The Fourth Way - Wrong Functions -7- P.D. Ouspensky

Q.If we can do nothing with ourselves as man 1, 2 or 3, must we call in some outside agency if we want to be aware?

A. There are no outside agencies we can call in because we are mechanical. We can do nothing, but there are difference in doing and self-observation will show them:for instance, we can show some resistanceto it we can go on resisting every day.

In quite small things we have a choice, so although we cannot 'do' in quotation marks there are many small things we can do now. For instance, we can try to be aware of ourselves .

Certainly we cannot do it for a long time. But do we try or not? This is the question. In observing these different actions of ours we see that, as a general principle, although man 1,2, and 3 can 'do' nothing, if he becomes interested in something, if he begins to want something, more than ordinary things, then he is not always on the same level and he can choose moments when he can start doing in a very elementary sense.

Another very important problem we must consider is the idea of good and evil in this system, because generally people's views are very confused on this subject and it is necessary to establish for yourself how to understand it.

From the viewpoint of the system there are only two things that can be compared or see in man, the manifestation of mechanical laws and the manifestation of consciousness. If you want to find examples of what you can call good or bad, to arrive at some standard, you will see at once that what we call evil is always mechanical. It can never be conscious; and what we call good is always conscious, it cannot be mechanical.

It will take a long time to see the reason for that, because these ideas of mechanical and conscious are mixed in our mind. We never describe them in the right way, so this is the next point you must consider and study. Further, in connection with the question of good and evil, we must try to understand the relative positions of morality and conscience. What is morality and what is conscience? We can say first of all that morality is not constant. It is different in differnt countries, in different centuries, in different decades, in different classes, with people of different education, and so on.

What maybe moral in the Caucasus may be immoral in Europe. For instance, in some countries blood revenge is a most moral thing; if a man refuses to kill somebody who killed his distant uncle, he would be considered most immoral. But in Europe nobody would think that . in fact most people would think a man is very immoral to kill anybody,even a relative of somebodywho had killed his uncle.So morality is always different, and it always changes.

But conscience never changes, conscience is a kind of emotional understanding of truth in certain definite relations, generally in relation to behaviour, to people and so on. This is always the same; it cannot change and it cannot differ in one nation or another, in one country or another, or in one person or another.

Try to connect in your mind what I said about the study of good and evil, mechanicalness and consciousness, morality and conscience, and then put the question, 'Is consciouness evil possible?' That will require study and observation, but from the point of view of the system there is a definite principle that conscious evil is impossible; mechanicalness must be unconscious.

Q. The idea of evil being always unconscious is rather difficult to understand. Can you explain it a little more.

A.I said first of all try to find for yourself what you call evil, not by definition but by examples. When you have acertain numb er of examples, ask yourself, could they be conscious? Could evil things be done consciously? Later you will see they could be done only unconsciously.

Another answer is that all you call evil can happen mechanically, and it always does happen mechanically, so it has no need of consciousness.

I said that we should study the ideas of this system chiefly in connection with the evolution of man, and I explained that by evolution we must understand a conscious process and conscious efforts, continuous and connected .There is no mechanical evolution as it is sometimes understood. Evolution, if it is possible, can only be conscious, and the beggining of evolution of anything else.

If consciousness begins to evolve, other things begin to grow and evolve, we cease to understand the conditions necessary for the beggining of evolution, as i described them for you in the example of escape from prison.

Reference: The Fourth Way: P.D. Ouspensky