maurice nicoll
Amwell, 7.1.50
THE IDEA OF VIOLENCE IN THE WORK
On many occasions we have spoken
about violence. In this connection many things have been said in the past few years concerning
the fact that negative emotions
lead down to violence. Men and
women who fall a prey to negative stat
es begin, say, with self-pity that
eventually reacts in a violent way to
the events of life. So we have to
understand that at the bottom of
negative emotions lies violence. And
since the Work talks so much about the importance of observing and
not identifying with negative states
you can understand that what it is
really saying is that we have to overcome the violent man, the violent
woman, in ourselves.
Let us try to get this as clear as
possible. Every one of you, whether
man or woman, has a violent person deeper down. The approach to
this person is through becoming a bit negative. You begin to feel
yourself unfairly treated—and who does not ? And from that moment
you are on a road in your psychological country that leads down to the
slums of violence. That is why we have
to be so careful, if we are really
trying to practise this Work, to
prevent even the small remarks of a
negative nature from being uttered. But the question is deeper than
this. You may be very polite and
well-mannered, careful and well-
spoken, apparently nice to other people, and yet in your inner world
you dislike, you loathe, you hate, you cannot bear. I was speaking
recently down here about this, and I said that we may refrain from
being violent externally in the sight of other people simply because we
are afraid of losing our reputation or
of being involved with the police,
but a person who is like that is not really doing this Work—he is a
mechanical man, he behaves civilly externally. Why does he behave
civilly externally? There are a hundred and one things that prevent
a man from really expressing what
he thinks. I mention fear of loss
of reputation, fear of police—you
can add the rest, such as fear of
being turned out of your club, fear
of being ill-spoken of. Now all these
things are external bonds which
prevent underlying violence from
manifesting itself openly. And yet all the time within us in the internal
man, in the world of our private thoughts and feelings, we behave as
violent, prehistoric people, hating and loathing.
Now on what does the Work lay emphasis as regards ourselves? It
lays emphasis on this inner man which is connected with the development of the essential man. It is at present comparable with a jungle
full of wild beasts, and it is exactly this jungle full of wild beasts that
has to be put in order, as Orpheus brought harmony into a similar
jungle, so that any person in our
thoughts can pass through without
being clawed, stung, or murdered. When a person in this Work begins
to observe himself (or herself), it is necessary for such a person to ob-
serve how he (or she) behaves outwardly when, so to speak, no one
sees him (or her). When you are alone a person becomes a thought
because when you are alone you are with your inner world of thoughts
and feelings. The question is how you treat people in this inner world
where you think no one is looking at
you, where you feel free to indulge in every private hatred and dislike and bitterness and revenge.
But Higher Centres see only this inner world of yourself and judge you
by its state and they will not help you at all—in fact, they cannot,
until you begin to purify this inner world that you believe no one can
see. As I said, it is a very remarkable level of being to reach at which
your inner world is such that a person, even if you dislike him, can pass
through it without being wounded or murdered. This is the real, inner
or esoteric meaning of the Commandment: "Thou shalt not kill", and
I can assure you that a great deal of
work has to be done on this inner
world in which one imagines one is free from observation. So I repeat
that you have to reach a stage in which when you are alone everyone
you know, whether you dislike them or otherwise, can pass through
without being sniped or butchered.
And once more it must be said that all this Work starts with self-observation. You cannot do this
Work if you have never observed
yourself and do not know what it
means. For example, if you have
never observed that you are polite
externally and hate internally, you
cannot do this Work. You do not see the contradiction. Most people
who are polite are conscious of being polite, but they are not conscious
properly that their politeness is a mask to their freely hating other
people. Only through self-observation can they perceive this deeper
layer of themselves, which is so contradictory to their outer behaviour.
You know that this Work is sometimes called esoteric Christianity and
for that reason it is often useful to read the Gospels in the light of the
teaching of this Work. I do not say
read them religiously but read them
as psychological documents with which this Work is connected straight-
way. I should like some of you to find passages in the Four Gospels in
which attention is called to the importance of self-observation. I will
give one example:
"Why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye but
considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?" (Matt. vii.3).
Now you will admit that this is a pretty good example of what the
Work says about observing yourself in
stead of finding fault with everyone else. In this brief parable, it
is implied that you should really
begin to observe yourself uncritically before you criticize other people.
All this will lead to less violence in
yourself, in your inner man, in the
side of you that you do not really
accept in your present consciousness
but tend to project on to other people. Here we have a very good
exercise in conscious work on ourselves which in life is quite unnecessary, but in the Work is taught so continuously to remind us to wake up.
For a man must have some inner, spiritual insight into himself and this
is to be awake—otherwise he is asleep or even dead.
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