“‘What do you expect?” said G. “People are machines. Machines have to be blind and UNCONSCIOUS, they cannot be otherwise, and all their actions have to correspond to their nature. Everything happens. No one does anything. ‘Progress’ and ‘civilization,’ in the real meaning of these words, can appear only as the result of conscious efforts. They cannot appear as the result of UNCONSCIOUS mechanical actions. And what con-scious effort can there be in machines? And if one machine is UNCONSCIOUS, then a hundred machines are UNCONSCIOUS, and so are a thousand machines, or a hundred thousand, or a million. And the UNCONSCIOUS activity of a million machines must necessarily result in destruction and extermination. It is precisely in UNCONSCIOUS involuntary manifestations that all evil lies. You do not yet understand and cannot imagine all the results of this evil. But the time will come when you will understand.” Fragments: Two

“There are definite ways of knowing that,” answered G. “Under certain conditions the ‘astral body’ can be seen; it can be separated from the physical body and even photographed at the side of the physical body. The existence of the ‘astral body’ can be still more easily and simply established by its functions. The ‘astral body’ has definite functions which the physical body cannot have. The presence of these functions indicates the presence of the ‘astral body.’ The absence of these functions shows the absence of the ‘astral body.’ But it is too early to speak of this now. All our attention must be concentrated on the study of the physical body. It is necessary to understand the structure of the human machine. Our principal error is that we think we have one mind. We call the functions of this mind ‘conscious’; everything that does not enter this mind we call ‘UNCONSCIOUS’ or ‘subconscious.’ This is our chief error. Of the conscious and the UNCONSCIOUS we will speak later. At this moment I want to explain to you that the activity of the human machine, that is, of the physical body, is controlled, not by one, but by several minds, entirely independent of each other, having separate functions and separate spheres in which they manifest themselves. This must be understood first of all, because unless this is understood nothing else can be understood.” Fragments: Three

Actually this conviction has no foundation whatever. The language in which they speak is adapted to practical life only. People can communicate to one another information of a practical character, but as soon as they pass to a slightly more complex sphere they are immediately lost, and they cease to understand one another, although they are UNCONSCIOUS of it. People imagine that they often, if not always, understand one another, or that they can, at any rate, understand one another if they try or want to; they imagine that they understand the authors of the books they read and that other people understand them. This also is one of the illusions which people create for themselves and in the midst of which they live. As a matter of fact, no one understands anyone else. Two men can say the same thing with profound conviction but call it by different names, or argue endlessly together without suspecting that they are thinking exactly the same. Or, vice versa, two men can say the same words and imagine that they agree with, and understand, one another, whereas they are actually saying absolutely different things and do not understand one another in the least. Fragments: Four

“Moving center working for thinking center produces, for example, mechanical reading or mechanical listening, as when a man reads or listens to nothing but words and is utterly UNCONSCIOUS of what he is reading or hearing. This generally happens when attention, that is, the direction of the thinking center’s activity, is occupied with something else and when the moving center is trying to replace the absent thinking center; but this very easily becomes a habit, because the thinking center is generally distracted not by useful work, by thought, or by contemplation, but simply by daydreaming or by imagination. Fragments: Six

“All this is rubbish,” said G., “the usual scientific sophistry. It is time you got rid of it. Only one thing is true in what you have said: that you can know consciousness only in yourself. Observe that I say you can know, for you can know it only when you have it. And when you have not got it, you can know that you have not got it, not at that very moment, but afterwards. I mean that when it comes again you can see that it has been absent a long time, and you can find or remember the moment when it disappeared and when it reappeared. You can also define the moments when you are nearer to consciousness and further away from consciousness. But by observing in yourself the appearance and the disappearance of consciousness you will inevitably see one fact which you neither see nor acknowledge now, and that is that moments of consciousness are very short and are separated by long intervals of completely UNCONSCIOUS, mechanical working of the machine. You will then see that you can think, feel, act speak, work, without being conscious of it. And if you learn to see in yourselves the moments of consciousness and the long periods of mechanicalness, you will as infallibly see in other people when they are conscious of what they are doing and when they are not. Fragments: Seven

“If we could connect the centers of our ordinary consciousness with the higher thinking center deliberately and at will, it would be of no use to us whatever in our present general state. In most cases where accidental contact with the higher thinking center takes place a man becomes UNCONSCIOUS. The mind refuses to take in the flood of thoughts, emotions, images, and ideas which suddenly burst into it. And instead of a vivid thought, or a vivid emotion, there results, on the contrary, a complete blank, a state of UNCONSCIOUSness. The memory retains only the first moment when the flood rushed in on the mind and the last moment when the flood was receding and consciousness returned. But even these moments are so full of unusual shades and colors that there is nothing with which to compare them among the ordinary sensations of life. This is usually all that remains from so-called ‘mystical’ and ‘ecstatic’ experiences, which represent a temporary connection with a higher center. Only very seldom does it happen that a mind which has been better prepared succeeds in grasping and remembering something of what was felt and understood at the moment of ecstasy. But even in these cases the thinking, the moving, and the emotional centers remember and transmit everything in their own way, translate absolutely new and never previously experienced sensations into the language of usual everyday sensations, transmit in worldly three-dimensional forms things which pass completely beyond the limits of worldly measurements; in this way, of course, they entirely distort every trace of what remains in the memory of these unusual experiences. Our ordinary centers, in transmitting the impressions of the higher centers, may be compared to a blind man speaking of colors, or to a deaf man speaking of music. Fragments: Nine

” ‘The outer circle’ is the circle of mechanical humanity to which we belong and which alone we know. The first sign of this circle is that among people who belong to it there is not and there cannot be a common understanding. Everybody understands in his own way and all differently. This circle is sometimes called the circle of the ‘confusion of tongues,’ that is, the circle in which each one speaks in his own particular language, where no one understands another and takes no trouble to be understood. In this circle mutual understanding between people is impossible excepting in rare exceptional moments or in matters having no great significance, and which are confined to the limits of the given being. If people belonging to this circle become conscious of this general lack of understanding and acquire a desire to understand and to be understood, then it means they have an UNCONSCIOUS tendency towards the inner circle because mutual understanding begins only in the exoteric circle and is possible only there. But the consciousness of the lack of understanding usually comes to people in an altogether different form. Fragments: Fifteen

“The character of the movements and postures in every epoch, in every race, and in every class is indissolubly connected with definite forms of thinking and feeling. A man is unable to change the form of his thinking or his feeling until he has changed his repertory of postures and movements. The forms of thinking and feeling can be called the postures and movements of thinking and feeling. Every man has a definite number of thinking and feeling postures and movements. Moreover moving, thinking, and feeling postures are connected with one another in man and he can never move out of his repertory of thinking and feeling postures unless he changes his moving postures. An analysis of man’s thoughts and feelings and a study of his moving functions, arranged in a certain way, show that every one of our movements, voluntary or involuntary, is an UNCONSCIOUS transition from one posture to another, both equally mechanical. Fragments: Seventeen

“Right exercises,” G. said once, “which lead direct to the aim of mastering the organism and subjecting its conscious and UNCONSCIOUS functions to the will, begin with breathing exercises. Without mastering breathing nothing can be mastered. At the same time to master breathing is not so easy. Fragments: Eighteen