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

we cannot use conscience, cannot feel at the same time two contradictorythings which we feel at different times. If a man does happen tofeel it, he suffers. So buffers in our present state are even necessarythings, without which a man will go mad. If he understands aboutthem and prepares himself, then after some time he may start todestroy the contradictions, and break the buffers down.MR. H. A child born with a minor internal malformation may thereforebe subject to chronic ill-health. Is this in essence?MR. O. Yes. But there are many different possibilities. It is impossibleto speak about this in general.MISS G. If, as I understand Mr. O. to say, the planets may influence theworld, that is, cause wars, and so on, how is it that they have noinfluence on men personally?MR. O. We will speak about that later.MISS G. May we hear again what was said about telepathy? A questionwas asked about whether there was such a thing.MR. O. And I said no. Not for us, in any case. For higher man, but notfor us.I must repeat first what I spoke about in the Tuesday group at theprevious meeting. At the same time those who heard should try tolisten, as I shall add to what I said then.I spoke about the necessity, in the study of man, of studying theworld in which he lives; first, in order to find the place of man in theuniverse, and secondly with the idea of trying to find why man is suchas he is, why he cannot be different, why he cannot do differently. Wecannot find the answer to these questions through the study of manapart from the universe. Man in a certain sense is analogous to theuniverse and he lives under certain laws. Some of these laws we canunderstand better from the study of man himself, some we can onlyunderstand from the study of the universe.In relation to the study of the universe you must first try tounderstand and remember that we use one particular method. We willstudy the universe on the principle of scale. To take a very simpleinstance of what I mean by scale: you know your own house on a scaleproportionate to your own body; the town you live in you do notknow on the same scale—you cannot know the whole of London, andeven the parts you do know you do not know in the same way as yourown house. England you know on a still smaller scale. It is the same