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

MR. O. No, no. I do not know where this idea comes from, butcertainly I am not guilty!We just want to look for intervals, changes of direction, in ouractivity. Then we are on the way to studying the Law of Seven.Nothing more can be done at present.MR. A . But sevenths of what are we looking for?MR. O. We know generally. Intervals show the position of the octave.That is all. . . . Then again we can study intervals in the examplesgiven, particularly in the Food Diagram. From this we can understandmuch about the Law of Seven. This is material for our study.MR. M. Is the genius of comedy and tragedy the same?MR. O. I do not know really. Can they be separated?MR. M. How would you distinguish between a man who bursts intolaughter and a man who bursts into tears?MR. O. There may be many reasons in both cases.MR. M. What is laughter?MR. O. That is another thing. When an impression is received in twoparts of centres at the same time, this produces the reaction oflaughing. It is quite mechanical. But in some cases, and in extremeforms, this kind of reaction produces something very similar to selfrememberingon a small scale, so the capacity to laugh, on our level,can help the digestion of impressions, and, in our state, is rather auseful quality. We transform many impressions with it which otherwisewould disappear. At the same time you must remember that in highercentres there is no laughter. So it is very limited.Well, we will continue next time. Try to prepare questions andavoid asking things you can find out for yourselves. You cannotexpect me to explain things which you can find out in other ways.***