(62.) Maurice Nicoll 1 - Internal Considering and External Considering (III), p.261-3.
This is number (62.) 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, March 8, 1943
INTERNAL CONSIDERING AND EXTERNAL CONSIDERING - III
Last time we spoke of the necessity for considering externally in the Work. External considering must begin from the start of the Work, as far as a person is capable of it. A person who is self-centred—that is, who only thinks of himself or herself and of others only in reference to himself or herself—cannot go far. Such a person works only along the first line of Work, the line of Work on oneself, and that only to a very limited extent. The second line of Work has to do with other people and one's attitude to them. This demands work on oneself also. It does not mean merely that you must endure the unpleasant manifestations of others—and remember that they have to endure yours—but it means rather the practice of external considering in general.
Everyone has a more or less fixed way of taking other people, due to attitudes and buffers. We see others through our attitudes and buffers. In general we do not like other people. Instinctively we are hostile. I remember G. once saying that when we pass someone in a lane we tend to tense our muscles. You know that it has been said that we should not pretend we like other people, but try to work on dislike. Dislike grows very early. You cannot externally consider another person, if you nourish dislike only. Everyone splits easily into like and dislike, and in relationships the dislikes must not be allowed to grow mechanically. By self-observation we notice we have two memories for a person. When we are negative we remember only unpleasant things: when not negative we forget them. We have some idea of what fair treatment means in regard to outer behaviour. But we have to be fair in ourselves to others and this really is work on oneself that takes the form of external considering. A cluster of unpleasant thoughts and feelings about another person, that you have allowed to enter consciousness willingly, can begin to grow. It is both for the sake of yourself and the other person that something must be done—that is, that you must work on yourself to neutralize, as it were, this unpleasant and powerful material in you. All your intelligence and sincerity and work-memory will be required probably to neutralize this poison, so that you can once more treat the other person fairly inside yourself. You will have to put yourself in the other person's place. You will have to drop all self-justifying, and above all you will have to remember what you have observed in yourself, and what you are like, before you criticize so easily this other person.
On the other hand, you need not do this. You can simply internally consider. You can make accounts—saying to yourself that the other person is wrong, that you have not been properly treated, that you are owed, that the other person is indebted to you—that is, in debt to you.
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All this is the basis of so many relationships in life. The basis is internal considering. Have you also noticed that in a relationship between two people, one of them usually externally considers a little more and the other often only internally considers and complains about everything ?
In the Work, external considering must go more deeply than in life. It really belongs to the purification of the Emotional Centre. One of the great objects of this Work is to awaken the Emotional Centre, which is drugged with negative emotions and all the small emotions of self, of vanity, of self-conceit, etc. External considering (in the Work-sense) requires conscious effort, whereas internal considering is mechanical—that is, it requires no effort but goes on by itself and grows by itself just as do negative emotions. In the Work, external considering does not spring from life-motives. That is why it requires conscious effort. You have to consider people whom, in life, you would probably not for a moment think of considering. It is this kind of external considering that can change the level of being. Let us take a person who practises external considering in life—for example, a head-waiter. He is perhaps very clever. He notices what people like, what their peculiarities are, what they expect from him, what forms of irritation they have, what food they prefer, and so on. He panders to all this. Like St. Paul he is "all things to all men" but not from the same motives. He is intelligent enough to adapt himself to people's requirements. He puts himself out for the sake of others. He is tactful, observant, he effaces himself, and so on. But he does all this because he is playing a game. And he is quite right. He is intelligent. But in the Work the case is different. External considering from a life point of view is not the same as 'external considering from a Work point of view. At the same time, a person who knows what external considering means in life and who is trained in studying the requirements of other people may perhaps learn better what external considering means in the Work.
What I want you to see to-night is that the kind of external considering done by the waiter is not the same as that which becomes eventually necessary for everyone in the Work. You come to the necessity and to the meaning of external considering in the Work from a different side which is certainly connected with yourself and your self-interest, but not in the same way. Our object is to try to awaken, not to be so identified with everything, not to be slaves to useless negative states and blank minds, and so on. If we continually make accounts against one another, by privately despising, by wrong talking, by psychologically murdering others and so on, all work on oneself is spoiled. In the process of awaking from sleep, one thing hangs on another thing. One leg cannot get out of bed. The whole of you must get out of bed, if you want to stand upright. After a time in the Work you come to that point of sincerity with yourself in which you realize that you simply cannot allow yourself to be in some particular state that you observe you are in. It is then that you will begin to see why you must externally consider—that is, that you must get things right in yourself with regard to other people. So you
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will see from this brief note that external considering, in the Work, is not something superficial, but something very deep. At first you must practise external considering quite externally, so to speak, but notice the quality of it. The more sincere it is, the better the quality. The more superficial and pretended, the worse the quality. All efforts in the Work, as has been often said, depend for their results on their quality. I suggest that for practical work each of you decides to externally consider a particular person during this next week. Observe your mechanical reactions to this person. Observe your mechanical criticisms. Observe where you feel superior. Try to find in yourself the same things that you complain of in the other person. Think how you would like the other person to think of you as you think of him or her. Put yourself in the other person's place. Try to see where the trouble lies in yourself as well as in the other person. Try not to identify. Notice your inner talking and what it is up to. Keep awake to what you are doing, which will be your aim for a week. Remember it every day on getting up. Think of it at night—where you failed, why you failed, where you began to internally consider instead of to externally consider. Then you will see better the meaning of externally considering and how it can change being.