Self-remembering and Organizing the Functions

Self-remembering and Organizing the Functions

Self-remembering is by far the most important idea of the system. The other ideas, while interesting, serve to support it. At best they help our understanding. At worst we become fascinated with the unusual ideas of the system, with diagrams and numbers - whereas the aim is to leave fascination behind.

You would think that all we have to do is work on self-remembering. If we try, we see that, somehow, it doesn’t go very far and that we can’t maintain it. This is because we also need to make our functions work better. We need to organize them so that they support the work.

We must develop discipline in the four centers - not mechanical discipline, but conscious discipline, that is, one based on self-remembering. Ouspensky remarks, “The most important aspect of discipline is not expressing negative emotions and not indulging in negative emotions.” For example, people can be taught to not express negative emotions in certain situations, but they cannot be taught not to express it in any circumstance. This is because the non-expression (here we are not speaking of suppression) requires a moment of selfremembering. Also, we can have great discipline without any trace of self-remembering, so it is better to say that they must go hand in hand.

The work on functions partly consists in removing wrong work of centers. Part of the chaos we live in is due to this. By self-observation, we can find our own particular kinds of wrong work and slowly reduce them.

In addition, we must use the four centers to set alarm clocks for ourselves. G said that one must invent one’s own alarm clocks. This takes the form of setting small aims. In this way, we organize the centers to support self-remembering.

“By observing attention and trying to control it, we compel ourselves to work in the intellectual parts of centres.”, writes O. in the Psychology. We use the functions to approximate, to mimic, how they would work if we were in the third state of consciousness, and this brings us closer to it.

We must also not forget that there is something in us that is actively opposing self remembering - the intellectual part of the instinctive center. Therefore another part of the work is outwitting this clever part of the machine. This is accomplished by working in the moment, on a very small scale of time. These tiny efforts escape the tentacles of this part. Once we become proficient at them, we can begin to string them together, so as to prolong self remembering.

By David Tuttle

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Image: Egyptian Wall relief (Saqqara); Leiden Museum