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can be lost. Even in the right way one can make efforts for some time and then, if one stops, all those efforts will be lost. So efforts can be wasted if they are not followed by a right attitude and by other efforts. Q. What explains the sense of urgency created in oneself in a better state? A. In the beginning it is magnetic centre, for it has a dim realization of the unreality of ordinary conceptions, intentions, possibilities. Then, when one begins to study, at a certain moment realization of sleep becomes emotional and gains strength. Lack of understanding means lack of emotion. Only formatory centre can work without emotion. Every right realization becomes emotional. One of our obstacles is that we are too dull, not emotional enough. The intellect is a very weak machine. This is why the emotional centre must be free of negative emotions, because otherwise we use all its energy on them and can do nothing. Q. Is any energy produced by self-observation? A. Certainly. Every kind of work produces energy, only some kinds produce a small amount, so that it is necessary to make consecutive efforts for a long time to produce sufficient energy. And some other kind of work may produce much energy at once. Sometimes an effort may look quite small and be very big in reality, and sometimes a very big effort may be very small. Q. How can I learn to feel more? I live so much in my head. I get too little out of life and there is a barrier between me and the system. A. This is everybody's problem, because if people could feel more, many things would be easier for them. But they have been for a long time unconsciously creating so many protective devices against feeling that there cannot be any at present- It is necessary to find a beginning; without a beginning nothing is possible. You must begin somewhere; there are things that are more difficult and others that are less difficult. What you really need is more observation and a certain kind of thinking about your self or about something else. If you persist in this thinking it can make you emotional; only you must find for yourself what it is; it is impossible to give general advice, suitable for everybody. Every person has some points which bring him nearer to an emotional state; it is necessary to find them. Whatever happens later, at present one has to begin in this way. Q. Before I came to the work I was full of little enthusiasms. I see that many of them were based on imagination, but now I have almost no feeling at all. A. As I just said, this is one of our biggest problems—how to make oneself more emotional—because we cannot go far on intellect alone. The only thing is effort— effort and remembering different lines of the work, trying not to identify, trying to remember oneself, trying this and that—effort, effort.. .. If you make sufficient effort, you will become more emotional. But the fact that this is a constant question that people ask—
or if they do not ask, they feel this problem—shows that people do not make enough effort. Q. You say more effort is needed. Do you mean effort to feel emotion or effort to work? A. It is simply effort to work. You cannot make effort to feel emotional, no effort will help in that—but you can make efforts. If you are doing something, you can do it without effort, trying to do as little as possible, or you can put much effort into it. Emotion can appear only as the result of a certain pressure. In ordinary conditions, in ordinary life, it only happens; something happens and brings you to an emotional state. The question is how to produce emotion, how to make ourselves emotional. And I say that in our present state there is only one thing—effort. But not effort to produce emotion. There is no such effort. But, very strong continuous effort in any work you do will make you more emotional after some time—not at once, certainly. A certain period of efforts on different lines is bound to increase your emotions. Q. Why should making efforts be so difficult? A. Efforts may look difficult because we are not prepared in our mind; we do not think rightly about them. We do not even accept mentally that it is necessary to make efforts. That creates the biggest difficulty. The necessity for making efforts comes as a shock, as a new thing. Q. I cannot by effort reach a state that sometimes comes accidentally. A. You say it comes accidentally. If it is what I mean, it comes as a result of your efforts, only it does not come at the time. But if you had not made efforts it would not have come accidentally, so it is not really accidental. The more efforts you make, the more you will have these accidental moments of self-remembering, of understanding, of being emotional. It is all the result of effort. Only in this case we cannot connect the cause and the effect. The reason why we cannot connect them is probably due to many small things, such as identification, imagination, and things like that. But the cause is there and at a certain moment it will bring a result. We must never expect immediate results. It is necessary to work for a long time to create permanent standards, in order to have immediate results; and even that comes only in very emotional states. If we could by will or desire or intention become more emotional, many things would be different. But we cannot. We are very low emotionally and that is why most of the work we do now, even if we really do it, can have no immediate results. But no right effort is lost, something always remains; only it must be followed by other and bigger efforts. So the first question is how to become more emotional, and that we cannot do, except indirectly, by making efforts. The second question is how to use emotional states when they come, and that is what we must prepare ourselves for, since it is possible. Emotional states come and we lose them in identification and things like that. But we could use them.
Q. When emotional states come, is the only way to prolong them to self-remember? A. I said use them. Certainly if you remember yourself you will see many ways of using this state when it comes; it is a matter of observation. It will give you a different power of thinking, different power of understanding. It cannot be described because it must be a personal experience. Q. Can emotions be used to see more objectively? A. Yes they can, when you have control of them. Emotions can be used as definite instruments for acquiring knowledge only if you can control them. And what does control mean? It means not admitting identification and considering. Control is the second step, study is the first step. We speak about emotions, but many of them we know only by name. They are so mixed with other things, we identify with them so much that we do not realize all that we can get from them if we could take them in the right way. All that we call emotions—anger, fear, boredom—they can all be turned upside down, and then we will find that they have quite a different taste. All emotions can be useful, they are a kind of windows, or additional senses. Only now we cannot use them, except for creating new illusions; but if we used them for seeing things as they are, we would learn many new things. Q. How can anger or hate help? A. By turning it against yourself. Hate yourself, find in yourself what to hate. When one becomes angry with oneself one can see many things. Q. Then that means self-criticism? A. More than that; criticism is simply intellectual, but this is feeling. All intellectual activity is preparing material, and then the emotional centre will begin to work with this material. Intellectual centre cannot, by itself, help in awakening. Only work on the emotional centre can do this, and we can only awake through unpleasant emotions— awakening through pleasant emotions has not been invented yet. The most unpleasant thing is to go against oneself, against one's views, convictions, inclinations. Awakening is not for those who are afraid of unpleasant things, it is only for those who wish to awake and realize what being asleep means and that much help is necessary, a great deal of shaking. This is the real point: how to provide perpetual shaking for oneself and how to agree to it. Q. To some extent it seems possible to train the thinking and moving centres, but can you say how we could train the emotional centre? A. We can begin in two ways: first, as I have often said already, by not expressing unpleasant emotions. We have proof that it is possible, because we see that we do not do so through fear. For example, a soldier does not express his unpleasant feelings before his officer, because he knows that if he does his punishment will be severe. So if it is possible to refrain mechanically, it is possible to do so consciously. We can act on our emotions by separating mind from emotions. Mind can not only be
trained but also taught to stand aside and look at emotions. Then, after a time, the emotional centre begins to realize that it is not worth while going on if mind does not follow. Then, as a rule, everyone has about five or six kinds of emotion for certain occasions. So everyone can know beforehand what will happen; the repertoire is very limited, so we can and must study ourselves from this point of view. It is really much easier than we think, and it is quite possible to foresee in advance the things that will happen. If we talk seriously to ourselves for half an hour, we can stop our emotions, because we know all the associations that will produce them. It would not be easy if our repertoire of emotions were unlimited; but emotions for to-morrow are very limited; you know very well that it would be difficult to think of a new one. But you must know all the associations very well, and you must know the ways by which emotions ordinarily come. It is the most difficult thing; emotional centre is the strongest one we have. Reason wants to stop emotion, but it is weak, and emotion is strong. One can stop it only in an indirect way, and not at the moment. Q. Is it bad to try? A. No, it is good; then, little by little, you may find out how to stop it, for it can only be done by skill. The only way is to create new attitudes opposed to the emotions you want to stop. Then, in the long run, the attitude may prove stronger than the emotion. So there are two ways to stop emotion: first, by being conscious, secondly, by creating right attitudes. But for each particular case a different attitude is necessary, so it is long work. We are not only machines, we are already damaged machines. In order to repair the machine, it is necessary to work hard. Q. What protective attitude against negative emotions do you suggest? A. As I said, first—trying to remember yourself. If you are conscious of all that is going on in you, you can stop them when they are still small. When they are big, you cannot. Then, in observing yourself, you find things that make you more asleep, more mechanical. You must separate them from things that can be useful. Q. This is about oneself. But how to protect oneself from the negative emotions of others? A. Our identification brings to us the negative emotions of other people; it makes us susceptible to them. If you have a definite case, you can visualize the possibility of not being identified, and you will see that you will be less susceptible. But even better than visualizing it, try it in actual fact. The relation of identification to negative emotions is not a theory, it can be easily verified. Identification is more easy to understand than emotions; there are hundreds of different negative emotions, but identification is always the same. The first step towards non-identification is self observation. One must watch all impressions the moment they
come in. Identification works both in the case of attraction and repulsion. Q. I see mechanicalness to a greater degree now and this seems to involve me in a greater identification, and fear, and a sense of being caught up. A. If you mean fear of mechanicalness in yourself, this fear can have a useful purpose, because you already know enough about it, how to struggle with it, how to oppose it. Q. I have been trying to stop expression of negative emotions in order to struggle with mechanicalness, but these efforts run down very quickly and the need to wake up gets forgotten. A. This is because you try it on small emotions. If you try not to express serious emotions you will keep awake longer. If you remembered to struggle with the expression of really strong emotions, at the right moment you would see the difference. Q. I am puzzled by the question of expressing emotions: if it is beyond ordinary human experience to feel positive emotion, and we are told not to express negative emotions, is it meant that we are not to express any emotion whatsoever? A. No, it is necessary to navigate between the two. We must be as emotional as possible, for we miss many perceptions, ideas, understandings, because at the moment we are not emotional. Many perceptions come through emotion. We have no positive emotions, but we can say that we have negative emotions and pleasant and unpleasant emotions that are not negative. Q. Positive means not negative? A. Yes, and much more besides. An emotion that cannot become negative gives enormous understanding, has an enormous cognitive value. It connects things that cannot be connected in an ordinary state. To have positive emotions is advised and recommended in religions, but they do not say how to get them. They say, 'Have faith, have love'. How? Christ says, 'Love your enemies'. It is not for us; we cannot even love our friends. It is the same as saying to a blind man, 'You must see!' A blind man cannot see, otherwise he would not be a blind man. That is what positive emotion means. Q. How can we learn to love our enemies? A. Learn to love yourself first—you do not love yourself enough; you love your false personality, not yourself. It is difficult to understand the New Testament or Buddhist writings, for they are notes taken in school. One line of these writings refers to one level and another to another level. Q. Have you a name for an emotion that is not negative? A. It can be pleasure or suffering. But both can become negative, for the tendency is there: every emotion can either become negative or give birth to other negative emotions.
Q. Does not instinctive centre make a good substitute for the emotional? For instance, love of animals and small children. . . . A. We cannot speak of animals when we speak about man. Instinctive negative emotions have their own place and their own normal causes, but the emotional centre borrows their results and substitutes imaginary causes. It is very interesting 10 see the lack of symmetry between pleasant and unpleasant emotions. Pleasant emotions cannot grow much, they are limited. Unpleasant emotions can grow. But this refers only to our present state of consciousness; in another state the symmetry is reestablished, for there pleasant emotions can also grow. Of course, we cannot verify this until we are in another state of consciousness. Why can unpleasant emotions grow? Because there are no limits to the abnormal state of the machine. But pleasures are limited by our powers of perception. This is one of the unpleasant sides of our situation. Q. I think we are so used to judging by results that my difficulty is that I cannot judge whether I have achieved something or not when I make efforts in the work. A. I quite understand. But you see, it is too early to speak about results. The time will come, it may be very soon, when you will begin to see some results, but not yet. In ordinary conditions we judge by results. If we study a language we know that after some time we will be able to read short sentences, then small paragraphs, then short stories. But if you take the psychological side of the work, you have to make efforts to observe, efforts to remember yourself, and at first you will see no visible results. Then, after some time, you will see some results, but you cannot bargain about it. Q. But how can I tell whether I have established something for myself that will take me further? A. Only you can answer that. It depends on you—how much you understand, how much you are prepared. One day there is one situation, another day another situation. One day one works, another day one can make a small mistake which may make one lose all the results of this work. The next day again one may work. One is changing all the time, so up to a certain definite stage it is impossible to say. Q. At what stage is it that man cannot lose anything? A. It is so far that it is useless to discuss it. We can lose everything. But even this ability not to lose comes step by step. At a certain stage man cannot lose one thing, then, further on, he cannot lose another thing, and so on. It comes little by little. Q. I want to know how to increase my valuation of the work? A. It is impossible to answer this question, because only you can know how to increase your valuation of the work. You must think; you must compare ordinary ideas with these ideas; you must try to find in what sense these ideas help you. Everything we do in the work has the tendency
to increase valuation, so try not to miss anything that is given, because all the ideas have this aim. Every principle will increase your valuation of the work, it cannot diminish it. But there can be no special method for this. Q. I wonder if as much as one desires other things in life, so much it takes away from one's desire to work? A. Not necessarily. There are many things we can have in life and yet work. IT is quite wrong to think they are always contradictory—though they may be contradictory. One may desire such things in life as make work impossible in one or another way. So one must learn to choose between desires, for some things are incompatible. It is formatory to divide things into 'things in life' and 'things in the work' and put everything together as you do. You must divide better, see better. Q. Is there any means of distinguishing between important and unimportant things? My whole life is filled with worrying over the next thing I am going to do and I lose sight of the general idea of the system. A. Only experience can show that, and a sincere attitude. If you are sincere, or try to be sincere, and at the same time try to observe these things, after some time you will see that the difficulty of distinguishing becomes smaller and smaller, and you will see what is unimportant. One cannot describe what is important and what is not, because it is subjective; one moment one thing is important, another moment another. Again, personalities enter here: what is important for one personality may be unimportant for another. One of the first things to remember is about different personalities in you and, particularly when you are in an emotional state, not to think 'I'. Personalities based on likes and dislikes are all wrong; one must always start with the personality based on magnetic centre. Then you can see other personalities, whether they contradict it or not. This idea of different personalities, the idea that you are not one, that you are many, must always be connected with self-remembering. Q. I have never been able to get any evidence that anybody has achieved self remembering. A. You will not see the evidence. If all other people were able to remember themselves and you were not, it would not help you. Q. Yes it would, because they would have more information. A. For themselves, not for you. You must prove it to yourself. No one can prove it for you. Q. Because we work on ourselves, it does not mean that we shall gain higher consciousness, does it? A. No, it may take a very long time. We want to acquire control of higher states of consciousness, but before that the system speaks of acquiring control over ordinary faculties, over thoughts, over emotions, and in acquiring this control we must eliminate certain things and create the
possibility of self-remembering. So first we must acquire control over simple, ordinary things. Only then can we expect more. In this system there are gradual steps, one cannot jump. Q. I find that I am prevented from thinking practically about the ideas of the system by a destructive attitude which starts by trying to find difficulties and objections. What is the best method of weakening this attitude? A. By studying. As a matter of fact, this is interesting as an observation, because many people, not necessarily only those in the work, live only on objections; they only think themselves clever when they find an objection to something. When they do not find an objection, they do not feel themselves to be working, or thinking, or anything. I notice from the questions people ask that they do not understand how new things come. The difficulty is that we are too accustomed to think in absolutes—all or nothing. But it is necessary to understand that everything new comes first in flashes. It comes and then disappears, comes again and disappears again. Only, after a certain time these flashes become longer and then still longer. Q. By what means can we prolong these flashes? A. By repeating the causes that produced them. I do not want to give an example, because it will lead to imagination. All I will say is that, for instance, by certain efforts of self-remembering one can see things that one cannot see now. Our eyes are not as limited as we think; there are many things they can see but do not notice. Q. What are our greatest difficulties? A. Absence of understanding and slowness of understanding, because understanding generally comes about two years behind time. Another principle I have already spoken about and which must be remembered is that work does not wait, it does not remain the same. One year has certain requirements, the next year something else is required, and so it goes on. And generally it happens that people are ready for the requirements of two years ago. People who wish to continue must raise their standard; and this must not be done at my suggestion: you must think for yourselves in what sense and in what form the standard should be raised. You must think about details—things which, to begin with, were only advised, must now become rules for you (but not in the sense of 'school-rules', using the word 'school' in its ordinary meaning). The necessity must be understood. We have come to the stage when we must be serious, and this means self limitation, limiting false personality. Freedom of 'I' depends on limiting false personality; both cannot be free together, one or another must be sacrificed.
CHAPTER XIII Different categories of human actions—Right and wrong use of triads— Study of human activities—Remembering the starting-point— Inner separation—learning to see false personality—Masks—Buffers and weaknesses—Study of methods—Alarms—Impossibility of studying the system from an utilitarian point of view—Philosophical, theoretical and practical language—Three degrees of school—Right thinking—Long and short thoughts—Role of intellect—Different values—Right and wrong curiosity—Critical attitude—Influencing others—Story of the sly man and the devil. I WANT TO GIVE YOU SOME NEW MATERIAL TO THINK ABOUT. DO you remember the starting-point when the idea of triads was explained? It was said that every action, every manifestation is the result of the conjunction of three forces. This is the principle, and we must now try to understand how to begin to study it. In the study of triads and three forces one must be very careful and slow, using the principles given in the system and trying to apply and enlarge them when it is possible. One should particularly avoid hurry and invention. The first point in understanding the meaning of triads is to remember that manifestations of energy, any kind of action, in the world, in man's activity, inside the human machine or in external events always consists of triads. We spoke of six different triads comprehensible to the human mind, each representing a different combination of forces. In order to limit the question, not to make it too complicated in the beginning, we will consider only human activity. But here we come to a difficulty. We have never thought of activity itself being different. We know the difference between wood and metal, for instance, and we will not mix them. But we do not understand that one action can be as different from another as two different objects. For us, in ordinary thinking, actions are the same, only one starts with one aim and has one result and another starts with another aim and has a different result. We think only about motives, aims and results, but not of actions themselves. Q. Is then motive less important than we think? A. It does not determine the action. You may have one kind of aim, but your action may be of a different kind. This happens very often. People
start doing something with a certain aim in view, but their actions are such that not even by accident can this aim be ever attained. It is necessary to co-ordinate aim with action, otherwise you will never attain what you want. This is what we must understand in relation to our actions and we must try to find different categories of actions. When we begin to look at human activity from this point of view, remembering that there are different kinds of actions, independently of results, intentions, emotions, material and so on, we will begin to see it. It is not the capacity to see that is lacking, but knowledge of this principle, which is new to us. We cannot begin at once to look for all the six different triads which can be found in human activity, for they will become mixed in our minds. We must find standards for two, three or four kinds, as much as we can see. Look at your own actions and at those of the people around you and you will see certain differences. It is good material for thinking. All the absurdities of life depend on the fact that people do not understand that certain things can be done with only one kind of triad. They use a wrong triad, a wrong kind of action, and are surprised that the results are not what they wanted. For instance, it is no good trying to teach by beating, or trying to persuade with machine-guns. Find your own and better examples of the wrong use of triads and you will see that certain results can be obtained only by an appropriate action. Observe yourself and life in general; if you turn this study on yourself, you will see, for instance, that if you wish to know or change something in yourself and if you approach this problem in a formatory way, you will never get anything. Formatory thinking is an example of an action that does not lead to understanding. Q. Can you give an example of different human activities? A. Take two simple examples in order to understand the idea. To build a house, effort is needed at every moment, every single brick must be put into place with a certain effort; no triad passes into another triad without effort. At last the house is built and furnished. Then, if you want to burn it, you just strike a match and put it to something inflammable, and the house is burnt. If you go deeper into it you will see that these are two different activities. You cannot build a house by the same activity as you burn it. In the second case one triad passes into another without any effort, automatically, after the first initial effort of striking a match. Examples of the third kind of triad, in our experience, can be found only in conscious work, not identified work, or in some activity that has a peculiar quality of its own that cannot be imitated by others, such as artistic creation. Efforts at self remembering and not identifying belong to this category. If you think about it you will understand that in order to paint a good picture, for instance, one must use a different triad from
the one used in building a house or the one used for burning a house; something else is needed. Another triad may be called invention, discovery, craft. If you think about these four different activities, they will give you material for observing and comparing. Try to see why and in what they are different. Q. I do not see the distinction between craft and building a house. A. In one case only energy, only effort is necessary; in the other something more is needed, some knowledge or capacity for invention. Q. Did you put efforts at self-remembering with art? A. Yes, it is the same triad. Simple, blind effort, as in physical work, will not help in self-remembering. Neither will effort in the sense of invention, adaptation, help. Q. I find it difficult to think of analogies to these activities. A. Naturally, because you are not accustomed to think in this way. It is quite a new way of thinking. You are trying to think in the ordinary, logical, formatory way, and this is not sufficient. It is necessary to think not about words, but about facts. If you find four different kinds, in what do they differ? They differ in the form of effort. Q. Is formatory activity destructive? A. It is not destructive by itself, only deficient. But activities that begin with negative emotion are always destructive, they can be nothing else. Very often people do not realize this. Q. I do not see how I can ever be sure into which category to place an activity? A. You know enough to start. For every result there is a certain method. Different methods have different results. If you have a block of wood, you have to deal with it in a different way from dealing with a sick man. It does not matter about placing them in different categories. Example is the beginning of the whole thing. We try to pretend that things are more difficult than they are, but in reality we know all about it. We know that murder is one activity, and writing poetry is a different activity. We cannot murder successfully with the kind of energy used for writing poetry. Q. Are there also different types of thinking parallel to different types of activity? A. Yes, certainly. Every kind of activity has its own way of thinking, although we are not aware of it. But what happens is that people act in one way and think in another. Sometimes the two coincide, but often they are in a wrong relation to one another. Q. But is not action the result of thought? Does not right thought always mean right action? A. No, not at all. One can think rightly and act wrongly. Understanding is one thing; will and purpose, effort and decision are another: they are two different degrees of the thing. It may be said that right thinking is a
step towards right action, but it does not yet mean that the action is right. Q. How can one set about using the right triad? A. At moments of effort, or soon after, you may realize that it is a wrong effort, that you cannot get what you want with it. For every definite aim there is a corresponding effort. If you catch yourself using a wrong effort, it means it is a wrong triad. You may not be able to use the right triad, but you can stop using a wrong one. What is new about this idea of activities is that they are different in themselves. For us action is action. At present it is enough to understand that the results of actions we see in life—particularly if we do not like them or find fault with them—are often due to wrong triads used to attain a given aim. If we understand this we will understand that by a given activity we are bound to arrive only where we do arrive and nowhere else. To arrive at some other place we should use a different activity. But at present we cannot choose, because we do not know. Q. Can one learn what actions to use? A. Yes, certainly. You can learn from work. School-work can be done in only one way. So you try one way, another way, a third way and, sooner or later, you come to the right way. In ordinary conditions you cannot see the results of your actions, there are too many possibilities of self-deception; but in school-work you cannot deceive yourself. Either you get something or you don't, and you can get something only in one way. There are other methods of learning about different kinds of action, by intellectual understanding, but we will wait for that. I should like you first to understand the general principle better. You see, effort, aim, motive, all enter into the word 'action' and the idea of action, so actions are connected with motive but not in the way you think. A certain kind of result can only be obtained by an appropriate action; at the same time motive also determines action. Motive is sometimes important, but with the best possible motives one can do the worst possible things, because we use a wrong effort, and a wrong effort will produce a wrong result. Suppose you want to build something and use the kind of effort that can be used only for destruction; then, instead of building, you will only destroy things, with the best intentions. I have given you some examples, try to find parallels. Try to think, for instance, that neither the action that builds a house nor the action that bums it can paint a picture; at the same time the action by which you paint a picture is not necessary for building a house—a much simpler effort is required for that. Only a few people can paint good pictures, but everybody can take part in building a house. Then the same effort which is necessary for building a house is not enough to invent, say, a new kind of electric bell. And the action by which you invent an electric bell will not produce a good picture. Different kinds of action mean different triads, but at present it is better to leave triads and not to think