Great Amwell House, October 11, 1947
THE WORK-OCTAVE
WORK-IDEA
The Work says very many things about evaluation. For example,
it says that the octave of inner development, and so change of level
of one's Being, begins with the Note Do, which is termed "Evaluation
of the Work". The Note Re is application of the ideas to oneself.
The Note Mi is realization of personal difficulties. The Work
also says that its ultimate aim is to awaken the Emotional Centre.
[„DO”]
The first note Do of the Work-Octave was once defined as "Evaluation
of the Work-Ideas". Since the Work-Octave is an ascending octave,
the next note is Re. This was defined as "The Application of the Work-
Ideas to oneself". The third note Mi was defined as "The Realization
of Personal Difficulties." Now the next note Fa lies beyond the "place
of Missing Semi-tone". This means, psychologically, that a special
shock has to be given here to reach the stage of understanding represented
by the note Fa. In this connection it was said previously that
Do must sound strongly enough, to begin with. That is, the "Evaluation
of the Work" must be great enough to give sufficient strength for anyone
to pass the note Mi and reach the note Fa, apart from other things.
It is obvious that if a person lightly esteems the Work, or cannot understand
anything about it, or thinks in his secret, internal side that it is
nonsense, and so on, then he will not value it. So he will not apply it
to himself or be able to pass to any degree of self-realization by its
means or sustain anything coming from it adverse to his self-esteem.
We will speak later about the third note Mi—defined as "The
Realization of Personal Difficulties". Now between this note Mi and
the note Re beneath it, defined as the "Application of the Work-Ideas
to oneself", lie all the processes of connecting the Work with what one
observes. If we connect the Work with what we observe, then things
become arranged in right order in us. (This must be understood. The
Work, not Life, sets things in right order.)
In the Work-Octave it will be seen that unless Do
sounds first strongly enough, Re will never be reached. Without Do,
Re cannot sound, and without Re, Mi cannot sound. One note depends
on another. No note can possibly exist by itself. So unless at Do there
is some real evaluation that increases, the further notes will sound
weakly and everything will die out. But all three notes can strengthen
each other, once they start sounding, through the practical verification
of the Work, whereby we internally see its value more and more. When
this is the case, the gap between Mi-Fa may begin to be bridged and
the note Fa begin to sound. This note Fa is always a new thing in one
—as if another being with a new understanding had begun to grow in
one's being.
We are taught that an ascending octave starts with Passive Do. The
Work-Octave does not start with work but with valuation. It does not,
for instance, start with thinking one can do and all the consequences
that arise from that illusion. To think one can do—to think, for
example, that one can easily change one's Being and become different
and behave differently if one wants to—is to think from Active Do.
What does it mean to start from Passive Do? Some people think they
can do anything by force. They think perhaps that they can compel
people to believe in God by violent measures and through fear of consequences.
This is starting from Active Do. It is starting from the wrong
attitude. To start from Passive Do is an entirely different thing. It is
very interesting to study at different times what it means and how one
continually tries to start from Active Do and continually fails because
one has not begun rightly. As was said, the Work-Octave begins not
with doing but with valuation. Since it is an ascending octave it must
start with Passive Do—for all ascending octaves start from Passive Do.
In this case, then, the valuation of the Work must constitute a Passive
Do.
Now your whole attitude towards a thing you value is quite different
from your attitude towards things you do not value. That is to say, your
psychological state is quite different in each case. You must understand
that a wrong psychological state is just as real in its effects as trying to
open a door with the wrong key. Valuation of the Work is the right
psychological state to begin with. Through valuation a thing becomes
precious to you. Through valuation you care for and remember a
thing. Through valuation you have patience to find out more about it.
Through valuation, if it is great, you regard yourself as of secondary
importance in comparison to what you value because what you value
is greater than you. The Work is greater than oneself and so the
approach to it is through valuation. There are many parables about
valuation such as the parable of the merchant who sought "goodly
pearls, and having found one pearl of great price, he went and sold all
that he had, and bought it," and the parable of the man who found
treasure hidden in a field, "and to his joy he goeth and selleth all that
he hath, and buyeth that field." You can understand from them what
valuation means and so what starting from Passive Do means.
To continue—if there is little or no valuation of the Work, it cannot
begin in the right place. It is a practical question, like sowing seed in
the right place. Of course, valuation increases as Re and Mi sound
stronger. But if you have possessed Magnetic Centre the Note Do will
sound early and clearly. Things will get cold, however, unless you
constantly return in your mind to the Work and relate it each day to
your self-observation and to all you remember and to what you want.
For what you want will gradually get more and more distinct.
[„RE”]
Now to turn to the Note Re—at Re you have to learn all the Work
teaches, to learn the language of the Work, and to apply it to yourself.
This takes a long time—in fact, one's life. Application begins with selfobservation—
and you will not keep conscious of yourself in this respect
unless your valuation is strong enough to supply you with the necessary
emotional force to make effort every day from your understanding.
[„MI”]
Now let us touch the Note Mi for a moment. Here you realize, on
a wider and wider scale, the city of yourself, of which you took yourself
as the sole inhabitant, and the Note Fa becomes possible—not in all
probability as you may have conceived. And it is here that you learn
to speak and understand the language of the Work. Here, for instance,
you know you cannot do, and here you know that others cannot do,
and so you do not speak always as if you or others could do. This already
is a great difference in you. And because you know and understand
yourself better and have lost many conceits, you know and understand
others, and cease to judge them. It is when you have reached this stage
that the Work itself may begin to speak to you internally, because you
have learned something of the language in which it speaks. This is why
the Note Fa becomes possible.
It may be that
a person simply does not understand what an increase of consciousness
can possibly be like. I mean, that a person may not smugly or blindly
assume he is fully conscious and may be willing to admit that he is not,
but cannot see what it means to increase his consciousness and feels
quite helpless through sheer ignorance. We all know this state. Now
to get out of this state we must fall back on valuation of the Work and
the reasons why we are seeking the Work. I will say merely that unless
we do this we will stick. All efforts will cease, so it is necessary to return
inwardly to valuation—and revalue the Work. This releases energy.
In terms of the Work-Octave we have to return to the note Do and sound
it more strongly. Many 'I's attack this note and seek to drain its energy
of vibration—mocking 'I's, clownish 'I's, ugly 'I's, cruel 'I's, hard
'I's, arguing 'I's, denying 'I's, mob 'I's. All unpleasant things in you
seek to attack this opening note of the Work. They do so because they know,
although you do not, that their power over you is eventually threatened
by the Work, which brings strange and new values. For valuation of
the Work, which is Do, is a valuing of new values, and a constant renewal
of them by revaluing is needed and not a constant revaluing
of old values. The inward man must be renewed day by day, as St. Paul
says. You will be startled to find how faint, how weak, this Do can become.
This is because you do not renew it day by day and have let the
uproar of life drown it. Circumstances can make a life-Do easy: a
Work-Do is not easy—it is against life. Along with making the note Do
sound more strongly in one's being, one has to reflect deeply—that is,
in the Inner Man—upon why one is seeking the Work, for the two go
together—or should do. If you have neither valuation nor aim, how
can the strength of the Work ever be received ? There is nothing to
receive it with. If there is nothing in you to receive the Work, it cannot
help you. If it does not begin to influence the way you think or feel or
act, it is a sign that you have neither valuation nor aim.
Let us return to the note Mi in the Work-Octave defined as the
"Realization of Personal Difficulties". At this stage of the Work,
represented by Mi, one's consciousness has increased to the point of
one's becoming more aware of the kind of person one is. Now the
realization of personal difficulties must not merely depress one or make
one negative. To take Mi in that way is not connecting the Work with
what one observes. To realize as a fact that one is not the perfect man
or woman that one imagined hitherto, belongs to the necessary action
of the Work which is to increase consciousness. The Work says: "Find
out facts about yourself by self-observation." An increase of consciousness
reveals what you are. You realize, for example, after some years,
that you are not one, but many different contradictory 'I's, all with
different desires. In that case, you have begun to escape from the
hypnotism of one form of imagination and so have become more conscious.
Now all these 'I's that wish to work are present at the note Mi as well
as the consciousness of one's personal difficulties. You will see clearly
that this stage represented by the note Mi cannot be reached if a man
takes himself as one. The 'I's that wish to work are not the personal
difficulties, for example. They must be seen as quite distinct from 'I's
that, say, do not wish to work. The 'I's that wish to work wish to go
up to Fa. All this means that a man must see and tolerate his multiplicity.
Where one was narrow and contracted to the illusion of oneness
one is now an expanse of many people where choice is possible.
In other words, the inner state as regards the Work, represented by the
note Mi, is a very wide one, due to a broadening of consciousness. It is
like looking over a wide garden and seeing what is useless and what is
useful. What are you going to select? Which 'I's will you go with?
Remember you can do nothing unless you choose the right 'I' to go with.
If you go with 'I's that drag you down, you will be dragged down.
And again, if you have no idea of inner separation—of separating from
uncomfortable, vain or deceitful or bad 'I's—if, in short, you say 'I'
to everything taking place in you—then you cannot sound Mi—and so
you cannot grow. Your level of Being will remain where it is and you
will attract the same fife as before.
Some people cannot reach the note Mi because they do not observe
themselves over a sufficient period. I quote from a recent letter: "If
one observes oneself over the period of a week, it is possible to discover
what one's personal difficulties are, because during the space of a week
they are bound to recur. One may go through a day without noticing
them, but one cannot get through a week without coming up against
them, even if one goes away into different surroundings. I have noticed
three things that make me lose force. (I also noticed several ways of
getting force.) The same three things may not all recur next week, but
probably one of them will, or two, or perhaps even all three. And they
are the same things that have always spoilt one's life."
When a man, a woman, reach sufficiently the stage of understanding
of the Work called the note Mi, through a strengthening of the notes
Do and Re, then they are close to receiving help from the Work. If
they will be passive to their faults and difficulties, acknowledge them
and separate from them, then, as was said, the note Fa may begin to
sound in them. But, as was said, this note is an utterly different feeling.
It is something delicate and new. Yet this is the beginning of meeting
Real 'I' which is nothing like what they thought was Real 'I'. It is
possible to say that some may not accept this new feeling of what they
are.
[„FA”]
In every aspect of life, whatever people may study for their living,
it is difficult and rare to reach the note Fa. A pianist may get as
far as Do-Re, or even to Mi—but rarely further. The note Fa is not
struck. That means simply that the pianist is a Do-Re-Mi man and so
nothing is unique; nothing, save perhaps technique, is exceptional in
his playing. The same applies to every branch of life. In whatever
branch of life you are, to strike Fa means at once that you arc at a far
higher level than others are. The reason is that the person has made
some curiously indefinable individual effort that lifts him beyond this
gap, this missing semi-tone, and establishes him at the note Fa. No
teacher can do this for the person. It is, as I say, a curiously indefinable
effort that only the man from his deepest sense of himself can make.
Imitation will never do it, for that only increases Personality. In brief,
in some way Essence is touched, which can in turn touch Real 'I' and
then the man is whatever he does, or whatever he does is the man.
For right valuation the Work must become emotional. A man, a
woman, should begin to see for themselves the truth of the Work. Why?
Because otherwise it cannot become emotional. That is, it cannot touch
the Emotional Centre. If it does not, it merely remains in the external
memory of the formatory part of the Intellectual Centre. It is a
detached memory, not affecting one's life. It is a memory comparable,
say, to remembering the dates of battles in history. It is not yet a part
of oneself. Now it is sometimes said that one of the supreme objects
of the Work is to awaken the Emotional Centre. What can it mean to
awaken the Emotional Centre? As we are, the Emotional Centre is in
a very bad state. It is "impure".
Now it is impossible to pass from the Note Mi to the Note Fa in the
Work-Octave if one believes in one's negative emotions. Only the
realization of the truth of the Work can make it possible to pass from
Mi to Fa—that is, for help to be given you to do so. You have to see
by self-study that negative emotions always lie and pervert the truth.
They take everything as they wish to take things. Negative emotions
distort everything. They malform, they twist, they deny, they hate—
for at bottom all negative emotions lead down to hate and violence and
so also to fear. Hate, violence and fear form a typical triad of forces
and each one depends on the others.
As a result of this distortion that negative emotions produce in
oneself, several forms of lying result. And again it is necessary to understand
that no one can pass from the Note Mi to the Note Fa unless they
know all about how they lie and have observed lying in themselves.
There are many forms of lying that the Work speaks of. One that is
comparatively harmless is writing or telling something that happens in
a way that puts you in a good light. But there are some very evil
forms of lying that spring from deep-seated negative states that are not
acknowledged and are surrounded by clouds of self-justifying. If they
are not acknowledged the person concerned can only sound a very
poor Mi. He does not know himself and, as is often the case, absolutely
refuses to broaden the consciousness of himself to include his lying.
Sometimes this is due to some extraordinary self-satisfactory picture of
himself being just and honourable and all the rest of it that prevents
him from this necessary increase of consciousness, only gained at the
cost of his vanity. Remember in this connection that every time we say
'I' we are really lying. Which 'I'? We all for a long time say 'I' with
such emphasis and confidence, as if Real 'I' controlled all we do and
say and think and feel. But if we sound eventually a broad Mi, such
illusions are no longer powerful. We have, in short, to come to accept,
to endure, what we are, which is the only way to accept and endure
others in the Work.
Nincsenek megjegyzések:
Megjegyzés küldése