A Generation of Still-Breeding Thoughts

A Generation of Still-Breeding Thoughts

In the system of the Fourth Way, P.D. Ouspensky explains that the main function of the Intellectual Center is to form thoughts and process information. Through words, reasoning, and understanding, this center can help make decisions, analyze disparate ideas, and explore logical and theoretical knowledge. In the Work, this knowledge gathers and becomes practical through verification and experience. Together with self-remembering, these verifications increase a person’s level of Being. In other words, a person begins to evolve and live more moments in higher states of consciousness.

You cannot intellectualize the miraculous. ─ The Teacher

To delve into the function of the Intellectual Center, I want to share the genius of Shakespeare’s words, which illustrate the multiple levels of thought that a human is capable of. At the end of the play, Richard II (Act 5, Scene 5, The Prison Speech), Shakespeare animates and “populates” a world through the creative imagination of King Richard II. He puts thoughts and words into the mouth of King Richard, who in this scene is sitting isolated in the empty, stark surroundings of his prison cell having been recently deposed and imprisoned.

Below I have provided the script of this scene and a link to watch a brilliant performance of it by the actor, Mark Rylance. . Please do not shy away from reading and watching this scene because you may have doubts about understanding Shakespeare. I hope you will take the time to watch this spectacular performance because seeing gestures from the Moving Center and expression of the text from Mark Rylance (rather than just reading it with the Intellectual Center), greatly aids my understanding of these archaic words. Also, I have found that reading the script multiple times very slowly, aloud, without fretting about understanding every detail, helps me begin to internalize and feel the words “marinate” into deeper and richer flavors.

The brain is actually brainless without presence. We use it to be in the intellectual parts of centers. ─ The Teacher

For many people – including me – it is quite an effort to understand Shakespeare and unravel the meaning of the language of Elizabethan England. It is partially an effort that begins in the intellectual part of the Intellectual Center – the King of Diamonds – which is a part of the machine rarely used. The King of Diamonds unites with perceptions coming from the intellectual part of the Emotional Center – the King of Hearts – and these two kings – “My brain … the female to my soul” and “My soul the father” help King Richard to see that he can no longer control and command the outer world, but no one can take his inner world away from him. As I allow Shakespeare’s verse to wash over me and read the script multiple times, a new level of understanding and higher states emerge. Shakespeare, who is a Conscious Being according to the Teacher, can transport me into experiencing moments of Higher Centers through the use of the Intellectual Center. This excerpt comes to us through Shakespeare’s higher mind.

Thinking—the talking of the soul with itself. ─ Plato

When I access and receive reality from a higher state, I am more able to understand one of the more puzzling statements that King Richard speaks. I consider it the main thesis of Richard’s study as he populates or creates his inner, psychological world: “But whate’er I be, / Nor I nor any man that but man is / With nothing shall be pleased till he be eased / With being nothing.” If I were to translate this into modern English, I might articulate it this way, “Whoever I am, or whoever anyone is that has been reduced to having nothing, will not find pleasure or contentment until coming to the realization that happiness is not external possessions or achievements, but a state of presence – of “no-thing-ness” – that cannot be removed by anyone.

Richard, alone in his prison cell.

[Mark Rylance.  https://youtu.be/YmR74FSfZjg ]

RICHARD

I have been studying how I may compare

This prison where I live unto the world,

And for because the world is populous

And here is not a creature but myself,

I cannot do it. Yet I’ll hammer it out.

My brain I’ll prove the female to my soul,

My soul the father, and these two beget

A generation of still-breeding thoughts,

And these same thoughts people this little world,

In humors like the people of this world,

For no thought is contented. The better sort,

As thoughts of things divine, are intermixed

With scruples, and do set the word itself

Against the word, as thus: “Come, little ones,”

And then again,

“It is as hard to come as for a camel

To thread the postern of a small needle’s eye.”

Thoughts tending to ambition, they do plot

Unlikely wonders: how these vain weak nails

May tear a passage through the flinty ribs

Of this hard world, my ragged prison walls,

And, for they cannot, die in their own pride.

Thoughts tending to content flatter themselves

That they are not the first of fortune’s slaves,

Nor shall not be the last—like silly beggars

Who, sitting in the stocks, refuge their shame

That many have and others must sit there,

And in this thought they find a kind of ease,

Bearing their own misfortunes on the back

Of such as have before endured the like.

Thus play I in one person many people,

And none contented. Sometimes am I king.

Then treasons make me wish myself a beggar,

And so I am; then crushing penury

Persuades me I was better when a king.

Then am I kinged again, and by and by

Think that I am unkinged by Bolingbroke,

And straight am nothing. But whate’er I be,

Nor I nor any man that but man is

With nothing shall be pleased till he be eased

With being nothing. (The music plays.) Music do I

hear?

Ha, ha, keep time! How sour sweet music is

When time is broke and no proportion kept.

So is it in the music of men’s lives.

And here have I the daintiness of ear

To check time broke in a disordered string;

But for the concord of my state and time

Had not an ear to hear my true time broke.

I wasted time, and now doth time waste me;

For now hath time made me his numb’ring clock.

My thoughts are minutes, and with sighs they jar

Their watches on unto mine eyes, the outward watch,

Whereto my finger, like a dial’s point,

Is pointing still in cleansing them from tears.

Now, sir, the sound that tells what hour it is

Are clamorous groans which strike upon my heart,

Which is the bell. So sighs and tears and groans

Show minutes, times, and hours. But my time

Runs posting on in Bolingbroke’s proud joy,

While I stand fooling here, his jack of the clock.

This music mads me. Let it sound no more,

For though it have holp madmen to their wits,

In me it seems it will make wise men mad.

Yet blessing on his heart that gives it me,

For ’tis a sign of love, and love to Richard

Is a strange brooch in this all-hating world.

You can make something out of anything if you are thinking right. Conscious thinking is being present breath to breath. ─ The Teacher

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Queen Elizabeth I, The Pelican Portrait, attributed to Nicholas Hilliard