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A. By trying to connect these moments. When you are in this state of wanting to work, remember other moments when you were in the same state and make a mental link between them. Q. But will it bring with it incentive to work? A. In this system incentive must come from the realization of your present situation and of the possibility of change. Or it may be even more simple. Incentive to work may be brought by the realization that it is possible to know more than you know now. The second refers to knowledge and the first to being. Actually you must have both, and all this must be verified. Very soon after you begin to work, you realize that you begin to acquire certain knowledge that opens new possibilities of understanding. Nobody can escape this if he really tries to work. And after some time one will notice changes in oneself, which one cannot describe, but which produce quite different attitudes. This is inevitable, so it gives one a definite valuation and a definite understanding that one is getting something and moving somewhere, instead of standing still. Q. How can one strengthen decisions? A. It depends on the decision. The first thing is to know what is more and what is less important. If you learn to distinguish this, decision will not be difficult. You must learn to discriminate between mechanicalness and consciousness on our level. Things that are connected with work can be conscious. Things connected with convenience, gain, pleasure, profit are mechanical. Then there is another side. If the result of the decision is really important and is connected with your work, you have a right to ask for advice. In such a case you must particularly try not to decide alone. Q. I feel that my attitude to the work needs complete revision. The system is only of importance to one 'I'—the others do not want to learn or change. Is there some way in which I can be helped to want to work? A. But who will do this if only one 'I' is interested and the others are not? You speak as though you were something different from these 'I's. One 'I' may decide, but another will come along and will not know about it. This is the situation and you must try to do all you can. Do not dream of things you cannot do or try to do more than you can. Nobody can help you to want to work, you must want yourself, but if you do not do what you can, you will lose and work less and less. If you try to remember yourself or to stop thoughts three or four times a day, this will very soon give you energy, only it must be regular. How can we increase our power to work? Only by working, there is no other way. If you learn to make small efforts you will have small results, and if you make bigger efforts you will get bigger results. Q. How can one be more sure that there is a concrete advantage in becoming more conscious and less mechanical? A. You must decide for yourself; find reasons for it. First try to under-
stand what it would mean to be more conscious and less mechanical; then decide. Only then will it have real weight. If I answer, it will be my opinion. There are things that one must decide for oneself, only then can they have real meaning and show real understanding. We do not know what it means to become conscious. But we do not know our present state either, because we live in illusions. If we were free from illusions, a strong impulse to get out of this state and to change would become possible. One cannot describe fully what this change means, and it is better not to try, for imagination is always ready to work in us and deceive us. Better study the present state. If you do, you lose nothing; for we have nothing to lose. Q. I feel sometimes that I have no sense of proportion. How can I try to remedy that? A. But this is the whole thing! This is the aim of all work. All that we do has as aim to have a real sense of proportion. But you cannot have it before you work, so it is necessary to work and then, as a result of work, you will have a better sense of proportion. Q. I think the greatest difficulty is to find the bridge between our ordinary life and serious work in the system. What is the bridge? A. There is no need to look for a bridge, because this system gives the possibility to begin work at once, just as you are. At the same time, when you begin to think about possible results of work and about what happens without any work, you will see that they are quite different. In one case everything happens and in another case you have to be conscious in order to act according to what you know. There is no bridge between these; what bridge can there be between madness and sanity? Q. Does change of being free one from external events? A. That you must find out by experience. The more you become united in yourself and the more you are conscious, the less you will depend on circumstances. You will understand them better, find your way better, and thus you will become more free. As to what happens later, it must be experienced in further stages. It is useless to speak about it theoretically. You can judge now, by everything I say, that I am trying to bring you to practical things. Q. Self-remembering is much more difficult in some life circumstances. Should one avoid them? A. It is a mistake to think that life circumstances, that is, external circumstances, can change or affect anything. This is an illusion. As to whether to avoid them or not—try to avoid them, or try to take them as a role you have to play. However, if you manage to avoid them you will find that nothing has changed; there may be exceptions, but the general balance usually remains the same. Q. If we are all weakness and no strength, from what source do we draw such strength as is needed even to begin work on ourselves?
A. We have certain strength. If we were only weakness, we could do nothing; if we had no strength at all we would not be interested in the work. If we realize our situation, we already have certain strength, and new knowledge increases this strength. So we have quite enough to start with. Later, strength comes from new knowledge, new efforts. Q. I find it very difficult to work in the right way, because I do not see what kind of effort is right at one time and not at another. A. Trying to remember yourself is always right, if you can make yourself try. Whatever you are doing, just try to realize that you are doing that, or that you are not doing something you have to do. If you try this persistently, it will give results. Effort to remember yourself is the chief thing, because without it nothing else has any value; it must be the basis of everything. Only in this way can you pass from the mechanical to a more conscious state. Q. I still cannot see in what way self-remembering is distinct from thinking of oneself? A. Thinking of yourself is another thing. If you want to remember yourself, the best thing is not to think about yourself. As long as you think about yourself, you will not remember yourself. It is difficult to explain the difference in words. It is as though you think about yourself on one basis and you try to remember yourself on another basis. You realize that you do not remember yourself, that you are not conscious, and by making yourself remember this absence of consciousness you begin to remember yourself. I cannot explain it any better. You do not get the right method at once, but if you try for some time you will find some particular line of thought that will help you. Then you will discover that if you think about some particular things in a certain way it will make you remember yourself. And this is the first step to consciousness. Q. I do not know whether I remember myself or not at certain moments. A. It is sufficient to know that you do not. Catch a moment when you are particularly far from remembering yourself—at this moment you will remember yourself. Q. If I say to myself 'I will remember myself. . . .'? A. Nothing comes; you cannot start that way. Either think of something that will bring it, or realize that you do not remember yourself. Q. I see now, at this moment, that I do not remember myself, but it goes no further. A. Go deeper. Nothing more is necessary. Realize more and more, deeper and deeper, that neither you nor other people remember, that nobody remembers himself. This will bring you to it better than anything else. Our difficulty in self-remembering is chiefly dependent on lack of realization that we do not remember ourselves. Later many other things may enter into it, but if you try to have them all at once you will have nothing. Try to observe how your time passes. Say you are in the theatre,
or you are here, or you go to see friends, then, when you come home, ask yourself were you aware of yourself, and you will find that you were not. Or if you are in a bus, ask yourself, when you get off, what happened on the way. You will see that you never remember yourself naturally, you have to make yourself do it. Q. Then how do accidental glimpses of self-remembering come about? A. It may be an intense work of centres, particularly when one function looks at another. When one centre is observing another centre, impressions may be strong enough or conflicting enough, or helping enough, to bring about self-remembering. Many things of that kind you can create intentionally, for you cannot rely on being made self-conscious by accident. Q. I feel it is not enough to be assured that we will know the state of self-remembering by its special taste, and I want to know how we may recognize it intellectually, without risk of interference by emotion or subjective thought. A. Emotion does not mean interference. Intellectual function can bring you only to a certain stage; further you have to travel on emotion. About self-consciousness, which is a higher state of consciousness, no one can say that it is a definitely possible or easy experience, for it means change of being; so it is difficult to tell a mechanical man how he will feel and look at things when he becomes more conscious. He is asleep. How can one say what he will feel or do when he awakes? We cannot make the first step towards higher states because there are many things we do not want to give up. Each of us knows perfectly well what he has to give up, but no one wants to do it. But in relation to self-remembering it is much more simple; if one really tries all possible means one will notice a difference between one's state and the state of a man who does not try to remember himself. Q. When I try to self-remember, sometimes my idea of time changes. Is it an illusion? A. It is quite possible, but in relation to self-remembering we must not think about additional results, side results. We must only think about the definite fact that we do not remember ourselves, which means that we are asleep, and that we want to remember ourselves, which means to be awake. Maybe the subjective feeling of time and many other things will change, but this is not important. What is important is the fact that we are asleep; and the effort to awake is important. Q. How can I build up a real direction, a stronger aim? A. Again the same thing—by building yourself; you can be stronger than yourself. Q. But we are the sum-total of different 'I's. How can one know which 'I' to trust? A. One cannot know—that is our state. We have to deal with what we
are until we change, but we work with the idea of possible change, and the more we realize the hopeless state we are in, the more energy we shall have for making efforts to change. Q. While I find it is only too easy to understand how mechanical I am in most ways, I find it difficult to reconcile my inconsistency with this idea. Is this the result of an imperfect understanding of the simile? A. No. You see, it is easy to understand mechanicalness with the mind. But to remember it always, to see it in facts, in things, to see how everything happens is always very difficult. It takes time. Q. Why is it that some recurrent mistakes you may see, but cannot stop until somebody points them out to you? A. Even that will not help. You can go on doing it every day, until you find the cause. Maybe it depends on some other thing, and this thing on yet another thing and so on. For everything you want to change you must find the beginning. But we do not speak about change now, we only speak about study. Change goes further. Naturally, it you find something very obvious, you must try to change it, but this is mostly for self observation, because if something always happens in a mechanical way you cannot even observe it. Q. The most fundamental idea of the system is changing oneself, isn't it? A. It is first necessary to know what to change. The most fundamental thing is to know oneself, although, as you have heard from the very beginning, if certain things do not change you cannot know yourself, for in our ordinary state we have a very strong antagonism to any change or any kind of work. People who only want to know and do not agree with change never learn to know themselves, just as people who only want to study the system intellectually get nothing and in most cases leave very soon. But to know oneself is a long process. First we must study. Q. Must we not expect any results from our work? A. What is the use of working without results? But you cannot expect them too quickly, you cannot expect immediate results. You put a twig into the earth and you cannot expect a big tree next year Growth is a process. Q. Some time ago you said that before one can know oneself one must see oneself. Does seeing oneself mean a combination of self-observation and self-remembering? A. No, just having a right picture of oneself. Before you get that, you cannot begin any serious work, you can only study, and even that will be fractional. Q. It is very difficult to make sure that one is telling the truth to oneself. A. Yes, that is why I said to see oneself first, not to know. We have many pictures of ourselves, we must see them, one after another, and then compare them. But we cannot say at the first glance which is right. It can only be verified by repeated experience. This is what, in the first
group in St Petersburg, was called taking mental snapshots of oneself in preparation for seeing oneself. Q. Cannot repeated experience also be wrong? A. Yes, we can deceive ourselves even in that. But when the emotional element— conscience—enters, that will be verification. Q. How does one take those mental snapshots? A. Without a camera. See how you look, how people see you in one or another set of circumstances. You have to do it yourself, although sometimes it may be useful to ask other people about their impression of you, because everybody has a wrong picture of himself. Everybody stands before a mirror and, instead of himself, sees somebody else. If you do that you will get an idea of your roles. Roles are often divided by buffers, so we cannot look from one role at another. Q. Does to see yourself mean you both see your faults and also what to do about them? A. Sometimes it may be like that. But you are again trying to have a definition and an explanation, and I speak about actual practice, not about defining or translating it into words. I mean actually to see. Suppose you speak about a certain picture which you have never seen and about which you have only heard. You can know all that is possible to know about this picture, but if you have not seen it, you must first see it for yourself and verify all that you heard. Seeing oneself does not mean seeing always. You can see yourself for a time; then you cease to see. One cannot speak to a person seriously until he begins to see himself, or at least realizes that he does not see himself and that it is necessary to do so. Q. You said once that it is necessary to be serious in relation to the work. What does being serious mean? A. First it is necessary to divide two things: being serious and taking things seriously. In thinking about this, people usually think about how to take things seriously, and which things, but never about what it means to be serious. I will tell you what it means. To be serious means to take nothing seriously—with the exception of things about which you know for certain that they are important in relation to what you want. This looks too small, but when you apply it in practice you will see that it is the only solution and the most necessary thing. You see, people who are not cannot be taken seriously from this point of view. One moment they are serious, another moment they forget everything, a third moment they again try to find something, next moment they are quite satisfied with what they have. This means they are not— they do not exist. First they must exist. Q. You said that certain negative emotions make serious work impossible. Does that mean they must be absolutely exterminated before one begins, and what do you mean by serious work?
A. By serious work I mean not only study but change. First you must study certain things, then you work to change them. But, since even study cannot go on without a certain change, because these two processes of study and change are not fully divided, a more serious study than just at the beginning can already be called serious work. With certain negative emotions serious work is practically impossible, because they will spoil all results: one side of you will work and another will spoil it. So if you start this work without conquering certain negative emotions, after some time you may find yourself in a worse state than before. It happened several times that people made continuation of work impossible for themselves because they wished to keep their negative emotions. There were moments when they realized it, but they did not make sufficient efforts at the time, and later the negative emotions became stronger. Q. What causes people to make efforts? A. Two things cause people to make efforts: if people want to get something, or if they want to get rid of something. Only, in ordinary conditions, without knowledge, people do not know what they can get rid of or what they can gain. Q. Has one to have long training? A. Everything has its own term of life, and if one waits too long it becomes useless and only bad results can come. Short-cuts come from time to time, but if we miss them, after some time they cease to come. It is necessary to remember all that was said at different times about effort, because effort is the basis of work. Everything we can gain is proportionate to effort; the more effort we make, the more we can expect. We want very big things, we do not realize what enormous things we want. In the beginning efforts are small only because in ordinary life we do not make efforts; everything in life is done to avoid work, so it is difficult to realize and accept the necessity of effort. All our ways of thinking and doing have the tendency to avoid it at all costs. Q. As regards change of being—it seems to be possible only with the effort to do something different. Therefore it is a vicious circle, since you cannot do anything different, because your being has not changed. A. No, this is in life, not in school. It is different in any system or any kind of school. In ordinary life one can change nothing—we make one step to the right and one step to the left, and the situation remains the same. But if one works under school conditions, it is not the same. If one works quickly, change will be quick; if one works very little, change will be proportionate. You cannot buy a big house for a few pennies—you have to pay what it costs. Just think about it in this way: how much do you pay and how much change do you expect? We have talked enough and can understand enough. We must see how much we pay and then we will see how much we can get. We cannot expect more. Is that clear? How many real efforts do we make? If we deceive ourselves we cannot
know, but if we do not deceive ourselves we can see how much we can expect. Effort by itself does not help, because you do not know in what direction to make effort. That is why school is necessary. Man as he is can learn many things if these things are shown to him and explained, but by himself, if he gets these things, he will get them wrong and make mistakes, or he will simply not get them. If it were not like that, school would not be necessary—some people at least could get these things by themselves. But they cannot; nobody can. Q. Then one cannot get much from books? A. One can get some ideas, but a person will get one thing and miss ten other things. As a matter of fact, there are books in which very deep secrets are written, but people can read them and never get these secrets. It is quite safe. Again, this is connected with the fundamental idea that understanding depends not only on knowledge but also on being. That is why one needs a school. In school you cannot deceive yourself, and in school it can be explained to you why you cannot understand. It means there is something in you that you have to conquer in order to understand more. We do not see ourselves, but with help, with study, we can see much more. There are different degrees of seeing. Q. Surely, if one makes a resolution. . . ? A. That is only a word. If you were stronger, you would be able to make resolutions. As you are, you can make as many resolutions as you like and you will continue to talk about resolutions. The chief thing is our weakness in everything. We can have beautiful plans; we can say that we know what we want; we can even have an aim, but we cannot 'do' anything. This is why we have to learn. We have to learn how to do small things first, step by step. We must begin with small efforts. If we do not make small efforts, we will remain the same—one moment there, another moment not there. But if we make small efforts and remember about them, that will give a line, a direction. Q. What is the best way to make efforts at moments when one feels the desire to change? A. It is necessary to know in what sense you mean change. Also effort cannot be described. When one understands one's situation, then inner contradictions and many other things give one a sufficient impulse for making efforts. So it is the realization of sleep, of inner divisions, buffers, negativeness and the unpleasantness of such things that will give one the impulse. Q. If I think I have changed a little since I have attended these lectures, would it be imagination? A. No. Certainly you have changed, because you begin to understand certain things you could not have understood before. But it may not be enough. Every small thing you learn changes something, but maybe more
change is necessary. You see, it is always a big change as compared with how things would have been without it; but the change may not be great enough from the point of view of acquiring more change, or of getting something else, because change does not come of itself. It comes as a result of a definite effort in a definite direction. The need for effort always remains. Study is impossible without a certain struggle, because there are many mechanical things going on in us that cannot be used in the process of acquiring control. Q. Where is the hall-mark to show that we have changed or not changed? A. Many things can be said about it. It is a difficult thing to do, but if you could imagine what would happen to you if you were not connected with any kind of work this would answer your question; if you could compare yourself with yourself as you would be. Q. Wouldn't you develop more and more 'I's as you struggle to change? A. You will still have many 'I's, they will not disappear, but you will be able to control them and arrange them in a certain way. Q. We have been told that it is useful to struggle with mechanical habits, but it was also suggested that it is not wise to try and alter things. Can this be explained further? A. What I said about not trying to alter things referred to people in ordinary conditions of life, without school, without discipline, without methods of the work. I said then that in ordinary life people cannot change anything in themselves, because by changing one thing they unconsciously change another. Without knowing how to do it, it is quite useless. But in the work, particularly after some time, this danger does not exist any more, because by doing all that is advised one avoids this possibility of wrong change, since wrong change always happens in one of the useless functions. If one changes something in the ordinary way, one either begins to lie more, or identify more or express more negative emotions, because these things are more easily affected. But in the work we have many safeguards, above all self-remembering, which will stop another mechanical thing taking the place of the mechanical thing you destroy. Besides, you must understand that in order to change something it is necessary to know how things are connected and how to do it, and one cannot do it unless it is explained how to begin. There are definite points where one can begin and in order really to change something one must follow the way that is shown. For instance, it is necessary to change our wrong way of thinking, to make our thinking less formatory. But first we must find examples of formatory thinking. Then we can struggle with the expression of negative emotions, with considering, with imagination— all these are ways to struggle with habits. At the same time you can also struggle with other habits, but your struggle will only serve self-observation, because you cannot change them. You can change them only through the channels that are indicated. To struggle with habits directly
and obtain right results more knowledge is necessary—you do not know enough yet. But it will do no harm because this effort will be balanced by self-remembering. Q. Why has nobody discovered for himself the points from which to begin? A. Because one 'I' discovers something, but at that moment another 'I' becomes interested in something else and takes all the energy; then while the second 'I' works, a third 'I' comes along, and so on. Man is always running in different directions. We do not realize how important this is. Q. I do not see how one is to get anywhere unless one tries to go against habits and to change one's everyday life. A. Yes, certainly one has to do something about it. The question is what one must change. People always try to change things that are not important, and what is important is disregarded and put off till to-morrow. Q. Are there any good habits? A. Habits of moving and instinctive centres can be good habits. Habits in intellectual or emotional centres can never be useful. Q. Are all habits forms of identification? A. Some habits are quite ordinary and harmless, but if you begin to put obstacles in their way it will give you good material for self-observation and you will be able to distinguish identification when it enters. This struggle introduces friction, and without friction you would not notice yourself, you would live as though in a thick fog, without noticing it. But the second step depends on your decision—you can be simply irritated by this friction, or you can use it. Q. Shouldn't we do as little as possible in our present state of consciousness? A. We must study ourselves. We can do nothing until we know: first we must know what we are and what to do. But in these lectures I have already given you several things you can do. One can study oneself as one is. It is very important to study that. And, I repeat again, from the very first steps one must try to change certain things, because in our state of chaos we cannot even study ourselves. We have to bring in some order. We want to make an inventory of our house and so we begin to set down what there is in it; but suppose that, while we are doing it, other people in the house keep on moving the furniture, or the furniture moves itself. This is what actually happens—the furniture moves itself, so you must attach it to some definite place. School knowledge is knowledge acquired through higher centres. So it is quite a different method. We are given certain principles and certain divisions which are not known ordinarily, and if we begin to study ourselves from this point of view we will discover many new things. When you are quite certain of these divisions and of these principles, then, observing yourself on this basis you discover things you cannot discover
without knowing them. With the ordinary mind we see things only vaguely and they become confused: we cannot distinguish one from another, so we mix things. But if we are told how to do so, we can divide them even with our ordinary mind. Q. So the observation of man 1, 2 and 3 is more complicated, more roundabout, but not necessarily wrong? A. Observation may be quite right, but if he does not know how to divide his observations he cannot arrive at right results. Very much is based on right divisions. Q. Is it good to start making observations of one division first? A. No, you cannot do that, because you cannot know what you can do best at a given moment. So do what you find you can do best. For instance, you may decide to observe the intellectual function and, instead, you may find yourself in an emotional state. You cannot do one thing and then another and then a third, until you have control. And control comes last. Q. Is there quite a lot of benefit to be derived by observing other people as well as oneself? A. Yes, but there are dangerous moments. If one is capable of applying to oneself what one finds in other people, then it may be right, but as a rule one thinks that other people are one thing and oneself a different thing. In that case one may see things in other people and never apply them to oneself. Q. It seems that self-observation and self-remembering become more difficult under conditions of bodily fatigue or when one is feeling unwell. How can this dependence be overcome? A. Conditions of our body are conditions under which we live, so we have to observe and remember or not remember ourselves in these conditions if we intend to do it. We cannot begin with changing conditions. Q. Surely observation is like introspection, it turns everything inwards? A. No, introspection is the same as imagination, it is uncontrolled. It is useless and does not bring anything. But in observing you know what you are doing and why you are doing it, what you want to attain, what you want to know. It is not introspection, it is studying a very complicated machine. It is really mechanics, not psychology. Psychology comes later. Q. How is it that one can observe oneself and still go on doing the same silly antics? A. Because there is not one person but many. One person looks on, and another continues the antics. If you can see the different people in you in one case, it is good. If you can see them in several cases, things begin to become uncomfortable. If you can see them always, it is the beginning of work. Q. I have observed that I am very unnatural. Does being a little more awake mean one is then more natural?
A. Not necessarily, because people, as they are in ordinary life, are in a very bad state, so in order to become natural eventually, they first have to become unnatural. You cannot expect to become natural at once. It would be possible if we started on the right level, but we start below level. Q. Why is it that if one gets out of touch with the system all obstacles come up in their worst form? One is more negative, one does more useless talking and so on? A. Because of work one gets a sort of new control and at the same time one loses mechanical control. So if one loses touch with the work, one loses this very small conscious control and one has already lost mechanical control. As a result one is worse off. Q. Why is there more resistance in me to work in the system sense than to other kinds of work? A. Because other kinds of work are mechanical and mechanical resistance is less to mechanical action. But if you take an originally conscious action it meets with all possible resistance. Q. Can some deep shock that occurs in life be favourable to one's work? A. Yes, but such shocks cannot replace work. All that can be acquired in the line of development of consciousness can only be acquired by effort. A shock cannot replace effort; it can act on centres but not on consciousness. Consciousness does not develop or grow by itself. A shock can for a short time open up higher centres and connect one with them for a moment. It can concentrate for a certain time all the energy in our body that is dispersed everywhere, and draw it together. You can then awake for a moment, but as a rule you fall more deeply asleep later. You can even lose consciousness, or be in a very low state afterwards. So no shock can increase the amount of consciousness; this is a very important thing to understand. People usually mix the idea of consciousness and functions. Both must develop, but the development of one does not produce the development of the other. Q. What do you mean by development of functions? A. If centres are balanced and acquire sufficient speed, they become connected with the higher centres. This is the easiest way to understand it, but there can be other descriptions. In this state of consciousness we can only be aware of the work of lower centres; in self-consciousness we can be aware of more. But first we must start cleaning. Q. I understand that no effort to be conscious is ever wasted, and yet that, by being negative, we lose the energy we make. How can both be true? A. This is a great mistake, for it is quite against the principles of the work to say that no efforts can be wasted. People can make efforts all their life and they can all be wasted if they make them in a wrong way. Take any wrong school with some kind of twisted idea. People belonging to such a school can make an enormous amount of efforts and all of them