Commentaries

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Ruth at the foot of the path of rememberance at Northeon Forest.
Paul Henry Beidler accepted Ruth and I as his personal students
in September 1983. He was 77 at the time. We were under his guidance for some nine years.
Mr. Beidler was accepted as a young nineteen year old student by George Gurdjieff
in Paris in 1923. He was staying in Paris at the time studying with the French architect Le Corbusier.
Also there in Paris in 1923 was Olgivanna ( later to become ) Mrs. Frank Lloyd Wright.
When Mr. Wright started " the Organic school of architecture " at Taliesin near madison in 1932, Paul was allowed
to be there too. He is mentioned in three books: one by John Bennett, one by Charles Luk, one in FLW letters.

. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

.
It was said recently that one should not do anything negatively.
In this age it might be said that in the world people tend, as a whole,
to do things negatively. For example, factory workers do not, and
indeed cannot, take pleasure in their work --- that is, the emotional part
of Moving Centre is not used, so they have to have music and so on as
a substitute. The Moving Centre works infinitely better when the
emotional part collaborates. Then a person takes pleasure in his move-
ments, in the skill of his hands, etc. and he becomes a craftsman through
the guidance of the emotional part --- that is, of emotional cognition.
We spend a great deal ofour time in being negative and doing things
negatively without noticing it. The difference is between going to, or
being dragged to, something. If you go to a thing from yhourself you
work at it positively. Otherwise it works you and that is one form of
doing things negatively. One source of this is when we doubt. The
Work is always tempting us and so making us negative. Temptation is
when we doubt the end. It is easy to give up, to think things useless--that
is, to think negatively. One has to say to oneself: "I can work"--and
say it further and further inside oneself. People do not recognize it as
temptation. Here is an example in a letter on the subject: " I have
noticed that temptation can be met if it is recognized as temptation. I had
an example last night. I was about to fall into a well-known Slough of
Despond, doubting the end. and then it suddenly struck me that is
might be temptation and that perhaps it was no inevitable and that
perhaps one need not go into it, if one had some help. In the end I
went to sleep quite peacefully." We must live with a plan, noticing
ourselves in regard to it. If there is no aim, no plan, no individual
direction, there is nothing to notice, nothing to work on. We remain
where we were, for then we do not act consciously in our relation to
our inner world and what we allow to go on in it, and in relation to
the world of others who are mirrors to us. Self-Remembering increases
the force of consciousness. The act of Self-Remembering, as, for
example, remembering distinctly one's plan, one's aim, in the midst of
some difficult situation, actually creates new energy. It is like the light
becoming much brighter, as if the central station had increased the
current. An this is just what it is. We get connected up inside again
and the Work then can give us force. Falling asleep, letting smouldering
negative states grow unchecked, breaks up right connections. The
whole plan and system of the Work is simply to give right inner con-
nections so that force from higher centres can be received. The act of
Self-Remembering, in a full sense, includes all the Work, all its teaching
and new ways of thinking, all one has learned from it, all that one has
gained from it, all that it means, all the insights, all the new experiences
--all this together. Then right connextions open us again and new
force passes through one. What does this force do? It overcomes the
negative mess of life, which people are always accumulating, which
forms wrong connections. It increases consciousness--which is light.
Through this light one sees everything more clearly, just as if you turn
on the light in a room in which you have been blundering about and
knocking everything down in the dark. Yes, Self-Remembering gives
new light. This light is consciousness, increase of consciousness. The
Work is to increase consciousness.

Great Amwell House, November 30, 1946
A NOTE ON EFFORT
Read by Ruth aloud Friday evening July 1, 2005.
.
The Work speaks of the neccessity of effort. Strictly speaking, it says
that it is neccessary to make right effort. The method of Sly Man is to
make right effort: he sees what particular effort is neccessary at a
particular time, and when things are too easy for the time for him, he
creates difficulty for himself, as, for example, by doing things in the
most difficult way. In life, acting mechanically, we do things in the
easiest way, which is always the most mechanical way. In making
effort in the WORK-SENSE, it must be understood that anti-mechanical
effort is met. So the work begins with general instructions on the
pratical side to work against one's mechanicalness. This gives new
impressions. How can one cease to be a machine if one always
behaves mechanically? Man is a machine but his transformation into
a conscious being is awaited. So his general task is to work against his
mechanicalness. This needs special kinds of interesting efforts, for his
mechanicalness lies in all centres. Therefore efforts are in three main
directions. What did you make effort against yesterday? Against the
inertia which prevents you from thinking distinctly? Against pleasant
and unpleasant day-dreaming? Against general distaste? One can
always notice the stale flavour of mechanicalness within one and the
fresher feeling that comes fro a new impression which even a short,
real Work-effort can create. In this connection I remind you that G.
said it is neccessary to move the brain once a day--apart from the
bowels. In a large sense, people avoid extra and interesting effort and
remain heavily at the level of mechanical effort--that is, what they are
compelled to do by external circumstances--that is, as machines. Now
Work-effort is not what we are compelled to do by external circum-
stances. The Work and Work-effort belong to something extra, outside
nature, outside life--something very interesting. In this conection
mechanical life--efforts, that external circumstances dictate, can be
taken interestingly from a Work-attitude and no longer seem at vari-
ance with the Work. Let us speak first of this. How can you turn
mechanical life-effort into Work-effort?

The secret lies in taking your life as an exercise. To do this interesting
thing, a certain vision of life is required. All the background of the
Work, all the teaching about the Cosmic Ray, the Sun-Octave, and
the significance of Man, can give this vision, if you know it well mentally
and then imagine it so that it better connects with the Emotional
Centre. To know what you know, you must also imagine it with directed
imagination. Then you see your life as a miraculous adventure--that
ceases to be so once you identify with it. Then it is all spoiled and life
no longer becomes your teacher but your taskmaster, your Pharaoh..
.It is only when we lift ourselves, when we can take life as this interesting
exercise,that life can become our teacher. In other words, only through
this vision that the Work gives, which separates us from the full powers
of life, can life change into what it should be--into as it were, an
intellignet person. With this attitude we gain the sense of being in life,
not of life or caused by life, and this is a preliminary to that form of
Self-Remembering where the three factors, (1) the seen object in outer
life, (2) my observed reaction to it, and (3) I myself, constitute a triple
simultaneous conciousness--a full triad--that is, a being conscious in
3 forces at the same time. It is clear that the usual state of being
always identified with life and its worries can never give such results.
This vision, therefore, which I have mentioned, is one belonging to a
right development in the understanding of the Work, which is to lessen
the power of life over us. One must get this vision--in which the centre
of gravity of the whole Work lies--a vision of the Work that lifts us
above life--in short, this Rope which we have to catch hold of. Hold
this Rope, when you catch it.

Page 973

O. said that what people find difficult is the Work changes as
you understand more. What was said may be no longer said, but
something different. For example, you are told at firt in making effort
in the second line of Work not to try to like one another, but to stop
dislike. This is one kind of anti-machanical effort. This is surely very
clear. It can be done. You can stop disliking. If done, it leads, almost
without our being told, to the next effort in scale, in ascending octave,
"that we have to like what we now dislike." There is great density of
meaning in this sentence. It applies to outer and inner--to the object
and to oneself. Now you can do nothing of all this if you are too
externalized, too far out, too far in front of yourself, too identified with
seen objexts, with life, seeing everything outside you, and so a mere
sense-machine. You have to see that a person is notoutside you but
is your idea of him, your imagination of him, your reaction to him (or
her), and not the object you see via your senses. Here begins the real
effort as regards the second line of Work--work, that is, about relation-
ship, work about enduring without negativeness one another's un-
pleasant manifrestations. Only in this way can an accumulator be made
among ourselves that eventually gives force to all os us. For one person
can, if a Work-group is established, give force to another, without
knowing it, simply by working against his or her mechanicalness
privately.
I wll here
.
Great Amwell House, December 14, 1946

Someone said recently: "How is it that we can have the same
experience?" I answered that when a person has the same experience
as another person it means that they have both been in the same part
of psychological space. As this was not understood, I will try here to
explain the idea further. It is well-known that in respect to books
having a mystical quality, as it is called--that is, containing B
influences, however ansient--we find many similar ideas and experi-
ences. Historically speaking, in countries widely separated by space,
by time, and language, we find records exist that are similar in trend
and are not simpl concerned with matters of life, It might be said that
most ancient manuscripts are of this kind. Whether this is so or not, it
is not surprising if it is so, since all literature started from the Conscious
Circle of Humanity and, passing into the world, became B influrences.
The reason for this is that the level of mechanical Man is such that
C influences--or direct conscious teaching--cannot be grasped. So
only a distortion of real teaching is possible in written form, and
"either-or"--"Yes-No"-- substituted for the new mind of Third Force
that lies between the opposites--namely, the mind that can think in
terms of Yes and No and is not chained to the opposites of "Is it true?"
or "Is it not true?" The ordinary mind is, of course, formatory
centre which is Third Force blind and only creates disturbances.

                                                                                              .
   In life, in physical space, we visit the same houses, the same places---
provided we actually go to them--Paris, Brighton, and so on. It is the
same with psychological space. But psychological space is not visited
by the physical body, but by the mind, the emotions and the sensations
--that is via the centres. This invisible world is as real as--and becomes
for more real than--physical space. So I have taught you in commen-
taries about the idea of your having a psychological country. Where
are you now in that country? For although you are in the same place
in a physical sense--say in 5 Heath Row, N.W.12--you can be in a
vast number of different places in your psychological space, in your
psychological country --- and it is where you are in that psychological
country that begins to matter so very much as you realize what the
Work teaches. The Work is about your inwardness--where you are
inwardly--namely, in this great inner country on to which centres
open.
                                                  .

The Work expresses this idea by speaking about centres and different
parts of centres. For example, one may be in a wrong centre for the
business in hand--or in a wrong part of a centre. It is your position
in your psychological country that matters. One should ask oneself:
"Where am I?" And this question does not relate to out sense-given
space but to that inner space of which only self-observation can make
you conscious. It is in connection with this that the Work teache s so
much about that psychological position called the negative part
of Emotional Centre. This inner psychologiacl invisible country, in which
we really live our lives, has good and bad places. It has in it heaven,
hell and an intermediate place. When we are in the negative part of
Emotional Centre, we are, inwardly, in hell--or at the mouth of hell.
And if we identify, if we consent, if we make internal accounts, if we
have no idea of concelling them and neither realize where we are
internally nor know what we have to do--namely, especially remember
ourselves--then we have no Second Body--no inner intelligent sense
of our direction in this inward spiritual world--and fall into
every ditch, never understanding that the Work is to teach us where we
are internally.

In these different localities in inward space, we will get what is
there--i.e., in slums we will be knocked on the head. One usually walks
in "unpleasant places" and expects outer life to be nice and pleasant.
How can this be possible? How can you expect things to improve if
you are walking about all the labyrinths, the squalor, the vast, dark city
of the negative part of Emotional Centre? Only by sincere self-con-
fession, only by sincere self-observation, can you be aware of where
you are dallying internally, in your psychological world, your innger
world, however you pretend with a bitter smile that you only have the
best intentions. Then you lie and your smile is tainted.

Now where you are in this inner psychological country is not
necessrily due to you. Things turn: life is a turning circle. The wheels
turn, like the enneagram. Everything comes round again. But when
you find yourself in a bid place and see where you are, through the
development and inner light of Real Conscience, you only get
out through valuation. The work, if valued, can get you out, unharmed,
from many unpleasant places that you have to endure for a time. It
is just like external life. If you value living in a pleasant place, and
happen to be in a bad place, you will tolerate your situation without
identifying for a time, and will not buy a house in the bad spot, but
wait till you can get a better house. This is called "not saying Yes to
your bad states". For remember state psychologically is a place physically.
Every internal state is a place in the great psychological world of heaven
and hell. Because this internal world exists, so can you be in the same
part of it as someone else has been. So you have the same experience.
And if you have been in a wonderful place in this inwardly-touched
world, so you can share your experience with another who also has
been there and seen the same things. This is why there can be a
similarity of experience.

*Self remembering was a continual theme there as taught by mr. beidler.
Paul henry beidler early in his life was an architect. at the age of 28
he was allowed to come to work with frank lloyd wright & the first
group of young mostly 18 year old students at taliesin near madison here in
wisconsin. This was in the year 1932. He served often as a teacher's assistant,
as he was ten years older and had studied architecture with le corbusier in
paris in 1923. Alton Altair, a draftsman from le corbusier's studio took the
young nineteen year old to meet gurdjieff one evening.
it was there, then, in paris in 1923 that he was accepted by gurdjieff as a
student. in 1973 he started a school on northeon mountain in eastern
pennsylvania called " the search at northeon forest '.
the grounds; property, were large & consisted of a revolutionary war
grain mill on a small stream. in 1983 he would accept ruth & i as his students. altho in an odd way i was given an unusual indian sign in july 1973.
while with frank lloyd wright in 1932 & 1933 & 1934 he & the others were given
the task of helping to create a set of printed fonts to use with
the architectural renderings. which they all helped to complete..
ruth & i have received permission to use these type fonts to a limited
degree, and starting now with the readings that ruth does, will do so.

p. 766. FURTHER COMMENTARY ON MAKING WORK-EFFORT.

from Vol. II ...... read by Ruth at the kitchen table both Friday & Saturday nights, Nov. 19 & 20, 2004.

In this Work all effort must be intelligent. It must have behind it
an aim that you yourself understand intelligently and it must be carried
out with your own consent. All real effort --- that is, intelligent effort ---
is about developing the indeveloped sizes of ourselves. Each of us has
a machine that is only developed to a small extent on one side of itself.
All intelligent Work-effort is about developing all the sides of the
machine to which we are connected and bringing it to a right state of
working. However most people have the idea that effort means simply
doing something you do not want to do without understanding why it is
.
necessary to do it. Or again, people think that effort consists only in
not doing something, in refraining from something.

Now all Work-effort is based on understanding and if you make
effort without understanding what you are doing it cannot lead any-

where. It has no meaning for you. A man in this work through self-
observation may come to know that he is always in one centre and
does not use his other centres. If he has begun to understand the
Work he will make an aim to make efforts in the direction of his
underdeveloped centres or parts of centres. This is intelligent aim,
intelligent effort. To make an effort in a direction that has no real
connection with what one needs is quite a good expierience but it may
have no result because it is not being done from one's own understanding
and one's own insight into what is necessry for oneself. I may
decide to get up early in the morning and dig all day in the field
and find myself too tired to think afterwards. I may then think
it is necessary for me to get up still earlier and dig harder the
next day. But am I making this effort from my understanding?
Such efforts are artificial, arbitrary efforts. They are quite useful
at first because they give a great deal of matter for self-observation
and for that rare form of thinking ---i.e. " What am I really doing
and for what reason? " For example, it might be much better for me not to
go and dig in the field all day long, but instead to make an effort in
regard to my Thinking Centre and work something out in my mind that
I have avoided doing. You have all heard that there is a class of effort
in the Work called making effort to avoid effort. Probably some of you
have noticed and become conscious of the fact that you should make
some different effort, say, with the mind or in not identifying with
unpleasant emotions, and instead of so doidng you go, so to speak, to dig
in the field. It is easier, but it is not intelligent. It is not based on
understanding our own situation.
.
What do you have to do to change your relationship to your own
centres? Now the first aim of this Work is to become No. 4 Man ---
that is, Balanced Man --- and to cease being a one-sided man, either
a No. 1 Man ---i.e. a purely physical man ---or a No. 2 Man or a
No. 3 Man. In life everyone is one-sided, one centered, and for this
reason no one understands anyone else and everything is in the muddle
that it is obviously in. Right effort will give you far more results than
unintelligent effort, but you will only get to the point of beginning to
understand what right effort means when you observe yourself sincerely
and quite objectively --- otherwise you will not be able to see how one-
sided you are and how instead of travellilng on four wheels you try to
travel on one. At the same time, as I said, artificial efforts are useful
for the purposes of self-observation and making you aware of Second
Force. You have to fire off, as it were, many bullets in different
directions, but after a time you will find that there is one bullet that
will hit the mark ---one thing that you should do. Supposing a person is
.
767
.
very critical or slanderous and he decides to make the effort of digging
all day in the field. Certainly he is not hitting the mark. He is making
no effort against his too great tendency to criticize others or to slander
others openly or privately. He is not taking hold of himself in the right
way. He does not see that where effort should lie, for him is precisely
in the direction of not being too critical or talking in a slanderous way
about others. At the same time, physical effort is necessary in this Work.
G. taught that we have to break our laziness, physically speaking, and
in this way go beyond what we ordinarily would avoid in the direction
of physical effort, in the whole realm of pots and pans and digging
and working with our hands and so on, or we will be handicapped and
will be unable to work on ourselves in any other way. Now if you
watch a person working physically you will often notice that the person
is not woking at all but simply doing what he or she has been told to
do and not really consenting to it or thinking intelligently. G. said that
in all physical work all centres should be employed and then it becomes
intelligent and useful. But suppose I dig in the field all day and never
notice what I am doing and how to use my spade but simply go on
mechanically ---then I am not working. This is called mechanical
effort as distinct from conscious effort. The simplest way of under-
standing the difference is to notice what you are doing, to notice your
resistance to what you are doing and to try to work on yourself in such
a way that you are doing it yourself with your own consent, with your
own understanding. Then the effort becomes, relatively speaking,
conscious effort, and yu will end up the day with force instead of being
merely exhausted and possibly negative. A man, G. said, who is working
physically, should try to master what he is ding --- namely, to notice
what he is doing and how to do it more easily, faster and more intelli-
gently. Everything you do mechanically is lost but everything you
do more consciously begins to belong to you. For example, mechanical
goodness is useless in the Work, but conscious, active goodness gives
you force. Doing something difficult at the moment when you feel
very disinclined to do it, if it is done intelligently, will always give you
force. But if you work in any way with continual internal considering,
with continual thoughts and feelings that other people should do this
and not you, your efforts are useless and this applies even to the small
things yo do here. Our task is to use parts of centres which we do not
ordinarily use so as to open up this 3-storey house in which we live and
in which we inhabit only a very small part. It is just this inhabiting
a small part of this 3-storey house that makes life tedious and produces
that curious staleness that everyone feels.
Note here about the nature of quality and attempting to bring forth spices of quality.
The " Sedona Sun Indian Adobo Spices " is the ongoing study of quality done within a spice medium we are using.
Perhaps we do have to look at this phenomenon within us where sometimes we are alive; do things
that have good quality energy within them ..... other times, yes, we are jaded, bored, impatient, despressed.
When we think of where quality comes from; where things with a certain fresh energy come from; might
we take a closer look at what Dr. Nicoll here refers to as " that curious staleness that everyone feels ".
Is one capable of doing quality work when in the midst of this staleness mood? No. But how to get out of it?
And then, how to get into that sort of creative, electric, fresh, alive state. Perhaps we might study creative
people and see what they say about their own lives; their own way of approaching this subject? Is this the Tao?
.
Now if you do not try to transform the day and what it brings ---
that is, if you do not make consious effort towards any of the events of
the day --- you will not be making Work-effort. You are reacting
mechanically --- that is, as you have always done --- to each moment of
the day. That is undesirable. After a time, when the Work is beginning
to touch you, you will hate feeling that you are simply doing everything
.
768
.
769
.
mechanically. Then perhaps you will begin to know what it means to
transform the day, to transform the moment, this very moment in
which you are listening to this paper. We have this possibility of trans-
forming each moment. We have this possibility of approaching life
quite differently. One way is not to talk about everything ---to keep
silence. This Work is a discipline, in every direction, for every centre,
not only when you are here, but when you are engaged in your necessary
affairs of life. You can bring the atmosphere of the Work into everything
that you do. But if you identify with everything and make inner
accounts, this will be impossible. Life will eat you. Taking things from
the Work point of view can alter your Being. If you make effort of this
kind --- namely, to bring the Work into what you do --- you will be work-
ing intelligently and making intelligent effort. This must not of course
be done heavily but with a certain lightness of touch that you will
gradually find out about for yourself. You must not shew too much
that you are working.
.
The supreme effort of the Work lies in making effort against your Chief Feature,
whether you are digging in a field or listening to a meeting or cooking or
travelling by train or are alone with yourself or surrounded by other people.
The reason is that Chief Feature enters into the way you think,
the way you relate yourself to others, it enters into your emotions and
enters into your movements and the way you do your life-work as well as
into your conceit and appetites and quarrels. But it is very difficult even to begin
to catch glimpses of your Chief Feature and it is quite useless to speculate theoretically
on what it is. I would advise you to think about what was said at the beginning of this
paper - i.e. about making intelligent effort based on self-observation.
I would ask you this question: Where through self-observatio do you perceive
that you avoid making certain kinds of effort? Where do you always get negative?
At what point do you always identify? At what point do you find things intolerable?
Or again, what do you feel is your right? What is owed to you before
you can consent to do anything? We all have favourable idea of ourselves
but when we are stirred ou by what we think intolerable in external circumstances
we soon realize that we are very limited people capable of only very little good-will
and very little effort. You may be quite sure that your Chief Feature has something
to do with all this. We have to make effort beyond this narrow limit in which we
usually make effort. G. said that only extra effort counts and I fancy that each
one of us should know by now what extra effort is, whether intellectual, emotional,
or physical. If we cannot go beyond our mechanical limitations,
if we only ramain in the narrow sphere of ourselves, we have no chance of becoming
No. 4 Man - i.e. Balanced Man. We shall have no idea what extra effort means.
A man whose centre of gravity is in the Moving Centre would never for a moment
think that he has to make intellectual effort and really think. He will not see
where extra effort lies for him. And if he decides to make extra effort he will only
dig longer in the field. But this is not intelligen effort which I now connect with extra effort.
.
Now I will bring this short paper to a close and ask you to think only about what intelligent
effort means for yourselves in view of the fact that we seek to become the many-sided
Balanced Man - i.e. a person in whom all the centres contribute their different
meanings to his daily life.

.... to be continued ....
.
During Christmas time, in our really hectic days .... Ruth & I happened to read the following three pages.
They are softening; beautifully softening. Also they address this pivotal question we attempt to
keep alive in our Spice House.. What is quality? We want to leave behind us a small shop that is different
& fresh & yes, original in a certain vibrant energetic sense. After awhile one comes to think that if we have thoughts exactly like everyone else's thoughts, that this lack of individuality seems to be connected to a search
for the nature quality. You perhaps will pick this up as the reading goes on. Sedona Spices are the match-up
for our ongoing search for what true & real quality is about. Click on Sedona Spices web page?
.
.p. 781, Vol III, The Commentaries by Dr. Maurice Nicoll.
..reading continued on from p. 780 an account from Quaremead, Ugley, England, Sept. 22. 1945.
.
".......So one of the first great ideas in this teaching in regard to our
relationship to other people is to realize first of all that we are mechanical
and that what we do and what they do is inevitable, being mechanically
determined. Many people think that they have reached this point of
view and take up a kind of resigned attitude to other people. This is
a pure fiction. It means that they have not seen their own mechanical-
ness, and so they get caught up in the great wheel of mechanical life,
thinking that they are conscious and yet being more and more
mechanical even than others. Now to regard yourself as mechanical
is extremely difficult and extremely painful but it will change
your whole relationship to other people. When you have realized that you
cannot help doing something, you will realize that other people cannot
help doing something and you will no longer feel this fatal criticism,
this contempt, that underlies so many people's psychology. This will
give you a right basis to begin to have relationship in the Work-sense
to other people. Do you remember this sketched-out first octave of the
Work which started from the note Do which was called 'evaluation of
the Work?' It is of course an ascending octave, so the next note is
Re, which was called 'application of the Work practically to yourself.'
The third note Mi, was called 'realization of your own difficulties'.
Now a man who begins to realize his own difficulties in the Work will
no longer blame other people as he used to mechanically, because
everything you realize in yourself frees you from other people. I mean
that if you realize your own difficulties, you will realize other people's
difficulties in proportion. The more you see in yourself the more you
see in other people. If you are blind to yourself you will never under-
stand other people, and, as you know, one of the things we are seeking
in this Work is understanding which is said to be the most powerful
force that we can create in ourselves. The word 'create' is used in
regard to understanding. If you behave mechanically you will create
nothing because mechanicalness creates nothing. It is only if you
begin to be more conscious that you begin to understand this difficult
word 'creation'. And for full understanding, we must practise all three
lines of this Work and we must get to know ourselves far more deeply
that we used to. But unless there is the third line of Work as well, the
first two lines of Work will peter our after a time. This is natural enough
because how can you expect this Work to continue to maintain its
force unless you attend to the third line, to the aim of the Work, to
what the Work itself is trying to do at the moment. You must remember
that the third line of Work is getting into contact with the Third Force,
the Neutralizing Force, of the Work, and it is exactly this that prevents
the Third Force of life from interfering with it and bringing it down to
zero in the Emotional Centre so that the Work loses all its force for you.
Now when you seek to make relationhip with someone else, you
have to create the person by seeing him or her distinctly. Most people
have fixed ideas, not only about the kind of persons they like, but about
what people are like. These ideas are practically always wrong and
are seen to be so eventually in the Work. They are probably based on
what we have been taught or have read about in novels. You cannot
take a person merely as what he is in life or is reputed to be. To make
relationship with a person you have to see the person differently from
the way you would see him or her in life. If you have never under-
mined yourself and your own opinion of yourself you will never be able
to do this. You will simply accept people at their face value and you will
only wish to know people who have the same buffers and the same
attitudes as you have, as I said before. So you will never move, you
will never shift, from where you are--that is, you will never change.
But the Work is about self-change.
The second point that I would like to speak about to-night in regard
to relationships towards others is that not only are other people machines
as you are yourself, but they are not one person. Another person is
many different persons, nice and unpleasant, intelligent and stupid.
To take another person as one unvarying 'I' does him or her great harm.
But again the real question is: Have you yet seen that you are many
different persons, and that you are not one permanent person, but a
mixture of different 'I's who act through you at different moments?
You may be able to see changes in people, you may be able to see that
he or she is in a good mood to-day, but have you seen the same thing
in yourself and not taken it as one person changing, but as changing
persons in you? How strange is this form of egotism that seems to
dominate us, that meks us think that we ourselves are always one and
the same person. You will notice that both the realization of our
mechanicalness and the realization that we are not one but many
different 'I's strikes at our egotism and self-love. Through self-love we
attribute everything ot ourselves. That is why we are taught in esoteric-
ism, especially in the Gospels, that the only cure for self-love is love of
God. This means that we gradually come to the conclusion that we do
nothing ourselves and that everything in us comes from some other
source. Sometimes I day to you: How do you move your body? How
do you think? You cannot give an answer. And yet everything you do
you ascribe to yourself. You even ascribe love to yourself, perhaps one
of the worst sins. The point is that the Work teaches that we are recipient
organisms, that we recive everyting and that we can do nothing our-
selves, neith think, love, nor anyting else. In attributing to our-
selves the existence of a real permanent " I " we not only do enormous
harm to ourselves but so do enourmous hard to other people in taking
them to be one permanent " I, one permanent person.
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The third point in relating ourselves to others depends on the science
of external imporessions. We do not notice how we behave and so often
give a quite wrong impression to other people. ***** see below We may have difficulty
in expressing ourselves, we may have some feature that refuses to give
to others, or that makes us not say quite enough for the other person to
understand what we mean, we may be jealous and not notice that we
express it the whole time, we may be negative and shew it in intonation,
and so on, and yet we may be surprised that other people do not seem
to care for us. The science of external impressions is a subject that we
have only talked about once or twice before and that we will talk about
later on. It means acting towards another person in such a way that
the other person can understadn you. It requires a conscious attitude
towards the other person which we are at present scarcely capable of
having. As a rule we are extremely clumsy with one another. I think
you will all admit this. We make a wrong impression on someone
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784
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without knowing it. That is because we do not know ourselves enough
through self-observation and therefore do not know about the other
person internally. We do not know how to get to a person and think
that a frontal attack, so to seak, is good enough. Of course, that will
only increase second force and here comes in that part of the Work that
deals with four categories of behaviour: foolish sincerity, foolish insin-
cerity, clever sincerity, and clever insincerity. In our relationship with
one another these four categories of behaviour are important to study
in connection with the science of external impressions. Foolish sincerity
is the most mechanical and stupid thing as regards relationships with
one another. People call it telling the truth. It is better to use foolish
insincerity. This may surpirse you. But n our relationships with
others we must above all things avoid foolish sincerity where a person
blurts out somehtng that may poision another person's soul and do
infinite harm. Relationship with one another demands a great deal of
attention, as, for example, stopping negative emotions at once. As we
are, we cannot talk about behavior consciously to one another because
we are not conscious men or women yet, but we can try to practise what
conscious behavior means and live more consciously every day. I
say, live more consciously every day, on purpose. You can live more
consciously every day if you understand what the Work teaches you
to avid. If you will follow the Work in your behavior you will feel
something happening to you because the work is a lever to lift you up
to another level and immediately you apply it to yourself --- tghat is,
sound the second note Re in the Work-octave --- you will feel yourself
lifted up.
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left to right: Jenni, Tigger, & Rita.
Rita has volume I of Dr. Maurice Nicoll's " Commentaries " in her lap.
She is talking with us about Self Remembering ....... she asks " has she got it right? "
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the "Octave of Firsts" given below might be a help in getting
to where the inner ground of Self Remembering resides?
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make an octave if firsts at the very start of the day even when your eyes just open in bed:
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1st Breath You Take
1st Sound You Hear
1st Thing You Touch
1st Taste You Have
1st Morsel of Food You Eat
1st Smell You Have
lst Spice you smell
1st Thing You See
1st Smile You Have
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At the end of the day, try to see mentally this Octave of Efforts as it took place.
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Disney World in Florida. January 2005. The kids give us a nice treat for our 48th wedding
anniversary ( Jan. 26, 1957 ).
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