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If we save enough, we can use it in the right way. Power to use comes with quantity. Q. I observe two kinds of indignation in myself one when for example I see a child hurt, and another when something annoys me myself. Are they both equally negative? A. The more unselfish the indignation is, and the more right you are, the worse it is. The more energy you lose in it, the more negative results it will produce. Q. Why am I so much sooner roused into negative emotions during discussions than at any other time? Political discussions, for instance. A. Because you always think that things can be different When you realize and become firmly convinced that things could not be different, you cease to argue. Arguing is based on the idea that things could be different and that some people could do things differently. Try to think from the point of view that all that happens happens because it cannot be different; if it could be different it would have happened differently. It is very simple, but very difficult to realize. Q. If we see something we do not like in others is it because they are mirrors for ourselves and we have the same thing in us? A. Chiefly, yes But it is a great thing to realize that. Maybe people dislike others because they are mirrors of themselves. They do not realize it, but somehow feel it vaguely and it makes them dislike them. However, there is also a principle in the work that before becoming better one has to become worse. It is not only because one notices more—one actually does become worse before one acquires more control. Q. If one always remembered about people that they could not act in any other way, could one then understand them? A. Naturally you must remember that. And until this remembering is constant, you can understand nothing about them. There are many things like that. All you learn in the system must be in your consciousness at the same time, otherwise every small thing will make you forget everything. Q. I find I become very negative when given advice and never agree with it. A. Again it is all based on your attitude: you admit that someone else can affect your emotional state. We should not admit an emotional power like that over us Now, even if you merely think about this advice you feel annoyed. You reconstruct it. But you should think in quite a different way; it is purely a matter of reasoning. Even if people give advice without thinking, even if you know better, there is no reason for you to lose your temper. You cannot get anything by being annoyed or irritated. You must stop justifying it in your mind. When one stops this justifying, one very often finds that the cause of all these negative emotions is some wrong idea. Everybody can find some-
thing wrong in one or another side of his life and generally one tends to put the responsibility on this thing. One thinks that if this thing were right, everything else would be right. Everybody has one, sometimes two or more combinations of circumstances which one blames for everything wrong one does and for all one's manifestations of weakness. But one must understand that absolutely anything in the world can produce this result. Suppose there is some definite thing that is wrong and I think: 'If it were right, I would be different'. But if it were right, I would be just the same. I speak from experience, because I know people who thought so, and when the particular thing they found wrong was changed, they remained the same and merely found another unpleasant thing instead of the first one. Q. I find that one of my greatest difficulties is irritation. A. This is one of the deepest features in people and it affects the whole mass. The most difficult thing in the world is to bear patiently the unpleasant manifestations of other people. People can sacrifice everything else, but they cannot stand that. Irritation is a particular emotion produced by the feeling of mechanicalness of oneself or other people. It does not mean that every mechanical thing causes irritation, but sometimes mechanicalness produces it. If we do not feel the mechanicalness of other people in some particular instance, they may be even more mechanical, but there is no irritation. We are irritated by other people acting as machines, because we are machines ourselves. If we cease to be machines, we shall cease to be irritated. This feeling of mechanicalness becomes irritation because we identify with it. If we manage to remove identification, the same thing that we know now as irritation becomes a very useful emotion, a kind of tentacle by which we can feel mechanicalness. You cannot imagine how different quite ordinary emotions become, and often how useful, if we do not identify with them. Q. How can one best deal with negative emotion when it becomes simply apathy? A. Very often when negative emotion takes the form of passive resistance you can do nothing at the moment. But you can continue to work. If you can do nothing to-day, there will be to-morrow, and the day after, and next week, and next month. You must prepare for the future, first of all by self-remembering, by remembering why you came, by remembering the first principles. All this apathy and negative feelings come from long sleep. If you continue to sleep when you could try to awake, this sleep will produce one or another negative state. Q. I have observed in myself a constant desire to be comfortable. Is it general for everybody to feel this? A. This is one of the most important features of our life. To this desire we sacrifice everything. We are ready to give up everything to go by the line of least resistance. Sometimes this desire becomes so strong that one
can be comfortable and nothing else. Even if something is not comfortable, one tries to arrange it so that it should be comfortable. Q. Is there a way of getting rid of it? A. What to do is a different question; we must come to it from another side. This desire is a very big thing and every effort against it is important; so every effort must be discussed specially, not all efforts together. Sleep is the most comfortable thing; trying to awake is very uncomfortable. Later, when we partly awaken, we will feel how uncomfortable it is to sleep when anything may happen at any moment. But it is necessary to come to that state. Q. How can one counteract laziness? A. By effort. How otherwise? It is difficult to speak in general, because there are so many forms of laziness—so many different escapes. We must speak about concrete cases, so only you yourself can answer. Find in yourself different kinds of laziness, then you will see that it is not always the same—in some cases it manifests worse, in other cases less strongly. You need a large quantity of observations—nobody from outside can help you. Q. Is it any good just wanting? A. No, that is not sufficient. Suppose one is lazy in one particular thing, but not always equally lazy—sometimes more, sometimes less. This is material for observation. Find what makes you more lazy or less lazy, then you will find some causes and will know where to observe further. In many things in us we must find what makes a difference, because nothing in us remains the same for long. Even permanent features manifest themselves differently—one day in one way, another day in another way. It is necessary to find what causes it. Q. Is there a means of telling the difference between a genuine need for rest and laziness? A. As in many other things, there are cases when you can say definitely, and you must take only these cases and not think about doubtful ones. If you start with cases where you do not know, you can do nothing. In this system you must start with things about which you have no doubt. Q. If you are trying to remember yourself, and you get some kind of result, can you be sure that it is not imagination? A. Again the same answer applies. There will be moments about which you will have no doubt, and there will be moments about which you will know that they are imagination. You cannot be sure about every moment, but about some moments you will be sure. Q. Can an outside circumstance suddenly wake you up? A. Yes, but the next moment other outside circumstances come and make you fall asleep again, so there is no profit in it. And the more one kind of circumstances awakes you, the more easily others make you fall asleep. Only this awakening is sure which comes from yourself. Q. Would a man who is beginning to awake develop a sense of duality?
A. Is that an observation or not? If it is an observation it is one thing; but if it is just philosophy, it is quite useless. It will not help you if you decide in one way and things happen in another way. You must deal with to-day, and with a possible to-morrow. Q. I have found that I can have a negative emotion and observe it at the same time. A. Yes, certainly. You can have violent negative emotions and observe them. Very often negative emotions wake us up to a certain extent, so we can observe them. This is quite right, but it does not diminish them, they become even better if you do this and even more pleasing as a form of sleep. Observation is not the way to destroy negative emotions. If you want to destroy them, there are many methods, but observation is only for study. Q. Is there any way of dealing with rather vague, dull, negative states? A. Yes, many ways; sometimes you can struggle with it, but supposing even that your state is so dull that you can do nothing at the given moment, if you make efforts before it comes, while in a better state, that will help. You have to do only what is absolutely necessary at such a time, but you must not identify with your state and must only remember that it will pass, must not believe that it is permanent. Emotionally we always believe in things—the emotional centre does not know to-morrow; for it everything is the present, everything is permanent. You must not identify with this feeling, you must know that it will change. Q. Everything that interested me in the work I very soon began to feel as a frightful grind. How am I to avoid this trap? A. Well, it is a beautiful state for self-remembering—you can use it. The more negative you are, the better you can remember yourself—if you realize that you can get out. It must remind you, serve as an alarm, otherwise you will remain in a negative state all the time. Q. It seems that only when I have observed some stupidity in myself am I able to make stronger efforts. A. Sometimes it is very useful to see one's stupidity. If one could really see oneself, one would not be able to forget it. But this is connected with consciousness. Q. I have always been rather adaptable, and that worries me. If I try to make an effort, it is very unpleasant to start with, but later it is no longer an effort. A. The moment it becomes easy, it is a warning; it means that next time the effort will be more difficult. Q. I find I can sometimes get out of a negative emotion by allowing myself to get identified with something pleasant. A. You use the word 'identified' in a wrong sense. You cannot say 'I allow myself to get identified'; you can only say, 'I allow myself to get interested in something'. Yes, it may work for some time, but if you
become identified, it will be just the same thing from a practical point of view. Only, in pleasant things you can be interested without being identified; in an unpleasant thing you cannot be interested without being identified. Q. I find enjoyment a great difficulty. I enjoy almost everything, and this seems to send me to sleep. A. Try to remember yourself, then enjoyment will be bigger, fuller and you will profit from it. But if it makes you fall asleep, you must try to avoid it, that is all. Every kind of emotional state can be used for self remembering, but before you can do that it is necessary to create a capacity for it; and the capacity can be created only by constant, regular effort. If you just think about it once a week, nothing will come of it. Q. I feel my chief obstacle is imagination, chiefly about myself. Is there any special work against this? A. Imagination may be very different. If there are special ways, it is only possible to arrive at them through a detailed study. If you ask me in general, I can only answer—self-remembering. If you mean day-dreams, they are only half of our imaginings, and the most innocent half. Certainly they mean loss of time, but we waste time in so many ways that a little more or less does not make much difference. It is much more dangerous if you imagine certain qualities in yourself in other people, in humanity or in nature, and then come to believe in these imaginary ideas and put your faith in them. We are surrounded by these imaginary qualities, and it is with these that we must struggle. Q. In trying to resist imagination, should one find the cause of it? ~ A. No, stop it at once. There are always causes. Replace it by something else—some intentional thinking. Q. Why is it of no value to observe and study imagination as a means to self knowledge? A. You will very soon see that it does not give anything. Imagination always turns in the same circle. It is an uncontrolled mind activity, and by imagination we create many false values, keep to them and use them in our thinking. This is why imagination is dangerous. We do not verify things. We imagine things either because we like them, or sometimes because we dislike them and are afraid of them. We live in an imaginary world. Q. By escaping from reality? A. Not consciously escaping, but it happens like that. It is partly due. to mental laziness: for instance, it is easier to imagine a thing than to study it. Q. Wouldn't knowing that be an easy way of stopping it? A. No, you can know it and it will still go on. A special effort is necessary to stop it. We are so mechanical that we can know and still do the same thing, Q. I feel I cannot wait any longer to try and find a path out of the morass
in which I now find myself. The more I see my mechanicalness, the more I see the urgency of so doing. A. You must realize that a long time is necessary. Years and years have passed in ordinary life. When you hear about mechanicalness and are just beginning to struggle with it, you want results at once. It is necessary first to get accustomed to these ideas. There are no secrets or special methods to make it quicker. Q. I find it difficult to realize that imagination enters into all our emotions. A. Every emotion based on identification is imagination. Identification is a sign of imagination. When you find an emotion without identification, you will find an emotion without imagination. Q. Is thought the only way to test imagination? A. No, not thought but attention, because imagination is one of the manifestations that go without attention. The moment you turn your attention to it, imagination stops. Q. Do you mean that one cannot observe imagination without stopping it? A. You cannot observe it for long. If you just notice it and turn away, it can go on, but if you keep attention on it, it stops. Attention acts like a light, and imagination is like a chemical process that can only go on in the dark and stops with light, Q. Does it not mean that when you notice it thought comes up? A. Thought brings attention. Attention is a different faculty, because even thought can go on without attention. But thought can work with attention, while imagination cannot. Some faculties can work only with attention and some others can work without attention. Q. What is the difference between ordinary thought and imagination? A. Intentional or unintentional; controllable or uncontrollable. Q. Imagination is one of the strongest things in man, yet it is the most useless. Why? A. It is a bad habit, a form of sleep, a weakness. It is easy, it does not need any effort. All the rest needs effort. Q. Is it possible to hope that we can get rid of imagination ultimately? A. We cannot speak about ultimately, it is too far. The first step is to know how much time is given to imagination; the next step is to give it a little less. Q. I cannot say whether something is imagination or not and I do not know how to begin to recognize it. A. Nobody can help you to begin, you must begin yourself. You must catch yourself in some kind of imagination—I do not mean exactly daydreaming. You must have some standard of imagination: then, when in doubt, you can compare. Imagination can take three forms; passive imagination, imagination expressing itself in talk, and imagination expressing itself in activity. There are lines and lines of our activity, each
quite different from another. Some start with effort and go on with effort. Others may be imagination. One may think it is effort when in reality it is imagination expressing itself in activity which cannot stop and needs no effort. Talking is the same: some people must talk, others must do something, but both are manifestations of the same thing. Q. I notice that imagining seems to take place in memory, going from one association to another. Is this a correct observation? A. No. Memory by itself is not responsible for anything. Memory is impartial; it supplies material for whatever you want. You may want it for serious thinking, imagination, expression of negative emotions and so on. Q. Is memory mechanical? A. Memory itself is mechanical, but the use of memory, the application of memory, the functioning of memory can be more mechanical or less mechanical. Memory is inscriptions on the rolls of our centres. How to use them, how to find them, how to verify them—that is another thing. Q, Should it matter much whether one knows the cause of any negative moods one observes: is it enough just to recognize that it is negative? A. No. Sometimes it is very useful to know the cause, because when you want to fight with it, you cannot fight unless you know the cause, and the cause is generally in your own imagination. All the causes are in you, so it is necessary to know them. Q. Sometimes when one is unhappy or perhaps feeling negative one is brought back to real issues. Since we have been told to guard against negative emotion, I cannot quite fit that in with the system. A. You mix the idea of suffering and the idea of negative emotion. It is not the same. Suffering is very useful; you can get many things only through suffering. But when suffering is connected with identification and imagination, it becomes negative emotion. Q. You say that man must give up suffering and also that he must suffer in order to develop. How can both things be true? A. Different cases, different days, different moments. These are not two contradictory principles. There is much unnecessary suffering which one does not want to give up. Then there is some inevitable and necessary suffering which one must accept if one wants to get something. On the Fourth Way, not all at once, one has to sacrifice all unnecessary things; wrong theories, talk, imaginary suffering. Imaginary suffering is the chief obstacle. Q, Then suffering does not exist? A. Only a certain amount is real. But we increase it by imagination. Real suffering exists, but it is limited by many things, by time for instance. But nothing can stop or limit imaginary suffering. Real suffering, if it has a cause, may be necessary; it may give knowledge. Imaginary suffering takes away knowledge. Death of a friend, or grief of some kind is real suffering,
but if you identify with it, it can produce negative emotion. And, after all, suffering occupies a very small part of our life, while negative emotions occupy the whole of it Q. Is pain a negative emotion? A. Simply suffering pain is not a negative emotion, but when imagination and identification enter, it becomes a negative emotion. Emotional pain, like physical pain, is not a negative emotion by itself, but when you begin to make all kinds of embroidery on it, it becomes negative. Q It has been stated, or at least implied, that man loves suffering. Is this strictly true? A You do not quite understand the meaning of that If you think deeper, you will see that everybody has some kind of suffering, say self-pity. One never gives up this self pity, it is the man's most cherished possession, he carries it with him, puts it in the best place, he will never try or ever decide in his mind to make an effort to get rid of this self-pity. Everybody has one or two negative emotions he is particularly attached to. He does not say to himself, 'I like, this negative emotion', but he lives in it, is fully absorbed in it, and everything is coloured by this negative emotion, so he will not sacrifice it For many people, to sacrifice their chief negative emotion would mean sacrificing their whole life. Q Since man ceased to believe that his sufferings were a direct punishment from God, is he not ashamed of them and resentful of them? A. Yes, it looks like that, but really he will never give them up When he decides to give them up, he becomes free of them. It seems a simple thing, but when it comes to practice, he finds that he cannot do it, because his sufferings have already become a habit, and so, although he decides in his mind, he still continues to feel the same. Nevertheless, in order to get rid of unnecessary suffering, the first step is to decide to give it up in one's mind When a man makes this decision, after some time he will give it up, but as long as his mind is hypnotized by this suffering, he will not make the effort Q. If he gives it up, what will he get in exchange? A. He will get in exchange absence of suffering That is why he does not want to give it up Q. What method can one use to sacrifice suffering? A. Realization of values But there are different kinds of suffering. Sometimes an effective way to destroy suffering is to see that it belongs to the imaginary part of oneself Division into real and imaginary is very useful. The general idea is that you cannot get anything for nothing, you have to sacrifice something. But what to sacrifice? One person does not want to sacrifice one thing, another person another thing. The answer is: sacrifice) our suffering—negative emotions, negative imagination and all that. It is a very good sacrifice, only it is very difficult, because one is ready to sacrifice any pleasure, but not suffering.
Q. How can one do it? Does one refuse to think that one is suffering? A. You refuse to accept your suffering, and stop your suffering. It is very simple. Suppose you have a grievance, either you are hurt or offended or something. Try to sacrifice this grievance and you will see how much you are attached to it. Actually it is a very pleasant feeling when one feels, 'I have nothing to worry about. Nobody is guilty.' But people dislike this, because they feel it as emptiness. Q. I suppose the reward of any development is really suffering, for knowledge brings suffering? A. I do not see that it is necessarily so. It is true that development means increase of suffering for a certain period, but you cannot regard this as an aim or the necessary result. By itself suffering can bring nothing, but if one remembers oneself in connection with it, it can be a great force. If suffering did not exist, it would be necessary to create it, because without it one cannot come to right self-remembering. But people try to run away from suffering, or try to disguise it, or they identify with it and in this way destroy the strongest weapon they have. Q. What is useful suffering? A. Until we get rid of useless suffering we cannot come to the useful. Most of our suffering is absolutely useless; we have too much of it. You must first learn to distinguish what is useless suffering. The first condition of getting free of it is to know it for what it is. Q. Would you say suffering is to some extent essential for attaining change of being? A. Certainly, but it depends on what you understand by suffering. We get nothing by pleasure; from that we can only get suffering. Every effort is suffering; every realization is suffering, because there are many unpleasant realizations about ourselves and about other things, and there are many forms of suffering. As I said, some sufferings are unnecessary and useless, with some other sufferings we must learn not to identify, and some sufferings are useful. We judge suffering from the point of view of whether it helps or hinders our work, so our attitude to suffering must be more complicated. Useless suffering is the greatest obstacle in our way; at the same time suffering is necessary, and sometimes it happens that people cannot work because they are afraid of suffering. In most cases what they are afraid of is imaginary suffering. We have much imagination and sometimes giving up certain kinds of imagination looks difficult. Q. Is suffering, apart from physical pain, possible without false personality? A. Certainly, but it does not become so insistent. When false personality begins to enjoy it, it becomes dangerous. Most of our suffering depends on identification, and if identification disappears, our suffering disappears too. One must be reasonable, one must realize that it is no use suffering if it is possible not to suffer.
Q. I do not understand how a positive emotion can be rooted in pain; yet some men of vision apparently attained the heights through physical suffering. A. Through physical or mental suffering it is quite possible, by transformation. Every kind of suffering, theoretically speaking, can transform into positive emotion, but only if it is transformed. However, such definitions are dangerous, because next moment someone will understand it in the sense that it transforms itself into positive emotion. This would be quite wrong, because nothing transforms itself, it must be transformed by effort of will and by knowledge. Q. Can grief help a man to a higher state of consciousness? A. No single isolated shock can help, because there are many ties that keep us in our present state. It is important to understand that thousands of shocks are necessary, and for years. Only then can the threads be broken and man become free. Q. How can real suffering exist if you say that the emotional centre has no negative part? A. In the description of man in this system one comes up against the impossibility of describing things as they are: they can only be described approximately. It is the same as on small-scale maps where the relative size of things cannot be shown. In some cases, in the description of the human machine, the differences are so great that it is better to say that a thing does not exist at all than to say that one thing is big and another small. This refers to the emotional centre. There are emotions that are not negative, yet very painful, and there is a centre for them, but it occupies such an infinitesimal part compared with negative emotions that are not real that it is better to say that emotional centre has no negative part. Q. How can you explain the great amount of suffering that exists in the world? A. This is a very interesting question. From the point of view of the work it is possible to find at least a logical form of solution of this problem. In organic life man must be regarded as an experiment of the Great Laboratory. In this laboratory all possible kinds of experiments are made, and they have to be made by means of suffering to bring about some kind of fermentation. In some way suffering is necessary for this; all the cells of this experiment have to suffer, and because of that their tendency is to avoid suffering, to have as little of it as possible, or to run away. If some of these cells break this tendency and accept suffering voluntarily, they can rid themselves of it and become free. Suffering, voluntary suffering, can become school-work. Nothing is more difficult and at the same time nothing can create so much force as voluntary suffering. The idea of development is to create an inner force, and how can a man put himself to the test without suffering? From one point of view the whole of
organic life exists for planetary purposes. From another point of view it exists only for the sake of those who escape. So it does not exist for feeding the moon alone. This suffering is the highest product and the rest are merely by-products; the highest is always the most important. We are far from understanding the idea of suffering, but if we realize that small things can be attained with small suffering, and big ones with big suffering, we shall understand that it will always be proportionate. But we must remember one thing—we have no right to invent suffering. Also, one has the right to accept suffering for oneself, but one has no right to accept it for other people. According to one's views of life, one helps other people, only it must be understood that helping cannot diminish suffering, it cannot change the order of things. Q. Should not one work for the relief of suffering? A. As much as one can, but there is suffering which can be relieved and suffering which cannot be relieved because it depends on bigger causes. Sleeping people have to suffer; maybe there is a great cosmic purpose in this suffering, because only suffering can eventually wake them up. If they can arrange their life so as to be happy and contented in sleep, they will never awake. But all this is only talk, because anyway it cannot be changed. Q. Is there a definite amount of suffering to be borne in the world? A. Probably for the purposes of possible evolution everyone must be surrounded by enormous possibilities of suffering. Evolution depends on man's attitude; if he accepts suffering and tries not to identify with it. It may be that this whole law was created so that he could become stronger, because strength can only be created by suffering. Q. Is it good for one person to suffer for another? A. No one can suffer for another; if I have a toothache, it will not diminish mine if you have a toothache too. Q. You say that man is an experiment? A. Man is specially made for evolution—he is a special experiment made for self development. Every man is an experiment, not all men. Now we have to return to practical things and the study of personal work. It is necessary to understand responsibility in personal work, because when a man begins to understand something, to formulate certain wishes in connection with the work, his responsibility towards himself increases. The more one understands, the greater one's responsibility, because if one knows nothing and does not attempt to work, one cannot make a serious mistake. But when one begins to work one can sin against the work, so to speak; and when a man makes mistakes it can stop his personal work. So his responsibility begins as soon as he begins to work, and it must be understood that this responsibility is very great, because
everything counts: everything one says or does, everything one does not say or do, everything is counted and is put for or against one. It is not an arbitrary action: it is so in the very nature of things. Things themselves make it so. In order to do something, to reach something it is necessary to work on many lines at the same time, otherwise one sticks. If you miss one or two lines, you have to go back and start again from the beginning; you cannot choose which lines to work on. Suppose you have to work on fifty lines and you discard three lines you do not like and work on forty-seven. Then, sooner or later, you have to go back and begin again from the beginning on all the fifty lines, because after some time forty-seven lines cannot take you any further. I mean by those lines trying to remember yourself, trying not to identify, not to express negative emotions and so on. Suppose you accept all those lines and leave out only one, about talking—it will spoil everything. Or if you accept them all, and the next moment forget—you will again get nowhere. That is why we cannot get right results. We start well and then the next moment forget and say to ourselves: 'I cannot keep fifty things in my mind at once'. Q. How can one increase one's sense of responsibility? A. It must be based on valuation. If you value something, then you have a sense of responsibility. Q. You said that another of our chief difficulties is formatory thinking. I do not in the least know how to think not formatorily. A. Think to the best of your ability and compare results—when your thinking gives results and when it does not. In that way you will come to a better understanding, at any rate better than just wondering about it. Definitions will not help you: desire for definitions is only an excuse. If you find yourself in a very difficult position, you will think to the best of your ability how to get out of it. Think in the same way. Q. Before we can think differently, is it necessary to perceive things differently? A. We cannot perceive differently until we think differently. We have control only of our thoughts; we have no control over perception. Perception depends particularly on the state of consciousness. If one awakes for sufficiently long, one can perceive many things one does not perceive now. It does not depend on desire or decision. Q. Is all thinking formatory, except when we are trying to self-remember? A. No, not all, but a great deal of our thinking is formatory. But when we think about serious things, such as the ideas of this system, we either cannot think at all or our thinking is not formatory. Formatory thinking is always poor, but for some problems it is ridiculous. Q. You said once that thinking about the big ideas of the system can be a way of stopping identification. I cannot see why this is so and why identification should necessarily spoil thinking?