The Eye of the Heart

The Eye of the Heart

The pivotal idea for students in this School is the intentional effort to self-remember. You could say that the hub of all our weekly topics revolve around self-remembering. Awakening to higher levels of consciousness means being simultaneously aware of the external world and one's inner state.

What does self-remembering mean? It means that your dormant self is remembering to be awake. Self-remembering means that one is aware both of oneself and of what one is viewing. — The Teacher

Self-remembering is also called divided attention. The Teacher has said that “Divided attention is self-remembering; they are synonymous.”

If I remember myself by dividing my attention in this moment – right now – I try to be aware of my externals such as my fingers typing, the smooth touch of the mouse, the tapping of the keyboard, the computer screen, the sounds in the next room, and the light of a nearby lamp. While observing these externals, at the same time I am attentive to my internal state and bring awareness of myself into the environment. I observe and engage my intellectual center, I struggle with imagination and distractions, I try not to feel identified and hurried to get this essay finished quickly, and make other observations of “who” is doing the writing. This effort already can lead to many useful observations and a deeper awareness of myself.

Many people live throughout their whole lives without being a participant of living in the fullness of their conscious potential. Afterall, what is the use of making the effort to self-remember when I can compose this whole essay in the second state of consciousness, entirely by the four lower centers without awareness of myself. While that is true, my life with self-remembering has taken on a deeper meaning, compassion, and richness of joy and understanding of the present moment that is self-generative. Just as a lizard regrows its lost tail, I, too – as a defense mechanism – have “lost my tail,” but through self-remembering, I am learning to regrow my dormant self and live more fully in unforgetfulness.

After developing divided attention between two things, a student is encouraged to divide attention between three. All of these esoteric ideas that we write about come from ancient teachings and I recently came across a text where G.I. Gurdjieff may have found the idea of self-remembering and built upon it with the triad of three divisions of attention. I found the following quote in a Hermetic text ascribed to Hermes Trismegistus.

For the soul, covered with the body, is forced to remember its unforgetfulness. — From the Hermetic teachings of Hermes Trismegistus to Asclepius

So, adding a third point of awareness to my divided attention, I broaden my attention to something higher, an influence that helps me put in perspective my place in the universe, such as the miracle of the sun overhead, a full moon shadow on an evening walk in the snow, the sparkling stars above, or the idea of gods, angels or invisible spirits. To help release us from the programing and identification with religiosity, G.I. Gurdjieff and P.D. Ouspensky refer to this higher influence as C Influence – Conscious Influence.

This higher influence is also described in the Hermetic writings of the first century. These ancient texts were concurrent with the writings of the Nag Hammadi texts of the early Gnostics. In my reading, I discovered an interesting word. The term nous, from which the name gnosis and gnostic is derived, can mean mind or divine knowledge, and is sometimes referred to as “the eye of the heart.” A soul imbued with nous bridges between the material and spiritual worlds, and connects the human soul to the divine, the highest activity of the human soul, a divine and transcendent principle. I think of it as the third point in divided attention.

Everything is visible to one who has Nous; who thinks of himself in Nous knows himself and who knows himself knows everything. Everything is within man … The exterior things are understood by the external (organs): the eye sees the exterior, and Nous the interior. The exterior things would not exist, if there were not the interior (ones). Wherever Nous is, there is light; for Nous is light and light is Nous. Whoever has Nous is enlightened, and whoever has not Nous is deprived of light. — From Hermes Trismegistus to Asclepius

Self-remembering can be as simple as turning on the light and seeing with the eye of the heart.

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Hermes Trismegistus, Father of the Philosophers, circa 1475