(8.) Maurice Nicoll 1 - COMMENTARY IV - ON A, B and C INFLUENCES - (Part I.), p.29-33
This is number (8.) 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, June 17, 1941
Part I.—It is necessary for everyone to think often about what he understands for himself of the meaning of this system of teaching. What does this teaching imply? What is it about? Why, for example, is it necessary to struggle with identifying, with negative states, with imagination, with internal considering, with self-justifying and other forms of mechanical lying, with mechanical talking, and so on. Why should one try to observe and break buffers or notice mechanical attitudes, or detect
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pictures of oneself? Why must false personality be struggled with in all its unpleasant manifestations? Why should it be necessary to remember oneself?
In the first place, you must understand that this system forms an organic whole. To take a small part without connection with the rest is not enough. It is not enough because the meaning of the whole teaching reflects itself into every part of it, and in order to feel the meaning of any one part of it—such as what it says about self-justifying, for instance—it is necessary to have some idea of the whole. Merely to say to oneself: "I must observe self-justifying in myself and try to stop it", while it may not be useless if it is done sincerely and may shew something to oneself that one had not realized, can easily become a mechanical action—that is, one that is done without conscious meaning.
Consider, for a moment, what it means that this system is an organic whole. The meaning of this work as a whole and the related meanings derived from the general meaning, right down to the smallest meanings, all stand in connected relation to and within one another. Its organization is like that of all living things, as for example that of the body. In the body the smallest parts unite to form larger parts, and these combine to form the body as a whole. Everything is connected with and related to everything else.
Knowledge of this system demands knowledge of the details and the parts and the whole; and if this system were not organic in the sense explained above, this would be impossible. People often say of one or another detail or part of this system: "Oh, that is like something I read in a book", or they say: "Oh, that is like what so and so teaches, or what this or that philosophy or religion says", etc., etc. It is quite true that if you read certain kinds of literature you will find a sentence here or a sentence there which reminds you of something in this work. But all these are fragments. They are merely separate bits, not in any organized relation with any whole, and, isolated by themselves, are useless. Let us suppose someone comes across a sentence in some old book in which it is said that "man is asleep". He may imagine for a moment that he has found the system in the book, but if he looks more closely he will see that it is an isolated statement. It is without connection, and so without any organic relation with any other ideas. And if he compares this detail with all that this work says about sleep and about awaking, about different states of consciousness, about mechanical and conscious humanity and about all that it is necessary to do in order to awaken out of sleep, he will realize that the man who wrote the book had merely heard something, but had no real knowledge. What, then, is real knowledge?
Real knowledge implies a knowledge of the part in relation to the whole—that is, real knowledge is relative in this sense. This is the real meaning of the principle of relativity in knowledge, from the standpoint of this system. A rough illustration of what is meant is as follows: A man may know all about the little village he lives in, but nothing about
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the town or county or country he lives in, or of other countries, or the world in general. He has no relative knowledge and so can neither see anything in its right proportion, nor can he have greater knowledge. This is very important to understand. By having real knowledge—that is, relative knowledge—a man's knowledge can grow in a right way, otherwise only one-sidedness results, with all the evils that follow, that are more obvious to-day than at any time in the world.
Now let us apply what has been said to any single part of the work. Let us take the example of self-justifying. As you know, it is said, in connection with practical work on oneself, that it is necessary to observe self-justifying. But if a man does not see why he should observe self-justifying in himself and work against it, he is trying to do what has no meaning for him, save that he is told to do it. If that is the case, he will be working in the most external way possible. What he is doing will be superficial, not really connected with him through any inner meaning. To work in this way is little else than to give a sort of lip-service to the work. And, still worse, he may be doing it for the sake of meritoriousness just to say that he is working, especially if he speaks of it. And he will not see that it is exactly self-justification that is at the root of feeling pleasure in meritoriousness, which only strengthens false personality, having nothing real or genuine in it. You will now understand why it was said at the beginning of this commentary that it is necessary for everyone to think for himself about the meaning of this teaching. Unless he does so, he will do everything in a vague external way, without seeing or understanding what it is all about, and without having any force to work. Meaning gives force and the more meaning this work has for you the more it will affect you emotionally and the more force will you obtain from it. For it is from the awakening of the emotional centre that the greatest force is derived.
Now let us begin with the meaning of this work on the highest scale. Let us begin, as it were, from the top. What does this work mean? You have all heard it said that there are two quite different kinds of influences existing in life, entitled respectively A and B influences in this system. A influences are created by life. They arise within the life of mechanical humanity from the interests of business, money-making, science, sport, politics, from the interests of conquest, intrigue, crime, power, from the interests of wealth, position, display and possessions, and from all the necessary interests of food, clothing, housing, law, order, and so on. You have only to open the newspaper to see what A influences are and to understand how they are created by life and arise within the life of humanity. All these interests develop personality, and in time, from personality, especially false personality, other interests arise, which become part of human life and which again are A influences. But there exist also in life influences of a quite different kind, called in this system B influences. These do not arise from life. Their source of origin is different. They have nothing to do with business, money-making, politics, sport, and so on. They come from outside the circle of
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mechanical life. In all ages and at all times we can find evidence of their existence in a certain class of literature, in certain religious ideas, in many ancient writings, in teachings that have been preserved to us, often in all sorts of disguised forms, in allegories, in fairy-stories, and so on. It is a very startling experience for anyone who has become familiar with the ideas of this work and has begun to understand something of its real significance to open a book written, say, a thousand or two thousand years ago or even more, and find some sentence which is, so to speak, "the pure work". What is the explanation? Why is there so great a background to the ideas of this system? What does it mean? It means, to begin with, that this system of work which we are studying is nothing new. It is nothing new in the sense that it is not something that some man or other invented recently and concocted out of his own mind, like some passing modern psychological theory. The system we are studying is the presentation in a form adapted to the times of something that was long ago understood, and long ago taught, about man and his inner possibilities. It has been understood and it has been taught not only since the beginning of known history, which is only a brief portion of all human history, but long before it, reaching us only in legendary form, in myths and allegories. The same teaching has always been given, but it has been given in different outer forms, in different dress, according to circumstances, according to the times and according to the nature of the people or race to which it is being given. It has changed only in regard to the general state of people—that is, their level of being and the depth of their sleep in the things of the external senses and so of their opportunities in respect of inner evolution.
Now all the traces in history concerning the idea that man is capable of reaching something of incalculable value, a treasure that cannot be estimated, through inner work on himself, constitute what are called in this system B influences. Since they do not relate to life, their existence in life is inexplicable unless we understand that they are essential for humanity—unless humanity wishes to perish totally in hate and destruction, which is a possibility closer to us than ever before. In the next commentary I will speak of the source of origin of B influences in the light of the ideas taught by this system. But if anyone wishes to ask for a clear example of B influences now existing in life, let him take as an example the New Testament, or rather, the four Gospels, which alone contain the teaching of Christ, and let him only take the recorded words of Christ. It will be obvious to him that the ideas contained in these words are not similar to the ideas belonging to A influences—to the newspapers—and are obviously about something different from the ordinary aims and interests of life, although, in a subtle way, they bear on the latter. Let him only reflect that he is taught to struggle with hatred and look into himself and see what he is like.
So far we have seen that this system of work is an organic whole, and every part and detail of it, such as the detail of self-justifying, is connected with ideas which have always existed and have been taught in
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every age. These ideas and teachings always are the same thing. They are always about the transformation of life. They are not about life and life-interests, but about the transforming of yourself in relation to all that happens to you every day in life, in the light of an entirely new set of ideas and entirely new aims and entirely new efforts. And when you begin to try to do all this, remember that you are beginning to do something that has always been taught to those capable of understanding and that the meaning of what you are doing is so great, so deep, so eternal, that, even if you can catch a mere glimpse of it, your emotions will awaken and you will see in a flash what is meant by evaluation of the work, and what is meant by greater mind, and what is meant by the sleep of humanity.