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

MR. O. You mean unsuccessful?MR. P . No, I meant based on wrong understanding of the idea of it.MR. O. That would mean unsuccessful, because it would bring no result.MR. R. About stealing ideas. I thought of Priestley's play. . . .MR. O. I am so accustomed to people stealing my ideas, from the ageof ten. But about ideas of the system we must be careful, we must notgive people system ideas. Our interest is to keep the ideas for school,not to make them public.MR. C. Is there anything one can do that is wrong, if it helps?MR. O. It depends on results. Later it may be interesting to speak ofwrong methods, simply in order to know which results they can, andwhich they cannot, produce. For example, in some Eastern schoolsthey use hypnotism for self-remembering. They hypnotize you and putinto you the idea of a different personality or individuality. Then whenyou wake up you have to get out of it. Some people do, and then theybegin to remember themselves. Sometimes this needs a year. But selfrememberingdoes not become stronger because of that.MRS. N. Are efforts to work and understand a form of payment?MR. O. It creates the possibility of payment, but it is not payment initself. Payment must be useful not only to you, but to someone else—to the school. But if you are not useful to yourself, you cannot beuseful to the school either.MR. p. Can enough energy for self-remembering be made only by selfremembering?MR. O. We have enough. We must struggle with causes of waste ofemotional energy.MR. p. Can this process of struggling against a negative emotion beaccomplished inside twenty -four hours?MR. O. No, you cannot put it so. This waste depends chiefly on sloweatingnegative emotions, such as suspicion, etc. They can take anenormous amount of energy.MR. p. So you have to struggle for a week against it before youconquer it?MR. O. At least six months.MR. P . Nobody struggles consistently.MR. O. They conquer you, but you struggle with them in your mind.Negative emotions have been developing for years, so at least you mustspend an equal number of months to conquer them, or maybe more.