Talks With a Devil

Introduced and edited by J. G. Bennett. Translated by Katya Petroff. The two unrelated stories in this book, "The Inventor" and "The Benevolent Devil," were written just before Ouspensky met Gurdjieff and just after he had returned from the East, "in search of the miraculous." They examine the whole question of conscious evil and the view that humanity's chief error is believing that the material world is the only reality. The Inventor is an allegorical story about a man faced with the consequences of modern science and technology. Ouspensky insisted that evil is seldom performed with conscious intent, but most often the result of our hypnotically conditioned state of sleep, automatic actions and responses, and the absence of intention, for which we are indirectly responsible because it is actually in our power to awaken. This theme runs throughout the story as the inventor seems to do harm particularly when he intends to do good, and cannot bring himself to accept the disastrous consequences of his own works of genius. In The Benevolent Devil, a young English civil servant living in Ceylon determines to do battle for his soul. He must confront the devil, who seeks to prevent him from waking from his imprisonment in materiality only because he will not face and accept the truth that reality is not of this world. The suggestion that runs through both stories - that devils are interested in us only when we make a real effort to escape - represents a viewpoint to which Ouspensky often returned. He felt that only a few people are able to recognize that the price of doing the right thing is inevitably to expose oneself to opposition and even to the threat of destruction. Ouspensky intuitively knew that some people see reality while the majority see only appearances, a realization even more relevant today than when he wrote these stories over eighty years ago. He felt that if enough people can see and accept the challenge to awaken, we can change the world. Size: 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. 176 pages. No Dust Jacket as published. Black titles spine. Quantity Available: 1. Shipped Weight: Under 500 grams. Category: Philosophy; Fiction; Esoteric; Magic, Paranormal & Occult; Religion & Theology. ISBN: 1578631645. ISBN/EAN: 9781578631643. Inventory No: 4898.…