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

cathedrals, people came to study these things, they came to studygeometry and mathematics that were used for building, they did notbuild, maybe they had to work thirty years before they took someactive part in the building of cathedrals, so if you take this example ofobjective work it means preparation. The same process of acquiringknowledge shows the aim or shows its object. By studying the systemone studies the aim of the system itself, it is the same process; this iswhere the difficulty comes—we think it is two different processes, w ethink understanding of the system is one thing and studying the objectis another thing, but it is the same thing.Q . You said we must change our knowledge in order to see things asthey really are; do you consider [?] truth [?] reality?MR. O. No, no, I mean in a much limited way; we cannot come in thisstate of consciousness to things as they are, but we can take somelayers of lying. Things are surrounded by lying, we can take one, twoor three skins away—we can come nearer to real things. . .People can spend their lives studying systems and existing wordsand never come to real things—three-quarters or nine-tenths of ourordinary knowledge doesn't exist really, it exists only in imagination.For instance, there was question about psychoanalysis—I compare thatwith Mediaeval Demonology—it was elaborate system of all classes ofdemons with their names, and it was definitely calculated that for everyman there are 27 millions of demons or something, in any case, thatexplained fully why man is powerless before demons, and each of these27 millions they were classified and had definite names and so on; itwas very interesting and exactly like modem psychoanalysis, only theyspeak of complexes and the other spoke of demons.Q . Must a science be necessarily wrong if it deals with symbols?MR. O. There were many interesting philosophical systems and theygave preparation for possible esoteric knowledge if we are able to getit. Man can think not necessarily wrongly, he can often find more orless rightly.Q. Does starting on the second line of work depend to a certain extenton progress on the first line?MR. O. Absolutely, because how can one work on second line if onedoes not work on the first line; there is absolutely no chance. If oneknows more about oneself, if one tries to observe oneself, tries tostruggle with habits and lying, then one has chance to work on second