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

MR. O. For observation only, not for actual stopping. To stop themmany other things are necessary.MR. S. In shooting I notice I am most successful in hitting birds whenI have had a certain amount of alcohol. Am I right in supposing thatthe effect of alcohol is to correct in some way the wrong work ofintellectual centre?MR. O. I heard this many times. But it is an unreliable method. It isvery difficult to calculate the right amount of alcohol necessary.MR. S. Is the anxiety about catching a train, when there is no reasonfor it, due to employing centres wrongly?MR. O. It is impossible to say. It is necessary to know associationsconnected with it.MR. L. Does being depend entirely on state of consciousness?MR. O. No. Do you mean is being determined by state of consciousness?Then yes. But other things also enter into being. Generally being isdetermined not by one feature, but by all together. On one level of beingone is many, one is asleep, etc. On next level all these things change.MR. L. How can one start to approach the accumulator of knowledge?MR. O. By learning, if one has a chance.MR. L. What differentiation does the system make between materialand matter?MR. O. Matter, as it is taken in physics, is not enough. Materiality goesfurther than that.MR. L. What relationship is there between being and existence?MR. O. We use the word being. Existence is used in the sense ofprocess, but being—in the sense of determining the level.MR. L. Have things in themselves a different existence from that whichwe infer them to have by our sense perceptions?MR. O. It depends which things. You cannot take all things as similar.They are all different.MR. L. Does time impose conditions that make it favourable or unfa­vourable to make attempts at 'doing'?MR. O. What means time? For whom? How?MR. L. There is time to sow and time to reap. . . .MR. O. If it is in this sense, you refer to school-work. You cannotspeak of school-work. Although certainly everything has its own time.MR. L. Is correct proportion the result of a rightly completed octave?MR. O. It is impossible to say.