A Record of Meetings held by P.D. Ouspensky - HolyBooks.com

eing on a bigger scale; has this anything to do with the question oftwo levels? I have rather wondered what this idea of scale implied?MR. O. I have already answered this. Scale in this connection onlymeans size. Every kind of work may be on different scale. It must havea certain scale, otherwise it will not be a success.MR. P . I understood Mr. O. to say in relation to the rule of not talkingabout ideas, that ideas are not to be talked or written about withoutacknowledgment, otherwise it was stealing.MR. O. This referred really more to writing, but certainly it also refersto talking.MR. P . It seems to be very difficult to get rid of ideas one has got.They seem to crop up when you are discussing ordinary ideas in theordinary way, and it is difficult to express an opinion because it may becoloured by ideas of the system.MR. O. First of all it depends with whom you are talking. And certainlythey must not crop up by themselves. If it continues to happen there isno profit in such a talk. Any colouring by ideas of the system iscertainly bad, because in this way you lose distinction between ordinaryideas and ideas of the system. You must learn to separate them, toknow which ideas belong to the system and which do not. This is whyI always argue against the idea of 'separation' without mentioningseparation of what from what. People use this expression meaningseparation of 'I' and 'Ouspensky', or else separation of essence frompersonality. But at first this expression was used in this sense: separatingideas of the system from ideas not of the system. Some years ago Ispoke without dividing them and then gave people the task of separatingideas belonging to the New Doctrine (as we called it) from others.Then in the New Model I was very careful not to introduce any ideasof the system. There are only three, and they are specially marked. Ifyou mix ideas, your valuation of the system will suffer.MR. B. From the point of view of the school, is the spreading of schoolideas and school language among other people important? Would thepassage of school ideas and language into general currency be of anyhelp from the point of view of the school?MR. O. Ideas cannot be spread in the right form. It is important tounderstand this. It would be very good if it could be done, but itcannot be done. Words will remain, but ideas themselves will bedifferent. If it were enough just to spread them, why should all these