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

MR. O. I think everyone can have as much as he likes.MRS. U. I think even without study some people seem to express morenegative emotion than others.MR. O. Quite right. Different talents. One has more capacity for expressingnegative emotion, another less.MRS. U. Does that have to do with development of false personality?MR. O. It can be put like that—but I see no necessity. Why bring falsepersonality in here?MRS. U. Only I wondered why it was that I express negative emotionmore than other people.MR. O. More identification. That is the real answer. False personality isa different question, a different problem.MR. S. When I find I have negative imagination developing I applystopping thoughts as a brake to stop it.MR. O. If it works, all right. It is not really for that, but sometimes itmay help. Though really it is for another purpose.MRS. A . In the system, is the emotional centre thought of as localizedin any particular part of the body?MR O. Yes, only with certain reservations. You see, each centre occupiesall body, though long ago it was said intellectual centre wasconnected with brain, emotional with solar plexus, instinctive andmoving with spinal cord. But these are only centres of gravity. Becausecentres are not organs.MRS. B. Is that why we can work asleep, because intellectual centre isin our hands and we can work asleep?MR. O Much better awake. Safer.It's all good. You ask good questions. But I would like you to askmore. For instance, in connection with accumulators, it was said thateach organ, each part of the body had several functions. Eyes, forexample, have their own function, and at the same time they areaccumulators for some other function. We don't realize how manythings an organ can do. Only when we begin to realize the enormousvariety do we understand something about accumulators.MRS. A . If the three centres are not to be thought of as organs or localizedfunctions, how can we think of them as being different from one another?MR. O. Different by functions. Intellectual centre thinks. Emotionalcentre feels. For instance, you cannot count with emotional centre. Butif you want to like or dislike, you cannot calculate it. But each centre