(42.) Maurice Nicoll 1 - Personal Aim - p.171-177
This is number (42.) 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 26, 1942
PERSONAL AIM
We can all understand what aim means in life. It gives us a direction. Without aim we are aimless—going nowhere. Even without having aim in life perhaps we simply want to keep alive as long as possible or keep our money, comforts, etc. This is a kind of aim, but very poor. We are not going anywhere but simply clinging to what we have. But we may want a definite job or to pass an examination, and then we have
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definite aim and direction in life. We then find we have to make sacrifices to attain it—to discard what is useless and concentrate on what is useful to attain this aim in life.
Now aim in the Work has some similarities to aim in life. But it is different in many ways. A comparison can be made up to a point. But actually aim in the Work is not really the same, because it is aim in a different direction from life, and in a way is against life.
Now we speak to-night of Personal Aim, in the Work-sense, on Being.
The most general definition of what aim means in the Work-sense is that it is to hear what the Work teaches and to do what it says.
Aim in the Work is always connected with the act of self-remembering. This is because in the state of self-remembering a man can receive help, which cannot reach him in his ordinary states of consciousness. Certain influences in the Universe can only penetrate as far as the third state of consciousness, where a man is conscious to himself or self-conscious. If at the same time as he remembers himself he remembers his aim, he may get help. For example, he may understand his aim better.
Aim may be too general, or contain an inner contradiction, or be too difficult; or it may be too complicated and must be broken up into simpler parts; or it may have no sense in it. In making aim people usually try to run before they can walk.
In regard to Work on Being, the first aim in this Work is self-knowledge—Knowledge of one's Being. This applies to everyone. Knowledge of the Work is one thing: self-knowledge is another thing. Without self-knowledge you cannot make any aim about yourself. Real self-knowledge as distinct from imaginary ideas and illusions about oneself can only come from direct and long-continued personal observation of the different sides of oneself. That is why this Work begins with self-observation. You must see how you act, how you speak, and what things are in you, in this thing called "yourself" which you take for granted. This Work gives you careful instructions as to what you must observe; these instructions should be followed not for themselves but for what they lead to. They are a means, not an end: they tell you what things keep you asleep. All the many things you are told not to do, and the few things you are told to do, in the Work, are connected with the idea that Man can awaken from sleep and come under better influences. This is the grand aim of the Work. You must never forget this because personal aim must agree with the whole aim of the Work, which is awakening. It must lie in the same direction and not in some other or opposite one, because otherwise a contradiction appears. If you are studying a system about awaking from sleep, you cannot make a personal aim that causes you to sleep more deeply than ever.
Personal aim can only begin after some real self-knowledge is gained through direct observation in the light of the instructions of the Work. In order to work on your Being, you must see something in your Being
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to work on. You cannot work on nothing. At first all is in darkness and you can see nothing in yourself. Conscious objective self-observation begins to let in a ray of light and you begin to see some things dimly. This light, created by the friction of self-observation, should gradually get stronger by practice until you catch sight of something in you clearly and beyond any doubt. You will probably be startled. If so, you are now in a position to make a personal aim—namely, to work against this thing you have seen in yourself. Suppose it to be some bad negative emotion, some really evil ill-will. Hitherto you have identified with it and so you have been it and it has been you. You have been for years under its power. Your task will be to separate yourself internally from it; and not, as it were, touch it internally more than you can help. This will be a personal aim on the side of work upon your Being. But most people are satisfied with themselves, although not with their circumstances. So when they are told they must work on their Being, they either do not understand what it means or do not see why they should. Now if a man in the Work is capable of observing himself sincerely, he cannot remain satisfied with himself for long in the light of the Work. From a life-point-of-view a man may see no reason to work on himself. But the Work-point-of-view is different from the life-point-of-view. The Work is about awakening: whereas life puts Man to sleep and tries to prevent him from awakening and makes him do things that keep him asleep.
So you must distinguish between life and the Work. There may be no reason why you should not do something in life, but every reason why you should not do it in the Work. Unless you make this distinction you will be in a confusion about the meaning of aim in the Work. For example, in life you can dislike everyone if you want to, and hate people and talk scandal and enjoy your negative emotions. But in the Work you cannot do this because you are destroying yourself inside—you are simply poisoning yourself. If you are in this Work you are under more laws than the ordinary person. This means you have to do additional things. You have to work. But the laws you put yourself under lead to your own inner evolution and eventual freedom from the laws of the earth.
Many people in the Work find difficulty in understanding what personal aim means, in regard to work on the side of their Being—that is, on the kind of people they mechanically are. Here is a definite stage in the Work. They cannot see what to work on in themselves. One reason is that they do not apply the ideas of the Work to themselves and do not try to do what the Work tells them to do. They do not observe themselves from this angle. Being satisfied with themselves in life, they do not see the place, so to speak, where Work on themselves begins. They are not estimating themselves from what the Work says but from life-standards. But the Work-standards are quite different from life-standards. You may be all right in life but all wrong in the Work. That is why it is necessary to realize that the Work is a new way of thinking. It
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is a new standard, a new thing altogether, from which you can begin to estimate yourself in quite another light—not in the light of external life but in the light of the Work. The Work is to make you think differently—it is to change your mind, change your ways of thinking, so that you begin to look at yourself in a new way. (This is metánoia). Imagine a collection of monkeys. They may be perfectly good monkeys and satisfied with themselves. But if they have to become responsible human beings, they must follow a new way of thinking, a new conception of what they must be. And, from the standpoint of conscious humanity—that is, fully developed men who have reached the level of the divine Intelligence of the Sun and its laws—we are nothing but monkeys and of really no importance. We are nothing but an experiment in self-evolution.
All personal aim on a small scale is a means, not an end. It is to make you think and awaken, to keep you awake. Aim is on different scales. Aim on a great scale is to be awakened from sleep, to attain inner liberation. But to say that this is one's aim is not enough. You may see something in the far distance as your aim but in order to get to it you find that many lesser aims are necessary. You may say you want to go to China. But to get there, you must do many things in between and you must have enough money to buy a ticket. Mr. Ouspensky said that aim is like this: You see far off a light that you wish to reach. But on approaching it, you find many lesser lights, like lamp-posts along a road, that you must pass one by one, before you attain the final aim. Let us suppose a man aims at becoming a conscious man, and escaping from the circle of mechanical humanity. He does not, of course, understand what this means—that is, he does not understand his aim. To become No. 5 or 6 or 7 Man, a man must first become No. 4 man—that is, Balanced Man, a man in whom all his centres work rightly—Intellectual, Emotional, Instinctive-Moving. Now to become balanced a man must begin to notice what centre in him predominates and interferes with the proper development of his other centres. An instinctive man, for instance, a man who consults his own comfort first, who loves agreeable bodily sensations before anything else, cannot become Balanced Man, because all his psychic energy is used up in his agreeable bodily sensations. His aim then must be to work against the predominance of one centre in him, which causes him to be lop-sided and prevents the other centres from developing. But if you have understood what has been said so far, you will see that in such a case it is only by seeing himself and estimating his inner state in the light of the Work that he will become dissatisfied with himself. Viewing himself from life, there is no reason why he should attempt to be different from what he is. Or let us take a man whose centre of gravity is in the Intellectual Centre. He is only interested in theories and abstractions. In life, there is no reason why he should be dissatisfied with himself. But observing himself in the light of the teaching of the Work, he will begin to be dissatisfied with his state of being.
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It is only through understanding the ideas of the Work that a man can make Work aim. It is only by beginning to think in a new way and viewing himself in that light that he can make a Work aim. You cannot make a Work aim if you think as you always did. By seeing himself in the light of the Work view of him a man can see what is wrong with him in a Work sense. In a life-sense he will see nothing wrong with him. Life will not judge him, but the Work will judge him; and exactly in terms of his valuation and understanding of it—that is, he will begin to judge himself. For the Work judges no one. The man himself will begin to judge himself, and when this once begins, the man has a point in the Work in himself.
Now as regards the often-asked question: "Can you give me examples of what personal aim means?" On the side of knowledge, personal aim means to become familiar with the ideas of the Work. On the side of Being, personal aim means to observe yourself in the light of the knowledge of the Work and apply it to yourself. Personal work on your own Being begins when you notice something that the Work tells you about in yourself. Have you noticed in yourself when you are negative? Have you noticed in yourself where you are too identified? Have you noticed day-dreaming? Have you noticed wrong talking? Have you noticed what false personality means in yourself? Have you noticed where you justify yourself? Have you noticed lying in yourself? Have you noticed what sleep means? Have you noticed what making accounts means?—and so on. Start with one single thing that you have noticed and begin to watch it and try to work against it. But start with something you have no doubt about. Start with something clear and distinct and try for a time to observe it and not consent to it internally. Once you start, the way opens out. But you must actually start from something definite and you must do this in the light of the meaning of the Work and its great aim. If you find you cannot keep your aim as first intended, because it is too difficult, modify your aim, and then you may find that a better aim is suggested to you, especially if you remember your aim whenever you try to remember yourself.
Everything taught in this Work on its practical side shews more than one aim to you. You must begin with one thing. But after a time you must include all the rest. For example, you cannot confine yourself simply to working, say, on one form of irritation or one form of negative emotion and not do anything else. If you really start to work on your being, from one thing in the Work, you will find that it is necessary to do all the other things in order to keep your aim. You must understand that if you hold too long to one small aim exclusively and neglect everything else in the Work, it is useless. Your aim, whatever it starts with, must eventually regard all other things you are taught in the Work. Otherwise you simply make your aim ineffective, if not worse, because it is unsupported. But you must start with one definite thing that you have observed in yourself and then you will find that everything else taught you is necessary as well, if you wish to keep the aim
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that you began with. Every side of the practical teaching of the Work must become your aim. And then, if you cannot work in one way, you will find you can work in another way. The whole teaching is necessary to effect any change in Being.
Here are some suggestions of aim:
Anything anti-mechanical is a temporary aim and helps us to awaken. All making of effort against mechanicalness is aim. Efforts made when you are tired are useful, if you yourself make them—not otherwise.
Aim must be made by everyone about wrong talking, negative talking, scandal, gossiping, which destroys the force of the Work in you. It is a form of lying—and lying can destroy essence itself. Try to notice what you say. If you cannot at the time, go through it afterwards. Try to see what you are like in your talking and think about this.
Find out what helps and what hinders you in working and what stops you from working.
By keeping to Work aim we create will. You should weigh your aim and see what you are prepared to give up for it. Aim requires effort.
Notice what you regard as a nuisance and make yourself passive for a time.
Notice your inner doubts and try occasionally to answer them clearly from the Work-ideas. This is a very good occasional aim and makes you think.
Observe your boredom and your tendency to speak of your life as dreary and so on. This is very important, as it prevents a lot of self-poisoning.
When you have just criticized someone, go over what you said carefully and apply it to yourself. This neutralizes poison in you.
When you are alone, do not let yourself think you are quite alone, and out of the Work. People allow themselves to change too much in this respect—they let go, so to speak.
Remember in regard to making aim about negative emotions that emotions are much quicker than time. You may not be able to check them at first, but you can remember them afterwards and realize what has happened. This makes it possible to know them beforehand.
Aim must be made from Work 'I's, not mechanical 'I's. You cannot make aim suddenly. People in life swear they will not do this or that again. In the Work you must not "swear" like this. It leads to nothing. Aim must be made consciously, with insight, after long observation, in view of realizing what is putting you to sleep and what helps you to keep awake.
Finally, you must all remember that in this Work the development of all parts of centres is an aim. This means that you must overcome ignorance and get to know as many as possible of the branches of knowledge and study that exist in life because each one develops some particular part of a centre. If you do this in the light of the meaning of the Work, understanding why it is necessary, it will help you to awaken.
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But if you do it from a life-point-of-view in order to be superior to other people, to out-rival others, you will be doing it in a useless way. And do not think that because others know more than you do about any particular subject or craft that you can learn that it is not worth while. The point of this Work is self-development, development of yourself on every side, and whether other people do anything better than you makes not the slightest difference. Remember that to take up anything new requires effort. Wherever you find yourself in life if you are in this Work you should be able to "make good"—to take it as Work. This aspect of the Work can give you many different kinds of aims.
This can be generalized under the Work phrase: "Struggle against ignorance."