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certainly, objective consciousness is a philosophical idea. At the same time the study of descriptions of glimpses of this state is possible. If one studies these descriptions and tries to find similarities, it can become theoretical Q. I should like to understand more about this division. I do not know what is practical. A. It means what you can do—in all senses. Only, 'doing' can be on one scale or another scale Doing is always more important than thinking or talking. So if we take it that philosophical is thinking, theoretical talking and practical doing, the practical is more important Q What is philosophical thinking? A. Thinking on a very large scale. A thing may look very beautiful on the philosophical scale, the same thing taken on the theoretical scale may be a very narrow and stupid theory and, taken practically, it may be a crime When I first heard about the division into philosophical, theoretical and practical, I was told that schools of knowledge which came from higher mind could be divided into three classes practical schools were the highest, then came theoretical and last philosophical schools. But ordinarily we understand by practical such things as gardening, making boots and so on By theoretical knowledge we understand mathematics, geology, etc, and by philosophical we understand what we usually want —philosophy. But according to this system philosophical schools are merely preparatory schools. Q When I first came to lectures I thought the word 'school' meant a school of thought, but now it seems to be just like the school I was in when I was a boy. A. Exactly. It is not a question of thought, it is a question of doing Q. Isn't it in a way a school of thought too, since doing must come from thinking? A Certainly there must be a certain amount of thinking, for without thinking we can do nothing, but thinking is only an auxiliary process, it is not the aim In a school of thought it is sufficient to think about freedom, whereas we want to be free, we are not satisfied with merely thinking about it. Q Would this school be of all three kinds or only one? A. I think it is better to say all three It has three sides Also, some people take the system philosophically, others theoretically and yet others practically You must not forget that the same thing can be taken in different ways Q Is, then, this system connected with philosophy? A. It cannot be quite free from it In some ways it is a legitimate form of thinking. But in thinking of man's development, of man's progress, it is better to look for psychological landmarks and not for philosophical ones.
Psychological landmarks are facts, the others may be imagination. Even if a man's intellect is dealing with big philosophical problems, his being may be on quite a low level. But if a man is more conscious, then all his sides can develop. Q. Who assesses psychological values? A. There are definite objective signs by which one can judge—definite inner standards. At a certain point they may become objective. As I said, we do not look for philosophical landmarks, we want psychological landmarks. It is very important to understand this. Philosophical conclusions may be just words, rhetoric, but about psychological landmarks there can be no mistake—for oneself. Q. Is it lazy to use philosophical thinking? A. Not necessarily. Sometimes there are things you can take only philosophically, others only philosophically and theoretically. There are things to which we have no practical approach and for which we must find analogies. So sometimes it is quite right. But there are things which you can take only practically, for only then can you value them. Q. You spoke of 'thinking in new categories'. This seems to me as impossible as being able to 'do'. A. Quite right. At the same time, when you begin to understand different categories, you will be able to think, at least sometimes, in a different way. But this is not the whole description of right thinking. Very often you do not think in right categories because you do not have enough knowledge. Even in our state we can think better or worse. Q. When I try to think in a new way, I do not know where to start. A. You have plenty of material—this system. Try to reconstruct it in your mind, to imagine that you are explaining to somebody the ideas of this system. Try to reconstruct what this system says about man and the universe. If you do not remember something, ask other people. This is a good exercise. Either you turn your thoughts and control them, or they turn by themselves. If they turn by themselves, you cannot expect positive results. In order that they should give results you have to drive them. Q. Shall I have to find new words for all system words and ideas when I imagine that I am explaining the system to people outside? A. You cannot invent new words. There is a definite rule that when you speak of the system you must speak using exactly the same language in which you learnt this system, and refer to the origin. There will never by any necessity for you to disguise it. Q. Is it that we cannot think differently until we remove our old ways of thinking completely? A. No, you cannot wait for this; you have to do so now. One example of thinking in new categories is that thinking must be intentional. We do not realize that whether something is intentional or unintentional changes everything.
Q. If you try to arrest the mechanical process of thinking and to think in a new way, does not the other way of thinking tend to become mechanical too? A. Yes, everything has a tendency to become mechanical, so when you are trying to do something in a new way you must watch not only what you intend to do but many other things. Identification must not enter into it, imagination must not enter; you must learn to control associations and have only those you need, rather than letting them control you. Q. But is there any other kind of thinking besides associative? A. There is controlled thinking. You can limit your thinking to a certain definite point or aim. Associative thinking is accidental. We can go on thinking by old associations without any attempt to change them, or we can try new associations by introducing new points of view. Q. About right thinking; when I try to think of something connected with the system, it peters out. A. For right thinking it is not sufficient just to think about the system, it is the way you think that is important. You can think rightly or wrongly about the system or about something that has no relation to the system. So it is not a question of the subject but of the method of thinking. And the method cannot be described. You must find examples of wrong thinking and examples of right thinking, and then compare them. We must learn to control our mind; we must understand formatory and defective thinking and be able to use our whole brain instead of only a small part. The only thing that can help in this is to remember oneself. You must try to find some personal connection, some personal interest in the question you want to think about, then that will grow and develop. By personal I mean what you thought before, questions about it which came to you by themselves and that you could not answer, or something like that. And when you find that now you can see more, that may give a push to other things. Q. In thinking about some idea of the system it is difficult to keep a line of thought compared with the ordinary things that happen in one's head —the material is so limited. A. No, the material is very big—something else is limited. Either desire is limited, or effort is limited, but not the material. Q. I should like to know the cause of the resistance to keeping out other thoughts that come creeping in. A. There are two causes—the cause of resistance is one thing and the cause of the thoughts that come interrupting is another. The second shows our ordinary way of thinking—we can never keep a line because accidental associations come in. Resistance is another thing; it is the result of a lack of skill, lack of knowing how to deal with it, lack of experience of intentional thinking on a certain line. This capacity must be educated.
I can tell you what is lacking in our thinking, but if you have no observations of your own about it, it will mean nothing to you. Each thought is too short; our thoughts should be much longer. When you have experience of short thoughts and long thoughts, you will see what I mean. Q. I have been struck by the limitations of our thinking capacity. What do they depend on? A. Only when you have examples of a better kind of thinking in yourself, using higher parts of centres, having more consciousness, will you see on what these limitations depend. We know our mind is limited, but we do not know in what it is limited. When you know these two ways of thinking and are able to compare them you will know where the difference lies and then it will be possible to speak about causes. Q. Is the development of a man with a very good intellect bound to be quicker than that of another whose intellect is not so good? A. Sometimes yes, sometimes no; not so much can be done by intellect as by balance of centres and development of consciousness, because even in the ordinary state man 1, 2 and 3 can be more awake or less awake, more conscious or less conscious. A man with a good intellect may be quite asleep, and then he may be too sure of his own intellectual achievement and too identified with it to start working. His intellect may stop him. This often happens. Often intellectual development prevents study because a man is too argumentative, demands definitions for everything, and so on. Development of intellect alone is not sufficient, very soon work on emotions becomes necessary. Q. I noticed that people who have never thought often seem to find less difficulty with the work than others who have thought. Which is better? A. Both are no good—one who does not think and one who thinks too much. Q. Does the same thing apply to people who are considered brilliant in life? A. People who are considered brilliant may be very different, so it is difficult to speak about them all in one category. They may be really brilliant, they may be just pretending to be brilliant, or other people may pretend that they are brilliant. But if you mean people who are very identified with their brilliance, then it may be very difficult for them, only not as a result of their brilliance but as a result of their identification. Sometimes an advantage in life means a disadvantage in work, for the better man 1, 2 or 3 one is, the more self-will and wilfulness one has to conquer. The easiest and most advantageous from the point of view of the work is to be quite an ordinary man. Q. Is it not essential to become successful in life? Or should one be unidentified with life activities, whatever the result? A. Both are necessary. Success is not dangerous in itself, if only one does
not identify with it. The aim is not success or failure, but non-identification. Success may help in many things. Q. How big a part does intellect play in the system? A. Intellect plays a very important part because we begin with it. It is the only centre which obeys itself. But development of intellect can go only up to a certain limit. Possibilities lie in the emotional centre. Q. Have we anything to control our thoughts now? A. If you have interests in the right direction, those interests control all other things to a certain extent. If we are not interested, we have no control. Q. You said that in trying to think rightly about these ideas you need to use the intellectual part of the intellectual centre. Can you do that by trying to control attention when you think? A. No, it is a simultaneous action; you cannot divide it. The fact is that about certain things you can think only in the intellectual part—if you think rightly and formulate rightly what it is you want to think about. Then, certainly, you have to keep yourself on this idea without going into imagination. So the function itself determines the place. Q. I have come to the conclusion that I do not know how to think about what I want to think about. Is it because of buffers? A. I think it is simply that we are not accustomed to think about these ideas—we do not think it is necessary to think about them. If we realize the necessity, then perhaps we will be able to. But buffers have nothing to do with it. Q. I think that the general experience is that early contact with the system brings more destruction than construction. A. From my point of view, the idea of construction and destruction is wrong. Nothing is destroyed, but if we imagine that we have something we do not have, then when we start working we may see that we thought we had something but now find that we have not. This means that it is an illusion and we have to sacrifice it. We can have real things or illusions. We lose nothing that we really possess; we only lose the idea that we possess something which we do not possess. It often happens that people become disappointed in the work because, from the very beginning, they start choosing and take some things and not others. So after some time they do not have the system but their own selection from it, and this won't work. Other people want to understand only intellectually and do not want to make experiments with themselves and observe, but without practical work it is impossible to move. Q. Shall we be told when we can start practical work? A. You have been doing some practical work from the very first. If you had done only theoretical work, it would mean you have done nothing. This work is practical from the first.
As I have often said, the first condition is that we must never forget what we want to get. People come to this from different sides. Some want to know. They realize there is a certain knowledge and that, maybe, there are somewhere people who know, and they want to get this knowledge. Other people realize their weaknesses and understand that if they can get rid of them things will be different. So people come with different aims and they must never forget the beginning. They can be reminded, but that will not help much if they themselves do not remember. Q. I wish I could strengthen my aim. I go on reacting in the same way as before and seem to be as mechanical. I suppose it is necessary to try harder? A. Trying hard will not help by itself; it must be based on understanding. It is more a question of valuation, general valuation, valuation of the ideas. About almost everything you can think in a new way—a better way than before. You can understand and connect together many things you could not put together or understand before you came. Only, unfortunately, you want to keep all the old ways of thinking and have the new at the same time, and so there is no room for the new. Again, if you have some habits of negative emotion, you cannot remember yourself while you have them; so in order to remember yourself, in order to work, you must have a little free time. It is not so much that there is no aim as that you do not want to sacrifice anything. You cannot keep everything you possess and have new things as well. Q. Is it lack of unity in man that makes it so difficult to find the practical connection between the aim of the system and the aims of ordinary life? A. There are no aims in ordinary life; that is where you make a mistake. In ordinary life one aim crosses another aim and destroys it or changes its nature, so that in the end there are no aims. Q. You say that the man in the street has no aim. But when you get older you do not fly about so much, you become interested in one thing. A. It is one-sided. There are many other sides of one's being and knowledge that this line does not touch at all. Some people can develop a certain oneness even in life, but these are exceptions. If, as you say, one becomes interested in one thing, only one group of 'I's develops this interest; others do not know about it; only a small minority is concerned. So there are two questions here: the question of minority and majority and the fact that if a line of interest appears it does not touch many other things and occupies only a small part of one's being. The whole being never takes part in it. I think that what was said before about this question of values in the work and in ordinary life must be understood better. In ordinary life there are so many imaginary values that it is useful to clarify a little. In life the best things have no meaning; people see what is small but miss
what is big. In the work you have to do many different things first in order to feel that you are waking up. Then other things come; everything comes, for this is only the beginning. Aim is necessary in the work, but it cannot be an arbitrary or invented aim. There can only be one aim—to awake—and it can only come when you realize that you are asleep, otherwise there is no necessity for it. All other aims, however one may formulate them, must be in line with that. Then, when one wants to awake, one begins to see obstacles, one sees what keeps one asleep; one finds a quantity of mechanical functions, talk, lying, negative emotions and so on, and one realizes that all life consists of mechanical functions that leave no time for awakening. One understands then the need to suppress them, or at least to make them less strong; then one may have time for awakening. Q, My problem is, do I really want to awake? A. What can I say? Suppose you come to a shop and ask: 'Do I want to buy something here or not?' It is the same in this case. So how can I answer? You must understand that at first you get only unpleasant things. Maybe (I only say maybe) the possibility to get something pleasant depends on the capacity to accept something very unpleasant; maybe this is the only chance. And if you agree to have something very unpleasant, you always get more than you bargained for. If you agree to half a pound of unpleasant things, you get twenty pounds. The great question is, what is the coin in which we have to pay. Effort is not really currency yet; effort has to be exchanged for something else and something else again, until you get to something that can be currency. It is very complicated. But what frightened you? Q. Suffering is the word in my mind. I do not think it is in me to face unpleasant things. A. It is a matter of taste. What does 'unpleasant' mean? It means paying. I quite agree that it is better to get things for nothing, but such a method has not been invented yet. Either one understands this and says: 'I will pay, only I must know how'; or one doubts and says: 'I had better either not pay, or pay to myself. Then nothing happens. Q. At first I was anxious to work. Now I find there is too much to be done and I feel it is hopeless. A. Although it seems much in description, it all comes to the same thing. It needs time; it is an organic process. Things have been going wrong for many years, it is necessary to give them time to turn round. Q. Sometimes I feel very frightened that I do not know what I am doing or what I want. I allow myself to get very negative. A. First you must not allow; and second, when in a state of doubt, you must remember to try and bring up other 'I's which have a certain valuation. This is the only way to conquer doubts.
Q. There are times when I feel a great revulsion for this work and a longing to escape, because there is something in me which I do not want to give up. How can I struggle with it? A. Either you have to escape, or continue to hesitate until you become sure of one thing or another. You must not do anything while you hesitate; it is very important to remember that. Just as in the case of understanding you must choose only things which you understand better and think about them; so in relation to doing, you must choose things about which you are sure, and not spoil your life by things which you do not understand. If you think rightly, that is to say, if you collect and keep only the things you understand, and try to do things you understand, their number will increase. But if you fill your mind with things you do not understand, you will never move. This is a very definite part of the system's method. Many things we know very well but we continue to deceive ourselves, mainly about words. It is very difficult to understand the value of words. 'Poor in spirit' are those who do not believe in words and 'rich in spirit' are those who believe in words. Often people say, 'If I do this and that it will be beautiful'. They do not understand that it is impossible to do exactly as they wish, that each thing will be a little different and in the end everything will be quite different. Then, when they see that it is different, they say, 'Yes, but the original idea was good'. It was not good. It only looked beautiful as an idea, but in realization it often becomes its own opposite. It will necessarily change because of friction. There are some ideas that can pass through triads and others that cannot, that can exist only in the form of one force, or half a force, or a quarter. Q. I believe that the understanding we are seeking is attainable only by some. Is it not probable that many of us may get to a blank wall of elimination and no further? A. Nothing can be guaranteed. But if one wants something and tries to work and does not show some particularly unpleasant feature very difficult to deal with, one has a chance. That is all I can say. One has exactly the same chance as everybody else. One person may have very good and beautiful features, and yet behind this have one small feature that makes work very difficult, more difficult perhaps than for somebody else who does not have such brilliant features. Q. Is conscience what would help most to know oneself? A. Yes, it is a necessary element; one has to pass through it. It is the most unpleasant thing in the world, because in the ordinary state we can hide things from ourselves. If we do not want to see something, we just shut our eyes and do not see it. But in the state of conscience our eyes will not shut. Q. How can one bring the ideas of the system into daily life? A. By studying yourself and studying the system. Everybody has many
personal questions and problems, but at present the system stands apart. Little by little you will learn to connect it with more and more things and after some time ideas of the system will enter into everything. Q. Is it then a waste of time to talk unnecessarily, to laugh and joke when one feels like it? A. There is nothing wrong in it by itself. What is wrong is what increases mechanicalness. Passing time in chatting and laughing is one of the most mechanical things. It depends on what you want. If you decide to have a rest, it may really be a rest. But if you cannot stop it, if it gets hold of you, then it is wrong. Q. I can observe what a great deal of energy I waste in vague imaginings, day-dreams and worrying, but I am powerless to prevent this. A. The whole system is a way of preventing this. But first you must study. You are dealing with a very complicated machine and you must know it. By studying it one learns what must remain, what must disappear, what helps and what hinders, what one must remove, what one must encourage. People either do not realize that they can change, or if they realize it, they take it too easily. They think it is enough to realize, to decide, and one will change. But realization, by itself, will not produce a change; we have too many tendencies created in us. We must know how to struggle with them. Q. I am constantly up against my past. The roots are far back. A. Quite right. Only there is no direct method; we have to begin with to-day, we cannot change yesterday. Try to change to-day and this may produce a certain change to-morrow. This is everybody's state, a condition in which we have to start. But it is not an obstacle that cannot be overcome. Q. I have been very negative lately about the conditions in which I found myself, and I feel I cannot see clearly what attitude I should take. A. It is quite true that in certain conditions one identifies too much with something and loses the possibility to see the difference of things. Sometimes it is impossible to do anything, and sometimes it is possible to struggle. Besides, we have a tendency to magnify and exaggerate. The conditions may not be so bad. There are many points of view, and only you can decide what the case is really like. Q. The difficulty is that I do not know what is right and what is wrong in ordinary life, and this acts as a screen or a whitewash over my actions. A. We cannot say we do not know. We know, or at any rate we should know. Nobody can live without certain ideas of right and wrong. But when you come to the system and understand the basis of it, you see that right is connected with consciousness and wrong with mechanicalness. If people are a little conscious, little as they can be, so to say approximately conscious, they have a better direction. Even standing in the same place, but turned one way or another, makes a difference. Q. Is it wrong to ask questions to satisfy curiosity?
A. Curiosity is a normal thing, if it is strong enough to make you study and if it is a right kind of curiosity, because there are different kinds. Right curiosity is a very important intellectual emotion. Q. Where does our curiosity for truth come from? And why are we curious at all? A. Curiosity is a special emotion which exists in each centre. In the intellectual centre it is connected with desire to know. But how do you connect it with the idea of truth? It is simply an intellectual process. Intellectually we distinguish what is true and what is false, and naturally we are curious about what is true and not about what is false, again only in our mind. Although we do not know what truth is, we can know what is definitely not true. Our mind is so made that we can know what is false, although in many cases we cannot say what is true. Q. What is the difference between desire to know and ordinary curiosity? A. What makes the difference is on what it is directed. If you want to know your neighbour's business that does not concern you, or if you want to know about triads, these two desires are in different parts of centres. Ordinary curiosity is just weakness, foolishness. Q. I suppose I lack the right kind of curiosity, because I find difficulty in asking questions. Either I am too lazy or I think I can answer them myself. A. If you really want to ask certain questions, you will ask them even if you think you already know the answer. If you try to think, you will have questions; you are bound to have many questions now, only you do not formulate them. It is impossible not to have questions, for there are hundreds of things you would like to know. So you must think about these things and try to formulate them. Q. What does it really mean to have unity? I thought it was the same as permanent 'I', but now I am not so sure. A. It may be the same; it depends where you start from in your understanding. You may make a decision, and then two or three days later act against it and justify yourself. Or you may want to struggle, try not to do something you usually do, and when you find yourself doing it again, you realize that you have no unity. Even in our state we can strive to attain unity, that is, collect ourselves, or we can be dispersed and do nothing about it. Q. When one is struggling to do a job one does not like, what can one do to do it well, apart from not identifying? A. At first, when you are trying to do a job of work, you cannot catch the right point from which you can do it, because work of one or another kind can be done only from one point in yourself and it is sometimes very difficult to find this point. For instance, it is often like that when you want to write a letter, but once you start you may write more than you thought you could. The whole thing is finding the right point of the
right centre. For everything we do there is a certain part of a certain centre that can do it, or at any rate do it much better than any other part of the same centre or of other centres. Q. Does doing a thing well involve some measure of subjection of false personality? A. To a certain extent it may be understood that way It means that, if one can do something well, one is able to have a certain standard by which one can measure both how other people do things and how one does things oneself and see when one does something in a wrong way. If one has nothing like that, if one can do nothing well, one has no standard. Q. I have a certain critical attitude to people I see a lot and I tried to stop it, but it has come back again very badly A. Yes, sometimes it can be a very oppressive thing and more difficult to stop than people think There is only one thing—just to look at it from the point of view of personal profit. Does this critical attitude give you anything or not? You will see that it gives you nothing. We often forget this question of personal profit, yet it is not only legitimate, it is the only criterion. Sometimes we spend enormous efforts, time and emotion on things from which we can get no benefit Perhaps this will help you not to criticize. It is just the same as criticizing the weather. Q. I often think that things are arranged badly. A. And you can arrange them better? You can struggle with this way of thinking not at the time when you feel emotionally but later, when you can see better, if only from the point of view that we have to take everything as it is. You cannot change it, you can only change yourself. This is the only right attitude, and if you think sufficiently often about it, this emotional element will disappear and you will see things on the right scale, in right relationships. Q. Is there a way to prevent expressing annoyance? I lose such a lot of energy by it. A. And by expressing it you may create cause for another annoyance. Try to catch yourself on that. When you express annoyance, try to see that you do it not because you realize that you cannot help it but because you deceive yourself by thinking that you do it for a purpose, you wish to change things, people should not do this thing and cause you annoyance, and so on But after you have expressed it, it may be worse, they may annoy you even more It is quite useless to produce wrong results If you think about this wrong result, maybe you will find the energy not to express your annoyance, and then the cause may disappear, because what annoyed you before would make you laugh We often think we express negative emotions, not because we cannot help it, but because we should express them. There is always something deliberate in it Q. But cannot you be rightly angry if something is wrong? A. The most dangerous negative emotions come from the feeling of
injustice, indignation. They make you lose more energy, and they are worse if you are right. Q. Why is it worse if you are right? A. Because you justify it. If you are wrong, you can see that it is absurd to be angry. But this is not a complete explanation. Start looking at it from this point of view: remember that there are very big things that are wrong. We usually identify with small things and forget the big. If we begin to think about the big things we realize that it is no use identifying with one small thing that is wrong. And one small identifying leads to another small identifying. But again it is not a complete explanation. Q. Can people have a permanent influence on others? A. Yes, to a certain extent they can, as much as you permit them. If you let yourself go in this direction and let them influence you, they will have an influence. But if you say to yourself, 'I do not want to be influenced', they will have no influence. Remember, they are machines; can a machine influence you? Yes, if you allow it. Suppose you see a wonderful car and would give your life to have this car, it means that you are influenced by this car. It is just the same with people. You are open to the influence of other people as much as you identify or consider. Q. In relation to work, can one do people harm by influencing them in a wrong way? A. Yes, one can—with some people, not with everybody. Some people are very easily influenced, so if you give them wrong ideas about the work it may do harm. This is why in speaking with people it is always necessary to be careful not to be misunderstood, not to give a wrong impression. Q. Would you explain why deep sleep should follow a moment of interest and urge to experiment, and why during sleep all desire to repeat the experiment goes? A. Every function, every effort, needs energy, and awakening needs special energy. If at the moment of awakening something wrong happens, if there is some kind of identification, or something like that, it produces an enormous waste of energy, and after that one may be asleep for a long time without remembering the possibility of awakening. But only if something wrong happens at the moment of awakening. And in our present state something wrong can happen any moment, because we do not know what is happening. For instance, some negative emotion may come in and produce such waste of energy that none will be left for a long time. So the most important moments to try to remember oneself are moments when one is habitually most identified, for if one can remember oneself at these difficult moments other moments will be easier. But if one chooses only the easiest moments, then at difficult moments one will never be able to do it. It is necessary to try both. Q. In your view, if a man could live the whole of his life in a state of consciousness, could he do no wrong?