logos5x5 said:
IMO, since the period of time when he came into contact with G, - i can't say always, because that i don't know - self-importance was issue of Ouspensky - of course, as well for people out of the Work and also in it - he was a very very clever man - Tertium Organum, just to put an example - and had a overdeveloped intellectual center, and a very high opinion of himself (self importance) - actually he thought that he comprehended better G's teachings and went away from him. - and I think that he couldn't manage to get rid of it, or maybe he thought he did.
Could Ouspensky have had the main problem of 'sitting on two stools'1 and the self-importance issue clouded his ability to see that? It could be possible even though G. had already explained all that to him by the time Ouspensky left.
I was thinking about where Ouspensky was in the Work before he left it and what had been going on in the background context between 1912 and 1924.2 In the early 20's, Ouspensky had reached a point in the work where I believe he felt he and G. were communicating telepathically somehow (is this right?). He was sorting through some emotional issues perhaps as a result of this stage of work and was also experiencing problems with the self-remembering practice.
Around this time, when Ouspensky was in Constantinople, someone located him and paid him a handsome amount of royalties from his book (Tertium Organum) which had been experiencing a lot of success unbeknownst to Ouspensky. Even though some of the money was probably paid to G and this helped G. to settle in Paris, France and open the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man3, I see this particular time in O's life as having been very tempting to turn away from G. and during this unstable period he shifted back onto his own stool, where he already had some fixed ideas he could work with easier.4
In other words, considering that Tertium Organum is/was thought of as the third major philosophical synthesis, the previous being those of Aristotle and Bacon, and that with his other books, Fourth Way writings and psychological and cosmological lectures, it seems fairly clear that Ouspensky had already possessed a very broad overview of how man and the universe works and that he possibly had some deeply held fixed ideas that he was unable or unwilling to let go of? Even if that were so, that alone, doesn't necessarily imply that he was wrong about anything, but it might be an example of how external considering passes into internal considering
if Ouspensky's fixed ideas were the 'requirements' with which he preferred to approach others.5
Could that have been part of Ouspensky's problem? Should I just wait until I get to the thread on
Imitation Fourth Way Groups Started by Gurdjieff Rejects?
ref:
------------------------
1
"How could this have happened?" others asked him. "Why did their attitude towards all of us and towards you change so abruptly and unexpectedly?"
"It is the first case for you," said G., "and therefore it appears strange to you, but later on you will see that it happens very often and you will see that it always takes place in the same way. The principal reason for it is that it is impossible to sit between two stools. And people usually think that they can sit between two stools, that is, that they can acquire the new and preserve the old; they do not think this consciously of course but it comes to the same thing.
"And what is it that they most of all desire to preserve? First the right to have their own valuation of ideas and of people...
ISOTM, p.277
2
Unbeknown to Ouspensky, a Russian émigré by the name of Nicholas Bessarabof took a copy of Tertium Organum to America and placed it in the hands of the architect Claude Bragdon who could read Russian and was interested in the fourth dimension. Tertium Organum was rendered into English by Bragdon who had incorporated his own design of the hypercube into the Rochester Chamber of Commerce building. Bragdon also published the book and the publication was such a success that it was finally taken up by Alfred A. Knopf. At the time, in the early 1920s, Ouspensky's whereabouts were unknown until Bragdon located him in Constantinople hansomely remunerating the author with some back royalties.
_http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._D._Ouspensky
3
Ouspensky studied the Gurdjieff System directly under Gurdjieff's own supervision for a period of ten years, from 1915 to 1924. It was during this time, after Gurdjieff founded his Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man in France, that Ouspensky came to the conclusion that he was no longer able to understand his former teacher and made a decision to discontinue association with him. While in Russia, Ouspensky himself experimented with the technique with a certain degree of success, yet Ouspensky personally confessed the difficulties he was experiencing with self-remembering.
_http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._D._Ouspensky
4
TERTIUM ORGANUM - THE THIRD CANON OF THOUGHT
In this book, he uses the concept of the fourth dimension as an extended metaphor for the esoteric nature of reality. Einstein and other physicists had at that time validated the study of higher dimensions, and Ouspensky was fixated on this idea.
_http://www.sacred-texts.com/eso/to/index.htm
5
It very often happens that a man begins with a blessing and ends with a curse. He begins by deciding not to consider and afterwards blames other people for not considering him. This is an example of how external considering passes into internal considering. But if a man really remembers himself he understands that another man is a machine just as he is himself. And then he will enter into his position, he will put himself in his place, and he will be really able to understand and feel what another man thinks and feels. If he can do this his work becomes easier for him. But if he approaches a man with his own requirements nothing except new internal considering can ever be obtained from it.
ISOTM 160-161
