more of nicoll's commentaries...
Let us review for a moment the present state of the world and the
present ideals that dominate people in regard to making this planet a
better world. You see on one side inventions such as penicillin and
many other similar things which are of benefit to mankind, and on the
other hand you see the inventions of destructive agents such as poison-
gas, atomic bombs, and so on. For everything that is invented of a
beneficial nature, there seems to be invented an opposite of a harmful
nature. Man, feeling that he can do, does not see this continual contra-
diction. He does not see that he is living in a world under a definite
number of laws that cannot be changed. It is as if there were always the
same amount of everything and if a thing is got rid of in one place it
appears again in another place. There is always the same amount of
air, let us say, in an air-cushion. You may push it in in one place but
it will swell out in another place. This idea that we live in a contained
world of this kind, a prison under a definite number of laws, is not
understood. The Work says, amongst other things, that the Earth is a
pain-factory from which a certain quantity of pain and suffering is
demanded. People believe that medicine is going to do away with
illness but what happens actually is that if a relative cure for one thing
is found you will practically always find that some other illness increases.
Let us suppose that small-pox as a disease has been decreased by
vaccination but cancer has increased. I am not making any definite
connection between these two things but simply indicating in general
what happens.
Can you mention a single law that you are under? I am not talking
about man-made laws but about laws belonging to this Earth on which
we appear for a brief period. One of these laws is that you have to eat.
If you don't eat you die. This is a law. Another law is that you have to
breathe oxygen. If you do not breathe oxygen, or if you breathe carbon-
monoxide from a charcoal-stove, you die. This is a law belonging to
this planet. Yet, curiously enough, we do not see ourselves as being
under laws of this kind and imagine ourselves as being quite free and
able to do exactly as we like. In other words, we do not reflect upon the
nature of our lives on this Earth. And we have the constant illusion that
we can do—i.e. that we can alter everything in our favour. And because
we have this illusion that we can do, we have also the equally firm
illusion that we are progressing and that the mere passage of time means
that we all get better and better and more and more comfortable. We
regard things like wars as exceptions, just as we regard illnesses as
exceptions, not seeing that they are the rule, and belong to our level of
Being.
What is the way out from this prison in which these laws constantly
interact and play on humanity like a set of different-coloured spotlights?
The Work, the Gospels, and all esoteric teaching say the same thing:
to begin to escape from these 48 orders of laws governing this planetary
prison called the Earth a man must cease to see the final solution in
changing external conditions but must see it in changing himself. He
must begin to change his relationship to this world and in order to do
so he must begin to observe himself and the world and work on his
mechanical reactions to it. This is the whole meaning of the Sermon
on the Mount which has nothing to do with being pious but has a far
deeper meaning and a far more interesting meaning. If a man remains
mechanical, if he always thinks and feels and speaks in the same
mechanical way, he remains in prison, but if a man begins to try to
awaken he begins to pass under fewer laws. Everything taught in this
Work about negative emotions, identifying, internal considering, Self-
Remembering, about vanity and pride, about making accounts, about
imagination, about False Personality, and so on, has to do with coming
under fewer laws—that is, under better influences—and all these things
that the Work is constantly talking to you about and asking you to
practise begin with observing yourself, with waking up from the state
of sleep in which you are merely functions of life and merely serve
nature and have no inner hope, no inner stability, no inner peace of
mind. In this great prison of the world, under these 48 orders of laws,
mankind as a whole is asleep. The Work, the Gospels, and all esoteric
teaching seek to awaken Man out of this state of sleep. The central idea
is that Man can undergo a definite change, a definite transformation,
if he will work on himself aright. This is called inner change or inner
development, and it is a quite definite thing that you can become aware
of yourself once it has begun to touch you. Then, instead of remaining
acorns which swine can eat, you begin to grow into trees which no
swine can eat.
What would completely change the world at this moment? The
world would change completely if everyone had good-will. Such an
idea is vaguely mentioned even by politicians. Do you know what it
means to have good-will? You may imagine that you have good-will.
Now suppose that you begin to observe yourself and your daily actions,
suppose that you begin to become responsible to yourself for your inner
thoughts and what you say secretly, can you any longer have the illusion
that you have good-will? You will begin to see what an immense task
it is to get free from these evil places in mind and feeling. Then you will
begin to understand what this Work is about and you will also under-
stand how impossible it is for humanity as a whole to change since it is
so difficult for you yourself to change in this respect. When such ideas
come to us we begin really to think, we begin to reflect and to want to
understand. We begin to understand, for example, why things go as
they do, and why no one can do anything. But it is always possible for
some people to change who wish to do so and wish to study how it is
possible to change and what it means.
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