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Main Index
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is the most difficult thing -- because we are asleep. We are deeply asleep! We are walking in sleep, talking in sleep, moving, living, loving, doing everything in sleep, in a deep somnambulism -- a deep, natural hypnosis. That is why there is so much confusion and so much conflict, so much violence and so much war. It is really a miracle how the human race has survived -- so much sleep, and still we manage somehow!
But we are asleep. Our behaviour is not a behaviour which can be called alert, attentive, aware -- we are not. For a single minute. we cannot be aware of ourselves. Try it, and then you will feel how much asleep you are. If I cannot remember myself continuously for one minute, for sixty seconds, how deeply asleep I must be! Two or three seconds, and then sleep comes and I am not there: I have moved. The consciousness has been dropped, the unconscious has come in. There is a deep darkness, and again I remember that I was trying to be aware.
P. D. Ouspensky was working with Gurdjieff on his method of self-remembering. The first time he met Gurdjieff he said, "What do you mean by self-remembering? I remember myself: I am P. D. Ouspensky."
Gurdjieff said, "Close your eyes and remember that you are P. D. Ouspensky, and when you forget, tell me. Be frank!"
Only three or four seconds passed, and Ouspensky opened his eyes and he said, "I began to dream. I forgot that I am P. D. Ouspensky. I tried three or four times. I said within myself, 'I am P. D. Ouspensky, I am P. D. Ouspensky, I am P. D. Ouspensky,' and then a dream broke in and I was not aware."
So Gurdjieff said, "This is not self-remembering -- that you are P. D. Ouspensky. Firstly, you are not P. D. Ouspensky, and, secondly, this is not remembering. When the remembering comes, you will be the first to deny that you are P. D. Ouspensky."
For three months Ouspensky tried hard, very hard. The more you try, the more you become aware how hard it is. The more you try, the more you begin to feel that "I have been asleep all my life." This is just a mechanical awareness that we have. We can move with it, do the routine, but can never go deep. For three months, when
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