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

egan to write a story about a man who tried to do everything in hisown way I remember I put him in an impossible position He came upa staircase to get into his flat, and when he came to the door herealized that in order to get in he must unlock the door and open it, sohe would not do that but went down again, and there realized that inorder to get out he must ring for the porter to let him out, so he didnot do that And there he remained, and there he has been for overforty years already!MR M Where do you place man in the scheme of things? Is he Lordof Creation or a worm, or what do you call him?MR O I do not define It depends on which scale we are talking abouthim If it is on our own scale then we talk about possibility ofdevelopment, self-study, study of the world we live in On the scale ofearth, for instance, man does not exist individually, only in the generalmass of organic lifeMR M And what do you mean when you talk of the intelligence ofearth?MR O It is only a principle, the principle that every cosmos hasintelligence What degree of intelligence we have no way of knowingEvery cosmos that may be explained by the enneagram must haveintelligence This is its meaning Degrees of intelligence we can compareonly in ourselves But if every cosmos is an enneagram, it meansthere are certain analogies between cosmosesM R M But man can create intelligent beings A chair, for instanceMR O Yes, or a picture—even Notre Dame—things more intelligentthan himself, maybe Only not living beings, of course So man islimited in all waysMRS F If one brings a new person, what happens if they recognizepeople that they see?MR O If they meet people amongst other outside people the) mustnot speak about groups or lectures, but if they recognize them and donot show it and do not talk, why not recognize?MR A Do you think I am right in regarding time as only arbitraryman-made distinctions of eternity?MR O Not quite Time is our life Life is not our invention Somepeople live longer than others That means time has some sort ofobjective existence You cannot call it simply an imaginary quality, butit has many features we do not recognize We do not realize, for