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the higher emotional centre works in him which gives him many new powers. Q. Is it worse not to be able to go on with the system than not to have started? A. If you have started, nobody can stop you, except yourself. Q. How can one reconcile this with what you said about their being no guarantee? A. It depends on your work. How can I guarantee your work? What we can get depends on our own efforts, and one must work at one's own risk But after some time one begins to see: 'I got this that I did not have before' and 'I got that that I did not have before'. So little by little one can be more sure. Q. What does a school study? A. It studies possibilities of the development of inner qualities in man. It begins with the idea that not all the qualities can develop equally In order that certain qualities should develop, other qualities have to be restrained and some others have to go. Suppose you have a hundred qualities. Out of these, suppose thirty can develop and seventy cannot Then you have to restrain those seventy in order that the thirty may develop. And in schools they have a certain knowledge about which qualities can and which cannot develop, which conditions are good, how to restrain certain qualities, how to develop other qualities. Different schools teach in different ways. For instance, this kind of school says simply: develop only consciousness and all the rest will be added unto you, and for that one must struggle with negative emotions, lying, identification, considering, imagination and so on Q. You said we must verify everything, but if we can only know what we ourselves have experienced, does it not limit us to a very small world? A. We know not only what we experience ourselves, we know what other people have experienced The whole idea of school is study on the basis of the experience of other people, not people such as we are, but people of higher mind, otherwise there can be no school. If a school is limited only to what we know ourselves, then it is not a school. Q. Isn't it the belief that there exists something beyond what we know that makes us seek for it? A. There are many things beyond, only we must understand that our possibility of knowing, actually knowing, is very limited in present conditions. We can formulate problems, we can make theories, but we cannot find answers for them, or we can find merely theoretical answers so that one answer is as good as another. But we can hope and expect that if we change our state of consciousness and perfect our inner machinery we shall perhaps know more. Q. Does school stand for self-initiation? A. What does self-initiation mean? It is all words. What would it mean
to be initiated into the Chinese language? It would mean to learn it, to be taught. You cannot be initiated into Chinese by laying hands on you. Initiation is work. Two people can be in the same school, and for one it will be a school of one level and for another a school of another level. And for a third it may not be a school at all. It depends how deep one is in it. The highest school can be on very low level, and one and the same school can be on different levels, depending on the people in it. It requires work and remembering of aim. Q. If schools are so important, why do they not have more influence in the world? A. Schools can only act through people who are interested in them. They can do nothing if they are surrounded by people who are indifferent. The possibility of schools influencing life is conditioned by the general attitude to schools. In order to have influence, schools must have people who are interested and who would obey. But this must come from below, it cannot be produced by schools. Schools can throw B influences into the world, but if people are not interested in them, they can do nothing. They cannot use violence. Q. Can a school lose by giving away its knowledge? A. A school can lose in many different ways. We shall come to this question later on. It depends whom it gives to. If it gives just in general and does not receive anything, certainly it will lose. If one has money and begins to give it to everybody, whether they deserve it or not, certainly one will lose one's money. Q. You said that if we want a school we must take part in building it. How can we do that? A. You must remember that the level of a school depends on the level of being of the people who constitute it. If there are not enough people with magnetic centre, there can be no school. But it is not simply coming to lectures and accepting what one hears that shows the presence of a magnetic centre. Q. Would the spreading of school ideas and school language among other people be of any help from the point of view of the school? A. Ideas cannot be spread in the right form—it is important to understand that. It would be very good if it could be done, but it cannot. Words would remain, but the ideas themselves would be different. If it were enough to spread them, why are schools necessary? The language will spread itself, maybe even in our lifetime, but the ideas will enter into the general currency in a wrong form. For instance, there would be no distinction between 'doing' and 'happening'. Q. We talk of schools and different levels. Is it not rather confusing? What do higher levels mean? A. Why do you find the idea of higher levels confusing? For instance, we can take this idea of levels quite simply in relation to ourselves: using all
our mental capacities we can think only up to a certain level, but if we could use higher centres, for instance higher emotional centre which already needs more or less complete self-remembering, then certainly on the same subject we could think quite differently and find many more connections in things which we do not notice now. That shows different levels of thinking, and sometimes we actually have glimpses of a higher level of thinking, so we may have some material for observation, because even now we can think differently on the same subject. And as regards different levels of people, we meet with results of work of people obviously belonging to higher planes; we cannot say that our experience of ordinary life is limited to results of work of people like ourselves. Take the New Testament, and there are also works of art, esoteric writings, Christian literature and so on which obviously cannot belong to ordinary people. The existence of people of higher development is not imagination, not a hypothesis, but an actual fact. So I do not understand in what way it is confusing; I do not see how one can think without recognizing this fact. It is a definite fact that people live not only on the level on which we are but can exist on different levels. From this point of view humanity can be regarded as divided into four concentric circles. The three inner circles are called Esoteric, Mesoteric and Exoteric. The fourth is the outer circle where men 1, 2 and 3 live. Schools act as gates through which man No. 4, who is between the outer and the Exoteric circle, can pass. Man No. 5 belongs to the Exoteric circle, man No. 6 to the Mesoteric and man No. 7 to the Esoteric or the innermost circle. The outer circle is also called the circle of the confusion of tongues, for in this circle people cannot understand one another. Understanding is possible only in the inner circles. All this means there are degrees. A man who lives in the outer circle is under the law of accident, or, if he has a strongly expressed essence, his life is more governed by the laws of his type or the laws of fate. But when a man begins to work towards consciousness, he already has direction. This means a change, perhaps not perceptible, but nevertheless cosmically a change. Only individual effort can help man to pass from the outer circle into the Exoteric circle. What refers to a man in the outer circle does not refer to a man who begins to work. He is under different laws, or rather, different laws begin to touch a man who begins to work. Each circle is under different laws.
CHAPTER V Possibility of man's further development—Absence of consciousness— Cognition of truth—Study of degrees of consciousness—Self-remembering and self-observation— Impossibility of defining what self-remembering is— Self-remembering as method of awakening—Approach to self-remembering through the intellectual centre—Reconstructing thoughts—Stopping thoughts as a method of bringing self-remembering—Remembering oneself in emotional moments—Ignorance and weakness—Identification and struggle with it—External and internal considering—Negative emotions—Quiet place in oneself. IT WOULD BE GOOD IF, FROM TIME TO TIME, you tried to sum marize in your mind what you have heard so far; because after some time of coming to lectures and talks one begins to forget the chronology of the ideas, and it is important to remember the order in which they are given. Out of all you have heard, the most important idea is that with certain knowledge and certain efforts man can develop, he can complete himself. The development of man, if it is a process (it is not obligatory at all), passes through certain definite stages or steps. If you return to the beginning, you will remember what was said about the absence of consciousness in man and the fact that when a man realizes it, this realiza tion gives him the possibility of acquiring consciousness, and you will see that this is the direction in which man can develop. As long as he does not realize that he is simply a machine and that all his processes are mechanical, he cannot begin to study himself, for this realization is the beginning of self-study. So study must begin in this way: we must realize that we do not possess self-consciousness, that we cannot be aware of ourselves at moments of action or thought. This is the first step. The second step is to realize that we do not know ourselves, we do not know our machine and how it works. And the next step is to realize that we have to study methods of self study. We observe ourselves all our life, but we do not know what self-observation means. Real self-observation must be based on facts. So one of the first points is: how to remember oneself, how to be more conscious? It is not enough to admit this absence of consciousness in
oneself; one has to see it in actual fact, to verify it from personal observation. We do not realize what consciousness is and what it implies. If one becomes conscious for half an hour, it is incredible what one can see and learn. So it is an aim in itself, because of what it brings, and it also means a step towards objective consciousness. It is necessary to speak a little about this, about what is meant by the four degrees of consciousness man can possess. If we take it from the point of view of cognition of truth, then in sleep we cannot know the difference between what is true and what is not true. Things we see in dreams all look alike. In the waking state we already have more opportunity to recognize the difference between things: the shape of things is made out by our eye, the surface of things by touch and, to a certain extent, we can orientate ourselves by the perceptions of our instruments of sense. So there is an objective element, but we ourselves remain subjective to ourselves. When we become self conscious, we become objective to ourselves, and in objective conscious we can know objective truth about everything. These are the degrees of consciousness. Q. Must we change our knowledge in order to see things as they really are and know the truth? A. No, in this state of consciousness we cannot come to things as they are; we have to change our state of consciousness. But we can take off some layers of lying. Things are surrounded by lying. We can take off one, two or three skins and come nearer to real things. Q. I am not clear about higher consciousness. Could we at least know how to think about it? A. We realize the possibility of higher consciousness when we realize that we are not conscious at all. We are conscious only at rare moments, with-out possibility of control. Now we are in two states—in sleep and half-awake. Theoretical comparisons of states of consciousness and descriptions in words will not help; but when we begin to awake we realize the state in which we are now. It is necessary to find moments of self-remembering and then, at these moments, you will see the difference. By studying yourself you will see that you can be very near to sleep, or you can be near to self consciousness. So study begins with the study of these different states in ourselves. For instance, when we take ourselves as one— or do not think about it—then we are nearly asleep. But when we begin to divide ourselves and know that at every moment it is only one 'I' or one group of 'I's speaking, then we are nearer to self-consciousness, nearer to objective facts. There are different ways of studying consciousness in oneself. In the beginning the first thing is the realization that one cannot be conscious when one wants to. The best time to realize this is after you have been speaking or doing something. Suppose you have been talking about some
important business, or writing a letter; then ask yourself, 'Was I conscious at that time?' The second thing, in the beginning, is the realization that you are not one, that you have many different 'I's. Q. How is one to recognize when one is self-conscious? A. You will know; it is quite a different feeling. If you try to be conscious for a moment and then compare it with another moment when you did not try to be conscious, you will see the difference. It cannot be described. One moment you are aware of yourself, another moment you are not: you do things, you speak, you write— and you are not conscious. Only you must remember that it is said from the very beginning that we must study not only states of consciousness but also obstacles to consciousness. So we must study them, and then remove them. All these obstacles are in ourselves. External circumstances we cannot change, we have to take them as they are and change inwardly in these circumstances. Q. If you observe yourself for a moment, are you conscious at that moment? A. Not necessarily; it may be quite mechanical. But if you are conscious at the same time that you observe, the line of your attention will resemble two arrows, one showing attention directed on the thing you observe and another on yourself. Q. I cannot understand the link between self-observation and self-remembering. How to begin, what to do? A. Self-remembering is an attempt to be aware of yourself. Self-observation is always directed at some definite function: either you observe your thoughts, or movements, or emotions, or sensations. It must have a definite object which you observe in yourself. Self-remembering does not divide you, you must remember the whole, it is simply the feeling of 'I', of your own person. They may come together, particularly at later stages, and then you will be able to do both at the same time—observe something definite, or recognize manifestations in yourself, and remember yourself; but in the beginning the two things are different. You begin with self-observation—that is the normal way— and through self-observation you realize that you do not remember yourself. When you realize that, and that at very rare moments you do remember yourself, then any person who is not definitely prejudiced will be able to understand that it is possible to increase these moments of self-remembering. And then you try to do it. Q. I find it difficult to decide whether I really observe myself or only remember things afterwards. A. In the beginning there is no particular necessity to worry about which is which; just do what you can, either observe at the moment, or remember it immediately, or remember after some time. But later you will catch
particular moments when you can be aware of yourself at the actual moment when things happen. That will be self-remembering. Q. How do you know of the miraculous results which will follow self-remembering? A. You see, this is connected with the whole idea of development, with the possibility of changing being. This is one of the first things we must understand: that man is not bound to remain as he is; he can change. There are different degrees of man that can be attained after long and persistent work. If we can be more conscious, this will make higher centres work. The functioning of higher centres will be in many ways miraculous. The idea of self-remembering enters into many systems and school teachings, but it is not in the right place, it is never put first. But this system says that you do not remember yourself and that if you understand that you do not remember yourself, you may be able to achieve something. Self-awareness is the greatest change possible, because in ordinary conditions of life nobody is aware of himself, and yet people do not realize this. Everybody sitting here, if they ask themselves sincerely whether they are aware of themselves, will have to answer that they are not. Nobody is aware. The whole idea is to be aware of yourself in this place, at this moment. This is the beginning, for one has to begin somewhere. Later it may take different forms, many other things may be included in it. Nothing can describe this: it is material for observation and study. Descriptions will not help, one has to practise. Normally nobody remembers himself, nobody is aware of himself. This is the ordinary state of a human being, of a man-machine. But if he knows about it, if he realizes it and thinks about it, it becomes possible. Only, in the beginning self-remembering is very slow in coming and very small, with long lapses of not remembering. Q. Is the essential feature of a state of self-remembering the ordinary state of alertness of mind? A. No, you cannot take it like that—it is too small. It is a different state, more different from our present state than our present state is from physical sleep; but even comparing sleep with the ordinary state gives you some possibility of understanding the difference. When you are asleep, your world is limited by actual sensations, but when you wake up and find yourself in the objective world (although you see this world in subjective categories) it is much less limited. But when you realize that this is not full awakening, that you are actually less than half-awake, you will understand that if you awake fully you will find yourself in a still richer world and will see and understand many of its characteristics which now pass unnoticed. Q. I want to know whether self-remembering, at any rate at an early stage, should be expected to consist of a sterile cessation of attention to any-thing other than oneself?
A. At an early stage it can only be a realization that you do not remember yourself. If we realize how little we are aware of ourselves and how tiny the moments are when we are aware, when we remember that and feel that and realize what it means, then we can understand what self-remembering means. If you realize the importance of this fact and all that it implies, it will not be sterile. But if you do not realize it, you are quite right, it will be sterile. Then it will simply be a strange exercise that does not lead anywhere. Q. Does self-remembering come automatically when you realize that you do not remember yourself? A. This is self-remembering. You cannot make the next step without realizing where you are. It is the same process, the same thing. The more you realize how unpleasant and dangerous it is to be a machine, the more possibility you have to change. Q. How? A. There is always something we can do at certain moments. You must know these moments, and what to do, and how. We are studying doors. Self-remembering is a door. If realization that we do not remember ourselves becomes continuous, then we can remember ourselves. Every day you can find time to realize that you do not remember yourself; this will gradually bring you to self-remembering. I do not mean to remember that you do not remember yourself but to realise it. I repeat, it is not useful to look for definitions, they would only make understanding more difficult. What is really useful for understanding Is comparing the different degrees of consciousness within our ordinary state, for even in our ordinary state of relative consciousness there are different degrees, different levels: we can be nearer to awakening or further from it. We can see such big differences in ourselves, when we really learn to observe, that it will show us the possibilities we have. It is the one unmistakable thing. We are always moving between two shores —between sleep and awakening. Moving more towards one shore or more towards the other creates two different possibilities: one is development, the other is decay. Q. You asked us not to accept anything without questioning it. Have you knowledge that these higher states of consciousness have actually been reached? A. Oh yes. In the first place you can find many descriptions in literature of how mystics and religious people came to the same things. The similarity of descriptions of these experiences is the best proof. All sorts of people in different countries, thousands of years apart, living in different conditions, have come to the same kind of experience by certain ways. Then you can find many people who have personal experience of this kind which proves that quite different states of perception and reaction exist. So it is not a hypothesis.
Q. I have recently had a very strange experience. I was talking to someone and trying to be aware of myself. Suddenly I saw my friend very clearly and realized that before this I had not really seen her at all. A. This is a very good observation; it actually happens that way. When you tried to be aware of yourself, for a moment you became conscious and saw things you had not seen before. If you could keep this consciousness for, say, ten minutes, you would see many things which would astonish you. We look with our eyes and do not see; but if we become conscious, we begin to see things about which we have no idea. This is quite normal, if only you do not let imagination enter into it. Q. Working to attain consciousness on the lines of the system, does there come a sudden change or illumination? A. Sudden? No. What does sudden mean? You see, in the process of growth of unity, when this process has gone on for a long time, at some difficult moment you may feel different. It may look sudden, but it is not really so. It is the result of previous efforts. Q. If potentiality for objective consciousness is the normal condition of man, how is it that only a few can develop? A. When you try to make the first step towards objective consciousness, which is gaining self-consciousness, and you see how difficult it is and how many forces work in you against it, how many obstacles there are, you will have no doubt that only a few can attain it, that it is a possibility, but a very remote possibility. There are too many obstacles—laziness, lying, inertia. We like to sleep. Q. How and why did man come to be this being of false values? A. What do you mean by false values? It is a relative concept: from one point of view they may be false, from another true. You can only find out for yourself whether man's development is an abstract idea or the truth. You must yourself come to one or another point of view. If you realize that change is only possible through awakening, then it becomes a fact, because you can see small degrees of awakening in yourself. Q. If man does not remember himself, does it mean he has no consciousness? A. You do not remember yourself; not man but you. If you try and fail, it does not mean you have no consciousness, but that you have not enough. Your own experience, however limited, can alone show the degree. When we use the word 'self-consciousness' we mean a certain degree, beyond our ordinary amount of consciousness. We have a certain amount of consciousness, but it is not sufficient for getting out of our state. If we had not a drop of consciousness, we would remain as we are. Q. How is it possible to recognize self-remembering if we ever do? A. First it must be understood by mind what it means and what it would mean to have it; and then it must be understood that one can be at different
distances from it. Suppose one is not sure, but the distance between the state of self remembering and your present state changes, and after a time you realize that one day it is five thousand miles and another day only three thousand miles. There is a difference. We cannot speak about several degrees at the same time; we can only speak about the next degree we can produce. Q. I want to find out about the next degree. A. This is all material for observation. You want to put labels on them, but you cannot; they change all the time. One moment it is almost self-consciousness, the next moment you are asleep. You must observe and see results. In one state you can understand certain things, in the next you cannot. In one state you identify, in another you have control; the more control there is, the nearer you are to self-consciousness. Talk will not help much, it will remain formatory. It is necessary to touch the emotional centre, and you can do that only by trying different things. Work is not simple: from the very beginning you must try to do impossible things— impossible in the sense that they do not happen by themselves. There cannot be a text-book telling you to do first one thing, then another thing, and so on. At the same time questions about self-remembering must always be asked, because, for a long time, many mistakes are possible about it. So these questions must never be suppressed, for they are most important. Q. Is there a connection between self-remembering and awakening? A. Self-remembering is a method of awakening. What you are doing now is only preparation, only the study of the method. You must do as much as you can in your present state; then, when your inner situation changes, you will be able to use all the experience which you now acquire. But to reach the real meaning of self remembering is possible only in very emotional states. Since you cannot create these emotional states, you cannot know what self-remembering is, but you can prepare for this experience; then when it comes you will know how to deal with it. Very high emotional energy is necessary for self-remembering. Now you are only practising, but without this practice you will never get the real state. Q. When you say 'asleep' and 'awake', is there a definite line between the two? A. No, they are transitory states. At the same time there is a line beyond which we never pass. Q. Is it a question of training? A. It is more training of mind. We must learn to think in a different way, and above all to think more practically. We do not think practically as a rule—we think mostly about things that do not concern us. Q. Is then self-remembering a function of the intellectual centre? It appears to be an intellectual effort. A. Self-remembering is the beginning and the centre of the system and
the most important thing to understand. You cannot describe it as an intellectual action or intellectual idea. You have to begin studying what self-remembering means intellectually, but in actual fact it is not intellectual because it is a moment of will. It is necessary to remember yourself not at a quiet moment when nothing happens but when you know that you are doing something wrong—and not do it. For instance, when you are identified, you must be able to feel it and then stop it and at the same time remember yourself, be aware that you are doing it, that mechanicalness causes you to be identified and that you are stopping it. That will be self-remembering. Q. How can one start practising self-remembering? A. You remember I gave the example of varying degrees of light in a room and a typewriter. The typewriter can be taken as the intellectual centre, and light as consciousness. Only, in the case of consciousness there is a certain connection between all centres, for in full light not only one but all centres work differently. Real self-remembering requires emotion, but we have no control over the emotional centre. So by a certain understanding we can make the intellectual centre, over which we have a certain control, work in the dark as though it were light, and this will produce self-remembering. Self-remembering means a form of thinking or intellectual work which corresponds to awakening, and in this way it induces a moment of awakening. Then, when one awakes for a moment, one realizes that generally one is asleep, that one is not conscious, and how dangerous it is. The more you put into it, the more you understand it, the better the result will be. If you realize what you lose by not remembering yourself and what you gain by remembering yourself, you will have a greater incentive for making efforts to self-remember. You will see that not remembering yourself is like finding yourself in an aeroplane, high above the earth, and fast asleep. This is in fact our situation, but we do not wish to realize it. If a man does realize it, then naturally he will make efforts to awake. But if he thinks he is just sitting in an easy chair and nothing particular is happening, he will think that there is no harm in sleeping. Q. What is meant by putting one's thoughts in a form in which they would correspond to awakening? A. As I said, thoughts are the only thing we can control. To a certain extent we can control movements, but in ordinary conditions, without special instruction, we can do nothing with movements. As regards thoughts, first of all we must throw out all thoughts connected with identification and think about the ideas of the system. This is preparation for self-remembering, because at every point we come to the necessity to remember ourselves. If you cannot remember yourself, try to revive the ideas of the system in your mind. The whole system, the study of man and the universe, is all help to self-remembering. This thinking will by
itself remind you and create an inner atmosphere for it. But first you must eliminate all thoughts that stand in the way. If at this stage you cannot control thoughts, you can do nothing further. You may not control your temper, or your imagination, or your lying, but you must control your thoughts. At quiet moments you must be able to see when you are wrong. If you cannot, it means that you have not begun yet; but sooner or later one must begin. Q. Should we, each of us, know what stands in our way? A. Yes, certainly everyone must know. It is generally connected with some form of negativeness, or laziness, or fear. Q. I still do not see what it means to try and think as we would think if we were more conscious. A. Try to imagine yourself conscious—that would be the right use of imagination. We develop this power of imagination in an absolutely wrong and useless way which is always making trouble for us. But now, for once, try to use it and imagine yourself conscious. Try to think how you would act, think, speak and so on. At first self-remembering is an effort on functions. You begin to remember yourself simply by forming your mental processes in a certain way, and this brings moments of consciousness. You cannot work on consciousness itself: you can make one or two spasmodic efforts, but no permanent efforts. But you can make efforts on thoughts, and in this way you can work on consciousness in a roundabout way. This is the most important part of the method. Try to understand the difference between remembering yourself in this way and being conscious. It is the same mental process that you use in everything, in reading, writing and all that you do, so you have a certain control over it. Even if we put the same amount of energy into self remembering that we put into the study of a foreign language we would acquire a certain amount of consciousness. Unfortunately we do not want to put even that amount of energy into it; we think that these things must come by themselves, or that it is enough to try once— and it must come. Self-remembering needs effort, so, if you continue to make these efforts, moments of consciousness will come more often and will stay longer. Then, gradually, self-remembering will cease to be purely intellectual—it will have an awakening power. Q. What will self-remembering be then—emotion and sensation? A. Emotion is a function and sensation is a function, but self-remembering is not. It is an attempt to create in oneself a state of consciousness without any relation to functions. From the very beginning we must understand that functions are one thing and states of consciousness another. You are now in a certain state of consciousness, and by trying to remember yourself you try to create an approach to the third state of consciousness. You do this by a certain reconstruction. You reconstruct a certain form of thinking which you have in higher states of