Views From the Real World
New York, February 24, 1924
Man is subject to many influences, which can be divided into two categories. First, those which result from chemical and physical causes, and second, those which are associative in origin and are a result of our conditioning.
Chemico-physical influences are material in nature and result from the mixture of two substances which produce something new. They arise independently of us. They act from without.
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Associative influences are quite different. If someone pushes me or weeps, the resulting action on me is mechanical. It touches off some memory and this memory or association gives rise in me to other associations, and so on. Owing to this shock my feelings, my thoughts change. Such a process is not chemical but mechanical.
These two kinds of influences come from things that are near to us. But there are also other influences which come from big things, from the earth, from the planets and from the sun, where laws of a different order operate. …
The more developed a man is, the more he is subject to influences. Sometimes, wishing to free ourselves from influences, we get free of one and fall under many others and so become even less free, even more slaves.
…Always everything influences us. Every thought, feeling, movement is a result of one or another influence. Everything we do, all our manifestations are what they are because something influences us from without. Sometimes this slavery humiliates us, sometimes not; … We may want to get free from one or two, but having got free of them we may acquire another ten. On the other hand we do have some choice, that is, we can keep some and free ourselves of others. It is possible to become free of two kinds of influences.
To free oneself of chemico-physical influences, one has to be passive. …these are the influences which are due to the emanations of the atmosphere of the body, of feeling, of thought, and in some people also of ether. To be able to resist these influences one has to be passive. Then one can become a little freer of them. The law of attraction operates here. Like attracts like. That is, everything goes toward the place where there is more of the same kind. To him who has much, more is given. From him who has little, even that is taken away. …
To become free of influences of the second, that is, the associative kind, requires an artificial struggle. Here the law of repulsion acts. This law consists in the fact that where there is little, more is added, that is, it is the reverse of the first law. With influences of this kind everything proceeds according to the law of repulsion.
So for freeing oneself from influences there are two separate principles for the two different kinds of influences. If you want to be free you must know which principle to apply in every particular case. If you apply repulsion where attraction is needed, you will be lost. Many do the reverse of what is required. It is very easy to discriminate between these two influences; it can be done at once.
… everyone, if he takes the trouble to look, can see what kind of influence it is. … It is impossible to obtain a result immediately, and become free from these influences at once. But study and discrimination are possible for everyone.
Change is a distant goal, requiring much time and labor. …
To study the …associative kind of influence is easier in practice. For instance, take influence through form. Either you or I influence the other. But form is external: movements, clothes, cleanliness or otherwise—what is generally called the “mask.” If you understand, you can easily change it. For example, he likes you in black and, through that, you can influence him. Or she can influence you. But do you wish to change your dress only for him or for many? Some want to do it only for him, others not. Sometimes a compromise is necessary. Never take anything literally. I say this only as an example.
As regards the second kind of associative influence, what we have called feeling and relationship, we should know that the attitude of others toward us depends on us. In order to live intelligently, it is very important to understand that the responsibility for almost every good or bad feeling lies in you, in your outer and inner attitude. The attitude of other people often reflects your own attitude: you begin and the other person does the same. You love, she loves. You are cross, she is cross. It is a law—you receive what you give.
… If I push and he pulls correspondingly, or if the same thing is done not correspondingly, the result is different. Sometimes both he and I repulse. If there is a certain correspondence, the resulting influence is calming. If not, it is the reverse.
If I act consciously, the interaction will be conscious. If I act unconsciously, everything will be the result of what I am sending out. …
Everything is mechanical.
… As a rule, at every moment of our life only one center works in us—either mind or feeling. Our feeling is of one kind when another center is not looking on, when the ability to criticize is absent. By itself a center has no consciousness, no memory; it is a chunk of a particular kind of meat without salt, an organ, a certain combination of substances which merely possesses a special capacity of recording.
Indeed it greatly resembles the coating of a recording tape. If I say something to it, it can later repeat it. It is completely mechanical, organically mechanical. All centers differ slightly as to their substance, but their properties are the same.
Now, if I say to one center that you are beautiful, it believes it. If I tell it that this is red—it also believes. But it does not understand—its understanding is quite subjective. Later, if I ask it a question, it repeats in reply what I have said. It will not change in a hundred, in a thousand years—it will always remain the same. Our mind has no critical faculty in itself, no consciousness, nothing. And all the other centers are the same.
What then is our consciousness, our memory, our critical faculty? It’s very simple. It is when one center specially watches another, when it sees and feels what is going on there and, seeing it, records it all within itself.
It receives new impressions, and later, if we wish to know what happened the previous time, if we ask and search in another center, we will be able to find what has taken place in the first center. It is the same with our critical faculty—one center watches another. With one center we know that this thing is red, but another center sees it as blue. One center is always trying to “persuade” another. This is what criticism is. If two centers go on for a long time disagreeing about something, this disagreement hinders us in thinking about it further.
If another center is not watching, the first continues to think as it did originally. We very seldom watch one center from another, only sometimes, perhaps one minute a day. When we sleep we never look at one center from another, we do so only sometimes when we are awake.
In the majority of cases each center lives its own life. It believes everything it hears, without criticism, and records everything as it has heard it. If it hears something it has heard before, it simply records. If something it hears is incorrect, for instance, something was red before and is blue now, it resists, not because it wants to find out what is right but simply because it does not immediately believe. But it does believe, it believes everything. If something is different, it only needs time for perceptions to settle down. If another center is not watching at the moment, it puts blue over red. And so blue and red remain together and later, when we read the records, it begins to answer: “red.” But “blue” is just as likely to pop out.
It is possible for us to ensure a critical perception of new material if we take care that, during perception, another center should stand by and perceive this material from aside. Supposing I now say something new. If you listen to me with one center, there will be nothing new for you in what I am saying; you need to listen differently. Otherwise as there was nothing before, so there will be nothing now. The value will be the same: blue will be red, or vice versa, and again there will be no knowledge. Blue may become yellow.
If you wish to hear new things in a new way, you must listen in a new way. This is necessary not only in the work but also in life. You can become a little more free in life, more secure, if you begin to be interested in all new things and remember them by new methods. This new method can be understood easily. It would no longer be wholly automatic but semi-automatic. This new method consists in the following: when thought is already there, try to feel. When you feel something, try to direct your thoughts on your feeling. Up to now, thought and feeling have been separated.
Begin to watch your mind: feel what you think. Prepare for tomorrow and safeguard yourselves from deceit. Speaking generally, you will never understand what I wish to convey if you merely listen.
Take all you already know, all you have read, all you have seen, all you have been shown—I am certain that you understand nothing of it. Even if you ask yourselves sincerely, do you understand why two and two make four, you will find that you are not sure even of that. You only heard someone else say so, and you repeat what you have heard. And not only in questions of daily life, but also in higher serious matters, you understand nothing. All that you have is not yours.
You have a garbage can and, until now, you have been dumping things into it. There are many precious things in it which you could make use of. There are specialists who collect all kinds of refuse from garbage cans; some make a lot of money this way. In your garbage cans you have enough material to understand everything. If you understand, you will know everything. There is no need to gather more into this garbage can—everything is there. But there is no understanding—the place of understanding is quite empty.
You may have a great deal of money that does not belong to you, but you would be better off to have far less, even a hundred dollars that is your own, but nothing you have is yours.
A large idea should be taken only with large understanding. For us, small ideas are all we are capable of understanding—if even these. Generally it is better to have a little thing inside than something big outside.