(Sleep, negativity, and the conditions for rebirth)
If you ever teach this Work you will find people saying to you that they were quite happy until they met this Work. People are in a state of sleep and self-illusion. Take a typical conceited man.
Nothing new can grow in you if you are negative. If you are liable to storms and floods there is no possibility of rebirth, because there is no soil for it.
When you have those moments that belong to theinner parts of centres then there is a possibility of something new, but in a moment someone does not do what you want, and then it all starts again.
You should not drink when you are negative. You should work on yourself in some way before you take anything. You should put in some Work effort before you drink, otherwise when you are negative you will start drinking.
Dr.Nicoll: (To Mr.X) Write the Primal Three Forces on the board.
The Absolute when it creates divides into three Forces. The Work calls this the Law of Three. What is your question?
Do people in life believe that if you have money in life you feel perfectly free, and say “I am going to enjoy myself tonight.” Are you? Christ said ironically to the disciples who had self-love: “You are all going to sit on twelve thrones and judge the twelve tribes of Israel”.
(The Law of Three and conscious man)
Mr.Ouspensky said: “If we could be conscious in three forces at the same time, we would be Conscious Man.” And then you know that at that stage a man has reached Real I, when he is conscious in three forces.
A man in Imaginary ‘I’ feels isolated. His feeling of ‘I’ is trivial. If we were conscious in Real I we would not have a trivial feeling of ‘I’, but a real feeling. All our pride and vanity would be completely gone.
Many people practise Self-Remembering to feel isolated.
That is dangerous. It must be followed by what is its opposite. You must become conscious of everyone and everything.
Dr.Nicoll’s Meeting on the paper “SINGING YOUR SONG” Psychological Commentaries On the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky page 253
Why? For the purposes of life he can go out and get shot, or make a lot of money, but from the point of view of Esoteric Teaching he has not done anything.
Here you get a person who is in a bad temper all day, he is negative with people and everything, and he blames the whole world, and never has the insight to see that he is really like that, so, therefore, he lives and dies a complete failure, although in life he may be a great sculptor, or skilled in this or that, but every time anything goes wrong he blames life. Would you call that a sign of Being?
What are you up against? You are avoiding something and not taking the events of the day from the standpoint of The Work, but mechanically.
So Negative Emotions are a considerable sacrifice. All this Work is about sacrificing something and becoming a new person. That is re-birth, getting rid of Nicoll in my case. You have to see what this Work is based on.
But if I pretend to die to myself before I have awakened it will be absolute nonsense.
Amongst mechanical states are what we call moods. They are very slow, not quick and violent emotions. Often a person can be brooding, when in a mood, for days and not know it, so a great deal of force is draining away uselessly.
(Observing I, Deputy Steward, and the carriage parable)
What consciousness we have we can draw up into Observing I. If our consciousness was more or less lodged in Observing I we would then be able to look down on our states (not contemptuously). You would be able to see things and hear voices beneath you.
Unsuitable ‘I’s crowd round the door of Observing I but Observing I is highly selective. When Observing I has enough ‘I’s round it Deputy Steward begins to speak to it. That is when the Driver in the Horse, Carriage and Driver Parable has left the public House.
“But I have not got a carriage!” That is the sensual mind interfering with the psychological understanding. It is our constant bugbear. When a man goes out of the pub he has got very far; he has then begun to spend his money – his energy – on his horse and carriage. Finally he climbs up on the box (remember he climbs up).
Do you still have a background of complaining? Yes, but not so much, and then you feel shame which comes from Buried Conscience. You feel shame for having had these thoughts and then you are very far on, but if you turn back then you are in very great danger.
There is then no hope for him, and he goes round and round in the same circle many many times in the eternal cycle of things. When there are sufficient ‘I’s collected around Deputy Steward they are then tested because without being tested they are no good at all. But when however much they are twisted they always point in the same way, after a time Steward will come down from a higher level and begin to communicate. Then The Work is working you. You will find it is exactly the same as you have heard for many years, and yet quite different.
All this Work is done for you if only you will make way for it. But nothing is done as long as I, in my case, am simply “Nicoll”. I will not be able to transform 48 into 24, and 24 into 12, if I remain Nicoll.
What shape are your feelings? Your thoughts and feelings are quite real. Why cannot people understand that there is an invisible country, and that the whole point of this Work is to get a good relationship with it, because there are places in this invisible world that are very dangerous, and some that are highly undesirable.
If you go down to Soho and get coshed you are taken to hospital for a week, and then you do the whole thing again; you should realize that you are in danger. Why don’t some of you understand that you have to choose where you are going?
You cannot take them up and throw them on the fire, no, the only thing you can do is not to go there, and especially to try and observe the little things that get you there.
A very spoiled self-indulgent person, who has always had his, or her own way, has never had to go against anything. Such a person’s soul will be very undeveloped.
This phrase “In your patience possess ye your souls” does not mean that you sit knitting patiently, but only if you have patience will you possess your souls. If we possessed our souls they would not be projected.
(Inner centres, meaning, and the disease of no meaning)
If you take the Intellectual Centre, there are three people in it: an internal man, a middle man, and an external man. For the purposes of life the internal man is not used at all. He is not turned towards life. He is turned towards the cosmoses represented by Higher Mental Centre and Higher Emotional Centre. The centres are openings into the different worlds or cosmoses.
Do you understand that you can have the most terrible disease – the disease of seeing no meaning? Then you only have the meaning that you can get from sex, from hitting a ball about, and eating and drinking and having hot baths.
And then The Work cannot help you. The Work starts with thinking in a new way, with realities that can be experienced but are not perceptible to the senses.
When you have the inner part of a centre developed you no longer feel inferiority. Everyone should feel inferior because he is inferior to what he should be, but if he is awakened in the inner parts of centres he no longer feels inferior. If he is awake in all three parts of centres he is beginning to be a complete MAN. There are many allegories about this in the Old Testament. One is the story of the children of Israel leaving Egypt, which is all about moving towards the inner parts of centres.
Underneath all this pretence lies a tremendous vanity. The only way to cure vanity is to observe it. You must try to see facts about your being.
There is something watching you inside called Real I which will awaken you when it is time for you to come into The Work.
We can find every possible method of preventing us from doing this Work, but there is only one way to do it, and that is through self-observation which leads on to many other things, and to Real I.
Waking up is not at all pleasant physically or psychologically, but at the same time it is always graded to your possibilities. It will not be too difficult, or it would be no good, it is never too strong if you are working. But if you think the results are slow then you will not be working properly. If you have a chance of working and deliberately turn against it then it is no good.
People sit down and worry and think they can do, but if you believe in The Work, after a time all those things that are worrying you will fall away.
(Identification, negative emotion, and the work of forgiveness)
The Work says that the only way to forgive is by seeing the same thing in yourself.
But I have certain misfortunes happening to me, and I say they are entirely due to the fault of so-and-so, it happened once before, and then it was due to the fault of two other people. If someone says “Don’t you think it was due to you” you will not agree.
It is necessary to find and invent every method to prevent recurring events from making you negative. You cannot protect yourself from getting negative by putting on a thick armour. If you have no self-knowledge you will not know how to be adroit.
Mr.Gurdjieff used to say: “The devil is also necessary”. Why do people think that it is wicked to be led into temptation? Will anything be strong in you unless you are tempted? We want to be delivered from everything, but we cannot unless we work.
Smith does not annoy Smith, but if I am identified with Smith he annoys me. If you are made negative by anything, it is where you are identified.
It is not that the False Personality can be absolutely starved, but if there were no audience you would not do half the things you do. If there was no one looking at you, you would not do a great many things.
A person who has awakened a little feels a kind of disgust on seeing the truth, but if The Work wants you, you will feel a kind of thrilled excitement.
You must not let your attitude to The Work get cold because then life rearranges itself in the old way. You begin to think from life again and then The Work gets cold. There is plenty to think about in life – the detective story – the Daily Express – the Guards marching etc. There is always something to put you to sleep. If you say, as it used to be said: “What is this Work about?” It is about enjoying yourself, but people cannot enjoy themselves. It is the most difficult thing to do.
No, as long as we are so crippled by Identifying, Negative Emotions, Internal Considering, etc. we cannot enjoy ourselves.
Dr.Nicoll’s Meeting on the paper OBJECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS Psychological Commentaries On the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky pages 1714-15
(Waking from sleep as the heart of the Work)
Some of you do not seem to see that this Work is about awakening from sleep, and this sleep that we are trying to wake from is a very powerful form of hypnosis. Imagination plays a great part in