Success

So Called Success:

"In seeming contrast to the descending or unsuccessful type, but in reality in exactly the same position, are people who are successful from the ordinary point of view, but successful through adaptation to the darkest or most senseless sides of life: people who quickly amass enormous fortunes, millionaires and super-millionaires; successful statesmen of opportunist or definitely criminal activities; " scientists " who create bogus theories, which become fashionable and arrest the development of true knowledge; " philanthropists " who support all forms of prohibitive legislation; inventors of high explosives and poisonous gases; sport-addicts of every kind and description; prizefighters, world champions, record breakers, cinema-clowns and " stars "; novelists, poets, musicians, painters, actors, commercially successful, but having no other value; founders of crazy sects and cults, and the like. In each new life these people continue to do what they did before, spend less and less time on preparatory training, grasp sooner and sooner the technique of their business and the technique of success, attain greater and greater celebrity or fame. Some of them become " infant prodigies " and show their special capacities from the earliest years.
The danger for the successful type of people is their success. Success hypnotises them, makes them believe that they themselves are the cause of their success. Success makes them follow the line of least resistance, that is, sacrifice everything to success. Therefore nothing changes in their lives, save that success is attained ever more easily and ever more mechanically. Without formulating it they feel that their strength lies precisely in this mechanicalness, and they suppress in themselves all other desires, interests and inclinations. "

True Success:

"Men of real science, of real art, of real thought or action, differ from these chiefly in very seldom attaining success. As a rule, they begin to be recognised only long after the end of their earthly life. And this is an exceedingly favourable factor from the point of view of the repetition of their lives. The inner decomposition which almost inevitably comes with success never sets in with them. And they start each new life striving towards their unattainable aim, every time with new strength, and they sometimes begin and " remember" astoundingly early, like some famous musicians or thinkers.
Evolution, that is, inner growth, inner development, cannot be either accidental or mechanical. The ways of evolution are the ways of Jnana-Yoga, Raja-Yoga, Karma-Yoga, Hatha-Yoga and Bhakti-Yoga, or the way of the special doctrine accessible only to few, which was mentioned earlier, in the chapter on Yoga. The five Yogas and the way of the special doctrine are the ways of work on oneself for people of different inner type. But all the ways are equally difficult, all the ways equally demand the whole of man. "

A New Model of the Universe, P. D. Ouspensky
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