“Not one of you has noticed the most important thing that I have pointed out to you,” he said. “That is to say, not one of you has noticed that you do not remember yourselves.” (He gave particular emphasis to these words.) “You do not feel yourselves; you are not conscious of yourselves. With you, ‘it observes’ just as ‘it speaks’ ‘it thinks,’ ‘it laughs.’ You do not feel: I observe, I notice, I see. Everything still ‘is noticed,’ ‘is seen.’ … In order really to observe oneself one must first of all REMEMBER ONESELF” (He again emphasized these words.) “Try to remember yourselves when you observe yourselves and later on tell me the results. Only those results will have any value that are accompanied by self-remembering. Otherwise you yourselves do not exist in your observations. In which case what are all your observations worth?” Fragments: Seven

But before making deductions, I will try to describe my attempts to remember myself. ‘ The first impression was that attempts to remember myself or to be conscious of myself, to say to myself, I am walking, I am doing, and continually to feel this I, stopped thought. When I was feeling I, I could neither think nor speak; even sensations became dimmed. Also, one could only REMEMBER ONESELF in this way for a very short time. Fragments: Seven

“In order to know why this is so you must remember a great deal of what has been said earlier. As was said earlier, self-observation brings a man to the realization of the fact that he does not remember himself. Man’s inability to remember himself is one of the chief and most characteristic features of his being and the cause of everything else in him. The inability to REMEMBER ONESELF finds expression in many ways. A man does ‘not remember his decisions, he does not remember the promises lie has made to himself, does not remember what he said or felt a month, a week, a day, or even an hour ago. He begins work of some kind and after a certain lapse of time he does not remember why he began it. It is especially in connection with work on oneself that this happens particularly often. A man can remember a promise given to another person only with the help of artificial associations, associations which have been educated into him, and they, in their turn, are connected with conceptions which are also artificially created of ‘honor,’ ‘honesty,’ ‘duty,’ and so on. But speaking in general one can say truthfully that if a man remembers one thing he forgets ten other things which are much more important for him to remember. And a man particularly easily forgets what relates to himself, those ‘mental photographs’ of himself which perhaps he has previously taken. Fragments: Eight

“Identifying is the chief obstacle to self-remembering. A man who identifies with anything is unable to remember himself. In order to REMEMBER ONESELF it is necessary first of all not to identify. But in order to learn not to identify man must first of all not be identified with himself, must not call himself ‘I’ always and on all occasions. He must remember that there are two in him, that there is himself, that is ‘I’ in him, and there is another with whom he must struggle and whom he must conquer if he wishes at any time to attain anything. So long as a man identifies or can be identified, he is the slave of everything that can happen to him. Freedom is first of all freedom from identification. Fragments: Eight

“It has been explained before that in ordinary conditions of life we do not remember ourselves; we do not remember, that is, we do not feel ourselves, are not aware of ourselves at the moment of a perception, of an emotion, of a thought or of an action. If a man understands this and tries to remember himself, every impression he receives while remembering himself will, so to speak, be doubled. In an ordinary psychic state I simply look at a street. But if I remember myself, I do not simply look at the street; I feel that I am looking, as though saying to myself: ‘I am looking.’ Instead of one impression of the street there are two impressions, one of the street and another of myself looking at it. This second impression, produced by the fact of my remembering myself, is the ‘additional shock.’ Moreover, it very often happens that the additional sensation connected with self-remembering brings with it an element of emotion, that is, the work of the machine attracts a certain amount of ‘carbon’ 12 to the place in question. Efforts to REMEMBER ONESELF, observation of oneself at the moment of receiving an impression, observation of one’s impressions at the moment of receiving them, registering, so to speak, the reception of impressions and the simultaneous defining of the impressions received, all this taken together doubles the intensity of the impressions and carries do 48 to re 24. At the same time the effort connected with the transition of one note to another and the passage of 48 itself to 24 enables do 48 of the third octave to come into contact with mi 48 of the second octave and to give this note the requisite amount of energy necessary for the transition of mi to fa. In this way the ‘shock’ given to do 48 extends also to mi 48 and enables the second octave to develop. Fragments: Nine