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Q. Do some people need school and others not? A. School is for those who are prepared for school. The beginning of school-work already means some preparation. In school a new octave must begin. What is the duty of this personality which was magnetic centre? What can be required from it now? Valuation of the work, valuation of the system and of everything connected with the system. If valuation is there, this personality will grow; if it is not there, it will not grow. Q. Can one be identified with a school? A. That means losing the school. One can be identified with the school in many ways—by liking it too much, or criticizing it too much, or believing in it too much. Q. Does a school interfere with how you behave outside school? A. In relation to the school your actions are controlled by rules. Outside school you will find that it is also necessary to apply certain principles which you use in school. If you do not try to apply them whenever you can, it is useless to know them. Then—this is not a rule or a principle— you will find even outside school that if you want to do something you must not do some other thing; in other words, you have to pay for everything, not in the sense of taking out money and paying it out, but by some kind of 'sacrifice' (I do not like to use this word, but there is no other). In that way it will involve all your life. Q. Does the number of people in a school depend on the amount of knowledge produced? A. No, it depends on the number of people who have a certain being and who can look after other people, teach and instruct them and so on. You think schools are like mushrooms in a wood, but they are very different from mushrooms. A school is the result of long work. Even if you take this room and us sitting here talking, it is the result of thirty years' work of many people, and maybe many before them. This must be taken into account. Besides, knowledge in our sense means knowledge connected with the possibility of development of being. This knowledge must come from another school and must be valuable. Suppose I make you learn by heart the dates of birth of all French presidents, what use will that be? Yet very often this is called knowledge. Q. Is the reason why this knowledge may not be given without payment because people who take it without payment will twist it? A. Simply because they will lose it, will throw it away, because valuation depends on payment. You cannot have a right valuation of a thing you do not pay for. If it comes too easily, you do not value it. This is one side, and another side of the question is that if you value a thing you will not give it away to other people. What does valuation mean? If you realize what effort was put into it, how many people have worked, and
for how long, to give you this knowledge, you will not give it away for nothing, because, first of all, it will not be useful to them if they have it, and secondly, why should they have it for nothing? It would be the greatest injustice. But this cannot happen, because they cannot take it anyway. Q. As far as I understand, the main object of school is to produce superman? A. I don't know about this 'producing superman'. This is not a superman farm! Q. What relationship has the idea of school with cosmic order? A. This school—a school in which you can be—is a very small thing. It may help you, but it is a great presumption on our part to think that it has any cosmic meaning. It is very easy to understand the idea of school if you think simply about it. You want to have certain knowledge, and you cannot get it until you meet a school, I mean a school that has got this knowledge from another school, not knowledge invented by ordinary men. This is the only idea from which you can start. Q. Some time ago you have mentioned men of higher mind from whom this knowledge comes. Do they actually live, and can we recognize them? A. We cannot recognize them if they do not wish to be recognized. But if they wish to, they can show that they are on a different level. If we meet people of a higher level, we shall not recognize their being, but we can recognize their knowledge; we know the limits of our knowledge, so we can see when somebody knows more than we do. This is all that is possible for us in our present state. But we cannot see whether another person is conscious or not, or more conscious than we are. He will look the same, or even, and this is particularly interesting, it often happens that people who are more developed may look less conscious and we may take them to be more mechanical than we are. Q. Do schools exist to have a general effect on other people not in schools, or is it entirely for their own reasons? A. I would say both, only there is no contradiction between the two things, because how can schools have an influence on people not in schools? Only by preparing them for school, in no other way. You see, the chief difficulty in understanding school systems is that they cannot be diluted too much. If they become diluted they become their own opposite, they cease to mean anything, cease to have any purpose. Q. Have not schools in the past influenced humanity? A. When schools influenced humanity, humanity was very small and schools very big. Now humanity is very big and schools very small. For instance, schools under the name of different Mysteries influenced certain periods of Greek life, but Greece was a very small country. Egypt too was comparatively small, so it could be influenced. But how could this small school influence humanity at the present time? You ask without
thinking. I remember Mr Gurdjieff said that 200 conscious people could influence humanity. We calculated once what this would mean. Suppose one man No. 7 exists in the world, he must have at least a hundred pupils, because he cannot be in contact with lower degrees by himself. So if there is one man No. 7, he must have at least a hundred men No. 6. Each of these men No. 6 must have at least a hundred men No. 5, so that makes 10, 000 men No. 5. Each of these 10, 000 men No. 5 must have at least a hundred men No. 4, through whom he can have contact with other people, so there must be 1, 000, 000 men No. 4. Each of these men No. 4 must have at least a hundred men 1, 2 and 3 whom he knows and with whom he can work; so that will make 100, 000, 000 men No. 1, 2 and 3. This means that, even if we suppose that a thousand makes one school, there would be 100, 000 schools. Well, we know definitely that there is no such number of schools, so it is impossible to expect a man No. 7, because the existence of a man No. 7 would mean that schools would control life. Even man No. 6 would mean that schools control the world. This implies that men No. 7 and No. 6 would only be in the world in special conditions, and it would be seen and known, because it would mean that life would be controlled by schools. And since we know that if there are schools now, they are very hidden, it cannot be so in our times. Q. Do you mean that man No. 7 cannot exist on this planet or that he does not exist under present conditions? A. I did not say he cannot exist. I said we may have reason to think that he does not exist, because his existence would show itself. But it does not exclude the possibility that for some reason men No. 7 may exist and not show themselves; only it is less probable.
CHAPTER XII Necessity to distinguish more important from less important ideas of the system—Limitations of being—Possibilities of changing being— Householder, tramp and lunatic—Hasnamuss—Sleep and the possibility of awaking—Realisations and words—How to increase emotional attitude— Sense of proportion—Self-remembering—To know and to see oneself— Being serious—Struggle with habits— Understanding mechanicalness— Efforts—Self-study—Self- observation —Shocks—How to be more emotional?—Putting more pressure into the work—Training the emotional centre—Positive emotions—Pleasant and unpleasant emotions— Increasing valuation—How new things come—Slowness of understanding— Raising one's standard. NOW IT IS TIME FOR YOU TO THINK about everything you have heard from the point of view of what is more important, that is to say, to look for the centre of gravity in all the different ideas you have studied and to try to find the chief points, because, as in every thing else, there are more important and less important points. There are auxiliary things which help you to understand the chief points, and there are chief points which determine the whole. It is now time to distinguish between them. Right questions, right problems are those that refer to being and change of being, how to find the weak sides of our being and how to fight against them. We must understand that, before acquiring new knowledge, we must realize our limitations and the fact that our limitations are really limitations of our being. Our knowledge remains on the same level. It grows in a certain direction, but this growth is very limited. We must see what a restricted field we live in, always deceiving ourselves, always imagining things to be different from what they are. We think it is very easy to change something, but it is only when we sincerely try that we realize how difficult, how almost impossible it is. The idea of change of being is the most important idea of all. Theories, systems, diagrams are only a help; they help concentration and right thinking, but there can be only one real aim, and that is to change our being, for if we want to change something in our own understanding of the world, we must change something in ourselves.
What is interesting in this connection, and what I would like to speak about, is the division of men from the point of view of the possibility of changing being. There is such a division. It is particularly connected with the idea of the Path or Way. You remember it was said that from the moment one becomes connected with influence C a staircase begins and only when a man gets to the top of it is the Path or Way reached? A question was asked about who is able to come up to this staircase, climb it and reach the Way. Mr Gurdjieff answered by using a Russian word which can be translated as 'Householder'. In Indian and Buddhist literature this is a very well-defined type of man and type of life which can bring one to change of being. 'Snataka' or 'Householder' simply means a man who leads an ordinary life. Such a man can have doubts about the value of ordinary things; he can have dreams about possibilities of development; he can come to a school, either after a long life or at the beginning of life, and he can work in a school. Only from among such men come people who are able to climb the staircase and reach the Path. Other people he divided into two categories: first, 'tramps', and second, 'lunatics'. Tramps do not necessarily mean poor people; they may be rich and may still be 'tramps' in their attitude to life. And a 'lunatic' does not mean a man deprived of ordinary mind; he may be a statesman or a professor. These two categories are no good for a school and will not be interested in it; tramps because they are not really interested in anything; lunatics because they have false values. So if they attempt to climb up the staircase they only fall down and break their necks. First it is necessary to understand these three categories from the point of view of the possibility of changing being, possibility of school-work. This division means only one thing—that people are not in exactly the same position in relation to possibilities of work. There are people for whom the possibility of changing their being exists; there are many people for whom it is practically impossible, because they brought their being to such a state that there is no starting-point in them; and there are people belonging to yet a fourth category who, by different means, have already destroyed all possibility of changing their being. This division is not parallel to any other division. Belonging to one of the first three categories is not permanent and can be changed, but one can come to the work only from the first category, not from the second or the third; the fourth category excludes all possibilities. So, though people may be born with the same rights, so to speak, they lose their rights very easily. When you understand these categories and find them in your own experience, among your acquaintances, in life, in literature, you will understand this fourth category of people. In ordinary conditions, in ordinary times, they are just criminals or actual lunatics—nothing more.
But in certain periods of history such people very often play a leading part; they may acquire power and become very important people But we must leave them for the moment and concentrate on the first three categories. Q. Is this possibility of growth of being connected with willingness to obey certain laws and principles? A. Not necessarily. There are different ways. On the monk's way, for instance, you have to begin with obeying. There are other ways that do not begin with obeying but with studying and understanding General laws you cannot disobey, because they make you obey. You can escape from some of them only through growth of being, not in any other way Q. Does it follow, then, that people who have connection with a school, however slight, belong to those who can change their being? A. Certainly, if they are interested in school and are sincere in their attitude towards school, it shows that they belong to those who can But you see, in each of us there are features of tramp and lunatic It does not mean that if we are connected with a school we are already free from these features. They play a certain part in us, and in studying being we must detect them; we must know in which way they prevent our work, and we must struggle with them. This is impossible without a school. As I said before, tramps can be not only rich, they can be very well established in life and still be tramps. Lunatics can be very learned people and occupy a big position in life and still be lunatics. Q. Is one of the features of a lunatic that he wants certain things out of proportion to other things, in such a way that it will be bad for him as A whole? A. 'Lunatic' means a man who always runs after false values, who has no right discrimination. He is always formatory. Formatory thinking is always defective, and lunatics are particularly devoted to formatory thinking: that is their chief affection in one way or another. There are many different ways to be formatory. Q. Is the tramp side in oneself a sort of irresponsibility that is prepared to throw everything overboard? A, Quite right. Sometimes it can take very poetical forms: 'There are no values in the world'—'Nothing is worth anything'—'Everything is relative'—those are favourite phrases. But actually the tramp is not so dangerous. The lunatic is more dangerous, since it means false values and formatory thinking. Q. What is it that determines which category a man belongs to? A. A certain attitude to life, to people, and certain possibilities that one has. It is the same for all the three categories. The fourth category is separate. About this fourth category, I will give you just a few definitions. In the system this category has a special name, consisting of two Turkish
words. It is 'Hasnamuss'. One of the first things about a 'Hasnamuss' is that he never hesitates to sacrifice people or to create an enormous amount of suffering, just for his own personal ambitions. How a 'Hasnamuss' is created is another question. It begins with formatory thinking, with being a tramp and a lunatic at the same time. Another definition of a 'Hasnamuss' is that he is crystallized in the wrong hydrogens. This category cannot interest you practically, because you have nothing to do with such people; but you meet with the results of their existence. As I said, for us it is important to understand the second and third categories, because we can find in ourselves features of them both, especially the third. In order to struggle against the second, that is the tramp, school discipline and a general inner discipline are needed, because there is no discipline in a tramp. In a lunatic there may be a great deal of discipline, only of the wrong kind—all formatory. So struggle with formatory thinking is struggle against lunacy in ourselves, and the creation of discipline and self-discipline is struggle against the tramp in us. As to the characteristics of a man in the first category, that is the householder—to begin with he is a practical man; he is not formatory; he must have a certain amount of discipline, otherwise he would not be what he is. So practical thinking and self discipline are characteristics of the first category. Such a man has enough of these for ordinary life but not enough for work, so in the work these two characteristics must increase and grow. A householder is a normal man, and a normal man, given favourable conditions, has the possibility of development. Q. Is there the possibility of the householder in everybody? A. Not in everybody. I already said that there are some people who have lost the capacity for practical thinking or the capacity for development. In such a case they are fully lunatics or tramps according to what they have lost. Q. You mean from birth? A. That we do not know. We cannot speak about that: we can only speak about results. We know that in the work one must have the capacity for practical thinking and practical attitude, and one must have sufficient self-discipline to accept school discipline. Q. What do you mean by practical thinking? A. Just what is called practical thinking in ordinary language, namely, the capacity to calculate things in different circumstances. This same capacity can be applied to ideas of the work, school principles, rules, everything. Q. It seems that people in the category of lunatics or tramps are further from any appreciation of truth than the householder? A. There is no guarantee of that. As facts go, they can be exactly on the same level in relation to that, but their potentiality is different. Like many other things, people do not differ as manifestations go; they do not differ
one from another among mechanical people. But possibilities are different. One can become different, another cannot; one can change only if a miracle happens, another can change by his own efforts and with certain help. Q. You say we all have parts of tramp, lunatic and householder? A. Try not to think about it in these terms. Find your own words—what is meant by 'householder', what is meant by 'tramp', what is meant by 'lunatic'. These words are not a description, they are only a hint at certain possibilities. Q. If one does not like self-discipline, is this a description? A. Not a description; only one feature. First of all the tramp has no values; everything is the same; good and bad do not exist for him; and because of that, or in connection with that, he has no discipline. The lunatic values what has no value and does not value what has value. These are the chief characteristics, not a description. The householder has at least certain values from which he can start and a certain practical attitude towards things. He knows that if he wants to eat he must work. Q. About the fourth category of man, who has destroyed all possibility of development, does that situation arise in him because of some form of extraordinary selfishness? A. Yes, in most cases. It is useful to know about this category only because sometimes these people play a great part in life. But they are already there: we can neither help them nor destroy them. We must think about our own selves, our attitude, and chiefly about our understanding. Because if we understand, it is already better; we accept such people more easily and know their ways. Q. Are the distinctions between men 1, 2, 3 and 4 definite, or, like tramps, lunatics, householders, are we a bit of each? A. You know, you absolutely spoil ideas for yourself when you take them like this and mix them up. These ideas are very important. First you must take one, quite separately, and try to understand it. Then take another and try to understand that one. The division of men Nos. 1, 2, 3 and so on is one thing and it was not given parallel to anything else. You must study it as it is—what is meant by man No. 1, by man No. 2, by man No. 3, what are the various combinations of these, how they are mixed and so on. Then take this second idea. In order to understand what is meant by householder, tramp, lunatic and the further degradations, so to speak, each must be taken separately. You cannot take them all together and talk about them in one breath. This division was mentioned in connection with the possibility of development. You must realize the enormous number of people who, by the state of their being, are incapable of appreciating any real ideas. Q. Could a tramp ever be outwardly successful?
A. This word is used to describe people who in the ordinary way are often supposed to be very near the possibility of development, although actually they are very tar from it—further than quite ordinary people. People can know many beautiful words, speak very easily and yet be very far from the possibility of development. Q. What is the significance of the idea represented by these three categories? A. The important thing is that in each of us, even if we find we have some practical attitudes and certain values, an important part of us also has no values or has false values, like the tramp and the lunatic Q. What can help us to get more discrimination? A. Divide in yourself the mechanical from the conscious, see how little there is of the conscious, how seldom it works, and how strong is the mechanical—mechanical attitudes, mechanical intentions, mechanical thoughts, mechanical desires. Q. What is the best way to work on self-knowledge? A, You remember I said in the beginning that there are two lines by which our development can and must proceed. The first is the line of knowledge. This is comprehensible, we must increase our knowledge, for we do not know enough either about ourselves or about the universe The second is the line of being, for our being is not what it should be, not only in the sense that we are half-developed beings so that our level can be raised, but also in the sense that certain things in us are under developed even for our present state. I said that the chief features of our being are, for instance, that we are not one, that we are many, that we are not conscious. This is inevitable, but the fact that we do not realize it can be changed: we can know it For example, we can know that at every moment not a single action, not a single thought comes from the whole— but only from a small part of us. We can become aware of it Change of being in most cases begins with our becoming aware of something we were not aware of before. But being itself can grow and develop; our level of being can change, and parallel with that grows our knowledge. Real work is work on being, but knowledge helps. At the same time work on knowledge is also important, and then being helps, because in the state we are in we cannot acquire even much knowledge— it will be broken up and divided between the different 'I's. Sometimes people work for several years, acquire information, but do not work on their being. Then they leave, but they cannot forget the knowledge they acquired and it works in them, but their being does not correspond to it, and so their knowledge becomes distorted. As regards knowledge, you must also understand that there are three men in everyone—man No 1, man No. 2 and man No. 3. One of them may predominate, but everyone has all three. So even in ourselves we have three categories of knowledge. Part of our knowledge is knowledge
of man No. 1, part is knowledge of man No. 2 and part—knowledge of man No. 3. When you divide what each of them knows, you will see how a man with a strong predominance can be swayed by it. Some schools start in a wrong way from the beginning and develop imaginary qualities, such as visions and things like that, for work on being needs constant supervision and knowledge, otherwise many things can go wrong: one can take imagination for the real thing, and if one does not work on being in the right way, one's work can take a wrong turn. This is very important to understand: there must always be these two lines, one helping the other. Q. You said that one of the features of our being is that we are never one. Surely in the case of identification we are one—we are not many; but perhaps in a wrong way? A. Yes, but it is only one of the many groups of 'I's; it is not the whole. And identification practically excludes all other 'I's. Even at ordinary moments, if you are relatively not identified, one 'I' can be doing something and other 'I's can watch and look in the same direction, at least a certain number of them. But in a state of identification they are completely shut out: one small 'I' occupies the whole field. This is a characteristic of our being, that one small 'I' calls itself 'I', meaning the whole thing. That is why I say that we always lie to ourselves and to everybody else when we say 'I', because this is not 'I' but only a small thing pretending to be the whole. Q. What is it in us that makes efforts? A. Again one of the 'I's or a small group of them. Our aim is to be able to make right efforts of self-study and self-development with a bigger group of 'I's, so that this small group of 'I's that begins self-study may grow and after some time become sufficiently big and strong to control the whole thing and keep the direction. But in the beginning it has to be educated in all that we call school-work by a certain kind of study. If this small group of 'I's with which you begin does not grow, you will not have enough strength to go on. Many people begin this work and then leave it. Nothing can be done about it, and one cannot tell beforehand. After some time you will see for yourself whether you have enough energy and interest; because work needs energy and effort. You can get neither knowledge nor being by being passive. You have to be active in relation to the work. The chief thing to remember and think about in connection with change of being is sleep and the possibility of awaking. You must find in yourself certain ideas, certain thoughts which will awake you. Q. Are there certain ideas that will always awake one, because I find some ideas help a lot one day and not another? A. Yes, certainly, but you must find things that help more often, certain realizations. There is a great difference between realization and words. Once you have realized something, you know that it is true. Then you
must not forget it. The chief question must be how to awake. Realize that you are asleep, that everybody is asleep. Then realize that the only way out is to awake. It is necessary to concentrate on one fact—sleep and the possibility of awaking. If you think about it and feel it, then the chance appears. Until you come to this realization, there is no chance, really. You can talk about this system, about worlds, hydrogens, cosmoses and everything else in the same way as you talk about other things, and nothing will happen. Q. If one has the realization that one is asleep. . . . A. 'If is already a dream. All dreams begin with 'if. Try to think without it. Yes, this realization is the only thing. It is necessary to find ways to awake, and before that you must realize what sleep is. Q. How is one to increase one's emotional attitude to the ideas of the system? A. Compare sleep and awaking. All ideas of the work begin with the idea of sleep and the possibility of awaking. All other ideas, life ideas may be clever, elaborate, but they are ideas of sleeping people. We are so accustomed to these imaginary ideas that, after some time, we take the ideas of the system on the same level as these other ideas that lead nowhere. It is useful to think that every day when you meet here may be the last day. We do not know what to-morrow may bring, but we usually forget this. If you realize it, your emotional attitude will increase by itself and you will be able to think about what is really important. Try to think about the relative importance of things. It is very necessary to understand how to approach this problem. How can you think about the importance of something if you have no material for comparison? You must have different things to compare. Try to compare the ideas and principles of the work with things in life. Q. It seems that the two are entirely different. A. It will not help you if you say they are different. We want to find for ourselves and not for academic purposes what is more important and what is less important, so it is not the way to begin. You will never get the right proportion, the right material for comparison if you begin in this way. Think and you will see. Q. My difficulty is that I accept intellectually that something is important and profitable and something else is unimportant and unprofitable, but I have no feeling about it. A. Realization will bring emotional feeling. It must be realized more often, must be connected with more things. Just try to pass, more or less, the ideas you have heard through your head. Find which of them attract you more. Some remain just words for you, about others you have practical observations or experiences. That will help. Q. It was said that we have to cut out everything unnecessary in order to progress. I find it very difficult.
A. I think this is the aim in everything. If you are doing something for a certain definite purpose, then certainly the fewer unnecessary things you do the nearer you come to your aim. For instance, if you are hurrying to catch a train and at the same time want to linger over your newspaper, you will miss your train and will not read the newspaper. It is better to take the paper with you and read it in the train. But to cut out everything is impossible, and impossible things are not required. However, the principle remains that we have so many unnecessary things we consider obligatory that we can reduce them a little. Q. Is it usual that one becomes less interested in life as one becomes more conscious? A. It depends on what one understands by life, because this expression can have many different interpretations. One may be interested in one side of life which is absolutely incompatible with other interests, or one may be interested in a side of life that can become connected with these other interests. Q. Desire seems to be essential to becoming conscious, yet cannot desire become an obstacle to consciousness? A. Desire is a complicated thing—it is really a combination of a whole series of thoughts, feelings, even fears. Desire to be conscious comes when you are afraid of mechanicalness. First one must realize that one is a machine, and then be afraid of it. Then desire will appear. Q. Lately I have had a rather depressing feeling that in spite of the work I still seem frightfully mechanical. A. We are certainly mechanical and we cannot do anything about it at present, until we know ourselves better, not only in general, but personally, individually, for there are many general things common to everybody, and there are many individual features. First we study the general things, then the individual; and when we know ourselves, we shall understand where to begin. Now we are just trying to do elementary things, more for self-study than for actual results. Q. How can one cure periods of listlessness, when system ideas have no strength? A. Everything goes in waves—up and down. It is necessary to acquire enough memory and enough elevation, so to speak, in order that at moments of depression one will not lose the thread, will not forget what has been. Q. But what to put in the place of the feeling of depression which comes when illusions disappear? A. Depression may be due to other illusions that take the place of the vanished ones. The first illusions were full of hope and the other illusions may be full of despair, that is all. Q. How can we strengthen and fix moments when emotion is felt and we want to work, and use this at moments when we do not want to work?