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

who call themselves Yogis—some just to get a rupee from you. Some whoare described in books are not Yogis at all, but sort of superstitious peoplewho have imagination in higher emotional centre—all they can producewithout real school. And they are just absorbed in this imagination. Thatis all. Most undesirable. So you see, there are Yogis and Yogis.MRS. D. I asked about whether destructive action starts with activeforce. But I suppose we ought to know this ourselves?MR. O. I already said much better if you study it without reference totriads at first.MR. M. I think Mr. G. was often asked about the source from which hederived his knowledge, and you said he gave many answers ondifferent occasions?MR. O. Yes, all different. When I noticed they were different, I did notpay much attention, I knew he did not want to say.MR. M. But could they not be different yet not contradictory?MR. O. One cannot be at the same time in different places, meetdifferent people. . . .MR. M. Were you not interested in that side of the thing?MR. O. I saw that he answered as if he did not wish to answer. Somepeople said he could not answer. Why I do not know. But that isanother question. We knew in which places he had been and I knewbefore I met him that there were strange schools. Then he knewvarious native languages—of Turkestan and Persia chiefly. So he couldmix with natives and could easily have met schools of dervishes orsomething like that. So sources were known more or less, though notdefinitely—he did not say definite names, times and so on.MR. M. Did you agree with some things he told you and reject others?MR. O. That depends what. In the system? In the system I did notagree. I simply studied. Because from the beginning I saw great valuein it, so I was interested in studying. It was not a question of agreeingor disagreeing. You know he studied himself, and he told us manythings in a practical way and tried to give us practical examples. Forinstance, we had once a conversation about types, and I want to readyou about this from Fragments—the book from which you readbefore the first three chapters. They referred to the spring and autumnof 1915, and this which we will read to -night, to the summer of 1917when we were in the North Caucasus. We stayed there most of thetime during the revolution. This was our first year there. In this