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

MISS v. For someone in the system does sin consist in not making aneffort to remember oneself when one realizes that the effort is necessaryand possible?MR. O. No, better not to introduce unnecessary words. This wordbelongs to the religious way.MISS C. I have tried to think why evil cannot be conscious, but I find Ido not really understand what is meant by evil. If good and bad aremerely relative, how can we know that what seems to us evil is evil inreality? Should we regard as evil simply that which is bad for our aim?MR. O. You tried to think. It is the wrong way, you cannot find it bythinking, but only by experimenting. Yes, you can say that evil is whatis bad for our aim and nothing more. Even that is already a big stepfrom the ordinary idea of evil based on belief or on imitation. Youalready decide yourself what is evil for you. Actions that definitely goagainst aim can only be mechanical; many of them interrupt youradvance towards your aim. You can only understand evil in relation toyourself; then, when you have understood it, you can understand it inrelation to a group of people, a larger group of people, a still larger,and so on.MISS C. I do not understand how war could ever be good, since italways seems to be the expression of negative emotions and entailsmaiming and killing people. Perhaps it is only because I can see only apart, and not the whole, and attach too much importance to suffering.Are there any historical examples of wars that were good? If so, howwere they good?MR. O. It is a very difficult question. It is necessary to speak very much,speak about history, about what was the aim of a particular historicalperiod, about whether a war made the existence of schools possible orcreated situations which made it more difficult for schools to exist.Before I could answer we must agree about the terms we use, then itwould be possible to go through times of history and see which warswere better and which were worse, and then perhaps go further. Thereare political situations that are more favourable for schools and othersthat are less favourable. Suppose a war creates a better situation, then it isuseful. There are many other ways to approach this subject, only wemust first speak about many principles. I want you to ask such questions,only I must first know what you know about different periods of history,how you regard, for instance, the nineteenth century, etc.