Questions and Answers Along the Way 1599010143, 9781599010144

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Hugh Brockwill Ripman

Q U E S T IO N S A N D AN SW ER S A L O N G T H E W AY

A H AN D B 0P& *

.COMPANION TO T R U T H

BY HUGH BROCKWILL RIPMAN

Forthway Center Press Washington, D .G

First Edition Copyright ©2009 Christopher Hugh Ripman All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or copied in any form or by any means— graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, taping, or information storage and retrieval systems— without written permission from the publisher. Selection of material for this book, as well as design and artwork, areilBy members of the Washington groups. Photographs illustrating the book are from the collections o f members of the Washington groups.

Printed in the United States of America Forthway Center Press 2009

INTRODUCTION

This b o o k |^ s ^ lc |io n s from Gurdjieff group meetings w ith H ugh Brockwill Ripman l|a | been prepared as a companion to his autobiographical account, Search fo r Truth, in which he describes his early life in ^ n g la n d H his pursuit o f answers to “haunting questions” about the mystery that lies behind the surface o f life; T h at search led him to^become a pupil o f P.D .Ouspensky in L ondon in It was irf this context th a t he m et his wife, M ildred Geiger, who had been introduced to the G urdjieff W ork by her friend Janet Collin-Smith and who shared his passion for the teachings o f the spilMMl traditions. In 1941, th e Oüspenskys moved a^M endham , New Jersey, and the Ripmans followed them rc© America at the end of Ih© war. M r, Ripm an worked at first for the B ritish Embassy and then the W orld B ank in W ashington D p i , initially comm uting from Mendham, b u t th en moving per­ m anently to W ashington in .1947. ||§3pie,r the death o f ©Uspensky in 1947, M r. R ipm an was am ong those who— at the urging o f Madame Ouspensky— w ent to be w ith G urdjieff when he came to New York during the w inter o f 1948. W hen G urdjieff returned to Paris, people were given the task o f finding new candidates who might be interested in the ideas and preparing them in anticipation o f G urdjieff’s return the following -y£ar. B ut G urdjieff’s death in 1949 led to w ork in a new direction. In H ugh Ripm an’s own words: The death of Gurdjieff was the beginning of a new phase in . my search for understanding. I had gathered together a number of people who were interested in the ideas. I felt a responsibility towards these people, and I was given permission to try to share with them what I had understood.

Questions and AnswersAlong the Way I approached this task with mixed feelings. fflrreilised*th at.I owed a debt to those who had taught me and helped me towards self-knowledge. I could never repay thaevdebf to themduectly, but I could make some attempt to' do so by iffytag to pass oil what I had received to others, as My teachers had done to H . For the next 30 years, Hugh Ripman led Jjhe,Gmdpeff groups in Washington. Mildred Ripman was his partner in tM stlsk taking responsibihty for the MöyimieflEs^sacrgid dances an d exercises brought from the East by Q plpej^^w hiieh make ä sllsISUn'ed demand on the attention ^ d ^ e considered an essential p art o f the Work. Often she invited t&ehers f e ® Mew ¥prk 81;# EjOffope to work with the classes. After Mr. Ilp m a i’s death in Mrs. Ripman carried tofl^lmfev Jear^^de'Sal^Q ^rSanids M. Henri rehgious |Banky ■he met*"^mi^Qähy ^ ^ i ^ ^ ^ ^ m ^ ^ ^ B hddliist? Miiflim, l€hnstian\ H e ,: i ^ p ß lM n ^ P ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ i l fiphiliip^^idi‘some.;In tm^way the W ork ^ ^ j j ^ s |m tiM ^ ^ ^ M h a t has called p^bme throtighout history. Vi Mr. Rlpma i ^ l l ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ B t h ^dxad^aliW of dfllw ork: par'gdpamir^: must Hegt ändl jpfOve each idea äpfegt A ek own experience and B olt1 the growth ©if iheif own understanding. His approach was both systematic and rigorous. Each group worked through irom'gMf the same series of assignirnents, revised and refined over tiknf:, which eventually covered the first eight years of group1 iferk* WifMy äBsSgÄ!€®tSi had three parts: first, a specific focus for ^ ^ ^ t u d y ^ ^ ^ p H ie g u lk rM ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ h g ^ V^Jb^.ColIeöion.s; and thirdra ^k^inyolvirig attention to physical awareness such as inter­ rupting ha hits, relaxing unnecessary tensions, or awareness of Lbreathing. Following these initial years, specific assignments were

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Questions a n d Answ ers A lo n g the W ay

generally abandoned, and w ork co n tin u ed o n an in d iv id u al basis as well as with a shared focus o r topic for g roup exploration. The taping o f group m eetings began in 1968 a n d c o n tin u e d until H ugh R ipm an’s death. M ore th a n 6 0 0 m eetings w ere tap ed . This book consists o f selections o n various aspects o f th e tea c h in g taken from these tapes. Sometim es th e questions have b e e n clarified or omitted, often because they w ere n o t audible o n th e tapes. E ach chapter consists o f material o n a specific subject ta k e n fro m m a n y different groups over a period o f years. Moving from the spoken w o rd to w ritte n te x t p re se n ts m a n y difficulties and can never frilly recapture th e a tm o sp h e re w ith in a group that is searching together. N evertheless, i t is h o p e d th a t th e quality o f informal, spontaneous response th a t ch aracterized H u g h R ipm an’s m eetings w ill be felt in th ese p assages. C e rta in ly th is record o f M r. R ipm an’s spoken w ords to his p u p ils w ill co n v ey th e clarity and depth o f his teaching. O n e th in g th a t is n o t a p p a re n t in the text is that, in responding to a q u e stio n o r o b se rv a tio n , M r. Ripman would often leave long pauses— pauses filled w ith a v ib ra n t silence—which w ould give the listener tim e to receive, a t a d eep e r level, the impression o f w hat h a d been said to h im a n d to c o n n e c t the words with a living, inw ardly experienced m e a n in g .

CONTENTS

In tro d u c tio n Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 C hapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 13 C hapter 16 C hapter 17 C hapter 18 C hapter 19 Chapter 20 C hapter 21 C hapter 22 C hapter 23

Epilogue References

First Meeting o f a N ew G roup Groups Aim T he Silent W itness Collection Physical Awareness & the Sense o f Physical Presence Self-remembering A ttention Identification Considering Centers T hinking and U nderstanding Energy Impressions Negative Emotions Attitudes and Expectations Repairing the Past Change o f Being W ork Suffering and Remorse Prayer D eath W ho A m |f

1

First Meeting o f a N ew Group

Let ni'e'M k about practical things first; :I w ould ask you in the future to be m ore punctual. You are to take no notes at these m eet­ ings; Experience shows th at ify o u don’t take n otes you listen w ith a great deal m ore attention, w hich fixes things in the m in d better. N o paym ent is asked for these meetings for the m om ent, because we have a tradition n ot to ask'för paym ent from those w ho have h a d no chance to prove to them selves w h eth er w hatever th e y 'receive' here is valuable or not. So for the tim e being th e expenses o f organizing";thif group are borne by other people w ho have proved the value o f these ideas to themselvefe Later, if y o u decide to come back and to stay w ith this w ork, you will be asked to contribute a tuition fee. N ow, a feW'Jof you here tonight were also at the talk w hich I gave at the bookshop.^You will have to bear w ith m e— I d o n ’t really make any apologies at all—-if I repeat to n ig h t quite a lot o f w h at I said on that occasion. Experience shows th a t if I were to ask one o f you w ho had been there to repeat w h at I said on th a t night, you w ould find it very difficult A nd probably each o f you w ent away w ith a different thing rem aining in your m em ory. I will go over m uch the same ground tonight, b u t since it will n o t be exactly the same, I suggest th at you pay the same close attention you d id on the previous occasion.

1

Questions a nd Answers A long the Way

I speak to you about a system o f practical ideas. I call it ^ sy s­ tem because these ideas all hang together. T hey are connected in an organic m anner. O ne cannot understand any Separate one o f these ideas satisfactorily w ithout seeing its relation to the rest b f the cor­ pus o f ideas. O f course, you can’t start out by doing that. You have to study m any ideas separately, and then the connections between them gradually begin to become clear. People have m any reasons for being interested in the ideas G urdjieff taught, b ut all o f you who are here tonight have som ething in com m on. You either have questions to which you seek answers, or else you have problems to which you seek solutions.. I will sky right away that We can guarantee no answers and we can prom ise no solutions. W hether you find answers w ith the. aid o f these ideas, w hether you find solutions to your problems,: depends entirely on the use you make o f the ideas. jYpujcannot be given understanding; you can only come to your own understanding. You can be given tools which, if used intelligendy, will enable you-to come to. ayour own understanding, but nobody can give you understanding. T his should be very clear from the beginning, so th a t there is no question about any promises held o ut here. AM-d can tell you is th a t m any people have, in fact found answers to; th e ir questions through the practical study o f G u rd jid fls;ideas, and m any people have found practical solutions to their problem s— b u t only as a result o f the investment they made in time, trouble, attention, and effort to make the tru th w hich these ideas sym bolize th e ir ow n truth. This is the one thing you can trust. You can tru st th e tru th which you have established for yourself. I’ve often likened the ideas o f this system to a set o f very fine carpenter’s tools. I f someone gives you this set o f tools, there are at least three things you can do w ith them . You can construct a fine showcase and set out your tools in it, p u t a glass cover over it and light it up nicely, and then show it to all o f your friends an d be p roud o f your splendid collection o f tools. T his w ould n o t make you a carpenter. O r you can take the tools an d experim ent w ith

2

First M eeting o fa New Group them, try to use them without taking advantage of the experience of those who have used such tools before. This can be dangerous because they are very sharp tools. O r you can learn from somebody who is experienced in using the tools, who can warn you against the kinds o f mistakes you can make when using them . You have to learn to use them to best effect, but no one can use them for you. You have to use them for yourself. M any people wish to trust another person. You can’t trust any­ one. I say that w ithout any hesitation at all. The only thing that you can trust is truth that you have absolutely established for your­ self and tested against your own experience. Belief, faith o f any kind, is totally discouraged in this room. O n the other hand, to reject ideas simply because they sound unusual and strange may be equally foolish. O ften the tem ptation is to take a new idea and connect it w ith som ething already in the m ind and say, “well, that’s only so and so.” T he more you’ve read and studied, the more you are tem pted just to equate a new idea w ith something already in the mind. In this way, if you dismiss it, you may miss the chance o f finding o ut precisely w hat is novel in it. _ If-we continue to study? together, we shall for some time be concerned w ith the m eanings o f words. W e deal here w ith the invisible facts o f the inner life o f m an. W hereas I can take this object out o f m y pocket and demonstrate to you its use, and then we can agree to call it a bunch o f keys and be fairly sure that we m ean the same thing by that, we can’t do this w ith a w ord like “G od” or “love” or “attention.” W e will find th at we need to be very careful n ot to get into arguments or misunderstandings simply on account o f using words in different senses. T his system o f ideas, like any properly ordered body o f knowl­ edge, has its own technical terms. Economics, language, anything you like— each study has its own technical terms. W e shall have to fin d am ong ourselves th e w ay in w hich each o f these technical term s corresponds to our own experience, so that, again, we can speak about them and n o t m isunderstand one another.

3

Questions and Answers Along the Way But it’s quite useless to crowd the cells o f your mind with vol­ umes of remembered words if the words are not connected with your own experience. If you begin to connect them with your own experience, then you begin to understand them. Otherwise, they’re just more noises in the head. You see, if you think about the idea of understanding, what it really means is seeing the relationship between the thing that you wish to understand and other things. If you can’t relate something to anything else, you can’t understand it. You don’t know where it fits in the general pattern o f life or what kind of function it performs and can perform, because to perform a function implies other things with which it is in relation. And so one sees that the idea of understanding— seeing things in relation to other things—is very open-ended. It’s foolhardy to imagine to one­ self that one has ever understood anything as completely as it can be understood. This applies very much, o f course, to people. W e think we understand people, but what does this really mean for most o f us most of the time? It means that we’ve seen these people behave in certain ways, probably in a restricted repertoire o f situations, and from that we’ve formed a picture o f each o f them as such and such a kind o f person. We’ve labeled them. As soon as we create this kind of label for them, it stands between us and them, and filters the impressions we get. It distorts w hat we receive from them because we see them, we hear them, and we feel them in relation to this image we’ve formed. Now, unfortunately, it’s true that we play the same game with ourselves. If we begin to study ourselves, we will see that each of us has various images o f himself, n o t just one. Gurdjieff’s system, as most o f you probably know, has two dif­ ferent sides: one dealing with man as he is and as he may become, and the other dealing with the world in which m an lives. T onight I shall only speak about the psychological ideas, w hich deal with man. I say very clearly at the beginning that w ith each o f these psy­ chological ideas, its truth can be proved if you try it and test it against your own experience.

4

First M eeting o f a N ew Group

The same applies to the cosmological ideas, but we cannot test and prove their truth with the apparatus of functions presently at our disposition. Their truth can also be tested, but not at the pres­ ent moment by us, not by the ordinary mind. Still, we can begin to see aspects of the principle “as above, so below” here. And one can­ not come to any satisfactory conclusion about the meaning of man’s life, the sense and aim of this life, in terms of man alone. One has to place it against a meaningful picture of the universe in which he lives; otherwise, one cannot see what kind of function he performs and what kind of function he may come to perform in that universe. We serve in any case—we serve purposes which are not our own in the universe. We are transforming stations for matter which comes in and goes out. We have no choice about this; we have to do this in any case. But the dignity of man is that he alone, of the living organisms that we know, can affect by his intentional efforts the processes of transformation which go on in him. He can affect and change the place and function he plays in the larger scheme of things. The Moslems say that God created the animals and gave them lusts. He created the angels and gave them reason. To man He gave both. And they say that the man whose lusts conquer his reason is lower than the animals, but the man whose reason con­ quers his lusts is higher than the angels. The animals and angels don’t have a choice. Man has. So Gurdjieff’s ideas are practical in the sense that they can be tested and put into practice. They aren’t any damned use to you unless you put them into practice. You can philosophize about them, discuss them, read about them, talk about them, dream about them—all that may be very interesting—but if that’s what you want to do, you have no place here. Please go and do it some­ where else. This is a place for people who are interested in finding the way to put ideas into practice. This is difficult because one first has to understand the ideas. And the ideas are linked together, just as the

5

Questions and Answers Along the Way finger is linked to the hand, and the hand to the arm, and the arm to the body; they are Jinked together organically. Just as one cannot understand the finger divorced from the rest o f the body, so one cannot understand one of these ideas divorced from the rest o f the corpus of ideas. O f course, one cannot study them all together. To start with, one has to study individual ideas and then, in the course of study, see how they fit in with each other, how they explain each other and are in turn explained by the others. The starting point of Gurdjieff’s idea o f man is that, as he is, man is not a finished product. In other words he has m any possibil­ ities that are not fulfilled. Nature has developed him so far, to the point which I call the stage o f the thinking animal. H e is distin­ guished from the animals by the fact that he has the intellectual function, but this is still only a half-finished product. It is sufficient to run businesses, wage wars, create universities, make love— it is sufficient for all of these. However, if you look at the w orld around you, which is organized and managed by people in this state, you will see why Gurdjieff had good reason to call the w orld a “pain fac­ tory run by madmen.” Many people think th at this can be changed by a substitution of one social system for another, im posed on peo­ ple. It can’t change like that. I t Can only change as a result o f indi­ vidual change. Everybody thinks that: everybody else o u g h t to change, but change has to start at home. A nd one m ust understand that change on a big scale cannot be thought o f in the same way as change on an individual scale. We constantly confuse this question o f scale ?in our thinking; we think of things on the wrong scale. W e take ourselves as the measuring rod for whatever we are thinking. T hings are big if they are bigger than us, small if they are smaller th an us, h o t if they are hotter than our blood temperature. W e apply this sam e k in d o f subjective measurement to the whole world. B ut we are a p art o f a much larger organism, mankind as a whole, w hich in tu rn is part of a still larger organism, organic life as a whole on th e surface of the earth.

First M eeting o f a N ew Group

This organic life plays the part, the essential cosmic function, o f enabling the earth to receive energies from outside. In th e absence o f this thin film o f organic life on the surface o f the earth, the energies o f the sun, for instance, w ould simply be reflected back into space. They w ould not be received by the earth. Plotinus spoke o f organic life on earth as being the earth’s “organ o f sensitivity” and its “organ o f growth.” O nly relatively recently has it gone o ut o f fashion to think o f the earth and the other heavenly bodies as alive, as developing. T o develop means to actualize possibilities th a t are n o t yet actual. In order to do this, one has to do the equivalent o f setting out on a journey— a psychological, spiritual journey. If one is going to make plans to set out on a journey, and if one is actually going to do it, there ||jo n ly one place from which one can start, namely, where one is. For a great many people, this is som ething th at is a real difficulty, for they wish to start from a place where they are not. They wish to take the tenth step before they have taken the first. This is very difficult, o f course, and generally entails falling flat on one’s face. If one wishes to develop one’s own possibilities, one has to begin w ith know ing fairly clearly where one stands. Unfortunately, most of us have strange ideas about where we stand. W e have inflated ideas about w hat possibilities we have already developed and from which we think we can go forward. Now, Gurdjieff tells us that we are deluded in very fundam en­ tal ways about w hat we are. W e thin k we are more than we are, and so we think we can start developing ourselves from a higher stage than we have actually reached. I will m ention a few o f the major illusions that he says we have about ourselves. T o start with, we have the illusion that we are one. W e imag­ ine we have some kind o f central, permanent, controlling element in our psyche which has at its disposal our various energies and resources, both psychic and material— something that manages the shop, that has a permanent memory, and that acts as a unifying and

7

Questions and Answers Along the Way integrating element in our psyche. The second illusion he speaks about is that we have what we like to call free w ilt—the delusion that we can carry out our intentions^« we decide, £that they are in fact our intentions, and that we can choose our responses to the events life presents us. The third basic illusion that he refers to$is the idea that we spend our waking hours in a state o f clear repnsciousness. And the fourth is that we really know ourselves. Gurdjieff says that for the majority o f mankind these are all illusions. Indeed, under these illusions the world can still be run in the very inefficient and unfortunate way it is run. But whatfare, according to Gurdjieff, the corresponding facts o f our lives? W hat will we Rnd if we see through these illusions? To begin with, instead o f finding in ourselves this, mysterious and very elusive single, permanent, integrating factor, we find many parts in our psyche and soma that call themselves “I.” They take the stage in turn, and while they are onstage, they feel they have the right to dispose of all of our resources,^ and the right to, move towards their own particular aims in life. Many o f them have differ­ ent objectives which they wish to attain, and unfortunately there no means by which they are brought together to act in harmony. This is the reason so many people find that they “have no time.” Each of a number of parts of them |s^nterested in quite different things and will not really be satisfied unless the whole time is given to its particular interest-^so one “has no tim e. Unfortunately, these parts don’t even know one another. Very often they are care­ fully kept from contact with each other by a series o f psychological constructions we call “buffers, ”i so that we remain unaware o f our inner contradictions. Buffers actually serve, to prevent the clasmpf two T s ” in contradiction. Often o n e ^ f undertakes ä commitment and then goes off on holiday, and the others have to pay. W e .regret this. We say, “Why did I ever comm it myself?” even thoughflfw as felt, at the time, to be quite right and the m ost natural thing in the world to do. One part signs the checks, and the other parts have to provide the money to pay.

8

First Meeting ofd New. Group Each of these parts has ittsKoyn memory. They surface, from time to time and are in charge and .arrogate to themselves the feelingpf our sen§e.;qf “L” T^fe memori^M>f the times each one of these isih;eh^g&are linked in a certain way that makes it possible for us, when oneapffthese ‘T s” comes up, to feel that we.'are#continuous with, our*pasts Actually, wet untiwBudeeTthat fsaffih to adm it t o oneself that one is unable. HBR: Exactly.10

Tonight I wish to a d c im fre lth in ^ ^ a ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ to m ^ slght of sometimes, namely, that these assignments which are given to youi ^ ) tk moment Experience has shown dfeait if one has a §p:eiÄe anditpOncrete ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ m fifoa^hichypn^ds liable: to be-called to account, you are Ifedy !f®i i© iraore by way ©if oibsfrvation than if left entirely to yqurself without any specific focus. Either you-forget, or your efforts of observation are spread too thin and over too ibroad a ground, and vO^^^jfmuch-' h appens.^

33

Questions a n d Answers A long the Way

But you are here, and o f course, each o f you has his or her own reason for being here. You are seeing yourself. Therefore, it is your search, your personal search, which gives m ean in g to the assign­ m ents that are given'to you. T hey are in te n d e d to be o f help in your search. I f any o f you take any o f these assignments and think th at it, in itself, is your work, you deceive yourself. So be aware of that. There is something in one th at so easily says, “All I ’ve got to do this week is think o f the assignment.” A n d tow ards the end of the week, it»is w hat one calls a “good” or “bad” w eek by the success or lack success o f w hat one has done w ith the assignm ent. Your assignments are n o t your w ork. Y our w o rk is to try your best to move from the position in w hich y o u r w hole in n er life is at the mercy o f the events around you and th e c o n d itio n ed reactions from your past, to a position in w hich you have som e freedom , in which you have some choice, and in w hich you have som e possibil­ ity o f developing, each o f you, th at quite u n iq u e c o n trib u tio n to life which you w ould desire to co n trib u te, b u t w h ic h you can’t contribute as you are because o f all th e b ad h a b its o f different kinds that have grown up in you over th e years o f y o u r life, which you take to be yourself. T his is .w hat we are in te re ste d in — n ot change o f habit, but a transform ation o f th e state o f being o f the whole m an.11

Q: Recently it has seemed to m e m ore im p o rta n t an d produc­ tive to try to work w ith m y state than w ith th e task we w ere given. HBR: N one o f your w eekly tasks is m e a n t to tak e th e place o f working directly on your state. You m u st be clear a b o u t this from the beginning. W hatever task you focus on, it is necessary at the same time to focus on your state; an d w hatever task y o u do seri­ ously, you cannot do seriously w ith o u t w o rk o n y o u r state. So d o n ’t speak as if these are two alternatives. T h e y are n o t. I t’s quite true that for each o f us som etim es th e necessity to w ork on o n e’s state appears m o re u rg e n t th a n th e n e cessity to

34

Groups focus on, some kind of near aim; sometimes it’s the other way around. These are both unbalanced views. The two m ust go together. And I think experience shows that if such work on one’s state is going to be productive in one’s life, it cannot be done in isolation from activity. There is, something :in one thatiwould like to be free from the necessity of outer activity and ij just turn inwards and contemplate God. But ibis is not much use if at the moment you have to eat, there is nothing to cook. There are times,- indeed, when we need to retire' from activity in order to open ourselves to the experience of th& highest that we know. But this is not an aim in itself, because as much as we are open to the highest level we know, precisely so much we have the responsibility to act in accordance with it.12

I would like to annouhce^emphasize-—underline— that I am sufficiently familiar with the difficulties o f doing this work not to expect you all to be more than you are. I understand that you are, each -of you, two people. One expresses itself through your person­ ality, which my particular personality may find attractive or repul­ sive, interesting or totally lacking in interest; and the other, that part that wishes to become what you were designed with the possi­ bility of becoming. That part in you is of one family w ith some­ thing in me. I love that part in you. I wish to help it. I know how it strug­ gles against all sorts of difficulties, all sorts of resistances— but it is there. T hat makes us members of one family. A nd try'to remember that we all have a need for help.13 ❖

'

It’s easy to get into the habit of coming to these weekly meet­ ings. And from that, it’s a very easy step to taking them for granted, and particularly taking it for granted that there w ill be a meeting next week and the week after. One has to remind oneself that this is

35

Questions and Answers Along the Way not guaranteed at all, to remind oneself again and again and again why it is that one comes here. Just as it’s a useful principle in life to feel that everybody one meets during the day is awake, that one is the only person asleep, and that however other people act, they do it consciously with the intention of helping one to wake up—so in the same way it’s a use­ ful principle to adopt for oneself to1look on each o f our meetings as the last meeting and to go away with as much as one fe’els one has the possibility of making one’s own and of proving in practice. It’s interesting how easy it istoassum e that one has •indefinite time to do what one feels is necessary to do, and that one can sensi­ bly plan something for tomorrow and next week and -next m onth and next year and the next ten wears,*■W e -only-have^d go to an insurance company to find out what the odds are that we have no more than a week left to live. I’m minded to say this because several people I know have died in the last week, and for another thing there’s som ething wrong with my body. So we each o | ^ d 6 i not know how m uch time we have left to do what is important for us ^ s d o . W e need; to review with ourselves, not once but many times, what it is th a t is really important for us, and to try to. see how it may become possible for us to behave in our lives with the remembrahce?o£what is really important and not get dost in petty and passing and ephemeral things that don’t, in themselves, have much importance, or else have nothing to do with us at all.14

You speak of wishing in some way to repay w hat you have received, The only way you can do this is by the way you live, by your effect on people you meet in your life, for good? or ill.|p)ne should always remember that it is by virtue o f the com m on spark that exists in us all, and which we wish to feed, th at we are^useful to each other. As much as one has been helped to feed one’s own spark by contact with others, one has some land o f responsibility*

36

Groups And one has to remember that the only time one can do anything at all towards paying one’s debt is now. It is always now, never at some time in the future. Those whose help has come to one may go away or die, but one still has an obligation to repay. - Now, it looks as though we owe this debt to individual people with whom we come in contact, but it’s not really so. I have used before now the picture of a rope stretching through the centuries, In the fabric of which each individual man or woman is just one thread. But these threads are bound together and every thread is attached; at both ends to others, and so the rope goes on without interruption. Each single thread is not essential, but unless there are a certain number of threads, the rope will fray and break. And at any given moment this rope, which consists of the lives of many hundreds and thousands of people through the ages, is, if Bpudike, a wick oJd of truth, from which the light of truth can1be manifested in life. None of us is indispensable, but part o f th is^ a m ily ,^ and-C^gj sdme way the, call whichjtcomes to us from a

37

3 Aim

Choose something which costs you something— which is an effort. That which is easy is bad fa r your interior life. Always have an immediate aim. This is your objective. You m ust achieve this. There are many zigzags on the way. D o not delay. Always see the aim. Know where you are going and you willfind the means to get there. . . . The aim should be clear and always bfare you. ■G. I. G urdjieff

Each of the various traditions Jhas its own set o f command­ ments. They are meant to give you guidelines for behavior in life. But from one point of view, they are all different expressions of the same basic principle, namely, that I should follow courses o f action designed to help my spiritual development, and avoid, those that hinder it. This shows us, when we compare the principles by which we live much of our lives, that we constantly forget our aim: where we wish our life to go, what kind of a person we wish to become. And it is only if that aim is constantly present to us th at we have the possibility of a real criterion for what, for us, is good or bad; in other words, it makes an opening for the germ o f our true con­ science to work in us.1

38

Aim Unless one has an aim, one hasn’t a compass to steer by. One has no reason to resist the push of the wind or the pull of the cur­ rent. One has no reason to resist, and so one is simply pushed around by life. One shouldn’t deceive oneself about this. Then the problem immediately becomes—and it’s a problem for each of us— how to make my aim more living and continuous. You see, it’s the difference between activity of different kinds with the essential life missing from it, and activity of any kind with this essential life combined with it. If one is dead, one can be active in all sorts of ways, but one is dead. If one is alive, it is different. If you’re dead, you can’t remember any kind of aim except an aim on the level of the different SUiaiMTs’’— comfort, sex, what have you. If you are alive, you are alive, and then you have some chance of remembering your aim. Having this is a kind of compass, a criterion by which you can exercise discrimination. Otherwise, there can be nothing but to drift. It may be a drift in a definite direction, because you may get into a strong current that takes you very fast in a given direction, but you are not steering the ship— this is the difference. It’s a question of level in yourself, not a question of whether I do this, or I don’t do it, or I do something else. This is not the question. The question is, Am I there? If I am not there, I am dead. I’m this monkey, this parrot, this dog—nothing else. Sure I eat, I sleep, I play, I copulate— all this goes oil—but if I am not there, this is a dead thing. The essential life, the vital vivifying element, is missing. It’s a shell, and it makes no sense to talk about aim with such an existence. This is what you have to remember.2

Q: Sometimes I think I should find my aim, and sometimes I think I should create an aim. Is my aim different from someone else’s or are we all looking for the same thing? HBR: Unless there was something in common, we should not be together. But since man is so complex, since there are so many dif-

39

Questions and Answers Along the Way

f a i t aspects to his being, each o f us would perhaps formulate his aim in a different way. You ask, “Should aim be som ething I create or something I find?” These are not necessarily alternatives that rule each other out. In the sense of aim being something that is, one m ust discover it in oneself, because it is a natural thing that m an should be drawn by something higher. It is a natural hunger that is born in him to search for and to wish to be part o f something higher. If you reflect on what is worshiped by different men in differ­ ent places, you see it always has this hunger about it. I think one should take very seriously the advice to respect every m an who wor­ ships sincerely, no matter what it is he worships. I f you look around the world and see what men worship sincerely, it’s always some­ thing beyond the comprehension o f their minds. It may be light­ ning, but lightning is beyond the comprehension o f the m ind that worships it. So from one point of view, one has to find that in oneself which will not be satisfied by anything but something higher. Some people come to this Work simply because, even though they have busy, use­ ful, productive lives, something in them feels— and this feeling will not let them alone— that there is something missing, som ething that is more important than all their activities and w hat comes o f all their activities. They find that in all these activities there is nothing that can satisfy this particular feeling, this particular yearning for mean­ ing and integration, which can only come from above. But to create an aim—this is also in?a sense necessary. O ne has to see for oneself how one repeats one’s mistakes, ho w w ithout intending it, one causes suffering for other people and for oneselfAnd one has to see that these mistakes that one makes, this suffer­ ing that one causes, cannot all be blamed on other people or on cir­ cumstances. One has to see that part o f the cause, at least, is in myself because I am what I am. Now, if one begins to see this, then one has reason to form an aim so as not to continue to live in this way. A nd one has some

40

Aim incentive to do something about that aim because one begins to see how one does again and again what one would not wish to do, and how one causes suffering again and again, for oneself and others, that one would not wish to cause. If one sees this, one has a prob­ lem, and from one point of view, one’s aim is to solve that problem for oneself.- Different people see different aspects of themselves more clearly, and their aim tends to be formulated, at any one time, in relation to what they see clearly. Now, of course, some people start off with very unrealistic aims, taking an aim that is far away as if it were near at hand, and SO wishing, as Mr. Gurdjieff used to say, “to jump over their own knees.” Obviously if one tries to jump over one’s own knees, one is liable to hurt oneself. So' one has to distinguish between an aim which is far— not the end of the journey; because on this journey we cannot see the end, but at least a marker sufficiently far ahead along the way to show clearly the direction in which we wish to move— one has to distinguish that from the immediate aim. The immediate aim is‘concerned with moving from where I am. In order to* be able to move at all from where I am, I have to establish where l am. If I have a false idea about where I am, if I think that I am halfway home when I’m at the beginning, I will have a totally unrealistic approach and will try to take the twentieth step before I have taken the first step. So this is why we start with self-study. Self-study is designed to help us see where we are. As much as we see more clearly where we are, it begins to become clear how we can move from there. But we won’t know where to move unless we already have in mind a fairly clear idea of the direction in which we want to move. As I say, the answer is that to discover one’s aim and to create one’s aim are not necessarily inconsistent.3

Q: Fm dependent? on the other people here— on being fed by their presence.

41

Questions and Answers Along the Way HBR; Yes, this is so. O f course, you have to find the way to bring this same degree of connection with your aim into the efforts you make when you’re by yourself. You m ust be clear th at there are many efforts of different kinds you can make which are felt at the rime to be perfecdy sincere, and yet by the fact th a t they are divorced from your aim, they become in themselves quite senseless and may indeed feed parts o f yourself the growth o f which is against your aim. It is necessary to remind oneself m any tim es th a t means— intelligent, useful means— become stupid and worthless if they lose their connection with the aim which they are designed to help one reach. O f course, this is an occupational hazard for all o f us all the time: to lose the connection between means and aim. O ne needs to remember, and because one forgets, one needs to be reminded, that if I continue to make certain efforts w ithout the present experience of their connection with an aim, then this has nodonger anything to do with the Work at all. I’ve told you before that work has two elements in its meaning. One element is effort—but all effort is n o t w ork— and the other is a useful aim. Work is effort for a useful aim. I f the useful aim disap­ pears, then the effort is no longer w ork It m ay be all sorts o f other things, but it isn’t w ork4

Q: Recendy my life has been easier, and as a result m y aim to work has tended to fade. HBR: You see, in a sense it must happen this w ay for a certain time because every effort we make has two sides to it: one is get­ ting away from something, and one is m o v in g tow ards some­ thing. At the beginning it’s inevitable— because o u r situation is such as it is, and we begin to see it to be such— th a t w e feel our efforts to be mainly on the side o f getting away from our present situation. We don’t see so clearly that we are also m oving towards another situation, because we can’t see w hat we’re m oving towards

42

Aim in the same clear way that we can see our present situation. This isn’t possible. Actually, every effort that one makes to get away from some­ thing which one wishes to become free from has its definite positive side. Every effort that one makes has to exercise some of the psy­ chological muscles that need strengthening. One has to use an atom of will. One has to control attention. One has to heighten to some extent one’s state of consciousness. All these must be done whenever we make an effort. But the effort may feel as if its center o f gravity were going away from something. I’ve used here the analogy of peeling pota­ toes. T^is:is at first sight a destructive activity, but it is for a con­ structive end. .It is the same with weeding a garden. You destroy weeds in order that the plants you wish to grow may grow. O f course, if you forget to plant the plants or to water and feed them, it makes no sense at all to weed the garden. It is true, you see, what the old Desert Fathers in Egypt used to sajgj-that we must thank God for our troubles, the troubles H e sends us, because they drive us into His arms. If everything is very peaceful and quiet, we just go to sleep again. N ot that one should seek troubles in the world—life will bring us enough. W hat you want to see during this quiet time, what you want to remember, is that it is an interlude in which you can prac­ tice for the next time, which is certainly coming along, when the pressures come back with renewed force. It’s the old business of the man who is satiated with food remembering how it feels to be hun­ gry, and the man who is hungry remembering how it feels to be full. This alternation between the times when life pressures us with full force and the times when the pressure lets up a bit is bound to happen. One has to see the moment against a larger background.5

Gurdjieff said that one must think of defining an organism in terms of the highest function possible for it. Now, this means that

43

Questions and Answers A long the W ay

one has to have some way o f ranking th e different functions one finds. And, o f course, the different parts o f oneself c an n o t do that because their w idth o f vision doesn’t encom pass th e whole. The whole can only be seen from a higher level. So one needs to come back to this questio n o f aim , because even if at a certain time one formulates one’s aim fro m a right view­ point in oneself, the Law o f Seven works in such a w ay th at what starts out in one direction— m oving how ever hesitatingly and spo­ radically towards this aim— may change course a n d head in another direction without one realizing w hat is happening. O n e thinks one is still essentially going in th e same direction, w hen in fact one is not. Each o f us has to make up his ow n m in d a b o u t w h at he wants and how to order the different wants th a t express themselves in him when he faces this question, “W h at do I w ant?” Y ou see, “W hat do I want?” begs the question, “W ho am I?” Is th e “I ^ t h a t wants the stereo the same as the “I” th a t wants consciousness? I t’s so easy Still to look at oneself as one and say, “I w a n t a stereo, I w an t a Car, I want good food, I w ant a loving wife, I w a n t G o d ,” as i f they were all on the same level, as i f they were all w ants o f th e sam etiT H fi Here is where the practical application >o f th e id ea th a t one is many and not one, has to be brought to bear. So lo n g as one'takes all these different wants and says, “I w ant, I w an t, I w a n t/’ one can never think clearly or get straight about »X * Many o f our different parts will do a n y th in g to a v o id ‘coming out into the lig h t o f consciousness to be seen fo r w h a t th ey are. They prefer to immerse themselves in activity, w rap i t aro u n d them like a cloud, so that they can’t be seen. O ne has to see these differen t p a rts fo r w h a t th e y are, see where they will lead one if they continue to act in o n e w ith o u t con­ straint, and then ask oneself, “D o I wish to be led in th is direction?” In this way, from one aspect after another, o n e clarifies o n e ’s aim. If I come to the conclusion that I do n o t w a n t to be led in a certain

Aim direction, it is for a reason, and it throws light on the direction in which I do wish to go. One speaks of one’s aim, and it then becomes necessary to formmäte one’s aim. But one needs to realize that in doing so—how­ ever one formulates it—one has tacitly implied a great number of other ways in which it could perhaps be fprmulated, and then to see that all these ways taken together add up to. a direction in which one wishes to move in one’s life-... One: says, Jbr instance, “I wish töjcontrol my inner life.” If one begins to think what that means, it means, among other things, I wish to gain, control over my attention. It means I wish to bring the energy exchanges in my machine under my control. It means I do not wish to be identified >wfth all ,m|_ various-parts of me; I-wish to have something separate. You can go on and on, and no matter how exactly you formulate your aim today, if you ask yourself quite -simply what it means to move towards this aim, you find you must bring in everything we’ve been talking about here since we first met.7

^ E b s n l lp «^ou. tof sefe^^c^^c^ ^ v - what vour position is and where ypu want to go from this position, which is the essence o f the formulation of one’s own aim, I think it can be useful to follow this series of questions: first of all, “W hat is it that I want to be or to become?” This is ^ o t an easy question to answer because one finds different; answers.? a^ording^tQ. who speaks in one. A second ques­ tion one wants to approach is, “W hy can I not be or become what I wish to be or become? W hat obstades stand in my way?” The third question is, “W hat is it necessary to do in order to become able to be or to become what I wish to fee?” And the fourth question is, “If I see what it is necessary to do, can I in fact do it by myself?” And the last question is, “If I find that I am, as I am, unable to do this by myself, what kind of hdp do I need?” If one follows through those questions, one might make dearer for oneself a kind of formulation of one’s aim. But it’s not unusual,

45

Questions and Answers Along the Way and it’s quite natural, that the way people put their aim to them­ selves changes as they begin to see their position more clearly.

We know what we can afford to do and what we cannot afford to do if we are following up a goal in life. If we wish to make money, we know we can’t throw away what we have. If we wish to gain political office, there are certain things we can’t afford to do, and certain other things we have to do. It is the aim which makes clear what are appropriate means. The aim makes clear what you can afford and what you can’t afford. If you wish to attain an aim, you know that any aim has a price. And if you forget that, you won’t attain your aim—quite simply. You know this in very simple practical things. But sometimes you forget to be simple and practi­ cal about your inner work, about what you can and can’t afford.

If we wish to study these ideas practically, the only way to do it is to use the ordinary everyday activities and events o f life as the field on which we focus attention and effort. It is here that we have the chance of seeing for ourselves the facts of our own life, and it is here, in due course, that we have the opportunity for working towards change, if we see reason to change and we have incentive to change. This depends on us. Nobody says you should change; you have to find reasons for yourselves, and you have to be very clear what those reasons are. But reason, as I say, is not enough; one has to have incentive, one has to have a wish which is not just one of a thousand wishes and aversions. In order to change in any serious way in the face of enormous resistance to change, which is exercised by habitual ways of thinking, moving, feeling, sensing, being, one has to have a desire for change that is like a hunger that doesn’t leave you alone. You know, there is a story about a man who came to an Indian teacher and asked him for instruction. The teacher looked at him

46

Aim and said, “Come outside with me,” and he took him outside, down to the bank of a small stream, and he suddenly seized him by the neck, plunged his head in the water and held it there. Then he released the man and said, “What did you want?” The man said, “I wanted air!” The teacher said, “All right, when you want instruc­ tion like that, you come back.”10' *'

How difficult it is really to carry in one the enduring sense of the connection between the way one lives from moment to moment and one’s aim. Obviously this cannot be accomplished by a little parrot that sits in the middle of one’s head and says, “Remember your, aim.” L Tf one wishes to work so that one’s aim becomes the center of one’s own life, sp that one has, in Gurdjieff’s words, a “center of gravity^ in the Work, it must be something that has grown up in one and has. become organic, something that has reached the point that when it is absent, one feels something is amiss. One doesn’t reach this all at once, and one has the feeling that, something is amiss from time to time for many years before one has something continu­ ous. But one should know that feeling, and when it happens, say to it, as Gurdjieff advised, “Remind me to remember you.”11

Over the years, I’ve seen many people concentrating too much on their weaknesses, shortcomings, and mistakes. This often pro­ duces a kind of funereal gloom about their situation, and this is not a right way to go about work at all. From my point of view, joy is the result of effort made with a whole heart and a single mind for an objective which is deeply val­ ued. If these elements combine, there is joy no matter what kind of difficulties one meets. That is what one has to concentrate on: fol­ lowing in one’s life what one values above all and following it with a whole heart and a single mind.12

47

Questions and Answers Along the Way $ I come here week after week. You have no idea whether I come here willingly or unwillingly, whether I like it or dislike it, whether I am bored or stimulated—you have no idea. But I have committed myself. So well or ill, lazy or industrious, whatever, I come. I do not have mercy on myself. You must ask yourself what kind of values does your life show you live by, For each of you, it is a decision that you have to malte for yourself, what kind of commitment' you have to your work— your work. We are all in the same position; a certain number o f parts of ourselves have agreed on a common adventure in die face o f every kind of obstacle. They will not reach die treasure, not escape the dragons chat guard it, not overcome all the other perils o f the adventure, if they rely just on their wish. The' wish has got to be coupled with intelligence, of course, but also somediing needs to be committed. Otherwise, one can never know what it means, even for a short time, to be of a whole heart and single m ind, and this adventure calls for chat and nodiing less. One is incapable of having that experience die whole time. Like all new experiences it comes acid goes, but as one tastes it, one knows how different one feels, how this singleness o f mind, this wholeness of heart temporarily unifies one and makes one know what, for oneself, is right and what is wrong. Temporarily, yes, but one knows. One has no doubt.13

One needs to have a far aim and near aims. The far aim, being far, is of necessity vague at first. As one sees various aspects of one’s life today, one sees what limits one’s freedom of action, and wishes to be free. That shows die direction in which one wishes.-to move. But at the same time one needs to have some idea, if one is going to become free, what one will do widi one’s freedom. One needs to connect this with die idea that in one’s life, whedier one

48

Aim likes it o r not, one serves— either blindly and unconsciously, or more intentionally and more consciously. One cannot help serving. . So when we consider our far aim, one side of it is to become free. Another side of it is what we want to use our freedom for. This puts US’ in relation, on the one hand, to the world around us because however we act, we are bound'to produce consequences in that world, which ripple out like waves when you throw a stone into a pond; and on the other .-hand, we have a relationship with something higher. Our near aims must d e much more precise and concrete than this,, ,anddhsy are not essentially ends in themselves, but means to move in the direction in which our far aim shows us we want to move. We cannot envisage the destination, so to .speak, at the end of our far aim, but we can more and more clearly see the direction in ^ ^ chaiteli^as we come to know:ourselves betterahd better. Amd*y^^se'#>jhe^qilistion oftservice rieedsuto be pondered. Obviously while we are asleep, we have no choice about it: we serve nature. But if we become able to be awake, then we have to remem­ ber that if we wish to become free from the domination of forces, influences, laws arising on our own level, then we have to put our­ selves under forces or influences from a higher level. We have to think for ourselves what that can possibly mean.14

If one asks oneself the question, “W hat do I want to become in My Me?” it’s difficult to find a formulation which can express this dearly. But as one sees progressively what fetters one now, what lim­ its one’s choice of action, so one can see the different elements that need to enter into the direction in which one must travel to become free of the bonds of different kinds that bind one today. As one gets S@ :>know oneself better, one sees that all the hindrances, all the obsta­ cles; to moving in that direction are linked together in different ways. So we have not only to have an idea of the direction in which we wish to> go, the kind of person we wish to become, free indeed o f

49

Questions and Answers Along the Way all the present limitations o f our freedom o f choice, our freedom of action; but we also need to have much nearer aims which can be more exacdy formulated and are within our power to move towards. You know, Gurdjieff used to say that it’s as though you’re in Paris and you see way over there the illumination o f the sky—the reflection o f the lights o f the Arc de Triomphe— and you wish to get there, but between you and it are all sorts o f roads and turnings. However, the streets are lighted, and as you reach the street lamp in front o f you, you can see how to take the next step, which is very practical, very near at hand. So one needs a near aim, a precise aim, a concrete aim all the time. And experience shows very clearly that, if one has a definite aim today—for this day, for this hour—which is within one’s possi­ bility to do, and if one works towards that, it always throws light on many other things. But you see, one forgets this, and one forgets because one’s state o f consciousness is so far from a state o f selfremembering.13

Q: I find I am motivated in the Work by a desire to escape from what I am, from all the things— like fear and inner consider­ ing—that constrict my life. But I avoid any inquiry beyond that because it seems poindess. HBR: Perhaps the idea which most distinguishes the psychology taught by Gurdjieff from ordinary psychology is the idea o f differ­ ent levels o f consciousness, different levels o f man. And clearly part o f that idea is that man’s evolution means the raising o f the level o f his consciousness. The raising o f his consciousness means that he becomes changed in a way that makes him open to receive influ­ ences from higher levels than he was able to receive before. N ow , a condition for this change is that one must understand the necessity, as much as one is open to receive influences and impressions from higher levels, to express them in one’s life in one’s relations to others, begin n ing with those who are closest to one. And if you ask yourself,

50

Aim "How can I begin to think about what I serve in my life?” what I am talking about bears directly on this question. We know we serve nature’s purposes; we can’t help doing this. But we are not just animals; we are not born according to a blue­ print that stops with animals. We are thinking animals, for one thing, but we can be more than that. And as much as we begin to realize—-first in our heads and then, for moments perhaps, in prac­ tice—that we can be more than a thinking animal, so there must be born in us a sense of responsibility to become, as fully as we can, what was in the original blueprint for man. And this means, among other things, to understand how to live in relation to life around us, always bearing in mind this idea of different levels, always bearing in mind that there are processes on many scales of which we are a part and can’t help being a part. Some of these are processes of evo­ lution and some, processes of degeneration. Both are necessary to tlif^it has to be. But we also need to think of this in relation to the question, W hat do I wish to serve in my life? As much as I have become free to have a choice in what I do, what do I wish to do with my life? I hope what I have said tonight is real food for thought for you and can be digested, because'-ifrone doesn’t try to understand what I have been talking about, then I don’t think one can really begin to have any kind of satisfactory feeling about oneself regarding what Gurdjieff used to call the “sense and aim” of man’s existence and, therefore, the sense and aim of my own life. One cannot think of replying to this question in terms of myself alone. The meaning of my life can only be understood ifrit includes my relation with the world around me.16 55

You see, there are always the two sides to the generation of this emotion which the alchemists called “the fire under the retort.” One side is to see what you are and what you will become if you take no part in the process of change that will inevitably take place

51

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4 The Silent Witness

Like two birds o f golden plum age, inseparable companions, the individual self a n d the im m ortal S e lf are perched on the branches o f the selfiame tree. The fo rm er tastes o f the sweet and bitter fru its o f the tree; the latter, ta stin g o f neither, calmly observes. Upanishads

I spoke last time about the first step in g ettin g to kn o w oneself better and having the opportunity to prove to o neself w hether what Gurdjieff says about m an’s condition an d situ atio n is tru e for you personally. I spoke about a m ethod o f observation o f self—o f one’s thoughts, one’s emotions, one’s sensations, o n e ’s actions— which requires a special effort w ith attention: a division o f a tten tio n into two parts. One o f these parts is directed tow ards whatever' activity it’s engaged in, whether it be th o u g h t o r actio n o f whatever, and the other is directed to the experience o f a p o in t o f awareness of what is going on. I call it the Silent W itness. I t’s an im partial, unjud g m en tal wit­ ness to what goes on. It is extremely difficult to d o this, and you will find at first that you can only do it for a split second, and then you find yourself w ith y o u r a tte n tio n w h o lly d ra w n in to what you’re doing; but with practice it becomes m o re p ossible.1

54

The Silent Witness

Q: Could you say more.about the Silent Witness?^* HBR: Well, you start with the fact that it is silent. It is not talking or thinking about what you are doing, but it is aware of what you are doing. You know, for instance, that you can be absorbed in a book and be absolutely unaware of your posture or the sensations of your body because you are lostin the book. You also know that if I call your: attention to that, you become aware of the posture and the sensations which are there all the time.-' The Silent Witness pays attention to what goes on in the centers: to*what go'es on in the head, to what goes on in the heart, to what goes on in the body. It simply pays attention. Ip&like listening to music. Yoil don’t have to manipulate the impressions you receive from music; you just receive them.| | | | | Silent Witness justfreceives impressions from your behavior. She hears your voice, bothf your inner and your outer voice; she is aware of what happens in you. You have to struggle towards this. But at any rate, be sure that it’s not thinking or internally talking a ip u l what’s going on in you. It’s simply being aware, as though each function had a mirror placed in front of it.2

Q: W hat i i dus part that watches me? HBR: For the time being,- .you..y^ll not gain anything by having that defined. The thing to do is to experience the Silent Witness. It may not be exactly the same thing with everybody. W e’re all trying S j do the same thing, to have a Silent Witness whose function is just to be aware, but it may be different for different people. So I feel at .this stage that it wouldn’t be helpful to put any words to it. I could do that, but it wouldn’t make you any wiser. The thing to. do is to gain more experience of it for yourself, to find how it feels dif­ ferent from the ordinary condition when your thoughts are experi­ enced as “I,” when your feelings are experienced as "I,” when your body is experienced as “I.” This is a little different.3

55

Questions and Answers Along the Way

Q: I have a hard time differentiating the,Silent Witness.from my mind. HBR: Yes, and if you don’t do that, you don’t understand what the Silent Witness is. You see, in the ordinary way, we live in the state which is called “identification.” This means that I feel myself to be my functions. It may be a thought, it may be a feeling, it may be a sensation—but it is felt to be myself. I am hammering a nail— I hammer my finger—“Oh, I hurt myself.” O r we become angry and say, “I am angry,” instead of saying, “Anger is rising in me.E And the Silent Witness is exactly something that is not a function: not a thought, not a feeling, not a sensation. One of the great difficulties of maintaining this special kind of attention is that when one is for a moment aware o f something, one immediately starts thinking about it, judging it, or whatever. And one’s sense of oneself slips into these feelings, these judgments of it, and one js löst. The Silent Wimess is no longer there. It is very dif­ ficult to realize for oneself that this isn’t a thinking effort. It is a naked awareness. It takes some people a couple o f years to get it absolutely clear inside themselves, by experience, w hat this*§ilent Wimess really is. But I wish to emphasize that it ish’t thinking about oneself. When you talk about being drawn back into yourself, you are being drawn back into thought about yourself, wMeh is n ot the same thing at all. You are tempted the whole time to react to what you observe, but the moment you do that you are no longer observing. And experience shows that it is extremely difficult not to react. Something immediately begins to think about it and a running commentary sets up, or one is pleasedK nat one has noticed something, or one is disgusted with what one has seen, or whatever. These reactions draw one’s attention away from the naked experience of oneself. Again, we come back to the many reasons for which the prac­ tice we call “collection” is quite essential. This practice o f collection

56

The Silent Witness requires an effort of attention; any kind of effort of inner work requires an effort of attention. It also requires the exercise of “organic will.” You sit down to a collection and something wishes to get up, something is restless, something is uncomfortable—you wish to just relax into daydreams—so it requires an effort of will to continue. And the third thing is that it helps you to become more familiar with the double-headed arrow state in which your attention is divided in two: part on what you are doing and part on the Silent Witness which is simply aware. If you wish to become less at the mercy of this state of hurry and flurry, you need to be quite regular in practicing your collec­ tions. And you need, whenever you can remember and when you can find your ov^n^ays of reminding yourself, to come back to this Silent Witness. He is not involved with what you are doing, not elated by your successes, not downcast by your failures; he simply is, and experiences whatever is going on. It is only by a great deal of practice that it gradually becomes possible— certainly it is possi­ ble—to maintain something absolutely quiet and still within when you’re engaged in no matter what.4

Q: Thisi,S ilent, Witnes&g^is. it something which is innately within us that we don’t recognize? HER: This is a question which always comes up: W hat is the Silent Witness? I don’t think it’s very useful to give a verbal label of some kind. W hat is important is to know the difference in one­ self between the times when it’s there and the times when it’s not. It is simply a witness at this stage, a witness which is able to be a witness because part of my attention is in the witnessing. It doesn’t really help to label it. W hat matters if-that you experience it. You feel the difference between the state when something is separate and looking on and experiencing, and the state in which that is not there— the state in which the candle is lit, and in which the candle is. out.

57

Q u e s tio n s a n d Answers Along

the Way

The Silent Witness can be considered to be the germ o f some­ thing that can in time, if it grows in strength and grows in fre­ quency, exercise some controlling influence and bring some order into the chaos o f the psyche.5

Q: Fm not sure o f the Silent Wimess. I may have it and I may n ot HBR; I ts not a rhinlcing effort; it s simply an effort o f witnessing what goes on in the organism. T he m om ent you th in k about it, you’re not having the direct experience o f it. T h in k o f the Silent Witness as a naturalist who is trying to observe a rather elusive animal. Most o f the time, he only catches sight o f the tail disappearing around the comer. Think o f this organism being the anim al you’re observing and the Silent Witness being the naturalist w ho really wishes t o find out how this strange creature leads his life, to find out by direct observation.6

Q: I would like to learn to observe myself simply, as I would a daisy or a butterfly, w ithout analysis, w ithout judgm ent, without trying to understand the whys. HBR: Well, before you can begin to understand th e whys, you need to observe simply, because if you try to analyze as you go along, it is mosdy based on previous notions about yourself. You don’t take in a pure impression o f w hat is happening. You see, this is constandy at work in us, whether it is impressions o f ourselves as we act or whether it is impressions o f other people— our impres­ sions are constantly affected by previous notions. So it is indeed desirable and necessary to observe oneself w ith the same impartiality as a naturalist observes a creature he is trying to study and to under­ stand its habits. But the trouble is, you see, it is very difficult to adopt the same stance v is - a - v is oneself because always som ething in one feels that one knows oneself and finds it very difficult to look at just what happens and nothing else.

58

The Silent Witness W hat happens, you see, time and time again, is that for a moment one can stand aside and impersonally experience what’s happening, but very quickly and imperceptibly observation changes into comment, and comment into emotional reaction to what one has observed. And the moment the observation changes into com­ ment, one has lost the pure impression. One just has to go on trying, and it is not an easy thing to do. But one is simply seeing, in relation to this process of observing oneself, what goes on the whole time when one is observing other people and things: one is constandy (and cannot help it) interpret­ ing and analyzing. It is very difficult indeed, but possible, to get away from this.7

Q: - Isn’t there movement in observation? I don’t see how it could observe without being in motion. HBR: This quiet thing that observes has been likened to a mirror in which things are reflected; a mirror doesn’t have to move to reflect movement. You see, it depends on how you understand the word “observe.” I can understand that you find in your own experi­ ence that you can’t observe without reacting, but it is the reaction which you experience as movement. The observation and the reac­ tion are actually quite separate. You understand? This is the way one normally functions: one observes and then something reacts. When we try to observe ourselves directly, then it is almost impossible to prevent some kind of feeling or thought about what we observe from arising in us; but one has to keep the feeling or thought about what we observe quite separate from the act of observation. The act of observation sets off the emotional and intellectual centers commenting, feeling and thinking about what one has observed. And it’s very easy to get caught in the illusion that this feeling and thinking about what one has observed is observation. It isn’t. It’s reaction. And very often, of course, when it sets up, it

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Questions and Answers A long the Way

catches one’s atten tio n so th a t o n e ’s sense o f o neself goes into thinking, and one ceases to have the Silent W itness.8 ♦♦♦ Q: I d o n ’t know if I am ever tru ly presen t, especially when speaking. HBR: Speaking is always difficult. I t’s been recognized for cen­ turies as one o f the m ost difficult things because one identifies with w hat one has to say. So we start w ith less difficult things such j|ss physical chores. If we practice enough being present to ourselves w ith simple things that don’t in themselves m ake a dem and on the m ind or the emotions— things th at the body has learnt to dp^-if we practice during those times feeling ourselves separate from our actions, then gradually, gradually it begins to becom e possible. You can use certain techniques. Before you are able to talk and remain conscious o f yourself, you can listen an d rem ain conscious o f yourself; it is n ot so difficult to listen as it is to talk. A nd if you wish to stay present to yourself w hen you are talking, you can use an anchor for the attention— awareness o f b reathing or something like that—which is quite possible to m ain tain w hen y o u are listen­ ing, but m uch more difficult w hen you are speaking. So it’s a question o f practice an d o f seeing these simple activi­ ties, which are n o t im p o rtan t in them selves, as practice grounds where you can develop the psychological m uscles w hich you will need when things are more difficult.9

As a help in m aintaining this Silent W itness for a little longer, take the physical task this week o f keeping th e soles o f both feet flat on the floor when you are standing or sitting. O f course, you will come to yourself many times and find th a t th ey are n o t on the floor. This will show you how m uch is required to keep present to yourself and how quickly this awareness goes. See ho w this connects with the idea that we cannot do. You cannot do this; there ds certainly not

60

The Silent Witness one of you who can do this. So how can we expect to do many other things which are much more difficult? One of the objects of the task is to bring home to you the dangers, the precariousness, o f your present position, so that your wish to escape grows stronger.10

Q: In the inner dialogue, I notice that the “I’s” close to the sur­ face are embellished with all kinds of personality. Even at the end of my^^n^jctions, it seems that the who’s observing all this is a very familiar colorful personality. HBR: Yes, it’s quite true that one “I” often observes another. But one müst try to remember that in making this effort to set up the Silent Witness, one is trying to create in oneself an impartial observer, whose sole function is to be aware, not to comment on what he’s aware of. Do you understand? Other parts^öf one^wM certainly comment on what has been observed, but Ü e must distinguish for oneself between observation by bare awareness and the comments that one finds making them­ selves on what has been observed—the thoughts about it, the feel­ ings about it, and so forth. They come from one “I” or another in onSSelf, and one needs to observe them, just as one needs to observe what they are talking about. It is very difficult, indeed, because for a long time the transi­ tion froJrin simply experiencing what is happening to talking about it and reacting to it takes place without one realizing that it has taken place. The attention goes from bare awareness into the running commentary without one noticing it. Then one has lost the bare awareness because it no longer has any attention at its disposal.11

Q: It seems to me as though when I look at some things, they stop, and I can’t really observe them. HBR: Yes, that’s true. But you’ll find that there are two possibili­ ties here. As we are, making the inner movement whereby we set up

61

Questions and Answers Along the Way

this impartial Silent Witness takes a great deal o f our attention, and this may be at the expense o f the attention available for what we are doing or how we are behaving. You have to rob that o f a great deal of attention, and so there may not be eaough attention left over to fuel what was going on before. This is one possibility. On the other hand, you see, there are certain things which one finds in oneself which, when the fight o f consciousness is cast on them by observation, are either so distasteful or so dam n stupid and foolish that one can’t go on with them. This is another possibility. But even in these cases, it is useful to observe the functioning of these things because, although on the face o f it they are distaste­ ful or foolish, they may be connected w ith m any other things in the psyche which one needs to understand.1

Q: I find there is a threat to security w hen I p ry into m y inner life, when I just try to be present to the images th at are there. If I have a Silent Wimess present, whatever is there runs off, and I’m not able to observe for very long. HBR: One finds that some parts o f oneself d o n ’t like being observed at all by other people or by oneself sometimes. But you have to ask yourself, “Do I really w ant to know w ho I am and what makes me tick?” If so, you have to tread carefully here. You don’t have to let the Silent Wimess walk like an elephant into the room. Q: I noticed also that much o f the turm oil th a t arises in this situation has something to do with the inner judge. HBR: Yes, and you see why these parts are so shy; they are used to being disapproved by the inner judge. B u t y o u m u st try to remember that this kind o f self-criticism , w h ich sometimes becomes self-hate, goes directly against th e m o v em en t to make oneself whole, to integrate the different p arts o f o n e ’s psyche. Remember also that the inner judge needs re-educating as much as those parts which he criticizes.13

The Silent Witness Q: During the past year, while recuperating from my accident, I realized that my previous efforts had been a striving for an extreme effect such as some day becoming God. Now I see that right effort is closer to the everyday movement within myself. I hope I can remember that my work is right here. HBR: Now your problem is not to forget that. Q: Yes, because already I have forgotten a lot of things I thought I would never forget. I find that I have forgotten some things I know I knew once. HBR: You know, I think it’s very important to go back over the insights that have come to you during this year and not to trust that you will remember them, but while they are relatively fresh in your mind, to formulate them and put them down on paper. The very effort of formulating them does something to crystallize them in memory. Sometimes one has such an insight and one is tremendously sure about it; one has no doubt about it at all, and so one thinks that because one has no doubt about it, one will certainly remem­ ber it. One forgets in that moment that one will remember it at a certain level in oneself, but it won’t be any use to you below that level unless you introduce it below that level. I think you would be very well advised to write down on paper these different insights you have had and then come back to them in different states. Read them once monthly, or something like that, but come back and ponder them and try to recall the memory of what they felt like when you felt them. W ith some things the experience is so deep that from then on it’s really impossible to forget. I mean if one has experienced for oneself directiy, w ithout any mediation at all, the fact that there is a part o f one that is immortal, that is not liable to the ills and pains and dissolution o f the body— if one has experienced that, then there can never be any doubt afterwards.1

Questions and Answers A long the Way

Q: W ould you comment on how we can rem ember observations? I have a problem with that. I see them, and then they evaporate. HBR: O ne of the first things is to make notes o f observations. And if you wish to fix an observation in memory, the way to do it is to cast your m ind back into your life and to connect the present observation with occasions in the past when the same kind o f thing happened. N ow I’ll tell you a story. W hen I first started w ith groups in W ashington in 1949, there was a m an h ere w ho h a d been in Orage’s group in New York before the war, and he knew Gurdjieff well. H e told me on one occasion, w hen he was w orking for the Voice o f America here, he had two colleagues w ho b o th held highly responsible positions. M y friend was an educated an d very cultured man. H e spoke several languages and was acquainted w ith art and music. A nd one o f these two colleagues had the same k in d o f back­ ground. The other colleague was a farm boy w ho h ad a genius for organization and had made his way up to a very responsible posi­ tion. One day these three were working together, an d w hen it came time to go home, they had n ’t finished. So m y friend invited the other two men to his house. They w ent there and sat at a long table in the living room and proceeded w ith their business. N ow it happened th at sitting on the table was a book on medieval Flemish art, a beautiful book and very scholarly. A nd when they had finished their business, m y friend pulled this book across the table, and turning to the man who was o f the same k in d o f cul­ tured background, said, “You may be interested to look at this.” And the man looked at it with interest and handed it back. A nd as my friend put the book back across the table, he saw o u t o f the corner of his eye— but didn’t really notice it— a little gesture from the other man, the one who had come up from being a farm boy. H e hadn’t thought at all that this m an m ight be interested in seeing the book, at least not consciously. H e had just acted u pon th a t supposition. Later, when my friend was getting into bed, he saw again that motion of the m an’s hand, and he realized th a t this m a n had felt left out. Although he hadn’t got the same cultural background, he

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The Silent Witness would have liked to have been shown the book, too. At that moment he heard a voice within him say, “But I’m not a thought­ less man!” Now this was very significant because he had just caught him­ self being thoughdess. “But I’m not a thoughdess man!” So he didn’t go to bed. He went downstairs and sat up for several hours, going back over his life, seeing where he could find occasions on which he had in fact been thoughdess, although it never seemed that way at the time. And in this way, he fixed in his mind the memory, the vitally im portant memory, that there was a part of him that was indeed thoughtless^ which until that day or minute he wouldn’t have believed or wouldn’t have admitted. But it was an insight into himself that he knew he would forget, so he fixed it in his memory by associating it with past experiences.15

Q: I find myself feeling a general sadness, and I’m not sure if it’s from what’s going on in my life right now—although it doesn’t seem to be— or if it’s from examining myself in this way. HBR: Well, you see, if one pursues the study of oneself in order to obtain for oneself, from one’s own inner experience, data about how one actually lives one’s life, then one is bound to find that sometimes this simply doesn’t coincide with the kind of person one thinks one is. And one is shocked and disappointed in oneself, sad about the things one sees in oneself. O ne really can’t help feeling so because one sees that one makes mistakes with the best will in the world, and having made a mistake, nothing can cancel its effects. But until one is able to admit to oneself and accept the fact that one has a part of oneself who is capable of making that kind of mistake, one will not take the very first step toward becoming free from that kind o f mistake. One has to accept the fact that one has made a mistake, and that one has a part of oneself that will probably react again in this partic­ ular way to some situation or some person.16

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Questions and Answers Along the Way

It is very difficult, first to learn to have m ercy on other people, and then to have mercy on oneself. But our shadow — all the parts of ourselves we’ve been taught to disapprove, to hate— somehow we have to find a way to approach this w ith a quite different point of view, a quite different attitude. So long as it persists as it is, we are riven inside; a gulf separates two parts o f us. T his g u lf will n ot dis­ appear if we try to explain it away or justify it in order to refuse the pain and the suffering we feel when we see the shadow for what it is. Fortunately, we’re so constructed that we can’t see m ore than we can bear. If you could really see the whole horror, the whole terror of your situation, it would be too m uch to bear, and so we are pro­ tected from seeing this. One needs to understand that sooner or later one has to face everything in one if—if-—one wishes to come to any k in d of, con­ trol over one’s inner life. So long as there are things in the darkness that I haven’t seen and don’t understand, control is o u t o f the ques­ tion. If I wish to be master o f my own life, then I m u st n o t Hindi from seeing everything, from understanding everything. A nd I must not be afraid of what I meet.17

5> Collection

You m ust do an exercise to be more collected. Learn to collect yourselfhChoose a good moment that seems propitious. S it down. L et nobody disturb ydw- Relax yourself. A ll your atten­ tion, all your will, are concentrated on your relaxation. You quieten your associations. G. I. G urdjieff

I shall just explain for those who are here for the first time that we are all trying daily to sit quietly, with, the spine erect and the head balanced on top of it so there is no necessity to tense the mus­ cles of the neck, and to maintain this position for five minutes and not more. Become aware in turn and accumulatively o f the physical sensations from the different parts of the body, starting w ith the feet and working up, not losing contact with your awareness o f the parts o f your body to whose sensations you are already open, build­ ing up until you are aware of all the sensations from all parts o f the body at the same time. T ry to be as sure as you can that there are no unnecessary physical tensions, and if there are, to relax them. D uring this time you will find thoughts arising in the mind. It isn’t suggested that you try to shut these thoughts out, b ut try to experience them just as though somebody had turned on the radio in the next room. This talk in the head has nothing to do with what

Questions and Answers Along the Way you’re currently engaged in, which is to be relaxed and to be aware of ail the sensations o f your body. If you pay attention to the thoughts that arise in your head, it takes you away from the awareness o f the sensations in the body; but if you concentrate your attention on that awareness, you will take your attention away from the thoughts. If you try and make them shut up, you draw more attention to them. It is not an easy exercise, but it’s a very profitable exercise. It has many profitable benefits. For the m om ent we take it as an exer­ cise in attention, to see what our capacity is to control and direct our attention. We do it for n ot more than five m inutes daily, and take note o f our experience.1

N ow we can take a few minutes for collecting. T ry to balance your head so that it rests lightly o n top o f your spine. Feel as though it were being supported by a thread going up from the crown o f your head. I f you get in th e rig h t position, it hardly needs any tension at all. Otherwise, there is a risk o f strain­ ing these muscles on either side o f the spine a t th e back. B ut the m om ent your head is o u t o f vertical, it m u st be tense an d it can become very sore. So try and set your head lightly o n th e top of your spine, and let the spine carry the weight. It’s n o t necessary to strain the muscles o f the neck and shoulders. I begin by opening m y awareness to the sensations from my feet, letting those sensations f l o w into a central place w here I can be aware o f them . I may feel a tingling. W ith o u t losing to u c h with t h o s e sensations, I open m y s e l f to the awareness o f th e ankles, lower leg, calf, and shin. I now try to be really aware o f this sensation. I f e e l t h e c l o t h e s pressing against them , the socks, th e difference in t h e f e e l o f t h e p a r t s that are enclosed by the socks an d th e parts that are open to the air. Make sure th at you are relaxed. So I open my awareness wider to include th e sensations from m y knees; I feel the w eight o f m y h an d s re stin g o n th e m , the w a r m t h o f m y hands— n o t o nly in the h a n d , b u t in th e knee.

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Collection Delicately holding my awareness of all of these, I extend it to include the thighs. And I make sure the thigh muscles are relaxed. Now in my two legs and my feet, I have access to the feeling of life in them. If I pay real attention, I can feel the pulse in them. Holding this awareness as if it were a bowl full of liquid, not spilling it, I then open my awareness further to include the buttocks and the sitting bones, and feel the pressure of the chair underneath. W ithout losing any of these sensations, I also become aware of the sensations of the lower back, and make sure that I become aware of the sensation that it is really vertical. W ithout losing feet, legs, lower back, I become aware of the stomach. If there are tensions there, I let them go. It’s as though I’ve filled my body with liquid awareness up to the waist. Again, holding this bowl very delicately so that nothing spills, I include the aware­ ness of my chest, the upper part of the back, the sides, the shoulders. I stay in touch with the life in my feet, and spread my aware­ ness over my upper arms down to the elbow, and my lower arms down to the wrists, and the palms o f my hands. Now I feel the warmth of .my knees through the palms, the warmth of the palms through the knees. T he fingers come alive: the little finger, the ring finger, the middle finger, the forefinger, the thumb, and now the back of the hand. So I have all the limbs o f the body, and I check before going further that I have access still to all of them. Now I include the back of the neck—making sure that those big muscles on either side of the spine and neck are relaxed as much as possible— the sides of the neck, the throat, the back of the skull, the top of the skull, the right ear, the left ear, the forehead, the temples, the eyebrows, the eyes and the eyelids, the cheeks, the nose, the upper lip, the lower lip, the chin, the tongue, and the inside of the mouth. A nd now I hold this all-body sensation. I am aware o f my body sitting in this chair. . . . M ind you, this method by which we learn the Collection is not necessarily the m ethod by which we will be doing it indefinitely. W e

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Questions and Answers Along the Way learn in a very step-by-step way because experience shows that unless you go over it like a list, you may easily kid yourself that you’re feel­ ing the different awarenesses of the body while not actually doing so. If you practice this diligendy, after a time you will come Much more quickly to the awareness of the whole physical- organism so that you don’t have to take time in going step by step as you do at the beginning. As soon as you can do it w ith confidence and not kid yourself that you are doing it, it is better to go as directly as you can to that quiet place in yourself where theretis room to receive all the different sensations, and stay there as steadily as you can.2

1 Q: For the five minutes of trying to relax and fill my body with sensation, I found it much different from the experience we had in the meeting, often losing my attention and M ying to go back. I don’t think I got further than my knees at any one time, and I was just surprised to find such a great difference. HBR: Yes, it’s not surprising actually} the only surprising feihgis that you imagine your attention to be so m uch under your control. In making any effort of this sort, we start w ith som ething in us which affirms. But then, this affirmation is m et by som ething that denies. Your own affirming force is n o t sufficient %> continue straight against the denial, and you don’t know yet how to bring a third force in here. If I take you through this exercise, then my affirming force is added to your affirming force, and so it may be possible to do it, although I’m sure m any people had difficulty last time we met in preventing their minds from w andering when we were going through this exercise. It’s like m any o ther things that one has not done before; if one is persistent, p atien t, faithful, it becomes easier. But the mind is very unstable, the m in d is flighty, the mind has to be tamed. Q: I also found that doing a Collection at n ig h t was easier for me because of the darkness. W hen m y eyes are open during the daytime, I find it very hard.

Collection

HBR: It is very difficult, and in this way one begins to see how one’s a tte n tio n is co n tin u ally caught th rough the long-distance senses, th at is, th ro u g h the ears and eyes. I rem em ber w hen I first began to discover this for myself. For instance, w alking dow n the street, my eyes were caught first by a pretty face an d th en by a display in a shop window and then by a brightly colored car and then by any kind o f writing p u t up any­ where at all. A n d I discovered that when m y eyes were caught in this way tw o things happened. First o f all, I was only aware o f a small portion o f the field o f vision, and second, the chances were that every im pression received th rough the eyes like this w ould begin to set up associations o f one kind or another in m y m ind, which came ju st by themselves, totally involuntarily. This seemed to m e to be a difficulty, because the way m y attention was con­ stantly caught th roug h m y eyes very effectively prevented me from being quiet inside at all and from having this silent witness present to w hat was going on in me. So it seem ed to m e th a t there was a possible way o f getting around this particu lar difficulty, w hich I thin k everyone finds, namely, th at if one could make an effort, w ithout straining, to be aware o f the whole field o f vision at once, then it was very unlikely that one w ould be so easily caught by a part o f it. And so I developed the technique that I call “wide-vision,” and perhaps, as we sit here now, we m ight ju st go through this exercise to see what it feels like. Sit up straig h t again and look straight ahead, and w ith o u t moving your eyes at all, be aware o f the floor, and you can probably see your hands on your knees (you can certainly see your knees) and then be aware o f th e ceiling and the lights, and then be aware as far to either side as you can w ithout moving your eyes. I recommend strongly th at instead o f the usual fashion o f looking in which you feel yourself, so to speak, in front o f your face, you feel yourself as though you were in the back o f your head, and the eyes are two great big windows letting in light. And see if you can see the whole field o f vision w ithout concentrating on any one part.

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Questions and Answers Along the Way But try this for. yourselves. It is a useful exercise because when one tries to do it, it cannot come by itself. You have to make ^con­ scious effort to do it. But if one is interested in preventing one’s attention from being constantly caught as it Is'n o w ,|i!|siIs a very useful exercise.3

You started by asking really why do we practice thi^sspecial effort we call Collection. I will remind you it has many different aspects. One aspect is that it shows us how difficult it is to produce quiet in our inner world, and if we cannot learn to produce quiet in our inner world, we shall never have any possibility-of peace in our lives. Through Collection one strengthens three psychological equiv­ alents to muscles that one will need to use when it^o rn es to | 1 | question of practical change in oneself. First o f all, whenever one practices?this Collection one must call upon whatever embryonic effort o f will one can, and so the affirming force of my will is faced w ith th e „denying force— all the distractions which try to take me away from my Collection. Secondly, I cannot attempt this Collection w ithout exercising, or trying to exercise, control over attention. A nd agdin, if I^cannot learn to control attention better, I have no possibility at all o f learn­ ing to become master in my own inner house. And third, by practicing this effort ^ C o lle c tio n , one becomes more familiar with the different levels o f consciousness in one. Ifs only by becoming familiar with the difference between a lower level of consciousness and something a little higher, an d w ishing toir approach more near the higher state, that one’s aim really becomes a living part of one. All these go into Collection.4

Collection We should be quite clear about the physical position in which the Collection is done, namely, to sit with the spine straight and the head balanced on top of the spine in the position in which minimum tension in any of the neck muscles is necessary. The gaze is straight forward but not.looking at anything. Feel as though you were in the back ofryour head and letting impressions come in through windows in front of your head. The first thing to do, and the most important, is to allow a part of your attention to flow into the silent witness, whose func­ tion is just to be aware and nothing else—no judgments, no inter­ ruptions—just to be ayrare. And this awareness is directed, not as if you’re pushing something out, but open to the sensations of the body, starting with the soles of the feet.; i ^Thoughts will arise in the mind. Don’t permit them to attract your attention in this exercise. You wish your mind to come to rest. If thoughts arise and you go against them or something like that, you are paying attention to them. Instead, pay attention to diese sensations of the body, which act as a counter-attraction to the pull on the attention of the thoughts that arise. . If, during the process of opening your attention to more and more of the body, you lose contact with the sensations of a part to which youfhave already opened yourself, then very quiedy, without any Impatience at all; just start again and make your way up. You may not, for the moment, get all the way through. O ne has a tendency, when one begins this work of paying attention to the sensations of the body, to be satisfied with a very superficial experience of those sensations. For example, when you have become able to open yourself to the sensations from all parts of your body at the same time, you are also aware of the beating of the heart. W hen the heart beats, it pushes blood through the arteries ftp the extremities where it must reach for the circulation. If you are very quiet and attentive, you can feel in your arteries this wave of pressure going out from the heart to the extremities. This sensa­ tion is there and being fed back constandy. This is an example to

7^

Questions and Answers Along the Way show how one must not be satisfied with a superficial awareness of the different sensations from the different parts of the body. There are many modes of bodily awareness. For instance, when you’re breathing normally, there is a difference in tempera­ ture between the air you breathe in and the air which comes out after being warmed in your lungs. You can be aware of this in the nose if you are paying real attention. The same is true with tensions. There are gross muscular ten­ sions in the face, which you can feel in clenching your jaw, as well as subde tensions in the litde muscles around the eyes. I remember when I was first studying the tensions in my body. I found again and again that before I could be confident that my face was really relaxed, I had to come back to it three or four times. It was like tak­ ing off a succession of masks. Later on, when we come to studying and practicing the way in which things can be changed in us, we will find that the way in which we normally go about changing things in ourselves ?is by direct attack, which is not very successful and may only lead' to exhaustion and frustration. Experience shows th at very often it’s much more effective to approach the process o f change in an indi­ rect fashion. To be able to do this, you have to have laid down a solid foundation of observation about the way in which behavior in one center ds connected with .behavior in another center. If you become impatient, your body becomes resdess; and to know exacdy the kinds of tensions and the kinds o f unnecessary movements that are set up in the body when you are impatient is an example of the fruits of observation. When we are sitting by ourselves in undistracted situations, we can, perhaps, come to this feeling of separation from this organism. We can feel ourselves in relation to this organism with its thoughts, its sensations, its emotions. It is difficult or impossible to do this in situations in life in which we have to be active, because we lose our­ selves in the associations that arise in the activity and cannot hold anything back to watch what is going on. Many o f the exercises I

74

Collection give you week by week are intended to help you, when you come to yourself, to stay with it a little longer.5

Q: I’m a little bit unsure of the goal of the Collection, in particular how this has to do with any kind of concentration or meditation. HBR: I’ve told you there are certain words that I try to avoid usingpefr some time with people. “God” is one, “love” as another, and “meditation” is_ another, because “meditation” is used in a thousand different senses. The object of this exercise rs manifold. It is first of all an exer­ cise in attention, in controlling attention. It. is an exercise in allow­ ing the m ind to come to rest. It is an exercise in becoming sensitive to the body, and this is important because where the body exhibits unnecessary tensions, these are normally connected with equally unnecessary tensions in other centers. You all know by this time how difficult it is to maintain a sense of yourself separate from your activities. If you continue to do these exercises, if you practice them, they will help you to maintain for a little longer this sense of yourself separate from your functions. But in the end you need to come to something which you can hang onto as a kind of lifeline, if you remember to do so, in all sorts of situations.- .This is a feeling of one’s physical presence, which one can come to feel whether one’s current activity is a physical activity or an intellectual activity. Whatever it is, one can come to feel one’s physical presence without this disturbing in any way the activity one is engaged in. *' This exercise is the beginning of quite a long series of steps which, if followed, can lead back to this sense of physical presence, which is something that most of us had naturally as children but which most of us have lost. We have come to live more and more progressively in our heads and out of touch with our bodies most of the time.

Questions and Answers Along the Way It is an exercise, as I say, in attention. It is an exercise in the silent witness, which is at a different level o f consciousness than the ordinary activity o f die centers. It is, at the same time, an exercise of will because there is resistance, there is difficulty, and so one cannot continue without exercising an embryonic am ount o f will. There are occasions on which some kind o f counter-attraction for the attention is used, b ut for the m om ent, in this particular exercise, the counter-attraction is opening yourself to the awareness o f physical sensations which takes attention away from thoughts that may arise in the head. T hey will arise; you can’t, for the moment at any rate, help their arising. But if you don’t pay atten­ tion to them, then they don’t normally lead into a chain o f associa­ tions which continues them. There is a story of the Egyptian monks in the desert where the abbot came into the cell o f one o f the monks and asked him how his prayer was going. The m onk said, “It is very difficult, Father, because random thoughts keep on arising and distracting m y atten­ tion.” The abbot looked at him and said, “C om e outside for a minute.” The monk followed the abbot outside the hut. T he abbot said, “Spread your arms wide, like this, and catch the w ind.” T he monk said, “I can’t do that.” “N o,” said the abbot, “no more than you can prevent thoughts from arising—b ut you don’t have to go with them.” Q: Sometimes I’ve used the counting exercise where we count back from eight to one. Is that advisable? HBR: For the moment, I’d rather you d id n ’t use a crutch like that. In a sense, all these exercises are crutches for a lame man, and o f course (it’s sort of an occupational hazard) one gets attached to certain exercises and then one tends to use the crutch for the leg, which the crutch was never intended for. But for the m om ent, I’d rather you didn’t use that kind o f counter-attraction for attention. Use this awareness of physical sensations alone. O f course, you need to be careful n o t to get lost in this. You need to remember all the time the necessity o f having the silent

C o lle ctio n

witness. You don’t want to become identified with all the different sensations from the body. You want to be sure that you who are aware are quite separate from those. If you make a real effort to be aware of all the sensations of the body, there is really no attention left over. The involuntary activity of the m ind that starts up, dies because there is no fuel for it to con­ tinue. Now, this doesn’t come at once. It only comes with practice. Q: I’m afraid that if I limit myself to five minutes, I’m liable not to finish the exercise. HBR; This may be quite true, b ut don’t worry about it. It doesn’t matter if you don’t go all the way through the exercise. Don’t be impatient w ith this. D on’t be disappointed or feel that you s h o u ld be able to do it. You’re trying to do something and it’s very diffi­ cult. It’s som ething totally unaccustomed. If you were trying to climb a difficult m ountain when you didn’t know anything about mountaineering, you wouldn’t be disappointed if you didn’t reach the top o f the m ountain, would you? You see, we have this voice in us that says, “If he is doing this, of course I should be able to do it.” That’s nonsense. If you will look carefully, you will see that most o f die time I say tr y to do something, and if you don’t succeed, then you try again. Everything comes with practice. I f you find some real kind of difficulty then we can discuss it, because having been through all this myself, I know most o f the difficulties that can arise—and I know that they will arise— b ut I don’t expect you to be successful. W hat is important is

HBR; H ow do your Collections go? W hat do you find? Q: It wasn’t clear to me. Was it to be five minutes of trying or five minutes o f success? HBR: Five m inutes o f trying, essentially. Q: I can sense up to about waist high and I have a great deal of difficulty getting feeling from there on up.

77

Questions and Answers Along the Way HBR: Well, the torso is not so richly endowed with sensory nerve endings. You may not get many impressions from it. But on the other hand, the whole torso is put into movement by breathing, and moreover, there is-a heart beating in the middle o f it, so there are plenty of sensations from there. It’s a question o f becoming able to widen one’s awareness and open to all the Sensations which are coming into your brain the whole time, whether you like it or not and whether you are aware of it or not. You don’t create the sensa­ tions by directing your attention to them— they’re already there. It’s a question of opening your awareness to them, but since one is not used to doing it, it is difficult at first. Q: I found that certain parts o f my body seem deadened to sensation. Certain parts I Could stay with, and other parts were very, very difficult to get. HBR: I think that most of us find, when we make this attempt to be open to all bodily sensations* that we have blind Spots. You see, the effort you’re doing now is jtist putting a toe in the water. When you begin to think of all the different modes o f bodily awareness, which are reporting the whole time to your brain, you will find that you’re just scratching the surface. You can go m uch deeper and open yourself to many more sensations than you are becoming aware of now. In general, if during this exercise you find blind spots, then in order to become more sensitive to the sensations from them, it helps to tense that part of the body on purpose and feel from inside what it feels like. Hold it for a certain time until you can really feel what it feels like. Tense it as much as you can and then let go and feel the difference in sensation from the tense state to the relaxed state. Q: Sometimes I feel a pulsating through my body $hat mms freely until it comes up to my neck, and I feel as though I had a block. HBR: I understand very well. People experience this sometimes and it is because there is a kind of block there. There is no easy way to express what is necessary to do, but something has to let go that doesn’t let go now, and it will include the head.

Collection Q: W hen one begins to §qrt of fall asleep at the end o f a Collection— HBR: At the end of Collection? Q: j you see, when one comes to this time which one sets aside for collecting, if you can learn to do it, this is the prime necessity: to let fall away, like feathers from a molting bird, everything to do with personality, everything normally felt as “I”— just to let it fell away. And one can do this only if one directs one’s attention to this central, deepest place to which something in one knows the way. To each of us it may be different, but for each of us it is the deepest that we know. T he closest to God, if you like, that we know. Q: A t times, I’ve been puzzled about methods of deepening because often it seems to me that the deepening doesn’t depend on me. It depends on how I start, the kind of state I’m in. HBR: Naturally one’s capacity is determined to a certain extent by the state one is in w hen one begins to make this kind of inner movement. O ne can do nothing about the spectrum of energy that one brings to this m om ent because it is historically determined. In the time since the last Collection (or any time you like to choose as a base, so to speak, in the past) the organism has taken in raw mate­ rial by way o f food, drink, air, and impressions. And these have been subjected to various kinds o f digesting or refining processes in the organism as a result o f which certain energies of different types and levels have been produced. At the same time, the way we live our lives determines the way our energies are spent, and it’s the bal­ ance between the production and the spending that absolutely, mathematically determines w hat energy we have available at any time and what we have, in particular, when we come to the time we set aside for Collection. N othing on G od’s earth at that moment can increase that store. At the same tim e, we know from our own experience if, in that time, we are able to let things fell away, to be without strain,

85

Q u e s tio n s a n d A n s w e r s A l o n g th e

Way

to be open, to be receptive, then it is possible to receive energy of a higher level. Again, this mysterious som ething th at comes alive in us in these moments is, in our experience, connected w ith a source o f energy to which we normally, in other states, do not have access. A nd indeed, it feels, in this state, that one is receiving a gift. And one is receiving a gift. But one’s own part is to make oneself open, empty, receptive so that there is room in one to receive this gift. So long as we are full o f the ordinary turm oil— the thoughts, the feelings, the emotions, and so forth-—th a t fill our inner life, there is no room to receive something from a higher source. It is only by quieting this turmoil, by making room, th at there is space enough left to receive. You see, it is n o t a question o f attaining something, achieving som ething, grasping som ething. So often, with every good intention, we make some kind o f effort to grasp something, and this is not the right effort to make. T he effort is to be open, to be receptive, to be empty. This silence we experience together or by ourselves— this is not an empty silence. But as we know, it is filled w ith life. A nd beyond that, the Void, as the Indians call it, the big emptiness, if you like, which contains not only us but all that sequence o f expanding hori­ zons. W e are, as it were, a tiny drop in the ocean o f this emptiness. You see, to make ourselves empty, then the dew drop is received into the ocean.13 ❖ I have spoken to you on many occasions in the past about the silence which you may be able to approach during Collection, the silence which is sensed with the inner ear, which is n o t dependent on cessation o f sound, either external or internal, b u t which is direcdy sensed whether sound is there or not. A nd I have spoken to you o f the wordless, direct sense o f physical presence which is not the awareness of any particular sensation, b u t o f w hat lies behind that— the very ground o f one’s life and being. T his is an experience that one can come to if one pays attention to the physical awareness

Collection of the body. This experience compares in a completely analogous way to the way in which the silence lies behind sound. These are the points of contact w ith that other dimension in which the naked experience of being lies.14

This silence is something that is present all the time. It is the normally unheard background against which we hear noise, just like the screen against which we see the movie. We see the alternation of light and dark w ithout normally seeing the screen. When we think about silence in the ordinary way, we think of the cessation of noise; but this silencefjs jquite different. It is in another dimension. It is riöt, äs you m ust have experienced, just an absence of noise or sound; because it is a living silence.. And, you see, our ordinary lives are filled with experiences that are experienced in time and space, and the reason w hy we interpret experiences in terms of time is because they change. If nothing changes, we have no measure of the passage o f time at all. A nd if one makes contact with this living silence, there is rtö change, and so this silence is not of the world which is limited by tim e.15

Q: H ow can we come to Collections with the best attitude? My own attitude varies a great deal, and it seems to me that the quality of my Collections is related to this. HBR: I have spoken to you before about impressions from differ­ ent levels. From one point of view, when we approach a Collection, we seek some kind o f impressions of a higher level. We seek to be open to an influence which may play upon us day and night, but to which we are open only if we make the conscious effort to be open to it for a long time— until we have developed something in us that is open to it naturally and no longer in the same way requires a con­ stant and continuous effort. Now, this is a kind of food and a very, very necessary food, and if we feel it to be such, we come to the

Questions and Answers A long the Way

tim e w hen we seek it w ith a real hunger. A nd this is w hat we need to approach our Collections with. B ut we will n o t do so until we have had the experience o f being fed in this way, and we will not have that experience so long as our m inds are like cages with rats running round in them. I have suggested, in connection w ith one’s Collections, several things. I have suggested that one make an inner effort— one can only do this, o f course, if one has previously taken the unnecessary tensions out o f one’s muscles— an inner effort analogous to making the whole organism a kind o f ear that is listening. B ut n o t listening to noise— listening for silence. T hen one has the experience o f one’s outer ears hearing whatever noise is going o n outside, and inside being aware o f the noises o f the life o f the body like the heartbeat, the breathing, and any words th at start up in the head— while at the same time being clearly and cleanly aware o f the silence behind all these sounds. I f you do th at and th e th ru st o f y o u r a tte n tio n is on the silence, then you are n o t distracted by the noise (the outer noise or the inner noise), and the monkeys can chatter. I t’s nothing to do with you. You are engaged w ith yourself at a m uch deeper level. T he surface o f the w ater can be ruffled w ith waves, b u t down below, down below is n o t affected at all by these surface waves. You see, we reach, as we learn to practice our Collections, dif­ ferent levels. W e can already make the body quiet, b u t then if we’re n ot careful our sense o f ourselves can slip into this awareness of the body, and we lose the pure naked experience o f existence separate from the body. If we can reach the silence, and the life o f the silence in us, then we are at one o f the gateways th at lead from time to eter­ nity, from space to emptiness, from activity taken as life to life itself. At first, o f course, we can only do this w ith great difficulty. If we practice, it becomes easier, until we can n o t only have that con­ tact as a result o f this very direct, undistracted effort, b u t can also m aintain that contact, at first in simple activities, and later in the more complicated activities o f life.

Collection But we m ust not forget that the possibility we have when we come to do a C ollection is n o t determined by our wish alone, because our Afflll III flic e/fll «//l/f f^(m;4 |f|ir ff it z d lß IO I/* d ll P l l d i l l l * Y ßl'dUP lUl 4*-'M4*- il dii. I h * only ihiitfg i h d t if/*/// 41114* u rl?/if /1t * y a t * (fünf1 f m -i

pilff/OV-.. II lof .ä IhtilhKhl

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U4*l*44 taskypu set foF us last week, I fornd t m f « O Ä to thinik about a particular aspect of my inner fseeMsilllhe a simple ifhfeg, llaitit it wasidSlfoA,,arid applying it to my HUreMas^even more difficult. HBR; I’m sure other people came up against this same kind of difl 0Ült|, 1' 1® (carry i©iut this task mean's that one has to think clearly a n ife :M®re fham 'two minifies, and ©ne finds out how very difficult this is! f ©Giäl'ibiälk to tfes » a n y tiaares:: 'that thinking plays an essenitikL*part in our> w d i^ o fi self-studv— coming to know ourselves— .iMMt work of self-change. It is not the whole of our work by any mefähs, hilf it is an essential part. Unfortunately for most of us, the Jmr^ jllfd'iise w reason and the power which goes very closely with ifofdeveloping one’s criticalTäculty,’ one’s judgment, is not really a .'Sjl|e0t^®f our 'education. So we need to practice thinking if it is to beeöme forlus the useful and invaluable tool that it can be in our work. Thinking is som ething that one has to learn. One forgets that one had to learn to walk. O ne did. And if you watch a baby learn% ito; walk, yoiiii see th a t it isn’t just a question of wishing to walk—it’s a question o f m uch m ore than that, There are many ways ifl which one can start thinking. In Views from the Real World\

201

Questions and Answers Along the Way Gurdjieff sets out ten different aspects o f a subject you can start thinking about. But very often the simple way is to start with your subject and allow your mind to associate about it and jot down ail the associations that come. And then you get those into some kind of order to see who it is in you that has these different associations with that subject. You will not get very far in clear and directed thinking unless you are quite clear where you want to arrive, because in the absence of this you don’t have a compass by which you can direct your thinking, by which you can distinguish between the mental associa­ tions which help you towards the point you wish to reach and those which take you away from it. Some associations may be very inter­ esting in themselves but don’t take your thought in the direction you want to move. Although maybe some of us realize th at to keep the body in good shape one has to keep it exercised to a certain degree, we don’t have the same feeling about the m ind, which also needs exercise. And as with other faculties, the more you exercise the mind, the easier it becomes to exercise. Again, you invest a certain amount of time and trouble in getting it to work, b ut once you have made the investment, you’ve got a tool which can w ork for you in a very sat­ isfactory fashion. So this is something I have to come back to again and again because I find that people don’t take it seriously. Some people spend a lot of time thinking about the diet they feed into their bod­ ies, how important it is not to eat the w rong food but to eat the right food. Who is really concerned about w hat sort o f food is fed into the mind and how it is digested?3

Q: I feel as though my m oving center has been fairly well trained, but my intellectual center is very unwilling. HBR: How long did it take to make your body obedient? You can’t expect to make your mind obedient in three months.

202

Thinking and Understanding Q: I think it started w ith taking care of children. Later, I trained myself to be a potter, and that was because I wanted to. HBR; What is common here is that you had an aim—an aim in the first place which was imposed on you by the fact of becoming a mother, and an aim in the second place which you set up for your­ self because you wanted something. Now there’s a lesson in that as to how to approach training the mind. First, know your m ind as it is; know what its habits are. You’ll find that your m ind works perfectly well if you are really interested in something that requires the work o f the mind. This is another due, because willingness and unwillingness are closely associated with interest. There’s a part o f you that is interested in taming your mind and making it a good servant. O ther parts of you are lazy or just don’t care one way or the other. Now, we have to be clear for ourselves what is the right func­ tion of mind. W hat kinds o f questions can it answer, and what kinds of questions can it n o t answer? Because if you feel that the mind is capable o f answering all questions, you make a mistake. Some people feel th at way. It’s n o t so. T he mind is not capable of answering all questions, or even understanding all questions. Ouspensky would sometimes give us as an exercise to list ten ques­ tions the mind cannot answer. You see, you really need to under­ stand for yourselves w hat are th e right functions o f the mind, because the m ind is an extremely useful tool, which we need to make our servant just as m uch as the body. And if the mind doesn’t work right, it makes our whole w ork much more difficult. There’s an old story about St, A nthony having dinner with a number of the brethren w hen the question came up: Which is the prince of virtues? Some o f the m onks suggested that prayer was the prince of virtues, some suggested that it was fasting, and they pro­ duced a number o f different virtues that they said could be regarded as the prince of virtues. B ut w hen they had gone around the table, St, Anthony said, “You’re none o f you right. W e have seen people who developed each o f the virtues you speak of and nonetheless fell.

Questions and Answers A long the Way The prince of virtues is right discrim ination, w hich tells you exactly how much.” You see, right discrim ination is th e in n er right equivalent of criticism, either o f oneself or o f others. R ight discrimination puts you right when your formatory apparatus thinks in opposites. Right discrimination sees that it’s n o t as sim ple as th at, n o t so simple as yes and no, not so simple as black an d w h ite .4

Q: One o f the things I noticed in try in g to th in k about some­ thing was that it was virtually im possible to do it. I would plan or sketch out an idea for a building, for exam ple, a n d th e next thing 1 knew I was in my glory, m y im p o rtan ce, b ein g draw n right into the middle o f a daydream, an d it was im possible to th in k . HBR: You know, one o f th e illusions w e have a b o u t ourselves that I haven’t yet m entioned— a n d y o u w ill p ro b ab ly all be quite insult­ ed when I do m en tio n it- —is th a t w e d o n ’t k n o w how to think. W e’ve n ot been tau g h t really h o w to th in k . T hinking needs various elem ents fo r it to b e right. It’s interest­ ing to ask oneself w h at th e elem en ts o f rig h t th in k in g are. Righ thinking is th e tru e fu n c tio n o f th e m in d , b u t y o u need to ask “H ow can the m in d exercise th a t fu n c tio n in its p ro p e r way?” Mos o f the tim e, o f course, th o u g h ts a rise in u s a n d flo a t across th mind. B ut it’s very in terestin g to discuss w ith o n eself w hat is real required for rig h t th in k in g , n o t ju s t m i n d w a n d e rin g , b u t tru right thinking. I leave th a t w ith y o u to p o n d e r fo r yourselves.

If you have a problem , for instance, what is the right way think about it? If you have a problem , o f course, thoughts go on the time— maybe you can’t stop th e m a t all— but this is not int tional conscious thinking ab o u t th e p roblem . In one respect, mind is quite like a com puter: th e result dep en d s o n th e input. example, when one faces a problem th a t requires a solution of s kind and when one is trying to exercise th e m in d to find the tion, one has to think, “What is th e in p u t, so to speak, whic

Thinking and Understanding internal computer is working on?” If the input is garbage, then the

output will also be garbage. Sometime this week try to sit down with pencil and paper and work out for yourselves w hat are the requisite elements in right thinking. Ponder also the right place of mental association in right thinking. Ponder also its connection with attention.5

Q: This week I discovered that, contrary to my opinion of myself as being a great objective thinker, seeing all the shades of gray, on a number o f occasions I did use absolute terms like “every­ body” and “always.” HBR: You know, one has to become familiar with the kind of thinking which we call “formatory.” It’s the thinking of the lowest part of the intellectual center. It is said o f that kind of thinking that it can’t:Count beyond two. It always thinks in terms of opposites: blackor white, good or bad. So when you find yourself speaking in absolutes, try to rein the horses in a bit and let other people speak. If you can remember, it’s good afterwards to ask yourself w hether your absolute statements can really stand up to scrutiny, and again ask yourself why it felt important to make these absolute statements so forcefully.6 ❖

For certain purposes, the form atory center is a very useful tool. It has been called the filing clerk—-it has everything filed away like this. But you don’t ask the filing clerk to make policy decisions— it’s not the job of a filing clerk. You don’t ask a filing clerk to make decisions at all; a clerk works under routine rules and regulations. Now, it’s not useful to run dow n the formatory center; we couldn’t possibly do without it. It’s an extremely useful apparatus, but it is not suited to make decisions. Q? I thought it was a bad center. HBR: No, no, form atory center is n ot bad, but it’s used badly.

Questions and Answers Along the Way And if one entrusts .decision-making to the formatory center, 0|le will make many wrong decisions. One has to learn to think rightly And of course, as with all other centers, this is partly a question of the state of the attention. Attention is absolutely necessary. The f0r. matory center often works with very little attention.7

Because one has been taught that the right way for the mind to work is by logical chains o f thought, one doesn’t normally realize that this iS: h^ the m in d can work, and that the approximations o ftru th ^ tliato n ecaii reach along the lines of logic are very, very limited; There axe all kinds o f questions that cannot be answered by logic. When you consider the approach ok|cience, you find that sci­ ence directs its attention towards answering the question of how things happen. It doesn’t really— and w ith its methods it cannot— try to answer the question u>hy things happen as they do. Because iojgic will not take yqiFfb that’answer, except in terms of a “further how,” looking further back, sqftö speak, to how things happen at a more fundamental level. And älso logic can never answer the ques­ tion of what thifigs are in any ultimate sense. . Logic Sismäsed on certaiMaxioms or assumptions that are taken for granted, on which' the whole structure o f scientific knowledge is ■mum but these aren’t normallWquestiphed, and peopliftfM^^ ^ they are no more than assumptions.-Now this is not to say that sci­ ence is not extremely useful, provid!ed you don’t ask it to do more than it can possibly do. Logical thinking is a wonderful tool, but it is a tool that cam be used by Hitler, as. well as by (3hnst.\It’s aswofa with two .edges.8 ^

Q: I believe I think more in pictures than in foold&Är HBR: Yoit see, we often confuse the process- o f thought with the pronunciation o f inner words] we often confUselanguage wffl

206

Thinking and Understanding dmugprö,, ß'ut if you begin to think about it, before you say anytiling,; the meaning of what you are going to say must be present to you1,'»öd this meaning is not necessarily in words at all. It maybe in pictures, it may be neither in words nor in pictures. But most peo­ ple make nn distinction between the inner experience of the mean­ ing,4aey wish to. convey by words and the words they speak. They aie fuite unaware of the fact that before they speak, there is alre’ady •f^^ p ih 1,the mind an intention to express a meaning. Now this doesn’t apply to all speaking, because some speaking isjust like a monkey chattering— it has no meaning behind it at all. Bn^ffiffiipmdmary way when one. speaksTsome process» goes on pefimpn^ayskwords: that is,-a nonverbal prpdgss in which a meanllwSisiptpteffi-to one which is||®ing to be expres^d^through pn«^, ?w^d^om02of vou who hM ef^ritten poetry mus.t surely have had j ^ ^ ^ ^ nenge ^ah^when; One is w ritingj^etryf a meaning wishes «1? aftKäfitSell stEUgedes;to expxps itselhsomehow, jpsit you may not a long time. But theia|idfy^ youm eed ;f öisnäeet^| demanding occasipn when ictarises, I^But^onefoTgets tm ^ p n e. th in l^ m E ^ ^ m t-m a tte r. How qfj&y does ä voice&sawdnon, or ftfet fe e i n g arise., th at it doesn’t matter ju st this once! I t always m at© ® . N o th in g th a t we do, and npthing; that we don’t 1| | when w&’tjrould,' can fail to have future,: on the future o f our- M e. T h is is t h f essence o f the idea of .karma. Everything must have ii^ tffect. No^^^^^i-Unsplllfcm ilk.9

When we start examining the em otional side o f o® life, we'carb see that outbursts of anger are like explpsipnfhjf pfiergy. But whätrw| often overlook is that, if we examine carefully, if we are honest mim I Matthew 25:1-13 K -

218

Energy

ourselyesf we often fin d th a t o u r day is filled w ith little passing impatiences;, irritations, anxieties. T h ey are here and gone. But when they are here, th e y ta k e a bite o u t o f the bank account o f energy. '•i^u.^i^vremerciber ho w it is said th at because we are so profli^ ^ ^ffi^ h u fien erg y ,: because w e d o n ’t save an d accumulate our g t i j i and because it is n o t tran sm u ted in to 'fin er energy in our bote, that if we go o n this w ay w e should certainly, as Gurdjieff saysMelik e ^ ^ |;-^ p e ris h like a dog rather th an dying like a m an— beclcts^ye .shall h o t have fabricated inside ourselves th e necessary liD Ä ^ |^ h ie h carr'survive.10

Q:

i i ^ f e e l i f i g th a t som ething feels very invigorated by feel-

• H M ^ f e e h t e e i^ p ^ Q ^ one ffeelf very flive* N o question about slrdngly in ofjpf. B u t öftepursej w hat one ^ M l i P f e e l i h g W th e ^ x p e n d if i f f '# t h e u seles^expenditure, o f M S B l ^ ^ ^ g y ^ T h is fe w ha^gjyBsijth e feeling o f life. B u t l f s n o t What you’ve ju s t said confuses me. D o y o u feel less ahve p ^ ^ f t l d n ’t spend thisVenergy? W h a tis this “m ore feeling ahve” w^ p ^ ^ expend the^energy? life. Wken m an was n o t surro u n d ed , as w e are, by all th e appury ^ ^ ^ ^ ra v ih z a tio i^ ih e 'W a s in a situation w here he h ad constant. 'I'.lifee otMie alert against’vefy real physical dangers to his survival. ; /fe l.s l®er# ie¥di©|)ei in h im th is capacity, w hen faced w ith a real ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ b o h i e im niediately ready to fight or to ru n away. T oday ; Ä ii:4 ^^1 y .!Ee|:eitedi by th e- release o f adrenalin into th e bloodwMch makes all th e m uscles ready for a great deal o f very lilts fat w§A,i^Tlfis i ^ to tally fu n c tio n a l in a situation in w hich p i ire laGed w&th real physical danger, w h ich y o u either have to | get;away from , b u t it is to tally in ap p ro p riate w hen you are ; siy* a verbal in su lt, o r in m an y o th er situations w here | teteio® i«. anger. I t is in a p p ro p ria te because th e situation in

219

Q uestions a n d A rm oers A lo n g th e W ay

which I am angry doesn't require that I knock somebody down. It doesn’t require anger, but I am angry. So you see, the moment the anger is triggered off, the system is simultaneously flooded with adrenalin, and every time this happens your life is shortened by a matter of hours or days. This energy has been released as the result o f your anger and has therefore depleted your store o f energy, and once it’s released, it’s got to be used one way or another. Now, it is perfeedy true that when one knows how, it becomes possible—when this energy is released, and you know what is happening in you—to divert the energy to a useful purpose. Are you familiar w ith Kipling’s Just So Stories? Do you remember the story entitled “How the Camel Got His Hump”? At the end o f that story there is a nice litde verse which is about the "Cameelious hum p,” and it has very good advice for what to do when you get the "Cameelious hum p.” You should read it and find out. But you see, when you have this feeling o f the body being full of energy, if you can avoid falling into the trap of letting all this energy go into the explosion o f anger, you can use it for other pur­ poses. You can scrub the kitchen floor w ith iti that is much more useful than “scrubbing” somebody else. You can use it to do some of the things you have been putting off doing. There are many use­ ful purposes to which it can be diverted. A nd if there is nothing at all to which you can divert it, then it is really better, as soon as you can, to get by yourself where you cannot do any harm to anybody else and then consciously, intentionally, w ithout being identified, to act it out. In this way you can avoid the enormous tension which comes when you simply suppress the anger.11

We must try to live our lives like p rudent merchants, prudent merchants of our scarce resources, who d o n ’t waste money, but who use it to the best effect, that’s all.

220

Energy Let me remind you o f something you have read and heard which may not come back very often to yout mind, namely, that the raw material that we take in from outside into our organism is all we have to create the energies by which we live. But let me also remind you that it is said that in the ordinary way this process can produce a surplus over and above what is necessary to keep this organism alive and to m aintain it for the ordinary activities required to meet the daily rounds o f life. T hat surplus, if it exists, can be available for further transformation. N o t that it will be transformed just by the process o f nature—we have to take a hand in it. That is what our work is about. A nd if it is transformed, then several effects comefrom that. In the first place, it is possible that the quality of the different kinds of vibrations we ingest from outside can improve. Remember reading how the air we breathe is a part of our vital food, and how it contains many subtle substances that we normally just breathe out again because we haven’t got in us the subtle substances with which to receive them . The other thing th at we are told is that the second body and the third body are material, just as the planetary body, but of a sub­ tler material. A nd w here does this come from? It can only come fromthe surplus o f energy over and above what is needed to get the organism through th e day. W e forget this. W e’ve read it, we’ve been told it, but we forget it. I t isn’t until the surplus of subtle mat­ ter has saturated the whole organism that it can begin, if more is produced, to crystallize out, and th at is the way the second body is formed. But you have to have th e energy to form it, the matter to f e i lt. And you see, w hen you talk about self-remembering, when you tty to dunk about w hat th at actually means to you, your possi­ bilities are absolutely lim ited depending on the energies you have available. More energy, m ore subtle energy— more possibilities; vdtnout it, no more possibilities. I t’s very simple. It's a chemical formula. So, bear all th at in m ind.12 ❖

Questions and Answers Along the Way

When, later on, we come to study the Enneagram, which is a symbol of a certain kind of living entity, which is complete in a cer­ tain way, you will see that in addition to the six-sided figure inside of the circle, there is a triangle drawn at points three, six, and nine, Now, tills triangle symbolizes the three ways in which we are sub­ ject to influences coming from outside. We depend on influences coming from outside for our life. We couldn't live without them. We call them the three foods, and one o f those foods is a food called impressions. If that food stopped, we would cease to live. So we are constantly the recipients of influences from outside. Again, you have to go back and study the Food Table, which says how the inner alchemy works by which the various energies in the organism are transformed and refined in various ways, in order to take, as the alchemist says, “the fine out o f the coarse,” The coarse is eliminated and the fine remains. And you will see from the study of die Food Table how far this process goes in die absence of any conscious work on oneself and how, if one remembers oneself and gives oneself what is called the “first conscious shock,” certain processes of refinement of energies can go furdicr and how, if one learns how to give oneself the “second conscious shock,” they can again go furdier. Now, our power to receive influences is determined by how far these internal energy transformational processes have gone in us and whedier die fine, or subde, matters resulting from those trans­ formational processes have crystallized in us, have become perma­ nent in us, It’s as though we were some kind of radio or television set which is only capable of being tuned to certain programs, If you change the set in a certain way, enlarge the spectrum of vibrations to which it responds, dien it can receive more programs, Now, diis you have to connect to what Gurdjieff said about our living on this planet, at this point in die Ray o f Creation, under the influence of many different laws. And certainly when you think about laws In this connection, you have to thinks about what limits our freedom of action, what limits our freedom o f choice. There is

Energy no difficulty, of course, in finding out by your own self-observation chat, very often your freedom of choice is extremely limited. , But he went on to say that if we wish to make ourselves free from these hindrances by which we find ourselves bound, then it can only be done by making ourselves open to influences that come from'a higher level in the universe. But in order to receive these OgH influences, which can be thought of as impressions of a cer­ tain kind, a very subtle kind of food, we have to have something in l&hich.can resonate to those higher vibrations. ..Whether we have this in us or not depends on our work on owselVes, because when it’s said that man is a microcosm of the macrocosm, one must be quite clear in one’s own mind that this does not apply to you and me. It applies to a man who has devel­ oped all his capacities. So people like ourselves are pardy analogous to 4 e macrocosm but n ot wholly. W e are analogous in the sense ,fatwe..can see the same laws active in our lives as we can see in the ™M'outside.13

Mow, on the question of sex energy, I advise you to go back to k 'iewS M iraculous and see what is written about this. But I would mmmd you o f two things here which, if you wish not to waste Afe very precious energy— the highest product of the food QtfayC,’die -highest energy that is normally produced in the organl$ifi%then ypU m ust at all costs try to remember. The first is to M m sing this very precious energy to fuel unnecessary excitement arid; vehemence, because this is where it is wasted more than any­ where else; and, of course, the other great waste of sex energy is in imagination. T te ls one o f the im m ature things that we need to work against. And you will never w ork against it unless you have some:Ä g ready to put in its place» and wish to put that something in its phce more than you wish to be led mechanically by your sexual

5®ghutlon.H

Questions and Answers Along the Way

Quite apart from anything else, of course, when one is lost in erotic daydreams, one is taken away from here and now and unable to respond with full attention to the events o f one’s life. One has to find one’s own way, but what is quite clear for people who begin to see this in themselves and wish to escape from its domination of their inner life, is that it is Unsuccessful and likely to be quite frus­ trating if you just try to make your m ind blank. It doesn’t stay blank. So this is not the way to deal with this kind o f daydream. The old Desert Fathers in Egypt likened the mind to a grain mill, and they said if you don’t p u t good grain into it, it will grind chaff. So one has to find for oneself something to substitute and have it already prepared, and then remember it, and then substitute It. But in order to do this, o f course, at the m om ent the daydream arises, there has to be present in you something that wants to sub­ stitute whatever you have prepared in place o f this daydream. You have to be not entirely sucked along in your enjoyment and indul­ gence. It’s not easy. But it% quite useless at this moment to talk about controlling sexual energy because when it is active in you, it is more powerful than anything that you can bring against it. You must understand that the organism is naturally designed to produce a number o f different grades o f energy, and each of these grades of energy is designed to be used to fuel a certain kind of function. At the same time, unfortunately for us, very often our energies are used in wrong ways. In particular, sexual energy, which is a very high and subtle form o f energy, is used to power certain manifestations o f the emotional center. A nd the type of manifesta­ tions that one can see quite clearly are fueled by the energy that should properly fuel the sex center are all kinds o f unnecessary excitement, vehemence, or fanaticism. It is interesting to think to oneself, “What kinds o f things do I get excited about, and is this excitement really justified by the thing in question?” So try to bear in m ind that the kind o f emotional manifesta­ tion which is marked by unnecessary degrees o f excitement or vehe-

224

Energy juence is again using up this very precious, very subtle energy that one has inside oneself. A n d if it is used up in that way, the universal lawis that it cannot be used in an o th er way. . U nfortunately, m o s t p eo p le go th ro u g h life w ithout ever knowing normal sexual activity— I say “norm al” here in the sense of what it is 5designed to be. T h e sex center can never w ork as it is designed to w ork except w h en all th e oth er centers are working in perfect harmony. I f ju s t o n e o f those centers is o u t o f harm ony, then it is impossible for th e sex center to w ork as it is designed to do. This is one reason, o f course, w hy m any people are disappointed with their sex experience, because th e y expect som ething th a t is quite Impossible.15

When we w ork, w e save certain kinds o f energy, and we pro­ duce certain kinds o f energy th a t w o u ld n ’t otherwise be produced irt the organism. N ow , this is all to th e good. B u t the question is, How is that energy spent? Is it ju s t spent, o r is it accumulated? Is it further refined? If you think o f th is in relatio n to th e possibility o f developing a second body, this depends en tirely o n th e right k ind o f materiality for that second bo d y b ein g p ro d u c e d . N o w , this substance can be produced by w ork, a n d if it is p ro d u c e d by w o rk in a certain quan­ tity, the organism becom es satu rate d . I f m ore is produced, some o f this higher energy crystallizes o u t in th e organism . It can only crys­ tallize out from a satu rated state. T h is is o n e possibility. T h e other possibility would be to p ro d u c e th is very high energy, and then, if we forget ourselves or so m eb o d y treads o n o u r corns, we have an extra-super-charged b u rst o f anger. A n d w h a t’s the p o in t o f th a t?16

A seed is planted in th e earth . I t consists o f a husk, som e food, and a tiny germ. N o w th e su n is sh in in g above. T h is germ feels th at sun and strives tow ards it. A sh o o t appears and gradually makes its

MS

Questions and Answers Along the Way way through the resistance of the earth, around stones in its way, towards the sun. In doing so, it is preparing to be a tree or a plant, This tree or plant in turn gives back. Its leaves fall to the ground and become humus. Its seeds in due course may fall and become other plants. It is part of a process, and in order to fulfill this process, it needs to draw energy from many different levels: from the soil beneath, from the water that comes down, from the air, and from the sun. All these different levels of energy come into it and are combined in it in different ways to form what it is. Man is like this. We take part, by virtue of being human, in this interchange of substances with the rest of the universe. By our being, we have to do that. Our choice is whether we do it in a rather stunted way, drawing our energy only from the ordinary sources, or whether we do it in a more balanced and complete way, in which we also draw energy from higher sources. Whether we’re doing it for ourselves or for others becomes a very tricky kind of question, because it has to be both. It has to be both. You see, the condition of receiving is that we have to give. If we try to receive without giving, something is bound to turn sour. It cannot be otherwise. But it is our choice whether we only receive, as it were, on the level of the thinking animal or whether we receive those substances befitting a man. This is our choice.17

226

14 Impressions

You know how Gurdjieff spoke about the human being need­ ing three kinds of food— ordinary food and drink, air, and impres­ sions—and how one can do w ithout ordinary food and drink for quite a long time, w ithout air for a few minutes, without impres­ sions not at all. O ne w ould immediately be dead if one were deprived of all impressions; this is the most essential food. There is a whole science of impressions— a whole way to learn what is good food and what is bad food, what to do when one is assailed by impressions one doesn’t want to be affected by and how to cope with this situation, how to seek the impressions and open oneself to the impressions that one does want to take in as food, and how to digest them when they are taken in. It would be useful tot you to refresh your memory about what is said about impres­ sions. For instance, it is connected with the idea of the alchemists chat to make gold you must have gold. Think what this means.1

The word “im pressions” comes from the Latin word that means to tread on something. Impressions are what make imprints on our various centers and may be of many different kinds. We need to distinguish between the actual impression and what hap­ pens to it after it comes in. But we have to try to see that we don't

227

’Questions and Answers Along the Way impressions. We d im t react to things outside and the impassions w e receive to r n them. Before we imp'iLe§siphsrSome meaning, and we react Ithis interpretation of impressions Occurs ^ f u ^ y ^ a ^ e ^ n ^ ^ K z f e that it has happened at all. If thto|^ihariT^Someone who m certain he wou^lnt know s ^ h |^ ^ ^ . l H e ^ ^ c l n '^ h ^ , anything t||||o n n e c t it to. A teacup i. *tofakes an certain certain jslpltffaud^o ^ ^ ^ n ^ h i lfiusnnen^taken'iri^pd^interpreted. ^pdefsltand? I Youiranlt imagine hoVv^compiie^^this^prAeess^ of interpretag n ^ j ^Buhwhen-a person- wJfoijjil^i^n« blind fro'mcbirth first sees, and cm ^ s f a n |p l!^ ^ ||lh d ?döes‘n^t always see thing. tre see thifigg^Ba^ te a a BSBmpyeSeparate. Look of I l f i ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ p d i i e e ^ l a n e s meet: We interthat all of the ^aifgies arÖ^i|hfe|ngJ^But a man born blind, w hen he first sight, cannot (fistmguishiike this. TAsIllsaid/^u have npddeaVof^tlfe ^complexity of thisprocessiOf interpretation of d m p r^^^^l^vhich *goes on the. whole time. We -take ifiall for,granted, on before,anyl hing.wlii^nfisi l orought tp: n^^ ^ ^ i!M ^m s^i@ l^kv^eäM ng^ömethihg> c p illp i diaye-*meaning ifiv^ cöri^^ ^ ^ with som^hirfg in our previous expemehcfe ■and ^ a ^ t v ^ a ^ ^ ^ ^ m e a n in g -for üs. Think about it. |If4sj| to the meanihg^hat we ^ ^ ^ a ^ ^ ^heHriam^sion ^ a l l . ^ S

MahY^^^ S I^PW Vetf pxe^m ^ true itfE-s that i n |||^ ^ f f i a ^ food, and that this food QÄ be nutrMptis or it can be poisonous. And we canMigest- this food that needs: to ibe digested, you see, and because we are not used to it, we Bi^ ^ tte n jjm ih k in th a t way. B ut we need to think precisely in In one o f his recorded conversations, Gurdjieff emphasized •^ ^ rn ^ m tl^ h e e d to keep the,rolls o f the centers pure. This has. to io 'exaedy W ih the kind o f impressions one allows in and allows to ^^^M fcpiAwill each .find, jif| you examine this carefully, that you B M B feof you thafe fascinated by certain kinds o f impressions ^Mlfflledsarid increase elem ents in your psyche that you certainly

^^^M gets'?usedirto receiving impressions and gradually takes less Ktnpl^^^mieSQfethem. I f y o ralp o k bacb t o ^ ^ r^ c h ild h o o d when Bf33E|M^ f ime voulsavy,- foh instance, a rabbit or a horse, you really im p^^ ro n j^ t th a t tim e. B ut after having seen a certain horpffipr^rabbits, it’s ju st another horse or just another impression at all because it gets vroM^ted auitendconsciouslv to a label, and you very rapidly rec: and:lä]f)Mvit4e6Ördingly— an d th at’s that. to m ake is to w alk dow n a street H fiffl^uitetfam iliar an d try to feel äs tho u g h you had never seen fe hllbieä.. you h ad never seen th e houses before, you had IlwgEfeil ire cars before, y o u h a d never seen the people before— as: If ^everything w ere en tire ly n ew a n d fresh. I t’s an interesting « p l M £ » malte, very difficult. I once w en t into H yde Park in I j ^ pj&h with the firm resolve to try to lo o k at things just as impresioiSibfBbloEs, shapes, light, a n d shade, w ith o u t interpreting at all.

229

Questions and Answers Along the Way

I stayed there for about four hours trying to do this. I found it almost impossible. It s quite necessary, o f course, to recognize what things are; otherwise, one would be lost in life. Unfortunately, when we recog­ nize what things are, many o f the memories o f that particular cate­ gory of things are tinged w ith som e feeling about them, some emotion about them. And unfortunately, when we look at people, particularly people we know, most o f the tim e we don’t really look at the person. We look at the image we have formed o f that person, the kind of person we think that person is, which is a conclusion reached by us mostly on the basis o f very inadequate evidence. We don’t know the whole person at all.4

Whatever happens in our lives is an inner experience. Now, an inner experience is made up o f two things: it’s made up o f the mes­ sages brought to us by our senses, and how w e interpret those mes­ sages. How these messages are interpreted is w hat gives them their meaning. If I can’t interpret something brought to me by my senses, it has no meaning for me. A nd m y response to these messages is determined by give them. J the meaning O that I CT Now, this meaning varies according to m y state and according to the associations it sets in m otion in m e w hen it impinges on me I may react to the same impression in quite different ways on two different occasions because m y in n er state is different. I may be depressed on one day and elated o n a n o th er, an d my reaction would be different—not because the im pression is different, but the interpretation I give to it is different. What one has to try to see is this: th e m eaning given to the events that I meet in my life may be m ore or less distorted by the way I see them. If it’s less distorted, I shall respond in a maimer which is more appropriate to the facts. I f the way I see things is more distorted, then I shall respond in a m anner w hich is less appropriate.’

I m p r e s s io n s

We don’t really realize so m eth in g very im portant: th at in spite of the way in w hich w e frequen tly w ish th a t we could control the outside world, w e c a n n o t c o n tro l th e outsid e w orld. B ut we can control the way w e tak e w h a t th e o u tsid e w o rld presents to us. That, we have th e p o ssib ility o f co n tro llin g . A n d th a t, from o u r own point o f view, m akes all th e difference. T h is is th e difference between being in prison a n d b e in g free. If we take no p a rt a t all in th is process b y w hich impressions arc given meaning, a n d allow th e m to arouse som e k in d o f em otion without any choice, th is w ill d icta te th e actio n w e take. A nd this is what G urdjieff calls th in g s h a p p en in g in us. W e T e n o t doing— things happen. But if weTe n o t c a u g h t in th is w ay, i f w e realize th a t m o st things have different p o te n tia l m ean in g s according to how they’re taken, then we can w ait a m in u te a n d d ecide to choose th e way we take things. B ut to d o th a t, o n e has to rem em b er th a t th e first asso­ ciations that are aroused are n o t th e o n ly possible associations, an d most of the tim e, th a t d o e sn ’t even o c c u r to u s a t alL W e a m p ly go along with th e first asso ciatio n s th a t a re aro u sed , a n d th e w hole thing unfolds from th e re .6

You m ust try to u n d e rs ta n d w h a t I ’ve said h ere before: th a t what we feel to be th e ev en ts o f life o u tsid e— messages w h ich are brought to us b y o u r senses— h a v e n o m e a n in g fo r u s u n til w e interpret them in so m e w ay. D o y o u u n d erstan d ? N o w , th e m ean­ ing comes from th e c o m b in a tio n o f th e m essages th a t are b ro u g h t by our senses w ith associatio n s w h ic h are aro u sed in o u r psyche. I t is the meaning th a t im p els u s to react in o n e w ay o r ano th er. 1 p u t it sometimes this w ay: th e im p a c t o f th e o u tsid e event u p o n o u r senses is like a finger o n a trig g er. W h a t w ill h a p p e n w h en th a t fin­ get compresses th e trig g er d o e s n 't d e p e n d o n th e force w ith w h ich the finger moves, n o r do es it d e p e n d o n w h a t k in d o f finger it is— it depends on w hat’s in th e g u n . i n th is case, w h a t's in th e g u n is us.

Q u e stio n s a n d A n s w e r s A lo n g th e W a y

If you take six people who have been present on a certain occa­ sion and ask them two weeks later to describe that occasion, you’ll get six different descriptions because they all saw what happened in the light of their own associations; and so what happened meant something different to each of them. This is one reason why we have such difficulty with communication. Words are a kind of sense impression. I make noises at you, and you receive these noises carried by the air as vibrations in your ears, and you listen. But I can’t be at all sure that the noises I make, which symbolize the meaning I am trying to convey, will arouse the same meaning in you because you have different associations. In fact, I can be quite sure that there will be some of you, or even many of you, who do not react from the same associations as I speak from when I produce these noises which we call words. And you see, in fact, the world as we know it is nothing but the interpretation of the messages brought to us by our senses, and our senses are very limited. Then one comes to the enormous diffi­ culties that constantly arise in our ordinary thinking by the division of everything in the world into material things and non-material things. This has nothing to do with the nature of the world—it simply has to do with the limitation of our perception. A line is drawn between the two where our human apparatus of sense per­ ception, extended by various instruments, leaves off registering things. If tomorrow a new machine is invented that makes a needle quiver in response to a new kind of force, then that force goes from the non-material to the material for us. But it’s purely subjective; there’s no reason to suppose that the line we draw between material and non-material has any objective significance at all.8

What one secs in oneself is that the same impression can mean very different things on different occasions according to our mood, because our mood determines what kind of memories from the past

Im pressions

are dqcessxble to us, If we have received some kind of shock from we are identified w ith this, very often an impression that otherwise would mean a lot,to us might mean almost nothing. This is one of (she ways in w hich we can prove to ourselves that we arc not «ne llki/t m any— th e fact that the same objective impression means quite different things to us at different times, according to i m t-jneets when it falls on us. There ate the two things, impressions and what’s already in us, | p we experience the com bination o f the two. Both are inside, essoatially, Both are Inner experiences because we can have no expe­ rience that is not an inner experience, but it’s very difficult for people m begin to realize this. T hey go through their lives convinced ta t there Is an objective, outside w orld of which they know some­ thing |l® eively. T his is absolutely n o t true. ^In stead o f th in k in g th a t y o u are obliged to react in certain ways; because the impressions you receive have an objective effect on H f e t e see^that they d o n ’t necessarily have an objective effect, that ikre i's always a subjective elem ent which can be changed. And so pii'cannO'tejgej; kid yourself by feeling that it is inevitable to react iii aeMtain wav to any given impression. You see that it depends— it always depends— on what it meets in you. It is very fortunate for us that the meaning of things is deter­ mined lay the previous associations inside with which the impres­ sions blend when they com e in, because it means we can have some -c f e Our reactions, w hich depend on the meaning of things, are H i Iked by nature from the outside at all. They are fixed by the facptha^our associations in the course o f time have become crystal­ lized. Buk this process can be undone, and these associations can be Replaced by other associations, W h a t had one effect because it was interpreted in one way up to a certain point in one’s life, can begin : to be interpreted in a different way and so to have a different effect and to produce different reactions. W e are very fortunate diat this Is so. Otherwise, we w ould have no chance o f change.

Questions and Answers Along the Way You must remember what Gurdjieff said about the way in which impressions are received. This doesn’t only apply to the impressions brought to us from the outside through our senses; it also applies to inward impressions. W hat self-remembering does is to enhance and deepen the reception of impressions. When I remember myself, impressions get taken in and are received on the rolls of the centers in a different way, and so they are remembered in a different way. But one forgets this— and it’s extremely important. If I want to remember something and be sure that I remember, then it’s not a question of making some kind of effort or strain with my mind. It’s a question of preparing something— making some­ thing available, open, deep inside me— to receive that at the moment. And if it’s received there, it’s kept there. Subsequently, if one wishes to come back to this again, if one tries to come back to it without first making this fundamental effort to remember one­ self, one can remember that one had these thoughts and feelings, but one cannot recapture the taste of them. If one climbs back to the same place in oneself where one was when one first received these impressions, they’re there— alive and vivid and fresh.10

It is said that if we develop in the right way we are capable of receiving impressions of a much finer, a much more subtle charac­ ter coming from higher levels in the whole hierarchy of creation. But this depends entirely on what we have refined inside ourselves by this alchemical process which goes on. And it will not happen at all unless we are able to save energy over and above what we use for the necessary purpose of maintaining our organism, and to refine that further by our inner work.11

It is said, you remember, that our ordinary impressions are of the materiality symbolized by the words “hydrogen 48.” It is said also, of course, that there are many impressions which are never

234

Impressions received at all, which just slide off us like water off a duck’s back.

But it is also said that we are capable of receiving finer impressions of the order of materiality which is symbolized by “hydrogen 24,” by“hydrogen 12 ,” and even by “hydrogen 6.”

Now, one has no idea what this means until one tastes it. It is quite impossible to explain this or make words about it, because it is a quite different order of experience, and you can only imagine an experience on the basis of your previous experiences. For me at any rate, one of the tests of the reality of other kinds of experience is precisely that they contain elements that I couldn’t possibly have imagined on the basis of all my past experience—something quite new, something like suddenly becoming aware of a new primary color. That’s something you can’t possibly imagine.12

Qi I wonder if there is anything you can say about the sub­ stance of the “second body” that I could understand or experience? HBR: The trouble is that when one is talking about the substances that are required to build the second body, one is talking about substances of such a fine and subtle nature that they cannot affect anyof our present instruments. One has to start in that direction by experiencing the fact that one is not one’s physical body. At the same time, one has to realize in practice that one has a limited capacity for experiencing impres­ sions, and normally this limited capacity is monopolized and totally taken up by the impact o f impressions and the associations that sense impressions arouse in memory, thought, and emotion. And it’s not only the impact o f sense impressions but also the random memories that arise and set off mental and emotional associations. It’s partly also concerned with the fact that we are brought up to feel—and we come to feel th at it’s natural to feel— that the world which is presented to us by our senses is the real world and that this is all there is to the real world. We deceive ourselves into believing this, and one o f the results is that we only impute life to

235

Questions and Answers A long the Way

ourselves and to forms o f life which are in some way similar to our­ selves, like animals and plants. As for the rest o f the universe, we either regard it as dead or d o n ’t th in k w hether it is alive or dead. (This is not the way intelligent m en have th o ught forever, by any means.) But because o f this, our capacity to receive impressions of a finer nature is very much limited. For instance, most of us find we have lost to a great extent the sensitiveness to other people’s emo­ tional states, which we had as children. T his is something that can be regained, recaptured in our lives if w e w ork to make room to receive such impressions. The other factor necessary to receive finer and subtler impres­ sions of the sort that are n o t based on the vibrations which affect our ordinary senses— vibrations o f light an d sound and so forth— the other thing that is necessary here is to have in us, as the result of the refinement o f inner energies, finer energies capable of resonating to these finer impressions, so to speak. So w hen you speak about higher bodies, these are the kinds o f things you have to think about as necessary before the experience o f higher bodies can be felt.13 ❖ At different times in m y life, I have fo u n d it emotionally very moving and stimulating to reflect o n the idea th at one is surrounded by aspects o f things that are quite invisible b u t nevertheless very real. We forget, you see, th at we have been accustomed all our lives to taking the world o f the senses as reality, to thinking that this is reality. Now, the m om ent you begin to learn ab o u t what the senses tell you, you can see th a t it’s n o t reality a t all. I t’s like looking through a tiny slit— whole aspects o f life can ’t be received through the senses at all. You begin to know , if y o u reflect, that what is more real about life is exactly w hat is n o t b ro u g h t to us by the sens­ es; it is the invisibility behind w hat th e senses bring to us. You may begin to know that this appearance w hich we feel as reality, which you see all around you, hides a m ystery o f w hich you have no idea. Sometimes you have intim ations o f this mystery.

Impressions So much of our thinking, you see, so many of our attitudes are

based on this idea that the world as imparted to us through our senses is reality, is the real world, and we have to realize that this is n0t so. That world is only a p a rt o f the real world. There’s nothing unreal about it. It’s simply a very limited aspect of the world in which we live, the world o f which we are a part. Behind this, which the Indians call the “veil o f appearances,” there lies for us, as we are today—mystery. Sometimes, if we w ork, we m ay get a glimpse— a glimpse which takes up very little o f our time, but contains an amount of experience that could n ot possibly be crammed into that time in our ordinary state— a glimpse which we cannot interpret in ordi­ narylanguage. You see, time is bound up in this too. One of the occasions whjen-this came home to m e in an intensely emotional way was just before the war, when I was sitting in a cafe in King’s Road. As I sat there, I looked at all the people around me. There were some sitting quietly and talking, a busy street outside, cars and buses going by, people walking by, people looking in. As I sat there looking at them, it came hom e to m e— I d id n ’t particularly search for the thought—that every one o f these people was connected, as it were, by invisible strings to all the people w ith whom they had relations now and in the past and in the future. They were all sitting, as it were, at the center o f a four-dim ensional spider’s web. And these relations with other people were just as real as the teacup in their hand—but I couldn’t see them . For the person sitting there, these relations might be ten tim es as real as the teacup at that moment. Here were all these people, every one o f them the center of a fourdimensional spider’s web o f relations in every direction in time and space—but this was all invisible. It existed; it was just as real as their clothes, their teacups, b u t I couldn’t see it. But it existed just the same. It was a very strange feeling to sit there and experience the fact that the ordinary sense one has o f a person— that he is limited byhis skin, so to speak— is ju st ridiculous in its limitation,14

15 Negative Emotions

There's never reason, i f discrim ination is used, to have a negative emotion. This does not mean that life can or should be free from suffering. This is different. L ife, w ill bring us suffering, but life will not bring us negative emotions. We bring that to life. H. B. Ripman

Q: Is it desirable to have no negative emotions* at all or is it use­ ful to learn simply not to identify with them? HBR: This is a question you must answer for yourself when see what part they play in your life—where they lead you, what kind of situations they get you into, what happens to your energy when' it’s taken by them. You must answer this fopyourself. ftfone has a certain aim, it makes sense to work to be free o f negative emotions. All the time we’re surrounded by “shoulds” without the accptn? panying “if.” If you begin to see in yourself that negative emotions are one of the chains that bind you to an unreal world of suffering that is not laid upon you by any law of nature, but which happens to you because you are what you are and you see things as you:see them, and you see that this is not necessary— i f yon see that, then obviously you conclude that you should find a way to work to become free of negative emotions. But you see, the “i f ’ is necessary

238

Negative Emotions here. You can’t say absolutely that you should or shouldn’t, but if the ‘'P is there, then you can say “should.” To become free of negative emotions is a big work because first of4ll you have to understand them. You have to understand the r0pfs:in yourself. W hen I say “the roots,” I’m not talking about relati^eLy superficial attitudes that you may find justifying your behavior| Beneath those, the roots are connected with various elements in your whole inner life. U ntil you begin to understand all this, you I f f l g be able to see w hat you have to see in order to become free oßpiö’se emotions and no longer to be inclined to react in this way. :?^B,iit the first thing is to separate from them, to realize that they are,something that happens to you, and to feel how powerless you are.at present to prevent them happening to you because you bring against them nothing which is of comparable force. This, one has to realize. The more one begins to realize it, to see this in practice, to be present to oneself w hen it happens, the more one will wish to become free of these chains.1

Q:.r In The Fourth W ay, O uspensky says that one should not suppress negative emotions, but that one should not express them either. Can you tell me how one can not express them without suppressing them? HBR: Only by this difficult inner work of separating from them. Q|q;must recognize that the external behavior corresponding to a negative emotion is not the same thing as what goes on inside, and one can allow what goes on inside to go on so long as one isn’t drawn into it. O ne can separate from it and experience it. One needs to do that in order to understand why it is that we have these negative emotions, why they seem natural to us— which we need to study. . # We have in our internal family a person that you could call a judge who always knows w hat’s right and what’s wrong, who disap­ proves very much o f our mistakes and who wishes to chase away or

239

Questions and A nsw ers A lo n g th e W ay

exile or kill the parts that make mistakes. This doesn’t solve any­ thing. As a matter of fact, his understanding o f things and his atti­ tude to things is just as mixed up as the other parts of us which he is so ready' to criticize, and it is he who represses the whole rime He must repress because he feels himself to be one, and he does his best not to allow something to go on that is contrary to his feelings. But when I am impartially observing myself, then I can see what goes on. I don't have to believe it, but I can listen to it and experience it And I don’t have to allow it to determine my external behavior.*

Q: I found myself really angry but not saying so. Inside I was thinking about ways I could get back at this person, and remember­ ing other things they had done to me. HBR: Yes. One finds one’s inner bookkeeper very ready to look op all past incidents. This is a very useful observation because you see a conflict in you between an anger which is felt and an outward behavior which is different, which means that there’s something else in you which wishes not to behave angrily. It’s good to be dear with oneself when this happens because sometimes it happens with­ out one hilly realizing what’s going on, and then one suppresses things. One needs to experience the anger even though it’s not being acted out. It’s difficult because it requires a certain control over one’s attention, not allowing it to be totally sucked into the anger, which would then control and determine one’s actions, and not allowing it to be totally absorbed in something else so that one doesn’t pay any attention to the anger. One needs to experience the anger consciously because it is only in that way that one will begin gradually, as one gathers data, to see what is at the root of one’s anger, what makes it feel right, what makes it feel natural. And if one is going to escape from it, first one has to understand it.3

240

Negative Emotions HBR: N ow, w h at d id y o u fin d in th e assignm ent of neither sup­ pressing nor expressing n egative em otions, b u t being consciously jvvareof what was g o in g on?

Q: Sometimes I saw anger as an impressive vehicle for selfexpression and did not care to stop it. HBR: One finds, you see, that when one is angry, there is always a pan of one that feels fully justified in being angry. We don’t under­ stand that there are situations in life that merely call for us to act as jfwe were angry, but in that case we are choosing to act that way radier than just going along with anger arising by itself. It’s a differ­ ent rhing Anger may have been called for in the situation which soudescribe, but that’s not why you were angry. Q; When anger overcame me, I practiced relaxing as a device ronot express anger, but just to sit there and see it and feel it. HBR: That’s right. You began to see the linkage between the emo­ tional state and the state of the physical body. When you become irritated, a certain mask hardens over your body; certain muscles become taut and form a grimace o f some kind. But you have helped yourself to see that if you relax the tensions that correspond with a certain pattem of behavior related to this emotion, it makes a dif­ ference in the whole body. I want to add a comment at this point. At present, by trying to inhibit the outward expression o f these emotions, we are dealing only with behavior-sym ptom s— putting a stick in the wheel of outward behavior. W e are interested, indeed, in getting out from under these negative emotions when they manifest themselves, but we must be clear in our own minds that we are simply modifying behavior and nothing else. W e are not making any fundamental change in the causes behind the behavior. When we find ourselves taken over by irritation, we need to be well aware of what is happening to our body and, by direct experi­ ence and consciousness, to be aware o f the kind of thoughts arising inour mind, because these are all linked together.4

241

Questions and Answers A long the Way Q: About the question o f expressing negative emotions. At breakfast one morning I was having toast, and my wife asked me if I had had enough to eat, and I said I would like some more toast, and she said no, there wasn’t any m ore toast. A nd my impulse was to ask her, “Why did you, ask me if I w anted more to eat, if there wasn’t any,more toast?” I didn’t say that, but immediately after­ wards there was almost an explosion o f five or six contradictory rationalizations and f i t t e r things th a t were m uch more extreme than what I intended to say in the first place. This all just popped up in afvery bitter way. 1 HBR: You see, what happened was that you were not reacting to this particdarincM were reacting to one o f your pictures of your wife, which rests on a whole series o f events in the past. You >vere reacting to a whole ranain o f events. O ne finds very often that one’s emotional1reaction to a particular circumstance appears to be out. o f all proportion .to the actual impression that comes from outside. And if one examines oneself, one will see that one is not reacting to the event, but one is reacting to some particular pic- \ ture one has o f the person that is built up from memories fthat go •iback in time. • If you begin to see your relation, w ith your wife more elearlyj l you will see that it is not simple— n o t ^simple at all. One of the great problems betw een'husbands and ^wiyes— between any, two people— that norm ally,you see, each regards himself as one and the other person asl.one|^^:each expects him self to be Consistent J and the other to be consistent. In fact, neither is consistent. Between a married couple, such as you and your wife, there are in any case six people present: there is your picture of her and < her picture o f you, your picture ogypurself and her picture of her­ self, and what you actually are and! w hat she actually is. So there are a t least six people present. But you see, your picture o f yourself may change from one mom ent to the next, so. it’s m uch more’complicated than that. It’s impossible for you to have a simple relation­ ship; it must be complicated,

242

Negative Emotions But I B p i if you study this feature of negative emotions, you |j§]find again and again that the strength of the emotion aroused is quite out of proportion to the immediate event.5

I remember talking to the abbot of a Buddhist monastery in Katmandu. I spent the afternoon listening to his rather remarkable exposition of the main ideas of Buddhism. At one point he spoke about the stages in becoming free from anger. In the ordinary way, he said, a man is>angry, and then when it’s all over he feels perfectly justified in being angry— quite right— and he goes on and nothing happens. He’s angry again when he’s next stimulated to anger. But after a time a man may begin to think to himself, “This isnlentMy a good thing; it has bad consequences. It leaves me exhausted, and it prevents me from thinking clearly. It’s a bad thing,” And so, the next time he’s angry, when it’s all over, he will remember this and say, “O h dear, I shouldn’t have done that.” This

fi| tjreSee^disfage: remembers this and comes to the third stage, in which he realizes—in the middle of his anger— that he is angry and that this, is not what he wants to be. But he cannot change, and unpleasant.' The fourth stage, as he described it to me, is when a man remembers that he doesn’t want to get angry when the first stirrings ofanger occur in him. T hen it is easier to get out from under anger because the ifeMkajg hasn’t built up a full head of steam in him. But still; he is. not free from anger, and he is Still tempted to anger. The fifth stage |amd the only stage in which one can say one has become liberated from anger) is when the idea of the harm ful­ ness of anger and the uselessness of anger have become organic, llajfebecome so much a part of one’s thinking, of one’s attitude to otiesd^oFoine’s attitude to life, that when the event comes along, it mSets S^xth this new attitude and not with the old attitude that pre­ viously w o Ä have resulted in anger.

243

Q u e stio n s a n d A n s w e r s A lo n g th e

W ay

So you see, everything depends o n w h at happens inside oneself. This is one of the most hopeful things th a t this system teaches— that it is not necessary to suffer from negative em otions.6 ❖ Q: I was angry at someone and fo u n d I could only maintain a frigid silence or explode. It was some tim e before it was possible to ask why that person was m ad at me or w hy I was angry in return. HBR: Experience shows th at, p articu larly w ith recurring situa­ tions, if you can respond in a way which, is com pletely contrary to your usual behavior, and so, completely contrary to w hat the other person is expecting—if you can behave in a quite unexpected man­ ner—it will often produce very interesting results. B ut I mean quite unexpected. This is possible because these situations repeat them­ selves, so one can prepare beforehand. You know also, when one is very close to somebody, one finds that in a recurring situation it often d o esn ’t attain any useful response to say, for instance, “W h y are you mad?” B ut if one waits until later and then asks the question, “W h y were you mad?” it may well begin a conversation out o f w hich m ore understanding may come. Because then the question m ay be taken as a genuine ques­ tion which seeks a genuine answer, rather th an as a disapproval or rejection. And one sees also that if you respond to anger w ith anger one result is likely, but if you don’t respond to anger w ith anger, another result is likely. You know how Gurdjieff said th at to bear other people’s nega­ tive manifestations and negative emotions is one o f the most diffi­ cult things to do. And at the same time, it’s possible.7

Every negative emotion that one has is justified by the part that has those emotions. This part is felt to be oneself if one identifies with it. Now, to find the inner causes behind a negative emotion, we

Negative Emotions have to study its justifications. They will lead us in the direction of the cause that makes the justifications seem to be real. But this takes time; and if one suppresses these emotions, one doesn’t have the proper opportunity to study them . Also, of course, it’s com m on experience that if you suppress them, the energy liberated in the organism by the arising of these negative emotions is blocked; it cannot find an outlet, and this pro­ duces a psychological tension. T h at’s why you have, with emotions that are suppressed like this, a growing inner tension until finally the trigger is pulled and an explosion follows. Now, the explosion releases the tension; all the energy that’s dammed up gets a chance to come out. A nd from one po in t o f view this is why, of course, people feel relieved after they’ve expressed such a negative emotion which has been previously repressed or suppressed. You pay for this in various ways. In the first place an enormous amount of energy is used up th a t m ight very well be used for differ­ ent purposes, because the energy itself is n ot negative— it is simply energy, fuel. In the second place, by expressing this emotion which has been pent up for so long, you are likely to arouse harmful con­ sequences in your situation an d to get back from other people just as much negativity as you give out. A nd in the third place, if one allows one’s behavior to be determ ined by a negative emotion, it digs that particular h abit a little deeper, and this makes it a little more likely that in the future y ou will repeat exacdy the same thing, and a little more difficult n o t to repeat it. So, these people who say—there are some psychologists w ho say— that you should express every negative em otion d o n ’t see the whole thing clearly. It’s quite true that if you have been repressing or suppressing a negative emo­ tion, you need to find som e outlet for the energy that is pent up. The energy can’t be p u t back into its accumulators; it’s there, ready and raring to go. T he reason som e people say it’s good to let it out is that it relieves this inner tension th a t comes from the suppression of the emotion. But you can learn to make it go in a useful direction, instead of simply fueling the expression o f the negative emotion.

Questions and Answers A long the Way

I’ve said to you that sometimes, particularly w ith the kind of emotions one finds one has repressed or suppressed, it’s very useful after the situation is over, w hen you realize w h at’s happened, to be by yourself someplace where you can’t do any harm , and act it out. Then you have a real chance o f studying the em otion for yourself. W hen you act it o ut intentionally, it doesn’t ju st take you over and go along its own natural course w here it always feels natural and justified. A nd then maybe it doesn’t taste so good.8 ❖ It’s very im portant to rem em ber th a t w henever any kind of emotion is aroused it means th at energy is released into the organ­ ism. If a negative em otion is aroused an d is n o t stopped, this energy is simply burnt up in the em otion. B u t if you get in there quickly and prevent the negative em otion from getting a full head of steam, this energy that is released into the b ody can be turn ed to your own benefit. It is m ost im portant to rem em ber this. It is n o t a question o f taking this energy and using it to repress th e negative emotion, because that simply is a k in d o f battle th a t produces strain and frus­ tration and fatigue. B ut if you take your a tten tio n quickly, quickly off the complex o f thoughts and feelings an d bodily sensations and attitudes connected w ith the negative em otion, it can’t go on. And yet the free energy is there, it’s available to you. T ry not to forget that, because it can produce quite rem arkable results if you are suc­ cessful in turning the energy th a t is lib erated in the organism in another direction at th at m o m en t.9 ❖ Q: W hen you talk about seeing th e causes, do you mean what associations or thoughts do we have th a t are associated with irrita­ tion and anger? It seems to m e th a t th ere’s som ething I just don’t know about this. HBR: You see, one can talk to oneself here to som e extent by hav­ ing an inner dialogue. O n e can be sure th a t if som eone in one is

N egative Em otions

irritated, that part o f one has no d o u b t whatever th at he is right to be irritated, that it’s n atu ral to be irritated. N ow , someone else in one sees that this irrita tio n is n o t w h a t one w ants to be. A nd between these two a k in d o f in n e r dialogue can take place. I ask myself (this o th er self): “But why are y o u irritated?” “Well, she m ade m e irritated!” “But why d id she m ake y o u irritated? “Because she behaved th a t w ay to m e . ^ “But why does th a t m ake y o u irritated?” “Because I expect to b e treate d in a different way!” - So you see, if y o u allow th ese peo p le in y o u rself to express their feelings, they w ill com e o u t— ju s t as if som eone else had asked you the question. I f y o u w a n t to com e to th e ro o t causes in yourself of these things, you have to listen to y o u r ow n justifications— b u t listen with a very, very cynical attitu d e — n o t believing them at all, reaflysubjecting th em to th e co ld lig h t o f reason.10

(|L After I exploded w ith anger, I felt so asham ed. HBR: Its very, very difficult n o t to suppress an em otion o f w hich the inner judge d isapproves, p a rtly because so m e th in g in one is afraid of being overpow ered b y th e em o tio n . Ä I separated, b u t o n ly fo r a m o m e n t. HBR: Perhaps you d o n ’t th in k o f y o u rse lf as liable to this k in d o f emotion. You say for a lo n g tim e th in g s h a d gone sort o f sm oothly. Perhaps it w ould be w ell fo r y o u to th in k o f yourself as som etim es, at least, feeling this k in d o f e m o tio n to be n atural. T h ere’s an other part which disapproves at o n ce a n d says y o u sh o u ld n 't feel like that. First, one has to get over th e fear o f o n e ’s in n er negative em ot@ns, which causes o n e to s h u t th e d o o r in th eir faces as soon as they appear. O ne has to learn n o t to be afraid o f th em , b u t to expe­ rience them w ith o u t b ein g th e m — a n d th e n to ask on eself after­ wards, “If I saw so m e b o d y else re a c tin g like th is, w h a t w o u ld 1

Q u e s tio n s a n d A n s w e r s A l o n g t h e W a y

conclude about that person?” Because one has th a t kind of person inside, and so long as one denies it, so long as one rejects her and feels that she oughtn’t to be, one doesn’t give h er room to be inside one. One will never understand th a t she needs to be liberated. One has to accept her as she is. A n d th e n one has to see the way she suffers and feels p u t upon, so th a t one feels compassion for her. But compassion is n o t enough. W h e n a child makes a mistake because it doesn’t understand, it needs to be helped to understand. These inner people have a right to exist, b u t I d o n ’t have to go along with them . I d o n ’t have to agree w ith them . At the same time, it doesn’t do any good to reject th e m an d deny them. What I have to do is understand them ; th a t’s th e im p o rtan t thing. It’s the only way in which I will be able to take th e first step to free them— not so much to free myself from them , as to free them from their ignorance, their false way o f looking at things. T h ey feel that they are at the mercy o f situations and people, an d they are, but they don’t need to continue always to be.11

Q: I have a feeling, perhaps a novel feeling, th a t fear is useful at some point. It’s useful b ut it doesn’t get used in the right way. HBR: But haven’t you been through, together w ith the group, an analysis of fears that are useful and fears th at are n o t useful? Because, you see, fear first o f all is the em otional reaction to some kind of impending danger to something th at one values. If the danger is real and w hat is threatened is truly valuable— for instance, if you step out in the road and you see a car coming at you—there is an immediate real risk to som ething you value very highly, your life, and so you get o u t o f the way quickly. But when we come to examine our lives and to see w hat p art fear plays in them, we can see many fears in w hich the danger is imaginary or in which what is threatened is imaginary, and th at is quite different. Again, when we come to know ourselves a bit better, we come to know that a negative emotion is the exact psychological analogue

Negative Emotions to ä. physical poison. If we know we are liable to fall into negative etiiotions, and we know that they are poisonous, we fear to fall into them. This is. a right fear because it is based on a real risk. We know from experience that we are liable to fall into a negative emotion, andwe know that w hat is at stake is valuable—our psychic health.12

Q: The problem w ith this negative thinking is that I never real­ ize quite what i^is 1 f e l — it’s just a fear. HBR: Well, find out. Remem ber that a fear which is ill defined and about which you are n ot quite clear in your mind is very diffi­ cult to deal with. A lot o f people go around with an unformed sub­ acute anxiety, not being anxious about anything in particular, but alwutthings in general. T his is very difficult to deal with. When one finds this inside, one needs to ask oneself, “What exactly is it that I am anxious about? W hat is threatened, and what m t that is threatening? Is it a real threat? Is the thing that is threat­ ened something that I really value?” This is the kind of thing one has to ask, because an unform ed fear, a vague fear, is like a kind of fog that surrounds you, and you need to condense this fear so you I t see what shape it is. V ery often when you see what shape it is, it is no longer so difficult to deal w ith .13 ♦♦♦

Q: I have trouble conceiving o f who I am when I am in this fear, because I think that such a thing or such a person is so ridiculous. HBR: I understand. A nd, y o u see, you must be very careful to avSid that. I think th at m any o f us have that kind of experience. It’s so ridiculous that we can’t take it seriously, but we have to realize t|$t there is a part o f us th a t indeed takes it very seriously. And we need ourselves to take it seriously in order to understand why this part of us is so affected by it. It may be that the answer to the ques­ tion of who in me fears is th at it is a child who has gone through various experiences an d w ho is afraid o f going through them again. We have such children in us, quite clearly.

Questions and Answers Along the Way To die part of you who doesn t understand the compelling force of this fear, it may seem quite ridiculous. But the fact is that you fear. Because you fear, there is a part o f you to whom it is not ridiculous at all. It is felt almost as if it were a matter of life or death. And if you wish to understand fear, you have to understand the reasons why it is felt so deeply, why the situation appears threat­ ening—so strongly threatening— to something that is deeply there. It is useless to say it is ridiculous. It may be objectively ridiculous, but it is not ridiculous to that in you which fears. And you have to learn to communicate w ith this part of you as if it were another person. First o f all, you have to accept it. H a v i n g accepted it, you can ask this part, "W hy do you fear?“ And then, i f you are open, it will answer. It feels very artificial to do this, to h a v e this kind of internal conversation, b u t it can be extremely useful. But the moment you say, "This is ridiculous,“ you deny the p a r t of you that feels that way. You cut off any possibility o f communica­ tion or any possibility o f understanding.1

Q: I feel I have to defend m yself against anger that’s being directed at me, as if it’s going to do m e real harm . HBR: Exacdy. That’s just how it feels. B ut w hen one finds this kind of feeling in oneself, then, if one can do it at the time—fre­ quently one can’t do it at the time, b u t if one doesn’t do it at the time, then later— it’s absolutely essential to ask oneself, "What exactly is at risk here? W hat do I really feel to be menaced? Is the risk real, or is it imaginary?” Because it’s som ething in me that feels vulnerable in some way. And w hat is it? V ulnerable to what? And why does it feel vulnerable? These kinds o f questions one has to ask oneself, because it’s perfectly correct w hen people say one is being defensive. But then one needs to take th at as a bit o f useful infor­ mation about oneself and say, “W ho is defending what? Against what?” One is defending something; som ebody in one is defending that something against some kind o f threat or menace.

N egative Emotions

You need to be present to yourself in the moment when another is exhibiting som e kind o f negative emotion towards you, Jjecause you need to see the different ways in which you receive iJiis, What is com m on to all th e different responses is that their baas is that you’re trying to defend yourself. That’s what’s in com­ mon. The moment you feel threatened, you are drawn into giving backtit for tat. I think you will recognize w hat I mean when 1 say that when you meet the em anations o f anger, the vibrations of anger that come from another person, sometimes you p ut up a psychological barrier against them as if in self-protection. Sometimes you’re taken over by them and overw helm ed by these emanations, which are received in you and resonate in you. There is another way o f taking anger, which is to present no barrier at all, to allow these em anations to pass through without finding anything onto w hich they can hook. T o do this you have to make yourself em pty an d tran sp aren t as though the wind could blow through you; th en you’ll find th at the quite objective emana­ tions of anger go right th ro u g h you. They don’t hook you in the same way that they do if y o u ’re n o t completely open like this. How you receive these em anations m akes a real difference to how you cope with them and w h at happens afterwards in yourself. And it really doesn’t occur to one th at the most effective way is to let them just pass th ro u g h . N o w , m ind you, this is not to say that if you do that y ou haven’t still a problem to find the right way to respond. B ut yo u r response is n o t then dictated by either this defensive posture or by th e tit for ta t th at comes when these vibra­ tions simply take you over. Y ou have a choice then; you have some freedom to maneuver, to m ove, to choose w hat response you want to give to the situation.15 ❖ Q? Someone in m e feels th a t anger is a sign o f strength. HBR: When you really consider this carefully, it is just one example

Questions and Answers Along the Way of a notion, which many people have, that violence is a sign of strength. It isn’t. Violence is a sign o f weakness. Violence is the last resort you fall back on when you have no means of handling the sit­ uation or improving it in some way. Every parent knows this with their children. Time after time the situation arises: you know that you ought to be able to control the situation, you try but you can’t control it, and finally you resort to violence. Violence is the last resort of the unintelligent. It is not a sign o f strength at alLjf^ ]

Q: I got angry so many times this week with my litde boy. I seem to have an ideal image o f the way I w ant him to be. I feel like so much is at stake. HBR: Yes, but you see, to become angry with him, to manifest this anger, is not the best way to prevent him from making mistakes. There is always something in you that feels if you are angry with him it will prevent him from making mistakes. It doesn’t really work that way, it really doesn’t. The basic illusion in your becoming angry is very fundamental, namely, that the child chose to make a mistake. This is what you feel justifies your anger. “How many thousand times have I told you before!” This doesn’t help. It means that w hat you have done before hasn’t helped him to understand that it is not the best thing to go on behaving in this way, and so you have to find another way to help him to see and understand. If you just get angry with him time after time, it won’t help. And you must realize that when you become angry like this, he sees that you have lost control o f yourself. O ne of the very unfortunate consequences o f anger in such a case is the fostering in the child of negative emotions o f different kinds: sometimes rebel­ lion and resistance, sometimes guilt, b u t negative emotions in a§|| case. And this will not help the child. A t the same time you see in yourself that one of the main reasons behind your being compelled to indulge in angry behavior is that you d o n ’t know any other way

Negative Emotions

in which to try to put things right. You’re driven to it by frustra­ tion. It doesn’t help. It doesn’t help you, and it doesn’t help the child* After a time, you know, if you go on like this, children some­ times behave badly just to set you off. A nd sometimes if you smile at the child and say, “Are you trying to make me lose my temper?” the-child will laugh and the whole thing will be over. You see, this is a case where if one were able to deal with the situation in a right way, it would be by being intelligent enough to see what kind of action was required. Because oneyfs notvjntelligent enough, one reacts from a negative em otion, b u t that does not mean that one carinötlearn to be m ore intelligent. Remember what Gurdjieff said—patience is the m other o f will. One IfpS prey to this anger and one thinks that being angry with oneself for having been angry is a step towards not being angry i n S future. It doesn’t help if one is angry with oneself for having been- aiigry, because it brings you no nearer to understanding why youwere angry in the first place. We need very m uch to realize th a t all this negative emotion towards ourselves for the w ay we behave doesn’t help a bit. The jfurifying emotion, the em otion th a t we need, is remorse of con­ science. One reads these words and thinks about them, but does one really understand w hat remorse o f conscience means? It’s not a nega­ tive emotion at all. It’s an intentional suffering of a certain kind, so It m ust be painful, b u t it’s n o t negative.17 ♦♦♦

Could you say so m eth in g general about the relationship between anger an d depression? I ’ve noticed th at after I’ve been angry, depression sets in. I ’ve heard th at depression is self-hatred turned inward or som ething like that. HBR: When the feeling th a t I ought to be able to be in control is thwarted, this can very easily lead to depression. Helplessness cou­ pled with the feeling th a t I o u g h tn ’t to be helpless— the two go

Questions and Answers Along the Way together. It’s the contrast between what I feel I ought to be able to do and what I find I’m able in fact to do. One needs to become aware o f the steps which lead to this depression, so that one is put on warning at an early stage. A t these times one should remember that there is in one, if one can open to it, the source of strength and help about which I have spoken to you before. The trouble is that in those moments one just forgets the existence of this, and identifies with the thoughts related t o the depression. One of the things that happens here— we all experience it from time to time—is that we don’t appreciate or enjoy the good th in gs we have. We take them for granted. We only begin to a p p r e c ia te them when something happens to disturb them or damage t h e m or take them away from us. If we could learn a l i t t l e more to enjoy the good things we have, then we would have a different approach to life which wouldn’t be so easily taken away from us by depression. W e have an awful lot to be thankful for, and most o f the time we take all these precious gifts as if it were our right to have them all the time. When I was in Pakistan about fifteen ago, I met a member of the Ahmadiyya sect of Islam, who described how, when India was partitioned in 1948, the headquarters o f the sect was then on the Indian side of the new border. Suddenly, they had to leave every­ thing overnight and go over the border in just the clothes they had on, nothing else at all. And this man said to me, “You know, people have asked us why it was that being deprived o f every possession overnight, just left in the clothes one stood up in, we weren’t totally upset by depression, resentfulness, and anger. But we are taught from the time we are children to take nothing for granted. We teach our children from the beginning, when they lose a favorite toy or a dearly beloved pet dies, to say and to feel, ‘God has taken back that which he had lent us.’ So you see, nothing is taken for granted in this way.” Just as we find our attention being taken by the various hor­ rors we read in the newspaper, so in the same way we find our

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Negative Emotions attention being taken so easily by what we call our problems. And when we compare our little problems with what we have to be thankful for, a real essence shame arises in us, that we regard our problems as so world-shaking. You see, I come back to this basic principle that just as we have in us the causes of all our unhappiness, so also we have within us the causes of happiness. But we forget this. We think that for us to be happy, outside circumstances have to be changed; God has to give us many nice gifts. But happiness does not depend on this; happiness depends on something inside. So we can choose, if we wish, to be happy.18

Q: This week I saw clearly how concerned I am with how oth­ ers see me and treat me. I depend so much on their opinion of me. And I also discovered that I react to my own thoughts about myself as^elL HBR: That is a very useful insight. Follow it up. Don’t be afraid ofwhat you may find. This is one o f the difficulties in the study of fear and its allied emotions. O ne becomes afraid of what one will find in oneself. It’s a good thing to start off, you know, by realizing that one has in one, not only the germ of every conceivable virtue, but also the germ of every possible vice. It’s the same for all of us. Just as we all have in us the sources of our unhappiness and suffering, we also have w ithin us the sources of our happiness. We often forget that. Even after we come to see to some extent that the causes of our unhappiness are w ithin us, when we think about being happy, we often think in terms o f outside conditions and not inner attitudes. W e feel as though we were entirely dependent on people or circumstances for the possibility of being happy. It is very interesting, you know, to read the handbook of Epictetus, the Enchiridion, and remember that the man who spoke those words was a slave. H e said men fear some things, and they are confident in the face o f others, b ut it is exactly the wrong things.

Questions and Answers Along the Way They fear the exterior world, and they are confident about their own reaction to it; It should be the other way around. You can’t control the exterior world anyhow, but your inner life—your reac­ tions, the way you take things— this, you have some possibility of controlling. Now you are concerned with being in control of things outside, but it is much more im portant to be concerned about being in control of things inside. T h a t’s w hat’s important-^ because, you see, the kind of world you live in from day to day and hour to hour and moment to moment is absolutely determined by what is going on inside.19

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Attitudes and Expectations

If I look at myself.tas_«h whole, I see that my life is what it is because various attitudes interpret for me whatever happens, and these interpretations o f the events o f my life incline me to react in a Now w hat I see is— if I look at myself five years ago ^an&itoday—what I see is th a t the relative strength of different atti­ tudes has changed. T he relative strength has changed. Some attigffi||are stronger than they were, some are weaker than they were, and some new attitudes have come in. So if I am going to assess what kind of change o f being has occurred that I can associate with efforts in the W o*k,;I have to thin k in these terms: W hat kind fMlange in the relative w eight o f different kinds of attitudes has taken place? I say “weight,” and by th at I mean that one can test the weight of an attitude very sim ply by th e am o u n t it affects one’s actual actions—the way one lives one’s life. If it doesn’t have any effect on öhe’s actions, it has no w eight. I f it ,has a lot o f effect on one’s actions, it has a lot o f w eight. W hether you like it or not, the rela­ tive weight o f different attitudes does change— whether it changes as'-the result o f purely m echanical processes or whether it changes ®fit® result o f conscious processes. It doesn’t stand still. Every time a given attitude or set o f attitudes determines my actions, that aftude or set o f a ttitu d es grow s stronger. This is absolutely

Questions and Answers Along the Way unavoidable, absolutely unavoidable. There’s no possibility of evad­ ing the lawful consequences. Every time I give in to a weakness, I am more inclined to'givb in to that weakness again. Every time I push against an obstacle, the next effort becomes a little easier.1

Q: My mother always expected a great deal from me in the way of excellence of the highest degree, and this il^omething that Ij believed and expected of myself. It has created a very unr^.l^m’® uation for me, and I’ve suffered the consequences. And it just came to me that I have got to be happy with what I have and with*mf§ capabilities as they are. JHBR: Yes. But this doesn’t mean to say. that one is satisfied with what one has; it means one accepts-it-for what it is and dbesh trfeel it should be any more than it is now, hut one recognizes that it^ij capable of being developed. There;is a tendency here to go to the opposite extreme and to say “L’mejusfcwhat Itam^-you can take me or leave me.” That’s;not a useful attitude. One is where one is, and that’s the point ffonij which one can go forward. Unless one admits to oneself and accepts the fact that one starts from where. One is, one never gets anywhere: One starts from here as a starting point, not äs a resting point. I remind you of what is/fsaid in the early part o f Light on the Path:* one should kill out every kind o f ambition, but-one-should work harder than the most ambitious person. Why? This you have gotitq.see.Q: I felt the same way. A great deal was expected of me as.a child, by both my mother and my grandmother. So there arose in me a sort of rigid taskmaster that still carries on with demands and expectations. And there also seems to be, corresponding to the fact that they spoiled me frequently and had a very high opinion of me, a great deal of self-indulgence. HBR: You have to understand both these points of view towards yourself—where they come from, w hat misunderstandings they * A nineteenth century Theosophical work by Mabel Collins

258

Attitudes and Expectations rest^gijfecomes back, you see, to the question which one must ask oneself from time to time in a very serious way, “What do I want to become?” Now, one may not have a general answer to this question that can be formulated in a pat phrase. One needs to think about it frommany different points of view. You need to measure each of these two attitudes which you haye^towards yourjs^lf against. an aspect of what you wish to becomes -.and, see exactly how it stands in your way and exactly why tefh|sySo much power over you. Because this you have to under­ stand: ypu have parts that feel both these attitudes are right, they are.natural, and there’s nothing wrong with them at all. But you have to see for ypurself what is wrong with them and what is wrong with the understanding o f the parts in you that feel there is nothing J Ä f .with them. It’s, useful to ask yourself,. “Where do they lead me? These two attitudes— where do they lead my life? Toward what destination do they lead me?”lpj| ♦

f |k I had a miserable experience at a gas station recently. I had a flat iite, and they just wouldn’t fix it— and it was my birthday! HBR; A Zen abbot once said to me, “Zen is very simple. It’s simflKjbeing ready for anything that happens in your life.” One sees very clearly from the example you quote that what constandy pre­ vents us from being ready for w hat appears in our life is that we expect things to be one way or another. And so, the moment our expectations are disappointed, we are caught off balance and feel the|vG>Jpld'has done us dirt, and we feel justified in reacting negaÄly^But this is because we are full of expectations. We expect other people to behave in certain ways, or not to behave in certain ways. Our lives are full o f expectations o f different kinds, p One should try to see how closely our expectations are tied up with ideas about ourselves, w ith images of ourselves—ideas and images we have built up on quite insufficient evidence—or are tied upwith ideas based on evidence that we have misinterpreted about

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Questions and Answers Along the Way other people and the way they are and the way they are likely to behave. It’s very necessary to see how much suffering we meet in our lives because of these unjustified expectations. We very often expect people to be consistent, but they aren’t. And when they are inconsistent, we feel they have betrayed us, let us down. I should be ready, should be capable o f flexible action, of adjusting, of not being thrown off balance when things or people don’t behave the way I have been expecting. How many times the thought passes through our minds, “How could he have done that?” “How could she have behaved like that?” “How could I have been so damn stupid?” These “how could” questions are all based on expectations which the facts prove were unrealistic. So it’s useful to examine one’s expectations, useful to try to be more ready when things go contrary to expectations, to meet th&; situation without feeling the world or people have done one dirt, but simply realizing one had expected something that didn’t hap­ pen. If one examines one’s negative emotions, one finds that many of them are based on the general attitude that in different ways peo­ ple could and should be different from what they are. And a rather great portion of them is based on the general attitude that I could and should be different from what I am. Now, these are both unjustified expectations. I am what I am, not any different from what I am. To say that I should be different doesn’t change anything at all. People are what they are; to expect them to be different from what they are is to court negative emo­ tion of one kind or another. Confusion arises here. W hen I say, “I am what I am, and there’s no use wishing or thinking I ought to be different,” the dan­ ger is that when I think I could or should be different, I don’t acknowledge and accept fully that I am what I am. This doesn’t mean that I’m resigned to it or satisfied with it. It means that I know where I stand and that I wish to move from there. When I come to myself, if I see that what is happening inside and outis not what I wish to grow in me, then I can take some steps to change it

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Attitudes and Expectations Idon’t have to wait 30 years. But the situation, as I meet it, is what it is. And the person in me who is behaving outerly and innerly in this way is what he is. It doesn’t follow that I have to let him have his head, any more than with a child who misbehaves. If you are completely permissive to that child in his misbehavior, you are doing him a great harm because you are not playing your part in preparing him for his own responsible life in future. A nd one has to have the same kind of atti­ tude to the people in oneself.3

One finds, you see, that one has all sorts of expectations about oneself. One finds one has all sorts o f expectations about other peo­ ple; And one: is constantly being disappointed; either one doesn’t behave in a way one feels one has a right to expect of oneself, or other people don’t behave in a way one feels one has a right to expect of them. T his is happening the whole time. And if you express it by the words “I ought” and “they ought,” and if you examine all your different types o f negative emotions, you will find a great many of them are justified and feel right because of these expectations. Now, since these expectations have been disappoint­ ed, they were quite clearly unrealistic to begin with. One gets terribly mixed up about “oughts” and “ought nots,” “shoulds” and “shouldn’ts.” O ne sees this, for instance, if a car won’t start, and one says, “It ought to start!” Now, that has a mean­ ing. It has a meaning because the car is made in such a way that if nothing is wrong and it performs its function well, turning the igni­ tion key should be followed by its starting. One knows that when a car doesn’t start, there is always a reason; and though one may curse at it and kick it, as something in one wants to do, something else recognizes that this is an entirely childish reaction and remembers that there must be a reason why it doesn’t start—so one looks inside and expects to find out w hat the reason is. Now, with ourselves it is the same thing, but we don’t know this machine in the same way.

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Questions and Answers Along the Way other people and the way they are and the way they are likely to behave. It’s very necessary to see how much suffering we meet in our lives because of these unjustified expectations. We very often expect people to be consistent) but they aren’t. And when they are inconsistent, we feel they have betrayed us, let us down. I should be ready, should be capable of flexible action, of adjusting, of not being thrown off balance when things or peopledon’t behave the way I have been expecting. How many times the thought passes through our minds, “How could he have done that?” “How could she have behaved like that?” “How could I have been so damn stupid?” These “how could” questions are all based on expectations which the facts prove were unrealistic. So it’s useful to examine one’s expectations, useful to try to be more ready when things go contrary to expectations, to meet the situation without feeling the world or people have done one dirt, but simply realizing one had expected something that didn’t hap­ pen. If one examines one’s negative emotions, one finds that many, of them are based on the general attitude that in different ways peo­ ple could and should be different from what they are. And a rather great portion of them is based on the general attitude that I could and should be different from what I am. Now, these are both unjustified expectations. I am what I am, not any different from what I am. To say that I should be different doesn’t change anything at all. People are what they are; to expect them to be different from what they are is to court negative emo­ tion of one kind or another. Confusion arises here. W hen I say, “I am what I am, and there’s no use wishing or thinking I ought to be different,” the dan­ ger is that when I think I could or should be different, I don’t acknowledge and accept fully that I am what I am. This doesn’t mean that I’m resigned to it or satisfied with it. It means that I know where I stand and that I wish to move from there. When I come to myself, if I see that what is happening inside and out is not what I wish to grow in me, then I can take some steps to change it.

260

Attitudes and Expectations 1 don’t have to wait 30 years. But the situation, as 1 meet it, is what it is, And the person in me who is behaving outerly and inneriy in thisway is what he is. It doesn’t follow that I have to let him have his head, any more than with a child who misbehaves. If you are completely permissive to that child in his misbehavior, you are doing him a great harm because you are not playing your part in preparing him for his own tesponsible life in future. A nd one has to have the same kind of atti­ tude to the people in oneself.3

One finds, you see, that one has all sorts of expectations about oneself. One finds one has all sorts o f expectations about other peo­ ple,'And one isJ constantly being disappointed: either one doesn’t behave in a way one feels one has a right to expect of oneself, or other people don’t behave in a way one feels one has a right to expect of them. This is happening the whole time. And if you express it by the words “I ought” and “they ought,” and if you examine all your different types o f negative emotions, you will find a great many of them are justified and feel right because of these expectations. Now, since these expectations have been disappoint­ ed, they were quite clearly unrealistic to begin with. One gets terribly mixed up about “oughts” and “ought nots,” "shoulds” and “shouldn’ts.” O n e sees this, for instance, if a car won’t start, and one says* “It ought to start!” Now, that has a mean­ ing, It has a meaning because the car is made in such a way that if nothing is wrong and it performs its function well, turning the igni­ tion key should be followed by its starting. One knows that when a car doesn’t start, there is always a reason; and though one may curse at it and kick it, as som ething in one wants to do, something else recognizes that this is an entirely childish reaction and remembers |that there must be a reason w hy it doesn’t start— so one looks inside and expects to find out w hat the reason is. Now, with ourselves it is thesame thing, but we d o n ’t know this machine in the same way.

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Questions and Answers A long the Way W ith a car, we recognize th at to feel th a t it ought to start is childish if it is Understood in the sense th a t it doesn’t start because

it chooses not to start. W e know th at this can’t be true with a car; we know there; is a reason w hy it doesn’t start, b u t we don’t take that attitude with people. W e don’t recognize th a t if people behave in a certain way, there are always reasons. W e d o n ’t yet see clearly in Ourselves that however we behave a t an y given m om ent in any situation, at the m om ent we behave, we either feel it is right or we feel that this kind o f behavior is im posed u p o n us. B ut we don’t see this in ourselves, and so certainly we d o n ’t see it in other people, but they all have a mason, too. W hatever I do, som ething in me has a reason for doing it. We get very confused about “o u g h t” , an d “o ught not.” It has actually to do, you see, w ith the capacity o f people to make choices. W hen people do w hat they ought to do, w e praise them . When people don’t do what they ought to do, o r do w h at they oughtn’t-to do, .we blame,them.-And in each case, th e only way praise or blame would make senseäs if they deliberately chose th eir behavior. This is what we assume. It is only by the process o f self-study that we begin m |see that we d ö rrt Lchpo^e.iour b e h a v io r^ v if happens. jfThere; is3 nobody there to chopse.; f*ood for thought.

We find v e ry h ite h th a t- w h at nSfadse a b o u t the basis of-our expectations is that w e imagine th a t people sh o u ld be and should be able to be co fisi^ n g and that they shoüld-äct an d should be able'ifoi act in accordance with Certain standards. B u t th e error o f this.is that we look a t people and a to u rse lv e s as th o u g h w e could do, as though we were one; as Nilfo'ugh we h a d free w ill^as th o ugh we were conscious. Reflection'^hows^this'is h o t ’so, eith er o f ourselves öFöf other people. It makes no sense h i expect o th e r people or oiirselyes/i to behave as i f they had these qualities which« th ey d o n ’t have. One should be careful n o t to ju m p to?the and expect nothing at all. This is equally foolish. T h e tfotible about'

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A ttitu d es a n d Expectations

one 5 expectations is th a t they may, a lo t o f the time, be perfectly realistic. What is unrealistic is th a t we expect them to be consistently jnet—in fact, always— an d if th e facts ever go against our expecta­ tions, then we th in k th ere is som ething w rong with the world or with people. There is n o th in g w rong at all. The only thing that is wrong is our expectation. a • When the judge in us finds th a t w e don’t live up to his unreal­

istic^expectations:, then he gives us hell. But this judge needs to be reeducated, arid the basis on which he forms his judgment needs to be carefully'scrutinized and replaced by a more realistic basis. He has a very important part to play in our inner family if he can be helped to see the unrealism o f his assumptions and to replace them with more realistic assumptions. Then he becomes right judgment, right discrimination, which we need very badly.5

Q: I have m ental pictures o f m y father and mother, and it seems to me that I reflect them both. 1BR: It’s interesting, isn’t it, h o w when we raise this subject of parents, which comes so near the marrow, and oblige ourselves to lookin this direction, we find how most o f the time we don’t think about these things any longer. O u r connection with our parents, the effect 'they have on us, is mostly unseen. They are there, fully operative, affecting us in the sense of impelling us to action or mak­ ingus refrain, from action, but not normally thought about in this connection at all. W hen We begin to think about it, we come very near areas of o ä lives where there are unhealed scars which have been buttered .over, and w here something in us is quite afraid to approach for fear we may find something other than what we have always believed. These beliefs are about very basic relationships in our lives,: airtd s.Orirefhiing in us is really afraid of anything that disis; 'diifeoiitk for people to accept the fact, which is true of •diftosr all children—-the child o f whom it is not true is a very

Q uestions a n d A nsw ers A lo n g th e W ay

exceptional child—that one both loved and hated one’s parents, and that this is absolutely normal. One hesitates to acknowledge it to oneself because one has some feeling inside that it is not normal, not human, not right. But you see, we now have a chance, if we are willing to rake it, to go back—armed with the knowledge we have gained by looking at ourselves—and to see that even when we were children we were not one, we were many, and to have the certain knowledge that our parents were also not one; they too must have been many. There is no possibility o f doubt about this. Now if we go back and dig out some o f these internal pictures we have of our parents, we shall see that they are far too simple, hr too absolute, h r too permanent to possibly be true. I don’t say they have no facts behind them at all—certainly they have some has behind them. But you see, I don’t suppose there is any one o f us here who hasn’t felt guilt in relation to both parents at one time or another. This needs looking at carefully, because this guilt is always in rela­ tion to a picture o f oneself, to a picture o f one’s parents, and to some picture o f right relations, duty, responsibility, maybe also fear—all these things. O f course, if one finds a picture of one’s lather or mother that is perfect, w ithout blemish, one is on notice that one has to look further. O r if one finds a picture o f a father or mother thar is wholly evil—and some people have such pictures— one has to look further. The thing that is necessary to untangle for oneself is this: when one was a child, one took It for granted that one’s parents did what they did as a result o f conscious intention. O ne could not take it any other way, and so one’s reactions to them were colored essen­ tially by this, as were their reactions to oneself. You see, this must have meant that many o f our emotional reactions a t that time were not based on facts, were n ot based on a clear seeing o f the situation, but were based on distortion— on something seen n o t as it was. Now, a lot o f unpleasant experiences that we had then, and a lot o f the feelings about which we felt guilty, were suppressed or

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•gjj avvay, were denied o r hid d en ; an d it is these feelings that go Operating in the darkness until w e finally see them for what they jjc and find a way to dissolve th eir pow er over us. T oday we very j j j don’t understand w hy w e react to som e people in certain ways, jje£2Bse we don’t see th a t it is a hangover from o u r early days. W e ^ to see chat, because th e m o re w e understand these things in ooßdves, the better w e are able to see w h at could free us from them. Of course, we have to be careful to avoid th e very childish and 0 ve altitude that any p articular feature w hich has dogged my life

%my parents’ fa u lt T h is d o e sn 't help a dam n bit— doesn’t help at J, But one can say w ith o u t an y blam e: th is was th e result o f that. This may be quite tru e, b u t o n e d o esn ’t have to ad d em otional rones to chat. If we can see an d u n d e rs ta n d an a ttitu d e in ourselves very cbrfy, understand its roots in o u r h eart w hich g ive it its power, and really see its c o n n e c tio n w ith o th e r things in us, then there is really noneed to go back into the past an d trace its whole history in our psyche. This is not necessary, b u t w ith som e things, it helps a great h i just to understand w hy it is th a t we act th e way we do today.

If you understand, you can o nly understand because you are looking from a new p o in t o f view based o n subsequent experience chat enables you to see m ore clearly. A s m uch as you can see more dearly, you can see w hat was w ro n g before, and you can see what would be rig h t in th e future. T h e n y o u have to find the way to equip or reinforce the new attitud e, w hich you have seen to be true, with emotional force such th a t it is n o longer only seen to be true with your m in d , b u t it is felt to be right an d good in your heart— tight and good and natural. T h e n it m ay com e to be felt as more tight and good and natural th an th e old was. T his is work.6

p % I must have som e w rong attitudes about performance. ftBR: Have you fo rm u lated these a ttitu d es about performance a then one w elcom es critic ism fro m th is p o in t o f view. Because if one doesn’t react in th is ch ild ish em o tio n al fashion, if ooedoesn’t become all defensive a n d co n cern ed o nly w ith justifying i oneself and that sort o f th in g , th e re is n o criticism fro m w hich one can’t leam som ething useful. S o y o u see, it’s n o t a question o f just disregarding criticism; it’s a q u estio n o f b rin g in g a totally different atdtude to criticism. O n e a ttitu d e regards it as a n a tta c k o n me; another attitude regards it as a d u e to self-know ledge. C riticism is quite different, depending o n w h ic h a ttitu d e o n e brings to it. I t has II adifferent effect.7

1

Q: When I’m a t h o m e w ith th e c h ild re n a n d g et im p atien t, it doesn’t feel justified. B u t I d o n ’t k n o w h o w to h a n d le th e situation, howto change it o r do s o m e th in g d ifferen t. HBR: Let me p o in t o u t th a t so m e b o d y in y o u th in k s it is justified, oryou wouldn’t feel im p a tie n t. Y o u a re ta lk in g a b o u t fru stratio n as much as impatience, o f course. A g a in , y o u h av e to ask y ourself w h a t lies behind th at, w h y y o u g e t f r u s tr a te d b ec a u se th in g s a re n o t goingthe way y ou expect th e y sh o u ld go. Q: I’m just u nw illing to a c c e p t so m e o f th ese things. HBR: You see, here ag ain th e c e n te r o f gravity o f th is a ttitu d e is life isn’t treating m e rig h t.” N o w , y o u have to ask yourself, “H o w do I expect life to tre a t m e, a n d w h a t d o I deserve fro m life?” Y ou may find that som e o f th e p a rts o f y o u rs e lf th a t are suffering th is j way feel somehow very special, n o t o rd in a ry a t all, b u t practically .unique. Therefore, th e y d o n ’t e x p e c t to b e tre a te d like everyone else. They expect to b e tr e a te d in a ra th e r special w ay w h ich recog­ nizes their uniqueness o r th e ir ta le n ts o r w h a te v e r it m ay be. A n d so

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Questions and Answers Along the Way you come, you see, to a picture of yourself, a feeling of what kind of person you are—a kind of person that deserves to be treated in a very special way. Most of us have this feeling in one way or another, that we’re special, and most of these feelings are deceptions. There is one sense, however, in which we are all potentially spe­ cial. You see, we’re each different. We each have a different mixture of qualities in us; that is what makes us different. If we learn to stop trying to be something that we’re not and learn to be what we really are, at that point we have the opportunity of making a contribution to life which nobody else could make. In that sense, we have the pos­ sibility of becoming special, unique. But we don’t think of it that way. We think we are already special and unique in various ways, and this gives rise, of course, to the expectation and the requirement that people should treat us as though we were very special, very unique.8

Q: I saw a feeling of resentment when something happened that I had not planned for in a busy day last week. HBR: Is your experience that most days don’t bring anything unexpected? Q: That’s my belief, that they shouldn’t. HBR: “Shouldn’t”—what is your experience in feet? That is one manifestation, you know, of a very broad attitude we have which needs to be seen clearly and thought about, namely, that we have some right to expect life not to present us with things we haven’t bargained for. It’s the same kind of thing which lies behind impa­ tience. We don’t expect to be held up and made to wait; we don’t expect things not to go well when we have planned them to go well, and so forth. And so long as we hang on to this, it’s quite clear that we will feel justified in resenting the facts that don’t correspond with the rather unrealistic and rather childish attitudes that we find in ourselves. It’s a good thing, you know, as a rule of thumb, to expect every day that something unexpected and quite probably unwel-

Attitudes and Expectations C0ine will meet one sooner or later in the day. Then when it comes along you’re not caught so off balance, and you say, “Here it is, noWwhat do we do about this?” That is a more practical way to start out the day— to regard these unexpectednesses that happen to Usas a real challenge. Q; I also have a distortion of time. I prepare for a day as if it were a 30-hour day, and it ties into the implication that nothing should interfere. HBR: Well, I think one finds it a very common experience that you look ahead and believe things are going to take as long as they would take if everything w ent smoothly. And you know from your own experience that is not so. Again, if you start with a more realis­ ts expectation that something somewhere will go wrong sometime, then, when it does, you say, “Ah, here it is. I’ve been expecting you, nowlhat do I do about you?” Does everybody recognize that kind ofattitu.de? This may be, for some people, part of a broader attitude one may have inherited, so to speak, from one’s parents—namely, that lifein general should be nice and smooth, and if it isn’t, it is delib­ erately being rough and difficult just to spite one. One really feels like this sometimes. Again, it’s a very childish attitude. But it lies behind a lot of different negative emotions. And one needs to see it dearly, to see that it needs to be replaced by a view of one’s relation tothe world which is more realistic. Q: I found that if I don ’t have negative emotions about the unexpected happening, if I don’t resent it and don’t get uptight, then I can sometimes turn the unexpected to my advantage. I can workwith it. HBR: One sees very clearly that how much one is upset by these unexpectednesses depends entirely how one views them, how one takes them. And if one gets very upset it means one has taken these ina very personal way and not as objective problems. It is beginning to be quite clear that to free oneself from the repetition of this kind o f mistaken reaction, it is simply not enough

Questions a n d Answers A long the Way

to see it dearly with one’s m ind, although th a t is the first step, and it’s an indispensable step. O nce you’ve seen it, one thing that hap­ pens to many people is that they say, “Ah, now I’ve learned that les­ son.” That is not so. O nce one has seen som ething like this, then one needs to operate on the general principle th at one will certainly forget it, particularly at the tim e one needs to remember it. One can remember som ething like this th at one has seen for oneself a great deal of the time, b u t the only tim e it really matters is when one is tem pted again to fall in to th e sam e trap. A nd then the chances are that, at that m om ent, you are identified with the same kind of thoughts and feelings that usually im pel you into the trap, and so you are cut off entirely from the m em ory o f the clear sight you have had in the past. So you have to find a way to rem em ber these things. One of the ways you can begin to embed an insight like that into memory is this: once you see it, then you rem em ber th at it cannot possibly just have sprung frilly blown from nothing. It m ust have operated in your life before. A nd then, if you look back to things that have happened in the past and try to see how this particular attitude and this particular assumption affected the way you took specific things in the past, you begin the process o f changing the past. Q: Sometimes it’s hard to pin dow n the better attitude because the mind has perfect justifications for negative emotions. But some­ times I have a glimmer. HBR: The voice crying in the w ilderness. A t first it’s a totally impotent voice which can’t change things, b u t nevertheless it means that one is n o t totally identified w ith a negative emotion. One begins to feel it’s more like a toothache than oneself.9

Q: I think probably my worst im patience is w ith the Work and wanting quick results. HBR: T hat is som ething that m any o f us suffer from. When I first met the W ork, I was studying, am ong other things, economics.

Attitudes and Expectations t wasvery fortunate in my teachers, who led me to understand what is called the Theory of Value, and I came to see that the whole of the science of economics is based on one fundamental principle, jjjitiely, that everything has its price. And so, when I met the Work, 1 began to see more and more things that were explained by the ignorance of this fact or a deliberate blindness to it. I began to see how I myself and other people on all sides wanted all kinds of things without being prepared to pay the price, and imagined one could get things w ithout paying for them. Sometimes people are prepared to pay something, b u t they don’t pay it in the coin that is required for this particular transaction. And so 1 saw that if one w anted to get results out of this Work, Onehad to work, and the results w ould be according to the intelli­ gence of one;’,s work as well as the energy one put into one’s work. I think impatience often arises because people want results without being prepared to pay the price w hich buys these results. ||s interesting to examine one’s own life to see whether this Mtude has played a part. M ost o f us suffer from time to time from pits that are not met. It’s interesting to ask oneself, "Why are they not met?” Very often, w hen people are seized with a great desire for something, they pray to G od th a t it be given to them, as if He could give it. to them w ith o u t their paying the price. You see, we iye.'in.a world that is law-abiding, governed by laws, and this law I ;|hat everything has its price— w hich may be paid in money or time, attention, energy, w hat have you— cannot be broken.10

These inner children w ho expect other people to meet their needs and at the same tim e w ant assurance o f love from other peo­ ple—the need is so intense, it’s th e need o f a crying baby. I recog­ nize that this k ind o f a ttitu d e is unrealistic, b u t how does one counter it? W hen I th in k about replacing one attitude with another, J see that my new insight does n o t have the same force as this com­ pulsion I have to seek assurance.

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Questions a n d Answers A long the Way

BEE(

HBR: A new attitude means a new w ay o f th in kin g about yours o f thinking about your rights a n d ‘obligations, o f thinking about causes o f negative em otions, o f th in k in g a b o u t their results means changing your way o f th in k in g ab o u t a whole aspect of y own life. You cannot leave this until th e occasion arises. You m come back,to. it m any times. O n occasion in the past we have practiced together the te nique of tak in g s new attitude w hich indeed w ould liberate one i lived |m one, or was ^active w ith th e sam e w eig h t and force a strength as the old is today, an d boiling it dow n to a few words battle cry or slogan, and then repeating those words to oneself d ing the day, and-so arousing the m em ory o f the new attitude whi you want to grow stronger. I’ve suggested, for instance, that one to do this every time one göes through a doorw ay or every time o .goes up and down slabs: If one does this, the result is that this ne way of thinking is 'sounded, so to speak, in m any parts o f one’s in rior country. Itmfeets w ith ||f e i n d confronts one in many differe moods and states, and so it'becomes m ore generally known and n i f l much confined to the small p a rt o f o n e ^ n t e r i o r ^ u n tr y which i%y^Es>^n^iyed and born. At-the same time öne m u ^ le e quite' clearly for oheself that t old way of .reacting, bäsed^on the old attitude, has its own-physic manifestatiöi^ ’Ö ne .m ust k n o ^ - th e m inside o u t ^ o that t moment they arise, ohe is familiar ;M th th e n taste and does not p mit one’s body to follow that line. A n d one m ust know why o makes this change— going against, the old for the sake o f the new as to;strengthen the new. And it is by this friction, b y, frontation between, the old and the new, th at a new is born in one, and the new attitude begihs'bo get emotional force. But y o u l Ä t o m u s f jn p t if ö ^ the differen$|arts ar sides of this process, and one m ust n o t allow oneself to’ be kiddf that change will occur because one sees through w hat ipyrong wi an old attitude and sees a new attitude th at w o u ld d ijto te ohe’d f were as active and strong In one as the old. So one m ust work on a

PUBI

Mou 274

A ttitudes and Expectations w ants to change an attitude, to make it effecp

in o n e ’s l i f e .

jayThisliMhe .beginning. N o w you have laid the ground for work, lI S ll have not reached the. p o in t at which you can reap the fruits 0( ^ r k ^ ^ i ^ s j i l l tem ains to be done. B ut it is the first step, and direction o f release and liberation.11

17 Repairing the Past

The whole central message o f this system o f ideas-is that, indeed, we have hope. So that no m atter w hat one finds out about oneself, one has reason to be glad because we can only start from where we are. And so long as we harbor illusions that we are further along the path than we actually are, we cannot think in a practical way about how to move forward. We are what we are today because o f our past experiences. Now, our past experiences were nothing objective, as far as we are concerned. There is an objective side to our whole past life, %ut| from our own point o f view, our past can be nothing but our mem­ ories of our own past experiences. A nd we know from self-study that our experiences are an amalgam o f the messages brought to us,; by our senses and whatever associations they are mingled with when they are received. It is these associations that interpret our experi­ ences and give them meaning, and we respond accordingly, Now,, as we see ourselves today, we see again and again how these inner associations put false interpretations on events; and because our ■ associations give us false interpretations, we respond to those events ; in an unbefitting manner. As you have discovered for yourselves, m any events from the past are buried in the psychological darkness because they have been pushed down there— repressed for different reasons—in the

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jjope that they will go away or n o t be brought into the light of con­ sciousness, because to b rin g th e m into the light i s felt to be too painful* Nevertheless, they go on. T h ey go on working, they go on feting us. Frequently th ey serve as the inner compelling force Jiich makes us act and react as we d o .1

You don’t see th a t y o u r in n e r w orld, like the outer world, behaves according to law. I f causes have been laid down in the past which result in a certain k ind o f behavior, then this kind of behavior will happen; if you wish to escape from it, you m ust learn to under­ stand those causes and to replace them w ith something else. What i :^rdo today is the direct an d exact result o f how you have lived yourlife in the past, and one has to acknowledge that to oneself. Most of the tim e we m anage to believe th at how I am today— the fact that I’m n ot w hat I should like to be— can be blamed on circumstances and other people. W e d o n ’t see that all circumstances and other people can do is to act as a trigger to set off what is ieidy inside me. It’s very difficult to see this because one is not used to the idea that one’s past, by the operation o f an inescapable law, determines one’spresent—but it does. A nd if one wishes that the future shall be different, then one has to act in the present to change the future faults of the past. T his is the only way it can be done, because the dnlytime you can do anything is in the present— now. You can’t do anything five minutes from now or five minutes ago. The only time |||£can do anything is now. A nd so the only time you have a chance to change the autom atic m echanical effect o f your past actions, which make you inclined to repeat your mistakes, is now. But one has to see this for oneself. O ne will not be motivated ,|o|try and make that kind o f change until one really begins to see in oneselfhow one is obliged all the time, n ot by exterior things, not hyother people, but by w hat is in oneself. The events o f one’s life aresimply the finger that pulls the trigger.2

Q uestions a n d A nsw ers A lo n g th e W ay

Q: There is in me a monumental amount of delusion. I can see this because something occurred to me just a few weeks ago that made me see something that had happened to me sixteen years ago in an entirely new light. It was through work in another direction that I stumbled ontoffus. It just'came to me. And I had deluded myself about the events that had happened to me. HBR: This wasn’t the only way to see them? Q: . 'Right! Buf)älso there was no other way that I could have seen it at that time. HBR: Exacdy, exacdy. This happens so often. W hen we begin to penetrate the truth of something today, we see that in theabsence of seeing that truth, we are bound to see things not as they are. They are bound to be distorted by the personal way we take them. This belongs to the whole business o f changing the past. If one realizes that one’s past can örüyvc^TOisdof.one’s accumulated memdnes Jof one’s own experience and nothing else, then you see that because the past is.determined by the way we saw things in those experiences at the time they occurred that any o f those past experi­ ences can b e;changed by throwing new light on it— the "light” being ‘the. ujmerstahdihg yve have managed to come to in the pres­ ent And indeed one needls to change the past like this in order to become free from the inalnation .to repeat one’s own mistakes. Also ume sees, again injhjs/way, how one can go on suffering for a long time about something arid then suddenly one day realize that one doesn’t need to eondnue-^there’s no need! to go on.3

Q: It seems like there are certain actions \yhich. create anger in me. This is nothing abstract. I mean m y husband, foj:, example, even if I. fell myself that he doesn’t knowJhowto act any ..differently. HBR: Don’t be discouraged, because -you have to recognize that this is the first step towards liberation— to see how strong diis is.

R e p airin g the P a st

There were occasions in th e p ast w here he acted in a certain «ay, and you have felt ever since th a t h e should n o t have acted in that way. You h o ld it a g a in s t h im . A n d y o u see, this has to be brought out, because it is th e w ak en in g in to life o f the complex o f memory which m olds y o u r a ttitu d e tow ards this person. This atti­ tude has in it all th e d ifferen t elem ents fro m th e past th at really cause your reaction now , q u ite as m u c h as th e present occasion. One needs to bring up these p a st occasions an d look at them anew and think of them in a n ew w ay. O n e can’t afford ju st to let them liethere on the shelves. I t is difficult because in between the times when these things are active in o n e, o n e has a great distaste for | bringing them to life. B u t it is necessary if one wishes to find a way torepair the mistakes o f th e past. Q; ) Doesn’t th at ju s t m ake it w orse, to brin g them all out? I HBR: In;the past, y o u experienced th e situation from the point o f I viewthatyoix are one an d h e is o n e a n d h e does w hat he does intenj rionally and consciously, as a m a tte r o f choice. N o w today you bow t h a t i ^ o t likely to b e tru e. A n d , you see, you have to go backinto, the past a n d apply to y o u r o ld interpretation o f that inci­ dent what you? can see clearly no w , th a t you saw before in some kindof distorted way. What I’m talking a b o u t now , th e m em ories o f o n e s own expe­ riences in the past, are in d eed w h a t is m ean t in B e e lz e b u b s T a le s to His Grandson when h e speaks a b o u t th e results o f the crystallization ; dthe properties o f th e organ K undabuffer. I t’s very im portant to see that this is w hat he is. talking about, n o t som ething abstract or occult; this is w hat h ap p en s in us every day. Kundabuffer is the thing that makes you see things n o t as they are, that makes you see things upside down in one w ay o r another. T h e properties o f that organ cause us to experience things n o t as they are, but in the par­ ticular way we are b o u n d to experience them because we see them insome kind o f distorted way. A n d the results o f that remain in our psyche and determine o u r a ttitu d e tow ards people and the way we interpret their behavior in the future. T hey go to shape our image

Q uestions a n d A n sw ers A lo n g th e W ay

vv.^i|lfetson, and as you know very well, most of the time one is not :t;£eom m to u ting Oi^mteracting with the actual persern, but Wit!* the rpeirson. Thpj|mage has been created in one by* nrie?raKSnm retWion of the person's, actipns a n d l y 'ohe’^ ^ a b je ä ^ tiöris tö'that interpretation. ' And we have to talize, oficoTTrse, that other people look 7 it^ - g d y the same way. They in te rp re t^ their owh subjectiye way how we we-aet. They actions and in te r^ ^ .ßpm them what kind of a person we are. They don’t see our inten­ tions, which are invisible to themf but they see our actions arixf build up fr^m.them an interpretation o f the motives tHatl:Syiag/t?o'ften not unders.tooditq he the hunger fop its proper objejct,;^|piget:Sj^S verted actual tbe>pösabilities contained in the blueprints withvv^iicliÄ werehoEnsw ^ hunger in the jgsycfe can turn canlsgek. in jn ö r ^ , in feme, in power; This is; neve^ u c ^ ^ i t e ^ ^ m ^ P ^ f e not seeking what it r e a h y ^ e d s ..|^ ^ ^ in g - o f need is misintemreted. We need. ffi, recogriize in ©itpsefees. this .natural:hunger.that has been expressed^-the naked! in ten t o f the söml tow ards God.” It is the f^ ^ p q n y and-.^fe have Xa think o f this^olfe move­ ment w h ^ ^ ^ i a ^ e M l ^ ^ ^ ^ u ] ^ ^ ^ ^ Thbr&,ala|^Pmirrents, you see. One,is the. c u r r e n iM x r e a ti Q n ,u n i ^ tp w m l ^ h tu l tiplicity; the other,; return^fr o ^ m f ^ sitv in thq.direcrioii of unity. And sinc e ^ v ^ ^ ^ ^ M q |o s i ^ f ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ i ^ n , i p e have,bomj^flG||*^ If we examine^Ur lives v.we ,se!e-indeed that uflffiulh we ha^e,S diverse inner hfe amj- we are in us that wishes to go in the direction o f unity, .towards thf-filM e from which we c o m e . This hunger S^Io®et!®afs felt as. in emufon to which we find it difficult; to p u t a nam e exactly. Really it is a kind of spiritual homesickness, a wishing to return t o ^ h a t is,.quf true home. It is said, you know, th at to be. absorbed in the .outeft world to the exclusion o f all else Js to live t® eiittei, iitie fita ls i it is. called Egypt Sometimes it is called an inn, where we are staping/Qi. the way of a journey, that is mistaken to be our h o m e,,;.

W o rk

And I would sayn^at^tjho.ugh^ fgvhen y r t true ;homej£§jFar away, thisds decepüOjjpBi| w e,eö |u a||| the obstacles andfrtqffifl^^ the fight way, it is very near.11

^ ^ n e ^ a n n o t rule out the 1 possibilitysthat^ in- due-course a j ^ ^ ^ pliaslif massUso. to speaks jhayi|^yeheyoridutsi present level', ©te tesis sight of the fact that the earth itself is in its eady -youth i ^ ^ » r r i a n k n ^ . a p p e a r ^ i t ih.buta\momenipf geoldgicalM fifne, Unless a disaster of some sort occurs, mankind—not individuals, bat m anklnd-^has a life of perhaps a number lof biUiprisiof -8 M ^ S j ^ & v ecafe atetheiatery begihniri'g{bf-a ^f p ^ p ^ )r experiment^;! @©an enormous scale— 'this; creation of man ion earth. M ^ ^ m /th e beginning, iuseems, man has been' endowed with the J ^ ^ ^^^h aracteristics fqr^sehreKing foa something higher... From the ’beginning he|fta£ ^had thei^M ibilitym f developingin himself func- \ tions and states through which he can attain access to truth. But i i ^ f e ^ r f m a n k i n d ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ M w a y t o r vwhethe&khis ' ^ ^ n t Ä p j p e n at. all— and it can always go; down—must essentially depend on the num ber o f individuals in whom „the? truth comes to Tiafie |i$ a wonderful Buddhist fext^ncerning the creation of tn|^orM^J|may. read; it to.yomsome day, but1it comes down to the ‘idea that ft :i§ ©mlf In man that the truth can find a place to live on earth. Now for that to happen, of course, individual people must "yishtto, seek the-truth and to seek to make possible its life in them. If Mdee;! individuals don’t do this,-then mankind as a whole will certainly hot'evolve. «So when one begins to feel one’s possible part . ®hi||process>on an enormous scale, of which one is a part whether onelikesdt^br not, one begins to feel a certain responsibility. You see, here you are, forty of you, in this group. Now, if you reflect in your m ind, probably each of you comes into contact in ,one, way or another w ith at least 500 people during the week. This

231

v \m v \ \ \ m '\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ v v A m \ \ \ \ \ \

Q u e s tio n s a n d A n s w e r s A l o n g t h e W a y

means that, as a group, you com e in to co n tact w ith 20,000 other people. Now, you cannot come into contact w ith any one of these people w ithout affecting them . Y ou have n o choice. You step into an elevator and treat the elevator operator as a piece o f furniture, and you don’t even n o tic ^ jttY o u have affected him , quite unintention­ ally, quite unconsciously, quite w ith o u t n o ticin g it. A dozen other passengers are in th a t elevator. F ro m y o u r state you emanate to them on a physical, chem icll level, an d th e y receive it. You emanate -iapEphsaoudy, they ricpiye' unconsciously, butLyou affect them. So you s'efc, even as small a group|as th is has, w hen one begins to realize it, an enorm ous responsibility because you are affecting other people for good or fo r bad th e w hole tim e, w hether you real? ize it or not. You have no cmfjjjS Y ou cannbfcbem plated from this, you cannot be independent p 'fth iP H Today you haveklMle possibility o f influ en cing the way you affechntE w people. b u t-th ere is j^ n o s s ibilitv. Y o n ise e ^ lS ^ n ly d f individualVpeople change in th e w a y th e y live th e ir life because truth has i^m^^myelM.themy rh a t m a n k in d as a w hole has anypos? Sibility at all o f evolving; ’ P eopieithink all th e d im e in term s' o f som e politicaMheans,' some social? means, by w hich the w h o le world, can ber transformed. This is an in f a n td ^ a l^ lr e a iii. T h ^ * 4 ? n o such t h i n ^ Ä h ^ p ^ i nothing th at^m d )e" done politically or: socially th a t will transform -the world overnight; It’s puerile to im a g in e th a t there lariibe such a thing. You have to realize that. Now, within the body o f m an k in d are people lik e ^ ^ u ^ lfw h o are searching for, som ething. T h e te are M|o;^eople;?whose search?h^ progressed way beyond w hef i ypujrs an d m in e have#and they also^ by the way they five;:jpf0pp5e: theif: effect o n the* b o llp ^ f^ a h M d i'i Again, you m ay be quite unaw are o ||t l I i , b u t ^ ^ B ® . I remember this struck me very m uch at th e tim e w hen I m et a Sufi ;n ta sfe fi^ Iran. I had a long conversation w ith him , an d in the! c n h r s ^ f tlii^s conversation, he said to me, “You will see, n o t jiist n o w / uuip!op p will see at a certain time th at you have n o t taken a single step along

W o rk

this road w ith o u t th e h e lp o f invisible helpers.” It was a very inter? esting thing to re m e m b e r.12

KM

N o w th a t I f in d I ’m s tro n g e r^ J l|fe l th a t I n e e ^ r o m li h

‘terms of w hy I a m w o rk in g . A n d I need m ore force in terms o f an IfflfS o f w hat I w an t.

ifiBR: It’s difficult fo r a y o u n g m a n lik e iy o ^ to realize th a t y o u i% tim e^ lim ited . Y o u a ss u m e ^ o f course;7th at there will be a tom ortp w ,^ n e x t w eek, a n ex t m o n th , a n ext year^ «ten; years from now, twenty,years. Y o u assum e th a t y o u ’ll be there, available^ B ut y o ia ^ o n ^ B ^ p ^ k n o w . Y o u ’re a statistic like the rest o f us. You may S S y e tom orrow fro m d f th e quick to the statisticsT o f ; pe§ead. T h ere’s a calculable nskM ? butlwe forget-all the time. l ^ p K u n ^ t f r a ^ ^ r o f r ö M f e v ^ ^ ^ m ^ lS w e i d d h ^ * today; ?we d o n ’^ j ^ t ^ b e / today; A nd as each minute i B B S i p ie o p p o rtu n ity it p reseilt^ ^ f s 'will n o t recur. H ^ u h a v lp o rem em b er th a t d a c h tm o m ^ t when I ’m n ot awake ^ ^ ^ ^ r a e l k o r e o f m e m o rip l inlMl m y centers that will incline me sfeeb. W e never stand still. Every moment, every lliute., feeds so m eth in g in m e and makes it stronger—I have no ^ ^ ^ ^ b o u t l th is at all. T do have a choice in w h a t each moment me if I ’m awake. I f I ’m n o t awake, I have no choice at a11. But I 'know very w ell, if I do nothing about it, if I’m n ot active fe the livirig o f m y ow n life, then I shall follow the kind o f course iülit I ,sff people follow ing aro u n d me on every side. All my tendenwhatever th ey are, will gradually become stronger and stronger; |h ® ] ) M t y for adaptation, for change, for flexibility, will gradually Ijlcrease' and decrease, and so I will end my life fully crystallized in a terfam m oM |—n o t because I wish to be, not because I intended to heat all, but because I was lived. I d idn’t live. There is w ith in us this little flame, which is o f the same nature as the'light o f the stars. I t is surrounded by veil after veil, and it

Q uestions a n d A nsw ers A lo n g th e W ay

does not cast its light where its light is needed to be cast, so d, one forgets that it exists. But it is the seed of life. If We tUrn ^ at from it, we turn away from our own life. But I cannot feel this frf you. You can only feel it for yourself.13

334

Suffering and Remorse

It’s very necessary to think to oneself the part that pain of dif­ ferent sorts in different centers plays in life, and to look back on one’s own life and see that there are many things that one has learned from pain and from suffering pain, and to see that one has been stimulated in one’s search for truth by this, ftt^think we all have in us still some infantile rebellion against the pain we see in life, as if it were not according to law. One has to face the feet that pain ism part of life. We know very well that to die pain that is part of life, from which no escape is possible, we add two different kinds of suffering which are not necessary and which we put on our own shoulders: first of all, the distress associ­ ated with pain, where we constantly fight pain and try to get away from it, instead of opening ourselves to the experience of it; and in addition, of course, the suffering that we place upon our shoulders bythe upside-down ways we interpret what we meet in life and our own actions. These are not necessary. No one goes through life without pain. But so long as one fights pain when one meets it— and I’m talking about real pain which has real cause, whether it’s mental, emotional, or physical—so long as one always fights pain as if it were an unjustified intrusion of some kind, one will always be at pain’s mercy. If one separates from pain and experiences it in a pure form, it is an entirely different

335

Questions a n d Answers A lo n g the W ay

event. But to do this one has to have an entirely new attitude to pain. Mostly we have the basic attitude that life has no right to make me suffer. There is always somebody hi one who feels this way, and it’s not a sensible way ‘bf meeting pain at all.1

I listened to the tape of last week’s meeting and it seemed to me that some things were not very clear. People spoke about suffering as if some suffering was real; and some wass unreal. You must be very careful of^tM: w ajoj^ipse these two words. Everything you experi­ ence is real in "the sense that yoft experience it. The cause of suffering is sometimes objective, and sometimes its cause is imaginary. This is the kind of distinction people are trying to get at when nailing some suffering teal and some unreal. All süfffefing is real, but if its’fcaul^iS objective, it cannot be avoided; and iJ^S cause is imaginary, it can be avoided.' This is w Eät^^na^ltö be clear about for oneself.2

Tyer^^n ^ ^lp p i feel its own kind of pain, but we must b'e veiy careful tmdistmg^iskhetw'een .the functional pain felt oy/the center and the psychological- distress of feeling this pain. This distress is |m m ^m n^quite different and dTwithin our control, potentially at least, oo^one needs to make this* distiheriombetween suffering which ^unavoidable because it isMjp^nffiiri its causes and suffering which is indeed avoidable becaiise it is imaginary in its^ causes, and then one needs to make|this/6then distinctioh 'Betweeh pain ‘arid the ps^m? lögical distress ^aRsuffering paih,^ m c nTs something quite differente and which depends essentially qmjour attitude towards the pain and ourattitude towards: ourselves at the time the pain is suffered. When we com eS| cdnscioffifsüffeting again I think therefa certain amount of to you^on many^&asRM that one can distinguish among three different states; one is the working o ft^ cen te rs by themsely^i#sleejp without coi^iqusn^ i (and of course, each center can work in this why); the second is the

336

Suffering a n d Remorse

fuq^tiomby themselves, Jm&I am cohaH Imousiof their functioning, whichtls what happens-jyh^ I observe ■myselF and the third i§,gvJhen I intentionsaEfe and conscibüsly|direct mvimlctions. Noys^it is the same with suffedhg: d->can su^fi^ithRff^m ^^^Shessr, I can be aware that h , i^^^^@ liyi[|SjifFen.^heg ^are three/diffi^entcfhing^ one Jmusgj^^a ?lle^i|g3f pnesjelf the dtffiriifdi among-thern^j. I t ^ g ^ ^ d lM ek^andf tl a d l ^ ^ ^ M ^ ^ / ^ v o U i . will find that the phraise^^ffidjiefF^ses^again and again and again is “conscious |15B81|äfid in ^ j^ ^ o ^ ^ u ffe rin g .” So when gV^-ispeak about inten^ ^ M |^ e rm g w e speak about? sufi^rigjthat would note^ist for us ^^SwefGonscml^muitended it ^ B ^^^^h^^fii^g ^ etv m an y q k irid s^ o f'-co riscio u s suffering: ;j fflo~feedm.es. mysefcget- \ p nWpdcnOw. y ^ i ^ a k e s me w h a t^ ^ ^ f f l By doing this, I make my JaecaräeJfc is moreLcomfortable. if it- pporates^Smg the lines-laydown by If I interrupt that.p something^suffers by being disturbed. I part, of the^ Being,;• Another kind of conscious suffering, is when my .wish and my Bi^Kili^^ fm p n t each, other, and X permit them to confront each olter without making excuses, without any process pf.s^-cahxiing, ^ ro ^ B sim p ly turning my back on them. And of cpurs^^ais can padlce another k ind of suffering which is absolutely necessary, namely, the suffering associated with remorse of conscience, when I contemplate my being as it, is and suffer the consequences.3

Yon sif, there Is not only physical pain; one must recognize A«® 'there is; psychological pain as well. For instance, if someone suffer a psychological wound that is just as ^^^^m hysical wound.

337

Questions and Answers Along the Way Now, you know from experience that N ature will heal physical wounds, provided that they are not infected. N ature alsö' heals psy­ chological wounds after a time if they are n o t infected. Büt what is infection of a psychological wound? It is the various negative emo­ tions that ai|se because one feels the pain *of that wound. And again, these negative emotions-are not due to the w ound itself, but urthS way one takes it. Sp in either case, w hether the body i^ h ü rt or whether the psyche is hurt, one needs in the first place to separate from what is hurt. One’s habitual reaction is toAvish the pain would go away and to wish one didn’t have to suffer it. ThatMpfesh’t .help at all. The pain won’t go away by w ishingdfa ^ ^ g ft It’s necessary really to? open1’ofr^efr^tB ntipnally,i voluntarily^ willingly'to the e x p e r ie r |||||f pain, witpibut feeling at the same time;|l|afe hurt. And this can hav e^itite unexpected resilltsl M i we are not in the state o f separation, if we are in th lg jrat||0£ identification, it dp’es1^ ^ ^ p i^ fb ^ s l;th a ^ iti?s-possible to experience pain w ithout the psychological d ift^ s ss'B u t w e'n eed to tiiifila about this and to try to rem em b^E t at the time it really matters^* when there is^pain.4

It’Svery, ifr^ful to th in l^ l^ ^ ^ m ö n e y p w n life and seenowithis* confusion between p tin a h d personal distress arising o ut of pain are mixed up. In many #avsa ^ g u s a | i l to p ra c tic e ^ p a ra tin g oneself I m et a psychiatrist^fi^^tm |ndu w hen visiting the Shivapuri Baba. He was Ipokirig^bf i ^ ways in which wise and learned men from various traditions fraught people ho^tfc»1*escape from pmg^ crushed by anximiesföf different kinds. H e laten wrote a/boojewiMlg describes some very practicalfrechniques whereby one can graduallyi learn> by practicing, to separate sense' o|!b:fr§gj§from physical pain. If you can do this; ;ypu can experience the^pain in a pureyyay, totally unadulterated, cal distress which usually accompanies it.

Suffering a n d Remorse

And it may indeed so u n d strange, b u t if you can jreM ^pbm -: pletelyfind ä way n o t to identify w ith bodily pain and to experience it in'this Way, as a pure experience, it is'sbmetim es alm ost like lis­ tening' to music. I t’s th a t k in d o f experience. It’s very strange^O ne wouldn't expect th at;5

are now1, w e db liee'd th e rig h t k in d o f suffering. T h a t is j^^m ifdjieff r e f e r s ^ m an y tim es in B w lzS u b to *^GönscioiB labor ahd mfenEronal suffering.” I t i^ n ^ e ^ a i y to th in k tb Oneself w hy he iiiferprets the u n fo rtu n ate position in w hich m an finds him self as M i^Ecth e d k e k b f‘b o th these- cb n ^ ib u s^ effo f^ cb n scio u s labor an d

•i^^n^mal'sufifering^^ Tt^seems ^ n s b n s e , | ^ f u s t sightj‘m p ^ b n e needs to i^ ^ F in te n tio n a lly , s ^ ) n e ‘has to ^ J g ^ e s e lf w h a t this m eans'and m u ch im p o rtan ce oil it. If y o u read Beelzebub, again $^M ffiaH ^dahm ntal, ^ s e n t i a l ' d u ty . B u £ w h a t ex actly can th a t tllne k in d m f in te n tio h ^ ^ fE e rin g . You M ^ ^ E ^ th in l^ B f^ w h a t' tfrlpfneariS' fo r yourself, an d i£ris direcdy conrilHed w ith l ^ f f ^ ^ m m ^ e ^ ^ M a n y an d n o f one. So, I give youaclue.6

1%: suggested som etim es th a t p e o p le take a w eek in w hich they bring ä new approach to life— th a t they regard every situation into which they come as intentionally and dehberately sent to them in answer to a fervent prayer that my life m ay be such that I know . ’^inyself. It;s ve.ry interesting if y o u really take th at seriously and wel­ come everyitog, b u t e v e ry th in g , th a t life brings to you for a Week, f e pfee possiblie to do it, n o t at all impossible. It will bring hom e to p ® hbw m u ch to d ay y o u constantly rebel and resent the things thatlife bringT to y b u , because y o u are moved by this feeling that To ■ p f e ^ ^ ^ B i k ollbe aBle^to r ih q b s e ^ h ^ ^ m ^ s u jB h r s ^ ia puppet psychological is a for what ?This, each o fu s has to ponder.

l ^ e l ^ g s W ' h a v e ^ u d l^ S^^p ^ r a ^ t a ü ^ ^ ^ m föahy^pfocessiK^ ■ tM ^ Q T O ^ o a w n ra n ^ w ^ ^ rm ^aa ro ^ ^ W ^ e m w m e w h o le tim e

all kinds o C tm ^ s ^ ^ o ra one ppinhqf BpB^lBtinds OB e^rg i^ ^ ^m tifls.a conditionofour life that havKiTi^lMMd iM ^ ^ ^ obliged to giyejhsfck^Wefrr^t give back. Bow* hire is w het e otaff fhoici lesi W hat do we give back? Mere we s i t ¥©ty deafly the diff®fn.Ce between: the state of sleep in ri'6' qlihicn a t all about what one gives in which one has choice. And if one asks IlgsÄ “I f 1 eon0t® e in t h i s ^ ^ ^ i n which I do not have choice» what will hap pen?” on# m u st beware of deceiving oneself by remain the way they axe.8 They will not: g Nothin’g "stands still. A nd so one becomes more and more crystal|lueatinione|^resporises;,to life. One repeats one’s mistakes and conialpi@>®t in ways that are designed to sow the seeds of suffering ifipm for oneself and for others. : Its'quite clear that if I look at my past life, I see that I have made many mistakes. I have done many things that have had objec-

349

s tfW

Q uestions a n d A nsw ers A lo n g th e W ay

tively Bad results^ both for myself and others; and without bringing in any question of serving a higher level, I wish, if I see this clearly, not to go on repeating m y mistakes, not to go on causing suffering. But if I am to do this, I have to learn to be able to choose. And i f f am jtO' be ab||d to dbjao^l then I have to find ways to become free ffom that which now hampers m y powers

It would be veiyaisefiiü.tCö thin kw h at ^drdjiefiF meant when he " spok^of -^hging-Partkdolg^^” -as being composed of two;j®sS| men^gfgn^cxQusUabor and intentiodl^ufiFering.' He alwaysrapokei of .these two together.. In ^k^ehdhj^praeti1

frgkYou .must, realize th at nobody else, can create a quiet place within you, and that you yourself cannot created quiet place with­ in^—because there isFhwaysajqüieü,within. O nly.youhave to open to it. You do n o t have to create i t —It is there. Nobody can give it to you.-S pm e|y^m ay bp able tO| help you^to^open, yourself to it. - Someone may be ab l^ perhaps, to s e e - m o r^ l^ rly w hat stands in the way of your beingvkble to open yourselfto it. But it is there.^s not. something that one .has to go out and fetch from somewhere. It’s n o t something one has to fabricate .for oneself.^t is there. And i | is Olfy bimnse we find ourselves, filled ^ t h all sorts o f restless activ­ ity, and our attention is boun d to lttiat. that we^(hhhpM)pen tö'igajl the time, ydiether we are extem ^y-actiye Of passive. This is what is meant when i l l l said in the New jjEestament trat the kingdom o f heaven is within.* How^-difficult it is töiipallze. w m m B

A Prayer' ^ Said during the quiet period at the beginning of a meeting Let com passion arise in your hearts for those who are hungry, for those who are lonely* for those who' are bereaved^ for :thosegwho M§,conftiseff> for f e s g who are searching for their home in the wrong places, for th e child who has lost Kis parents, for the B ^ ^ ^ ^ w ho have lost their child, for all who suffer. And for all the inner children who suffer from lack of understanding. Feel for them in your heart. Feel B ^ ^ ^ ^ f e ö |y ^ 'd s ? a l l of them .14

A t 4 m att discards k it threadbare robes a n d p u ts an new, sa the S p ied throw s o ff its outw orn bodies a n d takes fresh ones. F or death is as sure fo r th a t w hich is born as b irth is fo r th a t w hich is dead. Therefore g rieve n o tfo r w h a t is in evita b le. B hagavad- G ita

One has to think of there being three kinds of death. One is the death of the physical body. One is the death we live, which we life,"1when our functions are active, but we ourselves do not exist—when we are just a puppet at the mercy o f the world around us. And the third is the death that we have to die if we are going to be reborn, the death of which Mohammed said, “Die before ye die." Now what is that? This is something one has to think about. As I have «id to you before, this Work that we study is not a mat­ ter of ordinary reform of character. It’s a matter of transformation, iDjtter of going from one level to another; and so long as our sen se of ourselves is totally stuck at one level, we cannot move to another I speak to you about something which can for you today be only an idea, but an idea which deserves deep thought.1 ♦

362

Death Nothing is more certain than that life will present us with Liie will not leave us in peace. Crises will come along, and , e |n between is the time to prepare ourselves to meet them. • thall meet the crisis represented by the death of the physical it may be that this is the most important crisis in our life; we > really know. It may well be that it is. It may be that life is jo us in order to prepare for this moment.2 ❖ You only have to study the interrelation among parts of organ, nature to see that the whole maintenance of this thin, living envelope about the surface of the earth depends on a constant cycle of birth and death. It is obvious, that of the number of creatures in j this body of organic life, o f all those born only a fraction is destined j to survive and grow and fulfill its possibilities. In connection with the great disproportion between the many that arc bom and the few that come to maturity, one has to think also of man. Men are born with something in them that has the possibility of coming to maturity, but in fact their circumstances are such—the influences playing on them are such—that very often this has as little chance o f coming to maturity as most of the acorns that fall on the ground from an oak tree. We don’t think of our life like this, of course. W e take our life for granted, as we take so much for granted. But one is, indeed, born as a human being with the extraordinary possibility that a human being has.3 ❖

When one is rem inded of one’s mortality, it is not something to make one sad but som ething to remind one that now is the only time to live.4 ❖

We have to understand why it was that Beelzebub said that remembering death could be the one factor that could contain hope

363

y f j i i m

Questions and Answers Along the Way for liberating men from this totally unnatural state in which they now find themselves as the result of the “crystallized consequences of the properties of the organ Kundabuffer.” O f course, whenever we look at any of these different parts of ourselves, we see indeed very clearly that they do not see facts as they are; they see them upside down and inside out. You see, if you were able to move in the direction of becoming free from the fear o f death, which at present most people don’t even acknowledge to themselves exists, this would help put in order many other things. Some part of you regards it as morbid to remember death all the time. You have to take it together with what Beelzebub has already said about the holy process of Rascooarno and the bodies of man. He certainly doesn’t say that when the planetary body is dis­ solved into its constituent elements which return to the sources from which they came, that this is the end. He says something quite different. It is important to remind oneself of what he says about this aspect of man and this aspect of the possibilities symbolized by the different higher bodies of man. It is a very ancient, traditional point of view.5

You are all relatively young, and I realize that to you I am rela­ tively old, so perhaps it seems natural that I have thought for many years now about the moment of the death o f my physical body. But you know, every one of you, that this moment is drawing nearer for you every day, every hour, every minute, and for jul you know a great deal depends on the way you are able to meet this moment in your life, which is the only absolutely certain thing about the future. So we must try to be aware of this temptation just to relax and enjoy the times when things are going smoothly. There isxno reason why we shouldn’t enjoy them, but to enjoy them with the illusion that they will go on forever like that is stupid, and certainly is bound, sooner or later, to lead to disappointment=gvhether superficial or very deep.6

364

Death

(v I can’t believe I am going to die. It seems to change your whole outlook if you don’t believe that. HBR: Yes, it does. For one thing, o f course, it enables you to be at peace with yourself, and you can go oil believing that you can always$.0 something tom orrow. T his is not necessarily true. W e all know that the one thing that is absolutely certain about our indi­ vidual futures is that this planetary body will die. So we all know that whatever we have to do in this life, there is a limited time to do Bra We all know at the same tim e th at this limited time is being reduced as the days and hours and minutes and seconds pass. W e llikflöw we can’t recapture the tim e that has gone by. But we are afraid to face the fact o f death and so we don’t remember. We are afraid because w e have no convjction that we have any- J thing in us that will survive it. W e cannot know this and we have I no faith. So long as I let m y feelings of myself be taken up by my S body, how could I have faith? Obviously the body doesn’t survive. ■ One of the things th at can be experienced by a higher center is 1 the fact that one contains som ething in one’s self that is completely 1 independent of the life or death o f the body with its centers. This, ] one can know directly through the working of the higher centers, in j a manner which— once one has experienced not open to any kind of doubt. B ut w e canno t know it in this direct way by the working of our ordinary centers. And you see, it doesn’t m atter from one point of view because only two things are possible. I f nothing survives the death of the physical body, th en all we have is the time between this moment now and the tim e o f our death. T his is all we have. Nothing can be done after that; if w e w ish to do anything, it has to be done between now and then. On the other hand, if you take the alternate view and believe that something does survive the death of the planetary body, then it is hard to escape th e conclusion th at the fate of that which does sur­ vive the body m ust be affected very m uch by what has happened

365

Q uestions a n d A n sw ers A lo n g th e W ay

before then. It is said that anything unfinished in this life has to be death—again, this is something one should not just because one can’t prove it— but you will get sdfSe,idea what Gurdjieff thought about this himself if you read the chapter “The Holy Planet Purgatory” in B e elzeb u b s T ales to H is G randson? fin ish ed a fter

Every human relationship p lia b le to be in ieilmpted at any moment by death. If one becomes very emotionally dependent in a relationship with someone and identifies with this feeling olfemodo ^ jidependency, one putgj oneself immediately in ayihjforable »^BOslfiön. It is not that rria R m S S vulnerable—it is the dependency. It is extremelyldifficult not to feel emotional dependence towards someone you love or idealize’ But this is an element that doesn’t have to come into the relationship. - When a'close“ relationship is^lim deredsw lueaihv-^^^uffers. O ne suffers simplv^Decai^lthere is a perfectly material but subtle e ^ ^ n | B | joh^sg ^i^$ ls;lperson.g^|h^n[- this b o n d |i| suddenly sun­ dered, one^uffers af^fychological wound which is the exact equiva­ lent of ä physical wound. Like a wound, to the body, if thew oünd-is^ not infected, nature heals it witmhja.certain time. The ;.cal e ^ ^ e h ^ :^^ e !^ ^ ^ s^ a ri^ s^ eg a tiy eien i^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ » with the pain that is inevitahl^uffeie^S[^^^tf-nit^£^^histan