(41.) Maurice Nicoll 1 - Identifying - p.169-171
This is number (41.) of our sequential postings from Volume 1 of Maurice Nicoll’s Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky.
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Links to each commentary will be put on the following Contents page, as we progress through the book:
Birdlip, October 10, 1942
IDENTIFYING
We speak to-night about identifying. At this time we all have to think very much about the state of being identified. We all have to struggle against being identified and we all have to resist life. Let me begin by asking this question of each of you: "Where do you place your feeling of 'I'?" It is like placing the voice. Now where you place the feeling of 'I' most mechanically is where you will most identify. If you could place the feeling of 'I' fully in self-remembering, and all that it means, you would not identify. But this is conscious placing, because no one can self-remember mechanically. To remember oneself is a conscious act, a conscious placing of 'I', requiring attention to begin with.
So let us consider attention. When you are paying attention, are you identified? Begin with inner identifying. A man may be fully identified with his inner state; he may be depressed or afraid or hurt or angry, etc.—and simply be his state. Then his feeling of 'I' and his state are one and the same. This is inner identifying. The man is identified with himself. His feeling of 'I' is placed in his mood. Now supposing he observes his state. This requires attention. As you know, attention puts us in more conscious parts of centres. Understand clearly that no one can observe himself mechanically. He may imagine he is observing himself, but he is not, and he is learning nothing new about himself but merely revolving in a circle. In fact, mechanical self-observation is one of the mental habits to be observed. Now, to ask this question again: When you are paying attention are you identified? To answer this question in connection with inner identifying, it means: "When you are identified with your inner state and observe it, are you still fully identified?" How can you be?
In the Work we all have a very powerful instrument in us called non-identifying. But how long it takes for any of us to see what it means and to use it. If a man is always identified with his inner state of the moment, with his thoughts and his moods, etc. then he cannot change. For a man to shift from the position he is in, he must first divide himself into two. That is, he must be able to observe his state. If he is his state, then nothing can take place. If he divides himself into an observing side and an observed side—that is, becomes two—then he begins to be able to shift his position, to change internally. Do you understand the depth of this idea? It is the way out of the prison of oneself.
Now, as regards being identified with life, take a first example like this: If you are paying careful attention to the horses in a race, one of
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which you have backed, are you identified? The answer is: Yes and No. In so far as you are paying attention you are not identified. In so far that you are anxious your horse should win, you are identified and cannot pay attention. So the two states—the state of attention and the state of being identified—struggle with each other. Take a second example like this: If you are in a great hurry to get an important letter finished, then you are identified. But if after many abortive attempts you find it necessary to attend carefully to what you are writing, you are not identified while in this state of attention, although you may remain identified as it were, in the background—that is, in mechanical parts of centres you may still be identified, but since you have had to move into more conscious parts of centres to write the letter properly, while in them you are not identified. In these examples, the man is conscious within mechanicalness. Let us note that it is also possible to be mechanical within consciousness.
Now let us speak in general of the state of being identified with life. What is life? I do not mean to ask this question in a philosophical or theoretical sense, but in a practical sense. Life is a series of events on different scales. It is not things, people, objects, but events that bring these things and people and objects into different relations with you at different times. The pen on your table is not an event itself but becomes part of a small event when you pick it up to sign a cheque. In this event, the pen, the cheque-book, the table, the ink, and yourself and the person to whom you make out the cheque, etc. are all suddenly connected together. This is an event. Next moment, the pen, the cheque-book and so on, fall, as it were, apart, and lie silent and motionless. Your water-tap is not an event to you except when you have a bath or unless it leaks. Your bed is not an event unless you go to bed. A nail may lie on your mantelpiece. This is not an event. Suddenly, you want to hang a picture. Then the nail gets caught up into an event. Your neighbour next door may be a person unknown to you. He is not an event. But you hear he has called you a fool and suddenly an event between you and your neighbour takes place. The leaves lie motionless on the road in autumn and suddenly a whirlwind comes and they are in an event. An event gathers things together, moves them about, and passes. Consider the world-event of the war. This is an event on the scale of humanity. The countries Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, etc. are not events in themselves, but when war suddenly descends like a whirlwind and whirls them round and round, bringing them violently into a certain relationship with each other, then this is an event. The war gathers people together, moves them about, and when it has passed, the objects, the things of war, the people, will fall apart, and everyone will go home.
Now if you can begin to study life as events, what you are really studying is the Law of Three Forces, which says that every manifestation is the result of three forces. A thing is not an event unless it conducts one of the three forces in a triad: and any thing or person can conduct one or another of the three forces at different times and so be differently
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related to a particular event. Do you understand what this means? There is a stick and two people. There is no event. There are merely three things. Then the two people quarrel and one hits the other with the stick. All are now conducting the forces of a triad and a manifestation takes place—i.e. an event. You open an old cupboard and see an old rag-doll. It was once involved in many small events. Now it is simply a thing. You shut the cupboard-door: it remains a thing, involved in no event.
Now to talk briefly: Life can and should be seen as a series of events, not as things and people, as merely visible objects. If you can see what you are caught up by as a particular sort of event, it is an act of attention to do so, and makes it possible not to identify with it so much. All events recur. There are only a certain number. All possible events on earth were, so to speak, created with Man. Man was created with his life—with all the events possible to happen to him. Events are on different scales. Now ask yourself: "What event am I in? and am I totally identified with it? " This puts you in attention. This prevents you from being so identified with the event. Life keeps Man asleep and draws all his force from him, by a number of well-worn events with which he is always identified. But everyone must enter as if afresh and should pass through as many as possible of these different shows and side-shows of the great circus on earth called life, so as to have plenty of material on rolls in centres, plenty of experiences, for otherwise the necessary contrast between life and this Work is not possible—i.e. a person who knows nothing of life sees little difference between it and the Work and so has no basis of contrast or tension of opposites in him. That is, he takes life and the Work on the same scale. If you can draw back internally from whatever event you are identifying with in life, and try to formulate the event—like this: "This is called being blamed for something I did not do," "This is called losing one's temper," "This is called being insulted," "This is called being overlooked," "This is called losing something," "This is called being disappointed," "This is called being in a mess," "This is called being late," etc. etc.—then you will not identify so much.