The Alhambra

Granada, Spain

It was night; the full moon was out.

Thinking along paths of current associations, unnoticeably my thoughts passed again to the question which by this time had become finally transformed into the idée fixe of my inner world.

Continuing to think about this under the influence, from one side, of a distant hollow din formed from sounds of milliards of lives of all possible outer forms and, from the other side, of an awesome silence, in me gradually rose in relation to myself a critical faculty of unprecedented strength.

At the beginning there were recollected in me all my blunders in my former searches.

While from one side I constated my blunders and in general the imperfections of the methods previously applied by me, from the other side it became clear how I ought to have acted in this or that instance.

I remember very well how my strength waned from these tense thoughts and, during this, some part of me time and again ordered me to get up quickly and rouse myself in order to stop such thoughts, but this I could not do, so strongly had I been involved in these same thoughts.

I don't know with what this would have ended if at the moment when instinctively I began to feel that I must lose consciousness the three camels near me had not sat down.

At this I came to myself and got up.

By this time day was already dawning. Awake also were my young companions, who were already busying themselves with the usual preparations for morning life in the desert.

After talking with the old man, we decided to take advantage of the moonlight and set out in the evenings. Moreover, the camels could rest well during the day.

Instead of lying down to sleep awhile, I took with me a rifle and a traveling pail made of canvas, and went to a nearby spring of very cold water on the very edge of the desert.

Undressing, I began very slowly to pour this cold water over me.

After this, though I felt quite well mentally, physically I became so weak that after dressing I was compelled to lie down there near the spring.

And then, being so weak physically and very well refreshed mentally, there proceeded in me that same self-reasoning, the essence of which became impressed in my consciousness forever and concerning which, on the evening of November 6th, 1927, flashed the mentioned idea.

Due to its remoteness, I do not remember the exact words of that first self-reasoning so discordant with my usual general state.

But, having preserved in myself the, so to say, "taste" of it, I can recollect it exactly, though in different words. It consisted of the following:

Judging by my fitness during the last few days, it seems I again have come to life and willy-nilly will have to drag on and drudge as before.

My God! Is it possible that I will have to experience again all that I lived through during periods of my fully collected active state, for the half-year before this last misfortune of mine?

Not only to experience feelings alternating, almost regularly, between remorse for the inner and outer manifestations of my ordinary waking

state, and loneliness, disappointment satiety and the rest, but primarily to be everywhere haunted by the fear of "inner emptiness"?

What also have I not done, what resources have I not exhausted in my determination to reach a state where the functioning of my psyche in my usual waking state would flow in accordance with the previous instructions of my active consciousness, but all in vain!

In my past life, being forever merciless to my natural weaknesses, and almost all the time jealously keeping watch over myself, I could attain almost anything within the limits of man's possibilities, and in some fields attained even to such a degree of power as not one man, perhaps not even in any past epoch, had ever attained.

For instance, the development of the power of my thoughts had been brought to such a level that by only a few hours of self-preparation I could from a distance of tens of miles kill a yak; or, in twenty-four hours, could accumulate life forces of such compactness that I could in five minutes put to sleep an elephant.

At the same time, in spite of all my desires and endeavors, I could not succeed in "remembering myself" in the process of my general common life with others so as to be able to manifest myself, not according to my nature but according to the previous instructions of my "collected consciousness."

I could not attain the state of "remembering myself” even sufficiently to hinder the associations flowing in me automatically from certain undesirable hereditary factors of my nature.

As soon as the accumulation of energy which enabled me to be in an active state was exhausted, at once associations of both thoughts and feelings began to flow in the direction of objects diametrically opposite to the ideals of my consciousness.

When I found myself in a state of complete dissatisfaction with food and sex, the leading factor of these associations of mine appeared to be primarily revenge and, in a state of full satisfaction, they proceeded on a theme of the forthcoming pleasure of a meal and sex or of the gratification of self-love, vanity, pride, jealousy and other passions.

I thought deeply myself and tried to find out from others about the reasons for such a terrible situation within my inner world, but could not clarify anything at all.

From one side it is clear that it is necessary to "remember myself" during the process of ordinary life also, and from the other side that there is a necessity for the presence of attentiveness which is able to merge, in case of contact, with others.

Though in my past life I had tried everything, even had worn reminding factors of all kinds on my person, nothing helped. Perhaps these did

help a little, while I carried them on me, but if so it was only at the beginning, as soon as I stopped carrying them or got used to them, in a moment it was as if before.

There is no way out whatsoever. . .

However, there is; there is one exit only—to have outside myself, so to say, a "never-sleeping-regulating-factor."

Namely, a factor which would remind me always, in my every common state, to "remember myself."

But what is this!!! Can it be really so??!!

A new thought!!!

Why hitherto could there not have come to my head such a simple thought?

Did I have to suffer and despair so much in order only now to think of such a possibility? .

Why could I not, in this instance also, look to a "universal analogy"?

And here also is God!!! Again God! . . .

Only He is everywhere and with Him everything is connected.

I am a man, and as such I am, in contrast to all other outer forms of animal life, created by Him in His image!!!

For He is God and therefore I also have within myself all the possibilities and impossibilities that He has.

The difference between Him and myself must lie only in scale.

For He is God of all the presences in the universe! It follows that I also have to be God of some kind of presence on my scale.

He is God and I am God! Whatever possibilities He has in relation to the presences of the universe, such possibilities and impossibilities I should also have in relation to the world subordinate to me.

He is God of all the world, and also of my outer world.

I am God also, although only of my inner world.

He is God and I am God!

For all and in everything we have the same possibilities and impossibilities!

Whatever is possible or impossible in the sphere of His great world should be possible or impossible in the sphere of my small world.

This is as clear as that after the night must inevitably come the day.

But how could I have failed to notice such a startling analogy?

I had thought so much about world creation and world maintenance, and in general about God and His deeds; and also had discoursed with many others about all these matters; but never once had there come to my mind this simple thought.

And yet, it could not be otherwise.

Everything without exception, all sound logic as well as all historical data, reveal and affirm that God represents absolute goodness; He is all-loving and all-forgiving. He is the just pacifier of all that exists.

At the same time why should He, being as He is, send away from Himself one of His nearest, by Him animated, beloved sons, only for the "way of pride" proper to any young and still incompletely formed individual, and bestow upon him a force equal but opposite to His own? . . . I refer to the "Devil."

This idea illuminated the condition of my inner world like the sun, and rendered it obvious that in the great world for the possibility of harmonious construction there was inevitably required some kind of continuous perpetuation of the reminding factor.

For this reason our Maker Himself, in the name of all that He had created, was compelled to place one of His beloved sons in such an, in the objective sense, invidious situation.

Therefore I also have now for my small inner world to create out of myself, from some factor beloved by me, an alike unending source.

There arises now a question like this:

What is there contained in my general presence which, if I should remove it from myself, would always in my various general states be reminding me of itself?

—From G. I. Gurdjieff, Life Is Only Real Then, When I Am—Prologue