(59.) Maurice Nicoll 1 - Thinking from Life and Thinking from the Work (III) p.249-52
This is number (59.) 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, February 15, 1943
Thinking from Life and Thinking from the Work
PAPER III—ON EFFORT IN THE WORK
This Work has sometimes been compared with a map and a compass. A man is given a map and a compass, neither of which he understands at first.
After a time he begins to realize one or two things, as, for example, that Personality must get less active. You know that whatever is done through Personality is done through the force of external circumstances. You think you are active, but it is Personality. If life alone makes you act, you are not free. External circumstances make great and small men. External circumstances drive men, as different kinds of machines, in this direction or in that. But the directions given by the map and compass of the Work are not derived from external circumstances because the Work is another force coming, not from life, but from outside life; the ideas of the Work are not new directions for life but new directions for living in life.
Let us take the Work-idea that a man must aim to become No. 4 man—that is, Balanced Man. No. 1 man is either moving or instinctive, No. 2 man is emotional and No. 3 man is intellectual. All these are one-sided. One centre predominates over the other centres. But in Balanced Man, all the centres have a requisite development. That is, No. 4 man is all-sided, and this means that all sides of life are known and understood by him to some extent. He is not a man who says, for example: "Oh, politics are all rot," or "Greek and Latin are silly," or "Emotion is hysteria," or "Sport should be abolished," or "Religion is rubbish," or "Science is bunk," or "What's the good of this or that ?" and so on. A Balanced Man or a man aiming at balance knows that every aspect of life is necessary for development. He does not waste his time complaining of life and finding fault with it, because he realizes that life is a school and that is its real meaning, that life is a means and not an end in itself.
Now at this point people often say: "Yes, but the Work teaches that Man has no will, so how can he alter anything?" The Work says that Man has no real permanent will because he has no real permanent 'I'. But it says that Man has a small degree of will, comparable with the degree of freedom of movement a violin has in its case. But it will all depend in what direction he uses the small will that he naturally has. If he never uses it in connection with the directions given by the Work, he will not develop any further will. But it is impossible to get this point of view aright unless one has the possibility of viewing one's own life from the judgment of esoteric teaching—that is, unless one sees the necessity of inner development. A man, viewing himself, as the result
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of his personal self-observation, in the light of the directions given by the Work, will recognize sooner or later where he is deficient, and seek on purpose what in life will help him in this respect and will go to it willingly. He will not be following a life-direction but a direction in life, given him by the Work. It will not be done through Personality—that is, through the force of external circumstances, from life-ideas—but from his own insight into himself—that is, through internal circumstances, created in him by thinking from Work-ideas. Everyone, without exception, is crossed in life. But if a man in the Work begins to reach the point of understanding that he must bear the burden of his own life and begin to work on himself and change himself, then the whole situation is changed. His choice of will then will lie no longer in life—whether he smokes these or those cigarettes, etc. The small amount of will that we have must begin to turn in the direction given by the map and compass that the Work offers us. If people are still thinking from life, they say: "Why should we do this?" Yet exactly here lies the beginning of the Work in regard to effort. You can be the same person every day if you like: or you can wish to be different. You can go on submitting to negative emotions, identifying, being angry, justifying yourself from your life-ideas, and so on—or, on the other hand, you can think from the Work-ideas and use a little choice. If you sincerely evaluate the Work and desire to make choice for it, for its meaning and teaching, then the small amount of energy gained will pass into Deputy-Steward, or even towards the essential you, the real person in you, and strengthen you and perhaps open up for a moment a certain happiness that is internal and quiet.
Now let me give you an example of a man following the directions of the Work in life and not the directions of life only—that is, a man living and willing the Work in life. Let us take the example of a man so placed that he cannot change his outer circumstances. What can he change? He can change his attitude, his way of taking life. I am going to quote what Mr. Ouspensky writes about Karma Yoga in the "New Model of the Universe"—a passage that everyone should read at least once a year. Karma means roughly Fate, and the Yoga refers to those who by Fate cannot change their outer conditions. Everyone in this Work must to some extent practise this Yoga, which is that of non-identifying. This Work is not Karma Yoga: Karma Yoga is part of this Work, part of the Fourth Way. Remember that the passages that I quote here are written to illustrate what it means to follow new directions in life and not life-directions, not the hypnotism of life.
"Karma Yoga teaches right living. Karma Yoga is the Yoga of activity. Karma Yoga teaches the right relation towards people and the right action in the ordinary circumstances of life … Karma Yoga is always connected with the aim of inner development, of inner improvement. It helps man not to fall asleep inwardly amidst the entangling influences of life, especially in the midst of the hypnotizing influence of activity. It makes him remember that nothing external has any significance,
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that everything must be done without caring about results. Without Karma Yoga Man becomes absorbed in the nearest, the visible aims, and forgets the chief aim. Karma Yoga teaches Man to change his fate, to direct it at will. According to the fundamental idea of Karma Yoga this is attained only by altering the inner attitude of Man towards things and towards his own actions. The same action can be performed differently, one and the same event can be lived through differently. And if a man alters his attitude towards what happens to him, this will in the course of time inevitably change the character of the events which he encounters on his way. Karma Yoga teaches Man to understand that when it seems to him that he himself is acting, in reality it is not he who acts, but only a power passing through him. Karma Yoga asserts that a man is not at all what he thinks himself to be, and teaches Man to understand that only in very rare cases does he act of himself and independently, and that in most cases he acts only as a part of one or another great whole. This is the 'occult' side of Karma Yoga, the teaching concerning the forces and laws which govern Man. A man who understands the ideas of Karma Yoga feels all the time that he is but a tiny screw or a tiny wheel in the big machine, and that the success or unsuccess of what he thinks he is doing depends very little on his own actions. Acting and feeling in this way, a man can never meet with failure in anything, because the greatest failure, the greatest unsuccess, may further success in his inner work, in his struggle with himself, if he only finds the right attitude towards this unsuccess.
A life governed by the principles of Karma Yoga differs greatly from an ordinary life. In ordinary life, no matter what the conditions may be, the chief aim of Man consists in avoiding all unpleasantnesses, difficulties and discomforts, so far as this is possible. In a life governed by the principles of Karma Yoga, a man does not seek to, avoid unpleasantnesses or discomforts. On the contrary, he welcomes them, for they afford him a chance of overcoming them. From the point of view of Karma Yoga, if life offered no difficulties it would be necessary to create them artificially. And therefore the difficulties which are met with in life are regarded not as something unpleasant which one must try to avoid, but as very useful conditions for the aims of inner work and inner development.
When a man realizes this and feels it constantly, life itself becomes his 'teacher.'
The chief principle of Karma Yoga is non-attachment. A man who follows the methods of Karma Yoga must practise non-attachment always and in everything, whether to good or to evil, to pleasure or to pain. Non-attachment does not mean indifference. It is a certain kind of separation of self from what happens or from what a man is doing. It is not coldness, nor is it the desire to shut oneself off from life. It is the recognition and the constant realization that everything is done according to certain laws and that everything in the world has its own fate. From an ordinary point of view the following of the principles of Karma
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Yoga appears as fatalism. But it is not fatalism in the sense of the accepting of the exact and unalterable preordination of everything without the possibility of any change whatever. On the contrary, Karma Yoga teaches how to change the karma—how to influence the karma. But from the point of view of Karma Yoga this influencing is an entirely inner process. Karma Yoga teaches that a man may change the people and events around him by changing his attitude towards them.
The idea of this is very clear. Every man from his birth is surrounded by a certain karma, by certain people and certain events. And in accordance with his nature, education, tastes and habits he adopts a certain definite attitude towards things, people and events. So long as his attitude remains unchanged, people, things and events also remain unchanged—that is, corresponding to his karma. If he is not satisfied with his karma, if he wants something new and unknown he must change his attitude towards what he has and then the new events will come.
Karma Yoga is the only way possible for people who are tied to life, who are unable to free themselves from the external forms of life, for people who either through their birth or through their own powers and capacities are placed at the head of human communities or groups, for people who are connected with the progress of the life of humanity, for historical personages, for people whose personal life seems to be the expression of the life of an epoch or a nation. These people cannot change themselves visibly; they can change themselves only internally, while externally remaining the same as before, saying the same things, doing the same things, but without attachment, as actors on the stage. Having become such actors in relation to their life, they become Yogis in the midst of the most varied and intense activity. There can be peace in their soul whatever their troubles may be. Their thought can work without hindrance, independently of anything that may surround it. Karma Yoga gives freedom to the prisoner in a gaol and to the king on a throne, if only they can feel that they are actors playing their rôles."
This example has been given to shew how a man can follow new directions in life and so live his life under other laws while being in life. The Work is a set of new directions for living life. These directions come from a far source: they come from Conscious Humanity, from those at a level far above our level. In terms of the side-octave of the sun, they come from those who have reached the level of being and understanding and consciousness represented physically by the sun. All those who have evolved have left memorials behind them in teachings, parables, and other directions for those still in prison on earth. These constitute the map and compass, the chart, the secret instructions, and, in our case, the Work itself. If you follow these directions—that is, if you think from the ideas of the Work, you are no longer driven by life even though you may still be living in life.