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to see oneself. Man is afraid to see himself. But he can decide to take courage and see what he is. Q. Is will part of being? A. Yes, the same as consciousness and understanding. Only, if you work too much on understanding and knowledge and disregard will, then instead of growing stronger your will will become weaker, or remain the same as it was. If will remains undeveloped, the development of understanding cannot help much. One can understand a great deal and not be able to do anything about it. So from the very beginning one must start making serious efforts to develop will. As I said, with our will—the will of men No. 1, 2 and 3—we can only control one centre, using all the concentration possible for us. Yet centres are dependent on one another. Control of more than one centre can only be obtained if you put yourself under some other will, because your own will is insufficient, and this is why school discipline and school exercises are necessary. We have no real will; we only have self-will and wilfulness. If one understands that, one must have the courage to give up one's will. In a school special possibilities to give up one's will are made, so that if you give it up, later you may have your own will. But even without those special possibilities, if people watch themselves and are careful, they can catch moments when strong desire is present and ask themselves what they are to do in the light of the system. Everybody must find what his own situation is. Q. What is self-will? And what is the difference between self-will and wilfulness? A. There is no particular difference. Both are manifestations of the same thing— generally, manifestations of resistance. It is will created and controlled by opposition. This will we have, but it does not come from us, it comes from the obstacle. Self-will is when, for instance, someone sees that a man does not know how to do a thing and offers to explain, but the man says, 'No, I will do it myself', 'I will decide it myself', 'I don't want to listen to anybody', and so on. Wilfulness is much the same only more general—it can be a kind of habit. It is mechanical will, generally based on wrong assumptions about oneself and one's experience. Self-will is self-assertion. If you compare self-will with a normal action there is always some opposition in it—you want to do something you should not do. It is very characteristic in work. In studying ideas you know that certain things you must avoid, but you want exactly those things. If you start with this in thinking about self-will you will find your own examples. Q. How can we work against self-will? And is it possible for us, as we are, to recognize the moments when we have real will? A. Not real will; real will is very far off. As I said, all we have is self-will and wilfulness, or small wills that change all the time. As to how we can work against self will: you can study the system. There are certain
demands in the system; things you must not do or must do. What can be opposed to self-will? There are only two things opposed to one another: work and self-will. Self-will wants to talk, for instance, and you must not talk about certain things, because if you do, you will only tell lies; there is a rule that you cannot speak about the ideas of the system to people outside before you know and understand them. A struggle ensues, and the result is according to which of the two conquers. In this way, from the very beginning, you meet with ideas of the work opposed to self-will. If you forget about the work, you are not working against self-will. The only way to struggle against self-will is to remember the work. It may be that at one moment the work does not enter at all, but at another moment it does enter, and in that moment you can understand what giving up self-will means. Ask yourself: Is it right from the point of view of the work or not? This is struggle against self-will. In an ordinary man will follows a zigzag line or goes in a circle, this is why it is necessary to subjugate will. This subjugation trains it so that afterwards it can follow a definite line. When it becomes strong enough, it is no longer necessary to limit it. So will cannot be left as it is at present, for now it runs in all directions. It has to be trained, and in order to train will one has to do many unpleasant things. Q. Are opportunities for training will always present if you can find them? A. Yes, as I said, where there is friction. But that depends on what you want—on whether you want friction, on your decision, your state and your position. In the work every moment one has to overcome laziness, inertia, wanting to stop. If one does not work there is nothing to overcome, but if one works at anything one always has to overcome one's desire to stop working. Q. If I make myself do something I do not want to do, is that friction? A. Anything is friction, if you do it. But it is not enough merely to think about it. Only by friction can you create energy and develop will. Q. Are vast amounts of internal friction and discomfort always a necessary preliminary to new development? A. That depends on people. For some people more may be necessary, for some less. Again, it depends on what you want. If you just want to study, it is enough to see, but if you want to change something it is not enough to look at it. Looking at a thing will not change it. Work means friction, conflict between 'yes' and 'no', between the part that wishes to work and the part that does not wish to work. There are many parts of us that do not wish to work, so the moment you begin to work friction starts. If I decide to do something and a part of me does not wish to do it, I must insist as much as I am able, on carrying out my decision. But as soon as work stops, friction stops. Q. How can one create useful friction?
A. You must start with some concrete idea. If you produce no resistance, everything happens. But if you have certain ideas, you can already resist identification and struggle with imagination, negative emotions and things like that. Try to find what really prevents you from being active in the work. It is necessary to be active in the work; one can get nothing by being passive. We forget the beginning, where and why we started, and most of the time we never think about aim, but only about small details. No details are of any use without aim. Self-remembering is of no use without remembering the aims of the work and your original fundamental aim. If these aims are not remembered emotionally, years may pass and one will remain in the same state. It is not enough to educate the mind; it is necessary to educate the will. We are never the same for two days in succession. On some days we shall be more successful, on others less. All we can do is to control what we can. We can never control more difficult things if we do not control the easy things. Every day and hour there are things that we could control and do not; so we cannot have new things to control. We are surrounded by neglected things. Chiefly, we do not control our thinking. We think in a vague way about what we want, but if we do not formulate what we want, nothing will happen. This is the first condition but there are many obstacles. Effort is our money. If we want something, we must pay with effort. According to the strength of effort and the time of effort—in the sense of whether it is the right time for effort or not—we obtain results. Effort needs knowledge, knowledge of the moments when effort is useful. It is necessary to learn by long practice how to produce and apply effort. The efforts we can make are efforts of self-observation and self remembering. When people ask about effort, they think about an effort of 'doing'. That would be lost effort or wrong effort, but effort of self-observation and self remembering is right effort because it can give right results. Self-remembering has an element of will in it. If it were just dreaming, 'I am, I am, I am', it would not be anything. You can invent many different ways of remembering yourselves, for self remembering is not an intellectual or abstract thing; it is moments of will. It is not thought; it is action. It means having increased control; otherwise of what use would it be? You can only control yourselves in moments of self-remembering. The mechanical control which is acquired by training and education—when one is taught how to behave in certain circumstances—is not real control. Q. Does giving up self-will involve giving up your own judgment? A. It depends in what. Generally it means giving up childishness, inefficiency and lying. You have mistaken ideas about what giving up will means. First, you think it is a final action: that you give up will and have no more will. This is an illusion because we have no such will to give up.
Our will lasts for about three minutes. Will is measured by time. If once we give up three minutes of will, to-morrow another three minutes will grow. Giving up will is not one action, it is a continuous process. A single action means nothing. The second mistake is not remembering certain principles to which you give up will. There are many principles in order to follow which you have to give up your will. The third thing is to avoid thinking in extremes; imagining the most difficult cases. Start with simple, ordinary cases. Giving up will only means remembering about the work. This way you learn how to create will; it is the method of developing it. Q. Does giving up one's will mean not to act without understanding? A. You see, this is another of your mistakes. You think that giving up will means doing something. This happens very seldom. In most cases you are told not to do something. There is a great difference in this. For instance, you want to tell someone what you think of him, but you must not do it. It is a question of training. Will can be grown if a man works on himself and makes his will obey the principles of the work. Things that do not concern the work cannot be connected with it, but the more you enter into the work, the more things begin to touch upon it. However, this needs time. When their chance comes and people are told to do something, or not to do something, they often go against it for what seems to them the very best of reasons. So they miss their opportunity. Time passes and later they may see that they have missed their opportunity, but it can no longer be replaced by anything. That is the penalty of self-will. Q. It seems to me that if you give up self-will you actually get what you desire, for by giving up one's desire, one gets the desired result. A. Self-will does not include everything you want. If you are hungry and want to eat, that is not self-will. Self-will means preferring to act by yourself and, in our case, not taking into consideration the work and the principles of the work. If my self-will is to swear, for instance, and I give it up because it is against the principles of the work, where is the desired result you speak of? Some of our desires may be well hidden. For instance, a man may want to criticize someone and he calls it sincerity. But the desire to criticize may be so strong that he would have to make a really big effort to stop it, and a man cannot make really big efforts by himself. I must repeat—in order to create will, man must co-ordinate his every action with ideas of the work; he must in every action ask himself: how will it look from the point of view of the work? Is it useful or harmful to me, or to the work? If he does not know, he can ask. If a man has been long in the work, there is practically not a single action that is not connected with the work; there are no independent actions in the sense that one can no longer act foolishly and without discrimination. One must
think before one acts. This is the only method by which will can be created, and for this method school organization is necessary. As I said earlier, self-will is always connected with self-opinions, a man always thinks that he knows. Then he comes to a school and realizes that he knows nothing. That is why preparation is necessary for school. One is usually full of self-opinions and self-will. A man who comes to a school must be ready to accept the teaching and the discipline of the school, or else he will get nothing. He cannot acquire will unless he gives up self-will, just as he cannot acquire knowledge unless he gives up self-opinions. Q. Must one break self-will oneself, or have it broken? A. One must break it oneself, and one must have broken it sufficiently to be in a school. One must be sufficiently free from it to accept things without a fight. One cannot keep all the old views and opinions and acquire new ones. A man must be sufficiently free to give up the old, at least for a time. He must be able to understand the necessity of discipline, for will cannot be created until one accepts a certain discipline. Without school one can do nothing. One can try and try and nothing will come of it. When one is already connected with some kind of school, the chief thing is to start with work on giving up self-will. When self-will is sufficiently conquered, then it is possible to speak about different methods of work. Q. How can I learn to act differently in life so as to avoid the same limited and recurrent emotions which I now feel? A. To act differently in life is our aim. This is why work is organized, why we have to study different theories, remember different rules and so on. What you speak of is the far aim. We have to work in the system first. By learning how to act in connection with the system and the organization, we learn how to act in life; but we cannot learn how to act in life without first going through the system. Q. I want to make a decision to work from which I cannot draw back. A. This is one of our greatest illusions, that we can make decisions. It is necessary to be in order to make decisions because, as we are, one little 'I' makes decisions and another 'I', which does not know about it, is expected to carry them out. This is one of the first points we have to realize, that, as we are, we cannot make decisions even in small things— things just happen. But when you understand this rightly, when you begin to look for the causes, and when you find these causes, you will be able to work and perhaps to make decisions, although for a long time only in relation to work, not to anything else. The first thing you have to decide is to do your own work and to do it regularly, to remind yourself about it, not to let it slip away. We forget things too easily. We decide to make efforts—certain kind of efforts and certain kind of observation—and then just ordinary things, ordinary octaves, interrupt it all and we forget. Again we remember and again we
forget, and so it goes on It is necessary to forget less and to remember more, it is necessary to keep certain realizations, certain things that you have already seen and understood, always with you. You must try not to forget them The chief difficulty is what to do and how to make yourself do it. To make yourself think regularly, work regularly—this is the thing. Only then will you begin to see yourself, that is, to see what is more important and what is less important, where to put your attention and so on Otherwise what happens? You decide to work, to do something, to change things—and then you remain just where you were. Try to think about your work, what you are trying to do, why you are trying to do it, what helps you to do it and what hinders you, both from outside and inside. It can also be useful to think about external events because they show you how much depends on the fact that people are asleep, that they are incapable of thinking rightly, incapable of understanding. When you have seen this outside, you can apply it to yourself. You will see the same confusion in yourself on all sorts of different subjects. It is difficult to think, difficult to see where to begin to think once you realize this, you start to think in the right way If you find your way to think rightly about one thing, that will immediately help you to think rightly about other things The difficulty is that people do not think rightly about anything. Q. The thing I find most alarming is the ease with which I fall into a state in which no effort is possible A. Yes, but if you arrange with yourself to make regular efforts, that will help you to go on This is one of the realizable decisions you can make. In the work you must make only possible decisions, and decisions which have to be remembered. Q. A few times a year a line of action becomes particularly clear to me. I have been subject to these moments all my life and have come to think it useless to take any serious action without what would ordinarily be called inspiration. A. There are periods in ordinary conditions when nothing happens, and then there come cross-roads. All life consists of streets and cross-roads. Turning at cross-roads may even become more systematic if one has a centre of gravity. Then one thing will continue to be more important and one will always turn in the same direction. But inspiration has nothing to do with it. It is simply the realization of a moment when you can do something. Q Sometimes when I am trying to decide whether or not to do something, I find what seem to be good reasons from the point of view of the system both for doing and not doing it A It is impossible to say anything about this in general, it depends on circumstances Sometimes you can decide from the point of view of the system, and sometimes there are things in life you can decide without any
relation to it, because you cannot always find a practical use for these ideas before you know them all. There is an expression in the system, 'to create moon in oneself. Let us talk about what it may mean. It is a symbolical expression, and symbols in the form of diagrams or symbolical expressions are used for very definite purposes. A symbol expresses many ideas at once. If it meant only one idea, the answer would be simple; but a symbol is used to avoid long descriptions and to put many ideas into one sentence. How to decipher a diagram or symbolical expression? In order to decipher a symbol, it is necessary to know the order of ideas included in it. Now, if we ask what it may mean to create moon in oneself, we must first ask ourselves, what is the moon's function in relation to organic life? The moon balances organic life—all external movements are balanced by the moon. What will happen if this function of the moon disappears? Will it be beneficial to an individual man or the opposite? We must realize that all this refers to being. What are the features of our being? The chief feature of our being is that we are many. If we want to work on our being, make it correspond more to our aim, we must try to become one. But this is a very far aim. What does it mean to become one? The first step, which is still very far, is to create a permanent centre of gravity. This is what creating moon in oneself means. The moon is a permanent centre of gravity which balances our physical life, but in ourselves we do not have such a balance, so, when we create this balance or centre of gravity in ourselves we do not need the moon. But first we must decide what the absence of permanent 'I' means. We have been told about many features of this, but they must be established definitely by observation, and in order to come nearer to the idea of creating moon in oneself we must distinguish what is important and what is unimportant. Then we must begin to struggle against the features which prevent us becoming one. We must struggle with imagination, negative emotions and self-will. Before this struggle can be successful, we must realize that the worst possible kind of imagination, from the point of view of obtaining a centre of gravity, is the belief that one can do anything by oneself. After that, we must find the negative emotions which prevent us doing what is suggested in connection with the system. For it is necessary to realize that self-will can only be broken by doing what one is told. It cannot be broken by what one decides oneself, for then it will still be self-will. Let me repeat. Work on being is always struggle—against what you like doing or dislike doing. Say you like roller-skating and you are told to remember yourself. Then you must struggle against your desire to go roller-skating. What is there more innocent than roller-skating? But you must struggle against it all the same. Every day and every hour there are
things we cannot do, but there are also things we can do. So we mast look at a day and see what we can do but do not do. There can be no rule 'You must remember yourself'. If you are told to do or not to do something, and you do not try, it means you do not want anything, you do not want to work. You have sufficient knowledge. Now it is necessary to push work on being. We always try to escape from doing what is suggested. Q. What is the purpose of struggling against self-will? A. You remember how we started. The aim was to create a centre of gravity, create moon in ourselves. We cannot do it through self-will. Creating moon in ourselves is connected with the idea of sacrificing suffering. When we begin to sacrifice suffering we begin to create moon in ourselves. We always want to keep our suffering, yet moon can only be created from our suffering. Only we must remember that giving up suffering is one action and creating moon is the result of a continuous series of actions. Q. How is it possible to find the 'I's that prevent you from doing the things you are told to do? A. The first time you find you did not do something that was suggested, find the cause. The second time, find another cause, and so on. Then, as I said, find the negative emotions which prevent you hearing what is said and following it. Either you dislike me that day, or somebody else, or the weather; then you feel justified in doing nothing. Q. The making of effort is what you call struggle. But what do you call it if one does something without being aware of a struggle? A. That means it happened. Four kinds of things can happen to us—by accident, cause and effect, fate and will. Struggle must be by will, intention. And you must be aware of your intention. You cannot make effort and not be aware of it. What is important is will-action. Q. In those four categories, will is not often used, is it? A. Will has to be used. We are never ready for work, but we must work all the same. If we are ready, then we are given other work for which we are not ready. In work one must try to use will—in so far as one has it. If one has an inch of will and uses it, it will grow and one will have two inches, then three inches and so on. In the work we must learn to make super-efforts. Q. What is a super-effort? A. A super-effort can have many characteristics, but generally it is doing not what you think best, but what you are advised to do. From our own intentions we are ready to do many things, but we are not ready to do or not to do what we are told. Q. In what way does super-effort differ from an ordinary effort? A. It differs in degree, but not only in degree. Super-effort is effort made consciously, as much as we can, for a definite purpose which is not
required by any external circumstances. We never really make serious efforts; it is all pretence, for we do not know what it means to make efforts. In exceptional conditions, when we are obliged to make efforts, we make them, but not super-efforts. Besides, ordinary efforts one makes in life are necessary, useful. A super-effort may look useless for its purpose. Q. I feel I am getting into a vicious circle. The more efforts I make, the more I see I cannot 'do'. A. Then make more efforts and realize it constantly; make it more permanent. You will see that you are not always in the same state. People in ordinary life cannot 'do', but for you it is different—all the time you must try to do. You are always identified and you must not identify, you must watch your talk, you are constantly negative and you must struggle against negative emotions, you must remember yourself. All this is doing. You must observe these things and try to change them. Q. Is it possible to transfer energy where it is wanted? I cannot do it. A. This is generally connected with control. If you want to acquire control you must begin from where it is possible. So you must always study yourself and find weak spots where you can produce control. From another point of view they can be called 'strong spots', for they are weak from the point of view of mechanicalness. You cannot choose to do one thing before another for preference; one person can begin in one way, another in another way, but everybody must make efforts in some direction and find out what is possible and what is impossible. But for one person it is more profitable to make efforts in one direction, for another person in another. Q. What creates stimulus for work? A. Realization of one's present state. When one realizes that one deceives oneself, that one is asleep and one's house is on fire, always, permanently on fire, and that it is only by accident that the fire has not reached one's room at this very moment, when one realizes this, one will want to make efforts to awake and one will not expect any special reward. Since we do not realize that our house is on fire we always expect a special reward. What can one do in sleep? One can only have different dreams—bad dreams, good dreams, but in the same bed. The dreams may be different, but the bed is the same.
CHAPTER XI Necessity for study of school principles and methods Three lines of work — Right and wrong in relation to the three lines - The need for under standing— Aims and needs of the school—Putting another in ONE' S place — An organisation is necessary for practical work—What is 'work'? -Valuation— Working with people Working for the school—Taking personal interest in the organisation—The right kind of people— Fourth Way school—Right attitude— Payment—How to pay?—Centre of gravity—Discipline— RULES —Not doing what is unnecessary—Surrendering one's decisions—Meeting demands- Shocks in school-work— Idea of choice—Physical work—School knowledge— Men of higher mind Can schools influence life? IN THESE LECTURES WE HAVE SPOKEN ABOUT MAN, not enough, but sufficiently for practical purposes, we have spoken a little about the universe; but I see that the idea of school and school-work is still very vague and sometimes mixed with formatory conceptions which do not lead anywhere. The idea of school must be taken simply that is to say, a school is a place where you learn something. But there must always be a certain order in things, and you cannot learn without following this order Speaking of schools connected with some kind of higher schools (without this connection a school has no meaning) I said that in such schools you must work on your being at the same time as your knowledge, because otherwise all your knowledge will be quite useless and you will derive no profit from it Esoteric ideas that are not taken practically become mere philosophy—simply intellectual gymnastics that can lead nowhere. I have given you all the words necessary for the study of the system and explained the position of this system in relation to other systems. You will remember that I spoke about different ways and from what I said about them it more or less followed that this system belongs to the Fourth Way, that is, has all the peculiarities and features of schools of the Fourth Way Then I said that a school depends on the level of the people who study in this school, and level depends on the level of being. For development of being school is necessary—many people working in the same direction according to school principles and methods. What
one man cannot do, many people working together can do. When I met this system I very soon became convinced that it was connected with schools and in this way had passed through recorded and unrecorded history. During this time methods were invented and perfected. Schools can be of different degrees, but at present I take as a school every kind of preparatory school leading in a certain direction, and an organization that can be called a 'school' of the Fourth Way is an organization which introduces three forces into its work. What is important to understand is that there is a kind of secret in school-work, not in the sense of something actually hidden, but something that has to be explained. The idea is this. If we take school-work as an ascending octave, we know that in each octave there are two intervals or gaps, between mi and fa and between si and do. In order to pass through these gaps without changing the character or the line of the work it is necessary to know how to fill them. So if I want to guarantee the direction of the work in a straight line, I must work on three lines simultaneously. If I work only on one line, or on two lines, the direction will change. If I work on three lines, or three octaves, one line will help another to pass the interval by giving the necessary shock. It is very important to understand this. School-work uses many cosmic ideas, and three lines of work is a special arrangement to safeguard the right direction of the work and to make it successful. The first line is work on oneself: self-study, study of the system and trying to change at least the most mechanical manifestations. This is the most important line. The second line is work with other people. One cannot work by oneself; a certain friction, inconvenience and difficulty of working with other people creates the necessary shocks. The third line is work for the school, for the organization. This last line takes on different aspects for different people. The principle of three lines is that the three octaves must go on simultaneously and parallel to one another, but they do not all begin at the same time and so, when one line reaches an interval, another line comes in to help it over, since the places of these intervals do not coincide. If a man is equally energetic on ail three lines, it leads him out of many accidental happenings. Naturally, the first line begins first. In the first line of work you take—knowledge, ideas, help. This line concerns only yourself, it is entirely egocentric. On the second line one must not only take but also give— communicate knowledge and ideas, serve as an example and many other things. It concerns people in the work, so on this line one works half for oneself and half for other people. On the third line one must think of the work in general, about the school or the organization as a whole. One must think about what is useful, what is necessary for the school, what the school needs, so the third line concerns the whole idea of school and all the present and the future of the work. If a man does
not think about this and does not understand it, then the first two lines will not produce their lull effect. This is how school-work is arranged and this is why three lines are necessary—one can get additional shocks and the full benefit of the work only if one works on three lines It we connect the three lines of work with the idea of right and wrong, then all that helps the first line, that is, one's personal work, is right But on the second line you cannot have it all to yourself, you have to think of other people in the work, you have to learn not only to understand but to explain, you must give to others And you will soon see that you can understand certain things only by explaining to others The circle becomes larger, right and wrong become bigger The third line already relates to the outside world, and good and bad become what helps or hinders the existence and work of the whole school, so the circle grows still larger. This is the way to think about it I particularly draw your attention to the study and understanding of the idea of three lines It is one of the chief principles of school-work If you apply it, many things will open up for you. This system is full of such instruments. If we use them, they open many doors The first principle of the work is that efforts give results proportionate to understanding If you do not understand, there will be no results, if you do understand, the results will be according to how much you understand So the first condition is understanding, and even before that one must know what to understand and how to get the right understanding. Real work must be work on being, but work on being requires understanding of the aims, conditions and methods of the work. The aim of the work is to establish a school For this purpose it is necessary to work according to school methods and school rules, and to work on three lines Establishing a school means many things There are two conditions in the work with which one must begin, the first, that one must not believe anything, one must verify everything, the second, an even more important condition, refers to doing One must not do anything until one understands why one does it and for what purpose. These two conditions must be understood and remembered It is true that one may realize one does not know anything and does not know what to do Then one can always ask for advice, but if one asks, one has to accept and follow it So far you have worked on the first line, you have studied what was given and explained to you, and you have tried to understand Now, if you wish to continue, you must try to work on the second line and, if possible, on the third line You must try to think how to find more work on the first line, how to pass to work on the second line and how to approach work on the third line Without this your study will give no results Now ask questions until you are satisfied that you understand about