The Fourth Way (Ouspensky)

The human being is a very complicated machine and has to be studied as a machine.

We realize that in order to control any kind of machine, such as a motor car or a railway engine, we should first have to learn.

We cannot control these machines instinctively, but for some reason we think that ordinary instinct is sufficient to control the human machine, although it is so much more complicated.

This is one of the first wrong assumptions: we do not realize that we have to learn, that control is a question of knowledge and skill.

Normally nobody remembers himself, nobody is aware of himself. This is the ordinary state of a human being, of a man-machine. But if he knows about it, if he realizes it and thinks about it, it becomes possible.

Only, in the beginning self-remembering is very slow in coming and very small, with long lapses of not remembering.