If you want to remember yourself, the best thing is not to think about yourself. As long as you think about yourself, you will not remember yourself.
People live in sleep, do everything in sleep, and do not know they are asleep.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Many people go through life unaware of their true potential and reality, living in a state of unconsciousness.
This quote by P.D. Ouspensky highlights the notion that many individuals navigate through life without being fully aware of their thoughts, actions, and the world around them. It suggests that a majority of people exist in a metaphorical 'sleep', lacking consciousness, critical thinking, and awareness of their deeper selves or the essence of reality. The implication is that true awakening and enlightenment require intentional effort to break free from this slumber and recognize the truth of existence.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
During a workshop on mindfulness, one might say, 'As P.D. Ouspensky said, people live in sleep and do not realize their full potential.'
More from P.D. Ouspensky
All quotes →I have become so accustomed to think "scientifically" that I am afraid even to imagine that there may be something else beyond the outer covering of life. I feel like a man condemned to death, whose companions have been hanged and who has already become reconciled to the thought that the same fate awaits him.
Can one alter one´s chief feature?" asked someone else. First it is necessary to know it. If you know it, much will depend on the quality of your knowing. If you know it well, then it is possible to change it.
We often think we express negative emotions, not because we cannot help it, but because we should express them.
You can understand other people only as much as you understand yourself and only on the level of your own being. This means you can judge other people's knowledge but you cannot judge their being. You can see in them only as much as you have in yourself. But people always make the mistake of thinking they can judge other people's being. In reality, if they wish to meet and understand people of a higher development than themselves they must work with the aim of changing their being.
When a man begins to know himself a little he will see in himself many things that are bound to horrify him. So long as a man is not horrified at himself he knows nothing about himself.
Similar quotes
The Assembly has witnessed over the last weeks how historical truth is established; once an allegation has been repeated a few times, it is no longer an allegation, it is an established fact, even if no evidence has been brought out in order to support it.
The universe... is a machine for the making of gods.
How long do you remember that it is the Lord who is making you work? But then, by repeatedly analysing like that, you will come to a state when the ego will vanish and in its place the Lord will come in. Then you will be able to say with justice "Thou, Lord, art guarding all my actions from within." But, my friend, if the ego occupies all the space within your heart, where forsooth will there be room enough for the Lord to come in? The Lord is verily absent!
I live on Earth at present, and I don’t know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing — a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process – an integral function of the universe.
When a person’s tongue is extensively wrong, it is absurd, no less than unscriptural, to say that their heart is right.
Money is the seed of money, and the first guinea is sometimes more difficult to acquire than the second million.