P.D. Ouspensky QUOTES

21 " Man is a machine which reacts blindly to external forces and, this being so, he has no will, and very little control of himself, if any at all. What we have to study, therefore, is not psychology-for that applies only to a developed man-but mechanics. Man is not only a machine but a machine which works very much below the standard it would be capable of maintaining if it were working properly. "

― P.D. Ouspensky

22 " a man can be given only what he can use; and he can use only that for which he has sacrificed something "

― P.D. Ouspensky , Strange Life of Ivan Osokin

23 " We often think we express negative emotions, not because we cannot help it, but because we should express them. "

― P.D. Ouspensky , The Fourth Way

24 " Besides, all evil is relative. Something that is evil at one level of evolution can be good at an earlier stage because it provides the essential stimulus for development. But you want to judge everything by your own standards. You have reached a comparatively high level and so you see what you fight against as evil. Just think of the others, those who are at an earlier stage of development. Do not bar them from the path toward progress and evolution. "

― P.D. Ouspensky , Talks with a Devil

25 " And yet they lie all the time, both when they wish to lie and when they wish to speak the truth. They lie all the time, both to themselves and to others. "

― P.D. Ouspensky , In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching

26 " There is no question of faith or belief in all this. Quite the opposite,this system teaches people to believe in absolutely nothing. You must verify everything that you see, hear and feel. Only in that way can you come to something. "

― P.D. Ouspensky , The Fourth Way

27 " you do not realize that one has to learn to speak the truth. it seems to you that it is enough to wish or to decide to do so. and i tell you that people comparatively rarely tell a deliberate lie. in most cases they think they speak the truth. and yet they lie all the time, both when they wish to lie and when they wish to speak the truth. they lie all the time, both to themselves and to others. therefore nobody ever understands either himself or anyone else. think - could there be such discord, such deep misunderstanding, and such hatred towards the views and opinions of others, if people were able to understand because they cannot help lying. to speak the truth is the most difficult thing in the world; and one must study a great deal and for a long time in order to be able to speak the truth. the wish alone is not enough. to speak the truth one must know what the truth is and what a lie is, and first of all in oneself. and this nobody wants to know. "

― P.D. Ouspensky , In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching

28 " Whatever work a man may be doing, it is enough for him to try to do each action deliberately, with his mind, following every movement, and he will see that the quality of his work will change immediately. "

― P.D. Ouspensky , In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching

29 " Q. Why is it so difficult to control attention? A. Lack of habit. We are too accustomed to letting things happen. When we want to control attention or something else, we find it difficult, just as physical work is difficult if we are not accustomed to it. "

― P.D. Ouspensky , The Fourth Way

30 " We may have very good reason for saying that we are ourselves beings of four dimensions and are turned towards the third dimension with only one of our sides, i.e. with only a small part of our being. Only this part of us lives in three dimensions, and we are conscious only of this part as our body. The greater part of our being lives in the fourth dimension, but we are unconscious of this greater part of ourselves. Or it would be still more true to say that we live in a four-dimensional world, but are conscious of ourselves only in a three-dimensional world. This means that we live in one kind of conditions, but imagine ourselves to be in another. "

― P.D. Ouspensky , A New Model of the Universe

31 " With the attempt to self-remember many new sensations begin to awaken in man, particularly sensations connected with his own existence and his relation to the surrounding world. And these in turn may give rise to the realization of the different influences playing upon him and to the possibility of choosing between them. "

― P.D. Ouspensky , The Fourth Way

32 " With knowledge of the diagrams you will be able to interpret many of the new feelings, sensations, ideas that will come to your mind, and transfer this interpretation to the ordinary mind. Without diagrams you will not be able to do it. They are the intermediate language which will connect the language of the higher emotional centre with our ordinary centres. At the same time this language is a kind of ladder by which we can climb from ordinary thinking to the thinking of higher emotional centre. "

― P.D. Ouspensky , The Fourth Way

33 " There is practically no negative emotion which you cannot enjoy, and that is the most difficult thing to realize. Really some people get all their pleasures from negative emotions. "

― P.D. Ouspensky , The Fourth Way

34 " Thus space and time, defining everything that we cognize by sensuous means, are in themselves just forms of consciousness, categories of our intellect, the prism through which we regard the world—or in other words space and time do not represent properties of the world, but just properties of our knowledge of the world gained through our sensuous organism. Consequently the world, until by these means we come into relation to it, has neither extension in space nor existence in time; these are properties which we add to it. "

― P.D. Ouspensky , Tertium Organum

35 " The most important factor in every function is: ‘Is it under our control or not?’ So when imagination is under our control we do not even call it imagination; we call it by various names—visualization, creative thinking, inventive thinking—you can find a name for each special case. But when it comes by itself and controls us so that we are in its power, then we call it imagination. Again, there is another side of imagination which we miss in ordinary understanding. This is that we imagine non-existent things—non-existent capacities, for instance. We ascribe to ourselves powers which we do not have; we imagine ourselves to be self-conscious although we are not. We have imaginary powers and imaginary self-consciousness and we imagine ourselves to be one, when really we are many different ‘I’s. There are many such things that we imagine about ourselves and other people. For instance, we imagine that we can ‘do’, that we have choice; we have no choice, we cannot ‘do’, things just happen to us. "

― P.D. Ouspensky , The Fourth Way

36 " I already knew then as an undoubted fact that beyond the thin film of false reality there existed another reality from which, for some reason, something separated us. The "miraculous" was a penetration into this unknown reality. "

― P.D. Ouspensky , In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching

37 " We do not imagine that the "masses" may consist of automatons obeying external stimuli and may move, not under the influence of the will, consciousness, or inclination of individuals, but under the influence of external stimuli coming possibly from very far away. "

― P.D. Ouspensky , In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching

38 " Nothing that a man did yesterday excuses him today. Quite the reverse, if a man did nothing yesterday, no demands are made upon him today; if he did anything yesterday, it means that he must do more today. This certainly does not mean that it is better to do nothing. Whoever does nothing receives nothing "

― P.D. Ouspensky , In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching

39 " At one moment when I say 'I', one part of me is speaking,and at another moment when I say 'I', it is quite another 'I' speaking. "

― P.D. Ouspensky

40 " It is a question of finding reasons, of thinking rightly, because expression of negative emotion is always based on some kind of wrong thinking. "

― P.D. Ouspensky , The Fourth Way

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