Self observations

1 or several decades we have possessed, but not used, a most interesting machine the automated airliner. 

As electronic instruments for navigation developed, it became possible to get more and more precise electronic fixes on exactly where an airliner was, moment by moment. You could know that you were over a certain city, what the distance to your destination was, and so on. Current satellite navigation systems allow you to know your position anywhere in the country to within fifty feet. Added to this were electronic systems that allowed a pilot to land blind when fog or other conditions made it impossible to see the runway. Electronic beacons allowed a precise fix how far you were from each side and each end of the runway, how many feet in the air you were, and the like. 

Simultaneously we developed precise ways to electronically operate the controls on a plane, adjusting its altitude or speed, raising or lowering the wheels, etc. 

Since we don t have any scheduled flights on completely automated airliners, in spite of having had the technology for them for some time. 

From our discussions in previous chapters of the ways our consciousness becomes automatized and conditioned, you can see the analogy here our body, mind, and emotions frequently resemble a completely automated airliner. Course and destination have been set by others, automatic mechanisms have been set, and your consciousness is not required for the trip. 

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Similarly, in the case of your own self-observations you need to reflect on what is really going on inside and not mislead yourself by Imposing some facile, but comfortable interpretation on your behaviour. 

The dynamic interaction of perception, emotion, and cognition in the creation of conscious experience is highlighted by the visual image transformations that are enhanced by natural and drug-induced alterations of brain-mind state. Later in the book we will read the detailed accounts of such transformations in the reports by careful self-observers such as Albert Hofmann (who discovered the psychotogcnic potential of LSD) and Heinrich Kliiver (who used mescaline to study visual hallucination). In Hofmann and Kliiver s work, the most valuable descriptions are formal. That is, they emphasize form rather than content. 

Like many of his contemporaries, Claude Rifat was drawn to experimentation with psychoactive drugs, but he soon learned that he could accomplish the effects he sought without them. Through his contact with the French psychobiologist Henri Laborit, he was inspired to elaborate models of these transformations that involve the natural neuromodulator serotonin, just as I will do in chapter 7. Claude Rifat s life has led him back to the east, but now it is the extreme orient that he calls home. There he has felt freer to pursue his self-observation based scientific inquiries and develop his personal, social, and ecological ideals. 

These self-observation experiments convinced me of the veracity of lucid dreaming as a robust and remarkable state of dissociated consciousness. What other conclusions can we draw from the experience of lucid dreaming ... 

Even when he was out of his mind, Hofmann was capable of accurate self-observation. Hofmann is thus twice a hero. He resisted the impulse to interpret the visions that developed when he was synthesizing LSD-25 as either a visitation from the spirit world or as a spontaneous mental illness. Instead, he wanted to describe and investigate his inadvertent discovery with objective dispassion and analytic curiosity. 

Observing oneself means that the overall system must observe itself. Thus, in the conservative view of the mind self-observation is inherently limited, for the part cannot comprehend the whole and the characteristics of the parts affect their observation, in the radical view, however, in which awareness is partially or wholly independent of brain structure, the possibility exists of an observer much more independent of the structure. 

Self-observation, observation of others, and psychoanalytic data indicate that various stimuli can produce marked reorgnaizations of ego functioning very rapdily, even though these all remain within the consensus reality definitions of "normal" consciousness. These identity states are much like d-SoCs and can be sutdied in the systems approach framework. They are hard to observe in ordinary life because of the ease and rapidity of transiton, their emotional charge, and other reasons. The isolation of knowledge and experience in various identity states is responsible for much of the psychopathology of everyday life. 

Fifth, identity states are driven by needs, fears, attachments, defensive, maneuvers, coping mechanisms, and this highly charged quality of an identity state makes it unlikely that the person involved will be engaged in self-observation. 

Fisher, C. M. (1989). Neurological fragments. II. Remarks on anosognosia, confabulation, memory, and other topics and an appendix on self-observation. Neurology, 39, 127-132. 

Notice that with this analogy there is still something there that we could notice if we wanted to or trained ourselves to, but ordinarily the change is small enough that it doesn t force itself on our attention. The sudden shock is buffered out. This possibility of noticing the contradictions in ourselves is utilized in GurdliefTs method of self-observation, discussed in Chapter 17. 

It may be particularly hard for you to bring up information and feelings about repressed material, even if you are practicing the systematic type of self-observation that will be discussed in Chapter 17. By definition, there is a powerful reason why the material is being blocked from consciousness, and the desire to know yourself through self-observation may not be sufficient to overcome this block. You may become sensitive to peculiar reactions at times, the indirect effects of repression, like our patient s angry tone of voice that was so much at variance with his statement that he loved his mother but it may take outside intervention, from a therapist or teacher, to help you uncover repressed material. 

Self-observation can make us aware of our subselves and the functions... 

Self-observation, especially the disciplined type discussed in Chapter 17, can provide knowledge about isolated aspects of mental functioning, but without a deliberate effort to compare and contrast observations, the observations themselves may be stored in an isolated fashion, so they have little impetus toward producing change. One major type of false personality pattern centers on this kind of isolation defense. This type is very good at self-observation, does it habitually, yet is little affected by... 

Developing the ability to detect sublimations grows from a general development of the ability to self-observe and self-remember, discussed later in Chapters 17 and 18. These processes lead to increasing awareness of and growth of your essence, so what you really care about becomes clearer. 

The Fourth Way of spiritual development, which Gurdjieff represented, combines the other three ways, aiming at developing all three brains in a relatively equal and harmonious fashion. This is obviously desirable in and of itself, as well as setting the stage for the development of an entirely different kind of center for the self, the center that we call the Master in the parable. Various characteristics of Fourth Way work will be discussed in the remainder of this book, and some have been mentioned already, although not specifically identified as such. One of the primary tasks of self-observation, discussed in Chapter 17, is the personal observation of the different flavors of the three brains and of the wrong work of one brain for another. 

This section has been about the nuts and bolts of false personality, the way it developed, the habits and defenses that sustain it. To really change, false personality must die. But not in a harsh, punitive way, not by way of superego attacks—they are part of false personality too. The death of false personality should be a transformation process, a recycling process, a skilled process based on the knowledge gained through extensive self-observation. 

OBJECTIVE VERSUS SUPEREGO SELF-OBSERVATION To see what self-observation that leads to awakening is, we must... 

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