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must have one aim, one purpose in view, and this aim must be attaining consciousness. It is useless to study oneself without this purpose. There are reasons to study oneself only if one has already realized that one docs not have consciousness and one wishes to attain it. Otherwise it becomes just futile. Attaining consciousness is connected with the gradual liberation from mechanicalness, for man as he is is fully and completely under mechanical laws. The more a man attains consciousness, the more he leaves mechanicalness, which means he becomes more free from accidental mechanical laws. The first step in acquiring consciousness is the realization that we are not conscious. But this illusion cannot be changed alone, for there are many others. As I said earlier, the worst of them is the illusion that we can 'do'. All our life is based on this illusion. We always think that we are doing when, in reality, we are not doing anything— everything happens. Another illusion is that we are awake. When we realize that we are asleep we will see that all history is made by people who are asleep. Sleeping people fight, make laws; sleeping people obey or disobey them. The worst of our illusions are the wrong ideas among which we live and which govern our lives. If we could change our attitude towards these wrong ideas and understand what they are, this in itself would be a great change and would immediately change other things. Now, it would be good if we start in this way: you have been thinking during the week, so try to remember what was not clear in what you have heard and ask questions, and then I will develop that line of thought. Q. If we are not conscious, are we able to judge what is useful for us and what is harmful? A. I said that self-observation cannot be impersonal, for we are personally interested in the right work of our machine. Right work of the organism is profitable for us, wrong work is harmful. One must have a simple commercial attitude to one's life and inner functions, and one must know what is profit and what is loss, so one cannot observe oneself quite impartially like some historical events that happened a thousand years ago. When a man adopts this attitude to himself he is ready to begin practical self study, for practical self-study means the study of the most mechanical things. Some functions in us can become conscious, others can never become conscious. Instinctive functions, for instance, have no need to become conscious, but there are many others— our whole life is filled with them—which it is very important to make conscious or, if they cannot become conscious, to stop or eliminate, for they are really harmful. They are not merely mechanical in the sense that they are automatic; they are due to the wrong work of the machine which has gone on for a long time. So they have already caused definite harm; things have become broken or twisted or strained.
Q. In trying to study myself I can find nothing real, nothing tangible. A. Study what is there—whether it is real or unreal. You cannot study only what is real, you have to study what is there. It is not an obstacle to self-study if you find nothing real—you must study what you find. Actually you are quite right that there is nothing real, but one must study oneself and study obstacles. The chief obstacle to the attainment of self-consciousness is that we think we have it. One will never get self-consciousness so long as one believes that one has it. There are many other things we think we have, and because of this we cannot have them. There is individuality or oneness —we think we are one, indivisible. We think we have will, or that if we do not have it always, we can have it, and other things. There are many aspects to this, for if we do not have one thing, we cannot have another. We think that we have these things, and this happens because we do not know the meaning of the words we use. There is a definite obstacle, a definite reason why we cannot have consciousness as we are. This chief obstacle in the way of development is lying. I have already mentioned lying, but we must speak more about it, for we do not know what lying means because we have never studied this question seriously. Yet the psychology of lying is really the most important part of the study of the human being. If a man could be described as a zoological type, he would be described as a lying animal. I shall leave out all external lying and take only a man's lying to himself about himself. This is the reason why we are in the state in which we are now, and why we cannot come to a better, a higher, a more powerful, more effective state of consciousness. According to the system we are now studying we cannot know truth, because truth can be reached only in objective consciousness. So we cannot define what truth is; but if we take it that lying is the opposite of truth, we can define lying. The most serious lying is when we know perfectly well that we do not and cannot know the truth about things and yet never act accordingly. We always think and act as though we knew the truth. This is lying. When I know that I do not know something, and at the same time say that I know, or act as though I knew it, it is lying. For instance, we know nothing about ourselves, and we really know that we know nothing, yet we never recognize or admit the fact; we never confess it even to our selves, we act and think and speak as though we knew who we are. This is the origin, the beginning of lying. When we understand this and follow this line, and when we try to connect this idea with everything we think, everything we say, everything we do, we will begin to remove the obstacles which lie on the way to consciousness. But the psychology of lying is much more difficult than we think, because there are many different kinds of lying and many very
subtle forms hard to discover in ourselves. In others we see them comparatively easily, but not in ourselves. Q. If we do not know what truth is, how do we know when we lie? A. You know that you cannot know the truth, and if you say you do know, or can know it, it would be a lie, because no one can know the truth in the state in which we are. Do not think philosophically, take it in relation to facts. People speak about everything as though they knew. If you ask a man whether there are people on the moon, he will have an opinion about it. And so with everything else. We have opinions about everything, and all these opinions are lying, particularly about our selves. We do not know about states of consciousness, or the different functions, or the speed of functions, or their relation to one another. We do not know about how functions are divided. We know nothing, yet we think we know about ourselves. All we have is opinions, and they are all lies. Q. If all opinions are lies, should we avoid opinions? A. You must know their value. The first lie we tell ourselves is when we say 'I'. It is a lie because in saying 'I' we presume certain things: we presume a certain unity and a certain power. And if I say 'I' today and say 'I' to-morrow, it is supposed to be the same 'I', when in reality there is no connection between them. We are in this present state because of certain obstacles or certain facts in ourselves, and the most important fact that we do not understand is that we have no right to say 'I', for it will be a lie. When you begin to observe yourself you will see that it is really so: there are 'I's in you which do not know one another and never come into contact. For instance, begin to study your likes and dislikes and you will see that you can like one thing one moment and like another thing another moment, and the two are so opposed to one another that you will realize at once that those 'I's never meet. If you observe your decisions you will see that one 'I' decides and another has to carry out the decision, and this one is either unwilling to do it or never heard about it. If you find one thing one does not lie to oneself about you will be very exceptional. Being surrounded by these lies, born and educated in these lies, we cannot be any different from what we are; we are just the result, the product of this lying. Q. If I try to find truth and find it impossible, should I not have to separate myself from the everyday world? A. You would then study an artificial being, not a real one. You can study yourself only in the conditions in which you are, because you are the result of these conditions. You cannot study yourself apart from your conditions. Q. Isn't there anything common to all 'I's? A. Only one thing, that they are mechanical. To be mechanical means to depend on external circumstances.
Q. From what you said it seems very difficult to study oneself without lying to oneself. A. No, lying must stop. You must remember the principle: lies can only produce lies. Only when you know the chief types of lying will you be able—I do not say to struggle with them, but to observe them. Struggle comes later. Many things are necessary in order to struggle with something in ourselves; for a long time we can only study. When we know the general arrangement and classification of things in ourselves, only then does the possibility come of struggling with something. Such as we are we cannot change anything, because man is a very well balanced machine— balanced in the sense that one thing conditions another. Things look disconnected, but in actual fact they are connected, because each thing is balanced by many other things. Q. Would you mind expounding what you mean by machine? Machines cannot have potentialities, they cannot have a hope of getting consciousness. A. Analogies cannot be complete because they cannot be carried on indefinitely. This too is a limitation of our mind or, if you like, a limitation of our consciousness. So the comparison with a machine cannot be carried on in every direction. But man is a machine in quite a real, quite a definite sense; he cannot produce any action from himself, he is only a transmitting station, nothing more, and as such he is a machine. If a man could have an idea or could do something without external causes acting for him, then he would not be a machine, or would not be completely a machine. As he is, he is completely a machine, particularly in the state of consciousness in which we are. And the fact that we believe ourselves to be in quite a different state makes us even more mechanical. Our machine is not even working rightly, so if a man wants to create favourable conditions for the possibility of inner growth which is in him, he must first become a normal machine, because as he is, he is not a normal machine. When we hear about mechanicalness we often think that, although man is a machine, not all his functions are equally mechanical, nor are all human activities equally mechanical. Everybody finds something that he thinks less mechanical, according to his views or tastes. In reality all human activities are equally mechanical, there is no difference from this point of view between scrubbing floors and writing poetry. Generally speaking, it must be understood that a complete revaluation of all values from the point of view of their usefulness is necessary; without revaluation we can never move from the point at which we are. We have many wrong values—we have to be brave and start on this revaluation. Q. I understand that we have to create an 'I' out of nothing. What creates 'I'?
A. First, self-knowledge. There is a very good Eastern allegory which deals with the creation of 'I'. Man is compared to a house full of servants, without master or steward to look after them. So the servants do what they like; none of them does his own work. The house is in a state of complete chaos, because all the servants try to do someone else's work which they are not competent to do. The cook works in the stables, the coachman in the kitchen, and so on. The only possiblity for things to improve is if a certain number of servants decide to elect one of themselves as a deputy steward and in this way make him control the other servants. He can do only one thing: he puts each servant where he belongs and so they begin to do their right work. When this is done, there is the possibility of the real steward coming to replace the deputy steward and to prepare the house for the master. We do not know what the real steward means or what the master means, but we can take it that the house full of servants and the possibility of a deputy steward describes our situation. This allegory helps us to understand the beginning of the possibility of creating a permanent 'I'. From the point of view of self-study and of work to attain one 'I', we must understand the process by which we may come from this plurality to oneness. It is a complicated process and has different stages. Between the present state of plurality of 'I's and the one controlling 'I' we wish to attain, there are certain stages of development which must be studied. But first we must understand that there are certain formations in us, without knowing which we cannot understand how we eventually come from our present state to the state of one 'I', if it is possible for us. You see, although a great many of our 'I's are disconnected and do not even know one another, they are divided into certain groups. This does not mean that they are divided consciously; they are divided by circumstances of life. These groups of 'I's manifest themselves as roles that a man plays in his life. Everybody has a certain number of roles: one corresponds to one set of conditions, another to another and so on. Man himself seldom notices these differences. For instance, he has one role for his work, another for his home, yet another among friends, another if he is interested in sport, and so on. These roles are easier to observe in other people than in oneself. People are often so different in different conditions that these roles become quite obvious and well defined; but sometimes they are better hidden or even played only inside without any external manifestations. All people, whether they know it or not, whether they wish it or not, have certain roles which they play. This acting is un conscious. If it could be conscious, it would be quite different, but one never notices how one passes from one role to another. Or if one notices it one persuades oneself that one is doing it on purpose, that it is a conscious action. In reality the change is always controlled by circumstances, it cannot be controlled by man himself, because he himself does
not exist yet. Sometimes there are definite contradictions between one and another role. In one role one says one thing, has certain definite views and convictions; then one passes into another role and has absolutely different convictions and says absolutely different things, without noticing it, or else thinking that one does it on purpose. There are very definite causes which prevent man from seeing the difference between one role or mask and another. These causes are certain artificial formations called buffers. Buffer is a very good name for these appliances. Buffers between railway carriages prevent clashing, diminish the shock. It is the same with buffers between different roles and different groups of 'I's or personalities. People can live with different personalities without them clashing, and if these personalities have no external manifestation, they exist internally all the same. It is very useful to try to find what buffers are. Try to find how one lies to oneself with the help of buffers. Suppose one says 'I never argue'. Then, if one really has a good conviction that one never argues, one can argue as much as one likes and never notice it. This is the result of a buffer. If one has a certain number of good buffers, one is quite safe from unpleasant contradictions. Buffers are quite mechanical; a buffer is like a wooden thing, it does not adapt, but it plays its part very well: it prevents one seeing contradictions. Q. How are roles created? A. Roles are not created; they are not conscious. They are adaptations to circumstances. Q. Is it difficult to stop playing a role? A. It is not a question of stopping, it is a question of not identifying. Q. Can some roles be good? A. We speak only about consciousness and mechanicalness. If a role is mechanical, we must observe it and not identify with it. The most difficult thing is to act yourself consciously. We start consciously and then we usually identify. Q. You said that one could not change any of one's 'I's, because man was so well balanced a machine that to upset this balance would be harmful? A. Yes, but I meant someone trying to change by himself, without knowledge, without plan or system. But if you work on a plan such as this system it is different. That is why you are advised to do certain things which cannot produce any harmful effects. This system is the result of experience. Besides, in the actual stopping of the expression of unpleasant emotions, or stopping imagination and things of this kind, very little can be done at first. It is more for self-observation. You think that if you decide to do a thing you can really achieve it, but it is not so. Things go on automatically, mechanically, and you do not notice it. But if you start to oppose them you begin to notice them. So it is more for observation than for any results. It is not so easy to get results.
Q. If you are going to stop imagination, mustn't you have some point on which to fix your mind? A. We always have enough points on which to fix our mind, the question is can we fix it? We have the power of observation, but we cannot keep our mind on what we want to. The situation is like this we teach this self-study from different sides, if we do a little at one point, and a little at another point, and a little at a third point, together they will produce some effect and make it easier to do something on a fourth point We cannot do first one thing and then another, we have to start from all sides. As to struggle with imagination, it is suggested just as a struggle it does not mean that we can stop it. Much more energy than we possess is needed to stop imagination— we can only attempt to stop it. We can do nothing, we can only try. We can only begin something, and it we begin many things at once we will get some results. With this system it is possible to start from many sides, and then results will appear Q. When I try to remember myself I cannot think or do anything else. A. Yes, it shows how difficult it is. In the beginning, at the first attempts you make to be aware of yourself you have to use practically all your mental powers, so that nothing remains. But it does not mean that it will always be like that. It is not real self remembering, you only study how to do it. You will find later on that consciousness can exist without thought, that consciousness is. something different from thought. You use thought just to give a push, and then it begins to move in this direction and you become conscious without thought. Then you can think about anything you like. But in the beginning you certainly have to use this mental energy, because it is. the only controllable energy you have except movements. But you cannot make yourself conscious by turning a wheel or running, so you have to use thinking energy at first. It does not mean that you will always have to do it—you open a door Q. Why is. this system not widely known and popular? A. It cannot be because of its negative character. We study the way not of acquiring but of losing. If one could acquire things at once, the system would be popular. But nothing can be promised. It is. difficult to expect people to like this, for no one likes to lose illusions. People want positive things without realizing what is. possible. They want to know straight away what they can attain. But first they must lose many things. The ideas of this system can never be popular so long as they are not distorted, because people will not agree that they are asleep, that they are machines— people who consider themselves important will always oppose this idea. The system does not want to offer ideas to people who do not want them. If people have tried other methods and realized their futility, they may wish to try this system. This system is. only for those who need it. It is. necessary to understand man's situation and also his possibilities. As I said, man is. in prison. If he realizes he is. in prison., he may wish to run
away. But he may be afraid that if he runs away he may find himself in a worse position than before, and so he may reconcile himself to staying in prison. If he decides to run away, he must understand that two conditions are necessary: he must be one of a number of people who wish to run away, for they have to dig a tunnel, and one man cannot do it alone, and secondly, they must have help from those who have run away before them. So first he must realize he is in prison; second, he must wish to run away; third, he must have friends who also wish to run away; fourth, he must have help from outside; fifth, he must work to dig the tunnel. No amount of faith or prayer can dig the tunnel for him. And he does not know what he will find when he gets out of prison. There are many reasons why one man cannot escape from prison. But twenty people may. Each of them profits by the work of the rest. What one gains, all the twenty gain. Q. Do we progress by the process of elimination rather than construction? A. There are two processes. First there is the process of elimination— many useless mechanical functions must be eliminated. Then there is the process of construction. Q. You said that one's aim should be acquiring self-consciousness. But this aim seems too large for me, for I do not know what self-consciousness is. How can I understand better the idea of a right aim? A. You should be able to understand the question of aim—not necessarily to be able to give a reply. Aim is one, in general, whether large or small. You should have come already to some realizations, through your trying to study yourself, and on the basis of these realizations you may be able to formulate your aim. Let us take it in this form— can we say that our aim is freedom, that we want to be free? And can we say that we are not free now? This is sufficient for a general formulation. If we start with this formulation we shall always be able to see where we are: we shall be able to see how far we are not free, in what we are becoming more free. This idea of absence of freedom must be studied individually by every person. In other words, everybody must be able to see in what way he is not free. It is not enough to remember words 'I am not free'; it is necessary to know it definitely. One must realize that at every moment of one's life one decides to do one thing and does another, that one wishes to go to one place and in reality is going to another place, and so on. Again, this must not be taken literally, but everyone must find his own form of lack of freedom, peculiar to him. When everybody realizes that, it will be easy to speak about it. Everybody will then understand that he is a slave and will see what it is that really governs and controls him. Then it will be simple to understand that the aim is freedom; but as long as it is merely theoretical it will serve no useful purpose. It will serve our purpose of understanding what we want only if we realize this slavery individually, in our own life, through our own practical experience.
Each one of us must find in what he is not free. He wants to know— and he cannot know; either he has no time, or perhaps he has no preparatory knowledge. He wants to be, he wants to remember himself, he wants to 'do' in a certain way, but things happen differently, not as he wants it. When he realizes this he will see that the aim is freedom; and to be free one must be conscious. Q. But freedom for a few only, not for the world? A. You can think only of yourself. You cannot give me freedom—so what is the use thinking about me? But perhaps you can help another person to find something that will help him to become free; but only when you get something yourself, only when you yourself have become more free. Q. How can a man ever be free? Man is so weak and there are so many forces against him! A. He can be more free than he is now—more free relative to his present state. Look at it. from the personal point of view, not philosophically, then you will see that one can be more free or less free, because there are different moments in your life at certain moments you are less free, at other moments you are more free. When you sleep at night you are less free than in daytime, and if a fire happens when you are asleep you will die because you will not be able to get out. So in daytime you are more free. Things must be taken simply, not philosophically. Certainly, if we begin to think philosophically that there is no such thing as freedom, then there is nothing left but to die. Q. Is it. possible to determine the influences in life that destroy our freedom more than anything else? A The influences that increase our slavery are our illusions, and particularly the illusion that we are free. We imagine that we are free, and this makes us ten times more slaves This is the chief influence with which we can struggle. There are many other influences which have to be struggled with, but this is the beginning, this is the first—our illusions about our position, about our freedom. So first of all it. is necessary to sacrifice this illusion of freedom which we think we have. If we try to sacrifice this illusion, perhaps we shall come to the possibility of actually being more free. Q. What meaning have ordinary values like bravery, unselfishness and cheerfulness from the point of view of the system? A. Sometimes they have very good meaning, sometimes no meaning at all You cannot expect a permanent meaning in such values, because ordinary views always assume words to have a permanent meaning, whereas they cannot have one. Q. Has this system anything to say about the idea of sin? A Sin, in a general definition, is 'everything that is unnecessary'; but we must modify this definition Sin is always the result of weakness. If I have to go somewhere and promise to be there at 12.30 and I know that if I walk fast I shall be there in time, but instead I stop on the way to look at
shop windows, this would be sin against my promise to be there at 12:30 Everything must be taken from the point of view of aim or decision, in relation to the thing you set out to do at a given moment. If you have an aim in connection with the work, then everything you do against your own work is sin. It is not a sin if you have no aim. It is not a sin to stop at shop windows, but if you have to be somewhere at a certain time and stopping will make you late, then it is a sin. We can understand sin and crime when we understand them in relation to the work. Then we can take a slightly larger view and think of the people who are just coming into the work, and then of those who may come, and so on. It is necessary to approach this problem thinking in concentric circles and begin with people who are in the work or who think themselves in the work. Then everything they do against their own understanding of the work will certainly be sin, because they deceive themselves. And what they do against other people in the work either by suggestion or example is sin, because their aim is to help and not to hinder. So it is possible to understand sin only in relation to the work first, and then, later, to see it outside the work Q. What did you mean by saying that sin is the result of weakness? A. You see, in the work requirements grow, many things gradually become more difficult. One takes certain decisions, and one of the first is to make efforts, to go against the ordinary way which is always to avoid efforts and to make things as easy as possible. If one tries to work, one makes a decision to go against this tendency, to make things more difficult. Again, if it remains merely a mental decision, if it does not lead to any action, it is nonsense and is certainly sin against oneself Q. Can you go from the word 'sin' to the word 'repentance'? I take it that repentance is something quite different from the usual conception of it? A. In the work, bad things cancel many good things, but good things do not cancel bad things. Bad things can only be cancelled by repentance It does not at all mean that a man does something and then repents and says to himself, 'I will not do it again' because he will. If one has done a thing, the trace of it remains, so that it is easier to do it a second time, and this creates momentum. One can sometimes overcome this momentum by repentance, which means suffering Q. You call it repentance in so far as it does overcome momentum? A Repentance may be good, but not strong enough to overcome momentum. But, if it does overcome it, then it is 'repentance'. Sincere repentance is a big force in the work. Our tendencies always make us do things which are against the work. They do not necessarily assume the same form, which makes it deceptive I could do something in one form and then follow it up not in the same form but in the same way. But if I repent rightly and at the right moment, I can stop this tendency Q. Then real repentance necessarily means change of being?
A. I would not call it change of being, but simply stopping a tendency. Q. Is there no way in which we can help humanity? A. We always start with the idea that things should be put right. But suppose some man acquires power and begins to put things right. He may make them so bad that some higher power may have to come to put them right again, and this may mean destroying the earth. This explains another thing—the difficulty of acquiring what we may call higher powers. It is as though some definite conscious mind prevents one from acquiring higher powers, because immediately one would want to abuse them. It looks as though you can get these powers only when these higher minds or conscious beings are sure that you will not interfere. But there is no conscious observer—there are laws, and they are in you. They are sort of automatic brakes in you which will prevent your interfering. Q. What is the good of having these powers if you cannot use them? A. Evidently at a given moment forces in the world have to fight it out among themselves, and higher powers do not want to interfere, evidently for a certain definite reason. If the positive side—the one opposed to chaos —is sufficiently strong, it will conquer. If it is weak, it has to be destroyed, and then perhaps something new will appear. There are many allusions to this idea in the Bible—or maybe they are only allegories. It all shows that things have to be fought out on one level—so there can be no interference. Q. You said that a man has no will. Then what do you call it when a person makes a very real effort to overcome a habit, or not to do what he would like to do? A. It is either attraction to something, or repulsion from something. Either he is afraid of something, or dislikes something, and that creates repulsion; or someone told him he could get something and that creates attraction. It is not in him, it is in things. Things either attract or repel him, but he calls it his will. Q. You regard it as quite valueless then? A. It is mechanical; it is of no value. It may have an objective value, in the sense that he may get something from it in the material sense. But that is not the effort I speak about. Effort begins only from one thing—the effort to awake. Q. Can man develop consciousness by his own efforts? A. No, he cannot do it by his own efforts alone. First of all he must have a certain knowledge, and a certain explanation of methods; and there are many other difficulties besides. Man is a machine, a machine which works under external influences. This machine of man 1, 2 and 3 does not know itself, but when a man begins to know himself he already becomes a different machine; this is how development begins. But he cannot get the necessary knowledge by himself. Q. When you say that self-observation is the way towards self-consciousness, must one observe during the exact experience?
A. As much as one can. In the beginning it may be difficult, but very soon you will find it possible. When you realize that you can think with one part of your mind and observe with another part there will be no complication or confusion. Q. Is the first step to try and realize completely that we know nothing at all? A. Very useful if you can, but we cannot do that, we are so sure of many things. Q. Is it a thing to aim at? A. We can aim at it as much as we like, but we can never achieve it in the ordinary way. If we learn new things about ourselves, things we did not know before, then we can compare what we knew before and what we have learned now. Without comparison we can achieve nothing. Last time I explained the division of man into seven categories. This division, connected with the idea of man's possible evolution, gives a very good method for understanding the differences or divisions of many things. For instance, from the beginning we take different manifestations of man in different fields of activity, in religion, science, art and so on, and try to look at them from the point of view of this division into seven categories. You will see at once that if there are seven categories of man there must be, correspondingly, seven categories of everything that belongs to man. We do not know about man No. 5, 6 and 7, but we know the difference between man 1, 2 and 3, and so we can easily understand that religion of man No. 1, whatever it may be called, will be a primitive religion, simplified in all senses. Gods are simple, virtues are simple and sins are simple—everything is simple, because man No. 1 does not like to think much. Sentimental, emotional religion, full of illusions and imagination, will be the religion of man No. 2. And religion composed of theories, words and definitions for everything will be the religion of man No. 3. These are the only kinds of religion we know, although if men of higher levels exist, there must also be religion of man No. 5, religion of man No. 6 and religion of man No. 7. It is the same with art—there is art No. 1, art No. 2 and art No. 3, and we know nothing else. But there are some works of art remaining from very old days which evidently belong to men of higher consciousness. If we find such works of art, we will see that we do not understand them, they are beyond our level. From this point of view all ordinary art, art of man No. 1, 2 and 3, is called subjective art, for it is based only on a subjective understanding or subjective feeling of things. In science it is even easier to understand the difference. Certainly science No. 1, 2 and 3 is all we know. It uses man's present state of consciousness and present functions as an instrument for getting certain results. Science