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learn from the beginning not to pay attention to the music
but to listen to it automatically. At first, attention will stray
to the music from time to time, but later it will be possible
to listen to music and other things entirely with automatic
attention, the nature of which is different.
It is important to learn to distinguish this attention from
mechanical attention. As long as the two attentions are not
separated from one another they remain so alike that an
ignorant person is unable to distinguish between them. Full,
deep, highly concentrated attention makes it possible
to separate the one from the other. Learn to know the
difference between these two kinds of attention by taste
in order to discriminate between our incoming thoughts,
information on one side and differentiation on the other.
(Prieure, January 20, 1923)
PRIEURE, JANUARY 19, 1923
To all my questions, "Has anyone thought, while working
today, about yesterday's lecture?" I invariably receive the
same answer they forgot. And yet to think while working is
the same as to remember oneself.
It is impossible to remember oneself. And people do not re-
member because they wish to live by mind alone. Yet the store
of attention in the mind (like the electric charge of a battery)
is very small. And other parts of the body have no wish to re-
member.
Maybe you remember it being said that man is like a rig
consisting of passenger, driver, horse and carriage. Except
there can be no question of the passenger, for he is not there,
so we can only speak of the driver. Our mind is the driver.
This mind of ours wants to do something, has set itself the
task of working differently from the way it worked before, of
remembering itself. All the interests we have related to self-
change, self-alteration, belong only to the driver, that is, are
only mental.
As regards feeling and body these parts are not in the least
interested in putting self-remembering into practice. And yet
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the main thing is to change not in the mind, but in the parts
that are not interested. The mind can change quite easily. At-
tainment is not reached through the mind; if it is reached
through the mind it is of no use at all.
Therefore one should teach, and learn, not through the
mind but through the feelings and the body. At the same time
feeling and body have no language; they have neither the lan-
guage nor the understanding we possess. They understand nei-
ther Russian nor English; the horse does not understand the
language of the driver, nor the carriage that of the horse. If
the driver says in English, "Turn right," nothing will happen.
The horse understands the language of the reins and will turn
right only obeying the reins. Or another horse will turn with-
out reins if you rub it in an accustomed place as for instance,
donkeys in Persia are trained. The same with the carriage it
has its own structure. If the shafts turn right, the rear wheels
go left. Then another movement and the wheels go right. This
is because the carriage only understands this movement and
reacts to it in its own way. So the driver should know the
weak sides, or the characteristics, of the carriage. Only then
can he drive it in the direction he wishes. But if he merely sits
on his box and says in his own language "go right" or "go left,"
the team will not budge even if he shouts for a year.
We are an exact replica of such a team. Mind alone cannot
be called a man, just as a driver who sits in a pub cannot be
called a driver who fulfills his function. Our mind is like a pro-
fessional cabby who sits at home or in a pub and drives pas-
sengers to different places, in his dreams. Just as his driving is
not real, so trying to work with the mind alone will lead no-
where. One will only become a professional, a lunatic.
The power of changing oneself lies not in the mind, but in
the body and the feelings. Unfortunately, however, our body
and our feelings are so constituted that they don't care a jot
about anything so long as they are happy. They live for the
moment and their memory is short. The mind alone lives for
tomorrow. Each has its own merits. The merit of the mind is
that it looks ahead. But it is only the other two that can "do."
Until now, until today, the greater part of desire and striv-
ing was accidental, only in the mind. This means that the de-
sire exists in the mind alone. So far, in the minds of those pres-
ent there arose accidentally a desire to attain something, to
change something. But only in the mind. But nothing has
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changed in them yet. There is only this bare idea in the head,
but each has remained as he was. Even if he works ten years
with his mind, if he studies day and night, remembers in his
mind and strives, he will achieve nothing useful or real, be-
cause in the mind there is nothing to change; what must
change is the horse's disposition. Desire must be in the horse,
and ability in the carriage. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]