(57.) Maurice Nicoll 1 - Thinking from Life and Thinking from the Work (I) - p.236-42
This is number (57.) of our sequential postings from Volume 1 of Maurice Nicoll’s Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky.
(If you are a subscriber to The Journal of Gurdjieff Studies, you can opt in or out of receiving emails from the Fragments Reading Club category.)
Links to each commentary will be put on the following Contents page, as we progress through the book:
Birdlip, February 1, 1943
THINKING FROM LIFE AND THINKING FROM THE WORK - PAPER I
The following paper was written after a conversation about thinking from the level of life and thinking from the level of the Work. The conversation started with something that was said about people who are possessive—that is, identified with their possessions—who say, for instance: "Where is my book?" or "I have not had my breakfast" or "My proper sleep," or "My right share" and so on. It is not merely the question of possessing things but of feeling a right to have things that was discussed. You all know the kind of working-man who puts his sacred rights before everything else—who says: "I must have my dinner," in the middle of some job of the utmost importance, and is completely put out and deeply offended for the rest of the day if he is told to give up his dinner for once. And the same man, if someone borrows some tool he is not using will make endless fuss—"my chisel, my hammer" and so on. The example is clear enough. But the point is to find in yourself this "working-man"—this 'I' that insists on its sacred rights and says my to everything and which is so stiff and rigid and unintelligent. Remember the sign of intelligence is the power of adaptation and that all strength in the Work means flexibility, not rigidity. Your "strong man" in life is usually, from the Work angle, merely a man crystallized in Personality—a one-track man, as it is called. From this conversation, we passed to thinking from life and thinking from the Work. To think from the Work is to think from the ideas taught by the Work. If you try to do this Work without having taken in the ideas, and without thinking from them, then it is like trying to learn swimming while you are lying on the ground. The basis of your efforts is all wrong.
The Work ideas are to give us a new way of thinking. Thinking from life-ideas and yet trying to do the Work is to mix things. You have to learn to look at life and its events through the ideas of the Work—to re-interpret life. Unless you have pondered and assimilated the ideas of the Work, you will not have enough force to resist the action of life on you. So your personal work will keep on losing force. Everyone thinks from his ordinary ideas or opinions. But the Work gives us new ideas, new conceptions. If we think from the ideas of the Work we see life differently and our personal work will be assisted by the ideas of the Work. Then work on oneself will receive force from the ideas of the Work. Ideas have force. Ideas are the most powerful of all things. But to work on oneself with ordinary life-ideas is eventually impossible. The parables about this in the Gospels were mentioned in previous Papers—for instance, sewing a new piece of cloth on to an old garment, and putting new wine into old bottles, and so on.
237
Let us take to-night one of the ideas of the Work that can make us think in a new way about life. Let me first remind you that in the Gospels it is constantly said that a man must think in a new way—the word being wrongly translated as repent. To change your being, to raise its level, you must begin to think in a new way. And all the ideas given you again and again in the Work are to furnish you with the means of thinking in a new way.
The idea that Man is asleep is a new idea, as is the personal application of it—meaning that you are asleep. The whole general idea that a man can evolve in this life, and is created to do so, is again a new idea.
Have you grasped the idea of evolution as taught by the Work? Have you made it part of your thinking yet? Have you, in short, taken it seriously? Or is it merely something vague lying in your memory? Remember that this Work is taught for a certain time only. There is a time-limit.
There is evolution and there is not evolution. There is, for us as individuals, no mechanical evolution. But there is conscious evolution, and esoteric teaching throughout the ages refers to the possibility of conscious individual evolution. Conscious evolution only takes place by conscious effort. This is what the Work is about. A single individual can evolve. But mankind cannot evolve save in terms of the evolution of the planets. You can evolve now. But everyone cannot evolve. There is no collective evolution: but there is individual evolution. The emphasis is upon you, as an individual and a self-evolving organism. Do you grasp the Work-teaching on this subject? This is one, and only one, example of thinking from an idea of the Work. If you begin to think from this idea you will receive force for working on yourself. Whereas, if you have no clear ideas, or merely life-ideas, you will think wrongly. The ideas in your mind will be wrong and so, when you try to work on yourself, what you are doing will contradict your ordinary thoughts. And so your ordinary thoughts and ideas will run counter to your efforts. Whereas if you work on yourself in the presence of the Work—that is, in correspondence with the ideas of the Work—your efforts on yourself will be aided by the ideas of the Work in your mind. The ideas of the Work conduct very great force when they are taken in and become part of your inner thinking. But life-ideas drain you of force. They make you identify with life and all its events. Life drains people. The Work-ideas protect you from life and help you to create more force. They prevent life from "eating" you—that is, the Moon. They prevent life from "working you"—that is, as a machine driven by outer events. The Work-ideas re-interpret life for you. They tell you what life is like.
Now let us refer to the opening part of the Paper—to the man who says: "My book, my breakfast, my dinner," and so on, and who has so many ideas about his sacred rights. Such a man is in every man and this man in a man thinks from life. But in the Work we must gradually no longer think in such a way. These personal matters become of less importance in view of the ideas of the teaching. But if we cannot escape
238
from this level of personal thinking, of personal self-love, personal grievances and personal advantages, how can we expect even to begin to think beyond ourselves and our requirements? When my wife and I went to the Institute in France, G. said: "Remember, Personality has scarcely any right to exist here." Think what that means! How difficult it is to speak to people in the Work who value themselves, people who have precious ideas of themselves. They have their feelings of themselves or their particular forms of self-love. And it is the basis of self-love, self-conceit and self-admiration that has to be shifted—and how difficult it is! And you will see that a man or a woman who really thinks well of himself or herself will not be able to hear the Work-ideas. A person who has a strong sense of his or her virtue will at the same time have a strong sense of my and me.
Why? Because such a person is thinking of my book, my breakfast, my dinner, myself, my personal value, all the time. This is sleep. This is one reason, one of many, why the ideas of the Work, which are designed to produce a mental revolution, a change of mind, in short, a transformation, cannot act on us as they should. A man in the Work must come to the realization that he is nothing. We look vaguely at the diagrams or write down notes. Or we say: "Oh, yes, I have heard that before," and go on thinking just as we always do, often thinking we are sure of our own worth and sure that we really know what is right or wrong. But this sleep, this deep infatuation with ourselves, this self-conceit, must later on cease. A man must begin to feel that there is nothing else for him but the Work, and that he must for himself think out and see the meaning of everything he hears day after day taught him in the Work. Then he begins, at last, to awaken. The Driver in him begins to climb on to the box and take hold of the reins. The Driver is the mind—not the ordinary mind but the mind beginning to think the ideas of the Work. This is the awakening mind. This is thinking in a new way. This is that thing so insisted on in the Gospels—μετάνοια—thinking in a new way—the first step in leading to change of being. This is what in the Gospels is called "hearing"—"whosoever heareth …" It is hearing the ideas with the mind, not with the ears, not with the memory. And only this kind of hearing will awaken the Driver. It is hearing, not the words, but the meaning of the words. This is hearing.
***
We know, from the teaching of this Work, that Man is sown on "Earth" by the "Sun", as a self-developing seed. Man is an experiment on the Earth, an experiment made in the laboratory of the Sun. Now this is a new idea. The level of Being and Intelligence, represented externally by the Sun and marked in the Ray of Creation by the note Sol, creates Man as an experiment on the Earth, represented by the lower note Mi.
Notice that Man is created from above, from a higher level. The note Sol, externally represented by the Sun, creates Man on earth with the
239
object of his evolving in understanding up to the level of the note Sol. Man is therefore created incomplete, undeveloped, unevolved—but capable of evolution. Unless the level of Being and Intelligence represented by the note Sol in the Ray of Creation can receive a sufficient number of evolved human beings, passing upwards from the note Mi, then this small twig in the whole created Tree of the Universe—namely, our private Earth and Moon—may be destroyed as useless.
***
Two kinds of evolution are possible for Man. Man finds himself situated on a Being called the Earth whose period of evolution is very vast in comparison with Man's life. Before the Earth evolves to the state of the Sun, many millions of years of our time must pass. To the Earth it is merely its lifetime. The Earth may however fail to evolve, in which case it is broken up into a mass of small fragments that revolve round the Sun as minute "planets" or "asteroids". There are many of these between Mars and Jupiter.
Now the evolution of the Earth is held back by the evolution of its Moon. You must understand that the idea of a planet evolving is a Work-idea. It is not found in science. It alters our whole notion of the Universe. The period of time necessary according to the Work-teaching for a planet to evolve is something of the order of eighty thousand million years of Man's time. I will remind you of the Table of Time. To the planet itself it is a period of eighty years on the scale of its time. Since the Earth is in close relation to its Moon, the evolution of the former is held back by the state of the latter. Actually influences—vibrations and very fine matters—continually reach the Moon from the Earth and feed it just as the Sun feeds the Earth in a similar way. For example, all the useless human suffering, negative emotions and violence on Earth, feeds the Moon. Remember that everything is made use of in the Universe. If Man were to evolve quickly—that is, begin to awaken— useless suffering and violence would cease on Earth. But it is not in the interests of the Earth and Moon that Man should evolve independently of them. Man's evolution must go hand in hand with their evolution. This is only one of the two kinds of evolution possible for Man. You will see that it demands periods of time that are so prodigious that for practical purposes it is meaningless for us. It has no relation to our short lives. For this reason it is said in the Work that there is no progress in human affairs. The planets keep Man back—keep him asleep. I will quote here to you a conversation that G. had with Mr. Ouspensky, many years ago, before the latter had been shewn the diagram of the Ray of Creation. G. was giving some preliminary ideas leading up to the great conception of the Ray.
Mr. Ouspensky reports this conversation:
Somewhere about this time I was very much struck by a talk about the sun, the planets and the moon. I do not remember how this talk began. But I remember that G. drew a small diagram and
240
tried to explain what he called the correlation of forces in different worlds. This was in connection with the previous talk—that is, in connection with the influences acting upon humanity. The idea was roughly this: humanity, or, more correctly, organic life on earth, is acted upon simultaneously by influences proceeding from various sources and different worlds: influences from the planets, influences from the moon, influences from the sun, influences from the stars. All these influences act simultaneously; one influence predominates at one moment and another influence at another moment. And for Man there is a certain possibility of making a choice of influences—in other words, of passing from one influence to another.
"To explain how would need a very long talk," said G., "so we will talk about this some other time. At this moment I want you to understand one thing: it is impossible to become free from one influence without becoming subject to another. The whole thing, all work on oneself, consists in choosing the influence to which you wish to subject yourself, and actually falling under this influence. And for this it is necessary to know before-hand which influence is the more profitable."
What interested me in this talk was that G. spoke of the planets and the moon as living beings, having definite ages, a definite period of life and possibilities of development and transition to other planes of being. From what he said it appeared that the moon was not a 'dead planet', as is usually accepted, but, on the contrary, a 'planet in birth', a planet at the very initial stages of its development which had not yet 'reached the degree of intelligence possessed by the earth' as he expressed it.
"But the moon is growing and developing," said G., "And some time, it will, possibly, attain the same level as the Earth. Then, near it, a new moon will appear and the Earth will become their sun. At one time the Sun was like the Earth. And earlier still the Sun was like the Moon."
This attracted my attention at once. Nothing had ever seemed to me more artificial, unreliable and dogmatic than all the usual theories of the origin of planets and solar systems, from the Kant-Laplace theory down to the very latest, with all their additions and variations. The 'general public' considers these theories, or, at any rate, the last one known to it, to be scientific or proven. But in actual fact there is of course nothing less scientific and less proven than these theories. Therefore the fact that G.'s system accepted an altogether different theory, an organic theory having its origin in entirely new principles and shewing a different universal order, appeared to me very interesting and important.
"In what relation does the intelligence of the Earth stand to the intelligence of the Sun?" I asked.
"The intelligence of the Sun is divine," said G., "But the Earth can become the same; only, of course, it is not guaranteed and the Earth may die having attained nothing".
"Upon what does this depend?" I asked.
241
G.'s answer was very vague. "There is a definite period," he said, "for a certain thing to be done. If, by a certain time, what ought to be done has not been done, the Earth may perish without having attained what it could have attained."
"Is this period known?" I asked.
"It is known," said G., "But it would be of no advantage whatever for people to know it. It would even be worse. Some would believe it, some would not believe it, others would demand proofs. Afterwards they would begin to break one another's heads. Everything ends this way."
On another occasion, in connection with the idea that the evolution of Man in general is held back by the evolution of the planets, G. was speaking of progress. The talk was then about the latest inventions of science and so of Man's apparent progress. G. said: "Yes, machines are making progress, but not Man." In answer to a question whether Man had not progressed far beyond what he used to be, even in historical time, G. said: "It is strange how you so easily believe in this word progress. It is as if this word hypnotized you, so that you cannot see the truth. Man does not progress. There is no progress whatever. Everything is just the same as it was thousands, and tens of thousands, of years ago. It is only the outward form that changes. The essence does not change. This is because Man remains essentially just the same. "Civilised" and "cultured" people live with exactly the same interests as the most ignorant savages. Modern civilisation is based on violence and slavery, but these take different outer forms. All these fine words about progress and civilisation are merely words. If Man is the same, life is the same."
This of course produced a particularly deep impression on us, because it was said in 1916, at the time when the latest manifestation of "progress" and of "civilisation", in the form of a war such as the world had not yet seen, was continuing to grow and develop, drawing more and more millions of people into its orbit.
I remembered that a few days before this talk I had seen two enormous lorries loaded to the height of the first floors of the houses with new unpainted wooden crutches. For some reason I was particularly struck by these lorries. In these mountains of crutches for legs which were not yet torn off there was a particularly cynical mockery of all the things with which people deceive themselves. Involuntarily I imagined that similar lorries were sure to be going about in Berlin, Paris, London, Vienna, Rome and Constantinople. And, as a result of all this horror, all these cities, almost all of which I knew so well and liked just because they supplemented and gave contrast to one another, had now become hostile both to me and to one another and separated by new walls of hatred and crime.
I spoke about these lorry-loads of crutches and of my thoughts about them.
"What do you expect?" said G., "People are machines. Machines have to be blind and unconscious; they cannot be otherwise, and all
242
their actions have to correspond to their nature. Everything happens. No one does anything. "Progress" and "civilisation", in the real meaning of these words, can appear only as the result of conscious efforts. And only each single man can make conscious efforts. But no one wants to do so. Progress is only possible in each single man. It cannot appear as the result of unconscious mechanical actions. And what conscious effort can there be in machines? And if one machine is unconscious then a hundred machines are unconscious, and so are a thousand machines, or a hundred thousand, or a million. And the unconscious activity of a million machines must necessarily result in mass-destruction and mass-extermination. It is precisely in unconscious involuntary personal manifestations that all evil begins. This is the origin of evil. You do not yet understand and cannot imagine all the results of this accumulation of evil, from small sources. But the time will come when you will understand. If Man behaved consciously, all this evil would cease. But Man is not conscious."
With this, so far as I remember, the talk ended.
***
But apart from the evolution of Man in terms of vast planetary time, there is another evolution possible for him. There has always been a special teaching about Man that has to do with this immediate evolution. The very few fragments of Christ's teaching presented in the Gospels refer to knowledge about this evolution. All the teaching about Man's possible inner growth and evolution can be called esoteric teaching. Esoteric means inner. Esoteric teaching is about inner evolution—about the inner man—not the outer life-side of a man. All the Work is about this possible immediate inner evolution that is open to Man. And here lies another great conception or idea taught by the Work, in connection with the Ray of Creation and the side-octave from the Sun. Man is sown on Earth from the note Sol with the possibility of inner development, and the existence of this Work, the existence of Christ's teaching and the existence of many other teachings, is due solely to this fact—that Man is created as an organism capable of undergoing an inner evolution, quite apart from the evolution of the planets.
Now if you can grasp these two great conceptions of Man—how mankind in general is held back for planetary reasons and how at the same time there is a way open for those who wish to awaken, you will begin to think in terms of the Work.