“A permanent idea of good and evil can be formed in man only in connection with a permanent aim and a permanent understanding. If a man understands that he is asleep and if he wishes to AWAKE, then everything that helps him to AWAKE will be good and everything that hinders him, everything that prolongs his sleep, will be evil. Exactly in the same way will he understand what is good and evil for other people. What helps them to AWAKE is good, what hinders them is evil. But this is so only for those who want to AWAKE, that is, for those who understand that they are asleep. Those who do not understand that they are asleep and those who can have no wish to AWAKE, cannot have understanding of good and evil. And as the overwhelming majority of people do not realize and will never realize that they are asleep, neither good nor evil can actually exist for them. Fragments: Eight

“In relation to what we are speaking of now this book says the following: ” ‘A man may be born, but in order to be born he must first die, and in order to die he must first AWAKE.’ Fragments: Eleven

” ‘To AWAKE,’ ‘to die,’ ‘to be born.’ These are three successive stages. If you study the Gospels attentively you will see that references are often made to the possibility of being born, several references are made to the necessity of ‘dying,’ and there are very many references to the necessity of ‘AWAKEning’ — ‘watch, for ye know not the day and hour . . .’ and. so on. But these three possibilities of man, to AWAKE or not to sleep, to die, and to be born, are not set down in connection with one another. Nevertheless this is the whole point. If a man dies without having AWAKEned he cannot be born. If a man is born without having died he may become an ‘immortal thing.’ Thus the fact that he has not ‘died’ prevents a man from being ‘born’; the fact of his not having AWAKEned prevents him from ‘dying’; and should he be born without having died he is prevented from ‘being.’ Fragments: Eleven

“Theoretically he can, but practically it is almost impossible because as soon as a man AWAKEns for a moment and opens his eyes, all the forces that caused him to fall asleep begin to act upon him with tenfold energy and he immediately falls asleep again, very often dreaming that he is AWAKE or is AWAKEning. Fragments: Eleven

“There are certain states in ordinary sleep in which a man wants to AWAKEn but cannot. He tells himself that he is AWAKE but, in reality, he continues to sleep — and this can happen several times before he finally AWAKEs. But in ordinary sleep, once he is AWAKE, he is in a different state; in hypnotic sleep the case is otherwise; there are no objective characteristics, at any rate not at the beginning of AWAKEning; a man cannot pinch himself in order to make sure that he is not asleep. And if, which God forbid, a man has heard anything about objective characteristics, Kundalini at once transforms it all into imagination and dreams. Fragments: Eleven

“Only a man who fully realizes the difficulty of AWAKEning can understand the necessity of long and hard work in order to AWAKE. Fragments: Eleven

“Speaking in general, what is necessary to AWAKE a sleeping man? A good shock is necessary. But when a man is fast asleep one shock is not enough. A long period of continual shocks is needed. Consequently there must be somebody to administer these shocks. I have said before that if a man wants to AWAKEn he must hire somebody who will keep on shaking him for a long time. But whom can he hire if everyone is asleep? A man will hire somebody to wake him up but this one also falls asleep. What is the use of such a man? And a man who. can really keep AWAKE will probably refuse to waste his time in waking others up: he may have his own much more important work to do. Fragments: Eleven

“Before anything else he needs help. But help cannot come to one man alone. Those who are able to help put a great value on their time. And, of course, they would prefer to help, say, twenty or thirty people who want to AWAKE rather than one man. Moreover, as has been said earlier, one man can easily deceive himself about his AWAKEning and take for AWAKEning simply a new dream. If several people decide to struggle together against sleep, they will wake each other. It may often happen that twenty of them will sleep but the twenty-first will be AWAKE and he will wake up the rest. It is exactly the same thing with alarm clocks. One man will invent one alarm clock, another man will invent another, afterwards they can make an exchange. Altogether they can be of very great help one to another, and without this help no one can attain anything. Fragments: Eleven

“Therefore a man who wants to AWAKE must look for other people who also want to AWAKE and work together with them. This, however, is easier said than done because to start such work and to organize it requires a knowledge which an ordinary man cannot possess. The work must be organized and it must have a leader. Only then can it produce the results expected of it. Without these conditions no efforts can result in anything whatever. Men may torture themselves but these tortures will not make them AWAKE. This is the most difficult of all for certain people to understand. By themselves and on their own initiative they may be capable of great efforts and great sacrifices. But because their first effort and their first sacrifice ought to be obedience nothing on earth will induce them to obey another. And they do not want to reconcile themselves to the thought that all their efforts and all their sacrifices are useless. Fragments: Eleven

“The experiences, of course, which I had in August,” I said. “If I were able to evoke them at will and use them, it would be all that I could wish for because I think that then I should be able to find all the rest. But at the same time I know that these ‘experiences,’ I choose this word only because there is no other, but you understand of what I speak” — he nodded — “depended on the emotional state I was in then. And I know that they will always depend on this. If I could create such an emotional state in myself I should very quickly come to these experiences. But I feel infinitely far from this emotional state, as though I were asleep. This is ‘sleep’ that was being AWAKE. — How can this emotional state be created? Tell me.” Fragments: Thirteen

“How could it be otherwise?” asked G. “Imagine that there are two or three people who are AWAKE in the midst of a multitude of sleeping people. They will certainly know each other. But those who are asleep cannot know them. How many are they? We do not know and we cannot know until we become like them. It has been clearly said before that each man can only see on the level of his own being. But two hundred conscious people, if they existed and if they found it necessary and legitimate, could change the whole of life on the earth. But either there are not enough of them, or they do not want to, or perhaps the time has not yet come, or perhaps other people are sleeping too soundly. Fragments: Fifteen

“There is nothing new in the idea of sleep. People have been told almost since the creation of the world that they are asleep and that they must AWAKEn. How many times is this said in the Gospels, for instance? ‘Awake,’ ‘watch,’ ‘sleep not.’ Christ’s disciples even slept when he was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane for the last time. It is all there. But do men understand it? Men take it simply as a form of speech, as an expression, as a metaphor. They completely fail to understand that it must be taken literally. And again it is easy to understand why. In order to understand this literally it is necessary to AWAKEn a little, or at least to try to AWAKEn. I tell you seriously that I have been asked several times why nothing is said about sleep in the Gospels. Although it is there spoken of almost on every page. This simply shows that people read the Gospels in sleep. So long as a man sleeps profoundly and is wholly immersed in dreams he cannot even think about the fact that he is asleep. If he were to think that he was asleep, he would wake up. So everything goes on. And men have not the slightest idea what they are losing because of this sleep. As I have already said, as he is organized, that is, being such as nature has created him, man can be a self­conscious being. Such he is created and such he is born. But he is born among sleeping people, and, of course, he falls asleep among them just at the very time when he should have begun to be conscious of himself. Everything has a hand in this: the involuntary imitation of older people on the part of the child, voluntary and involuntary suggestion, and what is called ‘education.’ Every attempt to AWAKEn on the child’s part is instantly stopped. This is inevitable. And a great many efforts and a great deal of help are necessary in order to AWAKEn later when thousands of sleep­compelling habits have been accumulated. And this very seldom happens. In most cases, a man when still a child already loses the possibility of AWAKEning; he lives in sleep all his life and he dies in sleep. Furthermore, many people die long before their physical death. But of such cases we will speak later on. Fragments: Eight