dr. Maurice Nicoll Psychological commentaries vol.4 page 1237-8-9

Now understand we are born as self-developing organisms as an
experiment from the laboratory of the Sun. The Work says that if
this recent experiment is a failure, Man will be swept away, made very
small, like ants or bees, and another experiment in a self-developing
organism made on Earth. In this connection—this deep source of
negative emotion—there is the usual remark: “If there is a God, why
does he let things happen like war, etc. ?” What is the Work-answer?
The Work-answer is that Man’s level of being attracts his life. Wars,
cruelty, horrors, occur because Man is at the level of being that attracts
such things.

Now listen carefully. It is Man and his level of being that is the
cause of all such things and as long as Man does not try to awaken
and develop himself, such things will continue inevitably. I mean, Man
will attract them. We are made as self-developing organisms—that is,
we can work on ourselves and we can change our being—individually. If we
all changed, wars would cease. Study your being. You will find that
it is governed by negative emotions in the long run. As long as that is
the case, you cannot receive help from a higher level—that is, from
Higher Centres. If we are created as self-developing organisms and
make no attempt to use this freedom, why blame “God” for not interfering?

How could you be a self-developing organism if all the time
you were interfered with?

Do you see, therefore, that in the purification
of the Emotional Centre, which is necessary for contact with Higher
Centres—which represent in us the Conscious Circle of Humanity and
seek continually to help us, if we could only listen—we must get a right
form of thinking, a right mental idea, and so a right attitude as to
why things are as they are on this Earth. Gurdjieff, when once asked
if wars could be stopped, said: “Yes. But Man must change himself
so that certain vibrations do not make him violent. Wars are not
caused by Man. The sources are extra-terrestrial—such as two planets
crossing each other and causing a tension, a certain vibration. Mechanical mankind translates this vibration into violent emotions and
so war results. If Man became more conscious, he might, instead,
receive energy in the form of increased consciousness from these
vibrations.”
Now, to return briefly to the title of this note—namely, “Negative
and Positive Emotions”. All positive emotions come from Higher
Centres—and that is why we have to work on negative emotions.
Their quality is such that they have no opposites in them. That is,
they are Third Force, or, as the Gospels say, “Holy Spirit”. They are
“Yes and No”—not “Yes or No”. No one can create, call forth, make,
a positive emotion. So Mr. Ouspensky said: “Positive emotions come
as rewards.” That is, if you have privately, solitarily, and in the
loneliness not of your negative self but your own spirit, decided, made
a decision, to work on you yourself as regards some source of negative
emotion—if you, all alone, in this solitary place in yourself, full of the
integrity of your most Real I, have decided, made a decision, not to
identify or feed a particular negative emotion—-if, in short, you have
shut the door and entered into yourself (as it is said in Matthew:
“enter into thine inner chamber, and having shut thy door, pray to
thy Father, which is in secret”) then, “your Father, which seeth in
secret, will reward you” (Matt. vi.6). What is the reward? You will
taste positive emotion for a brief moment—something blessed—that is,
filled with such bliss that nothing of human love-hate emotions can be
compared with it. What we regard as positive emotions, feeling fine,
feeling fit, and on top of the world, self-admiration, etc., can turn in a
moment into negative emotion. Such emotions, such pleasant emotions,
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are not positive emotions; these never change into their opposites but
visit us and then withdraw.
But unless we work—really value this work on negative states,
struggle not to believe them, clear the Augaean Stables of the dung of
negative states, erect the God in ourselves, the individual spirit, to
fight as Hercules, who cleaned the Stables with the River of Truth,
then indeed we are cut off from all inner help and all the deep background that Higher Centres can begin to give, once we build up and
make the intermediary receptive instrument. False Personality will
prevent this. All humanity could be helped—if they made this receptive intermediary apparatus in their minds and hearts. Yes—but this
would, amongst other things, make False Personality and all its spurious
values so passive, so weak, that its influence would be negligible. Let
me remind you that when my wife and I went to Gurdjieff’s Institute
in France we were told: “Personality here has scarcely any right to
exist.” Well, reflect on all this for yourselves.
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