that is, when he begins to give himself the First Conscious Shock.
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Diagram of Extra Hydrogens created by First Conscious Shock
The Hydrogens made from the Food Octave are omitted save Si 12
Self-Remembering
For most people, even for educated and thinking people, the chief obstacle to their attaining the state of consciousness called Self-Remembering lies in the fact that they think they possess it already. They think that they remember themselves in everything they do and in everything they say, and they not only think that they are conscious at every moment and aware of themselves but believe that they are conscious of their inner lives also and fully aware of all the thoughts and emotions that pass through them in a continuous stream. And because they think they always remember themselves and act and speak with
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full consciousness and are fully aware of everything they say and do, they believe that they have real will and a permanent unchanging 'I' and that they have the ability to do—as, for example, that they can change themselves if they really wish to, or change their lives, or change other people, or do just as they like. But of course they cannot change themselves or their lives or other people or do just as they like, because they do not possess any real will, but many contradictory wills, nor have they any permanent 'I' but many changing 'I's and when they are doing something it is not from conscious will and conscious choice but from what only can happen at that moment to them. For just as in life everything happens in the only way in which it can possibly happen, and no one really does anything at all, although it looks as if people do, so is it in the case of a single man. Everything in his life takes place in the only way in which it can possibly take place, and as long as the man remains the same, everything else will be the same.
It is evident that a man will not be interested if you tell him about a state of consciousness that he thinks he already possesses. And this is one reason why people find it so difficult to understand anything about the meaning of Remembering Oneself or the state of Self-Awareness or Self-Consciousness. They ascribe this state to themselves as they are and really believe they pass their existence in a full state of consciousness. They do not realize that they cannot help doing what they are doing. They believe that all their actions are controlled by their will, that they do everything deliberately, and so on. Yet a man's ordinary state of consciousness is almost the reverse of all this. A man ordinarily does not remember himself, he is not aware of himself, he is not properly conscious of what he does nor of what he says. Nor does he make the decisions he imagines he makes. Nor is he properly conscious of his inner life, which is actually very obscure to him. Of all the thoughts and feelings that pass through him mechanically he is scarcely conscious of a millionth part. Yet actually the state of consciousness called "Self-Remembering" in which a man is aware of himself and of all he sees round him, and at the same time aware of all the thoughts and feelings passing through him—this state of consciousness is Man's right. And if Man does not possess it, it is only because of the wrong conditions of his life. It can be said without exaggeration that at the present time, the state of consciousness called Self-Remembering (or the Third State of Consciousness) occurs in Man only in the form of rare flashes and it can only be made more permanent in him by a long and special training.
This special training begins with self-observation. It is only by means of observing himself uncritically and over a considerable period that a man begins to understand that he does not remember himself. He realizes that most of the time he lives in dreams. He realizes that he forgets himself, forgets his aims, forgets what he was doing or thinking and so on. But this is not all that he begins to understand. He begins to realize what it means to awaken to some extent and what it means to
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be asleep. Through self-observation he begins to feel the taste of what it might be to be more awake, more conscious of himself. Self-Observation is not Self-Remembering, but it enables a man to realize he does not remember himself and that most of the time he has no distinct and separate feeling of himself, no proper sense of 'I', no real consciousness of himself. From this he realizes that he lives his life in a state of sleep which people call full consciousness, almost as if in mockery, it might be thought, for it is in this so-called state of full consciousness that people behave as they do to one another and even kill each other without realizing what they are doing. Look at to-day. What is the real explanation of what is happening in the world? The real explanation is that people are not conscious. They are asleep and acting in their sleep. And even if they feel something of this, they do not know how to awaken from the sleep or what they must do. Yet since the creation of the world men have been told they are asleep and must awaken. How many times is this said in the Gospels: "Awake, watch, sleep not!" But people do not understand it or they think it is a metaphor whereas it is literally true. If people awakened from sleep, if they began to remember themselves, the whole of life would change. And nothing can change in life unless people begin to awaken.
It is necessary to say all this before coming to the practical side of Self-Remembering because everyone who wishes to understand this Work must have, as it were, a background of principles from which he can think about details. This Work teaches as a principle that Man is asleep and that his greatest and most important task is to awaken.
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A man must first come to the realization that he is asleep and that he does not remember himself, before anything else can happen. And he can only gain this realization by means of observing himself uncritically at all times and over a long period. But in this system he is taught to observe certain particular things in himself which especially prevent a man from beginning to awaken. Awakening, you must understand, takes a very long time and all the first stages of the Work are to do with gradually awakening. One of the most important things to observe in oneself is the state of being identified. A man cannot remember himself if he is identified. And the more he is identified with himself, the less can he remember himself. A man is identified with pictures of himself, he is identified with his dreams, he is identified with every 'I' that for a moment takes the stage, he is identified with every mood, he is identified with every emotion, he is identified especially with his negative emotions, and he is identified with his suffering. And it must be mentioned here that this latter form of identifying must be struggled against from the very first moment of practical work on oneself. A man must give up his suffering from the very beginning. All the thousand and one forms of identifying must become subjects of self-study through
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self-observation. Now if a man observes that he is about to identify with, say, some negative state and at the same time remembers the Work and his aim not to identify, he may separate from this state completely. He will then probably experience a moment of Self-Remembering either then or later on. What has happened? I will try to explain. When you have practised self-observation for a certain time, you are more conscious of your inner state and in consequence you have, as it were, a moment of choice. You can see what is going to happen before it takes place. Self-Observation clears a space in your mind so that you can see things coming in and going out. If the energy which was about to go into a negative emotion is prevented from doing so, it may pass on and may create a moment of Self-Remembering. All this means that you have brought the Work up to the point of incoming impressions. Ordinarily impressions do not pass on because at the point where impressions enter the human machine, they fall on a network of long-established associations. After a time, at a certain age, people no longer experience new impressions. This is not because impressions are not new, for they are always new every moment but because they always "ring up", as it were, the same associations and produce the same reactions. People then live only in their associations and this makes their inner life almost empty, almost dead. If you wish to keep young in yourself you must take in the food of new impressions. That means, you must actually work on impressions as they enter and prevent certain of them from falling on the old places. Life is impressions coming in. You cannot change life. But you can change the way impressions fall on you. Take, for example, the question of aim. Everyone must have aim in this Work. He must think about it. Aim can be smaller and greater. But a man should know what his aim is, great or small, at any one moment. It gives shape and meaning to his inner life. Now if he brings his aim into consciousness—that is, does not forget it—at the point where life is acting on him through incoming impressions and prevents himself from reacting to any of these impressions in a way that is contrary to his aim, he is then in a state of Self-Awareness. His mechanical reaction is prevented by his conscious act. This action belongs to the First Conscious Shock. It is, so to speak, the beginning of it. The energy which would have gone into a mechanical reaction, through mechanical associations, can now pass on and become transformed first into Hydrogen Re 24. This is emotional. The result will be that either then or later he will "see something" or he will understand something in a new way—behind the network of associations. Impressions will, in fact, begin to fall directly on centres.
Impressions that are taken in in a state of Self-Remembering become emotional. Even the simplest thing can become interesting or beautiful and reflect some meaning you had never perceived.
Now as regards the question: "Which self must I remember when I try to remember myself?" First, remember the self or 'I' that knows what your aim is. This brings all the 'I's in you that wish to awaken
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into consciousness. Second, there is such a thing as real 'I' in us. But we are always being what we are not, substituting one 'I' after another in place of the trace of real 'I' that we have access to. Trying to feel the pure feeling of 'I' doing this, 'I' saying this, 'I' sitting here, 'I' being negative, and so on, can become sometimes a form of Self-Remembering. Full Self-Remembering is consciousness of real 'I' which stands above all the 'I's artificially created by life in us.
Finally, no one can remember himself unless he feels that there is something higher than himself. Unless he feels this, his Self-Remembering will always lead him into False Personality. Many other things could be said about the First Conscious Shock, which has many sides to it, but enough has been given for discussion and questions. But you must all keep to the paper in your discussion and this will be an exercise in Self-Remembering for you.