This extract was not included in the final draft of In Search of the Miarculous. It was made available in The Institute Magazine. This was a Bennett-linked journal. I have no further details of when it was published. I shall not comment on this material, at least not in this post. Some of it is of great valuable, but some is so opaque as to suggest a mistranslation, or perhaps Ouspensky was unhappy with the draft, and this could explain why it was omitted.

 

Ouspensky Chapter III early draft

Poetry, creativity, ideas, the moving of the masses, the striving towards order in the life of humanity, selfless altruistic activities, his own sacrifices and heroism, all these do not appear to him to be absolutely mechanical. This is one of the very greatest mistakes that man can make. The activities of the machine cannot be NOT mechanical. In this respect, all machines are identical; one is not better than another; one moment of machine activity is in no way better or worse than another. Taken the other way round, those machines, which we consider to be the very best, that is to say, those which act the most strongly on other machines, are only more automatic and more mechanical in their actions than other more feeble machines in which movement sometimes results independently. When man catches onto this, then his appraisal of human activities and of all human life becomes different. He understands that everything happens accidentally. Today he must to such and such an idea or understanding; tomorrow another. No one – whoever is inside him at the time – can be unconvinced. He sees all and everything according only to himself. Afterwards, you will convince yourselves that people never understand each other – even that the more they understand the more mistakes they make.

Machines, mechanicalness, everything during the time of learning about life gradually becomes more and more obvious. At first man admits his exclusion, then for a long time does not want to renounce his position. But in the very end, if he observes sincerely, he sees that everything is subordinate to a common law, that but there is no exception whatsoever.

Everything happens!

In the external world, in the external activities of man, there are no possibilities at all of escaping mechanicalness. But man does have such possibilities in his inner world, even though he is usually ignorant of them. This is where his chief mistake lies. He looks outside himself, not knowing that everything is to be found within himself.

Nothing in man prevent learning about ‘positive’ thinking. In other words, man has the possibility of inner development, the possibility of inner growth, the freedom from mechanicalness. Man … machine. But man can stop being a machine. In this consists the inner possibility of man.

But it is necessary to understand what it means to stop being a machine. Even in ordinary conditions, he can be more or less mechanical. The body is a machine and it always remains a machine. It is impossible to be saved from this, and impossible to betray. But it is possible to control with the body, and leave it to control everything else.

Take again this example of the carriage, the horse, the driver, and the master. This ‘complicated organisation’ can exist under very diverse conditions.

The conditions can be of the master telling the driver where to go, and the driver knowing the road, the horse well-fed, and the carriage well-maintained. There can also be many other conditions. It is possible for the driver to not take any part in the work, to lose or forget the address, or not know the right road. In this case it is possible to be the master but the driver is drunk or doesn’t control the reins, or has lost the way; or the horse is limping, or has not been fed; or the carriage wheels have not been greased. Or the driver can fall asleep, leaving the horse to go where he likes. Very good – if it knows the way. It can also get frightened, bolt: the driver can let go of the reins. Or again the carriage can swerve from the road when the driver has already lost control of the reins, and the carriage barges into the horse. The carriage controls the whole organisation, so this is bad for the horse, the driver, and the master.

Here is the end result – the very mechanicalness of everything. The first example is the least mechanical of all: when the driver is going in the direction ordered by the master, and the horse is moving well, and the carriage is properly maintained, then everything meets its requirements.