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Ouspensky
Vignettes
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"Yellowish-grey sand. Deep blue sky. In the distance
the triangle of the Pyramid of Kephren, and just
before me this strange, great face with its gaze
directed into the distance...I felt that...if I
could stay under its gaze from birth to death, the
whole of my life would flash by so swiftly for it
that it could not notice me. The glance was fixed on
something else. It was the glance of a being who
thinks in centuries and milleniums. I did not and
could not exist for it. And I could not answer my
own question - do I exist for myself."
A New
Model of the Universe
P. D.
Ouspensky
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(click
image to enlarge)
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It
is the year 1906 or 1907. The editorial office of
the Moscow daily paper The Morning. I have
just received the foreign papers, and I have to
write an article on the forthcoming Hague
Conference. French, German, English, Italian papers.
Phrases, phrases, sympathetic, critical, ironical,
blatant, pompous, lying and, worst of all, utterly
automatic, phrases which have been used a thousand
times and will be used again on entirely different,
perhaps contradictory, occasions. I have to make a
survey of all these words and opinions, pretending
to take them seriously, and then, just as seriously,
to write something on my own account. But what can I
say? It is all so tedious. Diplomats and all kinds
of statesmen will gather together and talk, papers
will approve or disapprove, sympathize or not
sympathize. Then everything will be as it was, or
even worse. It is still early, I say to myself;
perhaps something will come into my head later.
Pushing aside the papers; I open a drawer in my
desk. The whole desk is crammed with books with
strange titles, The Occult World, Life after
Death, Atlantis and Lemuria, Dogme et Rituel de la
Haute Magie, Le Temple de Satan, The Sincere
Narrations of a Pilgrim, and the like. These
books and I have been inseparable for a whole month,
and the world of the Hague Conference and leading
articles becomes more and more vague and unreal to
me.
A New Model of the Universe
P. D.
Ouspensky
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The fire was banked high for the
evening’s celebration. Month after month
Ouspensky had subsisted on a diet of
bread, coffee and a slice of sausage,
but this night was special. ‘We had
found’, admits Bechhofer, ‘a quantity of
spirit in one of the cupboards… and,
despite Zaharoff’s protests, Ouspensky
proceeded to transform it into vodka
with the addition of some orange peel.’
According to Ouspensky’s political
analysis, soon vindicated, either they
themselves drank the spirit or the
Bolsheviks would. ‘People have been
drinking since the beginning of the
world,’ pointed out the author of
Tertium Organum philosophically,
‘but they have never found anything to
go better with vodka than salted
cucumber.’ It seemed to clinch the
point. So there they sit, as if exposed
by the fire’s spluttering flare and
caught by some historical fixative: the
cheeky, resilient Bechhofer; the shy,
inarticulate bachelor Zaharoff, his
handsome face marked out for the
terrible disease which will soon kill
him; and Piotr Demianovich Ouspensky in
his ragged frock-coat, with his glass of
home-made vodka, his 1½ tons of coal,
and his 2½ tons of knowledge.
The nostalgic ambience mellowed
Ouspensky and he spoke of mad, vanished
St. Petersburg
nights: Bechhofer was tempted into
speculation. ‘Where shall we be in a
month’s time?’ he pondered, but his
question was not judged very practical
by either of the two older men. ‘You may
wonder as much as you like,’ said
Ouspensky, ‘but you will never find
better vodka than this.’
Gurdjieff and Mansfield
James Moore |
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Ouspensky writes
to a pupil
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