3 P. L. Travers Quotes on Spirituality

P. L. Travers quotes on spirituality

1. It is clear from Gurdjieff's writings that hypnotism, mesmerism and various arcane methods of expanding consciousness must have played a large part in the studies of the Seekers of Truth. None of these processes, however, is to be thought of as having any bearing on what is called Black Magic, which, according to Gurdjieff, 'has always one definite characteristic. It is the tendency to use people for some, even the best of aims, without their knowledge and understanding, either by producing in them faith and infatuation or by acting upon them through fear. There is, in fact, neither red, green nor yellow magic. There is 'doing.' Only 'doing' is magic.' Properly to realise the scale of what Gurdjieff meant by magic, one has to remember his continually repeated aphorism, 'Only he who can be can do,' and its corollary that, lacking this fundamental verb, nothing is 'done,' things simply 'happen.'

16. 'Bird and beast and stone and star - we are all one, all one -' murmured the Hamadryad, softly folding his hood about him as he himself swayed between the children. 'Child and serpent, star and stone - all one.'

28. In an interview which appeared in The Paris Review in 1982 the interviewers asked Travers whether 'Mary Poppins' teaching - if one can call it that - resemble that of Christ in his parables'. Travers replied: 'My Zen master, because I've studied Zen for a long time, told me that every one (and all the stories weren't written then) of the Mary Poppins stories is in essence a Zen story. And someone else, who is a bit of a Don Juan, told me that every one of the stories is a moment of tremendous sexual passion, because it begins with such tension and then it is reconciled and resolved in a way that is gloriously sensual'. The answer is clarified by the following question: 'So people can read anything and everything into the stories?'. 'Indeed'