(70.) Maurice Nicoll 1 - Internal Considering and External Considering - XII - On Being Passive (6) - p.292-7
This is number (70.) 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, May 22, 1943
INTERNAL CONSIDERING AND EXTERNAL CONSIDERING - XII—ON 'BEING PASSIVE' (6)
Last time we spoke of the necessity in the Work that a man should be able to find fault with his thoughts and not identify with them. Tonight we speak of the necessity of finding fault with our emotions. The activities of the Emotional Centre are far more difficult to become passive to than the activities of the Intellectual Centre. A man can think differently more easily than he can feel differently. It is quite possible to become passive to many thoughts that one has been accustomed to follow and identify with, but it is not the same in regard to the sphere of the emotions and feelings. The reason is that we are identified with our feelings far more than with our thoughts. Our feelings, our emotions, our moods, grip us. Notice yourself, when you are vexed. Is it easy to non-identify with this usual daily emotional state? You may smile and say cheerful things and pretend you are all right, but inside you are held as if in a vice. Although one side of you may not want to be vexed, yet some other side insists on being so. Or let us say that something belonging to the self-importance, to the vanity, is touched—is it easy to cease being identified with it? Is it easy not to be offended? One reason is that the emotions are very quick. They work with a very "quick" energy, a far quicker energy than that used in ordinary thoughts. Another reason is that we rarely look at our emotions. We do not observe them because we take them for granted. Our emotional life is a very poor thing. But we do not notice how poor and unpleasant and mean it is. If we did, we would begin to dislike it. We would begin to dislike our usual emotional states—even begin to hate them. But it takes some considerable time before we reach this stage of consciousness. It is scarcely too much to say that we are not really conscious of our usual daily emotions, which are practically always negative, mean, jealous, and paltry—or, in short, unpleasant. Our love of unpleasant emotions is extraordinary and we like very much not only to communicate our unpleasant emotions to others and infect them but to hear about unpleasant things, scandal, and so on. We do not know what we are doing. We do it all in sleep. We cannot see our emotions because we are so identified with them. If we could see plainly our usual emotions we would be horrified. But fortunately we are not able to see them, simply because we could not endure it. It would drive us mad to see the quality of our emotional life. We all have noble pictures of ourselves. And the Work never allows us to see what we cannot bear. Its action is very slow, very gradual, very gentle. But we can see the results of our emotions and this is the starting-point. We can see that we hurt people, for example. But even if we realize
293
this, it may take us years of self-observation before we realize that we have unpleasant, treacherous or nasty emotions, which cause others to be hurt, and that it is our fault. You must understand that awakening is a very long process and a painful one. Awakening means becoming more and more conscious of oneself—of what one is really like. In the emotional sphere this is very difficult. How often do people imagine that they have done their best for others, when, in actual fact, they have done nothing but express their unpleasantest, most stinging and harmful, and often nastiest emotions, of which they should really be ashamed. In fact, expressing unpleasant emotions is what in life is so often called "being sincere" or "trying to help", and so on. People actually think it is a kindness to say all sorts of unpleasant and wretched things to one another and they imagine that if they smile sweetly they are exercising charity and goodwill. That is the trouble in regard to our emotional states. We are not charitable nor have we goodwill, and one of the first things is to realize this to the very bottom and hate it. We love ourselves in everything. We love everything that gratifies our vanity and so we do not love our neighbours unless they flatter us and we feel that we dispense their lives. And even though we may have better 'I's in us that can understand other people more and even care for them, even if they do not flatter us, yet the smaller, meaner 'I's belonging to the self-love, the self-interest and the self-conceit, usually prove to be far stronger—save perhaps after a long interval of time of self-observation, or when they are rendered quiescent by the exhaustion of severe illness, which renders the personality passive. On the point of death people wish only that others should forgive them. That is because they are no longer in small 'I's. But this humiliation can gradually take place by the action of the Work—that is, through increasing consciousness of what one really is like—by means of long and patient self-observation and all the inner pain of realizing that life cannot be as it was in our imagination.
Now let us sketch the person who is full of vanity, self-merit, self-admiration, self-love, self-estimation, self-worthiness, self-conceit, self-importance, self-esteem, self-excitement, and so on. This person is very identified with himself or herself. This person is rich—"the rich man" (or the rich woman). Such people have no idea that they cannot do. This idea would startle them. They also have no notion that they do not know. They are sure they know best. They feel depressed only when their vanity meets with a check, or no doubt they feel furious. But they cannot see themselves. They may be very kind so long as they are gratified with thanks and praise. They help the poor, they give money to those in distress, provided they get proper recognition and feel they are properly treated. Such people may be very useful in mechanical life, but in the Work, which is under a reverse sign from life, they may find themselves at a loss. I remember many years ago that some people of this kind who were in the Work decided to get together and make the Work "really go". They felt that it was all too slow and
294
that they could rapidly make it a great success and they no doubt pictured themselves sitting on the platform at some great meeting at the Albert Hall or some such place bowing to thousands of people. They felt that out of their "richness"—I am speaking psychologically—they could enlarge the Work. But it is out of a man's "poorness" that the Work grows. It is not from the rich personality that the Work grows in a man but from the starved and real essence. This is why the Work reverses everything, and makes the active passive and the passive active. Do any of you really imagine that if this Work were a great success in life and were broadcast night and day it could retain any inner secret force and meaning? I advise you to think out this for yourselves. For my own part, I realized very early that this Work could never be a success in life and that it could never be written about openly, save indirectly. And if you think deeply you will see why this must be so—that is, if you think from the idea of active and passive signs, in regard to personality and essence.
Now let us take the question of becoming passive to likes and dislikes. This is part of the Work on Emotional Centre, in regard to the general teaching of becoming passive to the active "oneself" that takes charge of things and controls us. Try to observe your likes and dislikes and how you waste yourselves in silly likes and dislikes. There is an exercise in the Work to this effect: "Try for a time to like what you dislike and dislike what you like." There is a similar exercise in regard to the Intellectual Centre which I should have mentioned before—namely, "Try to observe what opinions you side with and speak in favour of the other side." Being identified with one's mechanical liking and disliking holds a person down to emotional habits. It so often happens that you find that what you dislike you can easily like and vice versa. Our mechanical likes and dislikes are based on very little. They change every moment. Yet we attach so much importance to them. And often in the Work you find that people you disliked you begin to like. This is a sign that you are changing. But you cannot change if you identify with every one of your momentary likes and dislikes. One thing can help here—namely, not always talking endlessly of your likes and dislikes, and making a fuss about them. Sometimes people's sole form of conversation is about what they like and they do not like. As if they really imagine it is important! No form of talk is more egotistical or exhausting. To practise for a short time, at intervals, being consciously passive to one's mechanical likes and dislikes is very useful, but not always, particularly in those who mechanically are too timid to say what they want. Speaking in general, Work is always against what is mechanical in you. If mechanically you have not enough likes and dislikes you should have more, and vice versa.
Let us now speak of one side of being passive to likes and dislikes. Let us speak of being passive to associations. You know that the Work says that we see everything from association. Yet we may have feelings of being in a familiar place and of being in an unfamiliar place at the
295
same time, but these feelings are not in the same part of us. To our small 'I's living in mechanical divisions of centres, things may seem familiar by mere association which when seen from more conscious 'I's become unfamiliar. Thus we sometimes "behold" one another—as for the first time. We see for a moment without associations. Impressions then fall beyond the machinery of mechanical personality. Then everything is strange, unfamiliar and vivid. Impressions then fall on essence. We get used to things owing to associations so we no longer see each other or indeed anything, but only our associations with which we completely identify. We take another person by our associations. We identify with these associations and so think we see and know the person. Now it is quite possible to observe associations at work with which we identify, and so get misled. It is quite possible to observe associations about others especially if one begins to realize one does not know them. For instance, people take it for granted that they know each other. This is illusion. We are nearly invisible to one another. But if you think you "know" you will not be able to "see" without mechanical associations. This means that you must start from the realization that you do not know other people, however familiar to you they are. And so also with everything. We do not really know. But we are sure we know. Start from the idea that you do not know and have never known. Start, that is, from ignorance. This is the "poor" side. And this gives new life because you begin to get new impressions, new viewpoints, new understanding. If impressions fall on essence you see in a new way. Now a "rich" person, very identified with himself, cannot expect to see things without associations or to get any new impressions falling on essence, which is the growing point of a person. He will live always in associations—in the past. Also an opinionated man, a man or woman convinced that he or she knows right and wrong, a man or woman openly or secretly in love with themselves, and certain of themselves and their virtue, and standpoint, such a man or woman, wholly identified with themselves, will not be able to divide themselves into two. That is, they will not be able to shift their position but must always remain where they are and so what they are in the Scale of Being. Where and what are the same in this scale. That is, the level of being where a man is, is also what he is. If you begin to see yourself passively you begin to see the level of being you are chained down to by the active, self-acting side of you—the side that calls itself "I" and which, in my case, expects to be called "Maurice Nicoll". This side, in everyone, usurps the throne and sits on it. There are endless legends, parables and myths, referring to this wrong psychological situation of man. One has some difficulty in believing that such a thing actually happens to everyone and that everyone has a wrong Ruler on the throne, and that it happened long ago to oneself. One at least thinks one is master in one's house. This is precisely not the case. You have no real master on the throne of your inner world—that is, in your own psychology. You must understand that if we see everything from past associations we will not be
296
able to see anything in a different way. We may imagine we see another person but it will be from our associations. In this way, we keep one another in the prison of our associations about one another. We have already formed our own opinions about others. So we do not allow others to exist beyond what we think of them by associations. This is a great tragedy. To let people go, as it were, let them be different, depends on our letting them go. That is, it depends upon our not trying to keep them to what we imagine they are by our mechanical associations. All mothers and fathers have this difficulty with children. But it applies to all sorts of other relationships in life. Remember that we see one another by our associations, once we become "familiar", as it is called, with each other. What we do not understand is that seeing a person by one's own associations with him or her has nothing to do with what the person really is. Try to see another person without associations. That is the beginning of something new. And it so often happens that people have got quite wrong associations with others and never even catch a real glimpse of them. I personally have found in this Work that I "know" others less and less. Certainly I would never say: "I know this person—I have known this person all my life." That is exactly saying, in so many words, that you know nothing save your few associations with the person.
***
One of the most difficult things in this Work is to go on steadily with it when one's vanity has been hit at. This shews merely how much we do things from vanity, without realizing it. All the explosive, bristling, quarrelling touchiness of life is due to the two emotional giants, Vanity and Pride. Can you stick to a thing when you have been told you are not good at it? Your vanity may be offended, but your pride may help. Anyhow, if you can, then you may be fairly sure that you are not acting from personality entirely but perhaps from something genuine, and deeper, and so more real. Yet it may only be pride, turned outwards, which comes to the rescue of offended vanity. At the same time one can stick to this Work through pride turned inwards, and eventually find genuine reasons which have nothing to do with superficial feelings, but spring from a real valuation of the Work itself. This is to reach emotion beyond self-emotion. You must remember that in a fully-developed school of this Work, your Vanity would be hit almost every day, and that many would leave in indignation. At the Institute in France we were told on entering that "personality has scarcely any right to exist in this place." But we merely heard the phrase. We did not realize what it meant—save later. Speaking on a far higher scale, let us recall how many people left Christ because "they were offended in him." This means they were identified emotionally with the vanity of their own worth. To be so is really a nuisance. You will find out why I say this, if you do not know it already But
297
there is a deeper side to all this—that is, where the Work really brings you up against yourself. Here lies the point where people forget to work and simply feel lost. Here is the place where it is possible to long not to be so identified emotionally with what one is. It is like being stuck to an illusion that you cannot get away from and that can no longer galvanize you. You must, however, begin to realize that you have been "stuck to" an illusion that you have called 'I' and that beyond the illusion you can begin to have real things—that is, the same things, but differently.
Now let us take another aspect of being identified emotionally, which illustrates one of the many difficulties of becoming passive to oneself—to this person called A, to this active Frankenstein-monster that one has been led to make, and which now stalks about in one's little world and takes charge of one, and speaks as if it were 'I' and keeps on singing all sorts of things, grandiloquent and boastful as well as pious and timid. This monster, this machine, that you are fastened to—what do you think of it? Do you like it? Everyone is attached to his or her machine. Remember the Work teaches that everyone is a machine but that machines are of different kinds—some are loud like Bren guns, or chattering like typewriters, and some are as silent as the electric meter in the hall outside. Now people compare themselves with others. That is, machines compare themselves with machines and identify through comparison with themselves. If you are a noisy machine you perhaps feel you are superior to a quiet machine. And if you are a quiet machine you thank God you are not a noisy machine, and so on. This is one source of identifying emotionally with oneself—that is, it is one source of liking oneself. In the Gospels it is said that a man must come to hate himself. This Work uses different language but has the same deep meaning. The Work says a man must become passive to himself. But it is very painful to go against the usual way one has reacted to life. You feel you are losing so much. Yet you are losing nothing real and after a time you begin to feel new forms of living passing into you. You come back to the same scenes, but you are different. It is the same outer world but you take it quite differently. It is the same kind of thing, the same kind of events, but you are related to them quite differently. It is even the same people, but you see and feel them quite differently. In passing from one level of being, and experience, to a new level, there is a gap that is painful. It is like leaving something familiar. If you hold on to the Work, after a time you find that you can once more experience everything fully, but at a different level—that is, in a new way.