Fragments, Chapter 17, pp.346-351 - Reading Club posting 62
This is this is the sixty-second of our weekly readings in Fragments Reading Club from P.D. Ouspensky’s In Search of the Miraculous, where we are gradually working our way through the whole book.
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August 1917. The six weeks at Essentuki. G. unfolds the plan of the whole work. "Schools are imperative." "Super-efforts." The unison of the centers is the chief difficulty in work on oneself. Man the slave of his body. Wastages of energy from unnessary muscular tension. G. shows exercises for muscular control and relaxation.
Chapter Seventeen
I ALWAYS have a very strange feeling when I remember this period. On this occasion we spent about six weeks in Essentuki. But this now seems to be altogether incredible. Whenever I chance to speak with any one of those who were there they can hardly believe that it lasted only six weeks. It would be difficult even in six years to find room for everything that was connected with this time, to such an extent was it filled.
Half of our number, myself among them, lived throughout this period with G. in a small house on the outskirts of the village; the others came in in the morning and stayed late into the night. We went to bed very late and got up very early. We slept for four hours, at the most, five. We did all the housework; and the rest of the time was occupied with exercises of which I will speak later. G. several times arranged excursions to Kislovodsk, Jeleznovodsk, Pyatigorsk, Beshtau, and so on.
G. superintended the kitchen, and often prepared dinner himself. He proved to be a wonderful cook and knew hundreds of remarkable eastern dishes. Every day we had dinner in the style of some eastern country; we ate Tibetan, Persian, and other dishes.
I am not attempting to describe everything that took place in Essentuki; a whole book would have to be written in order to do this. G. led us at a fast pace without losing a single minute. He explained many things during our walks, while music was being played in the Essentuki park, and in the midst of housework.
In general, during the short period of our stay at Essentuki, G. unfolded to us the plan of the whole work. We saw the beginnings of all the methods, the beginnings of all the ideas, their links, their connections and direction. Many things remained obscure for us; many things we did not rightly understand, quite the contrary; but in any case we were given some general propositions by which I thought we could be guided later on.
All the ideas we had come to know up to that time brought us face to face with a whole series of questions connected with the practical realization of work on oneself, and, naturally, they evoked many discussions among the members of our group.
G. always took part in these discussions and explained different aspects of the organization of schools.
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"Schools are imperative," he once said, "first of all because of the complexity of man's organization. A man is unable to keep watch on the whole of himself, that is, all his different sides. Only school can do this, school methods, school discipline—a man is much too lazy, he will do a great deal without the proper intensity, or he will do nothing at all while thinking that he is doing something; he will work with intensity on something that does not need intensity and will let those moments pass by when intensity is imperative. Then he spares himself; he is afraid of doing anything unpleasant. He will never attain the necessary intensity by himself. If you have observed yourselves in a proper way you will agree with this. If a man sets himself a task of some sort he very quickly begins to be indulgent with himself. He tries to accomplish his task in the easiest way possible and so on. This is not work. In work only super-efforts are counted, that is, beyond the normal, beyond the necessary; ordinary efforts are not counted."
"What is meant by a super-effort?" someone asked.
"It means an effort beyond the effort that is necessary to achieve a given purpose," said G. "Imagine that I have been walking all day and am very tired. The weather is bad, it is raining and cold. In the evening I arrive home. I have walked, perhaps, twenty-five miles. In the house there is supper; it is warm and pleasant. But, instead of sitting down to supper, I go out into the rain again and decide to walk another two miles along the road and then return home. This would be a super-effort. While I was going home it was simply an effort and this does not count. I was on my way home, the cold, hunger, the rain—all this made me walk. In the other case I walk because I myself decide to do so. This kind of super-effort becomes still more difficult when I do not decide upon it myself but obey a teacher who at an unexpected moment requires from me to make fresh efforts when I have decided that efforts for the day are over.
"Another form of super-effort is carrying out any kind of work at a faster rate than is called for by the nature of this work. You are doing something—well, let us say, you are washing up or chopping wood. You have an hour's work. Do it in half an hour—this will be a super-effort.
"But in actual practice a man can never bring himself to make super-efforts consecutively or for a long time; to do this another person's will is necessary which would have no pity and which would have method.
"If a man were able to work on himself everything would be very simple and schools would be unnecessary. But he cannot, and the reasons for this lie very deep in his nature. I will leave for the moment his insincerity with himself, the perpetual lies he tells himself, and so on, and take only the division of the centers. This alone makes independent work on himself impossible for a man. You must understand that the three principal centers, the thinking, the emotional, and the moving, are con-
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nected together and, in a normal man, they are always working in unison. This unison is what presents the chief difficulty in work on oneself. What is meant by this unison? It means that a definite work of the thinking center is connected with a definite work of the emotional and moving centers—that is to say, that a certain kind of thought is inevitably connected with a certain kind of emotion (or mental state) and with a certain kind of movement (or posture); and one evokes the other, that is, a certain kind of emotion (or mental state) evokes certain movements or postures and certain thoughts, and a certain kind of movement or posture evokes certain emotions or mental states, and so forth. Everything is connected and one thing cannot exist without another thing.
"Now imagine that a man decides to think in a new way. But he feels in the old way. Imagine that he dislikes R." He pointed to one of those present. "This dislike of R. immediately arouses old thoughts and he forgets his decision to think in a new way. Or let us suppose that he is accustomed to smoking cigarettes while he is thinking—this is a moving habit. He decides to think in a new way. He begins to smoke a cigarette and thinks in the old way without noticing it. The habitual movement of lighting a cigarette has turned his thoughts round to the old tune. You must remember that a man can never break this accordance by himself. Another man's will is necessary, and a stick is necessary. All that a man who wants to work on himself can do at a certain stage of his work is to obey. He can do nothing by himself.
"More than anything else he needs constant supervision and observation. He cannot observe himself constantly. Then he needs definite rules the fulfillment of which needs, in the first place, a certain kind of self-remembering and which, in the second place, helps in the struggle with habits. A man cannot do all this by himself. In life everything is always arranged far too comfortably for man to work. In a school a man finds himself among other people who are not of his own choosing and with whom perhaps it is very difficult to live and work, and usually in uncomfortable and unaccustomed conditions. This creates tension between, him and the others. And this tension is also indispensable because it gradually chips away his sharp angles.
"Then work on moving center can only be properly organized in a school. As I have already said, the wrong, independent, or automatic work of the moving center deprives the other centers of support and they involuntarily follow the moving center. Often, therefore, the sole possibility of making the other centers work in a new way is to begin with the moving center; that is with the body. A body which is lazy, automatic, and full of stupid habits stops any kind of work."
"But theories exist," said one of us, "that a man ought to develop the spiritual and moral side of his nature and that if he attains results in this
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direction there will be no obstacles on the part of the body. Is this possible or not?"
"Both yes and no," said G. "The whole point is in the 'if.' If a man attains perfection of a moral and spiritual nature without hindrance on the part of the body, the body will not interfere with further achievements. But unfortunately this never occurs because the body interferes at the first step, interferes by its automatism, its attachment to habits, and chiefly by its wrong functioning. If the development of the moral and spiritual nature without interference on the part of the body is theoretically possible, it is possible only in the case of an ideal functioning of the body. And who is able to say that his body functions ideally?
"And besides there is deception in the very words 'moral' and 'spiritual' themselves. I have often enough explained before that in speaking of machines one cannot begin with their 'morality' or their 'spirituality,' but that one must begin with their mechanicalness and the laws governing this mechanicalness. The being of man number one, number two, and number three is the being of machines which are able to cease being machines but which have not ceased being machines."
"But is it not possible for man to be at once transposed to another stage of being by a wave of emotion?" someone asked.
"I do not know," said G., "we are again talking in different languages. A wave of emotion is indispensable, but it cannot change moving habits; it cannot of itself make centers work rightly which all their lives have been working wrongly. To change and repair this demands separate, special, and lengthy work. Then you say; transpose a man to another level of being. But from this point of view a man does not exist for me. There is a complex mechanism consisting of a whole series of complex parts. 'A wave of emotion' takes place in one part but the other parts may not be affected by it at all. No miracles are possible in a machine. It is miracle enough that a machine is able to change. But you want all laws to be violated."
"What of the robber on the cross?" asked one of those present. "Is there anything in this or not?"
"That is another thing entirely," said G., "and it illustrates an altogether different idea. In the first place it took place on the cross, that is, in the midst of terrible sufferings to which ordinary life holds nothing equal; secondly, it was at the moment of death. This refers to the idea of man's last thoughts and feelings at the moment of death. In life these pass by, they are replaced by other habitual thoughts. There can be no prolonged wave of emotion in life and therefore it cannot give rise to a change of being.
"And it must be further understood that we are not speaking of exceptions or accidents which may or may not occur, but of general principles, of what happens every day to everyone. Ordinary man, even if he comes
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to the conclusion that work on himself is indispensable—is the slave of his body. He is not only the slave of the recognized and visible activity of the body but the slave of the unrecognized and the invisible activities of the body, and it is precisely these which hold him in their power. Therefore when a man decides to struggle for freedom he has first of all to struggle with his own body.
"I will now point out to you only one aspect of the functioning of the body which it is indispensable to regulate in any event. So long as this functioning goes on in a wrong way no other kind of work, either moral or spiritual, can go on in a right way.
"You will remember that when we spoke of the work of the 'three-story factory,' I pointed out to you that most of the energy produced by the factory is wasted uselessly, among other things energy is wasted on unnecessary muscular tension. This unnecessary muscular tension eats up an enormous amount of energy. And with work on oneself attention must first be turned to this.
"In speaking of the work of the factory in general it is indispensable to establish that it is necessary to stop useless waste before there can be any sense in increasing the production. If production is increased while this useless waste remains unchecked and nothing is done to stop it, the new energy produced will merely increase this useless waste and may even give rise to phenomena of an unhealthy kind. Therefore one of the first things a man must learn previous to any physical work on himself is to observe and feel muscular tension and to be able to relax the muscles when it is necessary, that is to say, chiefly to relax unnecessary tension of the muscles."
In this connection G. showed us a number of different exercises for obtaining control over muscular tension and he showed us certain postures adopted in schools when praying or contemplating which a man can only adopt if he learns to relax unnecessary tension of the muscles. Among them was the so-called posture of Buddha with feet resting on the knees, and another still more difficult posture, which he could adopt to perfection, and which we were able to imitate only very approximately.
To adopt this posture G. kneeled down and then sat on his heels (without boots) with feet closely pressed together. It was very difficult even to sit on one's heels in this way for more than a minute or two. He then raised his arms and, holding them on a level with his shoulders, he slowly bent himself backwards and lay on the ground while his legs, bent at the knees, remained pressed beneath him. Having lain in this position for a certain time he just as slowly raised himself up with arms outstretched, then he again lay down, and so on.
He gave us many exercises for gradually relaxing the muscles always beginning with the muscles of the face, as well as exercises for "feeling"
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the hands, the feet, the fingers, and so on at will. The idea of the necessity of relaxing the muscles was not actually a new one, but G.'s explanation that relaxing the muscles of the body should begin with the muscles of the face was quite new to me; I had never come across this in books on "Yoga" or in literature on physiology.
Very interesting was the exercise with a "circular sensation," as G. called it. A man lies on his back on the floor. Trying to relax all his muscles, he then concentrates his attention on trying to sense his nose. When he begins to sense his nose the man then transfers his attention and tries to sense his ear; when this is achieved he transfers his attention to the right foot. From the right foot to the left; then to the left hand; then to the left ear and back again to the nose, and so on.
All this interested me particularly because certain experiments I had carried out had led me long ago to conclude that physical states, which are connected with new psychological experiences, begin with feeling the pulse throughout the whole body, which is what we do not feel in ordinary conditions; in this connection the pulse is felt at once in all parts of the body as one stroke. In my own personal experiments "feeling" the pulsation throughout the whole body was brought about, for instance, by certain breathing exercises connected with several days of fasting. I came to no definite results whatever in my own experiments but there remains with me the deep conviction that control over the body begins with acquiring control over the pulse. Acquiring for a short time the possibility of regulating, quickening, and slowing the pulse, I was able to slow down or quicken the heart beat and this in its turn gave me very interesting psychological results. I understood in a general way that control over the heart could not come from the heart muscles but that it depended upon controlling the pulse (the second stroke or the "big heart") and G. had explained a great deal to me in pointing out that control over the "second heart" depends upon controlling the tension of the muscles, because we do not possess this control chiefly in consequence of the wrong and irregular tension of various groups of muscles.