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which action means which triad, for it will only make you lose the meaning of the idea. You must only try to see the differences. From ignorance or impatience people often use wrong triads and explain their failure by bad luck, or by the devil, or by accident. Q. When you carry out a certain action, should you try to think how that particular action compares with the examples you mentioned? A. We should think by emotional understanding whether the action corresponds to our aim. Then, partly by mind, partly emotionally, we can realize whether the way we are going on can or cannot lead to the desired result. Sometimes we can feel this. Then we can either stop it or try to do it in another way. For instance, you are talking to somebody, trying to persuade this person that you are right about something and he is wrong. The more you argue, the more he is convinced that he is right. Stop, and you may suddenly see that this person understands you. This happens very often. The more you argue, the more difficult it is for him to understand. Or you may even pretend to agree with him and in that way make him understand what you want. This is only an example, but you can find many examples yourself. Q. I suppose in a case like that we should be capable of knowing whether to argue or agree? A. If you do not identify you will see. Arguing is one way to persuade, agreeing is another. Generally what prevents us from seeing what method to use is identifying. It is a question of approach. Some approaches are right and others are wrong. If you go on observing you will see. Q. As regards the law of three, can one observe it in daily life? A. Yes, in self-study you can, but with patience. You will see that the system always plays the part of the third force between desire to change and inertia. If we have a sufficient supply of the third force, we are successful. In the work the first force is desire to learn and decision to work, the second is resistance. The more we work, the more resistance grows. Only with the help of the system can we conquer resistance. It is a question of consciousness and will. Well, try to talk about something else. We cannot hurry with this question of different actions. It is actually beyond our possibilities of understanding at present, but if we go slowly, we may get something out of it. Almost every idea in the system is a test. If one can pass one test, one can go further. Please ask any questions you like and I will try to answer them. Many things get forgotten and become dull because we forget the starting-point. But the moment we connect things with the beginning, we see why we came, where we are going and what we want to get. We realize
then what we have got from the system and see that we cannot expect more because the material we have is not sufficiently digested. We must always remember the starting-point, remember that it is connected not simply with words but with search for the miraculous. The system would have no meaning if there were no search for the miraculous. For instance, I am surprised that you do not ask more questions about separation between 'I' and (for me) 'Ouspensky', because there must be many things that are not clear for you yet. In speaking, in writing, in thinking about the work or the people in the work one must always ask oneself 'Who is speaking?' 'Who is writing?' 'Who is thinking?' If you do that, then, after a little time you will be able to distinguish who is speaking and will begin to recognize the different voices. You must know your false personality and find its features, its faces, manifestations and voices. You must know what it consists of. Sometimes you can actually hear when false personality speaks. It is not much use going on without that, for you will only go on turning round and round in the same circle and always returning to the same spot. When you can be sure that it is really 'you', you can speak. You must already know and mistrust your false personality. Q. If we do this, will it increase our progress in the work? A. Nothing can be guaranteed. It should be important to do that without a question of future reward, because the idea of separation is sufficiently important in itself. Q. How can I put more pressure into my work to wake up my desire to fight false personality? A. Catch a moment when your false personality wants to do something or does not want to do something, and stop her. When you find a conflict between you and her, it will depend on you how you will act. If she starts fighting, this creates an emotional storm. If there is no fight, emotions are asleep. All things come through friction, friction between the place where 'I' can grow and false personality. Work on oneself begins from the moment one feels this division between what one trusts in oneself and what one cannot trust. What one can trust is entirely created by work. Before, it was just an empty place, but if one begins to work, something begins to solidify. But, I repeat, one can know it better and trust it more only if one knows one's false personality, otherwise false personality will mix with it and pretend to be real 'I', or the beginning of real 'I'. Q. Is false personality a kind of mask? A. People wear one or another kind of mask and believe that they are exactly like this mask when in reality they are quite different. Each of us has several masks, not one. Observe your own masks and other people's masks. Try to realize that in different circumstances you have different masks and notice how you change them, how you prepare them and so on. Everybody has masks, but begin with your own. We never study masks,
so we must study them; it is very useful. Very often we begin to acquire masks at a very early age; even as school-children we wear one mask with one teacher and another mask with another teacher. Q. Is it a kind of self-protection, or is it imitation? A. It is a kind of self-protection, and yet not only that. Sometimes, as you say, it has to do with imitation. You can see fifty or sometimes five hundred people wearing the same mask. Q. If you took off the mask, what would you find underneath? A. It is not so easy. You will find that behind this mask there is another mask. Or, if you do not work, it cannot be taken off—it grows to the face. But if you work, this mask is not necessary at all and, without it, life becomes much easier—there is less lying. Q. Isn't a mask sometimes an ideal which one lives up to? Sometimes it makes you appear better than you really are. A. Sometimes better. That is why I said it is not only a protection. You see, we want to know ourselves. When we find something in ourselves that we do not know, we have to study it. We think we know ourselves, and now we find that all we know is masks, and that masks change. What they are, how they come, what their purpose is—that is another question. We have to study masks themselves, not the theory of masks. We always try to escape into theories—theories are safe. Q. Is it possible to see false personality as a whole? A. It is possible, but not at once. It is necessary to work, to study it in yourself and in other people, then, little by little, you will see it as a whole, but for a long time you will see it only from one side or another side. Even that is better than nothing. But you must realize and never forget that it is there. That is the first aim of schools. If false personality remains on top, you cannot have anything—it will take everything to itself. Q. About different voices, I notice that my voice changes with different emotions and different people. A. Who has ears to hear can hear many changes of voice. Every centre, every part of centre, every part of a part of centre has a different voice. But few people have ears to hear them. For those who can hear it is easy to distinguish many things. For instance, if you speak the truth it is one voice, if you lie it is another voice, if you base things on imagination, yet another. It is quite unmistakable. Q. Do you mean the intonation? A. Yes, and also the actual sound of the voice. If you train yourself to listen, the emotional centre can hear the difference. Q. You spoke about the possibility of a wrong separation. What did you mean by that? A. Suppose I call everything I like 'I' and everything I dislike 'Ouspensky', it would be a wrong separation. The 'I' from which I observe is a point, it has no material existence yet, it is only the embryo
from which 'I' can grow It I give it material existence, it would be wrong. Q Should not some weight be given to it? A. Yes, but only in relation to the work Who remembers the aim, who wants to work is 'I', the rest is 'Ouspensky'. Q I feel I have nothing in me I can trust. If I get a moment of understanding, false personality seems to take it and the part of me that understood is gone What can I trust? A. This feeling that one cannot trust oneself comes at different moments in the work as a delusion, as an excuse, or it comes in the real form. But this is later on, at present it is realization of mechanicalness. For work, a certain time and a certain persistence are necessary. Now you must do what you can, with time you will be able to measure the results of your work Q Is vanity an essential of false personality? A It is one of the features of false personality in one or another sense. In some people it may be the chief feature, and then it is very obvious and visible, but very often these features are behind other things and do not show themselves Q If work against false personality is a process, does it mean that one can go up and down? A Yes, and you must understand in yourself the power and magnitude of false personality, then you will understand that very often people have nothing else, or even if they have some possibility it is quite outweighed by false personality. False personality decides everything. In ordinary life false personality controls every moment, except perhaps moments when one reads or thinks of something. But when one works and magnetic centre begins to grow, sometimes it happens that false personality may disappear for ten or fifteen minutes and give magnetic centre a chance to manifest itself. That is how false personality disappears. It does not entirely disappear, it just goes away for a time This is what we must try to do—to make it disappear for a time. Q. Is it only by separation that one can work on identification? A. Only. Without realizing the difference between 'I' and false personality all efforts only strengthen the weaker side. As I said, this separation is the basis of all work on oneself. Unless this idea is understood, nothing can be attained, in everything one must start from that. This is the real difference between people in the work and not in the work. People who are not in the work think that they are what they are. People in the work already understand that they are not what they seem to be. This separation must pass through many phases, but it must begin. Q. When I see what a balloon of false personality I am, is the thing to do to try and see how I got that way? A. You have to study yourself. Only one thing can help and change your position and that is getting to know yourself better. This implies many
things. There are different degrees and depths of realization and understanding. When one understands sufficiently one will do something, one will not be able to sit and let things go on by themselves. Try to make your question more concrete: what is it you have been trying to do and what do you find you cannot? Then we can discuss it. Maybe you begin from the wrong thing, in a wrong way. Q. Can one find responsibility in oneself? A. Certainly. But in relation to what? You begin certain work; you have a responsibility towards this work—at least you should have. But who? If you call everything 'I', you must know by now that there are many 'I's; some have responsibility, others have no responsibility, because they have nothing to do with this work. It is only a question of observation to see that. Q. I see that it all comes back to the question of how to understand more. A. I am trying to explain, first, how you should study yourself. You must find your particular obstacle which keeps you from understanding. When you find it, you must struggle with it. It needs time, it cannot be found at once, although in some cases it is so clear that one can see it almost immediately. But in other cases it is necessary to work before one can see it. Q. Will group work help in this? A. You must not put too many hopes in group work, because, although it is useful for showing many things, experimenting, testing and so on, in group work one is in an artificial atmosphere, artificial circumstances. The moment one comes out of a group, one is in natural circumstances. So group work may show the way, but work must be in ordinary circumstances. What is the use if you are very good in a group, and become identified and a machine the moment you walk out of the group? It will be quite useless. Q. If someone in a school here has a very bad feature, such as bad temper, is special assistance given to overcome it? A. Only when one has studied and used all the general methods does one come to special characteristics. It is necessary to place this feature, to find the cause. Causes may be different. Some bad feature may be so strong that it may be the last to go—one cannot tell beforehand. If you begin to struggle with obstacles in the wrong order, you will get no results. At the same time it is necessary to have it in view. Q. If it is a negative emotion and you observe and resist it, does it change? A. It depends on the emotion. In most cases it is simply delayed. We do not know how to resist. There is a special key for every emotion. We must find the master key, and for this it is necessary first to know the machine. Q. If one feels depressed or irritated, what steps can one take against it? A. First one must try to remember oneself and, secondly, to remember that what is depressed is not oneself but one's imaginary picture of oneself.
Man's progress begins from the moment he realizes that what he is is one thing and his imaginary picture of himself is another thing. When he sees that he is smaller, weaker than he thought, that he is all sham, he is on the way to development. He has practically nothing, but enough to develop. Q. Since I have no permanent 'I', if I try not to identify with one 'I', do I identify with another? A. You must understand that you were given certain ideas in the same way as Mr Gurdjieff explained them, that is, gradually, first giving one aspect of an idea and then another. Many things are explained first in an elementary way, and then more details are added. When we speak of a man who is not in the work, we say he has no 'I'. If a man starts to study and make efforts, this already means a certain state; he has magnetic centre, and magnetic centre is the beginning of 'I'. So he no longer has the right to say that he has no 'I'. Naturally, he cannot say that he has a complete and permanent 'I', but he must already have a line of action, and this must mean an 'I'. It is not yet fully conscious, but it grows. Q. What are the kind of things to look for in trying to separate false personality from the rest of oneself? A. It is necessary to understand the features of false personality—what makes it up. You may be able to see it in the glimpses you remember of the age to which you can attribute the beginning of false personality. There are two things that are permanent in us—buffers and weaknesses or features of false personality. Everyone has one, two or three particular weaknesses, and everybody has certain buffers that are especially important, for they enter into all his decisions and his understanding of things. This is all that is permanent in us, and it is lucky for us that there is nothing more permanent, because these things can be changed. Buffers are artificial, they are not organic, they are chiefly acquired by imitation. Children begin to imitate grown-ups and create buffers, and some others are unwittingly created by education. Features or weaknesses can sometimes be found out, and if one knows a feature and keeps it in mind, one may find certain moments when one can act not from this feature. Everybody has many features but two or three are particularly important because they enter into every subjectively important situation in one's life; everything passes through them, all perceptions and all reactions. It is very difficult to realize what this means because we are so accustomed to it that we do not notice it; we are too much in those features, we have not got enough perspective. Q. Must the chief feature necessarily be bad? A. It is chief weakness; unfortunately we cannot think that our chief feature is strength, because we have no strength. Q. How can it be weakness if there is no not-weakness? A. It means mechanicalness. We are mechanical in all things, but in one
or two things we are particularly mechanical and particularly blind; that is why they are chief weaknesses, for we cannot see them. Other things, that are not weaknesses, we can see. Q. What would you call a weakness? Do you judge by ethical standards? A. No. As I said, a weakness is a thing in which you are most mechanical. Naturally, things concerning which you are absolutely helpless, where you are most asleep, most blind are bound to be your chief weaknesses, because there are degrees in everything. If there were no degrees in our qualities and manifestations it would be very difficult to study. We can study ourselves only because of these degrees. Even features are not always the same; sometimes they are more definitely expressed, and sometimes, in rare cases, they show themselves to us a little, and only in that way can they be found. But features are difficult to see in oneself. You will realize better what being more mechanical and less mechanical means if we take another example, say illness. If we are ill, we become at once more mechanical; we cannot resist the external world and things in it even as much as we resist them ordinarily. Q. You say we have nothing but weaknesses. Surely desire to be free is not a weakness? A. There can be one or another kind of desire. Suppose one realizes one's weakness and wishes to get rid of it, and at the same time one does not wish to learn the methods of getting rid of this weakness. This would be a second weakness, helping and protecting the first weakness. Q. But if one makes constant efforts? A. Again, that will belong to the other side of you, to what I call 'you'. This 'you' is not a power or a force, it is merely a combination of certain desires, desires to get rid of something. If you realize that something is wrong, and you formulate a desire to get rid of it, then if you can keep your mind on it sufficiently long, it becomes a certain plan of action; and if this line of action is sufficiently prolonged it can attain results. Only, it is necessary to add again that several different lines of action are needed to attain results, not just one line. We have to work at the same time on one thing and another thing and a third thing. If we work on one line we will get nowhere. Q. I did not understand it when you said once that we cannot change anything but we must act differently. A. Try to think: while we still remain as we are, we have to act differently. You cannot change at once, change is slow. But you have many things to do, and if you do them in a wrong way you will never change. Being a machine is not an excuse, although people use it: 'I am a machine, I cannot change anything', and so they do everything as before. Before you came to the work you explained everything by accident. Now you come to the conclusion that to-morrow will be the same as to-day unless you change. You cannot change, but you have to 'do'. So it is necessary
to understand on what lines you must do things differently. Everybody has two or three particular things where he is accustomed to act in a certain way and where he must try to act differently. These things are not the same for different people. You remember what I said about knowledge and being? The idea is to change being at exactly that point which is difficult for every person. One person must understand certain features and avoid them, another must understand what is lacking in him and try to acquire it and so on. That is why school is necessary. We need constant reminding about many things. Q. How can I make better use of moments when I feel the miraculousness of the system? A. Make more regular efforts, not occasional efforts. You know why I always speak about this? Because it is self-deception to think that one can awake without special and long work. We must realize how difficult it is. Thinking, not thinking, talking, not talking, feeling, not feeling, everything keeps us asleep. Now we speak theoretically about it, but work cannot be theoretical. The fact that one is asleep must become a permanent realization, one must feel it emotionally. But by itself this realization will not make one awake: special efforts are necessary to wake oneself up for a moment. Q. Is it not necessary to be fairly awake to formulate one's aim? A. This is another thing. Realizing and understanding are possible in a kind of half sleep; just as one can find one's way home, so we can find the way to our aim. Awakening is a long process. Q. Is hesitation between two different aims a sign of sleep? A. Partly of sleep and partly of incomplete understanding. When one knows what is most important, one has no hesitation. What we must think about now is methods—how to awake, which forms of work are best. But what is the use speaking about methods to awake if one does not fully realize the fact of sleep. What do you think about it, what do you feel about the state in which you are, have you any observations? This is very important, because there are many things about which we can speak seriously only if we have no doubts about this point. So it is necessary to think about this state and its different effects and consequences. If you take one day of your life and try to go over it, you will see that there are many things you would not have done if you were not asleep, because they were unnecessary or wrong, or that you did many other things rather than one particular thing, because for that particular thing it was necessary to be awake. All these conversations, systems, theories can help only if, together with this, you work on yourselves. Q. One realizes the danger of being asleep, but has one something to compensate for the increasing fear of unpleasantness brought by awakening?
A. If I am asleep and do not know it, the dangers are there just the same, so if I begin to see the dangers it is better than not seeing them, because then I can avoid them. Q. I find that when I discover a method to make me remember myself, this works for a few times and then wears off. A. You must always change those methods; they do not work for long— it is part of our state. Take it as a fact; there is no need to analyse it. The more new and unexpected things are, the better they will work. This is connected with the fundamental principle of all mental and physical life. We observe, in the ordinary sense, only changes in our associations. We do not feel permanent associations; we notice only changes. So when you are accustomed to them, you have to make some kind of alarm; then you get accustomed to this alarm and it does not work any more. If you make your alarm-clock ring permanently, you will notice it only when it stops ringing. Q. Does the realization of being asleep create its own force for awakening? A. If one realizes one is asleep, one must study means and methods to awake, but it must cease to be a word; it must become a fact based on observation. Only then is it possible to speak with more precision and more practically about it. When one realizes one is asleep, at that moment one is already half-awake, but it is not long enough; the next moment something begins to turn in one's head and one gets carried away into sleep again. This is why one cannot awake by oneself, why elaborate methods are necessary—one must be shaken and shaken. Q. And who is to do the shaking? A. This is the question. A certain number of people who want to awake must agree among themselves that when one of them is asleep someone else may be awake and will do the shaking. But making such an agreement needs sincerity; those people must really want to awake and must not get angry or offended when they get shaken. Q. What kind of shaking do you mean? A. Ordinary shaking. One finds one way, another, another. Alarms are also necessary, but it is even more necessary to remember to change them as often as possible. If one feels comfortable, one is asleep, but if one puts oneself in an uncomfortable position it helps one to awake. Pleasant things only help sleep. Q. Can one find one's own alarms? A. One can try, but it is necessary to have constant change and variation and choose things that will awake one. Otherwise we can awake for a second, decide to keep awake and imagine we are awake when we are really doing all this in a dream, with dream alarms. This is why constant control is necessary, and constant verification as to whether they really awake one or simply create new dreams, or whether one just does not
hear them any more. There is no reason to take too big a thing; but if one tries to take some small habit and check it, that may serve as an alarm, but only for about a week. Next week another will have to be found, perhaps something in connection with the people one lives with or something like that. One must find many alarms. Q. I find I am more aware of myself when alone, so I try to see as few people as possible. A. No, no, you must try to remember yourself in all conditions. If you remember yourself when alone, you will forget yourself when you are with people, and if you remember yourself among people you will forget yourself when alone. If you limit yourself to one set of circumstances, you lose at once. The best time to try to remember yourself is when circumstances are most difficult, and the most difficult circumstances are not when you can choose to be alone or not alone but when you have no choice. And why are the most difficult circumstances the best? Because then self-remembering gives the best results. In easy circumstances, if you decide to be alone or not alone, you may get some results; but if you find yourself in a most difficult situation and still manage to remember yourself, the results will be quite incommensurable. Q. Is there any action one could take, besides self-remembering, to discourage inner considering? A. Do that, and that will show you. It is all the same thing: if you consider, you cannot remember yourself. If you want to stop considering you must remember yourself; without remembering yourself you cannot stop considering. Q. Does self-remembering help one to get over such a thing as poor health? A. I do not know about that. This is a doctor's business, not ours. We are told that it produces certain chemical effects, but not at once. We can study it only psychologically; we do not know about the chemistry, but we can say that we will feel different. Generally speaking, I can say that every time one tries to study the system from a utilitarian point of view, it fails. The system is not made for that. In some cases self-remembering can produce a physical result one does not expect, but if one tries to work for this result, it will not happen. Q. But isn't physical health important? A. Certainly one must try to be more or less healthy, so if one is ill one must see a doctor about it. The question of health is important, but you cannot put it together with the question of consciousness. To use these ideas in the interests of health would be quite futile, though quite unexpectedly they may help. Q. Does consciousness require directed attention and will? A. All these things: attention, consciousness, unity, individuality, will, are different shades of the same thing. We divide them, but they are the
same. We may have them all for short moments, but we cannot keep them. If you observe yourself for a sufficiently long time, you will find moments of practically everything. But only moments. Our aim is to increase these moments, to strengthen them, to fix them, as you fix a photograph. Q. How should one do that? A. All work leads in the same direction. Finding names for the things we do not possess will not help. It is necessary to do something about it. Q. Do moments of attention depend on absence of distraction? A. There is always distraction, only we should have control. If we rely on circumstances, work will be in emotional parts of centres, not in intellectual parts. If it is in intellectual parts, it needs directed attention. Our centres are there, fully developed, waiting to be used, but we do not use the higher parts of them. Q. Does one have to sacrifice anything besides 'all nonsense' in order to attain higher states? A. 'Nonsense' is perhaps a good word. But when you sacrifice it, it is not nonsense for you. Objectively it may be nonsense, but if you felt it to be nonsense there would be no sacrifice. Q. There is a conflict in me, and though I know what I want it does not make any difference. I still do the thing that is bad for me. A. This means that you only know. To be able to 'do' is different. Knowledge by itself does not give enough power to do what you want. You have to accumulate energy slowly, chiefly by struggle with imagination, with expression of negative emotions, with talking and so on. This will give you the possibility to do what is better for you. Q. If you had a different attitude towards things, your emotions would be different, wouldn't they? A. What different attitudes? And what things? How can I answer? There are millions of things in the world and millions of different attitudes. You see, this is a practical question; it cannot be asked in this language. Try to see how your question will sound to another person, because you know what you mean by different things and different attitudes, but I do not know. Q. I am asking in connection with right attitudes as a weapon against negative emotions. Does an attitude mean accepting or rejecting? A. It is not a question of rejecting, it is a question of understanding. When I speak about right and wrong attitudes in this connection, I mean attitudes to negative emotions in general, and negative emotions in general are a subject for conversations about the working of the machine. When you speak about your own observation or your personal work, you must describe which negative emotion you mean: jealousy, fear, anger and so on. There can be no generalization, because negative emotions are very different and attitudes are different. About one you can
say one thing and about another, another thing If we take negative emotions all together, they have a certain common quality, but when you speak about your own observations you must take things on a different scale, not speak of attitudes, negative emotions, imagination, identification, as though they were abstract things ten thousand miles away from you It is possible to use these terms for the explanation of general features, but you cannot use them when you talk about your own work. You have a certain personal work to do. You come with a certain aim, you want to get something, and something inside hinders you—and yet you speak about attitudes, negative emotions, considering and so on. Speak about real things These terms can be in a book, and you speak as though you were taking phrases from a book You must understand that in our system—or in any system for that matter, whether it is acknowledged or not—there are three different languages, or three ways of thinking philosophical, theoretical and practical When I say 'this is theoretical' or 'this is philosophy' in answer to a question, it means that the language is wrong You cannot ask something in a philosophical way and expect a practical answer. An abstract question cannot have a concrete answer. You must understand that the difference in meaning between these words 'philosophical', 'theoretical' and 'practical' is quite contrary to the ordinary meaning attributed to them The philosophical is the easiest approach, the theoretical is more difficult and more useful, and the practical is the most difficult and most useful of all. There can be philosophical knowledge—very general ideas, there can be theoretical knowledge—when you calculate things, and there can be practical knowledge, when you can observe and make experiments In philosophical language you speak not so much about things as about possibilities, in other words, you do not speak about facts In theoretical language you speak about laws, and in practical language you speak about things on the same scale as yourself and everything around you, that is, about facts So it is really a difference of scale. Things can be taken on these three scales, and many things change completely according to the scale on which they are taken they are one thing on the philosophical scale, quite different if taken on the theoretical scale, and on the practical scale quite different again. Try to find examples. Some things can be taken on all three scales, some only on two, and some on one Even speaking with oneself one must not mix these three scales, otherwise one will create more confusion than there is already and only understand less and less. Q. Is an effort to self-remember practical? A. It may be practical, it may be theoretical and it may be philosophical. Q. Objective consciousness seems to belong to the philosophical scale? A. Quite the reverse: it is very practical. But if you mean for us, then,