/tag/observation

23 quotes tagged 'observation'

Tripping: An Anthology of True-Life Psychedelic Adventures

Publisher: Penguin Compass (2000)

Publisher: Paperjacks (1971)

20-22

Quite simply, the reasoning of the early theologians seems to have been as follows: since rain makes the crops grow it must contain within it the seed of life. In human beings this is spermatozoa that is ejected from the penis at orgasm. Therefore it followed that rain is simply heavenly semen, the all-powerful creator, God. \r\nThe most forceful spurting of this 'seed' is accompanied by thunder and the shrieking wind. This is the 'voice' of God. Somewhere above the sky a mighty penis reaches an orgasm that shakes the heavens. The 'lips' of the penis-tip, the glans, open and the divine seed shoots forth and is borne by the wind to the earth. As saliva can be seen mixed with breath during forceful human speech, so the 'speaking' of the divine penis is accompanied by a powerful blast of wind, the holy, creative spirit, bearing the 'spittle' of semen. \r\nThis 'spittle' is the visible 'speech' of God; it is his 'Son' in New Testament terms, the 'Word' which 'was with God, and was God, and was in the beginning with God; through whom all things were made, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life ...' (John 1:1-4). In the words of the Psalmists: 'By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and all their host by the breath of his mouth' (Ps 33:6); or, 'when you send forth your breath they are created, and the face of the earth is restored' (Ps 104:30). \r\nThis idea of the creative Word of God came to have a profound philosophical and religious importance and was, and still is, the subject of much metaphysical debate. But originally it was not an abstract notion; you could see the 'Word of God', feel it as rain on your face, see it seeping into the furrows of mother earth, the 'labia' of the womb of creation. Within burns an eternal fire which every now and then demonstrates its presence dramatically, by bursting to the surface in a volcano, or by heating spring water to boiling point where the earth's crust is thinnest. It was this uterine heat which made generation possible, and which later theologians identified with the place and means of eternal punishment. \r\nAlso beneath the earth's surface, lay a great ocean whose waters, like those of the seas around and above the firmament (Gen 1:7) were the primeval reservoirs of the god's spermatozoa, the Word. They were therefore 'seas of knowledge' as the Sumerians called them, and could be tapped by seekers of truth, whether they looked 'to the heavens or to the earth beneath' (Isa 51:6), that is, by means of astrology or necromancy, 'divination from the dead'. This notion that mortals could discover the secrets of the past, present, and future by somehow projecting themselves to the 'seventh heaven' or down into the underworld gave rise to much mythology and some curious magical practices. Since common observation showed that dead and decaying matter melted back into the earth, it was thought that the imperishable part of man, his 'soul' or spirit, the creative breath that gave him life in the womb, must either float off into the ether or return through the terrestrial vagina into the generative furnace. In either case he was more likely to have access to the fount of all wisdom than when his spirit was imprisoned in mortal flesh. \r\nSince it was given to few men to be able to visit heaven or hell and return to tell what they had seen and heard, there arose the ideas of 'messengers', or angels, those 'workers of miracles' as their name in Greek and Hebrew means. These demigods, or heroes, had access to both worlds and play an important part in ancient mythology. They could come from above in various guises or be conjured up from the ground, like the ghost of Samuel drawn to the surface by the witch of Endor for consultation by King Saul (I Sam 28). One important aspect of this idea of heavenly and subterranean founds of knowledge is that since plants and trees had their roots beneath the soil and derived their nourishment from the water above and beneath the earth, it was thought possible that some varieties of vegetation could give their mortal consumers access to this wisdom. Herein lies the philosophical justification for believing that hallucinatory drugs distilled from such plants imparted divine secrets, or 'prophecies'. \r\nSuch very special kinds of vegetation were, then, 'angels' and to know their names was to have power over them. A large part of magical folk-lore was devoted to maintaining this vital knowledge of the names of the angels. It was not sufficient simply to know what drug could be expected to have certain effects; it was important to be able to call upon its name at the very moment of plucking and eating it. Not only was its rape from the womb of mother earth thus safely accomplished, but its powers could be secured by the prophet for his 'revelations' without incurring the heavy penalties so often suffered by those misusing the drug plants.

How Our Lives Become Stories: Making Selves

Author: Paul John Eakin

Publisher: Cornell University Press (1999)

Beginner's Guide to Revelation: A Jungian Interpretation

Author: Robin Robertson

Publisher: Nicholas-Hays Inc (1994)

The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Author: Julian Jaynes

Publisher: University of Toronto Press (1978)

289

Paradise Lost. A further observation could be made upon the story of the Fall and how it is possible to look upon it as a myth of the breakdown of the bicameral mind. The Hebrew arum> meaning crafty or deceitful, surely a conscious subjective word, is only used three or four times throughout the entire Old Testament. It is here used to describe the source of the temptation. The ability to deceive, we remember, is one of the hallmarks of consciousness. The serpent promises that 'you shall be like the elohim themselves, knowing good and evil' (Genesis 3:5), qualities that only subjective conscious man is capable of. And when these first humans had eaten of the tree of knowledge, suddenly 'the eyes of them both were opened,' their analog eyes in their metaphored mind-space, 'and they knew that they were naked' (Genesis 3:7), or had autoscopic visions and were narratizing, seeing themselves as others see them.6 And so is their sorrow 'greatly multipled' (Genesis 3:16) and they are cast out from the garden where He-who-is could be seen and talked with like another man.

213

In summary, I have sketched out several factors at work in the great transilience from the bicameral mind to consciousness: (1) the weakening of the auditory by the advent of writing; (2) the inherent fragility of hallucinatory control; (3) the unwork-ableness of gods in the chaos of historical upheaval; (4) the positing of internal cause in the observation of difference in others; (5) the acquisition of narratization from epics; (6) the survival value of deceit; and (7) a modicum of natural selection.

209

The observation of difference may be the origin of the analog space of consciousness. After the breakdown of authority and of the gods, we can scarcely imagine the panic and the hesitancy that would feature human behavior during the disorder we have described. We should remember that in the bicameral age men belonging to the same city-god were more or less of similar opinion and action. But in the forced violent intermingling of peoples from different nations, different gods, the observation that strangers, even though looking like oneself, spoke differently, had opposite opinions, and behaved differently might lead to the supposition of something inside of them that was different. Indeed, this latter opinion has come down to us in the traditions of philosophy, namely, that thoughts, opinions, and delusions are subjective phenomena inside a person because there is no room for them in the ‘real,’ ‘objective’ world. It is thus a possibility that before an individual man had an interior self, he unconsciously first posited it in others, particularly contradictory strangers, as the thing that caused their different and bewildering behavior. In other words, the tradition in philosophy that phrases the problem as the logic of inferring other minds from one’s own has it the wrong way around. We may first unconsciously (sic) suppose other consciousnesses, and then infer our own by generalization.

The Denial of Death

Author: Ernest Becker

Publisher: Free Press (1975)

226

If history is a succession of immortality ideologies, then the problems of men can be read directly against those ideologies—how embracing they are, how convincing, how easy they make it for men to be confident and secure in their personal heroism. What characterizes modern life is the failure of all traditional immortality ideologies to absorb and quicken man’s hunger for self-perpetuation and heroism. Neurosis is today a widespread problem because of the disappearance of convincing dramas of heroic apotheosis of man.27 The subject is summed up succinctly in Pinel’s famous observation on how the Salpêtrière mental hospital got cleared out at the time of the French Revolution. All the neurotics found a ready-made drama of self-transcending action and heroic identity. It was as simple as that.

195

But now the rub for man. If sex is a fulfillment of his role as an animal in the species, it reminds him that he is nothing himself but a link in the chain of being, exchangeable with any other and completely expendable in himself. Sex represents, then, species consciousness and, as such, the defeat of individuality, of personality. But it is just this personality that man wants to develop: the idea of himself as a special cosmic hero with special gifts for the universe. He doesn’t want to be a mere fornicating animal like any other—this is not a truly human meaning, a truly distinctive contribution to world life. From the very beginning, then, the sexual act represents a double negation: by physical death and of distinctive personal gifts. This point is crucial because it explains why sexual taboos have been at the heart of human society since the very beginning. They affirm the triumph of human personality over animal sameness. With the complex codes for sexual self-denial, man was able to impose the cultural map for personal immortality over the animal body. He brought sexual taboos into being because he needed to triumph over the body, and he sacrificed the pleasures of the body to the highest pleasure of all: self-perpetuation as a spiritual being through all eternity. This is the substitution that Roheim was really describing when he made his penetrating observation on the Australian aborigines: “The repression and sublimation of the primal scene is at the bottom of totemistic ritual and religion,”11 that is, the denial of the body as the transmitter of peculiarly human life. This explains why people chafe at sex, why they resent being reduced to the body, why sex to some degree terrifies them: it represents two levels of the negation of oneself. Resistance to sex is a resistance to fatality.

The Fourth Way

Author: P.D. Ouspensky

Publisher: Vintage (1971)

317

Q. Why is it that some recurrent mistakes you may see, but cannot stop until somebody points them out to you? A. Even that will not help. You can go on doing it every day, until you find the cause. Maybe it depends on some other thing, and this thing on yet another thing and so on. For everything you want to change you must find the beginning. But we do not speak about change now, we only speak about study. Change goes further. Naturally, it you find something very obvious, you must try to change it, but this is mostly for self observation, because if something always happens in a mechanical way you cannot even observe it

271

There is an expression in the system, 'to create moon in oneself. Let us talk about what it may mean. It is a symbolical expression, and symbols in the form of diagrams or symbolical expressions are used for very definite purposes. A symbol expresses many ideas at once. If it meant only one idea, the answer would be simple; but a symbol is used to avoid long descriptions and to put many ideas into one sentence. How to decipher a diagram or symbolical expression? In order to decipher a symbol, it is necessary to know the order of ideas included in it. \r\n\r\nNow, if we ask what it may mean to create moon in oneself, we must first ask ourselves, what is the moon's function in relation to organic life? The moon balances organic life—all external movements are balanced by the moon. What will happen if this function of the moon disappears? Will it be beneficial to an individual man or the opposite? We must realize that all this refers to being. What are the features of our being? The chief feature of our being is that we are many. If we want to work on our being, make it correspond more to our aim, we must try to become one. But this is a very far aim. \r\n\r\nWhat does it mean to become one? The first step, which is still very far, is to create a permanent centre of gravity. This is what creating moon in oneself means. The moon is a permanent centre of gravity which balances our physical life, but in ourselves we do not have such a balance, so, when we create this balance or centre of gravity in ourselves we do not need the moon. But first we must decide what the absence of permanent 'I' means. We have been told about many features of this, but they must be established definitely by observation, and in order to come nearer to the idea of creating moon in oneself we must distinguish what is important and what is unimportant. Then we must begin to struggle against the features which prevent us becoming one. We must struggle with imagination, negative emotions and self-will. Before this struggle can be successful, we must realize that the worst possible kind of imagination, from the point of view of obtaining a centre of gravity, is the belief that one can do anything by oneself. After that, we must find the negative emotions which prevent us doing what is suggested in connection with the system. For it is necessary to realize that self-will can only be broken by doing what one is told. It cannot be broken by what one decides oneself, for then it will still be self-will. \r\n\r\nLet me repeat. Work on being is always struggle—against what you like doing or dislike doing. Say you like roller-skating and you are told to remember yourself. Then you must struggle against your desire to go roller-skating. What is there more innocent than roller-skating? But you must struggle against it all the same. Every day and every hour there are things we cannot do, but there are also things we can do. So we must look at a day and see what we can do but do not do. There can be no rule 'You must remember yourself'. If you are told to do or not to do something, and you do not try, it means you do not want anything, you do not want to work. You have sufficient knowledge. Now it is necessary to push work on being. We always try to escape from doing what is suggested.

269

This is one of our greatest illusions, that we can make decisions. It is necessary to be in order to make decisions because, as we are, one little 'I' makes decisions and another 'I', which does not know about it, is expected to carry them out. This is one of the first points we have to realize, that, as we are, we cannot make decisions even in small things— things just happen. But when you understand this rightly, when you begin to look for the causes, and when you find these causes, you will be able to work and perhaps to make decisions, although for a long time only in relation to work, not to anything else. The first thing you have to decide is to do your own work and to do it regularly, to remind yourself about it, not to let it slip away. We forget things too easily. We decide to make efforts—certain kind of efforts and certain kind of observation—and then just ordinary things, ordinary octaves, interrupt it all and we forget. Again we remember and again we forget, and so it goes on It is necessary to forget less and to remember more, it is necessary to keep certain realizations, certain things that you have already seen and understood, always with you. You must try not to forget them The chief difficulty is what to do and how to make yourself do it. To make yourself think regularly, work regularly—this is the thing. Only then will you begin to see yourself, that is, to see what is more important and what is less important, where to put your attention and so on Otherwise what happens? You decide to work, to do something, to change things—and then you remain just where you were. Try to think about your work, what you are trying to do, why you are trying to do it, what helps you to do it and what hinders you, both from outside and inside. It can also be useful to think about external events because they show you how much depends on the fact that people are asleep, that they are incapable of thinking rightly, incapable of understanding. When you have seen this outside, you can apply it to yourself. You will see the same confusion in yourself on all sorts of different subjects. It is difficult to think, difficult to see where to begin to think once you realize this, you start to think in the right way If you find your way to think rightly about one thing, that will immediately help you to think rightly about other things The difficulty is that people do not think rightly about anything.

257

There is one very important principle in the work—you never have to work in accordance with your force, but always beyond your force. This is a permanent principle. In the work you always have to do more than you can; only then can you change. If you do only what is possible you will remain where you are. One has to do the impossible. You must not take the word 'impossible' on too big a scale, but even a little means much. This is different from life—in life you only do what is possible. It is necessary to put more energy into things—into self study, self-observation, self-remembering and all that. And in order to put more energy into your work it is necessary to find where it is being spent. You awake every morning with a certain amount of energy. It may be spent in many different ways. A certain amount is necessary for self-remembering, study of the system and so on. But if you spend this energy on other things, nothing remains for that. This is really the chief point. Try to calculate every morning how much energy you intend to put into work in comparison with other things. You will see that even in elementary things, simply in relation to time, you give very little to the work, if you give any at all, and all the rest is given to quite useless things. It is good if they are pleasant things, but in most cases they are not even pleasant. Lack of calculation, lack of these elementary statistics is the reason we do not understand why, with all our best intentions and best decisions, in the end we do nothing. How can we do anything if we do not give any energy or time to it? If you want to learn a language, you must learn a certain number of words every day and give some time to the study of grammar and so on. If you want to learn Russian and begin by learning five words a day, I will guarantee that you will never learn it. But if you learn two hundred words a day, in a few months you will understand Russian. It all depends on elementary statistics. In every kind of work or study there is a certain standard. If you give it a certain amount of energy and time, but just not enough, you will have no results. You will only turn round and round and remain approximately in the same place.

266

Q. Are vast amounts of internal friction and discomfort always a necessary preliminary to new development? \r\n \r\nA. That depends on people. For some people more may be necessary, for some less. Again, it depends on what you want. If you just want to study, it is enough to see, but if you want to change something it is not enough to look at it. Looking at a thing will not change it. Work means friction, conflict between 'yes' and 'no', between the part that wishes to work and the part that does not wish to work. There are many parts of us that do not wish to work, so the moment you begin to work friction starts. If I decide to do something and a part of me does not wish to do it, I must insist as much as I am able, on carrying out my decision. But as soon as work stops, friction stops. \r\n \r\nQ. How can one create useful friction? \r\n \r\nA. You must start with some concrete idea. If you produce no resistance, everything happens. But if you have certain ideas, you can already resist identification and struggle with imagination, negative emotions and things like that. Try to find what really prevents you from being active in the work. It is necessary to be active in the work; one can get nothing by being passive. We forget the beginning, where and why we started, and most of the time we never think about aim, but only about small details. No details are of any use without aim. Self-remembering is of no use without remembering the aims of the work and your original fundamental aim. If these aims are not remembered emotionally, years may pass and one will remain in the same state. It is not enough to educate the mind; it is necessary to educate the will. We are never the same for two days in succession. On some days we shall be more successful, on others less. All we can do is to control what we can. We can never control more difficult things if we do not control the easy things. Every day and hour there are things that we could control and do not; so we cannot have new things to control. We are surrounded by neglected things. Chiefly, we do not control our thinking. We think in a vague way about what we want, but if we do not formulate what we want, nothing will happen. This is the first condition but there are many obstacles. Effort is our money. If we want something, we must pay with effort. According to the strength of effort and the time of effort—in the sense of whether it is the right time for effort or not—we obtain results. Effort needs knowledge, knowledge of the moments when effort is useful. It is necessary to learn by long practice how to produce and apply effort. The efforts we can make are efforts of self-observation and self remembering. When people ask about effort, they think about an effort of 'doing'. That would be lost effort or wrong effort, but effort of self-observation and self remembering is right effort because it can give right results. Self-remembering has an element of will in it. If it were just dreaming, 'I am, I am, I am', it would not be anything. You can invent many different ways of remembering yourselves, for self remembering is not an intellectual or abstract thing; it is moments of will. It is not thought; it is action. It means having increased control; otherwise of what use would it be? You can only control yourselves in moments of self-remembering. The mechanical control which is acquired by training and education—when one is taught how to behave in certain circumstances—is not real control.

251

If you help a poor person, it happens. If someone takes from this poor person what little remains to him, this also happens. One person will give him a penny, another will take away the last he has. It is first necessary to understand the principle that nobody can 'do' anything. If you think of life, not personal life but the life of humanity, wars, revolutions, you will see this clearly. You must try to find a right case for observation, because if you find something too small you will not see it. But if you find the right case, right conditions, right circumstances, you will very soon see whether you can do something or not. The simplest thing is to try and remember yourself. Can you do it or not? People think they can 'do' because sometimes they make certain plans and really get what they wanted. But this only means that they have got into a certain stream of events and things happened to coincide with their plan. When things happen like that we think that we did it, that we made a plan and did everything according to this plan. In reality it does not mean that we did it on purpose or knowingly and it does not mean that one can choose one stream of events or another stream; it is just accident. In every kind of work, in business, in travel and so on, it sometimes happens that things go successfully, but this only means that at a given moment, in a given place things went mechanically in a certain way—nothing more. It is difficult for us to realize, for example, that when people build a bridge, that is not 'doing'; it is only the result of all previous efforts. It is accidental. To understand this, you must think of the first bridge that Adam built and of all the evolution of bridge. At first it is accidental—a tree falls across a river, then man builds something like that, and so on. People are not 'doing'; one thing comes from another.

143

You hear something which has a right place in the system, and if you can put it where it belongs, you cannot forget it and it will remain there; but if you just remember what was said without putting it into its right place, it is quite useless. Each small thing you hear you must try to understand, and to understand means to find the place where it belongs among other ideas. You must have a general idea of the system and everything new must have its place in it— then you will not forget, and every new observation you make will find its place. It is as though you have a drawing without details and observation fills in the details. If you have no drawing, the observation is lost

129

Q. I think I have not got the right idea about identification. Does it mean that things control us and not that we control things? \nA. Identification is a very difficult thing to describe, because no definitions are possible. Such as we are we are never free from identifying. If we believe that we do not identify with something, we are identified with the idea that we are not identified. You cannot describe identification in logical terms. You have to find a moment of identification, catch it, and then compare things with that moment. Identification is everywhere, at every moment of ordinary life. When you begin self-observation, some forms of identification already become impossible. But in ordinary life almost everything is identification. It is a very important psychological feature that permeates the whole of our life, and we do not notice it because we are in it. The best way to understand it is to find some examples. For instance, if you see a cat with a rabbit or a mouse — this is identification. Then find analogies to this picture in yourself. Only, you must understand that it is there every moment, not only at exceptional moments. Identification is an almost permanent state in us. You must be able to see this state apart from yourself, separate it from yourself, and that can only be done by trying to become more conscious, trying to remember yourself, to be aware of yourself. Only when you become more aware of yourself are you able to struggle with manifestations like identification. \n\nQ. I find when I am identified it is nearly always with things inside me. \nA. Perhaps you are right; perhaps you are not right. You may think you are identified with one thing when in reality you are identified with quite a different thing. This does not matter at all; what matters is the state of identification. In the state of identification you cannot feel right, see right, judge right. But the subject of identification is not important: the result is the same. \n\nQ. So what is the way to overcome identification? \nA. That is another thing. It is different in different cases. First it is necessary to see; then it is necessary to put something against it. \n\nQ. What do you mean by 'put something against it'? \nA. Just turn your attention to something more important. You must learn to distinguish the important from the less important, and if you turn your attention to more important things you become less identified with unimportant things. You must realize that identification can never help you; it only makes things more confused and more difficult. If you realize even that—that alone may help in some cases. People think that to be identified helps them, they do not see that it only makes things more difficult. It has no useful energy at all, only destructive energy. \n\nQ. Is identification mainly emotion? \nA. It always has an emotional element—a kind of emotional disturbance, but sometimes it becomes a habit, so that one does not even notice the emotion. \n\nQ. I realize that it is important to be emotional in the right way, but when I feel something emotionally in the work, I soon destroy the whole thing. \nA. Only identification is destructive. Emotion can only give new energy, new understanding. You take identification for emotion. You do not know emotion without identification, so, in the beginning, you cannot visualize an emotion free from it. People often think they speak about an emotional function when in reality they speak about identification. \n\nQ. Is it possible for us, as we are now, to have any feeling at all without identifying? \nA. Very difficult, unless we begin to watch ourselves. Then easy kinds of identification—I mean easy individually—will respond to treatment. But everyone has his own specialties in identification. For instance, it is easy for me not to identify with music, for another it may be very difficult. \n\nQ. Is love without identification possible? \nA. I would say love is impossible with identification. Identification kills all emotions, except negative emotions. With identification only the unpleasant side remains. \n\nQ. Non-identifying does not mean aloofness? \nA. On the contrary, aloofness needs identification. Non-identifying is quite a different thing. \n\nQ. If you are identified with an idea, how can you stop it? \nA. First by understanding what identification means and then by trying to remember yourself. Begin with simple cases, then later you can deal with the more difficult. \n\nQ. As you develop self-remembering do you acquire a sort of detached attitude, more free from identification? \nA. Detached attitude in the sense that you know your attitudes better; you know what is useful to you and what is not useful. If you do not remember yourself it is easy to make a mistake about it. For instance, one can undertake some kind of study that is really quite useless. Self-remembering helps understanding, and understanding always means bringing everything to a certain centre. You must have a central point in all your work, in all your attitudes, and self-remembering is a necessary condition for that. We must talk more about identifying if it is not clear. It will become more clear when you find two or three good examples. It is a certain state in which you are in the power of things. \n\nQ. If I look closely and think deeply, does it mean I have become identified? \nA. No, identifying is a special thing, it means losing oneself. As I said, it is not so much a question of what one is identified with. Identification is a state. You must understand that many things you ascribe to things outside you are really in you. Take for instance fear. Fear is independent of things. If you are in a state of fear, you can be afraid of an ash-tray. This often happens in pathological states, and a pathological state is only an intensified ordinary state. You are afraid, and then you choose what to be afraid of. This fact makes it possible to struggle with these things, because they are in you. \n\nQ. Can we have any understanding with identification? \nA. How much can you understand in deep sleep, which is what identification is? If you remember your aim, realize your position and see the danger of sleep, it will help you to sleep less. \n\nQ. What is the difference between sympathy and identification? \nA. It is quite another thing; it is a normal and legitimate emotion and can exist without identification. There may be sympathy without identification and sympathy with identification. When sympathy is mixed with identification, it often ends in anger or another negative emotion. \n\nQ. You spoke of losing oneself in identification. Which self? \nA. All, everything. Identifying is a very interesting idea. There are two stages in the process of identifying. The first stage denotes the process of becoming identified, the second a state when identification is complete. \n\nQ. The first stage is quite harmless? \nA. If it attracts too much attention and occupies too much time, it leads to the second. \n\nQ. When you desire something, can you desire it without identification? \nA. Identification is not obligatory. But if you desire to hit someone, you cannot do it without identification; if identification disappears, you do not want to any longer. It is possible not to lose oneself; losing oneself is not a necessary element at all. \n\nQ. Is it possible to identify with two things at once? \nA With ten thousand! It is necessary to observe and observe. From one point of view struggling with identification is not so difficult, because, if we can see it, it becomes so ridiculous that we cannot remain identified. Other people's identification always seems ridiculous and ours may become so too. Laughter may be useful in this respect if we can turn it on ourselves. \n\nQ. I cannot see why identification is a bad thing. \nA. Identification is a bad thing if you want to awake, but if you want to sleep, then it is a good thing. \n\nQ. Would not everything we do suffer if we kept our minds on keeping awake instead of attending to what we are doing? \nA. I have already explained that it is quite the opposite. We can do well whatever we are doing only as much as we are awake. The more we are asleep, the worse we do the thing we are doing—there are no exceptions. You take it academically, simply as a word, but between deep sleep and complete awakening there are different degrees, and you pass from one degree to another. \n\nQ. If we feel more awake, we should not overtax these moments, should we? \nA. How can we overtax them? These moments are too short even if we have glimpses. We can only try not to forget them and act in accordance with these moments. This is all we can do. \n\nQ. Can you say that identification is being in the grip of something, not being able to shake off some idea in mind? \nA. Being in the grip of things is an extreme case. There are many small identifications which are very difficult to observe, and these are the most important because they keep us mechanical. We must realize that we always pass from one identification to another. If a man looks at a wall, he is identified with the wall. \n\nQ. How does identification diner from associations? \nA. Associations are quite another thing; they can be more controlled or less controlled, but they have nothing to do with identification. Different associations are a necessary part of thinking; we define things by associations and we do everything with the help of associations. \n\nQ. I cannot see why an 'I' changes. Can the cause always be seen in some identification? \nA. It is always by associations. A certain number of 'I's try to push their way to the front, so as soon as one loses oneself in one of them it is replaced by another. We think that 'I's are just passive, indifferent things, but emotions, associations, memories, always work. That is why it is useful to stop thinking, even occasionally, as an exercise. Then you will begin to see how difficult it is to do it. Your question simply shows that you have never tried, otherwise you would know. \n\nQ. Is concentration identification? \nA. Concentration is controlled action; identification controls you. \n\nQ. Is concentration possible for us? \nA. There are degrees. Intentional concentration for half an hour is impossible. If we could concentrate without external help, we would be conscious. But everything has degrees. \n\nQ. Is the beginning of a new observation identification with the object you observe? \nA. Identification happens when you are repelled or attracted by something. Study or observation does not necessarily produce identification, but attraction and repulsion always does. Also, we use too strong a language, and this automatically produces identification. We have many automatic appliances of this sort. \n\nQ. What can I do about identification? I feel that I always lose myself in whatever I do. It does not seem possible to be different. \nA. No, it is possible. If you have to do something, you have to do it, but you may identify more or identify less. There is nothing hopeless in it so long as you remember about it. Try to observe; you do not always identify to the same extent; sometimes you identify so that you can see nothing else, at other times you can see something. If things were always the same, there would be no chance for us, but they always vary in degree of intensity, and that gives a possibility of change. Everything we do, we have to learn in advance. If you want to drive a car, you have to learn beforehand. If you work now, in time you will have more control. \n\nQ. Why is it wrong to be completely absorbed in one's work? \nA. It will be bad work. If you are identified, you can never get good results. It is one of our illusions to think that we must lose ourselves to get good results, for in this way we only get poor results. When one is identified, one does not exist; only the thing exists with which one is identified. \n\nQ. Is the aim of non-identifying to free the mind from the object? \nA. The aim is to awake. Identifying is a feature of sleep; identified mind is asleep. Freedom from identifying is one of the sides of awakening. A state where identifying does not exist is quite possible, but we do not observe it in life and we do not notice that we are constantly identified. Identifying cannot disappear by itself; struggle is necessary. \n\nQ. How can anyone awake if identification is universal? \nA. One can only awake as a result of effort, of struggle against it. But first one must understand what to identify means. As in everything else, so in identification there are degrees. In observing oneself one finds when one is more identified, less identified or not identified at all. If one wants to awake, one must and can get free from identification. As we are, every moment of our life we are lost, we are never free, because we identify. \n\nQ. Can you give an example of identification? \nA. We identify all the time, that is why it is difficult to give an example. For instance, take likes and dislikes, they all mean identification, especially dislikes. They cannot exist without identification and generally they are nothing but identification. Usually people imagine that they have many more dislikes than they actually have. If they investigate and analyse them, they will probably find that they only dislike one or two things. When I studied it, there was only one real dislike that I could find in myself. But you must find your own examples; it must be verified by personal experience. If at a moment of a strong identification you try to stop it, you will see the idea. \n\nQ. But I still do not understand what it is! \nA. Let us try from the intellectual side. You realize that you do not remember yourself? Try to see why you cannot and you will find that identification prevents you. Then you will see what it is. All these things are connected. \n\nQ. Is non-identifying the only way to know what identifying is? \nA. No, as I explained, by observing it, because it is not always the same. We do not notice the temperature of our body except when it becomes a little higher or lower than normal. In the same way we can notice identification when it is stronger or weaker than usual. By comparing these degrees we can see what it is. \n\nQ. In struggling with identification is it necessary to know why one is identified? \nA. One is identified not for any particular reason or purpose, but in all cases because one cannot help it. How can you know why you identify? But you must know why you struggle. This is the thing. If you do not forget the reason why, you will be ten times more successful. Very often we begin struggling and then forget why. There are many forms of identification, but the first step is to see it; the second step is to struggle with it in order to become free from it. As I said, it is a process, not a moment; we are in it all the time. We spend our energy in the wrong way on identification and negative emotions; they are open taps from which our energy flows out. \n\nQ. Can one suddenly change the energy of anger into something else? One has tremendous energy at these moments. \nA. One has tremendous energy, and it works by itself, without control, and makes one act in a certain way. Why? What is the connecting link? Identification is the link. Stop identification and you will have this energy at your disposal. How can you do this? Not at once; it needs practice at easier moments. When emotion is very strong you cannot do it. It is necessary to know more, to be prepared. If you know how not to identify at the right moment, you will have great energy at your disposal. What you do with it is another thing; you may lose it again on something quite useless. But it needs practice. You cannot learn to swim when you fall into the sea during a storm— you must learn in calm water. Then, if you fall in, you may perhaps be able to swim. I repeat again: it is impossible to be conscious if you are identified. This is one of the difficulties that comes later, because people have some favourite identifications which they do not want to give up, and at the same time they say they want to be conscious. The two things cannot go together. There are many incompatible things in life, and identification and consciousness are two of the most incompatible. \n\nQ. How can one avoid the reaction which comes after feeling very enthusiastic? Is it due to identification? \nA. Yes, this reaction comes as a result of identification. Struggle with identification will prevent it from happening. It is not what you call enthusiasm that produces the reaction, but the identification. Identification is always followed by this reaction. \n\nQ. Is a bored man identified with nothing? \nA. Boredom is also identification—one of the biggest. It is identification with oneself, with something in oneself. \n\nQ. It seems to me I cannot study a person without losing myself in him or her, yet I understand that this is wrong? \nA. It is a wrong idea that one cannot study a person or anything else without losing oneself. If you lose yourself in anything, you cannot study it. Identifying is always a weakening element: the more you identify the worse your study is and the smaller the results. You may remember that in the first lecture I said that identifying with people takes the form of considering. There are two kinds of considering: internal and external. Internal considering is the same as identifying. External considering needs a certain amount of self-remembering; it means taking into account other people's weaknesses, putting oneself in their place. Often in life it is described by the word 'tact'; only tact may be educated or accidental. External considering means control. If we learn to use it consciously, it will give us a possibility of control. Internal considering is when we feel that people do not give us enough, do not appreciate us enough. If one considers internally one misses moments of external considering. External considering must be cultivated, internal considering must be eliminated. But first observe and see how often you miss moments of external considering and what an enormous role internal considering plays in life. Study of internal considering, of mechanicalness, of lying, of imagination, of identification shows that they all belong to us, that we are always in these states. When you see this, you realize the difficulty of work on oneself. Such as you are you cannot begin to get something new; you will see that first you must scrub the machine clean; it is too covered with rust. We think we are what we are. Unfortunately we are not what we are but what we have become; we are not natural beings. We are too asleep, we lie too much, we live too much in imagination, we identify too much. We think we have to do with real beings, but in reality we have to do with imaginary beings. Almost all we know about ourselves is imaginary. Beneath all this agglomeration man is quite different. We have many imaginary things we must throw off before we can come to real things. So long as we live in imaginary things, we cannot see the value of the real; and only when we come to real things in ourselves can we see what is real outside us. We have too much accidental growth in us. \n\nQ. If one retired from the world, surely one would overcome identification, considering and negative emotion? \nA. This question is often asked, but one cannot be at all sure that it would be easier. Besides you can find descriptions in literature of how people attained a very high degree of development in seclusion, but when they came in contact with other people they at once lost all they had gained. In schools of the Fourth Way it was found that the best conditions for study and work on oneself are a man's ordinary conditions of life, because from one point of view these conditions are easier and from another they are the most difficult. So if a man gets something in these conditions he will keep it in all conditions, whereas if he gets it in special conditions he will lose it in other conditions.

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Q. I think I have not got the right idea about identification. Does it mean that things control us and not that we control things? A. Identification is a very difficult thing to describe, because no definitions are possible. Such as we are we are never free from identifying. If we believe that we do not identify with something, we are identified with the idea that we are not identified. You cannot describe identification in logical terms. You have to find a moment of identification, catch it, and then compare things with that moment. Identification is everywhere, at every moment of ordinary life. When you begin self-observation, some forms of identification already become impossible. But in ordinary life almost everything is identification. It is a very important psychological feature that permeates the whole of our life, and we do not notice it because we are in it. The best way to understand it is to find some examples. For instance, if you see a cat with a rabbit or a mouse—this is identification. Then find analogies to this picture in yourself. Only, you must understand that it is there every moment, not only at exceptional moments. Identifica tion is an almost permanent state in us. You must be able to see this state apart from yourself, separate it from yourself, and that can only be done by trying to become more conscious, trying to remember yourself, to be aware of yourself. Only when you become more aware of yourself are you able to struggle with manifestations like identification

Things happen in human life according to three laws: 1. The law of accident, when an event happens without any connection with the line of events we observe. 2. The law of fate. Fate refers only to things with which man is born: parents, brothers, sisters, physical capacities, health and things like that. It also refers to birth and death. Sometimes things can happen in our life under the law of fate, and at times they are very important things, but this is very rare. 3. The law of will. Will has two meanings: our own will, or somebody else’s will. We cannot speak of our own will, since, as we are, we have none. As regards another person's will, for the purposes of classification, every intentional action of another person may be called the result of this person's will. In studying human life it becomes clear that these definitions are not sufficient. It becomes necessary to introduce between accident and fate the law of cause and effect which controls a certain part of events in man's life, for the difference between events controlled by accident in the strict sense of the word and events resulting from cause and effect becomes abundantly clear. From this point of view we see a considerable difference between people in ordinary life. There are people in whose life the important events are the result of accident. And there are other people in whose case the important events of their life are always the result of their previous actions, that is, depend on cause and effect. Further observation shows that the first type of people, that is people depending on accident, never come near school work, or if they do, they leave very soon, for one accident can bring them and another can just as easily lead them away. Only those people can come to the work whose life is controlled by the law of cause and effect, that is who have liberated themselves to a considerable extent from the law of accident or who were never entirely under this law

It is very easy to distinguish these three parts when we begin to observe ourselves. Mechanical parts do not need attention. Emotional parts need strong interest or identification, attention without effort or intention, for attention is drawn and kept by the attraction of the object itself. And in the intellectual parts you have to control your attention. When you get accustomed to control attention, you will see at once what I mean. First the character of the action will show you which centre you are in, and then observation of attention will show you the part of centre. It is particularly important to observe the emotional parts and to study the things that attract and keep the attention, because they produce imagination Study of attention is a very important part of self-study, and if you begin to observe this division of centres into parts, in addition to the division of centres themselves, it will give you the possibility of coming to smaller details and will help you to study attention.

Q. I used to think that by talking about my observations I was formulating them. But now I feel there is a danger of observation evaporating in talking. A. There may be very different talking; you can talk for the sake of talking, or you can make yourself talk, with effort. Talking can be awakening, and it can be sleep.

It is very easy to distinguish these three parts when we begin to observe ourselves. Mechanical parts do not need attention. Emotional parts need strong interest or identification, attention without effort or intention, for attention is drawn and kept by the attraction of the object itself. And in the intellectual parts you have to control your attention. When you get accustomed to control attention, you will see at once what I mean. First the character of the action will show you which centre you are in, and then observation of attention will show you the part of centre. It is particularly important to observe the emotional parts and to study the things that attract and keep the attention, because they produce imagination. Study of attention is a very important part of self-study, and if you begin to observe this division of centres into parts, in addition to the division of centres themselves, it will give you the possibility of coming to smaller details and will help you to study attention.