Fragments, Chapter 17, pp.363-368 - Reading Club posting 65
This is this is the sixty 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.
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What does "to be serious" mean? Only one thing is serious. How to attain real freedom? The hard way of slavery and obedience. What is one prepared to sacrifice. The fairy tale of the wolf and the sheep. Astrology and types. A demonstration. G. announces the dispersal of the group. A final trip to Petersburg.
On another occasion in connection with the same question G. said:
"A good deal is incomprehensible to you because you do not take into account the meaning of some of the most simple words, for instance,
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you have never thought what to be serious means. Try to give yourselves an answer to the question what being serious means."
"To have a serious attitude towards things," someone said.
"That is exactly what everybody thinks, actually it is exactly the reverse," said G.
"To have a serious attitude towards things does not at all mean being serious because the principal question is, towards what things? Very many people have a serious attitude towards trivial things. Can they be called serious? Of course not.
"The mistake is that the concept 'serious' is taken conditionally. One thing is serious for one man and another thing for another man. In reality seriousness is one of the concepts which can never and under no circumstances be taken conditionally. Only one thing is serious for all people at all times. A man may be more aware of it or less aware of it but the seriousness of things will not alter on this account.
"If a man could understand all the horror of the lives of ordinary people who are turning round in a circle of insignificant interests and insignificant aims, if he could understand what they are losing, he would understand that there can be only one thing that is serious for him—to escape from the general law, to be free. What can be serious for a man in prison who is condemned to death? Only one thing: How to save himself, how to escape: nothing else is serious.
"When I say that an obyvatel is more serious than a 'tramp' or a 'lunatic,' I mean by this that, accustomed to deal with real values, an obyvatel values the possibilities of the 'ways' and the possibilities of 'liberation' or 'salvation' better and quicker than a man who is accustomed all his life to a circle of imaginary values, imaginary interests, and imaginary possibilities.
"People who are not serious for the obyvatel are people who live by fantasies, chiefly by the fantasy that they are able to do something. The obyvatel knows that they only deceive people, promise them God knows what, and that actually they are simply arranging affairs for themselves—or they are lunatics, which is still worse, in other words they believe everything that people say."
"To what category do politicians belong who speak contemptuously about 'obyvatel,' 'obyvatels' opinions,' 'obyvatels' interests'?" someone asked.
"They are the worst kind of obyvatels," said G., "that is, obyvatels without any positive redeeming features, or they are charlatans, lunatics, or knaves."
"But may there not be honest and decent people among politicians?" someone asked.
"Certainly there may be," said G., "but in this case they are not prac-
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tical people, they are dreamers, and they will be used by other people as screens to cover their own obscure affairs.
"The obyvatel perhaps may not know it in a philosophical way, that is to say, he is not able to formulate it, but he knows that things 'do themselves' simply through his own practical shrewdness, therefore, in his heart, he laughs at people who think, or who want to assure him, that they signify anything, that anything depends on their decisions, that they can change or, in general, do anything. This for him is not being serious. And an understanding of what is not serious can help him to value that which is serious."
We often returned to questions on the difficulties of the way. Our own experience of communal life and work constantly threw us up against newer and newer difficulties that lay in ourselves.
"The whole thing is in being ready to sacrifice one's freedom," said G. "A man consciously and unconsciously struggles for freedom as he imagines it and this, more than anything else, prevents him from attaining real freedom. But a man who is capable of attaining anything comes sooner or later to the conclusion that his freedom is illusion and he agrees to sacrifice this illusion. He voluntarily becomes a slave. He does what he is told, says what he is told, and thinks what he is told. He is not afraid of losing anything because he knows that he has nothing. And in this way he acquires everything. Everything in him that was real in his understanding, in his sympathies, tastes, and desires, all comes back to him accompanied by new things which he did not have and could not have had before, together with a feeling of unity and will within him. But to arrive at this point, a man must pass through the hard way of slavery and obedience. And if he wants results he must obey not only outwardly but inwardly. This requires a great determination, and determination requires a great understanding of the fact that there is no other way, that a man can do nothing himself, but that at the same time, something has to be done.
"When a man comes to the conclusion that he cannot, and does not desire, to live any longer in the way he has lived till then; when he really sees everything that his life is made up of and decides to work, he must be truthful with himself in order not to fall into a still worse position. Because there is nothing worse than to begin work on oneself and then leave it and find oneself between two stools; it is much better not to begin. And in order not to begin in vain or risk being deceived on one's own account a man should test his decision many times. And principally he must know how far he is willing to go, what he is willing to sacrifice. There is nothing more easy to say than everything. A man can never sacrifice everything and this can never be required of him. But
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he must define exactly what he is willing to sacrifice and not bargain about it afterwards. Or it will be the same with him as with the wolf in the Armenian fairy tale.
"Do you know the Armenian fairy tale of the wolf and the sheep?
"Once there lived a wolf who slaughtered a great many sheep and reduced many people to tears.
"At length, I do not know why, he suddenly felt qualms of conscience and began to repent his life; so he decided to reform and to slaughter no more sheep.
"In order to do this seriously he went to a priest and asked him to hold a thanksgiving service.
"The priest began the service and the wolf stood weeping and praying in the church. The service was long. The wolf had slaughtered many of the priest's sheep, therefore the priest prayed earnestly that the wolf would indeed reform. Suddenly the wolf looked through a window and saw that sheep were being driven home. He began to fidget but the priest went on and on without end.
"At last the wolf could contain himself no longer and he shouted:
"'Finish it, priest! Or all the sheep will be driven home and I shall be left without supper!'
"This is a very good fairy tale because it describes man very well. He is ready to sacrifice everything, but after all today's dinner is a different matter.
"A man always wishes to begin with something big. But this is impossible; there can be no choice, we must begin with the things of today."
I quote one talk as being a very characteristic example of G.'s methods. We were walking in the park. There were five of us besides G. One of us asked him what his views on astrology were, whether there was anything of value in the more or less known theories of astrology.
"Yes," said G., "it depends upon how they are understood. They can be of value and they can be without value. Astrology deals with only one part of man, with his type, his essence—it does not deal with personality, with acquired qualities. If you understand this you understand what is of value in astrology."
There had been talks in our groups about types before and it seemed to us that the science of types was the most difficult thing in the study of man because G. gave us very little material and required of us our own observations of ourselves and others.
We continued to walk and G. continued to speak trying to explain what there was in man that could depend upon planetary influences and what could not.
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As we left the park G. stopped talking and was going a few steps ahead of us. We five walked behind him talking together. In going round a tree G. dropped the stick— ebony with a Caucasian silver handle —he was carrying and one of us bent down, picked it up, and gave it to him. G. walked on for a few steps, then turned to us and said:
"That was astrology. Do you understand? You all saw me drop the stick. Why did one of you pick it up? Let each of you speak for himself."
One said he had not seen G. drop the stick as he was looking another way. The second said he had noticed that G. had not dropped the stick accidentally as happens when a stick gets caught in something, but that he had intentionally loosened his hand and let the stick fall. This had excited his curiosity and he had waited to see what would happen next. The third said he saw G. drop the stick, but was very absorbed in thinking of astrology, particularly trying to remember what G. said once before, and did not pay sufficient attention to the stick. The fourth saw the stick fall and thought of picking it up, but at that moment the other picked up the stick and gave it to G. The fifth said he saw the stick fall and then he saw himself picking it up and giving it to G.
G. smiled as he listened to us.
"This is astrology," he said. "In the same situation one man sees and does one thing, another—another thing, a third—a third thing, and so on. And each one acted according to his type. Observe people and yourselves in this way and then perhaps we will afterwards talk of a different astrology."
The time passed by very quickly. The short Essentuki summer was drawing to a close. We had begun to think of the winter and to make a variety of plans.
And suddenly everything changed. For a reason that seemed to me to be accidental and which was the result of friction between certain members of our small group G. announced that he was dispersing the whole group and stopping all work. At first we simply did not believe him, thinking he was putting us to a test. And when he said he was going to the Black Sea coast with Z. alone, all excepting a few of us who had to return to Moscow or Petersburg announced that they would follow him wherever he went. G. consented to this but he said that we must look after ourselves and that there would be no work no matter how much we counted on it.
All this surprised me very much. I considered the moment most inappropriate for "acting," and if what G. said was serious, then why had the whole business been started? During this period nothing new had appeared in us. And if G. had started work with us such as we were, then why was he stopping it now? This altered nothing for me materially. I had decided to pass the winter in the Caucasus in any case. But it
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changed a good many things for some of the other members of our group who were still slightly uncertain and made the difficulty for them insuperable. And I have to confess that my confidence in G. began to waver from this moment. What the matter was and what particularly provoked me is difficult for me to define even now. But the fact is that from this moment there began to take place in me a separation between G. himself and his ideas. Until then I had not separated them.
At the end of August I at first followed G. to Tuapse and from there went to Petersburg with the intention of bringing back some things; unfortunately I had to leave behind all my books. I thought at the time that it would be risking very much to take them to the Caucasus. But in Petersburg, of course, everything was lost.
[END OF CHAPTER]