The Outsider (49 page)

Then, Aggivesana, I said to myself:
‘
Suppose I practice still further the musing of breath suppressed ?
’
Accordingly, I stopped my breathing in and out from mouth and nostrils, and I closed my ears.

Then, just as if a strong man with a sharp pointed sword should crash into the brain, so did the rush of air, all outlets being stopped, crash into my brain. Then was my energy strenuous and unyielding indeed. Mindfulness was indeed established undisturbed, yet my body was perturbed; it was
not calm thereby, because I was overpowered by the stress of the painful struggling. But even then such feelings as arose could not lay hold of and control my mind....

Finally, the scripture tells us, Gautama starved himself until he was a living skeleton. One day when he was bathing in the river, he found he had not strength to climb out. He finally saved himself from drowning by clutching an overhanging branch; but the near-experience of death had the same effect upon him as upon Ramakrishna; a realization that he wanted more life, not less. Then another memory came to him:

Then... I thought:
‘
I call to mind how when the Sakhyan my father was ploughing I sat in the cool shade of the rose-apple tree, remote from sensual desires and ill-conditions, and entered upon and abode in the First Musing, which is accompanied by thought directed and sustained, which is born of solitude, full of zestful ease.
⁵
And then I said:
‘
Is this, I wonder, the way to Wisdom?
’

This realization was followed by a decision to eat and drink normally, and to rely upon the sensitivity of his imagination and power of discrimination to bring about the desired result.

Then... I came to Uravela, a suburb of the captain of the Host. There I beheld a lovely spot, a pleasant forest grove and a river of clear water flowing by, easy of access, and delightful, and hard by was the village, where I could beg my food. ... So, brethren, I sat down, thinking.
‘
A proper place for striving in.
’
¹²

And it was here that Gautama meditated his way to
‘
freedom
’
, Nirvana, perfect knowledge, self-realization. (We, of course, are welcome to doubt whether such an ultimate is attainable by man; but, all the same, we can recognize the value of the Buddha
’
s method.)

We can find even more extreme examples in the Christian saints; there is Heinrich Seuse (or
Suso) (1295-1366), who, in his
Autobiography,
tells how he invented appalling bodily penances for himself, wearing a gown of hair and an iron chain that cut his body; then having an undergarment made of leather straps
with brass tacks pointing inwards, which he wore for several years; he made a cross with nails pointing inwards, which he strapped to his back and carried for eight years. He slept on an old, studded door with no covering but a thin straw mat in winter or summer. He continued these ascetic practices for sixteen years until he considered that he had completely subdued the body. He was inspired by a passage in Meister Eckhart:

There is another power, immortal too, proceeding from the Spirit.
...
Aye, in this power is such poignant joy, such vehement, immoderate delight as none can tell. ... I say, moreover, if once a man in intellectual vision did really glimpse the bliss and joy therein, then all his sufferings would be a trifle, a mere nothing...
¹³

It was this
“
fiery joy
’
that Seuse set out to capture.

The value of such extremes, of course, lies in the vitality of the Will behind them; if they were undertaken merely as a penance, a deliberate burden, they might be useless or even harmful. It is the Will that matters.

The argument of this book has come almost its full circle. It is not my aim to propound a complete and infallible solution to
^‘
the Outsider
’
s problems
’
, but only to point out that traditional solutions, or attempts at solutions, do exist. Before we turn to T. E. Hulme and his prediction of
‘
the end of humanism
’
, there is one more modern attempt at a solution which is far too important to exclude from a study in the Outsider
’
s problems. This is the
‘
system
’
of that strange man of genius, George Gurdjief
f
.

Gurdjieff died comparatively recently, in 1950, at about the age of seventy (his exact age was not known). He had spent some forty years of his life teaching his
‘
system
’
to his pupils. Our knowledge of Gurdjieff is not very great; we know he was a Caucasian Greek, who did most of his teaching in Moscow and Petersburg, and later in Europe and America. Of Gurdjieff
’
s major exposition of his system,
All and Everything,
only the first part has to date been printed in England; this is over twelve hundred pages long, and it is hardly unfair to its author to say that it is almost unreadable—hardly unfair since
it seems to have been a part of his aim to make sure that no dilettante could dip into it and then claim to
‘
understand
Gurdjieff
; his efforts to achieve this effect have made the first volume rather less comprehensible than
Finnegans Wake.

Fortunately (or unfortunately, Gurdjieff would say), there are simpler expositions of his philosophy; there is the absorbing introduction by Kenneth Walker,
Venture With Ideas,
and the brilliant exposition by GurdjiefPs chief follower, P. D. Ouspensky,
In Search of the Miraculous,
which tells the story of Ouspensky
’
s period as
Gurdjieff ‘s
pupil; Gurdjieff played Socrates to Ouspensky
’
s Plato.

GurdjiefPs system can be regarded as the complete, ideal
Existenzphilosophie.
It is not interested in ideas for their own sake, but only in results. Therefore, the
‘
system
’
itself consists of various disciplines and exercises, which, at the moment, are only known to Gurdjieff
’
s pupils and followers. It is only with some of the
‘
theoretical
’
part of the
‘
system
’
that we are concerned here.

Gurdjieff ‘s
starting-point is the completely deluded state of man; man, he claims, is so completely embalmed and enmeshed in delusions that he cannot even be considered as a living being; he can only be regarded as a machine. He has, in other words, absolutely no free-will.

This seems to be no more than the blackest pessimism, but this is not the whole. Having emphasized that men are virtually asleep, mere sleep-walkers without real consciousness, he goes on to state that man
can
attain a degree of freedom and
‘
awakening
’
: but the first step in attaining
‘
freedom
’
is to recognize that you are not free. Since we have spent some nine chapters listening to Outsiders emphasizing just this fact, this should present no difficulties to us. A part of
Gurdjieff ‘s
system is a method of observing oneself and other people, and recognizing how many actions are habitual, mechanical.

One of the most interesting points in
Gurdjieff ‘s
system, from our point of view, is his exposition of
‘
three ways
’
, the way of the fakir, the way of the monk, the way of the yogi. For these are the three ways we established in Chapter IV: discipline over the body, the emotions, the mind. But what is most interesting is that Gurdjieff claims that his system is a
fourth way
which involves all the other three.
Gurdjieff ‘s
‘
school
’
in the South of France was called The Institute for the Harmonious
Development of Man
’
, harmonious development of the three parts. Obviously,
Gurdjieff ‘s
system and the Outsider have the same aim.

In my own copy of Ouspensky
’
s book, I have gone through the Contents list, labelling various chapters
‘
philosophical
’
or
‘
psychological
’
. The
‘
philosophical
’
parts may or may not be
‘
true
’
; it is impossible to say. Such a statement, for instance, as that the moon is a younger earth, and the earth a younger sun, and that the planetary bodies are living beings, just as we are, can be taken with a pinch of salt or not, according to the reader
’
s inclination. But there can be no doubt whatever about
Gurdjieff ‘s
astounding penetration as a psychologist; and it is here that he touches the field of this book.

Gurdjieff
teaches that there are four possible states of consciousness. The first is ordinary sleep. The second is the condition in which the ordinary bourgeois spends his life, the state which is called—ironically,
Gurdjieff
thinks—
’
waking consciousness
’
. The third state is called
‘
self-remembering
’
(which we shall define in a moment), the fourth,
‘
objective consciousness
’
.

From our point of view,
‘
self-remembering
’
is the most important state. We have seen in the course of this study many Outsiders experiencing this state. Perhaps the best example is Steppenwolf in bed with Maria; Yeats in the
‘
crowded London shop
’
is another.

Ouspensky explains
‘
self-remembering
’
with great clarity. Normally, when you are looking at some physical object, the attention points outwards, as it were, from you to the object. When you become absorbed in some thought or memory, the attention points inwards. Now sometimes, very occasionally, the attention points both outwards and inwards at the same time, and these are moments when you say,
‘
What /, really
here?
’
:
an intense consciousness of yourself and your surroundings. (A fine example in literature is Olenin
’
s first sight of the mountains in Tolstoy
’
s
Cossacks,
a moment of complete self-remembering.) Ouspensky says:
‘
Moments of self-remembering came either in new and unexpected surroundings, in a new place, among new people, while travelling for instance
...
or in very emotional moments, moments of danger, etc
’

Self-remembering can be produced by a deliberate discipline, but it is very difficult. Try, as an experiment, looking at your
watch, and then, while your attention is concentrated on seeing the time, try to become aware of yourself looking at the watch. A moment will come during which you are aware of both the watch and yourself, but it will not last more than a few seconds. You will either become aware only of yourself looking, or only of the dial of the watch. That moment of self-awareness, looking at the watch and at yourself, is Gurdjieff
’
s third state. (And, of course, people who are incorrigible self-dramatizers, like the young Nietzsche, are only trying to get themselves
‘
outside
’
the situation, and to see themselves in the situation objectively.) To express it in the Outsider
’
s way: we identify ourselves with our personalities; our identities are like the pane of a window against which we are pressed so tightly that we cannot feel our separateness from it. Self-remembering is like standing back, so you can see
‘
yourself (the window-pane)
and
the outside world, distinct from
‘
y°
^u
’
- Ouspensky relates how deliberate exercises in self-remembering produced strange intensities of feeling. Obviously, he had found one solution that the Outsider has overlooked.*