P. D. Ouspensky
and the Bodhisattva question
Peter Demianovich Ouspensky was born in Moscow on 5th March, 1878. His mother was an artist, and his father, an officer in the Russian Survey Service, had a keen interest in mathematics. Ouspensky’s own interest in higher mathematics may have been drawn from his background.
Ouspensky seems to have been mischievous as a youth. It is recorded that he was expelled from school for painting graffiti on a wall. He was clearly bright, and went on to study at Moscow University, where he attended as a ‘free listener’, which meant he could attend lectures but had no right to pass exams. It seems to have done his career little harm, and he worked his way up to the editorial offices of the Moscow daily newspaper The Morning.
Beyond a good intellect and the ability to write, there is little to distinguish Ouspensky in his early years. By the time he was in his late twenties however, his interest in philosophy and higher mathematics led him to publish his first book, The Fourth Dimension (1909). The book dealt with the nature of time, and drew on the work of the British mathematician Charles Hinton, as well as his own interest in esotericism.
His interest in esotericism, or hidden knowledge, led him to travel widely – to England, France, Italy, Egypt, Turkey, Sri Lanka, and India – and he had intended to travel further but his plans were interrupted by the First World War. Then, on returning to Russia in 1915, he came across a small group of people gathered around the enigmatic teacher George Gurdjieff.
Gurdjieff had himself travelled extensively in search of esoteric knowledge, and had returned to Russia with what Ouspensky described as a teaching that had been ‘entrusted to him by others’. Ouspensky records that Gurdjieff probably got it from a Sufi school in Kashgar in Chinese Turkestan, but its exact source is unknown.
After three years’ study with Gurdjieff, Ouspensky parted company with him, citing his disagreement with Gurdjieff’s intention to take the work in a more religious direction. In the book In Search of the Miraculous he records:
‘I perceived that G. was leading us in fact towards the way of religion, of the monastery, and required the observance of all religious forms and ceremonies, there would be of course a motive for disagreeing with this and for going away, even though at the risk of losing direct leadership. And certainly this would not, at the same time, mean that I considered the religious way a wrong way in general. It may even be a more correct way than my way but it is not my way.’
The way Ouspensky was referring to was the Fourth Way, as distinct from the other ways – the way of the Fakir, the Monk, and the Yogi. He explained the Fourth Way was not a combination of the existing ways:
‘It is different from others first of all in that there is no external giving up of things, for all the work is inner. A man must begin work in the same conditions in which he finds himself when he meets it, because these conditions are the best for him.’
Gurdjieff had given Ouspensky the specific task of putting the teaching into a coherent whole, later known as ‘The System’. Owing to his relationship to Gurdjieff, many have regarded Ouspensky as merely an interpreter of his work, but he was clearly more than that. The idea of the ‘psychological method’, for example, came from him. He first used the term in Tertium Organum (1912), prior to meeting Gurdjieff:
‘In order to obtain at least some kind of an answer to the questions which torment us we must turn in quite another direction – to the psychological method of study of man and humanity.’
He employed the term again in his second book, A New Model of the Universe:
‘We can see different levels of thought in ordinary life. The most ordinary mind, let us call it the logical mind, is sufficient for all the simple problems of life.
‘But a logical mind which knows its limitedness and is strong enough to withstand the temptation to venture into problems beyond its powers and capacities becomes a psychological mind. The method used by this mind, that is, the psychological method, is first of all a method of distinguishing between different levels of thinking and of realising the fact that perceptions change according to the powers and properties of the perceiving apparatus.’
The type of perceptual change Ouspensky was referring to is more than simply a change of outlook, but something more akin to the change of perception called ‘satori’ in Zen Buddhism, which is a sudden insight into the nature of reality. In Buddhist teachings it is made clear that satori cannot be manufactured, nor logically arrived at, and that the whole of its teaching is merely the preparation for it. It could be said that the purpose of the psychological method is to provoke insight.
It is recorded that Bodhidharma called his four closest disciples to his deathbed and asked, ‘What is the dharma?’ Each answered in turn. At last his successor Huike stepped forward and bowed silently, or in some accounts, answered ‘There is no dharma’. ‘You are the marrow in my bones,’ said Bodhidharma. For those who do not understand the psychological method, Huike’s answer might seem to be a negation of the teaching.
One of the distinguishing features of the System is that it is rendered in modern, technical terms. While some of the terms employed by Gurdjieff – Hasnamuss, for example – are drawn from Eastern origin, System terms are expressed in the secular language of the West. For example, the System refers to three forces – active, passive, and neutralising – at work in all activity, inner and outer. Ouspensky made it clear this was the same as the Gunas of Hinduism, but stripped of the clutter attached to it over centuries:
‘We can find the teaching about three forces or three gunas in Sankhya philosophy, but in the existing literature it has seriously deteriorated, for they speak of each guna or force as remaining always the same, whereas from the point of view of the system, as I said, the activity, passivity or neutralizing power of each force appears only in relation to the two other forces.’
The employment of secular terminology is very much a part of the psychological method. The aim is not to impose a dogma, but to provoke the individual to question what is presented to find the hidden – or esoteric – meaning behind the terms used. This demands, not just effort, but a degree of insight.
An example of this can be found in the use of the terms Man numbers 1, 2, and 3 to describe different kinds of people. In the East, more colourful terms are used – hell beings, hungry ghosts, and animals – but these are drawn from a time and culture when the psychological element of the teaching was taken for granted. In present day Western culture, the psychological meaning can be obscured by a moral element which is not conducive to insight; the aim is not to judge, but to see. The use of numbers makes it possible to suggest more than is stated. Ouspensky tells us that Man number 4 is the product of school work, and further:
‘Next comes man No. 5 who has already developed in himself the third state of consciousness, that is, self-consciousness, and in whom the higher emotional function works. Next is man No. 6 and finally man No. 7, who has full objective consciousness and in whom the higher intellectual function works.’
In the language of the East, Man number 5 would be a Saint, Man number 6 would be a Bodhisattva, and Man number 7 would be a Buddha. The difference between a Bodhisattva and a Buddha is not generally understood in the West. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy puts it succinctly:
‘A practitioner who is on the way to becoming a Buddha is known in Sanskrit as a Bodhisattva.’
In Buddhist culture, A Bodhisattva is a being who has achieved enlightenment, but forfeits Nirvana to incarnate again and again to assist others, until they finally incarnate as a Buddha, never having to incarnate again. The last Buddha was Gautama, who lived in about the 6th century BC. His successor was the Bodhisattva known as Bodhidharma, the founder of Zen, who lived a thousand years later, in the 6th century AD.
Attempts have been made to trace other incarnations of the Bodhisattva. Some hold the view that Jesus Ben Pandira (not to be confused with Jesus of Nazareth), who lived in the 1st century BC and founded the Essenes, was a Bodhisattva. Few fragmentary records exist, making a definitive judgement difficult. Others believe that Mani (3rd century AD), the founder of Manichaeism, was a Bodhisattva. There are references in the Manichean text The Acta Archelai to him addressed as a Buddha. Another source, a fragment of text known as the Shabuhragan, said to be written by Mani himself, states that the King of Turan declared to him ‘You are a Buddha’. And a Manichean scroll found in Dunhuang in China bears the title A Compendium of the Doctrines and Styles of the Teaching of Mani, the Buddha of Light.
D. T. Suzuki, the Japanese writer and practitioner of Zen, was of the view that the 14th century German monk, Meister Eckhart, was an incarnation of the Bodhisattva. Suzuki was highly familiar with the Buddhist tradition – he translated the Lankavatara Sutra from the original Sanskrit – and wrote Mysticism Christian and Buddhist to lay out the case for Eckhart (and others) as incarnations of the Bodhisattva:
‘For Eckhart’s thoughts come most closely to those of Zen and Shin. Zen and Shin superficially differ: one is known as Jiriki, the ‘self-power’ school, while the other is Tariki, the ‘other-power’ school. But there is something common to both, which will be felt by the reader.’
Suzuki even suggested that the Bodhisattva might have been alive in the twentieth century:
‘But who can tell if Eckhart is not watching me writing this in the most modern and most mechanized city of New York?’
It cannot be definitively stated that Ouspensky was an incarnation of the Bodhisattva; such judgements are best left to time. What is needed is a better understanding of the psychological method to put Ouspensky and his teaching into perspective. As Huike put it:
‘At first, we see a precious stone and call it a rock;
Then we suddenly realize that it is a genuine jewel.’
It is likely Ouspensky knew more than he wrote or said. He didn’t make any special claim regarding his own level of development, and so all judgments about him must be drawn from inferences found in his writings. In the following passage, for example, it is clear he is speaking first hand:
‘When you find yourself in a state approaching higher emotional centre, you will be astounded how much you can understand at once – and then you come back to your normal state and you forget it all.’
Ouspensky’s genius was not fully recognised in his lifetime. Those who came closest often did so by inference rather than directly. The artist and writer Rom Landau, who attended Ouspensky’s study groups in Kensington, London, recorded his impressions in the book God is my Adventure (1935). Landau writes that Ouspensky entered the room and sat before the assembled group:
‘One of the speaker’s first sentences was: ‘None of you here is awake. What you all do is sleep.’ After he had made this remark he stopped abruptly, as though withdrawing from the world of words into his own more comfortable world. His appearance suddenly suggested to me some modern version of Buddha.’