Free The Strange Life of P. D. Ouspensky by Colin Wilson Page B

Miraculous , we can also begin to see how the original excitement turned into something much more down to earth, 'scientific', and how this scientific approach slowly gave way to the pessimism of his comment that 'there is only one hope - that we should find the way to find the way to work with the higher emotional centre. And we do not know how this is to be done.'
    Yet when we turn from A New Model of the Universe to Ouspensky's account of his meeting with Gurdjieff in In Search of the Miraculous , it is possible to understand that original excitement. At one of their earnest meetings, Ouspensky asked Gurdjieff about his ballet The Struggle of the Magicians . This is, in fact, a pleasant little love story about a wealthy man who tries to seduce the pupil of a white magician by enlisting the help of a black magician; the white magician foils his plans, but the rich man finally becomes his disciple, and the ballet ends with the suggestion that love will triumph in the end. Gurdjieff explained that the most important part of the ballet was its dances, then went on to compare them to the movements of an orrery - a device simulating the movements of the planets. In the same way, he explained, in 'sacred dances', the movements are intended to remind those who understand them of certain hidden laws of nature. Such mysterious hints were guaranteed to fascinate Ouspensky. It was the same when Gurdjieff began to talk about what he called 'the ray of creation' - the sun, the planets and the moon - and to explain that they are living beings, and that the moon is a planet in the process of birth, which may evolve to the same level as the earth. Gurdjieff was later to explain that the universe has seven levels of reality, and that the moon is the lowest of these; those who live on that level are subject to 96 laws. Man, who lives on the earth level, is subject to 48 laws. And so on up the 'ray of creation: the planets, the sun, the galaxy, the totality of worlds, the absolute, each being subject to half as many laws as the previous level, until we reach the absolute, which is subject only to its own law . . .' All this seemed to Ouspensky to reveal that Gurdjieff was the repository of the kind of secret knowledge that he had spent his life searching for.
    Even so, much of what Gurdjieff had to say only reinforced Ouspensky's romantic pessimism. For example, when they sat in a noisy café speaking about the war (Gurdjieff deliberately chose such places to force Ouspensky to make 'extra effort'), Gurdjieff explained that war was the result of planetary influences. When two planets approached too closely to one another, the result was a kind of tension, such as the tension one might feel when passing too close to someone on a narrow pavement. Ouspensky asked: 'Then is there absolutely nothing that can be done?', and Gurdjieff replied gloomily:
    'Absolutely nothing.'
    Not all Gurdjieff's pronouncements were quite so negative. He explained, for example, that man is in prison, and that it is possible to dig a tunnel to freedom - but that one man alone can do nothing. The tunnel can only be completed by a group working together:

    Furthermore, no one can escape from prison without the help of those who have escaped before . Only they can say in what way escape is possible, or can send tools, files or whatever may be necessary. But one prisoner alone cannot find these people or get into touch with them. An organisation is necessary. Nothing can be achieved without an organisation.

    For a loner like Ouspensky, such a notion was a violation of his deepest instinct: the feeling that a man can find his own salvation, but not that of others. At the very end of his life he was to return to this belief.
    On another occasion, Gurdjieff told his pupils the grim little parable of the magician and the sheep. A magician gets tired of the wanderings of his sheep, who were aware that they were due to be slaughtered and skinned. So he hypnotizes them and tells