Commentary on the Difference Between the Object and The

COMMENTARY ON THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE OBJECT AND THE

THOUGHT OF THE OBJECT

The object is physically rendered to us by the senses. Please understand that what we call physical is rendered by our senses. I see a person, I touch him and I hear him, and then I call this person a physical object-that is, the senses give a physical object. If you have no eyes, nor ears, nor sense of touch, this so-called physical object will vanish. This is the first point to understand-namely, what we mean by the physical world which our senses render to us and which we take as reality. Yet please note that if you had not the senses there would be no physical reality.

Now a question was recently asked in connection with the following quotation from a paper: "This Sufi teacher points out that whether a person takes pleasure in disliking the thing itself or in the thought of it, it is the same thing, and vice versa." The question was about understanding the difference between disliking the object and disliking the thought of it-no difference could be understood. I will remind you here of something said in this connection a long time ago. You are eating something, let us say, with great relish, and enjoying it as a physical object, and then you are told it is a stew of snails, and instantly you feel very sick. Here obviously the thought is different from the physical sensation. Now our thinking is different from our senses, and on another plane, another level. You can see a person or you can think about him. How you think about him is psychological and belongs to your inner psychological world, and you can go on thinking about this person you dislike quite apart from seeing him. When the Sufi teacher says that taking pleasure in disliking a thing and taking pleasure in the thought of it is the same thing he means just what he says. I would ask you first of all : Do you know an example of taking pleasure in disliking some object or person? Remember that a person is an object and remember that the Work teaches a great deal about how we take pleasure in disliking things. The question is subtle because we always imagine we do not take pleasure in disliking people and for this reason it is necessary to find for yourself some real example of your disliking some physical object or person. You know that if you dislike a person-i.e. an object-it gives you great pleasure to hear that someone else dislikes in the same way. This is pleasure in disliking and this pleasure is reinforced by the agreement of others with you. Is not this a common thing if you are frank with yourselves? But the pleasure of disliking somebody or something is not the same as the pleasure you. take in thinking about it. When a person, looking at another person as an object transmitted through the senses, says: "Oh, how I hate a man like that," he takes pleasure in disliking the object when it is before his eyes, and afterwards, if he thinks about this person when he can no

longer see him with his senses, he takes pleasure in thinking how lie dislikes him, then it is, as the Sufi teacher says, exactly the same thing. He is taking pleasure in disliking the object when he sees it and taking pleasure in thinking about the object when he does not see it, and so the effect is just the same. In the one case, he is taking impressions of dislike from the visible object and in the other, he is taking impressions from the thought of it, so in both cases he is taking in negative impressions and psychologically it is the same thing in its effects on him.

If a man wants to overcome his pleasure in disliking a person he must also overcome his pleasure in thinking how he dislikes that person. The Work teaches that we must learn to handle one another rightly in the domain of our thoughts-i.e. in our psychological world -to which we have gradually to become more responsible. It is the re-ordering, the re-arrangement, of our psychological or inner life that is the object of this Work. It is how we think about others that is so important in this Work. If you take great pleasure in thinking evil of others, in thinking negatively, and attain a feeling of satisfaction from it, then your psychological world from which starts the function of second and third bodies is in a great mess and you may crystallize out psychologically in a quite wrong way. A man may for a long time not be able to overcome momentary dislike through the senses but if he is working he knows quite well he will have to get rid of thinking and feeling the same way internally. That is, he must realize that he cannot take pleasure in unpleasant thoughts about others which is the great source of our inner life as it is. If our psychological world of thought and feeling could be got into better order-i.e. the way in which we think and feel about people in our privacy-and if we could cease to take pleasure in hatred and negative criticism in general, our external relationship to one another as physical objects registered by our senses would alter completely. There are external reactions and more internal reactions. For a long time we may react mechanically-that is, we may react externally-and cannot change this, but if we have any insight-Le self-observation-we will not necessarily let our internal side agree with our external side. Unless we see that we have an internal life of thought and feeling to which this Work is directed with the object of building up a psychological body or organization, rightly arranged, then we do not understand what the Work is about. The object of self-observation is to let a ray of light into our inner world, which is in chaos. The object of this Work is to build this inner world of chaos into an ordered world. An ordinary man behaves internally just as he pleases. He maybe very polite externally. It does not occur to him that how he thinks and feels privately about other people matters. But the Work says it does matter and so it begins with self observation, whose object is to make us more conscious of what is going on in ourselves in each centre. After a time you may reach that stage where you behave much better inside than you do outside. You cannot change the external until the internal has changed. For example, I cannot

expect to change some negative reaction unless I see internally what lies, what wrong thoughts and feelings, are produced in me. Then I may wish to change my inner state because through inner taste I dislike what is going on in me. Through an increase in this dislike of my internal life and so gradually strengthening it through self-observation and by sincerity with myself, my inner state may become strong enough to control my external and mechanical, reacting life. This is where a man begins to work on himself without showing much external change. For example, I cannot pretend to myself that I can alter the reactions of my False Personality just like that, but if I observe them in the light of the Work with any sincerity I begin to dislike them. Then I begin to struggle with my thoughts and feelings privately-i.e. I begin to work on myself, on my inner life. Mechanically I may take pleasure in disliking some person whom I see visibly in front of me but after a time I take no such similar pleasure in thinking how I dislike this person. The reason is because I begin to be aware of my inner or psychological life-i.e. the life of thought and feeling that I have become aware of through self-observation and which, so to speak, I am trying to arrange in a right way in the eight of the Work. When I am in that state of insight I will continually suffer from myself-from Nicoll and his mechanical reactions. Then I will in a certain sense have to endure this external, mechanical, reacting person, that hitherto I have taken as myself but which the Work has gradually shown me I must separate from. At the time my Personality reacts I will no doubt feel quite justified, but from this deeper and more internal part that is beginning to awaken I will feel uncomfortable and will certainly take no pleasure in going with the thoughts of Nicoll, or with his feelings that have boon called forth by some momentary irritation.

And so gradually by the growth of something internal to Nicoll, in my case, I may sometimes actually feel that something in me is beginning at times, but only at times, to be stronger than this machinery that dislikes a person right off, like that. I will no longer be so prone to agree with Nicoll and with the judgments of Nicoll. To be alone with oneself and indulge in negative feelings and enjoy unpleasant thoughts about other people will no longer commend itself to me as a good way to live in myself. When I am alone with myself I will have to review myself as to what has boon going on in my centres and examine myself from the standpoint of what 'I's have charge of me in the momentary heat of my mechanical intercourse with life, when I have been completely identified with each passing event, each typical circumstance. The pleasure of reacting mechanically will no longer give me satisfaction although it may give Nicoll great satisfaction. And when I examine myself in this way when I am alone with myself, I can only do so rightly when I review myself from the standpoint of all that the Work teaches about being identified, about being negative, about making internal accounts, about judging, about lying, about self justifying, and above

all about remembering to remember oneself. When I submit myself to the Work in the solitariness of myself in this way, I will dislike thinking with pleasure of people that I hate. I will not take pleasure in my thoughts although I may find it difficult not to take pleasure in disliking the person when I see him. It has boon said by some philosopher of no moan standing that religion consists in what you do in the solitariness of yourself. To get up in the morning after having indulged in all sorts of unpleasant thoughts and feelings about other people is not a good way to start the day. And a good many of us know this by inner taste. But the strengthening of this internal side which wishes to grow if we have any Work `I's in us depends on this inner sincerity with oneself that the Work speaks about so much. For example, if I can never see I have lied I would agree with Nicoll-namely, my external side, my False Personality-and if I justify myself I cannot have any depth in my observation and the internal side of me cannot possibly grow, in which case there can never be anything stronger than Nicoll. I do not mean, as I explained, that I can deal with Nicoll straight away, but I can begin to suffer from him myself privately. And I will suffer in the right way, and please note this, only if I observe the reactions of Nicoll in the eight of the Work. If I begin to do this, I will find it possible for me to separate from a great many thoughts and feelings that Nicoll takes pleasure in but which something more deeply placed in me takes no pleasure in at all. To dislike oneself is useless and only gives rise to illness and depression. But in my case to begin to see and dislike the reactions of Nicoll, to separate from them and so not to regard myself as Nicoll can give results. That is why the Work emphasizes so much that we must break ourselves up into different parts and not take ourselves as one, as a unity, which Imaginary `I' causes us to assume. You cannot change yourself if you take yourself as yourself and all attempts to do this will lead into a dangerous situation. You have to be able to say to yourself: "I am not this 'I', I am not that `I'." Or again you must be able to say: "I am not this thought that comes to me," or, "I will not take pleasure in thinking or fooling in this way." It may only be possible to do this for a short time, but I can assure you that if you manage to do it only for a short time, and only from time to time, gradually something more internal will develop in you that may be able actually to take charge of you occasionally and control the reactions of the external, mechanical side. Some people think that change is something that takes place finally and irrevocably by a few moments of work and they get upset if they do not get results. But this is a quite wrong conception of what work means. The whole point lies in how you recover from falling, and it is always interesting to notice how people recover from a bad state because here lies the Work at first-in this learning to walk instead of always falling, because we are like little children learning to walk and if we never fell we could never learn.

To resume: it is on our thoughts, on how we think and feel, that

the centre of gravity of our work falls and so if we take pleasure in thoughts as to how we dislike, it is the same thing as taking pleasure in disliking the object transmitted by our senses. Confronted by some object that you take pleasure in disliking there may be such a mechanical reaction that you cannot prevent it, but you can prevent the thoughts afterwards as to how you dislike this object. And it is here at this point that all the Work lies. Here for example, lie such thoughts as: "Can you find anything similar in yourself to what you take such pleasure in disliking in this other person? Have you noticed how you behave? Have you noticed what impressions you give to other people?" and so on endlessly. We are trying to build up a psychological internal order in ourselves arranged by the influences of the Work, a delicate organism built up so to speak of thoughts and feelings, of right connections, of right associations, a psychological organism that begins to put us in touch with Higher Centres-a psychological body. When we begin to realize this we cannot afford to indulge in such things as taking pleasure in thinking how we dislike other people. Why? Because in that case we are building up a negative psychological organism that will conduct everything in the wrong way, in which there is no truth and nothing good. Many people crystallize out in their negative emotions. I advise you to avoid such people.

The point then is to see clearly the difference between a sensation and a thought. You see in front of you a person you do not like because of his clothes, his voice, or his manner and you take pleasure in disliking this object while looking at it-that is, while your senses transmit his image to you. Afterwards when you no longer see this person you take pleasure in thinking how you dislike this person. The Sufi teacher says that the effect on you is the same. The two things are different, one being an object and the other a thought about the object, because to see a person who is present and to think about a person who is absent is not the same thing-a different centre is being employed -but the dislike in both cases is the same.

1Maurice Nicoll

“Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky”

Volume 2 from page 642