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negative emotions, for displaying, enjoying and producing them. You remember that there is no real centre for negative emotions. False personality acts as a centre for them. Q. Is identification always a manifestation of false personality? A. False personality cannot manifest itself without identification, the same as negative emotions and many other things in us, such as all lying, all imagination. One identifies, first of all, with one's imaginary idea of oneself. One says 'this is I' when it is nothing but imagination. It is the same with lying—one cannot lie without identification; it would be very poor lying and nobody would believe it. So it means that first one must deceive oneself, and then one can deceive other people. Study of false personality is one of the quickest methods for self-remembering. The more you understand your false personality, the more you will remember yourself. What prevents self-remembering is, first of all, false personality. It cannot and does not wish to remember itself, and it does not wish to let any other personality remember. It tries in every possible way to stop self-remembering, takes some form of sleep and calls it self-remembering. Then it is quite happy. You must not trust your false personality—its ideas, its words, its actions. You cannot destroy it, but you can make it passive for some time and then, little by little, you can make it weaker. Q. You say one must not trust anything connected with false personality, but it seems to be all there is? A. It cannot be so. There is one thing—-you, and there are imaginary 'I's. You is what really is, and you must learn to distinguish it. It may be very small, very elementary, but you should be able to find something sufficiently definite and solid in yourself. If we are entirely false personality, then nothing happens. There are people who are only false personality. Other sides of them are so subdued, so weak, that they cannot resist false personality. These people will not study themselves because they would be afraid of seeing what they are. False personality does not like it at all. Generally, if they begin, they very soon leave off, explain it in some way, for they are unable to continue self-study. But if one has the energy to go on studying false personality, this shows that one has something besides it. As I said before, this work is every day, not once a month or once a year. It is an examination every day. Q. Would you say false personality is more inclined to leave you as you grow older? A. No. If you do nothing against it, it grows. Tastes may change, but it grows. This is the only 'development' that happens in mechanical life. False personality is the most mechanical part of us—so mechanical that there is no hope for it. So it must not be allowed to enter into the work. Q. Presumably really great people, the saints for instance, conquer false personality?
A. It depends on the degree. Saints describe the devils they have to struggle with. All devils live in false personality. Q. How can I remember my realization that much of emotional suffering is in false personality? A. Only by self-remembering. Suffering is the best possible help for self-remembering if you learn how to use it. By itself it does not help; one can suffer one's whole life and it will not give a grain of result, but if one learns to use suffering, it will become helpful. The moment you suffer, try to remember yourself. Q. There are two kinds of suffering: one is due to seeing my own mechanicalness and weakness, and the other is suffering from seeing someone you are fond of ill or unhappy. How to work against it or use it for the work? A. The question is, can you do something or not? If you can, you can, but if you cannot, it is another thing. If we begin suffering about everything we cannot help, then we shall certainly never cease suffering. The chief thing is to find how much imagination there is in it. We may be perfectly sure there is none, but if we make one more effort we often see that it is all imaginary. We have a wrong picture of ourselves, and at the same time we ascribe to this wrong picture real features. But if this picture is false, then everything about it is bound to be false, and its suffering is also false. It may be very acute, but this does not make any difference. Imaginary suffering is generally more unpleasant than real, because with real suffering you can do something, but with imaginary suffering you can do nothing. You can only get rid of it, but if you are fond of it or proud of it, then you have to keep it. Q. I still do not see how to start understanding false personality? A. You must know what it is, place it, so to speak; this is the first step. You must realize that all identification, all considering, all lies, all lies to oneself, all weaknesses, all contradictions, whether seen or unseen, all these are false personality. It is like a special breed of dog. If you do not know it, you cannot speak about it. Even to see little bits of it is quite enough, for every small part of it is the same colour. If you see this dog once, you will always know it. It barks in a special way, walks in a special way.. . . In the beginning you cannot know which is 'I' and which is false personality. What you call 'I' is a complicated structure, and so is false personality. You cannot know everything about either of them; but if you take from one side something you have no doubt about that it is false and from the other side something you have no doubt about that it is true, you can compare them. Q. Sometimes I observe myself identifying or considering and find that I do so because of a picture I have of myself. Can I in this way come to know false personality and, by observing it, weaken it?
A. Yes, it is the only way, but only if you do not get tired of it, because, in the beginning, many people start eagerly, but soon get tired and begin to use 'I' indiscriminately without asking themselves 'which I'? Our chief enemy is the word 'I', because, as I said, we have really no right to use it in ordinary conditions. Much later, after long work, we can begin to think of the group of 'I's that correspond to Deputy Steward as 'I'. But in ordinary conditions, when you say 'I don't like', you must ask yourself, 'Which of my "I"s does not like?' In this way you constantly remind yourself of this plurality. If you forget once, it will be easier to forget next time. There are many good beginnings in the work, and then, after some time, this is forgotten and people start to slide down, and in the end become more mechanical than before. The beginning of self-knowledge is understanding who speaks in you and whom you can trust. Q. Does one's capacity for work increase just as much as one is able to weaken false personality? A. Work begins with struggle against false personality. Everything one can get one gets only at the expense of false personality. Later, when it is made passive, one may get much at the expense of other things, but for a long time one has to live, so to speak, off false personality. False personality is very difficult to find in ordinary life, because, since there is no action against it, there is also no resistance. But when a person begins to work, resistance to work appears, and this resistance is false personality. Q. Cannot false personality be interested in, or attracted by, system ideas? A. Yes, very much. Only then you will have the system in the light of false personality, and it will be quite a different system. The moment false personality takes the system to itself it only grows stronger and weakens the system for you. It adds one word here and another there, and you cannot imagine in what an extraordinary form some of the ideas come back to me. One word omitted from some formulation may make an idea quite different. False personality always knows better and is always fully justified in doing what it likes. This is where the danger lies. The system means all that is said, in the sense in which it is said. If one corrects it, consciously or unconsciously, then it cannot be called the system—it will be pseudo system, falsification of the system. The moment it becomes incorrect or something is forgotten or left out, it will give wrong results. Q. I ask these questions because I sometimes doubt the genuineness of my interest in the work—I may be lying to myself. A. Only you can answer that; and there again only if you do not forget the fundamental principles and say 'I' about something which is only one of the 'I's. You must get to know other 'I's and remember about them.
To forget about this is very dangerous, because then a knock, a slight change in something can be enough to put everything wrong. Until now, when we spoke about man, we spoke about general human features common to all people. But at a certain moment in the work, besides understanding the general principles, one must try to find one's own peculiarities, for one cannot know oneself for practical purposes if one only knows the general characteristics. Each man has his own individual features, his own weaknesses when he is unable to resist things that happen. These features or weaknesses may be very simple or very complicated. One man may be able to resist everything except good food; another all except talk, or he may be lazy, or too active. It is very important at a certain stage of self-study to find one's chief feature, which means chief weakness. People's chief weaknesses are very different, and if we can resist something that another man cannot resist because it happens to be his chief feature, this difference in weaknesses gives us the illusion that we can 'do'. Chief feature or chief weakness is in false personality. In some cases it is possible to see definitely one, two or three features or tendencies, often linked together, which come into everything like an axis round which everything turns. This is chief feature. Sometimes it is very clear and apparent, but sometimes it is difficult to describe. Our language has often no words, no forms to describe it and it can only be indicated in a roundabout way. It is interesting that one can hardly ever find one's own chief feature, because one is in it, and if one is told, one usually does not believe it. But we can find what stands side by side with it, although it is not it. It is sometimes useful to collect opinions of friends about oneself, for this often helps in discovering one's features. It is very important to find out what creates obstacles to our work. Until one has found it, a chief feature means constant loss of energy, so we must find this leak and stop it. Q. Can one ever find the chief feature by oneself? A. At a certain moment in organized work it will come out, or you may be told. But if you are told, you will not believe it. Or sometimes it is so obvious that it is impossible to deny it, but with the help of buffers one can forget it again. I have known people who gave a name to their chief feature and for some time remembered it, and then forgot. You must come near to it yourself. When you feel it yourself, you will know. If you are only told, you may easily forget. When you find many manifestations of your false personality, you may find your feature. Q. Is it what you call a buffer? A. No, but buffers hide the chief feature; it is helped by buffers. Q. If we find out our chief features, can we correct them? You said we cannot change anything.
A. In the ordinary way we cannot. But here it means using the result of experience and knowledge that does not belong to ordinary life. Q. But an ordinary man changes too. A. Of course he changes, he becomes more mechanical, more narrow, more set. There may be exceptions, but as a rule things do not progress in ordinary life. Personalities change, particularly if circumstances change, but it is mechanical, accidental change. We often base our opinion on exceptions, whether we observe them rightly or wrongly. Exceptions are easier to notice than rules. Q. Having observed a certain tendency in oneself, one decides that it shall not happen. A. Usually after one has decided it still goes on happening. Or if it docs not happen, generally another tendency appears in its place. As a rule only one thing stops things— fear. Q. Do chief features vary during life? A. If they are clearly delineated, they go on throughout the whole life. Q. Yet I can see things that I had that do not exist now. A. Possibly. Our knowledge of ourselves is very defective. One can observe many things in life and make great mistakes, if one does not know how to verify. And generally, as I said, it is difficult to see chief feature. Q. Could you tell me what my chief feature is? A. I do not think so. You see, this is not necessary for starting to work. In the beginning, what is important is not the chief feature itself but what is produced by it, and that you can study in the form of attitudes. We do not know our attitudes because we have never thought about ourselves in the right way. We have too many imaginary ideas. What we must study now is all our points of view, habitual emotions, the way we think, what we invent. These are all results of chief feature or chief features, for there may be two or three features which are the most important, not necessarily only one. Think about false personality; this is quite sufficient for practical purposes. As a theory, false personality in most cases turns round one axle and that axle is chief feature. If a man has one big weakness, from one point of view it is an advantage, because if he can conquer this feature or weakness he can in one stride achieve many things. It is an advantage when things are concentrated, many things coming together at one point. Then efforts at this point produce better results than if one works at different points. But chief feature is not always definable. Sometimes you can put your finger on it, sometimes not; in one person you can see it, in another not. But false personality you can see. Q. Is chief feature a food for false personality? A. Chief feature is not food. It is false personality; it is something on which false personality is based and which enters into everything. Q. Does chief feature always make decisions at important moments? A. This is the best definition for it—that it always makes decisions.
In connection with chief feature, it is better to think first on general lines—why you came to the system, what you want from the system. It often happens that people come to lectures for years and forget why they came. If you remember why you came, the system can answer your questions, but not without that. You may not remember about mechanicalness; you may forget about the very keen conviction in every person that he can 'do', and that if he cannot it is because he did not think about it or did not wish to. It is necessary to struggle with this idea, and understand that we are mechanical, that we can do nothing, that we are asleep, that we have many 'I's—all these things. This will help you to see false personality, for all these things we ascribe to ourselves are standard examples of imagination. And imaginary personality, or false personality, is chief feature for everybody. Q. Is false personality always selfish? A. If you think of yourself as false personality and try to find what is not, you may be fairly sure that all that is selfish is false personality. But the more you think about it, the less you will see it. It may appear very unselfish, and that is the worst of all! Q. Are there many varieties of chief feature? A. There are strange varieties and there are classical ones. One very common feature, described in many places in the New Testament, is when we see other people's faults but not our own. Then certain kinds of self-pity are very common. And there are also curious combinations for which it is sometimes difficult to find a psychological definition. Q. Is self-remembering the only way to defeat chief feature? A. Without self-remembering we can do nothing. It is the only way. Q. Is it not possible to have different features when one is with different people? A. No, these are roles. Features do not change so quickly. Q. Is blaming other people a feature? A. It may be a feature. But what is it based on? On lack of understanding. If you begin to study psychology, you find that all causes are in yourself; there can be no causes outside yourself. You do not remind yourself of this often enough. One little part understands that causes are in you, but the larger part continues to accuse other people. At the bottom of every favourite negative emotion you will find self-justification which feeds it. You must stop it in your mind first, and then after some time you will be able to stop it in the emotion too. Lack of understanding is the first cause, lack of effort the second. Q. Did you say that laziness can be a chief feature? A. Laziness is for some people three-quarters of their lives or more. Sometimes laziness is very important and is the chief feature of false personality, and then all the rest depends on laziness and serves laziness. But you must remember that there are different kinds of laziness. It is
necessary to find these different kinds by observing yourself and observing other people. For instance, there are very busy people who are always doing something, and yet their mind may be lazy. This happens more often than anything else. Laziness is not only desire to sit and do nothing. Q. What is the best way to struggle with false personality? A. Always do something which false personality does not like and very soon you will find more things it does not like. If you continue, it will get more and more irritated and will show itself more and more clearly, so that soon there will be no question about it. But first your struggle must be based on knowing—you must know its features, find what it particularly dislikes. One false personality dislikes one thing, another dislikes another thing. You must have enough strength in yourself to go against it. Now let us speak about the relation of false personality to other parts of man. In every man, at every moment, his development proceeds by what may be called a Static Triad. This triad can be called static because things at the apex of the triangle always stay in the same place and act as neutralizing force while the other forces change very slowly. Man is divided into four parts: body, soul, essence and personality. We have already spoken about essence and personality. The term 'soul' is used in the system in the sense of life-principle. The soul may be described as a cloud of fine matters or energies connected together and bound to the physical body. As long as it is in the body, the body is alive and body and soul make one thing. When they separate, we say that the body dies. It is this that distinguishes a piece of dead meat from living flesh. When a centre is working well, the soul is concentrated there. But in an ordinary man the soul has no psychic qualities, nor is it any use your knowing anything more about it. I only tell you this from a theoretical point of view; it is simply material, although of a finer materiality than the body. This diagram may be useful, because it shows what we are, if we can see it. It shows the changes in our development, what we are now and what we can become. When you learn to use this diagram, it will help you to determine definite stages in the work. The first triangle shows the state of man in ordinary life; the second shows his state when he begins to develop. There are long periods between the state shown in the first and the state shown in the second triangle and still longer between them and the third triangle. Actually there are many intermediate stages, but these three are sufficient to show the way of development in relation to false personality. It is necessary to remember that none of these states is permanent. Any of them may last for half an hour and then another state may come, then again a different state. The diagram only shows bow development goes.
It would be possible to continue the diagram beyond permanent 'I', because permanent 'I' again has many forms. The triad is made by the body, the soul and the essence at the apex. At the second point is 'I', taken in the sense of many 'I's which are the person, that is to say, all feelings and sensations which do not form a part of false personality. The third point of the triangle is held by false personality, that is, by the imaginary picture of oneself. In an ordinary man false personality calls itself 'I' and is active, but after some time, if a man is capable of development, magnetic centre begins to
grow in him. He may call it 'special interests', 'ideals', 'ideas' or something like that. When he begins to feel this magnetic centre, he finds a separate part in himself, and from this part his growth begins. This growth can take place only at the expense of false personality, because false personality cannot appear at the same time as magnetic centre. When magnetic centre is active, false personality is passive, but when false personality is active, magnetic centre is passive. If magnetic centre is formed in a man, he may meet a school, and when he begins to work he must work against false personality. This does not mean that false personality disappears; it only means that it is not always present. In the beginning it is nearly always present, but when magnetic centre begins to grow it disappears, sometimes for half an hour, sometimes even for a day. Then it comes back and stays for a week! When false personality disappears for a short time, 'I' becomes stronger, only it is not really 'I', it is many 'I's. The longer the periods for which false personality disappears, the stronger the 'I' composed of many 'I's becomes. Magnetic centre may be transformed into Deputy Steward, and when Deputy Steward acquires control of false personality it transfers all the unnecessary things to the side of false personality, and only the necessary things remain on the side of 'I'. Then, at a still further stage, it may be that permanent 'I' will come on the side of the 'I' side with all that belongs to it. Then many 'I's will be on the false personality side, but we cannot say much about that now. There will be permanent 'I' with all that belongs to it, but we do not know what belongs to it. Permanent 'I' has quite different functions, quite a different point of view from anything we are accustomed to. The name 'permanent I' is not very successful, because it is not perma-nent for a long time; it only comes and stays when it is necessary, and when it is not necessary it may go away again. So it is better to say 'real I'. When this 'I' comes, it controls all other 'I's. It can control everything in a way that no existing 'I's can, so it is quite new in a sense. But when this one 'I' comes, it does not mean that it will stay. First it may not be necessary for it to be there, because smaller 'I's must also learn to act in the right way. Secondly it needs very intensive work, and if work slackens it cannot stay. So there are many conditions for its presence, but if you experience the taste of it being there once, you will know many things and you will be sure of many things which now you can only surmise. The Static Triad shows that either personal work or degeneration is going on in relation to different manifestations of false personality, but that body, soul and essence remain the same all the time. After some time they too will be affected, but they do not enter into the initial stages. Body will remain the same body, essence will change later, but it does not enter into the beginning of the work. According to this system, essence
enters only as much as it is mixed with personality. We do not take it separately because, as already explained, we have no means of working on essence apart from personality. Q. Does this diagram imply that body and essence come in sometimes on the side of false personality, and sometimes on the other, according to which is uppermost? A. No. If body and essence are normal, they are impartial and do not take one side or the other. But if there is something wrong with them, they are on the side of false personality. But that does not enter into our conversation; we take them as a permanent force. Change takes place at the other two points of the triad. Q. Docs this diagram mean that Deputy Steward begins to take the place of magnetic centre when one starts school work? A. As I have explained earlier, Deputy Steward does not come straight from magnetic centre, it has to be transformed into different things first. The first thing that shows the right growth of something in the place of magnetic centre is valuation—understanding of the work. There is a long way between the one and the other. In the diagram they are shown to follow one another, but it does not mean that the one follows the other immediately—they are miles and miles apart and there are hundreds of transformations. Q. What is it that makes 'I' begin to develop and false personality to fade? A. All changes happen in time. In ordinary life false personality is there the whole time. Then, in time, it will diminish and become less important, will occupy less time. (This is shown in the second stage of the diagram where false personality has become passive and the many 'I's surrounding magnetic centre have become active.) You cannot diminish false personality in the sense of size, but you can diminish it in the sense of time. Take twenty-four hours—how many hours belong to one and how many to the other? Everything that changes in us changes in this way. Q. I had the impression until now that false personality was the collection of all the many 'I's. This diagram has made things a little obscure to me. A. Among these many 'I's there are some useful and many passive 'I's which may be the beginning of other personalities. False personality cannot develop; it is all wrong. That is why I said that all work must be against false personality. If one fails in one's work, it is because one has not given enough attention to false personality, has not studied it, has not worked against it. False personality is also made up of many 'I's, but they are all imaginary. Q. I do not understand what you mean by passive 'I's. A. Passive 'I's are 'I's which are controlled by other, active 'I's. For instance, good intentions may be controlled by laziness. Laziness is active, good intentions are passive. The 'I' or combination of 'I's in control is
active; the 'I's which are controlled or driven are passive. Understand it quite simply. This diagram represents a state, then a slightly different state and again a different state. With the help of this diagram you can see three different states of man beginning from the most elementary. In the most elementary state false personality is active and 'I' is passive. Body, soul and essence always remain neutralizing. When, after many stages, permanent 'I' comes, the 'I' becomes active, many 'I's become passive and false personality disappears. Many different diagrams can be drawn between these two extremes, and further than that there are several possibilities. Q. Is there a place in the Static Triad where a group of 'I's, unconnected with magnetic centre, are active and false personality is passive? A. When I said that certain groups of 'I's or personalities become active, I meant those that are centred round magnetic centre. First magnetic centre itself, and then those 'I's that range themselves round magnetic centre are opposed to false personality. Then, at a certain moment, magnetic centre becomes active and false personality passive. Magnetic centre is a combination of a certain group of interests or likes. It does not lead you, for leading would mean progress, whereas you remain in one place. But when things come, then with the help of magnetic centre you are able to see which is which, or whether you like or dislike a thing. You can make a choice. Before one comes into the work, magnetic centre is a certain point which has transformed itself into a certain group of interests. When one meets the work, it becomes interested in school work, and then it disappears as magnetic centre, because magnetic centre is a weak thing, and becomes transformed into what may be called 'work' personality. This diagram is intended to describe the initial stages of the work and so I have put in very few of the combinations which might be shown. For instance, at one of the initial stages we can draw a triad with body, soul and essence at the apex, false personality on one side and many 'I's already divided into certain groups on the other. One of these groups is magnetic centre, but there are other groups, maybe not attached, but still not hostile to the magnetic centre, which can exist and eventually develop into something better. The groups of 'I's which are always hostile and always harmful are false personality. Q. Does the change from one form of the Static Triad to another depend on change of being? A. Yes, every small change is change of being although this expression is generally applied to bigger, more serious changes. When we speak about change of being we speak about change from men No. 1, 2 and 3 to man No. 4 for instance. This is change of being, but of course this big jump consists of small jumps. The Static Triad is merely an auxiliary diagram. It represents you. It shows the state of your being, what you are at a given moment, and helps you to describe to yourself all the stages you pass
through from ordinary mechanical existence to development. In this way you do not describe it in words but give a complete picture of it. Our aim is to become one, to have one permanent 'I'. But in the beginning work means to become more and more divided. You must realize how far you are from being one, and only when you know all these fractions of yourself can work begin on one or some principal 'I's around which unity can be built. It would be wrong understanding to unify all the things you find in yourself now. The new 'I' is something you do not know at present; it grows from something you can trust. At first, in separating false personality from you, you try to divide yourself into what you can call reliable and what you find unreliable. When in a state of doubt remember to try and bring up other 'I's which have a certain valuation. This is the only way to conquer doubts. In order to develop you must have some capacity for valuation. The only practical approach is to think of the different sides of yourself and to find the sides that can work and the sides that cannot. Some people have real values, some have false values and some have no values at all. It is the same with 'I's. People can spend their lives studying systems and system words and never come to real things. Three-quarters or nine-tenths of our ordinary knowledge does not really exist: it exists only in imagination. But this work must be practical from the first. You must understand that without work, without the system, one can do nothing. If one begins to work, one has a chance. But even in the work there are dangers, for if people think that they can do something and at the same time refuse to work on acquiring control, if they remain theoretical too long and do not realize that no kind of change is possible without big efforts, if they go on putting off these efforts until to morrow, then this continual hesitation begins to produce an effect and, after some time, there comes a dangerous moment. It does not come in the beginning, but only if for a long time one goes on without making sufficient efforts or without doing anything seriously. Then, instead of one, one can become split into two, so that all features and all personalities are divided into two groups— one part useful to the work and helping personal work and another part indifferent or even unfriendly. These two groups can continue to exist side by side, trying not to come up at the same time; one may come in the morning, the other in the afternoon. This is a real danger, because if two parts begin to form like this, the indifference of one spoils the result of the work of the other and in this way development stops. This second part need not necessarily be bad or antagonistic to the work, but only weak, and weakness and strength cannot grow at the same time. So it is necessary to struggle very quickly and ruthlessly against that, otherwise it may lead to double crystallization. Q. Would one know if these two groups of personalities were forming in one?