Amwell, 29.4.50
WHAT WE HAVE TO OBSERVE IN OURSELVES
Maurice Nicoll
We were talking last time of the many different meanings of the First Conscious Shock that enables a man no longer to have a mechani- cal reaction to life but a more conscious reaction to what happens to him. We spoke about willing what you have to do. Now we will talk about what we have to observe and separate from. Someone said to me recently: "I understand we have to observe ourselves, but why?" The object of self-observation is to observe yourself from what the Work teaches that you must observe yourself from. People always imagine that they observe themselves already. Most of you have heard this many times. But in the selective self-observation laid down in the Work there are definite things that the Work teaches you must observe in yourself; so, in answer to all questions about self-observation, we must once more come back to this thing endlessly taught, endlessly not understood: we must observe ourselves along the lines that the Work teaches. People forget this and so make self-observation useless.
Now we are taught that we have to observe certain things in our- selves for the reason that if we do not see and separate from them, we will not get in touch with inner development or with Real I or with Higher Centres, which is the object of the Work. This Work teaches you to become aware of, to become conscious of, and so to separate from exactly what blocks you, hinders you, from getting in touch with what you really are essentially created to be—that is, what essentially you were created for in this developing Universe. A person says to me: "Why should I have to go on observing myself?" I might say to him: "Yes, but what are you observing?" He might say to me: "Oh, I am just observing that, for example, I left the gas on, I forgot something, I gave twopence to a beggar, I missed the bus, I did not like the report in the Daily Mail of that play, and so on." May I tell you that all this has nothing to do with self-observation in the Work-sense. What we have to observe from the Work point of view is that we are asleep and mechanical and in that connection through this shrewd self-observation the realization that we do not remember ourselves slowly comes in. Of course, people can fight against this, and even go out of the Work when they are told that they are machines and do not remember themselves. Yet the first line of conscious selective self-observation laid down by the Work is to realize gradually that we are asleep, that we have no centre of gravity, that we are controlled by outside events, and that we swing between hating and loving, liking and disliking, yes and no, in everything. However, this is difficult for us to realize. It is a supreme realization and may mark a turning point that has to do with reversal. But it is gradual—a long process not attained by any short cut.
So let us pass to an easier thing that the Work teaches as regards the necessity of observing oneself according to what is taught in the Work. The Work says, for example, that we are always identified with everything. No sooner does one thing happen, such as a rise in your investments, and you feel rather good, than the next moment a bull or bear, or whatever it is, comes along, and you feel depressed. Does not this mean that to this extent we are a function of what happens in external life and eventually that external life controls us? Yes, it means simply that we have nothing internal yet that can resist the ups and downs and swings of the pendulum of external life. We have no moon in ourselves. In brief, it means that we are identified with life and not distinct from it. Yet we deny this owing to False Personality. This is a very happy field in which to observe yourself and will give you many results if you observe yourself, but always in the name of the Work, for this gives a trace of Self-Remembering. Then we have another great field in regard to which we are told to observe ourselves, and this is the vast field of being negative. We are, for example, told, in regard to the practice of self-observation from the Work point of view, that we must observe our negative states and really see, really observe, that we are negative for quite a considerable part of our daily life: And it is said in the Work that unless we separate from negative emotions we cannot get any help from Higher Centres and that means from Higher Intelligences above us in the Scale of Being indicated by the Ray of Creation. Yet we refuse to understand this. Then again we are told to observe ourselves from the point of view of not always self- justifying. I suppose that none of us has really perceived deeply enough through internal self-observation that whenever we are accused of anything at all, rather than see the truth of the accusation, we always want to justify ourselves. Is there anything more tedious than to listen to a person who is always justifying himself about something that everyone knows he did wrongly ? So we have all these wonderful things, for example, like the Sermon on the Mount, that has to do with the poor in spirit. Can you imagine a man rich in spirit who always justifies himself ever seeing he is in the wrong? Then again comes in the tremendous factor of observing yourself when you are internally con- sidering. Consciously to observe yourself internally considering is one of the most interesting things you can follow. You must remember that all internal considering is based on thinking that other people have treated you badly and you have treated them extremely well and this is a great source of blocking our passage, our way, to inner develop- ment, that we all feel we are lacking, without understanding what it is that is lacking.
And then comes in the observation of when you are lying. Of course, self-justifying is lying, internal considering is lying, and really almost everything we say is lying in a way—such as saying 'I'. Now intelligent self-observation means that you become conscious of what you were not conscious of before, so the Work when followed and practised will supplant what we have in us already, the acquired conscience, and make us see this deep Buried Conscience that we all have inherent in us because we all have the materials of the Work in us but we have forgotten. We have fallen asleep. Once we knew them and then we fell asleep and now we have to wake up and get them all back again.
I will only add this, if you are unaware of a thing, if you are not conscious of a thing, how can you change it ? You cannot, because you are it. So the exercise and discipline of what the Work teaches is to make something awaken, so that we can practise inner separation, and here I specially mention once more separation from negative emotions, so that we can come in touch with what we once were and touch that. All the things mentioned are what shuts the mind internally to light from Higher Centres.
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