THE PARABLE OF THE HORSE, CARRIAGE AND DRIVER PAPER I

In speaking of the inner state of a mechanical man, G. made many analogies. On some occasions he compared the inner state of a man to a Carriage, Horse and Driverand he emphasized that it was very important for us to think about what these three distinct things in Man mean. The point of the analogy is that these three distinct things are not in right relationship to one another. The Driver is not on the box of the Carriage; the Horse is not properly fed, nor rightly harnessed to the Carriage; and the Carriage itself is in a bad condition. "What," G. asked once, "is the reason of all this? The reason is that the Driver is sitting in the public house spending his money on drink and giving no food to the Horse and no proper care to the Carriage. In order to change this state of affairs," G. said, "it is necessary that the Driver receives a shock, to awaken him."

Now the interpretation of this analogy or parable can be approached from many different sides, some of which have already been explained. To-night I will take up more especially the point that the Driver after realizing his state must eventually climb up on to the box of the Carriage that is, he must rise in his level to reach a place of control. But first we must understand that it is possible to take the rousing of the Driver in many steps. He must be shaken out of his drunken slumber, and then he must stand up, and then move himself out of the sphere of the public house, and then observe the Horse, and then the Carriage, and so on. After attending to the Horse and Carriage he must climb on to the box and finally take hold of the reins and start driving as best he can. As you know, the parable goes on to say that if he does all this a fourth factor may appear on the scenei.e. the Master may be found sitting in the Carriage and giving directions to the Driver as to where he must go. But, it is added, the Master will never seat himself in the Carriage unless the Driver is on the box and has begun to take hold of the reins and has done what he could for both the Horse and the Carriage. This parable is really about the whole object of the Work. The object of the Work is to reach Real 'I' in oneselfthrough the long inner path through oneself, through Self-Remembering and work on oneself. Real 'I' is the Master in the parable. We are taught that as we are we have no Real 'I' and have no inner stability and never know what we really have to do. In our present state first one 'I' takes charge and then another 'I'. Our state is comparable to that represented in the parable of the Tower of Babel. From that parable, apparently we once had inner unity but something went wrong and multiplicity appeared namely, from being one we became many. In general, our Being is defined in the Work as being characterized by multiplicity as distinct from the Being of a Conscious Man. We are a crowd of different 'I's pulling in different directions, all with their own forms of selfwill, and what we rather grandly call our will is nothing but the resultant of all these different wills. So our task is to attain unity, and no single 'I' that we know or can observe at present has the strength to give us this unity and arrange and subordinate all the 'I's into a whole.

We can however form substitutes for Real 'I' which, beginning with Observing 'I', are called in ascending sequence of importance and power Deputy-Steward and Steward. We are fortunate if we have a Deputy- Steward to look after our household affairs and still far more so if we ever attain to that level where we have Steward controlling affairs. But beyond Steward lies Master or Real 'I', the reaching of which is the chief aim of all. You will see in the parable of the Horse, Carriage and Driver that there is no chance of our attaining to the level where Master or Real 'I' exists or of hearing his voice and receiving his instructions as to what we have really to do with our lives unless we first of all waken out of the sleep, out of the stupor that we exist in, which is represented by the Driver sitting in a drunken sleep in the public house. The first task then is to awaken the Driver for unless this has taken place the Horse cannot be attended to, nor the Carriage. The Carriage can be said to represent the body and people may think that they can start only with the body but this is wrongin fact, it may put the Driver into a deeper sleep. What is the method of this Work in regard to the awakening of the Driver and the nature of the shock? If the Driver realizes that he is in a drunken sleep this may be sufficient to make him try to wake up. With what is he drunk? One thing is imagination. We are drunk with imagination. I have heard it said in the Work that at one time humanity on Earth was going forward too quickly in proportion to the rate of development of the Moon and the Earth and had to be held back. The Overseer called the Chief Engineer and explained to him the difficulty. The result was that Man was given imagination. Then from that time everything went on without difficulty. The imaginary began to replace the real. As you know, the Work speaks about Imaginary 'I'. Man believes that he has Real 'I' as he is, just as he imagines he is fully conscious. He believes that he is a real individual, unchanging, permanent, with full will and full consciousness. He has no Real 'I' but his imagination creates Imaginary 'I' in him. He hides from himself his extreme inner weakness by means of imagination. Now if a man realizes that he has no Real 'I', no Real Will, that all he has felt and thought about himself in this respect can simply be called Imaginary 'I', then he is beginning to awaken from the drunken sleep in the public house where he spends his money in imagining. This is one side of the position of Man from the esoteric point of view. We remind ourselves here that the problem of esotericism is always the samenamely, how to awaken Man from his state of sleep and make him realize he is asleep. Esoteric teaching takes Man not only as not yet conscious, but drunken with imagination and wasting his force in falsity and violence. You will then see the necessity for beginning with selfobservationthe observation of one's sleep. All forms of teaching are quite useless unless the Driver awakens. You can see the reason why. A man may be given some teaching while he is drinking in the public house and this teaching will go into his imagination and increase his state of sleep. If he is told that he is an angel in Heaven he will believe that he is and drink more than ever. Certainly this will increase his state of sleep, his state of imagination. Many good people indulge in this form of drink. Unfortunately there are many sorts of teaching that have this effect as their objecti.e. pseudo-teachings that only increase imagination. In the Work, however, we are given nothing to feed our imagination about ourselves but quite the contrary. I have found nothing flattering in this teaching. There is nothing flattering, for example, in being told that we are machines that have no Real 'I', that we are nothing but pictures of ourselves, that what we call 'I' is nothing but imagination,

that we have no Real Will, that we are a mass of contradictions which we do not notice owing to having so many buffers and different forms of padding, that we are not conscious yet, and so on. It is not pleasant to be told that we are mechanical, just machines, and that we do nothing consciously. But teaching of this kind will not tend to prolong our sleep in the public house if we value and apply it to ourselves. When we realize, even to a small degree, that we are mechanical, and that this machine, in which hovers Imaginary 'I', does everythingwe experience a shock. This shock may be nothing more at first than an uneasy feeling that we are not quite what we supposed hitherto. Yet even this feeling is the beginning of awakening and it will increase if nourished because it is truth. All awakening has a sour tastelike going back to school. Now when you begin to awaken from your sleep to a small extent you are beginning to remember yourselfnot your Imaginary 'I', but something deeper, which eventually leads to Real 'I', which is our truth. The power of imagination however is so great that people do not wish to wake up and experience even momentarily the harsh taste that comes with a moment of greater consciousness. They try to drown it, even though their suffering and unhappiness in ordinary life-affairs are very great. You can see people who are plagued by one thing or another, from which they could escape if they woke up, deliberately preferring to be plagued rather than face awakening and standing up and leaving the public house and taking their place eventually on the box of their own carriage. You know that it is said about sacrifice in this Work that, as we are, we have nothing to sacrifice, nothing worth sacrificing, save one thing namely, our negative states, our negative suffering, our depressions and songs of misery. We can only sacrifice what we love. Our pictures of ourselves cause us to ascribe to ourselves much that does not exist, except in imagination. One cannot sacrifice something that exists only in imagination. But we so love our suffering, our sadness, and disappointments, our negative states, that here we have something to sacrifice so that the direction of our love can change. When I first heard this I thought it a very strange viewpoint and one that did not apply to me until I began to observe myself and then I began to see it was true. You notice how people intoxicate themselves with their own suffering and cannot listen to anyone else's and are always dwelling on their suffering, either openly or secretly, commiserating with themselves. This dwelling on suffering is a form of imaginative drunkenness. It is a fascinating form of drunkenness on which the Driver can spend a great deal of money. Do you know your own typical public house song of miseryoften actually sung in an actual public house? In order to awaken, the Driver must begin to think. The ideas of this Work fall on us at first as from a great distance. We hear a voice saying things over and over again. We do not notice much of what is said. We are dreaming of other things or waiting for our little accumulators to fill up again, so that we can run around once more as before. After a time something falls on the ear of the sleeping Driver. He hears something and stirs and perhaps looks up for a moment. "Yes," he thinks, "that is quite true." He has begun to think. If things go well with him his hearing improves and instead of drinking all the time, he sometimes thinks and sometimes merely drinks. He is still in the public house. His Horse is still starving. The harness is in bits and pieces and the Carriage unrepaired and unpainted. But he is not yet aware of all this. His thinking is

not yet strong enough to become emotional and get him on his feet and make him go to the door and look for himself at his inner state. Now I will skip several steps in the parable and come to the idea that the Driver must climb on to the box. To drive he must ascend above the level of the ground. But before this can happen he must say: "I will drive." That is a decision and it is followed by having to go up. Now here is something very strange, because actually he has to go down. He cannot drive from Imaginary 'I', from False Personality, from anything in him that thinks it can do. He will never be able to drive from pride or vanity, but only from what is lowest in him in this respect- from what is most simple and humble and genuine and sincere. So to go up he must go down. When he says: "I will drive", if he thinks he can do it himself and for himself, he will break reins, smash wheels and fall off. This decision "I will drive" must be said with a delicacy of understanding that implies the existence of something else being necessary. For where are you going to drive? You will have to be told and then obey and so you are not the Driver in the imperious sense of the man who imagines he can do and merely does what he pleases. To do in the Work-sense ultimately means to obey the Master who may suddenly appear in the Carriage.

THE PARABLE OF THE HORSE, CARRIAGE AND DRIVER PAPER II

We spoke last time about the parable of the Horse, Carriage and Driver, which is one of the parables of the Work dealing with Man's inner situation. You will remember that the Driver in this parable is sitting in the public house and the Horse and Carriage are outside and both in a bad state. The first thing that must happen is that the Driver must awaken from his drunken sleep and attend to the Horse and the Carriage and eventually climb on to the box and take hold of the reins. Then it is said that he may find the Master sitting in the Carriage behind him directing him in which direction to drive. In our last conversation about this parable I dwelt more especially on the point that the Driver has to climb up to the box and indicated that he cannot drive the Horse and Carriage from the level of the ground. From this level he cannot control anything. At the same time I said that a man might come to the point where he says: "I will drive." This happens when through long observation of himself he begins to see that he must do something with himself and can be no longer carried along in the idea of his mechanical life. But although he makes this decision: "I will drive", yet he is far from the possibility of driving. Further stages are necessary and further experiences with himself. His attention will be drawn to certain sides of himself. In that internal communion with oneself that comes from the growing need of the Work and the growing new knowledge of oneself gained from selfobservation, he will perceive in many ways that he must climb up in himself before he can drivethat is, reach another levelotherwise he is bound to fail continually and probably simply give up trying to do anything with himself in the way of selfchange. In other words, he has to climb up to the level of Self-Remembering because no one can drive his Horse and Carriage unless he has something of that intensity of Consciousness and Self-Awareness that belongs to the Third State of Consciousness

to which the Work points. What is it that the Work says is the most important thing for us to practise? It says that we must become more conscious and, in fact, begin to reach the level of Self-Remembering, Self-Awareness and Self-Consciousness. Some people, not understanding the Work, although in contact with it, see that life goes anyhow, that it is a tragedy, a complete muddle, a veritable Babel. And having got to this point they perhaps become negative, without comprehending that this is exactly what the Work teaches about life. They simply stick, not seeing the Work, but only the chaos of life. The Work teaches that a man must see that everything does happen in life and realize that it is because Man is not properly conscious. The Work constantly emphasizes that life is mechanical and that this is due to Man himself being asleep, not properly conscious. Yes, but the Work adds that the practice of this teaching is to make an individual man more conscious when he has realized all this and it gives him instructions as to how to become more conscious and so reach another level of himself. When a man observes himself over a long period sincerely he becomes startled and through this a little more conscious of himself. If he does this with a continual renewal of the meaning of the ideas taught in this Work he will become still more conscious even though it is painful, and begin to reach a level in himself where he can begin in the right way to control lower sides in himself, smaller 'I's in mechanical parts of centres that have hitherto controlled him. It is this rising up in oneself from mechanical death, which one mistook for life, that is the object of the Work. Ordinarily speaking, we live at a low level of ourselves. For example, we live far too much in small unpleasant 'I's, in dull, stupid, mechanical parts of centres, in silly dreams, and so we too contribute to the general sleep of humanity. Yes, we then help to keep the world-sleep. It is exactly wakening out of the sleep of humanity in which one is sharing that is referred to in the parable of the Driver in the public house asleep in dreams and illusions about himself. For a man to wake up he must begin to cease to have illusions and false imagination, and so here comes in the acute work done from self-observation that separates a man from himself and makes it possible to leave the public house. Let us continue to talk about the stage where the Driver must climb on to the box. Understand that this is not a sharply divided stage, but a gradual process is meant of trial and error. Everything is done by order in the Workby the Law of Seven. For example, he makes a definite aim and keeps on failing. He learns gradually, but in order, that he cannot keep his aim because he goes to sleep continually and this is because he gets down amongst small 'I's that know nothing about his aim or the Work. He does not think enough. I use this word deliberatelyi.e. that he does not think enough. Here thinking is both remembering and thinking. Thinking and remembering interlock. You have to defend your aim by pumping truth into it as you have seen it. You have to call together in your understanding all truths concerning your aimI mean, Work-ideas and insightsotherwise your aim will deviate. It will then only become a vague memory instead of being a constantly renewed source of truth to you. All truths of this Work will fight for you when you have got into a more or less central position in yourself in regard to your aim. But you must continually revisit, re-stimulate yourself in regard to these truths and insights. The Work fights for you only when you engage with it mentally through emotional acknowledgement. I said recently that if the ideas or truths of this Work stood round you and transmitted

their force you would be able to do. Owing to our limited consciousness and our level of mind which only holds one thing at a time, this is not possible. It is possible at a higher level, howeverthat is, light increases as our level is raised. With regard to everything bad and wrong in you which you may have noticed in action as well as in thought, the ideas of this Work, if perceived as true, will fight for you. Only in that way can what is wrong and bad and unnecessary in you be changed. You cannot do it yourself. You go to war. Work-'I's will fight with mechanical 'I's if you go on giving them the force of the ideas of this Work and renewing it always. It is they that fight for you, these Work-'I's, contacting the Work-ideas. For example, when you are negative a Work-idea suddenly comes into your mind, and you find it possible to fight with that negative stateor it simply vanishes. This is an example of the Work fighting in you and for you. That is why valuation of the Work is so important. It is useless to think you can do all this yourself and by yourself. This thing that you call yourself is useless and as often as not it is your worst self, your most mechanical, habitual self, which cannot possibly lead you anywhere and will never withstand any temptation to sleep. Everyone who has felt this Work deeply and over a sufficient length of time has already other selves that can fight. But we try to fight ourselves with ourselvesour habitual selvesand not with our new selves. When we are negative we try to fight our negative state with this thing "ourself". And often we make aims when we are negativethat is, when we are at an even lower level than our ordinary "ourself" is. Now when a man is in a negative state he mechanically thinks lies. The truth of the ideas of the Work does not reach him. But it is this that can fight for you. So when you are negative it is important to try to think the truth, by an effort. A negative state, allowed by inner slackness to persist, drives away the Work and all its possible influence on you. When a man is in a negative state the negative part of his Emotional Centre induces a current of lies that flows through his Intellectual Centre. Negative states are only supported by lies in the Intellectual Centre. You cannot think a lie if you are in a good state. It is usually the same lies that are brought up, if you observe yourself closely. When a negative state in the Emotional Centre induces lies in the Intellectual Centre it means that wrong connections in thought and memory are made, often traceable very far into the past, so that in consequence they have become habits of thinking which have never been challenged by yourself. This is a bad state to be in. People begin to die from such lies. In these lies that are excited by negative states in the Intellectual Centre important things are left out and unimportant things are over-emphasized, or what is pure imagination is mingled with what is real, especially with the aid of pride and vanity and suspicion which have never been corrected, and many other self-injurious distortions are made, due to blaming and to internal account-making in general. All this remains incredible to one, unless one catches oneself through self-observation in the act of enjoying these lies. In this inner tangle many live most of their lives without making any attempt to deal strongly with all this dirt and mess laid down in their psychic life. Now there can be no question of its being possible to climb up on to the box as long as one is full of all this dirt and mess of lies or evasions or distortions of the truth which form a kind of midden within us. You will try to climb up on to the box full of this mess of lies and, since you always feel yourself as the leading person in yourself, you will always feel these habitual lies in yourself which can only be annihilated by a new revelation of yourself coming from the fuller light

of consciousness, belonging to the Third State of Consciousness that is, to SelfAwareness. This is where the light will cure you. The light of consciousness will make it impossible for these habitual lies to cling so closely and to form so large a part of the customary feeling of yourself whereby you have hitherto recognized yourself. So mounting the box is obviously a long process and, as I said, there is an order in it. The question is of course this: "What mounts the box?" If a mass of habitual, ingrained lies mounts the box nothing will happen. You can in no wise say that the Driver has mounted the box, because the Driver must be purified by the Work. When he is about to mount he comes to a definite test. Is he really sufficiently awakened yet? Is he really prepared to drive although perhaps he may have said: "I will drive." He may get up to the box in imagination but in this case he is still asleep and he will fail. Then he may persuade himself that he has done his very best and feel self-pity and give up for the time being. But he has as yet done nothing really. He has not faced himself with himself and with the difficulties in his Being. So the whole thing remains purely imagination. He is making effort in imagination but he is not making real effort. People can take the whole of this Work in their imagination and never make any real effort whatsoever. Now when you make a real effort or a relatively real effort, you never become negative when you fail. This is a sign. Your failure makes you think more and remember more. But when you make an effort in imagination, an imaginary effort, not a real effort, you become negative very quickly and pass into your gallery of self-pity with all its ancestral portraits. Now the outer is like the inner. If you go to a carpenter's shop and pretend to saw a piece of wood you are making an imaginary effort. You may handle lots of tools and make a noise as if you were working but you are really doing nothing and you will get no result. It is exactly the same thing in the inner psychological world. You have got really to make an effort, as far as is in your power, in your psychological world. Take as it were your selfsatisfaction which is the bane of some in this Workthat is, the worst thing in them. No one who is filled with self-satisfaction can possibly do this Work and any idea of their climbing up on to the box is quite out of the question. Why? Because a selfsatisfied man or woman feels that he or she is already on the box. Actually they are still fast asleep in the public house spending all their money in generous forms of imagination about themselves. However, when we begin to realize practically and by direct insight and by mental perception that we are nothing and cannot do, we are very close to being able to get on the box. So one goes down to go up. But no one will ever realize his own nothingnessI mean, genuinely and not theoretically, save through the power of this Work. And for a very good reason. To realize one's own nothingness in a real way without having this Work to hold on to might easily destroy a man or turn him into a mass of negative emotion. But to realize increasingly, and in order of experiences, one's own nothingness has nothing to do with negative emotion. Quite the contrary, it can begin to transmit the Work. Yet one does not climb up to the box simply by realizing one's own nothingness but by a double and paradoxical process in which one has to make effort on the one side and yet know on the other side that one can do nothing without help.