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

itself. It also seems that I am more intensely aware of it, in more partsof my body, as my effort to self-remember improves. Is this at all areliable criterion of progress in self-remembering?MR. O. It may be but this is not important; you must be aware ofyourself as a whole, not as parts; it is subjective. These realizationshappen sometimes but they don't mean much.MR. B. When I am trying to stop a circle of thought, a mechanicallyrepeated phrase or a tune, I often succeed in putting it out of my mindfor a time, and find that sooner or later it will return unaltered, as if ithad been kept alive all the time in another 'I' or personality. It seemsthat I have stopped it only by restricting my attention. How can I startto really break such a circle of thought?MR. O. It is a very good method for self-remembering; the moment itappears try to remember yourself; if you attach self-remembering to ityou will forget both; no persistent thought can stand that.MR. B. I thought I understood Mr. O. to say that Finland was right tobe at war, only since she was righting bolshevism. Does he mean thatFinland should really be a part of Russia and would be wrong to fightmerely for independence?MR. O. That would be impossible really. Finland was independent, butit was found before the last war that Finland was very dangerous inthat state, it was a land of revolutionists; Lenin, Stalin and all thosepeople always took refuge there and brought arms, and when the warbegan it was the centre of German spies, and all German spies camethere. Finland was so near to Petersburg that they could not beindependent and inimical country. If Finland behaved better they werealmost independent, but they did not have their own ambassadors, butthis independence was absurd because they showed themselves unprepared.They had all the privileges of part of a big country, but theywere working against this country. Poland is just the same, it cannotbe independent because they are not grown-up enough. And fightingagainst bolshevism, that is quite a different thing, it is only thebeginning. I am sure that things are turning; as a matter of fact it is avery interesting time now, because for a long time things were goingvery wrong—for twenty-five years since the last war—and this lastyear before the beginning of new war, was a dangerous point; war wasinevitable, but nobody understood the right cause of the war, andnobody understood the real possibilities of this war, and that the cause