Maurice Nicoll, Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff & Ouspensky

Birdlip, June 19, 1942

NOTE ON PRAYER

RESPONSE AND REQUEST

In the paper that was read last time about the idea of Prayer as given in the Gospels (which is not included in this volume) it was said that the Universe can be taken as response to request. Man requests, and the Universe in all its full and total reality, outer and inner, responds according to the request. In regard to what was said last time, I wish to draw your attention to this fact: many people are getting responses to requests which they do not understand they are making. If the Universe, visible and invisible, material and psychological, gross and fine, as apprehended externally by the senses and internally by the mind and heart, is response to request, then you will see how important it is to realize what kind of requests you are making in order to understand why you get the response, from any side of life, that you are actually getting. The Work says: “Your being attracts your life”. Do you see the connection? Without knowing it, a man or a woman may be making request and so getting a response from the total Universe that he or she does not like. They see the response but do not see what excites the response, what it is in themselves that attracts it. People, in other words, may be asking for trouble without being aware that they are. They only see the result—that is, the response. They see only effects, not causes. To think only from effects is one thing. It is how mechanical people think. To think from causes is another thing. It belongs to more conscious thinking. Now the level of your being enters into request as much or more than your knowledge. You may ask intellectually for happiness but not see how factors that govern your being, as love of your negative states, your grievances, your secret jealousies, your laziness, your dislikes, and so on, are asking for something quite different, and that the Universe is responding to these factors in your being that you are secretly willing and affirming without seeing that you are. Understand that full request must contain both thought and will—formulation and emotional desire. The side of knowledge is the side of thought and a man can only think from his knowledge. The side of being wills, and a man only wills what he desires. If you love negative states, then your will is of this quality. Your love is your will; it will attract the response belonging to it. Only self-knowledge will make you aware of your state of being and this begins with self-observation. Enough has been said here on this subject—namely, that a person may be getting responses he does not expect or desire, without seeing that he is attracting them because he is making requests for them that he is not aware of.

Maurice Nicoll, Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff & Ouspensky