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Author: [[Maurice Nicoll]] Full Title: Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky Category: #books We might imagine human life on Earth as comparable to some vast hotel into which air has to be blown to keep people alive. This ventilating-system can be compared with the Conscious Circle of Humanity trying to introduce air or spirit into the people in this enormous hotel – otherwise the people in this hotel would gradually die. Now False Personality never admits anything. It is always right. If it pretends to confess its sins, it does so out of vanity, as a pose, to shew off, to gain merit and applause. This absurd thing composed of selfevident lies and false imagination you might think easily seen and destroyed. On the contrary its existence is most difficult to see and its strength is extraordinary. house. A man, a woman, should learn after a time what it means to work on themselves and not to remain just a function of external conditions – that is, upset, bored, unhappy, when external conditions are not agreeable to them, and excited and enthusiastic when external conditions are favourable. This is to live in the opposites. Then one is certainly a helpless machine changing from misery to happiness and from happiness to misery. Yes, it is really like that. You come to a typical jump and fall. But if you remember yourself you need not – especially if you can say to yourself: “This is a typical situation that millions of others are in at this moment.” That deprives it of its unique taste. Now to He added that the whole question lay in the emotional reactions of False Personality in a man or woman. He said man, or woman, must be shaken to their depths to get rid of False Personality. The keeping up of the False Personality takes a great deal of force. It makes us internally consider: it exhausts us. Mr. Ouspensky said that the False Personality always justifies itself in order to maintain its existence. This wastes force. I asked him to speak about the stages of emotional development – that is, the development of the Emotional Centre to its highest receptive powers – as it was formulated in the Gospels – namely, “love of oneself, love of one’s neighbour, and love of God”.

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Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky-3 by Maurice Nicoll presents wisdom from the contemplative traditions.

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