Views From the Real World
NEW YORK, DECEMBER 9, 1930
Question: How can we gain attention?
Answer: There is no attention in people. You must aim to ac- quire this. Self-observation is only possible after acquiring attention. Start on small things.
Question: What small things can we start on? What should we do?
Answer: Your nervous and restless movements make every- one know, consciously or unconsciously, that you have no authority and are a booby. With these restless movements you cannot be anything. The first thing for you to do is to stop these movements. Make this your aim, your God. Even get your family to help you. Only after this, you can perhaps gain attention. This is an example of doing.
Another exampleÑan aspiring pianist can never learn except little by little. If you wish to play melodies without first practicing, you can never play real melodies. The melodies you will play will be cacophonous and will make people suffer and hate you. It is the same with psychological ideas: to gain any- thing, long practice is necessary.
Try to accomplish very small things first. If at first you aim at big things you will never be anything. And your manifestations will act like cacophonous melodies and cause people to hate you.
Question: What must I do?
Answer: There are two kinds of doingÑautomatic doing, and doing according to aim. Take a small thing which you now are not able to do, and make this your aim, your God. Let nothing interfere. Only aim at this. Then, if you succeed in doing this, I will be able to give you a greater task. Now you have an appetite to do things too big for you. This is an abnormal appetite. You can never do these things, and this appetite keeps you from doing the small things you might do. Destroy this appetite, forget big things. Make the breaking of a small habit your aim.
In Search of the Miraculous
Chapter 8
Self-observation brings man to the realization of the necessity for self-change. And in observing himself a man notices that self-observation itself brings about certain changes in his inner processes. He begins to understand that self-observation is an instrument of self-change, a means of awakening. By observing himself he throws, as it were, a ray of light onto his inner processes which have hitherto worked in complete darkness. And under the influence of this light the processes themselves begin to change.
…For this purpose a man must learn to take, so to speak, ‘mental photographs’ of himself at different moments of his life and in different emotional states: and not photographs of details, but photographs of the whole as he saw it. In other words these photographs must contain simultaneously everything that a man can see in himself at a given moment. Emotions, moods, thoughts, sensations, postures, movements, tones of voice, facial expressions, and so on. If a man succeeds in seizing interesting moments for these photographs he will very soon collect a whole album of pictures of himself which, taken together, will show him quite clearly what he is.
But it is not so easy to learn how to take these photographs at the most interesting and characteristic moments, how to catch characteristic postures, characteristic facial expressions, characteristic emotions, and characteristic thoughts. If the photographs are taken successfully and if there is a sufficient number of them, a man will see that his usual conception of himself, with which he has lived from year to year, is very far from reality.
“Instead of the man he had supposed himself to be he will see quite another man.
This ‘other’ man is himself and at the same time not himself. It is he as other people know him, as he imagines himself and as he appears in his actions, words, and so on; but not altogether such as he actually is. For a man himself knows that there is a great deal that is unreal, invented, and artificial in this other man whom other people know and whom he knows himself. You must learn to divide the real from the invented. And to begin self-observation and self-study it is necessary to divide oneself. A man must realize that he indeed consists of two men.
On Attention, Christopher Freemantle
…rightly directed attention is creative or catalytic; that is, it promotes the production of the specific materials necessary to fully connect the centers, and it has a crucial action in allowing impressions received through the senses (also a source of fine materials) to be absorbed on an adequate scale… This controlled attention never occurs automatically and is the very antithesis of the over-involved attention characteristically found in everyday living, in which the attention is hypnotically drawn to the outer world, so that almost no inner movements are experienced and no objective knowledge of them can arise. Unless the form of attention is changed and a special inner awareness is cultivated, exact knowledge of the inner conditions which govern voluntary changes of state is impossible.
Is there a vital synthesis at work in which a new force arising from the interplay of attention and consciousness links me to a timeless world? Why is it that at these moments there is a sense of recognition as well as of mystery? And the world, so different from the one I was in a few moments before, now fills me with questioning.
By conscious attention the impressions are assimilatedÉ.Conscious attention (is) a catalyst. Automatic attention provides man with security; but conscious attention, or more precisely, an awareness, an attention that simultaneously includes both manÕs outer and inner world, is the key to evolution.
When a manÕs attention is not entirely taken by associative movements and these movements are allowed to die down, he experiences inner silence. This silence is either a passive state or one accompanied by an active attention, perhaps in the thoughtless form of a question without an answer… Such, for example, is the state of a man listening, trying to catch an almost inaudible sound as his whole body, feeling and thought are concentrated in the attempt to catch the sound.
Meditation is necessaryÑto establish an awareness of a centered attention, and of the state where the many IÕs are naturally subordinated to its centered weight. They do not disappear, but simply cannot take the reaction too far, because the center of gravity of attention restrains them.
The Reality of Being # 8 The watchman
I wish to be conscious of myself. Yet, as I am at this moment, can I know myself, can I be conscious of myself? I cannot. I am too scattered. I feel nothing. But I see that I am asleep, and I see the symptoms of this sleep. I have forgotten the sense of my existence, I have forgotten myself. And at this moment I receive a shock: I am awaking, I want to wake up.
Then, having scarcely felt the shock, I feel myself taken again, held back by the elements of my sleepÑassociations that turn around, emotions that take me, unconscious sensations. I feel myself fall back into forgetfulness.
We do not realize how passive we are, always pulled along by events, people and things. We begin an activity with great interest, fully aware of our aim. But after a certain time the impulse weakens, overcome by inertia. Our understanding diminishes, and we feel the need for something new that will restore the interest, the life. Our inner work progresses like this in stages, and always depends on new forces. It is determined by laws. We must get rid of the idea that progress is continuous in a straight line. There are stages where the intensity diminishes and, if we wish not to fall back, a force must appear that is more active.
The passive man in us, the only one we know, is the one we trust. But as long as we remain passive, nothing new can appear. We must become active in relation to our inertia, the passive work of our functions. If we wish to change, we must look for the new man in ourselves, the one who is hidden. This is the one who remembers, who has a force that can only be brought by our wish, our will, and must grow degree by degree. It is necessary to see that a more active state, a greater intensity, is possible.
I need to recognize that in my usual state my attention is undivided. When I open to the outside, I am naturally interested in it. My attention goes there. I cannot prevent myself. If my force of attention is entirely taken, I am lost in life, identified, asleep. All my capacity to be present is lost. I lose myself, the feeling of myself. My existence loses its meaning. So, the first step is a separation in which my attention is divided.
Our effort must always be clearÑto be present, that is, to begin to remember myself. With the attention divided, I am present in two directions, as present as I can be. My attention is engaged in two opposite directions, and I am at the center. This is the act of self-remembering. I wish to keep part of my attention on the awareness of belonging to a higher level and, under this influence, try to open to the outer world. I must make an effort to remain related, an effort of attention. I try to know truly what I am. I struggle to stay present, at the same time with a feeling of I turned toward a better quality and with an ordinary feeling tied to my self, my person. I wish to see and not forget that I belong to these two levels.
We must see where our attention is. Where is our attention when we remember ourselves? Where is our attention in life? Order can be born in us only if we enter into direct contact with disorder. We are not in the disorder. We are the state of disorder. If I look at what I really am, I see the disorder. And where there is a direct contact, there is an immediate action. I begin to realize that my Presence is where my attention is.