Petr Uspensky Quotes

Thought does not grasp, does not convey, what is at times clearly felt. Thought is too slow, too short. There are no words and no forms to convey what one sees and knows in such moments. And it is impossible to fix these moments, to arrest them, to make them longer, more obedient for the will. There is no possibility of remembering what has been found and understood, and later repeating it to oneself. It disappears as dreams disappear. Perhaps it is all nothing but a dream.

The most important factor in every function is: ‘Is it under our control or not?’ So when imagination is under our control we do not even call it imagination; we call it by various names — visualization, creative thinking, inventive thinking — you can find a name for each special case. But when it comes by itself and controls us so that we are in its power, then we call it imagination. Again, there is another side of imagination which we miss in ordinary understanding. This is that we imagine non-existent things — non-existent capacities, for instance. We ascribe to ourselves powers which we do not have; we imagine ourselves to be self-conscious although we are not. We have imaginary powers and imaginary self-consciousness and we imagine ourselves to be one, when really we are many different ‘I’s. There are many such things that we imagine about ourselves and other people. For instance, we imagine that we can ‘do’, that we have choice; we have no choice, we cannot ‘do’, things just happen to us.

Q. Positive means not negative? A. Yes, and much more besides. An emotion that cannot become negative gives enormous understanding, has an enormous cognitive value. It connects things that cannot be connected in an ordinary state. To have positive emotions is advised and recommended in religions, but they do not say how to get them. They say, ‘Have faith, have love’. How? Christ says, ‘Love your enemies’. It is not for us; we cannot even love our friends. It is the same as saying to a blind man, ‘You must see!’ A blind man cannot see, otherwise he would not be a blind man. That is what positive emotion means. Q. How can we learn to love our enemies? A. Learn to love yourself first — you do not love yourself enough; you love your false personality, not yourself. It is difficult to understand the New Testament or Buddhist writings, for they are notes taken in school. One line of these writings refers to one level and another to another level.

The crowd neither wants nor seeks knowledge, and the leaders of the crowd, in their own interests, try to strengthen its fear and dislike of everything new and unknown. The slavery in which mankind lives is based upon this fear. It is even difficult to imagine the horror of this slavery. We do not understand what people are losing. But in order to understand the cause of this slavery it is enough to see how people live, what constitutes the aim of their existence, the object of their desires, passions, and aspirations, of what they think, of what they talk, what they serve and what they worship.

Did I dream all that and what did it mean?” he says to himself. “And what I see now, is this too a dream?

Whatever work a man may be doing, it is enough for him to try to do each action deliberately, with his mind, following every movement, and he will see that the quality of his work will change immediately.

I mean that you always know what results will come from one or another of your actions; but in a strange way you want to do one thing and get the result that could only come from another

An unexpected vision appeared to me. A circle not unlike a wreath woven from rainbow and lightnings, whirled from heaven to earth with a stupendous, velocity, blinding me by its brilliance. And amidst this light and fire I heard music and soft singing, thunderclaps and the roar of a tempest, the rumble of falling mountains and earthquakes. The circle whirled with a terrifying noise, touching the sun and the earth, and, in the centre of it I saw the naked, dancing figure of a beautiful young woman, enveloped by a light, transparent scarf, in her hand she held a magic wand. Presently the four apocalyptical beasts began to appear on the edges of the circle; one with the face of a lion, another with the face of a man, the third, of an eagle and the fourth, of a bull.

There is something in us that keeps us where we find ourselves. I think this is the most awful thing of all.

Positivism is very good when it seeks an answer to the question of how something operates under given conditions; but when it makes the attempt to get outside of its definite conditions (space, time, causation), or presumes to affirm that nothing exists outside of these given conditions, then it is transcending its own proper sphere.

Generally speaking, the significance of the indirect results may very often be of more importance than the significance of direct ones. And since we are able to trace how the energy of love transforms itself into instincts, ideas, creative forces on different planes of life; into symbols of art, song, music, poetry; so can we easily imagine how the same energy may transform itself into a higher order of intuition, into a higher consciousness which will reveal to us a marvelous and mysterious world. In all living nature (and perhaps also in that which we consider as dead) love is the motive force which drives the creative activity in the most diverse directions.

It is a question of finding reasons, of thinking rightly, because expression of negative emotion is always based on some kind of wrong thinking.

Q.Would it be correct to say that when learning anything like driving a car, intellectual function tells moving function what to do and that,when proficient, moving function works by itself¿

When one realizes one is asleep, at that moment one is already half-awake.

"Depende de como você entende essa palavra, "esotérico" significa interno. O esoterismo encerra a idéia da existência de um círculo interno da humanidade. Lembra-se de como a humanidade foi descrita como constituída de quatro círculos - o esotérico, o mesotérico e o exotérico, que formam o círculo interior, e o círculo exterior no qual vivemos? A idéia de esoterismo implica a idéia de transmissão do conhecimento; presume a existência de um grupo de pessoas a quem pertence um certo conhecimento. Não se deve compreender isso de alguma forma mística, porém mais precisamente, de forma concreta. Há muitas diferenças entre os círculos interno e externo. Por exemplo, muitas coisas que queremos descobrir ou criar só podem existir no círculo interno."