P. D. Ouspensky

Ouspensky — The Fourth Way (1957) [DECLARADA]

Ouspensky — In Search of the Miraculous (1947) [DECLARADA]

Cuarto Camino · Transmisor

«I RETURNED to Russia in November, 1914, that is, at the beginning of the first world war, after a rather long journey through Egypt, Ceylon, and India. The war had found me in Colombo and from there I went back through England» — abre el libro con su propio regreso a Rusia en noviembre de 1914 tras un viaje largo por Egipto, Ceilán y la India.

«When leaving Petersburg at the start of my journey I had said that I was going to “seek the miraculous.” The “miraculous” is very difficult to define. But for me this word had a quite definite meaning. I had come to the conclusion a long time ago that there was no escape from the labyrinth of contradictions in which we live except by an entirely new road, unlike anything hitherto known or used by us. But where this new or forgotten road began I was unable to say. I already knew then as an undoubted fact that beyond the thin film of false reality there existed another reality from which, for some reason, something separated us. The “miraculous” was a penetration into this unknown reality» — declara el objeto con que había salido de Petersburgo y define qué entiende por lo milagroso: una penetración en una realidad desconocida.

«And it seemed to me that the way to the unknown could be found in the East. Why in the East? It was difficult to answer this. In this idea there was, perhaps, something of romance, but it may have been the absolutely real conviction that, in any case, nothing could be found in Europe» — declara por qué buscó en el Oriente, y acota que quizá lo suyo fuera romance o quizá la convicción de que en Europa no había nada.

«When I went away I already knew I was going to look for a school or schools. I had arrived at this long ago. I realized that personal, individual efforts were insufficient and that it was necessary to come into touch with the real and living thought which must be in existence somewhere but with which we had lost contact» — declara que lo que buscaba eran escuelas, y por qué: los esfuerzos personales le parecían insuficientes.

«I want to say that schools lost much of their fairy-tale character» — declara qué cambió en él durante el viaje: la idea de escuela perdió su carácter de cuento de hadas.

«On my departure I still admitted much that was fantastic in relation to schools. “Admitted” is perhaps too strong a word. I should say better that I dreamed about the possibility of a non-physical contact with schools, a contact, so to speak, “on another plane» — consigna lo que él mismo admitía antes de partir: el contacto no físico con escuelas, en otro plano.

«I came to two conclusions in the course of these experiments: first, that we do not know enough about ordinary psychology; we cannot study supernormal psychology, because we do not know normal psychology. Secondly I came to the conclusion that certain real knowledge exists; that there may be schools which know exactly what we want to know, but that for some reason they are hidden and this knowledge is hidden» — enuncia en la primera conferencia las dos conclusiones a que dice haber llegado por sus experimentos: que no se sabe bastante de psicología ordinaria y que existe un conocimiento real escondido en escuelas.

«So I began to look for these schools. I travelled in Europe, Egypt, India, Ceylon, Turkey and the Near East; but it was really later, when I had already finished these travels, that I met in Russia during the war a group of people who were studying a certain system which came originally from Eastern schools. This system began with the study of psychology, exactly as I had realized it must begin» — cuenta el viaje y el encuentro en Rusia, durante la guerra, con un grupo que estudiaba un sistema venido de escuelas orientales.

«The chief idea of this system was that we do not use even a small part of our powers and our forces. We have in us, so to speak, a very big and very fine organization, only we do not know how to use it. In this group they employed certain oriental metaphors, and they told me that we have in us a large house full of beautiful furniture, with a library and many other rooms, but we live in the basement and the kitchen and cannot get out of them. If people tell us about what this house has upstairs we do not believe them, or we laugh at them, or we call it superstition or fairy tales or fables» — resume la idea central del sistema con la metáfora oriental de la casa grande en la que se vive en el sótano y la cocina.

«But from the point of view of this system there is no such evolution at all—I do not speak in general, but specifically of man. The evolution of man, if it occurs, can only be the result of knowledge and effort» — acota qué entiende el sistema por evolución del hombre: no hay evolución mecánica, y la que hay es resultado de conocimiento y esfuerzo.

«The professors’, he wrote, ‘were killing science in the same way as priests were killing religion» — sus palabras sobre la academia, en el tramo que Jacob Needleman entrecomilla en el Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism.

«I realized’, he wrote, ‘that I had met with a completely new system of thought, surpassing all I knew before» — sus palabras sobre el primer encuentro con Gurdjieff, en el tramo que Needleman entrecomilla.

«Ouspensky [Uspenskii], Piotr Dem ’ianovich, * 5.3.1878 Moscow, tT 2.10.1947 London» — la cabecera de la entrada del Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism, firmada por Jacob Needleman, da el nacimiento en Moscú el 5 de marzo de 1878 y la muerte en Londres el 2 de octubre de 1947; la capa de texto rinde con una te el signo de defunción.

«Russian author, spiritual philosopher and teacher who is now remembered chiefly for his deeply influential book, In Search of the Miraculous: the most authentic account, written by a pupil, of the teaching of > G.I. Gurdjieff» — Needleman lo define autor, filósofo espiritual y maestro ruso, y dice por qué se lo recuerda: por En busca de lo milagroso, que llama el relato más auténtico de la enseñanza de Gurdjieff escrito por un discípulo.

«His father, who died when Ouspensky was quite young, was a railroad surveyor and also a mathematician interested in the problems of the fourth dimension, a theme that became one of the central elements of Ouspensky’s philosophical and spiritual work» — Needleman hace venir del padre, agrimensor de ferrocarriles y matemático interesado en la cuarta dimensión, uno de los elementos centrales de su obra.

«Distrusting all forms of academic science, Ouspensky broke away early from formal scholastic training with a firm decision never to pass any examinations and never to take the academic degrees for which he was qualified» — Needleman le adjudica la ruptura temprana con la formación académica y la decisión firme de no presentar nunca un examen.

«At the age of 29, he discovered the literature of the > Theosophical Society (> H.P. Blavatsky, > HLS. Olcott, > A. Besant. etc.) and was profoundly influenced by the idea of secret wisdom, which gave him a new impulse for the study of religion, > mysticism and “higher dimensions» — Needleman data a los veintinueve años su descubrimiento de la literatura de la Sociedad Teosófica y le adjudica el impulso que de ahí sacó.

«Throughout his life, Ouspensky remained scientific and empirical about the inner world and could not rest content with speculative metaphysics alone» — Needleman le adjudica haberse mantenido científico y empírico sobre el mundo interior toda su vida.

«Tertium Organum became an international best-seller and established Ouspensky’s worldwide reputation as a pre-eminent visionary philosopher» — Needleman hace de Tertium Organum el libro que le dio reputación mundial como filósofo visionario.

«Ouspensky’s first meeting with Gurdjieff took place in St. Petersburg in 1915. He had recently returned from the Orient and was attracting large audiences to his lectures about his “search for the miraculous” in India, Ceylon, Egypt and elsewhere (among his listeners was Sophia Grigorievna Maximenko, who became his wife and, later, also one of the leading figures in the transmission of the Gurdjieff teaching in England and America.). At the urging of some pupils of Gurdjieff who had sought him out at his lectures, he reluctantly agreed to meet Gurdjieff» — Needleman data en San Petersburgo en 1915 el primer encuentro con Gurdjieff y lo dice de mala gana concertado.

«Although he had no doubts about the truth of Gurdjieff’s ideas, Ouspensky separated himself from him and continued his own work first in Constantinople and then settled in London where, with the help of Lady Rothermere, A.R. Orage and other influential individuals, he lectured and guided the work of numerous pupils until he moved to America during the Second World War» — Needleman consigna que la separación no vino de una duda sobre las ideas, y traza la continuación por su cuenta en Constantinopla y Londres.

«Concerning his break with Gurdjieff, Ouspensky writes only that at a certain point he ‘ceased to understand him» — Needleman consigna lo único que él escribió sobre la ruptura: que en cierto punto dejó de entenderlo.

«The break between the two men, teacher and pupil, each of whom had received much from the other, has the elements of a classical tragedy and has never been satisfactorily explained. It was not made final until 1930 when Ouspensky visited Gurdjieff for the last time in Paris» — John Pentland, discípulo suyo y después de Gurdjieff, caracteriza la ruptura como tragedia clásica nunca explicada satisfactoriamente, en el tramo que Needleman cita.

«No one need suppose here that Ouspensky was particularly susceptible to authority figures or easily overawed. On the contrary he himself was formidable. With receding hair cropped short and a square Teutonic skull jam-packed into a powerful neckless torso, he might have been an understudy for Erich von Stroheim. Beneath militant black eyebrows, rimless pince-nez amplified a gaze which was almost alarming in its blue intensity; his chin and heavy jawline conveyed an obstinate determination» — James Moore lo describe físicamente y advierte que no era hombre fácil de intimidar; el retrato es suyo y así va dicho.

«The totemic figure of Ouspensky, although still on the horizon’s rim (and now apparently travelling in the wrong direction), is essentially moving with the assurance of a sleepwalker towards his singular destiny as the supreme apologist of Gurdjieff’s ideas — not exactly St Peter (he will deny his master once too often for that) but St Paul the Apostle» — Moore le adjudica el papel de apologista supremo de las ideas de Gurdjieff y lo compara con san Pablo, no con san Pedro.

«in the masterly translations by P. D. Ouspensky, a pupil he taught in Russian, Gurdjieff is seen to command a clear, grammatical, and even sophisticated prose» — Moore le atribuye traducciones magistrales, en las que Gurdjieff aparece con una prosa clara, gramatical y hasta sofisticada.

«Ouspensky had resourcefully survived the Bolshevik occupation in the guise of ‘Essentuki Soviet Librarian’, and was now teaching Gurdjieff’s ideas to groups of his own» — Moore lo sitúa sobreviviendo a la ocupación bolchevique bajo el disfraz de bibliotecario del sóviet de Essentuki y ya enseñando por su cuenta.

«Pyotr Demianovich Ouspensky (1878-1947) Ouspensky was born in Moscow. When he met Gurdjieff in 1915 he was already the succ essful author of Tertium Orgamtm (1912) and a lecturer whose Theosophical interests and inner quest had led him to travels in India. He was a member, with his wife, of the earliest core group of pupils to whom Gurdjieff taught cosmological theory. Ouspensky began the process of separation from Gurdjieff in 1917 in Essentuki. He left Gurdjieff and began to teach in London in 1921; A.R. Orage was among his f» — Sophia Wellbeloved lo asienta en su lista de discípulos tempranos, data el encuentro de 1915 y la separación iniciada en Essentuki en 1917, y fija en 1921 el comienzo de su enseñanza en Londres; el verbatim se corta donde el troceo parte la palabra.

«Overall, the reader of Ouspensky's writings must question his own ability to understand what he reads because, first, if he accepts Gurdjieff’s premise that man is asleep, then he himself is asleep and incapable of judging, and, second, at ever)' step of the way described, a man may lose his way, may not find the help of a teacher and school, may fall into the hands of a wrong school, or may already be so damaged that his machine cannot be repaired» — Wellbeloved enuncia la dificultad que le adjudica al lector de sus escritos: si acepta la premisa de que el hombre duerme, él mismo duerme y es incapaz de juzgar.

«This contention was of secondary importance to Piotr Demianovich Ouspensky (I 878-I947), a Russian journalist with some scientific training, who found in the fourth dimension a new religion for humankind» — Ioan Couliano lo llama periodista ruso con alguna formación científica que halló en la cuarta dimensión una religión nueva para la humanidad.

«In two books (The Fourth Dimension, 1909, and Tertium Ornanum, 1912) he tried to interpret visions and ecstasies reported by mystics in terms of direct experiences of the four-th dimension, thereby continuing and developing Hinton's view that the fourth dimension is the source of all spirituality» — Couliano data sus dos libros sobre la cuarta dimensión y le adjudica continuar y desarrollar la tesis de Hinton.

«Gurdjieff had read Ouspensky's work about the fourth dimension, and he perceptively described the books as definitely wiser than their author» — Couliano recoge el juicio que atribuye a Gurdjieff sobre sus libros: más sabios que su autor.

«One is the man he calls ‘I’ and whom others call ‘Ouspensky,’ ‘Zakharov’ or ‘Petrov.’ The other is the real he, the real I, which appears in his life only for very short moments and which can become firm and permanent only after a very lengthy period of work» — Gurdjieff usa su apellido como nombre de ejemplo de la personalidad falsa, en el tramo que el propio Ouspensky transcribe: lo que otros llaman Ouspensky no es el yo real.