Q. What is the distinction in the meaning of attention and consciousness?

A. Attention can be regarded as the elementary beginning of consciousness--the first degree. It is not full awareness for it is only directed one way. As I said, consciousness needs double attention.

Q. What is the object of attaining this higher consciousness--to live more fully?

A. One thing depends on another. If we want to have will, if we want to be free instead of being marionettes, if we want to awake, we must develop consciousness. If we realize that we are asleep and that all people are asleep, and what it means, then all the absurdities of life are explained. It is quite clear that people cannot do anything differently from what they do now if they are asleep.

Q. As we are, would we ever be able to be conscious when we want to be, or does it always come accidentally?

A. Nothing comes in its full state at once. The first step is to be more conscious, the second step is to be still more conscious. If, with effort, you can now make yourself be conscious for a minute, then, if you work on it and do all that is possible to help, after some time you will be able to be conscious for five minutes.

Q. Is it wrong when it is accidental?

A. You cannot rely on it. As we are, higher states cannot last; they are just flashes, and if they last, then it is imagination. This is a definite fact because we have no energy for lasting higher states. Flashes are possible, only again you must judge and classify them by what material they bring.

Q. Cannot they last in memory even?

A. The memory that we can command, control and use is only intellectual, and intellectual memory cannot keep them.

Q. It seems to me quite impossible to self-remember at will, although it seems not quite so difficult to observe myself.

A. You must try methods that will produce it. Try this method of stopping your thoughts, to see for how long you can keep your thoughts down, to think about nothing--if you know about self-remembering. But suppose a man who does not know about self-remembering tries this--he will not come to the idea of self-remembering in this way. If you already know, that will create a moment of self-remembering; for how long will depend on your efforts. It is a very good way. This method is described, for instance, in some books on Yoga, but people who try it do not know why they are doing it, so it cannot produce good results. Quite the opposite, it may produce a kind of trance state.

Q. When you said 'knowing about self-remembering', did you mean if you have it in your head as an aim, or if you had a taste of it?

A. There are different degrees. You see, we speak about self-remembering all the time; we always come back to it; so you cannot say you do not know about self-remembering. But if you take a man who has studied ordinary psychology or philosophy, he does not know about it.

Q. Is it possible to have done self-remembering before one met this system? I ask because I have tried to self-remember and the results seem to correspond to what I used to do before, without knowing what I was doing.

A. That's the thing. You can study it to understand the principle that if you do a certain thing knowing what it is, it gives one result, and if you do almost the same thing without knowing what it is, it gives a different result. Many people came very near to self-remembering in practice, others came very near to it in theory but without practice--either theory without practice, or practice without theory--and neither from the one nor from the other did they come to the real truth. For instance, in the so-called Yoga literature there are many near approaches to self-remembering. For example, they speak about 'I am' consciousness, but they are so theoretical that you cannot get anything out of it.

Self-remembering was never mentioned in any literature in an exact, concrete form, although in a disguised form it is spoken about in the New Testament and in Buddhist writings. For instance, when it is said, 'Watch, do not sleep', this is self-remembering. But people interpret it differently.

Q. Is emotional centre the chief centre that works in self-remembering?

A. You cannot control emotions. You simply decide to remember yourself. I have given you a very simple, practical method. Try to stop your thoughts but, at the same time, do not forget your aim--that you do it in order to remember yourself. That may help. What prevents self-remembering? This constant turning of thoughts. Stop this turning, and perhaps you will have a taste of it.

Q. What centres work in self-remembering?

A. Self-remembering needs the best work you can produce, so the more centres that take part in it the better the result. Self-remembering cannot be produced by slow, weak work--the work of one or two centres. You may begin with two centres, but it is not sufficient, because other centres can interrupt your self-remembering and stop it. But if you put all centres to the work there is nothing that can stop it. You must always remember that self-remembering needs the best work you are capable of.

Q. You said real self-remembering needs emotion, but when I think of it I do not experience any emotion. Can one remember oneself without emotional experience?

A. The idea is to remember oneself, to be aware of oneself. And what comes with it you just notice, you must not put any definite demands upon it. If you make it a regular practice to try and remember yourself three or four times a day, self-remembering will come by itself in the intervals, when you need it. But that you will notice later. You must make it a regular practice to try and remember yourself, if possible at the same times of the day. And, as I said, the practice of stopping thoughts will produce the same effect. So, if you cannot remember yourself, try stopping thoughts. You can stop thoughts, but you must not be disappointed if at first you cannot. Stopping thoughts is a very difficult thing. You cannot say to yourself 'I will stop thoughts', and they stop. You have to use effort all the time. So you must not do it for long. If you do it for a few minutes it is quite sufficient, otherwise you will persuade yourself that you are doing it when instead you will just sit quietly and think and be very happy about it. As much as you can you must keep only one thought, 'I do not want to think about anything', and throw all other thoughts out. It is a very good exercise, but only an exercise.

Q. Is it bad to stop breathing when one tries to stop thoughts?

A.. This question was asked once in our old groups and Mr. Gurdjieff asked: 'For how long?' The man said for ten minutes. Mr. Gurdjieff answered: 'If you can stop breathing for ten minutes it is very good, because after four minutes you die!'

Q. Are self-remembering and stopping thoughts the same thing?

A. Not exactly; they are two different methods. In the first you bring in a certain definite thought--the realization that you do not remember yourself. You must always start with that. And stopping thought is simply creating a right atmosphere, right surroundings, for self-remembering. So they are not the same thing, but they bring the same results.

Q. Is one's work more accurate if one is remembering oneself and the work one is doing?

A. Yes, when you are awake you can do everything better, but a long time is necessary for that. When you get accustomed to self-remembering you will not be able to understand how you ever worked without it. But in the beginning it is difficult to work and to remember oneself at the same time. Still, efforts in this direction give very interesting results; of that there can be no doubt. All experience of all times shows that these efforts are always rewarded. Besides, if you make these efforts you will understand that certain things one can only do in sleep and cannot do when one is awake, because some things can only be mechanical. For instance, suppose you forget or lose things: you cannot lose things on purpose, you can lose them only mechanically.

Q. While performing on the piano, when I thought 'I am here' I did not know what I was doing.

A. Because this is not being conscious, it is thinking about self-remembering. Then it interferes with what you are doing; just as when you are writing and suddenly think 'How is this word spelt?'--you cannot remember. This is one function interfering with another. But real self-remembering is not in centres, it is above centres. It cannot interfere with the work of centres, only one will see more, one will see one's mistakes.

We must realize that the capacity for remembering oneself is our right. We do not have it, but we can have it; we have all the necessary organs for it, so to speak, but we are not trained, not accustomed to using them. It is necessary to create a certain particular energy or point, using this word in an ordinary sense, and this can be created only at a moment of a serious emotional stress. Everything before that is only preparation of the method. But if you find yourself in a moment of very strong emotional stress and try to remember yourself then, it will remain after the stress is over, and then you will be able to remember yourself. So only with very intense emotion is it possible to create this foundation for self-remembering. But it cannot be done if you do not prepare yourself beforehand. Moments may come, but you will get nothing from them. These emotional moments come from time to time, but we do not use them, because we do not know how to use them. If you try sufficiently hard to remember yourself during a moment of intense emotion, and if the emotional stress is strong enough, it will leave a certain trace, and this will help you to remember yourself in the future.

Q. So what we are doing now is a sort of practising?

A. Now you are only studying yourselves, you can do nothing else.

Q. What is this preparation you are speaking about?

A. Self-study, self-observation, self-understanding. We can change nothing yet, nor make a single thing different. It all happens in the same way as before. But there is a difference already, for you see many things you could not have seen before, and many things 'happen' differently. It does not mean you have changed anything: they happen differently.

Q. Is our life long enough to attain results?

A. You come to the understanding of this point through self-remembering. When you reach certain results in it, if it comes often--like seeing oneself in a mirror--then there comes another form of self-remembering, remembering one's life, the time-body. This increases possibilities. There are also other steps, but we can only speak of one step ahead, otherwise it would be imagination. We must understand that we must not touch certain questions without self-remembering. It is a question of perfecting our instrument of cognition. Our mind is very limited by our state of consciousness. We can hope that certain things will become comprehensible if our state of consciousness changes.

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Q. Sometimes when I have tried to self-remember I have a strange feeling about inanimate objects, as if they had a sort of awareness that was them.

A. Discount the possibility of imagination. Let us say simply that you feel something new in things. But when you begin to explain it, you begin to imagine. Do not try to explain, just leave it. Sometimes you can feel strange things in that way, but explanations are always wrong, because you feel with one very good apparatus and explain with another, a very clumsy machine that cannot really explain.

Q. It all seems to come back to the same question--how to be more emotional.

A. You cannot try to be emotional--the more you try, the less emotional you will be. You can try to be conscious, and if you become more conscious, you will become more emotional. You must think about how to get more energy to be conscious. That would be a right question, and the answer would be that first you must stop leaks and try to get more energy by following all the indications you get from the work--all of them. Do not only concentrate on one; you can always find something that you did not do.

Q. Sometimes I feel that I have the capacity to concentrate, but I do not know what to do. I only think about small things and it disappears again.

A. You have always more than enough material for work on yourself; you can never be at a loss as to what to do. Try to stop thoughts--that is easy and useful. If you have no energy to do that, you must accumulate energy by struggle with mechanical habits and things like that. That will accumulate enough energy for this effort to remember yourself or the effort to stop thoughts.