(40.) Maurice Nicoll 1 - Further Note on Knowledge and Being - p.164-169
This is number (40.) of our sequential postings from Volume 1 of Maurice Nicoll’s Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky.
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Birdlip, October 2, 1942
FURTHER NOTE ON KNOWLEDGE AND BEING
I
We will begin our talk to-night with further thoughts about the two sides of a man called in the Work the side of Knowledge and the side of Being. Since I notice that these two sides of the Work are not sufficiently thought about I will ask you this question: Suppose you have some person who is very primitive, very undeveloped in the ordinary sense, very superstitious, and, let us say, more like an animal than a human being. Now let us suppose that your task is to raise this person to a better state. How are you going to begin to do so? Now if you think over the subject you will realize that you have two tasks confronting you—and, in fact, you will begin to realize why the Work says that a man has two sides, Knowledge and Being. You will begin to understand that what the Work says about the two sides of a person that must be developed is quite true. Now this person whom you have to deal with knows nothing: and also this person lies and steals and behaves dishonestly and so on. Which side are you going to begin with? You must think for yourselves as to where you would begin. Would you begin by teaching him some Knowledge or by acting on his Being, with, say, a big stick? Do you now realize more distinctly that these two sides, the state of his Knowledge and the state of his Being, represent the man in a psychological sense—and that if we ourselves wish to grow it is only possible along these two lines?
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II
Now let us speak of levels of Being. What are the signs of the level of Being in a man in the Work-sense? How can we understand what it means that each man is at a higher or at a lower level of Being? We can all understand, at least to some extent, what a man on a higher level of Knowledge is. That is, we can understand the Relativity of Knowledge. We can realize that a man knows more or knows less about some subject than we do. I say here, on purpose, that we can understand this to a certain extent. And by this I mean that we are not speaking of the quality of knowledge, but simply in a general sense of all knowledge. To-day, by the method of examinations, a man is tested as to his degree of knowledge, whether scientific or commercial, mathematical, classical, and so on. We are all prepared to admit that this or that man's knowledge of, say, astronomy, or finance, or the French language, or motor-cars, or literature, and so on, may be on a higher level than is our own. And this standard of knowledge, verified by examinations, is to-day the main standard in practice that people are judged by. But in the Work the
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case is different. People in the Work are not estimated from the side of Knowledge only, but from the side of Being. In the Work, the question is not merely what a man knows but what a man is. What a man knows belongs to the side of his Knowledge: what a man is belongs to the side of his Being. And just as Knowledge is relative, so is Being—that is, one man's being may be relatively on a higher level than another's. And in this respect, as you know, the Work says that a man must be at that level of Being called Good Householder before he is really regarded as being in the Work. Therefore on the side of Being, we begin with a man who is at that level called Good Householder. Notice the word good, because Being has to do with goodness. You cannot apply this word to Knowledge. Knowledge is either right or wrong Knowledge, true or false Knowledge. You can learn the truth about how to make a motor-car. This is knowledge that is truth. But you can also have false or wrong Knowledge. So the terms truth and falsity belong to the side of Knowledge. But in the case of Being these words cannot be used in quite the same way. A man is a good Householder or a bad Householder. A good man and a bad man are terms quite distinct from right or wrong as applied to Knowledge, or Knowledge that is true and Knowledge that is false. A man can be, in quite an ordinary sense, a good man, and have quite a wrong Knowledge, say, of how to make a motor-car. On the other hand, he can be, in an ordinary sense, a bad man, even a criminal, and have a very good Knowledge of how to make a motor-car. In other words, it is not Knowledge alone that defines a man in the Work. He is defined in terms of his Being as well—and, in fact, as a starting-point in the Work, he is taken first of all in terms of his Being. That is, he is not taken in terms of his level of Knowledge at the starting-point, but in terms of his level of Being. This does not mean that a man's Knowledge is useless in the Work. In the Fourth Way, which we are studying, a man's Knowledge can prove to be very useful. But what is first of all taken into consideration is his level of Being—the kind of man he is. He must be, or be near to, the level of Good Householder, and if he is not, no matter what he knows, he is of no use to the Work. But since we have already spoken many times of what Good Householder means, to-night we are going to speak of levels of Being and what they mean. I will begin with this Work phrase: "A man on first hearing this Work, understands it, and can only understand it, on his level of Being." This Work comes in to you as Knowledge. But Knowledge and Understanding are two different things. You may know a lot and understand nothing of what you know. Now this Work, coming into you as new Knowledge, will be understood exactly according to your level of Being, and that will depend upon whether you have Magnetic Centre or not. This is the second sign of Being in the Work.
Now let us go slowly and re-capitulate, in order that the teaching about Being can be grasped. First, in regard to Being, a man must be at the average level of Good Householder. He must be a responsible and decent person. He must not be a tramp or a lunatic—and of the
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meaning of these technical terms we have spoken enough elsewhere. The second sign of Being, at the start, is the possession of Magnetic Centre. In ordinary language, this means that a candidate for the teaching must be a man who has pondered about life and wondered about the meaning of himself on earth and had many private thoughts of his own, which have led him to feel dimly that there must be something else, some other sense in things than he has been taught, some other meaning in life than he was taught, as it were, at school. Putting the matter roughly, without using technical language, he must be a man who is not quite satisfied with position, money, possessions, success and so on, and has caught sight of something behind the world of the senses, behind the world of appearances. Or put more technically, a man with Magnetic Centre in his Being is a man who has had moments when he has felt that life cannot be interpreted and so cannot be understood simply in terms of itself. Sometimes in the country, in the woods, in the fields, we have seen something that has made us feel we were far away not only from ourselves but from all real meaning. Or it may have been that some words read from the Gospels in the School Chapel have made us catch our breath. Or the sudden sight of someone has awakened some strange feeling that we have forgotten something that we should have always remembered. Or we have touched a thought in some book that seemed filled with a meaning we could not reach and yet recognized. Now when a man is convinced in his inner and most hidden thoughts—the thoughts that he cannot easily put into words—that there must be something else behind life, and yet at the same time he fulfils his task in life and does his job and becomes what he must become—soldier, sailor, doctor, priest, lawyer, and so on—he is both a Good Householder and a man who has traces of Magnetic Centre. But—to put it as brutally as possible—if a man believes in nothing but getting on in life and sees life as the fulfilment of all he needs and cares nothing for anything else, then he has no Magnetic Centre. He may be a Good Householder but not quite in the Work-sense. For in the full Work-sense a Good Householder is a man who has fulfilled his duties in life in a responsible way and no longer believes in life. He no longer believes that life by itself leads anywhere, but believes that, under the circumstances, he must do his duty. Now no longer to believe in life as being capable of fulfilling all we seek is one thing: and to believe that there is something else that we must seek is another thing, for this latter means that a man has Magnetic Centre—something in him that points in a certain direction that does not obey the ordinary laws of a compass.
Let us again re-capitulate the teaching about Being. First, a man must be in life and have dealt with life and reached some adequate position in life and knowledge of life and so be a Good Householder, capable of dealing with the ordinary difficulties and problems of human existence—that is, the Work is not for people who seek to escape from the normal burdens of life. It is for normal decent people and starts from that level of Being. It is very important that everyone should understand
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this. Second, a man's Being must have some trace of Magnetic Centre in it. This means that in the Work-teaching of what Being means, a man who has no Magnetic Centre, whoever he is and whatever he is in life, is at a lower level of Being than a man who has Magnetic Centre. Here, you will all see, the Work-teaching about Being breaks away entirely from any ordinary conception of Being. A man who is on the general level of Being called Good Householder and has Magnetic Centre is at a higher level of Being than the man who is in a broad sense simply a Good Householder. And further, a man who has Magnetic Centre but is not at the general level of Good Householder but belongs to the category called "tramp" or "lunatic" is at a lower level of Being than is the Good Householder with no Magnetic Centre. Once more I emphasize how important it is to understand this first teaching of the Work about Being.
Many things could be added here, in this connection, but we will now go on to consider what this Work says about the signs of Being in its development.
Now the next technical thing said in regard to the quality or level of a man's Being, apart from the possession of Magnetic Centre, is that it is characterized by the fact that it is multiple. And it is exactly by means of the multiplicity of Man's Being that its development can be understood. Man has many different 'I's in him and this feature is a characteristic of his Being. The highest Being a man can reach is when only one permanent 'I' reigns in him. That is, all development of Being lies in the direction of increasing union and is finally attained by unity of Being in place of multiplicity of Being. The whole of a man should form one man. But as we are, we are not one but many. A man resembles an assembly in which now one person, now another, gets up and speaks and there is no agreement between these different persons. A man is like a house full of servants who quarrel and use the single telephone and all speak in the name of the master. A man is a house in disorder. A man is legion. Yet above him, at a higher level of himself, there is real 'I', that sometimes he feels the existence of, especially in conditions of great danger or great fatigue. This one permanent and real 'I' is the highest Being of the man and every man has this in him. So all development of Being, in the Work-sense, is defined by the approach to this real 'I' which unites all that is in him and is concealed in everyone, in the depths of himself, and behind all the tedious things he does and says with his other side, which only begins to become realized through self-observation. Now people in the Work, who begin to feel it, have already more unity of Being. Why is this? It is because they are following something that unites them. If a number of people are thinking and practising the same thing they are more in union, and not only this, they are more in union in themselves. Only a teaching having the quality of the Work in it, can effect any sort of union, either in oneelf or in connection with others. If you see the truth of one or another of the teachings of the Work you will be brought internally into the
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beginning of unity in yourselves, for this Work leads to union with real 'I' and is designed to. And you will begin to see for yourselves what you cannot go with—i.e. negative states—for real 'I' will never approach you if you are not tested in regard to all self-emotions.
Therefore we have a clear definition of what a higher level of Being means. A higher level of Being means an approach to unity or oneness of Being. If there were nothing above us, no goal that can be reached, there would be no definable development of Being. But there is a goal. But to attain this goal it is necessary to follow distinct directions—that is, a teaching—about how to reach it. The Work in every aspect and detail of it, is about reaching this goal. No higher level of Being is possible apart from that acquired in life, save through an extra force acting upon one. Unity of Being is not attainable through the influence of life. It is only attainable through influences coming from those who have attained this supreme development of Being. That is, special Knowledge is necessary which must be applied to Being. Now if you reflect on this teaching, and see what it is about for yourselves, you will see that both on the psychological and the cosmological side, it is all about raising the level of Being to unity. All the cosmological diagrams lead to unity. It is impossible in this conversation to go into everything said about this. You know that one of the great handicaps to the development of Being lies in buffers which prevent us from seeing inner contradictions, and that only long observation, and sincere desire to be different, can make you see inner contradictions. Do you suppose that a man full of buffers and so full of inner contradictions can reach any further stage in unity of Being? Do you suppose that a man who has no insight into himself can reach any further stage of unity in his Being? The continued action of the Work through noticing oneself begins to break up many contradictions in one's Being and to make many wrong expressions of Being less and less possible. For example, one sign of Being is the capacity to bear the unpleasant manifestations of others. Why is this a sign of greater Being? The answer is that you cannot do this unless you have seen in yourself what you dislike in others. Another sign of greater Being is to be able to remember and keep your aim. Why is this a sign of greater Being? It means that you are more in your conscious 'I's that are moving towards real 'I' in you. If you have not yet learned to distrust and so not to identify with 'I's that you already know always mislead you, how can you expect to feel more strength of Being in yourself? You are allowing your Being to be taken charge of by the worst 'I's in you. You have not begun to select—to separate—to throw away the bad and put the good into vessels. If you want to change your level of Being you have got to see what your level of Being is—that is, what kind of a person you are over a period—or, more strictly, what kind of 'I's you allow to take charge of you at different moments, over a period, and remember what you observed. If any 'I' in you can jump up and speak through your mouth then your state of Being is mechanical and cannot change. You have nothing conscious at work in you.You
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are not working on yourself and this Work therefore is not acting on you and you do not really exist.