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Q. Is payment sacrifice? A. Yes, but you have to sacrifice only non-existent things, imaginary things. All our values are imaginary. In the work one acquires new values and loses imaginary values. Q. Has one to break down every thought one has? A. You cannot generalize. Some of them may be useful. If all these things could be explained briefly, it would be easy. It is necessary to study many things in order to know what to pay and how to pay. And in life you get credit, but here you get no credit. By paying you must get something, but you do not know what you will get. Q. One must be willing to pay? A. Yes, but it may be difficult, not easy. Generally, paying must be difficult for you and useful for the work. But this is too general an explanation. Often we cannot define things until we come to facts. We cannot have old things and new things, there is no room for them, so first we must make room for them. This is so even in regard to ordinary things. If one wants much, one must give much. If one wants little, one will give little. Measure it, then you will understand. Q. I think perhaps one deludes oneself about wanting to change? A. Very often. This is a very good observation, because often one persuades oneself that one wants to change but at the same time one wants to keep every small thing, so where is the change? Change is impossible if one wants to keep everything. To think about changing one must also think about what one would give up. Q. Is there something in ourselves that prevents us from wanting enough to change? If we desired enough, should we get the help? A. Yes, certainly, but I would not put it like that. You have all the help possible, it is now your turn to work, your turn to do something. Certainly, with different conditions, different preparation, and also different circumstances, things could be better arranged. But the question is not how much is given, but how much is taken, because, generally, only a little part is taken of what is given. Q. Does it mean that it is important for us to plan our own affairs so that we have more time to devote to the work? A. I think almost everybody, with the exception of very extreme cases, can give sufficient time to take a certain part in the work without actually changing his life and affairs. Q. It is not possible for most of us to give up our lives. A. No. I said that people must think about this side of the work, and they must look at the practical side—what is possible and what is impossible. I am perfectly sure that in most cases people can continue to do what they have to do and live as they are accustomed to live. There is nothing in life that cannot become work if one tries to remember oneself, tries not to identify, to understand that everything happens and
so on. It is not necessary to change circumstances; on the contrary, changing circumstances is even worse, especially in the beginning Later it may be useful, but not at first Q. What did you mean by saying that everything in life can be a possibility to work? A I meant that every ordinary occupation in life can become work If one tries to apply the ideas of the work, then, little by little, whatever one does becomes work Q. What is a practical application of this system? A. For instance, the possibility, by self-remembering, of increasing our consciousness. This immediately becomes practical And there are many other things Q. I am beginning to understand that most of the work one tries to do for other people in life is useless Would it be true to say that the school teaches one to discriminate as to what work one is really capable of? A Yes, certainly, this is one of the most important things But the school does not teach you just to work for people, it teaches you to work for the school, and in this way you learn what you can do and how to do it You must learn first to work for yourself, without that you cannot do anything, you must learn to be useful to yourself, to change yourself Secondly you must learn to be useful to people in the school, you must help them, and then you must learn to help the school as a whole As I said, only when one works on all the three lines can one get full benefit from the school, and in that way one learns what one can do outside the school. Besides, in school one learns cosmic laws and one begins to understand why certain things are impossible Q If we are all mechanical, I cannot make out why we try to do anything? If we have a school, what is the object of having it? A. If there were no possibility to change, there would be no object of having it, but there is a possibility, and this makes all the difference In this system we know that it is impossible to 'do', that everything happens, but we also know that there are possibilities to develop this power to 'do' Q. Does work on oneself gather momentum after a time or remain equally difficult, like pushing a cart uphill? A I think it becomes more difficult, because it comes to more and more ramifications You start on one line, then after some time you work on three Lines, and each of them divides and divides, and all the time requires attention and effort There is no momentum there On the other hand, one acquires more energy, becomes more conscious, and that makes it easier in a sense But, by itself, work cannot become easier. Q. Is it necessary to work for the school before you can make any progress? A. It cannot be put like that. If you work for yourself and make progress,
then the opportunity of working for the school may come, but you cannot make theoretical suppositions. It is your initiative that is the most important thing, both in the first and the third line. You are given material, but the initiative remains with you. But in the second line you have no initiative, or very little. Let me repeat what I said earlier: you have received these ideas and came here because certain people have worked before you and have put their energy and time into it. Now you must learn to share the responsibility. You cannot continue getting the ideas without sharing the responsibility; this is quite natural. So, if not to-day, then to-morrow one must 'do'. Do what? One must understand what to demand from oneself. We study school methods, and this is the only way to study them. Q. Can you give an example of how to share responsibility? A. No. As I said it is a question of understanding what is useful, what is necessary. Then it is a question of seeing what one can do, if not now, perhaps later. It cannot be given in the form of a prescription. Q. Is it not true that for one's own benefit one should make payment which is difficult? A. Yes, but you must find it. Payment is not just making things difficult for yourself without any benefit for anyone else. Q. Should we avoid looking at the work only from the point of view of our special capacities? A. Naturally everybody must look first from the point of view of what he can do. But supposing his capacities are not useful—he must then find new capacities which may be useful. People often ask: How to learn to 'do'? By working, by doing all that is possible in connection with the three lines of work. Often we cannot 'do' because we do not know our own powers. Then we have not the habit of a certain discipline that is necessary in the work. Everything can be learned, but it requires initiative and understanding, and understanding means effort, work. Q. It seems to me that I have more from the work than I have given. But I have nothing to give. A. I would not make such a complication out of it. We always have something to give, and we always have something to learn. So long as you are interested and continue to take things, you have a chance to pay. You lose the chance to pay when you take nothing. Q. I feel that it is part of our concern with the third line of work that we have to try to become man No. 4. A. That is not third line of work. You do it for yourself, otherwise you cannot do it. All three lines are connected, but the third line is what you do directly for the school, such as you are, without waiting to become No. 4. Q. But it seems to me that until we reach a higher level of being the understanding of which you spoke would not be for us?
A. No, you are wrong. If you mean by a different level of being having a centre of gravity, then you are right, but if you mean a different state of consciousness, you are wrong, because if you wait till you have a different state of consciousness, you will get nothing. So the answer to your question depends on what you mean by change of being. Struggle with false personality is also necessary; because of false personality we can find nothing This means that a certain change is necessary but not a big change Q. Would you mind repeating again the characteristics of a centre of gravity :> A Permanent centre of gravity comes at a certain moment in relation to the work, when one is already sure what one is doing, and sure of the system, and when this becomes more important than anything else, when it occupies the chief place in one's life This is the moment when permanent centre of gravity is established. But when one is interested in the ideas of the system, and yet at any moment something else may become more important, this means that one has no centre of gravity. Q. Is it possible to look on three lines of work as being three different forces forming a triad? A. Yes, in a sense, but they always change One is active to-day but was passive yesterday and may be neutralizing to-morrow. And they are different even in obligations. You see, like many other things, these three lines of work cannot be denned in words. At the same time the idea is very clear. The moment you understand it you will ask yourself 'Why did I want definitions? It is quite clear without words!' You must try to remember all that was said about it, for many things were already said on this subject. For instance, remember what was said about prison. I remember a conversation with Mr Gurdjieff many years ago. He put it in a very simple form. He said: 'One can be useful to oneself; one can be useful to other people; one can be useful to me' He represented the school. That describes the three lines of work. And he added; 'If one is only useful to oneself and cannot be useful to me or to other people, it will not last long'. Q. But by being useful to oneself one automatically becomes useful to other people? A. No, it is separate. Only forgetting goes automatically; nothing good happens automatically. It is quite right to get things for yourself, but if you think only about that, you limit yourself. One has to study oneself; one has to work on oneself; so one has time to study other lines. But after some time, if one does not accept this idea and keeps only to one line, one begins to lose ground. Q. Isn't the third line rather out of our reach at the moment? A. No, it is only necessary to understand. Again, one person may be in
one position, another in another position—so there are no general laws about it. For instance, I began with the third line; I could do more on the third line, before I could do anything on the first and the second. Q. Isn't there a sort of organization to help people to work on the third line? A. Yes there is. But an organization cannot help by itself, because each line must be based on some kind of attitude. An organization cannot replace an attitude, but at the same time an organization is necessary for understanding certain things. For instance, one of the most important things in the work is the understanding of discipline. If one understands this idea of discipline, one finds the possibility to work against self-will. If one does not understand it, one will think one works, but in reality one will not work, because it will only be self-will. Study of discipline is connected with the second line of work. Without understanding school discipline one cannot have inner discipline. There are people who could do good work and who fail because they lack discipline. Yet change of being is possible only with school-work and school discipline. For a certain period of time one must have it, and then, later, one can work by oneself. Discipline is connected with rules. Rules are the conditions on which people are accepted and given knowledge in a school. Keeping these rules or conditions is their first payment, and the first test. One of the most important things in every kind of school is the idea of rules. If there are no rules, there is no school. Not even an imitation school can exist without rules. If it is an imitation school there will be imitation rules, but there must be some kind of rules. One definition of a school is that it is a certain number of people who accept and follow certain rules. Rules are not for convenience, they are not for comfort— they are for inconvenience and discomfort, and in that way they help self remembering. You must understand that all rules are for self-remembering, although they also have a purpose in themselves. If there are no rules and the importance of rules is not understood, there is no work. The important thing to realize about rules is that there is really only one rule, or it is better to say one principle—that one must not do anything unnecessary. Now try to understand that Why cannot we 'do' in the right sense? Because we do so many unnecessary things Every moment of our life we do hundreds of unnecessary things, and because of that we cannot 'do' and must first learn not to do anything unnecessary. First we must learn not to do unnecessary things in relation to the work, and later in connection with our own lives. It may take a long time, but this is the way to learn. You must do this, you must not do that; this is all specifications, but there is only one rule. Until you understand this fundamental rule, you have to try to follow other rules which are given.
Rules are particularly important in connection with organization of groups, because, since people come without knowing one another and without knowing what it is all about, certain rules have to be imposed. For instance, one of the rules that applies to new people is that they should not talk to people outside about what they hear at lectures. People begin to realize the importance of this rule only when this form of talk turns against them, when their friends insist on their talking and they no longer want to talk. This rule is to help people not to lie, because when they speak about things they do not know, they naturally begin to lie. So if, after listening to one or two lectures, people begin to talk about what they have heard and express their opinions, they begin to lie. Most people are too impatient, they do not give themselves enough time, they come to conclusions too soon and so cannot help lying. But the chief reason for this rule is that it is a principle of school-work not to give ideas but to keep them from people, and to give them only on certain conditions which safeguard them from being distorted. Otherwise they will be distorted the next day; we have had enough experience of that. It is very important to prevent these ideas from deteriorating, because it may be said that a school is something where people and ideas do not die. In life both people and ideas die, not at once, but die slowly. Another reason for this rule is that it is a test, an exercise of will, an exercise of memory and understanding. You come here on certain conditions; the first condition is that you must not talk, and you must remember it. This helps enormously to self remember, because it goes against all ordinary habits. Your ordinary habit is to talk without discrimination. But in relation to these ideas you must discriminate. Q. It seems that in a school nothing is done without reason. Is one reason why this rule is necessary that talking would introduce a new factor, the result of which could not be predicted? A. Certainly. If people knew what to do without rules, rules would not be necessary. At the same time it is also a kind of education, because by obeying rules people create something in themselves. There would not be enough friction if there were no rules. Q. I take it that the main object of rules is to break mechanicalness? A. Each rule has many objects, but you cannot expect anything from rules alone. They are only a part of the general work, a help. Q. I find it almost impossible not to utilize the knowledge so far gained to assist one's friends. A. It cannot be utilized yet, because if you try to do something with the amount of knowledge you have, you will distort it. It is necessary to have more, because only then will you be able to judge whether you can do something with it in a given case or not, whether you can give something to this or that person or not. Now you cannot say. Besides, everything in this system must be explained fully or not
touched at all, and in order to explain one thing you have to explain another. This is the difficulty. Do you see what I mean? For us many things are facts, or at least should be facts. If you tell them to people who have not gone slowly through this study, for them it will be something like faith. They will either believe or not believe, and since these things mostly go against ordinary ideas, it would be much easier for them to disbelieve. So why should we produce more disbelievers? It is impossible to convey these ideas sufficiently clearly to people who do not study them. Q. It is difficult to discuss something with anyone without it being coloured by what we have heard here. A. Until it becomes easy you cannot begin to do anything; everything will be transformed into talk and will remain talk. Only when you are able to keep silent, keep something to yourself, only then can you accumulate more knowledge or material. If you make a hole in a balloon, the contents of the balloon will escape. If you make a hole in yourself, something will also escape. Rules are difficult to keep, because by remembering rules and obeying rules you accumulate conscious energy. This is chiefly why rules are made. One cannot describe rules or give a catalogue of them, but rules can be understood. Besides, emotional development needs discipline. Nothing develops the emotional centre so much as giving up self-will. Rules are connected with the idea of conduct. When we become men No. 5 our conduct will be perfect compared to what it is now. But we are not men No. 5, so we must have rules. If we remember rules, understand and follow them, our conduct will be consistent and will lead in a definite direction; it will no longer be the erratic conduct of men 1, 2 and 3. All the ways need discipline. This explains why one cannot work by oneself. One cannot create discipline by oneself. If one understands this work, then discipline takes the form that one does not decide for oneself but works according to instructions. It takes a long time to acquire will, for self-will has to be conquered first. In the meantime another will is necessary, the will of the school, of the organization. Q. I do not understand why rules belong to the second line and not the third? A. Try to think. There can be no rules on the first and the third lines; there you must do what you can, there must be initiative, work must be free. On the second line there must be discipline. Q. What is more important on the second line, advantage to oneself or advantage to other people? A. It is impossible to put it this way. In the second line you must be able to forget your own interests, your own likes and dislikes. Q. Are the questions which people ask at lectures and which are helpful to other people the second line of work?
A. No, work is another thing, you know. It is necessary to understand what the word 'work' means in the system's sense. It does not mean happenings like that—that somebody's question happens to give a useful result. Work always means a line of efforts leading towards a certain definite aim. Not one effort. One effort does not mean work; but a connected line of efforts, an uninterrupted line of efforts, only that becomes work. Q. If two people help each other, will that be second line? A. No, as I have explained, in the second line there is no initiative. But there must be a certain preparation for it: one must understand the necessity of working with people. When you begin to understand that it is physically impossible to work alone, that it is only because of these other people that you yourself can work, that will be understanding, but it will not be second line yet. You must understand that the people you meet here are as necessary for you as the system itself. This will be a beginning. Q. Is there any particular line that will help one to escape from doing unnecessary things? A. No particular line—all lines that are explained. You must be able to see what is possible. You are given many suggestions and one day you can do better work on one line and another day on another line; there is no special line for all days, for all time. And there is self-remembering, everything that was said about identification, considering, negative emotions, study of the system, many things. You never know which will be more useful at a given time; one moment one helps and another moment another helps. Q. Does this system involve self-surrender? A. Not in the usual sense. In the Fourth Way only a special kind of surrender is necessary, in certain kinds of work, in some special situations. For instance, as I have said, one must surrender one's decisions in questions connected with work in the school. This is an example of possible discipline. And one must remember why one is doing it and what one is doing. For instance, in remembering rules, one must surrender a considerable part of one's own judgment and simply remember them. Why? Because one must realize that one does not understand enough. When one does understand, there will be no need to remember rules. So you see, surrender does not mean blind sacrifice, and it is necessary only in connection with school-work, not outside school work. I repeat: the way to acquire will is to put oneself under a certain discipline and not try to escape. People use in the work the same methods they use in life—they adapt. They try to make work as comfortable, or at least as little uncomfortable as possible, and in that way they lose what the work can give. Q. I do not see why adapting should not be admitted in the work?
A. You cannot adapt to the work; you have to work in actual fact. Adapting may be right in certain cases in life, but in the work it is always wrong. Adaptation is not a sure method. You adapt yourself to one state or one set of circumstances, and then it changes and your adaptation fails. You must find a better method, because you never know what will happen next moment. For instance, you sit in your room and decide not to be irritated, then something happens unexpectedly and you are irritated before you know it. Q. How can we make this work more real? I realize that it is not what it might be. A. It is what it is because you are not what you might be. There is a certain principle in the work—time is counted. For every person certain demands are made. If you have only been one month in the work the demands are small; next month they grow, after six months they are bigger, after a year still bigger. If a person does not meet these demands, the bill becomes very heavy in the end. If someone considers that he has the right to be on the level of the first month after being in the work for some years, he cannot pay the bill. Payment means first of all being able to meet demands. Demands always grow, and if you are behind your time things will look below their right level to you, whatever they are in reality, because you are below level. But if you work, if you grow, you will be on the level of the demands. I am showing you the side from which it is possible to approach this question. Many things are necessary in an organization, understanding first of all, and effort. Q. I suppose meeting the demands entails giving up some things, but I am puzzled about what they are. A. Do not worry. When it is necessary to give up something it becomes quite clear. If you do not see what you have to give up it means that it is not the time to think about it yet. Intellectual thinking about it is quite useless, for when you have to give up something it never comes in the form of a puzzle. Maybe some day you will see some particular kind of negative emotion and will realize that if you want to keep it you cannot work. Or it may be some kind of imagination, or something else of this kind. It always begins in this way. Q. It seems paradoxical that we are trying to get free from laws and are putting ourselves under more. A. In order to get free it is necessary to submit to many more laws for a certain time, for one can learn to be free only by obeying more laws. There are many reasons for this. One reason is that we are too lenient with ourselves; if we set ourselves a task, after some time we begin to make excuses. And then we deceive ourselves too much. So, as I said, if people want to continue to study, they must accept certain conditions. This means they must make the study practical. If people do not take work seriously enough, it is a waste of time. You
have a right to go away and I have a right to stop lectures, so there are no obligations on either side. I have other work to do, but my giving up my time to this is necessary, because it is the only way to establish a school. If I can say, 'If I die to-morrow, work will continue', it will mean that a school is established. If it depends wholly on me, it will mean that the school is not of sufficient strength. Q. In a school is it better to study only yourself and not other people? A. No, it is necessary to study other people also, but not only other people. Q. Surely it is easier to be objective about other people than about oneself? A. No, it is more difficult. If you become objective to yourself you can see other people objectively, but not before, because before that it will all be coloured by your own views, attitudes, tastes, by what you like and what you dislike. To be objective you must be free from it all. You can become objective to yourself in the state of self-consciousness: this is the first experience of coming into contact with the real object. Q. Does one ever learn to administer shocks to oneself in order to work as one should? A. If you work on three lines, one line will give shocks to another. When you understand, not theoretically but from observation, how one line helps another, you will find out. Q. What I meant was, when one needs energy quickly for a special purpose, how can one get it? Is it by a shock? A. A good shock makes energy quickly. But shocks can be of three kinds: somebody else can give it to you, or you can give it to yourself, or it may come accidentally. Nothing else can create energy quickly. A good shock can make you remember yourself and remember the shock. It may be so good that you will be unable to forget it for some time; that will make you more emotional and the emotional centre will produce energy. Q. You said shocks can be accidental? A. Accidental shocks do not count. Things happen; people find money in the street, but you cannot rely on it. When we speak about 'giving shocks' we speak about conscious shocks. We must understand how things happen. We start to do something and then come to an interval without so much as realizing the existence of intervals or knowing about their possibilities. This is our situation. Before we come to the possibility of aiming and attaining, we must understand that this is very far from us and we must study intervals in the given examples, such as the food diagram. By studying these intervals and the two conscious shocks which were explained, by learning to produce them, we may come to the possibility of quite a different kind of shock, but not before that. As a matter of fact, if we could produce enough
necessary shocks that are strong enough, there would be practically nothing we could not attain. The only thing we need is shocks, but we cannot make them. Even if we think of them, we are not confident enough, we do not trust ourselves, do not know for certain that this shock will produce the desired effect. That is why organized work includes in itself many shocks, so it is not left to ourselves. We are so fast asleep that no shocks wake us—we do not notice them. Q. Does the realization of mechanicalness give one choice in one's actions or must one wait for will? A. I would say it gives choice. At the same time it is wrong to think that when realization comes it already brings the possibility and the power. One can know and not be able to do anything. It is a most difficult and unpleasant situation if one begins to see things and is unable to do anything. That is why in some cases it is better not to begin working unless one is ready to go on to the end. Otherwise one may remain between two stools. The idea of choice is a contradictory idea. From one point of view there is no choice, from a second point of view there is choice, from a third again no choice, and all are true. It is a very complicated idea. For instance, in the work there is choice, but work is connected with life outside. Things may become so bad that there is no choice, and then perhaps there is a moment of choice, but if we miss it, we miss it. Q. Is there any way to recognize these moments of choice? A. Only by trying to find these moments in the work, because this system is a method of acquiring new knowledge and power and, at the same time, a means of exercising this knowledge and power. Here we have more possibility to choose. If we exercise it, then perhaps later we will be able to apply it to other things. This idea is connected with cross-roads. Crossroads are moments when one can 'do'. A moment comes when one can help in this work or not. If an opportunity comes and one misses it, another may not come for a year perhaps, or even longer, if one does not arrange to use organized work which may make permanent opportunities. Q. Concerning work on the second line, is it necessary to ask for an opportunity? A. Everybody is given the opportunity, only, an individual person cannot organize work on the second line for himself; it must be arranged. In this connection it was found by experience that physical work is very useful in school. In some schools there are special physical exercises, but, in the absence of these, physical work takes their place. All this refers to the second line—it must be organized work. The idea is this; when a certain number of people work together, in the house, in the garden, with animals, and so on, it is not easy. Individually they can work, but working together is difficult. They are critical of one another; they get in one
another's way; they take things from one another. It is very good help for self remembering. If a person is interested in the idea, he can try it, but only if he feels the need of it. You must not think it is some kind of magical help. Work means action. Theoretically, work with other people is second line, but you must not think that being in the same room with other people or doing the same work is already second line. You do not know yet what the second line of work is. Q. You said once that physical work is the way to make centres work properly. What did you mean by that? A. Physical work—not sport, but hard work, one kind for one person, another kind for another person—puts centres right. Centres are connected in a certain way and energies are distributed in a certain way. When people are idle, centres try to do one another's work, and because of that physical work is a very reliable method for making them work better. This method is largely used in schools. In modern life, particularly with some people, wrong work of centres saps all the energy. But of course, even in organized work, if one works with identification it does not mean anything. Q. What is the difference between physical work in ordinary life and organized physical work in a school? A. Working anywhere else is much easier: you give yourself more freedom to choose the way to do it. Suppose you work in your own garden. You will do the things you like doing and do them in your own way. You will choose your own tools, your own time, your own weather, everything. So you introduce very much self-will into it. In organized work you have not only physical results, you also struggle with your self will. Work does not cease to be dangerous by being specially organized, however, because in ordinary work will always remains self-will, while in school-work self-will spoils the whole thing, and not only for oneself but also for other people. Self-will always knows better, and always wants to do things in its own way. All organized work is a chance to work against self-will. Besides, organized physical work needs emotional effort. That is why physical work cannot really be called physical, because it is emotional as well. If it were only physical it would not be so profitable. If there is no emotional effort in the physical work you are doing, you must either increase your speed, or increase the time or the effort in order to make it emotional. Try to do some physical work harder and longer than you can do it with ease and you will see that it requires an emotional effort. This is why physical work is important. Q. What sort of emotional effort? A. You will see. We are now speaking of physical work connected with the system— it is under quite different laws; you do it for a different purpose, and you have to remember why you do it.