Contents List:"Difficult" IdeasEsotericism The Psychological Method Limitations of Ordinary Mind Four Methods of Thought Degeneration of Knowledge Degenerative Reform The Trap |
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It cannot be denied that, in general, these ideas are very far from modern thought.
But as there is no sense in reading my book without having some conception of the meaning of these two ideas I will try here to show ways of approach to them.
First of all both ideas need the recognition of the fact that human thought can work on very different levels.
So that the first step towards understanding the idea of esotericism is realisation of the existence of a higher mind, that is, a human mind, but one which differs from the ordinary mind as much as, let us say, the mind of an intelligent and educated grown-up man differs from the mind of a child of six. A genius is only a "Wunderkind". A man of higher mind possesses a new knowledge which ordinary man, however clever and intelligent, cannot possess. This is esoteric knowledge.
Whether people of higher mind exist now and have existed always, or whether they appear on Earth only at long intervals, is immaterial. The important point is that they exist and that we can come into contact with their ideas and, through these ideas, with esoteric knowledge. This is the essence of the idea of esotericism.
We can see different levels of thought in ordinary life. The most ordinary mind, let us call it the logical mind, is sufficient for all the simple problems of life. We can build a house with this mind, obtain food, know that two and two make four, that the "Volga falls into the Caspian Sea" and that "horses eat oats and hay". In its proper place the logical mind is quite right and quite useful. But when the logical mind meets with problems which are too big, and when it does not stop before them but starts out to solve them, it inevitably falls down, loses touch with reality, and becomes "defective". To this "defective mind" and "defective method" of observation and reasoning, humanity owes all superstitions and false theories beginning with the "devil with a goose's foot" and ending with Marxism and psychoanalysis. [Ouspensky here presumably refers to the Freudian variety. — Ed.].
But a logical mind which knows its own limitations and is strong enough to withstand the temptation to venture into problems beyond its powers and capacities becomes a "psychological mind". The method used by this mind, that is, the psychological method, is primarily a method of distinguishing between different levels of thinking and of realising the fact that perceptions change according to the powers and properties of the perceiving apparatus. The psychological mind can see the limitations of the "logical mind" and the absurdities of the "defective mind" — it can understand the reality of the existence of a higher mind and of esoteric knowledge, and see it in its manifestations. This is impossible for a merely logical mind.
Nor will esoteric ideas, that is, ideas coming from higher mind, say much to a logical man. He will ask, for instance: Where are the proofs that the Gospels were written by people of higher mind?
Where indeed are the proofs? They are there, everywhere, in every line and in every word, but only for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear. But the logical mind can neither see not hear beyond a very small radius or the most elementary things.
The limitedness of the logical mind renders it powerless even before quite simple problems of ordinary life once they go beyond the limits of its accustomed scale.
The man of logical mind who demands proofs for everything at the present time, for instance, looks for the cause of the world economic crisis everywhere except where it actually lies.
And even if he were told that the causes of the crisis lie in the existence of the Soviet government in Russia, and in the recognition and support of this government by other governments, he would never understand it. He is accustomed to think in a certain way and he is unable to think differently. For him the Bolsheviks are a "political party" like any other party, and the Soviet Government is a "government" like any other government. He is unable to see that this is a new phenomenon different from anything he knew before.
Where are the proofs of this? he would ask.
And he will never see that this needs no proofs. Just as no proofs are needed of the inevitable appearance of the plague in his house when there is plague in the house opposite against which no steps whatever have been taken on the spot. But a man of logical mind cannot see that Soviet Russia is a plague-house. He prefers to believe in the "biggest social experiment in history", or in the "evolution of bolshevism", or in "bolsheviks giving up propaganda" — as though plague can "give up" propaganda and as though negotiations and treaties and "pacts" with plague were possible. In this particular case, of course, the man of logical mind errs almost consciously because he cannot resist the temptation to take advantage of the opportunity of snatching a profit out of the plague-house. The inevitable result is that the plague appears in his house. But even when it appears, the man of logical mind still does not want to understand where it has come from and demands "proofs".
But "proofs" are by no means always necessary in order to accept or to deny a given proposition. There are "psychological proofs" which mean much more than facts because facts can lie and psychological proofs cannot lie. But one must be able to feel them.
The term "psychological method" comes from "psychological proofs". On the basis of these proofs it is possible to see the defects of logical thinking in regions inaccessible to it or in questions too big for it; and, in exactly the same way, it is often possible to find solutions to problems too difficult or too big for the logical mind. Real solutions can come only from higher mind possessing higher knowledge, that is, from esotericism. This is the difference between the psychological method and the esoteric method.
The logical method is based upon a glance at the room from one definite spot, at one definite angle, and usually without enough light. Too big a confidence in it and the defence of this angle of vision makes the logical method defective.
The psychological method compared with the two first would be like a view of the room in daylight, moving about in it in various directions, knowing the objects in it and so on. It is quite clear that it is possible to learn more about the room in this way than by the logical method, and that it is possible to find many mistakes and wrong conclusions of the defective method.
The esoteric method of approach to the study of the room would include not only the whole room with everything it contains but also the whole house, all the people in it with all their relationships and their occupations; the position of the house in the street, of the street in the town, of the town in the country, of the country on the Earth, of the Earth in the Solar System, and so on. The esoteric method is limited by nothing and always connects every given thing, however small it may be, with the whole.
Examples of "psychological", "logical", and "defective" thinking abound around us. Occasionally we meet with the psychological method in science. In psychology itself, the "psychological method" inevitably leads to recognition of the fact that human consciousness is merely a particular instance of consciousness and that an intelligence exists which is many times superior to the ordinary human intelligence. Only a psychology which starts from this proposition and has the proposition as its foundation can be called scientific.
Take, for instance, Darwin, whose discoveries and ideas were the product of psychological thinking of the very highest quality. But they had already become logical with his followers and, later on, they became defective because they stood in the way of the free development of thought.
This is exactly what Ibsens's Dr Stockmann meant when he spoke about ageing truths. He says:
There are truths which have attained such an age that they have really outlived themselves. And when a truth becomes as old as this it is on the best way to become a lie.... Yes, yes, you may believe me or not, but truths are not such long-lived Methuselahs as people imagine them to be. A normally constructed truth lives as a rule, let us say, fifteen, sixteen, at the most twenty years, seldom longer. But such ageing truths become terribly lean and tough. And the majority, having first of all been created by them, later recommends them to humanity as healthy spiritual food. But I can assure you there is not much nourishment in such food. I must speak about this as a doctor. All the truths belonging to the majority are like ancient rancid bacon or like rotten green ham; and from them comes all the moral scurvy which is eating itself into the life of the people around us.
The idea of the degeneration of accepted truths cannot be expressed better. Truths that become old become decrepit and unreliable; sometimes they may be kept going artificially for a certain time, but there is no life in them. This explains why reverting to old ideas when people become disappointed in new ideas does not help much. Ideas can be too old.
But in other cases old ideas may be more psychological than the new. New ideas can just as easily be too logical and therefore defective.
Take, for instance, reforms in weights and measures. Weights and measures which have been created through the centuries and which are different in different countries appear at first glance to have taken one or another form by chance and to be too complicated. But in reality they are always based on one definite principle. In each separate class of things or material to be measured, a different divisor (or multiplier) is used, sometimes very complicated as in the English system of weights — 16 ounces to a pound, 14 pounds to a stone for comparatively small weights, and for larger weights 28 pounds to a quarter, 112 pounds to a hundredweight, 20 hundredweight to a ton; or, for instance, a simple multiplier like 8 in the Russian measurement of grain which is never repeated in relation to anything else. This is real psychological method created by life and experience because, thanks to different coefficients in different cases, a man making mental calculations involving the measurements of several different materials cannot confuse either objects of different denominations or the measures of different countries (should he have to deal with the measures of different countries) because each order of multiplier itself tells him what is being measured and with what measure.
Those who do not like these old complicated systems are the school-teachers who, as is well known, are the most logical people in the world. Different weights and measures seem to them unnecessarily confusing.
In 1793 the Convention decided to replace the existing French measures by one "natural" measure. After lengthy and complicated "scientific" activity and research, such a measure was acknowledged as being one ten-millionth of one fourth part of the Earth's meridian; this was called a metre.
There is no direct proof of it, but I am sure that the idea of a "natural" measure and the metric system was born in the minds of teachers of arithmetic, because it is so much easier to divide and multiply everything by ten having done away with all other divisors and multipliers. But for all ordinary necessities of life, the metric system is far less practical than the old systems and it weakens to a considerable degree a man's ability to make simple mental calculations. This is very marked in countries where the metric system has been adopted.
Exactly the same thing takes place in attempts to change the old orthography. All orthographies must certainly be adapted to new requirements, let us say, once in a hundred years, and this takes place of itself, in a natural way. But violent reforms and the introduction of so-called "phonetic" spelling (only so-called because real phonetic spelling is impossible in any language) generally upsets the entire trend of the normal development of a language and very soon people begin to write in different ways and then to pronounce in different ways, that is, to adapt pronunciation to the new spelling. This is the result of the application of the logical method to a problem which goes beyond the limits of its possible action. It is quite clear why: the process of reading and writing letters. It is a process of reading and writing words and sentences. Consequently, the more words differ from one another in their form and appearance, the easier does the process of reading and writing proceed; and the more they resemble one another, the more difficult is the process of reading and writing. It is quite possible that it is easier to teach "phonetic" spelling than the normal spelling, but for the rest of his life the man who has been taught in this way is left with a most unsatisfactory instrument for learning other peoples' ideas and for expressing his own.
This is exactly what is happening now in Russia. Just before the revolution a commission of teachers (there is no doubt of it in this case) under the presidency of the Rector of Moscow University, was formed for the investigation or reforming spelling. This commission worked out a very absurd "new spelling" absolutely unsuitable for the Russian language, breaking all principles of grammar and contradicting all the laws of the natural development of the language. This "spelling" would never have been accepted if the Academy and the literary circles had had time to express their opinion on it, that is, if the revolution had not occurred just at that time. But having got into power, the Bolsheviks introduced this new "spelling" and under its influence the language at once began to deteriorate and to lose its strength and clarity. If "phonetic" spelling were to be introduced into English-speaking countries, the English language would very quickly disappear and twenty or thirty varieties of "pidgin-English" would take its place.
Another interesting example of the logical method as opposed to the psychological, and one which is now almost generally accepted in several countries, is the co-education of boys and girls. Logically co-education seems to be quite right but psychologically it is absolutely wrong, because by this system both boys and girls alike lose many of their characteristic features, particularly those which should be developed in them, and they both acquire features which they never should have. Besides, both of them learn to lie immeasurably more than they could learn even in the best of the old kind of schools.
Let us take other examples. What could be more logical than the Holy Inquisition with its tortures and burning of heretics; or Bolshevism, which began by destroying schools, universities, and technical institutes, in this way cutting off its own supply of trained specialists necessary for the new industrialisation which had been so much advertised? If this is not so, then why do the Bolsheviks need foreign engineers? In this respect Russia for a long time lived on its own resources. Further, what can be more logical and, at the same time, more unsuccessful than all possible prohibitions — like the American experiment in prohibiting alcoholic drinks? And what can be easier? Any fool, if he has the power in his hands, can find something to prohibit and in this way show his vigilance and his good intentions. All this is the result of the logical method. The danger of the logical method in all possible spheres of life lies in the fact that at the first glance it is the easiest and the most effective way.
P Ouspensky. 1934.