Quaremead, Ugley, June 29, 1946
Maurice Nicoll
NOTE ON SELF-REMEMBERING
The Work teaches that Self-Remembering immediately means better
food for all the cells in the body. On the contrary, identifying in all one's
life troubles, being negative, heavy, jealous, unhappy, and so on, which
signifies an absence of Self-Remembering, means bad food for all the
cells in the body. An act of Self-Remembering, in the midst of the uproar
of life, gives new force. The whole body feels lighter, because then the
cells composing the body receive new food—a class of food above
vitamins. The body needs right food from the psychology. The rela-
tionship of the body to the state of oneself, that is, one's psychological
state, is very intimate. A depressing negative state, a worrying state,
an anxious state, produces bad food for the body. The Work teaches
that the relation between the body and the mind is very fine, subtle and
definite. Bad states of the mind, and especially bad emotions—such as
small petty self-emotions, disliking, boredom, etc.—retard the right
work of cells in the body. So the Work teaches that this effort to work
on oneself, to pick up one's behaviour at any moment and transform it
by an act of Self-Remembering changes the chemistry of the cells in the
body. Man can be asleep in life although very busy. Man can be awake
in life although very busy. The results are quite different. If a man
begins to study what Self-Remembering means from realizing he does
not remember himself but is simply a machine reacting to outside
conditions always in the same way, he begins to see what the Work is
about. If he flatters himself as being all right as he is, the Work remains
shut to him. This means, internally, the active higher parts of ordinary
centres in him remain shut to him. So he lives, on the whole, in the
basement of himself, of his house. A man, a woman, should learn after
a time what it means to work on themselves and not to remain just a
function of external conditions—that is, upset, bored, unhappy, when
external conditions are not agreeable to them, and excited and en-
thusiastic when external conditions are favourable. This is to live in the
opposites. Then one is certainly a helpless machine changing from
misery to happiness and from happiness to misery. One does nothing to
create one's own life, to create, in short, oneself. Life then drives us as
a great belt drives hundreds of little machines. This is not a desirable
state, for then there is nobody—one is really nobody, with no power of
transforming any situation. One spends all one's money and then has
nothing, so to speak. There is no reserve of force. Nothing is created
in oneself. In this case one is identified with all that happens. In other
words, one does not remember oneself. If a man, a woman, in some
typical unhappy event of which there are many typical stereotyped ones
already made—if they identify fully with them they lose force. They are
machines, mechanically reacting to these typical stereotyped events, all
prepared for them like the jumps on a racecourse. Yes, it is really like
that. You come to a typical jump and fall. But if you remember your-
self you need not—especially if you can say to yourself: "This is a typical
situation that millions of others are in at this moment". That deprives
it of its unique taste.
Now to repeat—"The Work teaches that Self-Remembering im-
mediately means better food for all the cells of the body". But let me
remind you that Self-Remembering depends finally on the sense of some-
thing higher in yourself. When a man begins to apply the teaching
of this Work practically to himself he begins, as it were, to fly a little
above the surface of the earth. What he used to stumble at he no
longer stumbles at. In other words, he is living on a higher telegraph
wire—on a slightly higher level. What would have been a catastrophe
is now perhaps only a momentary incident. I ask you all to think
and reflect upon what it can possibly mean "to remember oneself"
in the midst of troubles and anxieties and, in short, in the midst of the
uproar of life's stereotyped daily incidents, daily events. In that way,
to vary the image, one begins to see what it might mean to "walk on
the sea" of oneself—in my case to walk on, and so above, Nicoll.
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