This Q & A board posts questions asked by visitors
of this website (anonymously), answered by the Foundation. You can
e-mail your question to Dorine.
Question
1:
Just before his death in 1947, Ouspensky asked Dr. Roles 'to find
the source'. After many years, Dr. Roles found the Shankaracharya
of the North (one of the heads of the Advaita Vedanta tradition
in India). Didn't Ouspensky actually mean to say: 'find the source
in yourself?' How does the Ouspensky Foundation interpret Ouspensky's
last wish?
Answer:
In Dr. Roles' book A Lasting Freedom, there
is a formulation of Ouspensky's instruction: "If we could only
remember ourselves when we need to, life would be entirely different."
Dr. Roles continues: "Ouspensky maintained that
there must have been some simple method for doing this, if it
were so important in human life; but although he had looked for
it in many parts of the world including India, he had never found
it; so some of his younger followers would have to find it; and
if they did, they would also find men who had a very wide knowledge
and a very fine being to guide them after death."
In Yale's biography of Ouspensky, we find the following
quotation: Ouspensky: "The aim of a school may be to find another
school. Try to think that I may go away and the work, as it is
now, may disappear. Do not take it as a permanent institution.
" In The Fourth Way, we find the following:
Q: "Is meditation as advocated in Indian books, the same as remembering
yourself?"
A: "They speak of meditation, but also say that one must work
under a teacher. If you can remember yourself, you can meditate;
if not, you cannot."
These answers really speak for themselves. I think
that Ouspensky had an idea that one had to go on looking for schools,
and also that one shouldn't rush to the decision that one had
found one! But the essential message was to find the source in
yourself. I can well imagine that Dr. Roles thought he had hit
the target when he came into contact with the Maharishi and his
meditation technique, but at that time the West had not yet been
flooded by the Sai Babas of this age! Maharishi made use of a
hole in the market, but by now his method has been shown as not
as authentic as he claims, and that there are a number of dubious
sides to it. So to have found a guru, even a very honest one like
Shantananda Saraswati, the Shankaracharya of Jyotirmath, does
not mean that one has thus found a school. If you look for the
source only outside yourself, you will be deceived, and if you
look for the source only within, you will get frustrated, because
then you cannot test what you know. It seems to me that a combination
of these two is the best way.
The Ouspensky Foundation makes use of outside sources, keeps contact
with a number of groups, movement groups of Wim van Dullemen in
Holland, Kate and Tinky Brass in England, with Tony Blake (a follower
of J.G. Bennett), with a group in Oslo and even has connections
with India, through the Shankaracharya of Sringeri, without binding
itself to any one of these sources. At the same time, the Ouspensky
Foundation actively helps to develop the inner being through movements,
exercises, group meetings, workshops and seminars. For more information
about this, please refer to our activity file on the Website.
