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

line. This is the beginning of the whole thing; we are machines, andwe must see where we can change something, because in everymachine of every kind there is always point where it is possible tobegin. I forget whether it was in this group or not, but there was aquestion, 'Is there anything permanent in us?' There are two things,buffers and weaknesses which are sometimes called features, reallyweaknesses; everyone has one, two or three particular weaknesses, andeverybody has certain buffers belonging to him; he consists of buffers,but some are particularly important, they enter into all his decisionsand all his understandings and so on. This is all that is permanent inus, and this is lucky for us that there is nothing more permanentbecause these things can be changed. Buffers are artificial, they are notorganic, they are acquired chiefly by imitation; children begin toimitate grown-up people and they create buffers, and some are createdby education without knowing, and features, weaknesses, can be foundout sometimes, and if one knows his feature, and if one begins to keepit in mind and to remember it, then he may find certain moment whenhe can act not from feature. Features are very interesting, theseweaknesses, because sometimes they have simple forms like laziness,but in some cases they take such well-disguised forms that there are noordinary words to describe them; they have to be described by somekind of diagram or drawings or things like that. We can some timespeak, but that will be in smaller group when it will be easier to speakabout features, but these are the only permanent things in us, and thisis our luck, because if there was something else permanent it would beimpossible to change.Q . How can we trust our own judgment about features?MR. O. You cannot, you have to be told, and then you will not believeit, you will say—anything, but not that! Even if you accept it anddon't argue you will not see the importance of it, because you seefeatures are very funny things in that way—everybody has manyfeatures, but everybody has two or three particularly important becausethey enter into every decision, every definition, every subjectivelyimportant thing—everything passes through it, all perceptions and allreactions, but very difficult to realize what this means, because you arcso accustomed to it that you don't notice, even if it is drawn on theblackboard. I always remember a man.... [Example of fool as fea­ture.]