Regarding the current project of Orage’s Psychological Essays being sent out, it’s useful to see each essay in its place in the sequence of the set of fifteen, and to keep what has gone before in mind, as they seem to be building upon each other. There are hints of underlying motives as well as the surface meanings, and a deep connection with Gurdjieff’s teaching in the form that Orage gives it in his explicit teaching groups.
We are shortly coming up to essay number (8), namely, the middle of the set of fifteen. A sentence summarising the “quintessence” of each so far could be as follows:
Gaining thought-power through practice in dividing attention in tasks for the thinking centre.
Watching the symptoms of negative emotions and thus becoming their master.
Placing a chemist in our “chemical laboratory” in order to make combinations with other chemical laboratories that are just not natural.
Learning the elements of self-observation by first observing others through the five manners of behaviour.
Tricking the devil of one’s own dark moods by learning to read oneself and do the opposite of what is automatic.
Simultaneous imagined “observation” of objects’ origin, history and future - enlarging the possibilities of thinking, as well as expanding the mind’s “stomach” with increased food of impressions.
The picture of our available time as a succession of events is represented by a string on which beads are threaded, and the possibility of placing three (or more) strings side by side to increase our time.