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

MR. P . Does not power to invent the means to attain a known aimdifferentiate intelligence from mechanical adaptability?MR. O. It is the same thing really, only much depends on circumstances,organs in different beings and so on.MR. A . Am I right in interpreting the octave-picture with the missinghalf-tone intervals denoting calls for shock as being a telling way ofillustrating the continuous need for periodically introducing into one'slife fresh life-giving forces, so as to ensure the consolidation of anyprogress attained by further advance, failing which the direction mustinevitably decline in retrograde?MR. O. Before we can dream about such things as that, we mustunderstand how things actually happen. We start to do something andthen come to an interval, without so much as realizing the existence ofintervals or knowing about their possibilities. This is our situation.Before we come to the possibility of aiming and attaining, first wemust learn that this is very far from us, and we must study intervals inthe given examples, such as the Food Diagram. In this the place isshown and the necessity explained for two conscious shocks. Bystudying these, learning to produce them, we may come to the possibilityof quite different kind of shocks, but not before that.MR. A . Am I right in this connection in thinking that the choice of mi—fa and si—do as denoting these intervals is just part of that picture, thesole significance of which is to denote that such times do inevitablyoccur, when the even tenor of one's way must be disturbed, but that infact such times are in no wise confined to those particular occasionswhich tally with the sub-division of life into seven, the critical periodsbeing at stages A?/ 7, A 4 / 7 A 7 / 7 and B 1 / 7?MR. F. Is only man No. 5 able to alter his fate, or can man No. 4already have a choice between two alternatives?MR. O. That depends when and how. But I see we must stop a littlemore and go into some of these things. I noticed from your talk lasttime that some things were not clear.MR. A . Are the distinctions between men Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4 and so ondefinite, or, like tramps, lunatics, householders, about which we heardlast week, are we a bit of each?MR. O. You know you absolutely spoil ideas for yourself when youtake them like this, and mix them up. These ideas are very important.First you must take one, quite separately, and try to understand it.