Practice inner separation from life in order to see higher truths
“As regards this isolation from life that I spoke about, Mr. Ospensky used to say that there are four things that help above all others to isolate us from the influences of life which tend to drag us down and keep us asleep. He said: ‘Knowledge of your Being, Self-Remembering, Non-identifying and Non-Considering are four supreme practices that help us to isolate ourselves from the continual impact of external life and so enable something to grow in us apart from life.’” Maurice Nicoll, Psychological Commentaries, p706-707
“Eventually, we must become channels for this teaching. If we can pass on this teaching as it is taught, we get something for ourselves. In order to do this, something must be sealed in us, sealed tight against the effect of things happening outside us. The Work must be given a place in us where, eventually, nothing from the external world can affect it. We spoke some time ago about the Work being like a new being forming in oneself and how one has to protect this being and fight for it often against the logic of the external senses. We spoke last time of the meaning of the foot. Your foot is your external side which touches life. I will speak some time more fully about what the eyes mean in contrast with the foot. But, briefly, the eyes mean esoterically one’s inner psychological understanding as distinct from the understanding that one gains from the senses or one’s foot. It used often to be said in the Work that we have to go against life. For example, you read the papers and see how everyone in the world seems to be angry and violent and you may have the thought: ‘What is the good of the Work if everything is going in this way?’ Does not such a thought mean that you have not sealed off the Work from the influences of life? One is letting one’s attitude to the Work get mixed with things belonging to the great machinery of life, just as if one expected external life to correspond with or conform to the Work. This sealing of oneself off from life so that one can guard and keep separate the Work-ideas is necessary. It has to be done sooner or later. The Work is under other laws than life is. Its source is from another direction. If you judge the Work by what happens in life you will not understand it. Here in this Work we are studying something different from life. We seek to come under influences different from the influences of life. We try to form something in ourselves that life cannot shake, whatever happens in life, whether war or peace, poverty or wealth, bad weather or good weather, failure or success. The idea is that we have to form in ourselves a place where the Work exists and have to guard this place. When you take this standpoint the non-correspondence of life with what you expect becomes no longer a source of negativeness. If you feed sufficiently on the ideas of the Work, you are able to guard this inner place that we spoke of and then events that formerly dragged you down into negativeness no longer have that power because you begin to have the power of the Work.” Commentaries, p860
“You understand that if you are identified with life, you are in life. You respond only to [earthly] influences. You are in all the feelings that life gives. You are in all its anxieties. Then you will be far away from the Work. The Work will seem like a dream. You all understand that you must re-interpret life and see it in the light of the Work. But as long as you are completely absorbed in the cares, anxieties, frictions and ambitions of life, how can you expect to interpret life differently?” Commentaries, p413
“The technique of inner separation must be developed by practice. At first, it can be said that a person has no power of inner separation simply because he has no idea that it is possible and says ‘I’ to everything. Nor has he an inkling that only along this path—this path of inner separation—can he reach a higher level of himself—a new sense of ‘I’. An ordinary person is in a state of sleep. This is emphasized by the Work over and over again. People hear this said but cannot see in what way it affects them.
“In regard to all this, an increasingly delicate inner perception is required. At first, everything is rough and violent. The formatory part, which says: ‘Either this is true or it is not,’ is useless. In-between-the-opposites-thinking has to be slowly heard by the mind—that is, relative thinking. Sometimes a thing is wrong, sometimes it is right. People want a definite answer and so they are given stony commandments. They are written on tablets of stone: ‘Thou shalt not,’ etc. This form of truth is external and not yet flexible—not yet ‘water.’ But people who pride themselves on their downright common sense cling to the mental activity of the Formatory Center—that is, the mechanical side of the Intellectual Center, which can only think in terms of the opposites—that is, the pendulum—and has no Third Force. They wish to know always: ‘Is this right or is it wrong? All I ask is a plain, definite answer.’ But truth as ‘water’ is not like this.
“For example, negative thoughts enter us continually. If you have no enclosure, nothing sealed off in yourself, they simply invade you, and you are helpless in their power, and so you will act from them and express them in gesture, behavior or speech or action. This comes out of you. Then, you are to be blamed. This is a fault in you, arising from lack of inner separation.
“From what has been said it is now possible to disentangle and understand the psychological meaning of Christ’s words, which referred apparently to literal food, ritually prohibited, but which really meant psychological food—thoughts, moods, and so on. A man may have evil thoughts that enter him but separates from them. He is guiltless. He cannot stop evil thoughts entering him. But they do not defile him. He can separate from them and not consent, not say ‘I’ to them.” Commentaries, p918-920
Logion 45
Yeshua says...
Grapes are not harvested from thorns,
nor are figs gathered from thistles.
Thorns and thistles do not produce fruit.
Good people bring goodness
out of a storehouse of inner treasure,
and evil ones bring wickedness
out of the repository of evil collected in the heart.
It is from there that they speak.
For from the heart's overflow evil enters the world.
from the Gospel of Mark, Chapter 7:
Then Jesus called the people to Him again. “Listen to me, all of you,” He said, “and understand. There is nothing outside a man which entering him can make him unclean; but it is the things which come out of a man that make him unclean.”
After He had left the crowd and gone indoors, His disciples began to ask Him about this figure of speech.
“Have you also so little understanding?” He replied; “do you not understand that anything whatever that enters a man from outside cannot make him unclean, because it does not go into his heart, but into his stomach, and passes away ejected from him?” By these words Jesus pronounced all kinds of food clean.
“What comes out of a man,” He added, “that it is which makes him unclean.
For from within, out of men’s hearts, their evil purposes proceed–fornication, theft, murder, adultery, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, reviling, pride, reckless folly: all these wicked things come out from within and make a man unclean.”
from the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 15:
Jesus said, “Hear and understand. It is not what goes into a man’s mouth that defiles him; but it is what comes out of his mouth–that defiles a man.”
Then His disciples came and said to Him, “Do you know that the Pharisees were greatly shocked when they heard those words?”
“Every plant,” He replied, “which my Heavenly Father has not planted will be rooted up. Leave them alone. They are blind guides of the blind; and if a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into some pit.”
“Explain to us this figurative language,” said Peter.
“Are even you,” He answered, “still without intelligence? Do you not understand that whatever enters the mouth passes into the stomach and is afterwards ejected from the body? But the things that come out of the mouth proceed from the heart, and it is these that defile the man.
For out of the heart proceed wicked thoughts, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, perjury, impiety of speech. These are the things which defile the man; but eating with unwashed hands does not defile.”
Page numbers for Maurice Nicoll refer to Psychological Commentaries on the Teachings of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Eureka Editions:2020) unless stated otherwise.
Quotations from the Gospel of Thomas are from Lynn C Bauman, Ward J Bauman, Cynthia Bourgeault, The Luminous Gospels (Praxis 2008)
Read the Impression introducing the Gospel of Thomas.
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