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people wish to acquire control, they can achieve it only in one way. If they act in another way they will get the opposite result. Wars, revolutions and so on never give the desired results, but always the opposite results, because wrong triads are used. If people of the inner circles wish to influence other people, they can produce good results only if there is understanding, and only with people who wish it. This is a useful question. Try to think about it. Q. You spoke of the insecure times we live in. Will the school take precautions to protect itself? I understood you to say that a school is not under the law of accident. A. I meant that a school cannot be formed by accident, but it can be destroyed by accident. It cannot be formed mechanically, but it can be destroyed mechanically. Take some work of art—it will not be created purely mechanically, it will be made by some special triad—but it can be burnt like anything else. Q. If schools are real living things, why do they die? A. What do you mean by saying that schools are living things? It is vague and indefinite. But if we take it literally it will make it quite clear why schools die. All living beings die sooner or later. If people die, schools must also die. I have explained that schools need certain conditions. If these conditions are destroyed, the school is destroyed. Q. But the ideas may remain? A. Ideas cannot fly: they need human heads. And a school does not consist of ideas; you always forget that school teaches how to improve being. Q. Were no ideas written down in the past? A. Certainly there were, but ideas can be written down in different forms; they may be written down in such a way that nobody can read them without explanation from those who know or without change of being. Take the Gospels—they are written in different ciphers; one must know the key to decipher them, otherwise it would be just a story, doubtful historically and producing many wrong effects. Q. Will the system give the key to the Gospels? A. Some keys, but you cannot expect all the keys. Many of the keys can be got only with change of being, they cannot be only a matter of knowledge. Again you forget about being. Change of being means connection with higher centres. Higher centres can understand many things which ordinary centres cannot. Q. Then the New Testament must have misled many people? A. The New Testament is written for schools and for different levels. In schools every word is explained. Every sentence in the New Testament has dozens of meanings, that is why there are so many things in it we do not understand. We are trying to pass from the level of man 1, 2 and 3 to the level of understanding of man No. 4; other people may be trying
to pass to the level of man No 5, yet others to the level of man No 6 and so on—and they all read the New Testament So we cannot expect, on our level, to understand all of it, since it is written in a very clever way. When somebody said it is under seven locks, he was quite right One must find one key and use it and then, with its help, one will find a second key, and so on, but one will not understand it until one has opened all the seven locks So if we understand all that is possible to understand on our level, we may get the possibility of understanding more. Q. Can a school reach a higher level than the school it started from? A. Yes, if it works according to methods and principles of school-work, it can grow. But again you must remember that the level of the school depends on the level of being of the people who constitute it Q. Was self-remembering a feature of the old esoteric knowledge? A. Always, everywhere. Only sometimes, for instance in religious schools, it is called by a different name It is not arbitrary, self-remembering is a necessary stage in man's development, not an arbitrarily imposed task. One has to pass through it, and one can pass through it only in one way Q. Did Christ at any time speak about it, and in what words? A Almost on every page, in different words, for instance, 'Watch', 'Do not sleep'. He spoke about it all the time. Q. How should one consider church religion? A. We cannot discuss religion, because it is quite a different thing, different elements enter into it Every religion is based on faith and, as I said already, faith does not enter into our system All we can say is that religions are on different levels, as I have explained in the first lectures Religion is a relative term All people are divided into men of different levels and all religions are divided in the same way Each religion has all the degrees. This is one of the very important things to understand We only know the horizontal divisions—historical and geographical. But there exist other divisions. There are religious ways, and religion does not contradict any other system, the difference lies in different levels Suppose you know religion No 2—it is not sufficient if you want to study yourself and become No 4 And suppose you find that this system is on a certain level and do not know of a religion of a sufficiently high level—then conflict is possible Conflict is possible only between different levels. Q I feel since I met this system that I seem to understand the Prayer Book and the Bible better Can it help us by giving a better understanding of the teaching of Christ? A. I already said that this system is not a religion You can improve your mental machine and your capacity for understanding, and you can make your emotions better But whether the system can help you in this direction I cannot say. Later you may be able to see the connection
between the ideas of the system and the esoteric parts of religion. But we do not know esoteric religion, so we cannot speak about it. A very similar question was asked Mr Gurdjieff in St Petersburg Someone asked in what relation this system stood to Christianity Mr Gurdjieff said many things about how different people understand Christianity differently. And then he said: 'If you like, this is esoteric Christianity'. And he added: 'What from your point of view is the most important thing in Christ's teaching? It is action: do this, do not do that. The question is—can you do it? You must decide for yourself whether you can understand it better now or not, but you must take Christianity as a teaching of action, not as a mental teaching. If you take the Christian teaching without the modern sentimental attitude, you will see that it is the most exclusive of all religions. It is constantly repeated and repeated that only a few have a chance—difficult way, narrow way, only a few can pass through, and so on. Q. One cannot help thinking that the Absolute is one name for God. A. No, you are quite wrong The Absolute is the principle that lies in the beginning of things and behind everything. I never connected the Absolute with God in the religious sense God in religion can do many things for you, but the Absolute can do nothing for you. So it is not God in that sense, you cannot pray to the Absolute. If you take a religious question, follow the religious explanation. If you see a difference, keep them separate. Q. Is it a fact that there are higher forces one can contact when one is in a better state? A. In every situation, in every question we must keep to what we can know, to what we can be sure about, and we can be sure that most of our time we are in a state in which we cannot be in contact with higher forces, Either we are fully asleep and no higher forces can penetrate to us, or we are negative so that everything that comes to us is transformed into one or another kind of negativeness. In such a state, what can we expect? Q. Are there many esoteric teachings or only one? A Every teaching of an esoteric origin agrees fundamentally with the others. In order to be true, the teaching must be one of many. If it is unique, it means it is invented Q. In the New Testament we are very often told to watch and pray. What is it in the system which corresponds to prayer? A. Whose prayer? If a machine prays, what can be the result? Which prayer? Prayer does not necessarily mean petition. Most prayers have as their aim keeping the mind on certain ideas—a form of meditation. Q. Do you think that self-consciousness can be achieved by prayer? And if so, how should one pray? A. If one could really pray continuously, it would create self-conscious-
ness The whole thing is that we cannot A man decides to pray and five minutes later it becomes a mechanical repetition of words If one could pray, prayer could do it, but one cannot, because one is not Man could do many things if he was, that is, if he was permanent As it is, one starts, another continues Q. Is true prayer contact with higher powers? A. I will not argue against it, but we know quite concretely that in ordinary centres we only have the powers that belong to them At the same time we learn that higher centres have many powers that ordinary centres do not have So I can answer in the language of the system that if this contact is possible, it is only possible through higher centres Our problem is how to approach higher centres We cannot have contact now, but higher centres may have Nobody can guarantee it, because even our expectations may be wrong In any case we know—and some people have had their short experiences of it—that higher centres have new powers, so all we can do is to try to become connected with higher centres by studying how to become conscious When we become conscious, we shall have contact with higher centres, and then we may have new powers and new knowledge Q. But do we not already have flashes of higher emotional centre? A Some people do, but they are only flashes which they cannot control. Only man No. 5 can control these things, and we are but men No 1, 2 and 3 Q. According to some esoteric teachings the mind of a man is like a pool When it is calm he can see things clearly and listen to 'the voice of the silence' A. There are many dangers in that It is so easy to mix the real 'voice of the silence' with an imaginary voice, so easy to mix truth with imagination It may be the way for some people, but it is not the way for us We want to know more precisely how to evolve, so for us all such definitions are dangerous, for there is no instrument by which we can separate the imagination in them from reality That is what you must remember in this system—that you learn how to separate the imaginary from the real from the very beginning, when you learn to distinguish in yourself imagination from reality Then later, on higher levels of consciousness, you will be able to separate it in the objective world Many of these mystical ways only increase confusion Instead of bringing man nearer to truth, they lead him further from it Q Then should man continually seek irritations? A Why irritations? You take that for granted and then try to find opposites You can try all your life and get nothing, if you work in the wrong way But you must try, in the right way, to remember yourself, not to identify, to gain control Nobody has enough control. We are not masters of ourselves, and this is why we cannot begin to do this and not
do that. We have to study first, and understand first. We must study ourselves, and sometimes we can turn one little thing and another little thing, and in this way we begin to change. One cannot start with this big calm. One can want to be calm, if one is not calm, but that is the same as speaking of such Christian principles as loving your enemies. Q. Is not the A B C of all esoteric knowledge the death of the seed? A. We may take it like that. As a matter of fact, in connection with this there is another thing which may perhaps explain our situation. I remember long ago Mr Gurdjieff said about this expression repeated two or three times in the New Testament, that in order to germinate and produce a plant a seed must die, that it was not complete in relation to man. In relation to man it must be amplified. Speaking in general about the work, about its possibilities and about the direction of the work, Mr Gurdjieff explained it to us like this. First we must realize that we are asleep; secondly we must awake. When we are awake we must die; when we die we can be born. This is the process in detail and the direction. It is useful to think about it, useful to understand what sleep means, what to awake means, what to die means and what it would mean to be born. Suppose we want to be born. We cannot be born until we die, and we cannot die until we awake. We cannot awake until we realize that we are asleep. So there are definite steps. Q. What does to die mean in the sense in which you speak? A. 'To die' means to die, to disappear, not to be, not to exist. It is useless to die in sleep, because then you cannot be born. You must awake first. I have been asked many questions, some of them very naive, by different people who have tried to understand the Lord's Prayer and who came to me asking me to explain what one or another phrase in it means. For instance, I have been asked what 'our Father in heaven' means, who are 'our debtors' and what are 'our debts' and so on—as if the Lord's Prayer could be explained in 'plain words'. You must understand first of all that ordinary, plain words cannot explain anything in relation to the Lord's Prayer. Some preparatory understanding is necessary, then further understanding may come, but only as a result of effort and right attitude. The Lord's Prayer can be taken as an example of an insoluble problem. It has been translated into every language, learnt by heart, repeated daily, yet people have not the slightest idea of what it really means. This failure to understand its meaning is connected with our general inability to understand the New Testament. If you remember, in another conversation, the whole of the New Testament was given as an example of objective art, that is to say, the work of higher mind. How then can we expect to under-
stand with our ordinary mind what was formulated and given by higher mind? What we can do is to try and raise our mind to the level of thinking of higher mind; and although we do not realize it, this is possible in many different ways. In mathematics, for instance, we can deal with infinities— with infinitely small and infinitely large quantities which mean nothing to our ordinary mind. And what is possible in mathematics is possible for us if we start in the right way and continue in the right way. One of the first things which must be understood and remembered, before a study of the Lord's Prayer is possible, is the difference between the religious language and system language. What is religion? This word is used very often; there are people who use it every day, but they cannot define what is meant by religion. In the system we have heard that religion is different for different people, that there is religion of man No. 1, a religion of man No. 2, a religion of man No. 3 and so on. But how can we define the difference between them? Before coming to definitions we must understand first of all that the most necessary element in all religions known to us is the idea of God—a God with whom we can stand in a personal relationship, to whom we can, as it were, speak, whom we can beg for help, and in the possibility of whose help we can believe. An inseparable part of religion is faith in God, that is, in a Higher Being, omnipotent and omnipresent, who can help us in anything we wish for or want to do. I do not speak from the point of view of whether this is right or wrong, possible or impossible. I simply say that faith, that is belief in God and in his power to help us, is an essential part of religion. Prayer is also an inseparable part of any religion; but prayer can be very different. Prayer can be a petition for help in anything we may undertake, and also, through school-work, prayer can become help itself. It can become an instrument of work which can be used for reviving ideas of the system, it can be used for self remembering and for reminding us about sleep and the necessity for awakening. At the same time, the expressions of religious language cannot be translated exactly into the system language. First, because of the element of faith in religion, and secondly, because of the acceptance in religion and religious language of facts and assertions which in the system are regarded as illogical and inconsistent. Nevertheless, it would be wrong to say that religion and the system are incompatible or contradictory; only, we must learn not to mix the two languages. If we begin to mix them, we shall spoil any useful conclusions that could be made on either of the two lines. Returning to the idea of God, an idea which is inseparable from religion and religious language, we must first ask ourselves how religions can be divided in a general or historical way. They may be divided into religions with one God and religions with many gods. But even in this
division it must be remembered that there is a great difference between the ordinary understanding of monotheism and polytheism and the system understanding of the same ideas. Although there are certain differences between gods—as, for instance, in Greek mythology—in the ordinary understanding of polytheism all gods are more or less on the same level. From the system point of view, which includes the idea of different scales and different laws on different levels, one has quite a different understanding of the interdependence of gods. If we take the Absolute as God, we can see that it has no relation to us. The Absolute is God for gods; it has relation only to the next world, that is, World 3. The World 3 is God for the next world, that is, World 6, and also for all the following worlds, but in a lesser and lesser degree. Then the Galaxy, Sun, Planets, Earth and Moon are all gods, each including in itself smaller gods. The Ray of Creation as a whole, taken as one triad, is also God: God the Holy, God the Firm, God the Immortal. So we may choose on which level we wish to take our God if we want to use the word 'God' in the religious sense, that is to say, in the sense of a God having immediate access to our lives. From the system point of view we have nothing to prove that any of these worlds may have a personal relation to us; but there is a place for God in the system. In the lateral octave which begins in the Sun as 'do' there are two quite unknown points about which we have no material for thinking. The octave begins as do in the Sun, then passes into si on the level of the Planets. On Earth it becomes la-sol-fa, which constitutes Organic Life including man. When each individual being in the human, animal and vegetable kingdom dies, the body—or what remains of the body— goes to the Earth and becomes part of the Earth, and the soul goes to the Moon and becomes part of the Moon. From this we can understand mi and re; but about si and do we know nothing at all. These two notes may give rise to many suppositions as to the possible place of a God or gods having some relation to us in the Ray of Creation. Now, remembering all that has just been said, we may come to the study of the Lord's Prayer. The first thing is to discover why and when it was given. We know that it was given to replace many useless prayers. The next thing is to note many interesting features in the Lord's Prayer itself and in its very special construction; and from our understanding of this construction, and particularly from our knowledge of the Law of Three, we may be able to realize that, from the system point of view, there is a possibility of the development of understanding through our understanding of the Lord's Prayer. Like many mathematical problems, the study of the Lord's Prayer must begin with a correct disposition or arrangement of the separate parts of the problem. We notice at once two interesting things: first, that the
Lord's Prayer is divided into three times three, and second, that in the Lord's Prayer there are certain key-words, that is to say, words which explain other words to which they refer. We cannot call the division into three times three triads, because we do not know their relation to one another and cannot see the forces. We can only see that there are three parts. If you read the first three petitions together as one part, you will see many things which you cannot see if you read them in the ordinary way. 1. Our Father which art in heaven hallowed be Thy name 2. Thy kingdom come 3. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. In the first petition, 'Our Father which art in heaven hallowed be Thy name', the immediate question is, who is 'our Father'? The key-word is 'heaven'. What does 'in heaven' mean? If we try to answer this question from the point of view of the Ray of Creation we may be able to understand something. We live on the Earth, so 'heaven' must mean higher levels, that is, the Planets, the Sun or the Galaxy. The idea of 'heaven' presupposes certain forces, or certain mind or minds on those higher levels to which, in some way, the Lord's Prayer advises us to appeal; 'heaven' cannot refer to anything on the level of the Earth. But if we realize that the cosmic forces connected with the Galaxy, the Sun or the Planets are too big to have any relation to us, then we can look for the place of our 'Father in heaven' in the do or si of the lateral octave—or we can again leave it to higher regions. In the words which follow there is nothing personal. 'Hallowed be Thy name' is the expression of a desire for the development of the right attitude towards God, and for a better understanding of the idea of God or Higher Mind, and this desire for development obviously refers to the whole of humanity. The second petition, 'Thy kingdom come', is the expression of a desire for the growth of esotericism. In A New Model of the Universe I tried to explain that the kingdom of heaven could only mean esotericism, that is to say, a certain inner part of humanity under particular laws. The third petition, 'Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven', is the expression of a desire for the transition of the Earth to a higher level, under the direct will of Higher Mind. 'Thy will be done' refers to something that may happen but has not yet happened. These three petitions refer to conditions which may come but which have not yet been fulfilled. The first petition of the second part of the Lord's Prayer is: 'Give us this day our daily bread'. The word 'daily' does not exist in the oldest known Greek and Latin text. The correct word, which later was replaced by 'daily', is 'super-substantialis' or 'supersubstantial'. The correct text should be: 'give us to-day our supersubstantial bread'. 'Supersubstantial' or 'spiritual' as
some people say, may refer to higher food, higher hydrogens, higher influences or higher knowledge. The two following petitions in this second part, 'Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors', and 'Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil' are the most difficult to understand or to explain. They are particularly difficult because their ordinary meaning, as generally accepted, has nothing to do with the real meaning. When people think about the words, 'forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors' in the ordinary way, they immediately begin to make logical and psychological mistakes. First of all, they take for granted that they can forgive debts, and that it depends on them whether they will forgive or not forgive; and secondly, they believe that it is equally good to forgive debts and to have their own debts forgiven. This is a fallacy and has no foundation whatever. If they think about themselves, if they study themselves, if they observe themselves, they will very soon see that they cannot forgive any debts just as they cannot do anything. In order to do and in order to forgive one must first of all be able to remember oneself, one must be awake and one must have will. As we are now, we have thousands of different wills, and even if one of these wills wants to forgive, there are always many others which do not want to forgive and which will think that forgiveness is a weakness, an inconsistency or even a crime. And the strangest thing is that sometimes it is really a crime to forgive. Here we come to an interesting point. We do not know whether it is good to forgive or not, whether it is good to forgive always, or whether in some cases it is better to forgive and in some cases better not to forgive. If we think more about it, we may come to the conclusion that even if we could forgive, perhaps it would be better to wait until we knew more, that is, until we knew in which cases it is better to forgive and in which cases it is better not to forgive. At this point we should remember what has been said about positive and negative attitudes and we should realize that positive attitudes are not always correct, negative attitudes are sometimes necessary for a right understanding. So, if 'forgiving' always means having a positive attitude, then forgiving may sometimes be quite wrong. We must understand that to forgive indiscriminately may be worse than not to forgive at all; and this understanding may bring us to the right view of our own position in relation to our own debts. Suppose for a moment that there actually was some benevolent and rather stupid deity who could forgive our debts, and who would really forgive them and wipe them out. It would be the greatest misfortune that could happen to us. There would be no incentive for us to work then, and no reason to work. We could go on doing the same wrong things and having them all forgiven in the end. Such a possibility is quite contrary to any idea of
the work. In the work we must know that nothing will be forgiven. Only this knowledge will give us a real incentive to work, and at least prevent us from repeating the same things which we already know to be wrong. It is interesting to look at schools from this point of view and to compare schools with ordinary life. In life people may expect forgiveness, or at least hope for it. In school nothing is forgiven. That is an essential part of a school system, school method and school organization. Schools exist precisely for not-forgiving, and because of this fact one can hope and expect to get something from a school. If things were forgiven in schools, there would be no reason for their existence. The inner meaning of 'Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors' actually refers to influences, that is to say, influences from higher levels. We can attract to ourselves higher influences only if we transfer to other people the influences we receive or have received. There are many other meanings of these words, but this is the beginning of the way to understand them. The third petition of this second part is: 'Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil'. What is our greatest temptation? Most probably it is sleep: so the first words are understandable—'help us to sleep less, or help us to awake sometimes'. The next part is more difficult. It reads: 'But deliver us from evil'. Possibly it should be 'and deliver us from evil'. There are many interpretations of this 'but', but none of them is quite satisfactory as translated into ordinary language, so I shall leave it for the present. The chief question is, what does 'evil' mean? One possible interpretation is that in relation to the ordinary temptation, which is only sleep, it means letting oneself fall asleep again when one had already begun to awake. It may mean giving up the work when one has already understood the necessity for working, giving up efforts after one had begun to make efforts and, as has already been mentioned, starting to do stupid or even harmful things, such as going against school rules and justifying oneself for so doing. Many interesting examples of things of this kind can be found in the actions of people who leave the work and particularly in their explanations of their doing so. Finally, the third part of the Lord's Prayer should be taken as referring to a future order of things and not to the present order. 1. For Thine is the kingdom 2. the power 3. and the glory for ever Amen, presupposes that the desire expressed in the first part of the Prayer has already been realized, has already taken place. Actually these words can only refer to the future. In conclusion, the whole of the Lord's Prayer can be taken as one triad. It cannot be taken in the sense that one part is active force, another part
passive force and a third part neutralizing force, because all relations probably change with the change in the centre of gravity of attention. This means that, by itself, each of these three divisions or parts can be taken as one force and that together they can make a triad. These very big ideas are put in the form of a prayer. When you decipher this idea of prayer, prayer in the sense of supplication, disappears. Q. What is the difference between forgiving and being forgiven? A. Subject and object. But we cannot be forgiven. We did something and, according to the law of cause and effect, a certain result will be produced. We cannot change the law, but we can become free—escape from it. We can change the present, through the present the future, and through the future the past. We must pay our debts. By paying them we change the past, but there are different ways of paying. Q. What are the different ways of paying our debts? A. Mechanically or consciously. We pay them in any case: by waiting for the results of causes and paying thus, or by changing the past and paying in another way. To-day is the result of some past. If we change to-day, we change the past. Q. Is changing the past struggling against the way things go? A. This is the beginning only. Positive emotions and higher influences are necessary. We cannot change anything without them. There are several stages. This does not come at once; it is necessary to work. I have put some principles—it is necessary to see how we can reach this. There are many interesting things in this. For instance, there is no word 'I' or 'me' in the Lord's Prayer. That means there can be no personal favours—all people stand in the same relation to higher forces, all need the same things.
CHAPTER XVI The idea of recurrence can only be regarded as a theory—Different relationship of people to the possibility of recurrence—Three successive stages— Why the possibility of receiving C influence must be limited—Remembering past lives—Theory of reincarnation as a simplification of the idea of recurrence—Impossibility of finding proof- —We are limited by the state of our being—Different kinds of essence as the strongest argument in favour of pre-existence—Why schools cannot recur—Study of recurrence in one life—Eternal recurrence is not eternal—Possibility of variations— Chances are limited and time is counted—Self-remembering and recurrence —Personality and recurrence—Study of children's minds—Origin of the idea of recurrence—Three dimensions of time—The idea of recurrence and the system—Parallel time—'Limitations of our mind—Growth of tendencies and recurrence—Possibilities of meeting a school next time— Being prepared—Is the starting-point the same for everybody?—School and the demands made in it—Death of essence—Recurrence and date of death— Recurrence of world events—The only thing is to awake. I CONSTANTLY GET QUESTIONS REFERRING TO RECURRENCE, SO I want to say something about it which may give you material for thinking. There are two reasons why I avoid speaking about it: first, we can only talk about the theory, we have no real facts about it; and secondly, we do not know whether in connection with the work the laws referring to recurrence change. It is necessary to understand these things. We know very little about recurrence. Some day we may try to collect what can be taken as reliable in all that is written about recurrence and see which way we can think about it, but it is only a theory. I wrote in A New Model of the Universe, long ago, that even in ordinary life people may be very different in relation to recurrence. Some people may have exactly the same recurrence, other people may have different variations or possibilities; some may go up and others may go down, and many other things. But this is all without relation to the work. In the case of people who come nearer to the work, it may be possible, though only theoretically, to study three successive recurrences. Let us suppose that the first is when one comes close to the possibility of meeting with some kind of ideas of higher mind; the second, when one definitely comes in contact with C influence; and the third, which would be the result of it.