Fragments, Chapter 12, pp.249-254 - Reading Club posting 45
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This is this is the forty-fifth 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. Please post comments and questions.
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A bad mood. G. promises to answer any question. "Eternal Recurrence." An experiment on separating personality from essence.
One very interesting conversation took place at this time. I felt very strongly everything that took place at that time; especially strongly did I feel that in spite of every effort I was unable to remember myself for any length of time. At first something seemed to be successful, but later it all went and I felt without any doubt the deep sleep in which I was immersed. Failures in attempts to relate the story of my life, and especially the fact that I even failed to understand clearly what G. wanted, still further increased my bad mood which, however, as always with me, expressed itself not in depression, but in irritation.
In this state I came once to lunch with G. in a restaurant on the Sadovaya opposite the Gostinoy Dvor. I was probably very curt or on the contrary very silent.
"What is the matter with you today?" asked G.
"I myself do not know," said I, "only I am beginning to feel that with us nothing is being achieved, or rather, that I am achieving nothing. I cannot speak about others. But I cease to understand you and you no longer explain anything as you used to explain it in the beginning. And I feel that in this way nothing will be achieved."
"Wait a little," said G. "Soon conversations will start. Try to under-
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stand me; up to now we have been trying to find each thing's place. Soon we shall begin to call things by their proper names."
G.'s words remained in my memory, but I did not go into them, and continued my own thoughts.
"What does it matter," I said, "how we shall call things when I can connect nothing together? You never answer any questions I ask."
"Very well," said G., laughing. "I promise to answer now any question you care to ask, as it happens in fairy tales."
I felt that he wanted to draw me out of my bad mood and I was inwardly grateful to him, although something in me refused to be mollified.
And suddenly I remembered that I wanted above all to know what G. thought about "eternal recurrence," about the repetition of lives, as I understood it. I had many times tried to start a conversation about this and to tell G. my views. But these conversations had always remained almost monologues. G. had listened in silence and then begun to talk of something else.
"Very well," I said, "tell me what you think of recurrence. Is there any truth in this, or none at all. What I mean is: Do we live only this once and then disappear, or does everything repeat and repeat itself, perhaps an endless number of times, only we do not know and do not remember it?"
"This idea of repetition," said G., "is not the full and absolute truth, but it is the nearest possible approximation of the truth. In this case truth cannot be expressed in words. But what you say is very near to it. And if you understand why I do not speak of this, you will be still nearer to it. What is the use of a man knowing about recurrence if he is not conscious of it and if he himself does not change? One can say even that if a man does not change, repetition does not exist for him. If you tell him about repetition, it will only increase his sleep. Why should he make any efforts today when there is so much time and so many possibilities ahead—the whole of eternity? Why should he bother today? This is exactly why the system does not say anything about repetition and takes only this one life which we know. The system has neither meaning nor sense without striving for self-change. And work on self-change must begin today, immediately. All laws can be seen in one life. Knowledge about the repetition of lives will add nothing for a man if he does not see how everything repeats itself in one life, that is, in this life, and if he does not strive to change himself in order to escape this repetition. But if he changes something essential in himself, that is, if he attains something, this cannot be lost"
"Is the conclusion right that all the tendencies that are created or formed must grow?" I asked.
"Yes and no," said G. "This is true in most cases, just as it is true in
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one life. But on a big scale new forces may enter. I shall not explain this now; but think about what I am going to say: Planetary influences also can change. They are not permanent. Besides this, tendencies themselves can be different; there are tendencies which, once they have appeared, continue and develop by themselves mechanically, and there are others which need constant pushing and which immediately weaken and may vanish altogether or turn into dreaming if a man ceases to work on them. Moreover there is a definite time, a definite term, for everything. Possibilities for everything" (he emphasized these words) "exist only for a definite time."
I was extremely interested in everything G. said. Much of this I had "guessed" before. But the fact that he recognized my fundamental premises and all that he brought into them had for me a tremendous importance. Everything began immediately to become connected. I felt that I saw the outline of the "majestic building" which was spoken of in the "Glimpses of Truth." My bad mood vanished, I did not even notice when.
G. sat there smiling.
"You see how easy it is to turn you; but perhaps I was merely romancing to you, perhaps there is no recurrence at all. What pleasure is it when a sulky Ouspensky sits there, does not eat, does not drink. 'Let us try to cheer him up,' I think to myself. And how is one to cheer a person up? One likes funny stories. For another you must find his hobby. And I know that Ouspensky has this hobby—'eternal recurrence.' So I offered to answer any question of his. I knew what he would ask."
But G.'s chaff did not affect me. He had given me something very substantial and could not take it back. I did not believe his jokes and did not believe that he could have invented what he had said about recurrence. I also learned to understand his intonations. The future showed that I was right, for although G. did not introduce the idea of recurrence into his exposition of the system, he referred several times to the idea of recurrence, chiefly in speaking of the lost possibilities of people who had approached the system and then had drawn away from it.
Conversations in groups continued as usual. Once G. said that he wanted to carry out an experiment on the separation of personality from essence. We were all very interested because he had promised "experiments" for a long time but till then we had seen nothing. I will not describe his methods, I will merely describe the people whom he chose that first evening for the experiment. One was no longer young and was a man who occupied a fairly prominent position in society. At our meetings he spoke much and often about himself, his family, about Christianity, and about the events of the moment connected with the war and with all possible kinds of "scandal" that had very much disgusted
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him. The other was younger. Many of us did not consider him to be a serious person. Very often he played what is called the fool; or, on the other hand, entered into endless formal arguments about some or other details of the system without any relation whatever to the whole. It was very difficult to understand him. He spoke in a confused and intricate manner even of the most simple things, mixing up in a most impossible way different points of view and words belonging to different categories and levels.
I pass over the beginning of the experiment.
We were sitting in the big drawing room.
The conversation went on as usual.
"Now observe," G. whispered to us.
The older of the two who was speaking heatedly about something suddenly became silent in the middle of a sentence and seemed to sink into his chair looking straight in front of him. At a sign from G. we continued to talk without looking at him. The younger one began to listen to the talk and then spoke himself. All of us looked at one another. His voice had become different. He told us some observations about himself in a clear, simple, and intelligible manner without superfluous words, without extravagances, and without buffoonery. Then he became silent; he smoked a cigarette and was obviously thinking of something. The first one sat still without moving, as though shrunken into a ball.
"Ask him what he is thinking about," said G. quietly.
"I?" He lifted his head as though waking up when he was questioned. "About nothing." He smiled weakly as though apologizing or as though he were surprised at anyone asking him what he was thinking about.
"Well, you were talking about the war just now," said one of us, "about what would happen if we made peace with the Germans; do you still think as you did then?"
"I don't know really," he said in an uncertain voice. "Did I say that?"
"Yes, certainly, you just said that everyone was obliged to think about it, that no one had the right not to think about it, and that no one had the right to forget the war; everyone ought to have a definite opinion; yes or no—for or against the war."
He listened as though he did not grasp what the questioner was saying. "Yes?" he said. "How odd. I do not remember anything about it." "But aren't you interested in it?" "No, it does not interest me at all."
"Are you not thinking of the consequences of all that is now taking place, of the results for Russia, for the whole of civilization?"
He shook his head as though with regret.
"I do not understand what you are talking about," he said, "it does not interest me at all and I know nothing about it."
"Well then, you spoke before of your family. Would it not be very
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much easier for you if they became interested in our ideas and joined the work?"
"Yes, perhaps," again in an uncertain voice. "But why should I think about it?"
"Well, you said you were afraid of the gulf, as you expressed it, which was growing between you and them."
No reply.
"But what do you think about it now?"
"I am not thinking about it at all."
"If you were asked what you would like, what would you say?"
Again a wondering glance—"I do not want anything."
"But think, what would you like?"
On the small table beside him there stood an unfinished glass of tea. He gazed at it for a long time as though considering something. He glanced around him twice, then again looked at the glass, and said in such a serious voice and with such serious intonations that we all looked at one another:
"I think I should like some raspberry jam."
"Why are you questioning him?" said a voice from the corner which we hardly recognized.
This was the second "experiment."
"Can you not see that he is asleep?"
"And you yourself?" asked one of us.
"I, on the contrary, have woken up."
"Why has he gone to sleep while you have woken up?"
"I do not know."
With this the experiment ended.
Neither of them remembered anything the next day. G. explained to us that with the first man everything that constituted the subject of his ordinary conversation, of his alarms and agitation, was in personality. And when his personality was asleep practically nothing remained. In the personality of the other there was also a great deal of undue talkativeness but behind the personality there was an essence which knew as much as the personality and knew it better, and when personality went to sleep essence took its place to which it had a much greater right.
"Note that contrary to his custom he spoke very little," said G. "But he was observing all of you and everything that was taking place, and nothing escaped him."
"But of what use is it to him if he also does not remember?" said one of us.
"Essence remembers," said G., "personality has forgotten. And this was necessary because otherwise personality would have perverted everything and would have ascribed all this to itself."
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"But this is a kind of black magic," said one of us. "Worse," said G. "Wait and you will see worse than that"