“In the terminology of certain Eastern teachings the first body is the ‘CARRIAGE’ (body), the second body is the ‘horse’ (feelings, desires), the third the ‘driver’ (mind), and the fourth the ‘master’ (I, consciousness, will). Fragments: Two

He again used the Eastern comparison of man with a CARRIAGE, horse, driver, and master, and drew the diagram with one addition that was not there before. Fragments: Five

“Man is a complex organization,” he said, “consisting of four parts which may be connected or unconnected, or badly connected. The CARRIAGE is connected with the horse by shafts, the horse is connected with the driver by reins, and the driver is connected with the master by the master’s voice. But the driver must hear and understand the master’s voice. He must know how to drive and the horse must be trained to obey the reins. As to the relation between the horse and the CARRIAGE, the horse must be properly harnessed. Thus there are three connections between the four sections of this complex organization. If something is lacking in one of the connections, the organization cannot act as a single whole. The connections are therefore no less important than the actual ‘bodies.’ Working on himself man works simultaneously on the ‘bodies’ and on the ‘connections.’ But it is different work. Fragments: Five

“Work on oneself must begin with the driver. The driver is the mind. In order to be able to hear the master’s voice, the driver, first of all, must not be asleep, that is, he must wake up. Then it may prove that the master speaks a language that the driver does not understand. The driver must learn this language. When he has learned it, he will understand the master. But concurrently with this he must learn to drive the horse, to harness it to the CARRIAGE, to feed and groom it, and to keep the CARRIAGE in order — because what would be the use of his understanding the master if he is not in a position to do anything? The master tells him to go yonder. But he is unable to move, because the horse has not been fed, it is not harnessed, and he does not know where the reins are. The horse is our emotions. The CARRIAGE is the body. The mind must learn to control the emotions. The emotions always pull the body after them. This is the order in which work on oneself must proceed. But observe again that work on the ‘bodies,’ that is, on the driver, the horse, and the CARRIAGE, is one thing. And work on the ‘connections’ — that is, on the ‘driver’s understanding,’ which unites him to the master; on the ‘reins,’ which connect him with the horse; and on the ‘shafts’ and the ‘harness,’ which connect the horse with the CARRIAGE — is quite, another thing. Fragments: Five

” ‘Buffer’ is a term which requires special explanation. We know what buffers on railway CARRIAGEs are. They are the contrivances which lessen the shock when CARRIAGEs or trucks strike one another. If there were no buffers the shock of one CARRIAGE against another would be very unpleasant and dangerous. Buffers soften the results of these shocks and render them unnoticeable and imperceptible. Fragments: Eight

“One must learn to pray, just as one must learn everything else. Whoever knows how to pray and is able to concentrate in the proper way, his prayer can give results. But it must be understood that there are different prayers and that their results are different. This is known even from ordinary divine service. But when we speak of prayer or of the results of prayer we always imply only one kind of prayer — petition, or we think that petition can be united with all other kinds of prayers. This of course is not true. Most prayers have nothing in common with petitions. I speak of ancient prayers; many of them are much older than Christianity. These prayers are, so to speak, recapitulations; by repeating them aloud or to himself a man endeavors to experience what is in them, their whole content, with his mind and his feeling. And a man can always make new prayers for himself. For example a man says — ‘I want to be serious.’ But the whole point is in how he says it. If he repeats it even ten thousand times a day and is thinking of how soon he will finish and what will there be for dinner and the like, then it is not prayer but simply self-deceit. But it can become a prayer if a man recites the prayer in this way: He says ‘I’ and tries at the same time to think of everything he knows about ‘I.’ It does not exist, there is no single ‘I,’ there is a multitude of petty, clamorous, quarrelsome ‘I’s. But he wants to be one ‘I’ — the master; he recalls the CARRIAGE, the horse, the driver, and the master. ‘I’ is master. ‘Want’ — he thinks of the meaning of ‘I want.’ Is he able to want? With him ‘it wants’ or ‘it does not want’ all the time. But to this ‘it wants’ and ‘it does not want’ he strives to oppose his own ‘I want’ which is connected with the aims of work on himself, that is, to introduce the third force into the customary combination of the two forces, ‘it wants’ and ‘it does not want.’ ‘To be’ — the man thinks of what to be, what ‘being,’ means. The being of a mechanical man with whom everything happens. The being of a man who can do. It is possible ‘to be’ in different ways. He wants ‘to be’ not merely in the sense of existence but in the sense of greatness of power. The words ‘to be’ acquire weight, a new meaning for him. ‘Serious’ — the man thinks what it means to be serious. How he answers himself is very important. If he understands what this means, if he defines correctly for himself what it means to be serious, and feels that he truly desires it, then his prayer can give a result in the sense that strength can be added to him, that he will more often notice when he is not serious, that he will overcome himself more easily, make himself be serious. In exactly the same way a man can ‘pray’ — ‘I want to remember myself.’ ‘To remember’ — what does ‘to remember’ mean? The man must think about memory. How little he remembers! How often he forgets what he has decided, what he has seen, what he knows! His whole life would be different if he could remember. All ills come because he does not remember. ‘Myself — again he returns to himself. Which self does he want to remember? Is it worth while remembering the whole of himself? How can he distinguish what he wants to remember? The idea of work! How can he connect himself with the idea of the work, and so on, and so on. Fragments: Fifteen

A very interesting event took place in connection with his departure. This happened at the railway station. We were all seeing him off at the Nikolaievsky Station. G. was standing talking to us on the platform by the CARRIAGE. He was the usual G. we had always known. After the second bell he went into the CARRIAGE — his compartment was next to the door — and came to the window. Fragments: Sixteen

He was different! In the window we saw another man, not the one who had gone into the train. He had changed during those few seconds. It is very difficult to describe what the difference was, but on the platform he had been an ordinary man like anyone else, and from the CARRIAGE a man of quite a different order was looking at us, with a quite exceptional importance and dignity in every look and movement, as though he had suddenly become a ruling prince or a statesman of some unknown kingdom to which he was traveling and to which we were seeing him off. Fragments: Sixteen

But the story is not yet over. In the CARRIAGE with G. there traveled A. (a well-known journalist) who was at that time being sent away from Petersburg (this was just before the revolution). We who were seeing G. off, were standing at one end of the CARRIAGE while at the other end stood a group seeing A. off. Fragments: Sixteen

A few days later the paper to which A. was contributing contained an article “On the Road” in which A. described the thoughts and impressions he had on the way from Petersburg to Moscow. A strange Oriental had traveled in the same CARRIAGE with him, who, among the bustling crowd of speculators who filled the CARRIAGE, had struck him by his extraordinary dignity and calm, exactly as though these people were for him like small flies upon whom he was looking from inaccessible heights. A. judged him to be an “oil king” from Baku, and in conversation with him several enigmatic phrases that he received still further strengthened him in his conviction that here was a man whose millions grew while he slept and who looked down from on high at bustling people who were striving to earn a living and to make money. Fragments: Sixteen