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

Next time I will try and come at the beginning of the meeting and wewill try and read the programmes, so if anybody else wants to write aprogramme we can discuss them and perhaps we can come to somenew programme. Just see if you have any questions now on what Isaid to-day.MR. E. I spoke of an emotion being negative and making mehappy. . . .MR. O. No, I said all that I can say. Find an example.MR. T . What is the purpose of teaching cosmological ideas?MR. O. Many analogies. Later you will understand that many laws wecan understand only thinking on the scale of cosmoses and then adaptto ourselves. Other laws we can understand only thinking on our ownscale and perhaps later apply to cosmoses. We have to study man andthe world, and some laws we can understand better by studying manand some laws we can understand better by studying the world.MR. T . You spoke of trying to learn to remember ourselves irrespectiveof physical feeling; did you mean ordinarily during the day, also in theprogramme?MR. O. I did not mean in the programme, I meant in general.MRS. D. Why do we always believe that things will happen differently?MR. O. Because we believe first that people can 'do': that is the basis ofall wrong beliefs. We don't fully understand or fully believe even whenwe hear about it that things happen. If we realize that things happenwe realize that if they happen in that form it means they could nothappen differently; if they could have happened differently they wouldhave happened differently. It is very difficult to realize that.MRS. D. How can we think about it to understand it better?MR. O. Just think. If you begin to see, if you take certain combinationof events, and when you catch yourself thinking that they could bedifferent and persuade yourself and really begin to see that they couldnot happen differently, then you begin to understand it; it is the onlyway. Only sometimes it is easier to think on a bigger scale before youthink on smaller scale.MR. M. Sometimes I try to think about circumstances in the way youhave just said, and then I think that if I had been different thecircumstances would have been different.MR. O. It depends on what scale you take circumstances. If it is your