Tao Te Ching

The Power of Goodness, the Wisdom Beyond Words
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Ouspensky Пётр Демья́нович Успе́нский

(Pyotr Demianovich Ouspenskii)

1878 – 1947 CE

Close student, popularizer and critic of Gurdjieff; Ouspensky explained ways to discover the sense beneath the words (“the actual meaning of the thing itself") with a psychological method he described as "a calibration of the tools of human understanding.” Though not religious, he kept one prayer—to at least not during his lifetime become famous. That prayer was granted but he still had a deep impact on many famous people like T. S. Eliot, Aldous Huxley, and many influential writers, psychologists, and journalists. Championing "the esoteric method,” he evolved a philosophy that expanded beyond the Aristotelian logic of A = A to include a more Taoist/Buddhist understanding that A = A and A = not-A. The Buddhist influence extended to his version of mindfulness practice which he described as “being aware of being aware.” His books and influence helped launch what today is called Secular Buddhism but also many New Age versions of spiritual materialism.

Eras

Quotes by Ouspensky (19 quotes)

“Like the goal of art is the search for beauty, the goal of religion is the search for God and truth.”

Themes: Truth God Art Religion

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“Authentic religion ends stops when it believes it has found truth and ceases the search.”

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

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“It is only when we realize that life is taking us nowhere that it begins to have meaning.”

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“A religion contradicting science and a science contradicting religion are equally false.”

Themes: Religion Science

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“There is no possibility of remembering what has been found and understood… It disappears as a dream disappears. Perhaps it is all nothing but a dream.”

Themes: Forget Dream Memory

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“First of all, what man must know is that he is not one; he is many. He has not one permanent and unchangeable ‘I’ or Ego. He is always different. One moment he is one, another moment he is another, the third moment he is a third, and so on, almost without end.”

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“Desire is when you do what you want, will is when you can do what you do not want.”

Themes: Desire

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“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”

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“In existing criminology there are concepts like a criminal man, a criminal profession, a criminal society, a criminal sect, and a criminal tribe; but there is no concept of a criminal state, or a criminal government, or criminal legislation. Consequently, the biggest crimes actually escape being called crimes.”

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“There is no tyranny more ferocious than the tyranny of morality. Everything is sacrificed to it.”

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“Psychology is sometimes called a new science. This is quite wrong. Psychology is, perhaps, the oldest science, and, unfortunately, in its most essential features a forgotten science.”

Themes: Science

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“All evil is relative. Something what is evil at one level of evolution can be good at an earlier stage because it provides the essential stimulus for development.”

Themes: Evolution Evil

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“One of the worst illusions we have is thinking that negative emotions are produced by circumstances. All negative emotions come from within us, not from an external source.”

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“If you become objective to yourself you can see other people objectively, but not before, because before that it will all be colored by your own views, attitudes, tastes, by what you like and what you dislike”

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“People rarely tell a deliberate lie, in most cases they think they speak the truth. And yet they lie all the time, both when they wish to lie and when they wish to speak the truth, both to themselves and to others. This is why most never understand either themselves or anyone else.”

Themes: Deception Lies

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“At one moment when I say 'I', one part of me is speaking,and at another moment when I say 'I', it is quite another 'I' speaking.”

Themes: Egolessness

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“This system teaches people to believe in absolutely nothing. You must verify everything that you see, hear and feel. Only in that way can you come to something.”

Themes: Doubt Belief

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“Worship in Christian churches almost entirely represents the course of repetition… prayers, hymns, responses, all had their own meaning in this repetition as well as holidays and all religious symbols, though their meaning has been forgotten long ago.”

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