Read Online The Strange Life of P. D. Ouspensky by Colin Wilson - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Colin Wilson
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the horse's face. A dog once gave me a similar sensation. At the same time the horse and the dog were not simply horse and dog; they were 'atoms', conscious, living 'atoms' of great beings - 'the great horse' and 'the great dog.' I understood then that we are also atoms of a 'great being', 'the great man.' A glass is an atom of a 'great glass.' A fork is an atom of a 'great fork'.
In other words, Ouspensky was seeing Plato's world of ideas as a reality, a point also made by R.H. Ward: '. . . it seems to me very interesting that one should thus, in a dentist's chair and the twentieth century, receive practical confirmation of the theories of Plato.' All this was experienced in 'an exceedingly intense emotional state':
My attitude towards this new knowledge was in no way indifferent; I either loved it or was horrified by it, strove towards it or was amazed by it; and it was these very emotions, with a thousand others, which gave me the possibility of understanding the nature of the new world I came to know.
It is important to note that Ouspensky felt that his method of obtaining these insights - through laughing gas - was the wrong way. He says that he felt that there was ' somebody who watched me all the time and often tried to persuade me to stop my experiments, not to attempt to go along this path, which was wrong and unlawful from the point of view of certain principles which I at that time felt and understood only dimly'. The basic principle is, in fact, self-evident. There is no point whatever in having thousands of insights if you cannot hang on to them in some way.
J.G. Bennett was to describe a similar experience in the forest at Fontainebleau in 1923, when a tremendous bout of 'super-effort' raised him into the 'exceedingly intense emotional stats' in which he was able to evoke feelings at will:[1]
. . . I said to myself: 'I will be astonished.' Instantly I was overwhelmed with amazement . . . Then the thought of fear came to me. At once I was shaking with terror. Unnamed horrors menaced me on every side. I thought of 'joy', and I felt my heart would burst from rapture. The word 'love' came to me, and I was pervaded with such fine shades of tenderness and compassion that I saw that I had not the remotest idea of the depth and the range of love. Love was everywhere and in everything. It was infinitely adaptable to every shade of need. After a time, it became too much for me, it seemed that if I plunged any more deeply into the mysteries of love, I would cease to exist. [My italics.] I wanted to be free from this power to feel whatever I chose, and at once it left me.
Bennett goes on to quote Blake's lines:
Grown old in love, from seven to seven times seven
I oft have wished for hell for change from heaven,
and adds:
I realised that for Blake this was no mere trick of words, but the expression of a real experience. I knew that the world I had entered was one where there is no loneliness, because all who enter into that Eternal Source meet there as brothers.
Bennett's vision of the infinite varieties of love leaves no doubt that he had entered the same state of 'unfrozen' consciousness as Ouspensky - with a sense of the infinite 'connectedness' of everything - and that he had soon had enough of it. What is the good of being shown the answer if it promptly escapes us, due to our inability to capture it in words and concepts? Our job , as Ouspensky well knew, is to capture 'visions' in words and concepts, so they become permanently available to all men. The main business of writers is to trap 'meanings' in words - as if someone had invented a camera to take photographs of the advertisement signs as they flash past us - so that other men can examine them at leisure. The main point of this exercise is to fill us with courage and certainty, so we no longer have any doubt about our purpose and direction.
Now in fact, it had precisely the opposite effect on Ouspensky:
The experiments almost always ended in
In other words, Ouspensky was seeing Plato's world of ideas as a reality, a point also made by R.H. Ward: '. . . it seems to me very interesting that one should thus, in a dentist's chair and the twentieth century, receive practical confirmation of the theories of Plato.' All this was experienced in 'an exceedingly intense emotional state':
My attitude towards this new knowledge was in no way indifferent; I either loved it or was horrified by it, strove towards it or was amazed by it; and it was these very emotions, with a thousand others, which gave me the possibility of understanding the nature of the new world I came to know.
It is important to note that Ouspensky felt that his method of obtaining these insights - through laughing gas - was the wrong way. He says that he felt that there was ' somebody who watched me all the time and often tried to persuade me to stop my experiments, not to attempt to go along this path, which was wrong and unlawful from the point of view of certain principles which I at that time felt and understood only dimly'. The basic principle is, in fact, self-evident. There is no point whatever in having thousands of insights if you cannot hang on to them in some way.
J.G. Bennett was to describe a similar experience in the forest at Fontainebleau in 1923, when a tremendous bout of 'super-effort' raised him into the 'exceedingly intense emotional stats' in which he was able to evoke feelings at will:[1]
. . . I said to myself: 'I will be astonished.' Instantly I was overwhelmed with amazement . . . Then the thought of fear came to me. At once I was shaking with terror. Unnamed horrors menaced me on every side. I thought of 'joy', and I felt my heart would burst from rapture. The word 'love' came to me, and I was pervaded with such fine shades of tenderness and compassion that I saw that I had not the remotest idea of the depth and the range of love. Love was everywhere and in everything. It was infinitely adaptable to every shade of need. After a time, it became too much for me, it seemed that if I plunged any more deeply into the mysteries of love, I would cease to exist. [My italics.] I wanted to be free from this power to feel whatever I chose, and at once it left me.
Bennett goes on to quote Blake's lines:
Grown old in love, from seven to seven times seven
I oft have wished for hell for change from heaven,
and adds:
I realised that for Blake this was no mere trick of words, but the expression of a real experience. I knew that the world I had entered was one where there is no loneliness, because all who enter into that Eternal Source meet there as brothers.
Bennett's vision of the infinite varieties of love leaves no doubt that he had entered the same state of 'unfrozen' consciousness as Ouspensky - with a sense of the infinite 'connectedness' of everything - and that he had soon had enough of it. What is the good of being shown the answer if it promptly escapes us, due to our inability to capture it in words and concepts? Our job , as Ouspensky well knew, is to capture 'visions' in words and concepts, so they become permanently available to all men. The main business of writers is to trap 'meanings' in words - as if someone had invented a camera to take photographs of the advertisement signs as they flash past us - so that other men can examine them at leisure. The main point of this exercise is to fill us with courage and certainty, so we no longer have any doubt about our purpose and direction.
Now in fact, it had precisely the opposite effect on Ouspensky:
The experiments almost always ended in
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