After this G. went on to explain man’s various functions and CENTERS controlling these functions in the way they are set out in the psychological lectures. Chapter Three

In this connection it must be noted that the ideas were not given us in the form in which they are set out in my lectures. G. gave the ideas little by little, as though defending or protecting them from us. When touching on new themes for the first time he gave only general principles, often holding back the most essential. Sometimes he himself pointed out apparent discrepancies in the theories given, which were, in fact, precisely due to these reservations and suppressions. The next time, in approaching the same subject, whenever possible from a different angle, he gave more. The third time he gave still more. On the question of functions and CENTERS for instance. On the first occasion he spoke of three CENTERS, the intellectual, the emotional, and the moving, and tried to make us distinguish these functions, find examples, and so on. Afterwards the instinctive center was added, as an independent and self-supporting machine. Afterwards the sex center. I remember that some of his remarks arrested my attention. For instance, when speaking of the sex center he said it practically never worked independently because it was always dependent on other CENTERS, the intellectual, the emotional, the instinctive, and the moving. Then in speaking of the energy of CENTERS he often returned to what he called wrong workwork of CENTERS and to the role of the sex center in this work. He spoke a great deal about how all CENTERS rob the sex center of its energy and produce with this energy quite wrong work full of useless excitement and, in return, give to the sex center useless energy with which it was unable to work. Chapter Three

I recollect another remark which afterwards proved a ground for much wrong reasoning and many wrong conclusions. This was that the three CENTERS of the lower story: the instinctive, the moving, and the sex CENTERS, work, in relation to each other, in the order of three forces — and that the sex center, in normal cases, acts as neutralizing force in relation to the instinctive and moving CENTERS acting as active and passive forces. Chapter Three

Many people found contradictions between the first exposition of a given idea and subsequent explanations and sometimes, in trying to hold as closely as possible to the first, they created fantastic theories having no relation to what G. actually said. Thus the idea of three CENTERS was retained by certain groups (which, I repeat, were not connected with me). And this idea was, in some way, linked up with the idea of three forces, with which in reality it had no connection, first of all because there are not three CENTERS but five in the ordinary man. Chapter Three

It is possible that the idea of the three CENTERS (intellectual, emotional, and moving) being the expression of the three forces arose from G.’s wrongly repeated and wrongly received remarks on the relationship to each other of the three CENTERS of the lower story. Chapter Three

During the first and subsequent talks on CENTERS G. added something new at almost every talk. As I said in the beginning he spoke first of three CENTERS, then of four, then of five, and afterwards of seven CENTERS. Chapter Three

Parts of CENTERS hardly came into these talks. G. said that CENTERS were divided into positive and negative parts, but he did not point out that this division was not identical for all the different CENTERS. Then he said that each center was divided into three parts or three stories which, in their turn, were also divided into three; but he gave no examples, nor did he point out that observation of attention made it possible to dis tinguish the work of parts .of CENTERS. All this and much else besides was established later. For instance, although he undoubtedly gave the fundamental basis for the study of the role and the significance of negative emotions, as well as methods of struggling against them, referring to non-identification, non-considering, and not expressing negative emotions, he did not complete these theories or did not explain that negative emotions were entirely unnecessary and that no normal center for them existed. Chapter Three

“The alternation of I’s, their continual obvious struggle for supremacy, is controlled by accidental external influences. Warmth, sunshine, fine weather, immediately call up a whole group of I’s. Cold, fog, rain, call up another group of I’s, other associations, other feelings, other actions. There is nothing in man able to control this change of I’s, chiefly because man does not notice, or know of it; he lives always in the last I. Some I’s, of course, are stronger than others. But it is not their own conscious strength; they have been created by the strength of accidents or mechanical external stimuli. Education, imitation, reading, the hypnotism of religion, caste, and traditions, or the glamour of new slogans, create very strong I’s in man’s personality, which dominate whole series of other, weaker, I’s. But their strength is the strength of the ‘rolls’ in the CENTERS. And all I’s making up a man’s personality have the same origin as these ‘rolls’; they are the results of external influences; and both are set in motion and controlled by fresh external influences. Chapter Three

“The difference between knowledge and understanding becomes clear when we realize that knowledge may be the function of one center. Understanding, however, is the function of three CENTERS. Thus the thinking apparatus may know something. But understanding appears only when a man feels and senses what is connected with it. Chapter Four

“Man number four is not born ready-made. He is born one, two, or three, and becomes four only as a result of efforts of a definite character. Man number four is always the product of school work. He can neither be born, nor develop accidentally or as the result of ordinary influences of bringing up, education, and so on. Man number four already stands on a different level to man number one, two, and three; he has a permanent center of gravity which consists in his ideas, in his valuation of the work, and in his relation to the school. In addition his psychic CENTERS have already begun to be balanced; one center in him cannot have such a preponderance over others as is the case with people of the first three categories. He already begins to know himself and begins to know whither he is going. Chapter Four

“At the same time as we watch the work of the CENTERS we shall observe, side by side with their right working, their wrong working, that is, the working of one center for another; the attempts of the thinking center to feel or to pretend that it feels, the attempts of the emotional center to think, the attempts of the moving center to think and feel. As has been said already, one center working for another is useful in certain cases, for it preserves the continuity of mental activity. But in becoming habitual it becomes at the same time harmful, since it begins to interfere with right working by enabling each center to shirk its own direct duties and to do, not what it ought to be doing, but what it likes best at the moment. In a normal healthy man each center does its own work, that is, the work for which it was specially destined and which it can best perform. There are situations in life which the thinking center alone can deal with and can find a way out of. If at this moment the emotional center begins to work instead, it will make a muddle of everything and the result of its interference will be most unsatisfactory. In an ‘unbalanced kind of man the substitution of one center for another goes on almost continually and this is precisely what ‘being unbalanced’ or ‘neurotic’ means. Each center strives, as it were, to pass its work on to another, and, at the same time, it strives to do the work of another center for which it is not fitted. The emotional center working for the thinking center brings unnecessary nervousness, feverishness, and hurry into situations where, on the contrary, calm judgment and deliberation are essential. The thinking center working for the emotional center brings deliberation into situations which require quick decisions and makes a man incapable of distinguishing the peculiarities and the fine points of the position. Thought is too slow. It works out a certain plan of action and continues to follow it even though the circumstances have changed and quite a different course of action is necessary. Besides, in some cases the interference of the thinking center gives rise to entirely wrong reactions, because the thinking center is simply incapable of understanding the shades and distinctions of many events. Events that are quite different for the moving center and for the emotional center appear to be alike to it. Its decisions are much too general and do not correspond to the decisions which the emotional center would have made. This becomes perfectly clear if we imagine the interference of thought, that is, of the theoretical mind, in the domain of feeling, or of sensation, or of movement; in all three cases the interference of the mind leads to wholly undesirable results. The mind cannot understand shades of feeling. We shall see this clearly if we imagine one man reasoning about the emotions of another. He is not feeling anything himself so the feelings of another do not exist for him. A full man does not understand a hungry one. But for the other they have a very definite existence. And the decisions of the first, that is of the mind, can never satisfy him. In exactly the same way the mind cannot appreciate sensations. For it they are dead. Nor is it capable of controlling movement. Instances of this kind are the easiest to find. Whatever work a man may be doing, it is enough for him to try to do each action deliberately, with his mind, following every movement, and he will see that the quality of his work will change immediately. If he is typing, his fingers, controlled by his moving center, find the necessary letters themselves, but if he tries to ask himself before every letter: ‘Where is “k”?’ ‘Where is the comma?’ ‘How is this word spelled?’ he at once begins to make mistakes or to write very slowly. If one drives a car with the help of one’s mind, one can go only in the lowest gear. The mind cannot keep pace with all the movements necessary for developing a greater speed. To drive at full speed, especially in the streets of a large town, while steering with the help of one’s mind is absolutely impossible for an ordinary man. Chapter Six

“‘Imagination’ is one of the principal sources of the wrong workwork of CENTERS. Each center has its own form of imagination and daydreaming, but as a rule both the moving and the emotional CENTERS make use of the thinking center which very readily places itself at their disposal for this purpose, because daydreaming corresponds to its own inclinations. Daydreaming is absolutely the opposite of ‘useful’ mental activity. Chapter Six

‘Useful’ in this case means activity directed towards a definite aim and undertaken for the sake of obtaining a definite result. Daydreaming does not pursue any aim, does not strive after any result. The motive for daydreaming always lies in the emotional or in the moving center. The actual process is carried on by the thinking center. The inclination to daydream is due partly to the laziness of the thinking center, that is, its attempts to avoid the efforts connected with work directed towards a definite aim and going in a definite direction, and partly to the tendency of the emotional and the moving CENTERS to repeat to themselves, to keep alive or to recreate experiences, both pleasant and unpleasant, that have been previously lived through or ‘imagined.’ Daydreaming of disagreeable, morbid things is very characteristic of the unbalanced state of the human machine, After all, one can understand daydreaming of a pleasant kind and find logical justification for it. Daydreaming of an unpleasant character is an utter absurdity. And yet many people spend nine tenths of their lives in just such painful daydreams about misfortunes which may overtake them or their family, about illnesses they may contract or sufferings they will have to endure. Imagination and daydreaming are instances of the wrong work of the thinking center. Chapter Six

“The next object of self-observation must be habits in general. Every grown-up man consists wholly of habits, although he is often unaware of it and even denies having any habits at all. This can never be the case. All three CENTERS are filled with habits and a man can never know himself until he has studied all his habits. The observation and the study of habits is particularly difficult because, in order to see and ‘record’ them, one must escape from them, free oneself from them, if only for a moment. So long as a man is governed by a particular habit, he does not observe it, but at the very first attempt, however feeble, to struggle against it, he feels it and notices it. Therefore in order to observe and study habits one must try to struggle against them. This opens up a practical method of self-observation. It has been said before that a man cannot change anything in himself, that he can only observe and ‘record.’ This is true. But it is also true that a man cannot observe and ‘record’ anything if he does not try to struggle with himself, that is, with his habits. This struggle cannot yield direct results, that is to say, it cannot lead to any change, especially to any permanent and lasting change. But it shows what is there. Without a struggle a man cannot see what he consists of. The struggle with small habits is very difficult and boring, but without it self-observation is impossible. Chapter Six

The division of actions according to the CENTERS controlling them did away with all uncertainty and all possible doubts as to the correctness of these divisions. Chapter Six

What was particularly important in G.’s system was the indication that the same actions could originate in different CENTERS. An example is the recruit and the old soldier at rifle drill. One has to perform the drill with his thinking center, the other does it with the moving center, which does it much better. Chapter Six

But G. did not call actions governed by the moving center “automatic.” He used the name “automatic” only for the actions which a man performs imperceptibly for himself. If the same actions are observed by a man, they cannot be called “automatic.” He allotted a big place to automatism, but regarded the moving functions as distinct from the automatic functions, and, what is most important, he found automatic actions in all CENTERS; he spoke, for instance, of “automatic thoughts” and of “automatic feelings.” When I asked him about reflexes he called them “instinctive actions.” And as I understood from what followed, among external movements he considered only reflexes to be instinctive actions. Chapter Six

“Can the instinctive and the moving functions be controlled by two distinct CENTERS?” I asked G. once. Chapter Six

‘They can,” said G., “and to them must be added the sex center. These are the three CENTERS of the lower story. The sex center is the neutralizing center in relation to the instinctive and the moving CENTERS. The lower story can exist by itself, because the three CENTERS in it are the conductors of the three forces. The thinking and the emotional CENTERS are not indispensable for life.” Chapter Six

“It changes,” said G., “one moment the moving center is active and the instinctive is passive. Another moment the instinctive is active and the moving is passive. You must find examples of both states in yourself. But besides different states there are also different types. In some people the moving center is more active, in others the instinctive center. But for the sake of convenience in reasoning and particularly in the beginning, when it is important only to explain the principles, we take them as one center with different functions which are on the same level. If you take the thinking, the emotional, and the moving CENTERS, then they work on different levels. The moving and the instinctive — on one level. Later on you will understand what these levels mean and upon what they depend.” Chapter Six

“The two higher states of consciousness — ‘self-consciousness’ and ‘objective consciousness’ — are connected with the functioning of the higher CENTERS in man. Chapter Eight

“In addition to those CENTERS of which we have so far spoken there are two other CENTERS in man, the ‘higher emotional’ and the ‘higher thinking.’ These CENTERS are in us; they are fully developed and are working all the time, but their work fails to reach our ordinary consciousness. The cause of this lies in the special properties of our so called ‘clear consciousness.’ Chapter Eight

“When a man comes to realize the necessity not only for self-study and self observation but also for work on himself with the object of changing himself, the character of his self-observation must change. He has so far studied the details of the work of the CENTERS, trying only to register this or that phenomenon, to be an impartial witness. He has studied the work of the machine. Now he must begin to see himself, that is to say, to see, not separate details, not the work of small wheels and levers, but to see everything taken together as a whole — the whole of himself such as others see him. Chapter Eight

“As has been said earlier, in the case of less cultured people essence is often more highly developed than it is in cultured man. It would seem that they ought to be nearer the possibility of growth, but in reality it is not so because their personality proves to be insufficiently developed. For inner growth, for work on oneself, a certain development of personality as well as a certain strength of essence are necessary. Personality consists of ‘rolls,’ and of ‘buffers’ resulting from a certain work of the CENTERS. An insufficiently developed personality means a lack of ‘rolls,’ that is, a lack of knowledge, a lack of information, a lack of the material upon which work on oneself must be based. Without some store of knowledge, without a certain amount of material ‘not his own,’ a man cannot begin to work on himself, he cannot begin to study himself, he cannot begin to struggle with his mechanical habits, simply because there will be no reason or motive for undertaking such work. Chapter Eight

“Energy is spent chiefly on unnecessary and unpleasant emotions, on the expectation of unpleasant things, possible and impossible, on bad moods, on unnecessary haste, nervousness, irritability, imagination, daydreaming, and so on. Energy is wasted on the wrong workwork of CENTERS; on unnecessary tension of the muscles out of all proportion to the work produced; on perpetual chatter which absorbs an enormous amount of energy; on the ‘interest’ continually taken in things happening around us or to other people and having in fact no interest whatever; on the constant waste of the force of ‘attention’; and so on, and so on. Chapter Nine

“The work of the factory consists in transforming one kind of matter into another, namely, the coarser matters, in the cosmic sense, into finer ones. The factory receives, as raw material from the outer world, a number of coarse ‘hydrogens’ and transforms them into finer hydrogens by means of a whole series of complicated alchemical processes. But in the ordinary conditions of life the production by the human factory of the finer ‘hydrogens,’ in which, from the point of view of the possibility of higher states of consciousness and the work of higher CENTERS, we are particularly interested, is insufficient and they are all wasted on the existence of the factory itself. If we could succeed in bringing the production up to its possible maximum we should then begin to save the fine ‘hydrogens.’ Then the whole of the body, all the tissues, all the cells, would become saturated with these fine ‘hydrogens’ which would gradually settle in them, crystallizing in a special way. This crystallization of the fine ‘hydrogens’ would gradually bring the whole organism onto a higher level, onto a higher plane of being. Chapter Nine

“When the ‘table of hydrogens’ has been sufficiently understood, it shows immediately many new features in the work of the human machine, establishing clearly before anything else the reasons for the differences between the CENTERS and their respective functions. Chapter Nine

“The CENTERS of the human machine work with different ‘hydrogens.’ This constitutes their chief difference. The center working with a coarser, heavier, denser ‘hydrogen’ works the slower. The center working with light, more mobile ‘hydrogen’ works the quicker. Chapter Nine

The thinking or intellectual center is the slowest of all the three CENTERS we have examined up to now. It works with ‘hydrogen’ 48 (according to the third scale of the ‘table of hydrogens’). Chapter Nine

“In order to understand the work of the human machine and its possibilities, one must know that, apart from these three CENTERS and those connected with them, we have two more CENTERS, fully developed and properly functioning, but they are not connected with our usual life nor with the three CENTERS in which we are aware of ourselves. Chapter Nine

“The existence of these higher CENTERS in us is a greater riddle than the hidden treasure which men who believe in the existence of the mysterious and the miraculous have sought since the remotest times. Chapter Nine

“All mystical and occult systems recognize the existence of higher forces and capacities in man although, in many cases, they admit the existence of these forces and capacities only in the form of possibilities, and speak of the necessity for developing the hidden forces in man. This present teaching differs from many others by the fact that it affirms that the higher CENTERS exist in man and are fully developed. Chapter Nine

“It is the lower CENTERS that are undeveloped. And it is precisely this lack of development, or the incomplete functioning, of the lower CENTERS that prevents us from making use of the work of the higher CENTERS. Chapter Nine

“As has been said earlier, there are two higher CENTERS: “The higher emotional center, working with hydrogen 12, and Chapter Nine

“The higher thinking center, working with hydrogen 6. “If we consider the work of the human machine from the point of view of the ‘hydrogens’ which work the CENTERS, we shall see why the higher CENTERS cannot be connected with the lower ones. Chapter Nine

“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. Chapter Nine

“In order to obtain a correct and permanent connection between the lower and the higher CENTERS, it is necessary to regulate and quicken the work of the lower CENTERS. Chapter Nine

“Moreover, as has been already said, lower CENTERS work in a wrong way, for very often, instead of their own proper functions, one or another of them takes upon itself the work of other CENTERS. This considerably reduces the speed of the general work of the machine and makes acceleration of the work of the CENTERS very difficult. Thus in order to regulate and accelerate the work of the lower CENTERS, the primary object must consist in freeing each center from work foreign and unnatural to it, and in bringing it back to its own work which it can do better than any other center. Chapter Nine

“In order to regulate and balance the work of the three CENTERS whose functions constitute our life, it is necessary to learn to economize the energy produced by our organism, not to waste this energy on unnecessary functions, and to save it for that activity which will gradually connect the lower CENTERS with the higher. Chapter Nine

“The fourth body requires the complete and harmonious working of all CENTERS; and it implies, or is the expression of, complete control over this working. Chapter Nine

“Thus we see that our organism has the different kinds of fuel necessary for the different CENTERS. The CENTERS can be compared to machines working on fuels of different qualities. One machine can be worked on oil residue or crude oil. Another requires kerosene; a third will not work with kerosene but requires gasoline. The fine substances of our organism can be characterized as substances of different flashpoints, while the organism itself can be compared to a laboratory in which the combustibles of different strengths required by the different CENTERS are prepared from various kinds of raw material. Unfortunately, however, there is something wrong with the laboratory. The forces controlling the distribution of combustibles among the different CENTERS often make mistakes and the CENTERS receive fuel that is either too weak or too easily inflammable. Moreover, a great quantity of all the combustibles produced is spent quite uselessly; it simply runs out; is lost. Besides, explosions often take place in the laboratory which at one stroke destroy all the fuel prepared for the next day and possibly for even a longer period, and are able to cause irreparable dam age to the whole factory. Chapter Nine

“In reality Kundalini is the power of imagination, the power of fantasy, which takes the place of a real function. When a man dreams instead of acting, when his dreams take the place of reality, when a man imagines himself to be an eagle, a lion, or a magician, it is the force of Kundalini acting in him. Kundalini can act in all CENTERS and with its help all the CENTERS can be satisfied with the imaginary instead of the real. A sheep which considers itself a lion or a magician lives under the power of Kundalini. Chapter Eleven

“This however is possible only with the help of the emotional center. It is essential that this be understood. The connection with the large accumulator can be effected only through the emotional center. The instinctive, moving, and intellectual CENTERS, by themselves, can feed only on the small accumulators. Chapter Eleven

“Laughter is also directly connected with accumulators. But laughter is the opposite function to yawning. It is not pumping in, but pumping out, that is, the pumping out and the discarding of superfluous energy collected in the accumulators. Laughter does not exist in all CENTERS, but only in CENTERS divided into two halves — positive and negative. If I have not yet spoken of this in detail, I shall do so when we come to a more detailed study of the CENTERS. At present we shall take only the intellectual center. There can be impressions which fall at once on two halves of the center and produce at once a sharp ‘yes’ and ‘no.’ Such a simultaneous ‘yes’ and ‘no’ produces a kind of convulsion in the center and, being unable to harmonize and digest these two opposite impressions of one fact, the center begins to throw out in the form of laughter the energy which flows into it from the accumulator whose turn it is to supply it. In another instance it happens that in the accumulator there has collected too much energy which the center cannot manage to use up. Then every, the most ordinary, impression can be received as double, that is, it may fall at once on the two halves of the center and produce laughter, that is, the discarding of energy. Chapter Eleven

“You must understand that I am only giving you an outline. You must remember that both yawning and laughter are very contagious. This shows that they are essentially functions of the instinctive and the moving CENTERS.” Chapter Eleven

“Because,” G. answered, “laughter relieves us of superfluous energy, which, if it remained unused, might become negative, that is, poison. We always have plenty of this poison in us. Laughter is the antidote. But this antidote is necessary only so long as we are unable to use all the energy for useful work. It is said of Christ that he never laughed. And indeed you will find in the Gospels no indication or mention of the fact that at any time Christ laughed. But there are different ways of not laughing. There are people who do not laugh because they are completely immersed in negative emotions, in malice, in fear, in hatred, in suspicion. And there may be others who do not laugh because they cannot have negative emotions. Understand one thing. In the higher CENTERS there can be no laughter, because in higher CENTERS there is no division, and no ‘yes’ and ‘no.’” Chapter Eleven

It proved that friends and acquaintances asked very shrewd questions to which most of bur people had no answers. They asked for instance what we had got from the work and openly expressed doubts as to our “remembering ourselves.” On the other hand others had themselves no doubt whatever that they “remembered themselves.” Others found the “ray of creation” and the “seven cosmoses” ridiculous and useless; “What has ‘geography’ to do with this?” very wittily asked one of my friends parodying a sentence from an amusing play which had been running shortly before this; others asked who had seen the CENTERS and how they could be seen; others found absurd the idea that we could not “do.” Others found the idea of esotericism Chapter Twelve

“There is a good deal of truth in that,” said G. “But in that form it is, of course, much too general. Actually you did not see types of men and women but types of events. What I speak of refers to the real type, that is to say, to essence. If people were to live in essence one type would always find the other type and wrong types would never come together. But people live in personality. Personality has its own interests and its own tastes which have nothing in common with the interests and the tastes of essence. Personality in our case is the result of the wrong workwork of CENTERS. For this reason personality can dislike precisely what essence likes — and like what essence does not like. Here is where the struggle between essence and personality begins. Essence knows what it wants but cannot explain it. Personality does not want to hear of it and takes no account of it. It has its own desires. And it acts in its own way. But its power does not continue beyond that moment. After that, in some way or other, the two essences have to live together. And they hate one another. No sort of acting can help here. In one way or another essence or type gains the upper hand and decides. Chapter Twelve

“It is useful if there is abstinence in all CENTERS. If there is abstinence in one center and full liberty of imagination in the others, then there could be nothing worse. And still more, abstinence can be useful if a man knows what to do with the energy which he saves in this way. If he does not know what to do with it, nothing whatever can be gained by abstinence.” Chapter Twelve

“People have tried abstinence from times beyond memory. Sometimes, very rarely, it has led to something but in most cases what is called abstinence is simply exchanging normal sensations for abnormal, because the abnormal are more easily hidden. But it is not about this that I wish to speak. You must understand where lies the chief evil and what makes for slavery. It is not in sex itself but in the abuse of sex. But what the abuse of sex means is again misunderstood. People usually take this to be either excess or perversion. But these are comparatively innocent forms of abuse of sex. And it is necessary to know the human machine very well in order to grasp what abuse of sex in the real meaning of these words is. It means the wrong workwork of CENTERS in relation to sex, that is, the action of the sex center through other CENTERS, and the action of other CENTERS through the sex center; or, to be still more precise, the functioning of the sex center with energy borrowed from other CENTERS and the functioning of other CENTERS with energy borrowed from the sex center.” Chapter Twelve

“In the first place it must be noted that normally in the sex center as well as in the higher emotional and the higher thinking CENTERS, there is no negative side. In all the other CENTERS except the higher ones, in the thinking, in the emotional, in the moving, in the instinctive, in all of them there are, so to speak, two halves — the positive and the negative; affirmation and negation, or ‘yes’ and ‘no,’ in the thinking center, pleasant and unpleasant sensations in the moving and instinctive CENTERS. There is no such division in the sex center. There are no positive and negative sides in it. There are no unpleasant sensations or unpleasant feelings in it; there is either a pleasant sensation, a pleasant feeling, or there is nothing, an absence of any sensation, complete indifference. But in consequence of the wrong workwork of CENTERS it often happens that the sex center unites with the negative part of the emotional center or with the negative part of the instinctive center. And then, stimulation of a certain kind of the sex center, or even any stimulation at all of the sex center, calls forth unpleasant feelings and unpleasant sensations. People who experience unpleasant feelings and sensations which have been evoked in them through ideas and imagination connected with sex are inclined to regard them as a great virtue or as something original; in actual fact it is simply disease. Everything connected with sex should be either pleasant or indifferent. Unpleasant feelings and sensations all come from the emotional center or the instinctive center. Chapter Twelve

“This is the ‘abuse of sex.’ It is necessary, further, to remember that the sex center works with ‘hydrogen’ 12. This means that it is stronger and quicker than all other CENTERS. Sex, in fact, governs all other CENTERS. The only thing in ordinary circumstances, that is, when man has neither consciousness nor will, that holds the sex center in submission is ‘buffers.’ ‘Buffers’ can entirely bring it to nought, that is, they can stop its normal manifestation. But they cannot destroy its energy. The energy remains and passes over to other CENTERS, finding expression for itself through them; in other words, the other CENTERS rob the sex center of the energy which it does not use itself. The energy of the sex center in the work of the thinking, emotional, and moving CENTERS can be recognized by a particular ‘taste,’ by a particular fervor, by a vehemence which the nature of the affair concerned does not call for. The thinking center writes books, but in making use of the energy of the sex center it does not simply occupy itself with philosophy, science, or politics — it is always fighting something, disputing, criticizing, creating new subjective theories. The emotional center preaches Christianity, abstinence, asceticism, or the fear and horror of sin, hell, the torment of sinners, eternal fire, all this with the energy of the sex center. … Or on the other hand it works up revolutions, robs, bums, kills, again with the same energy. The moving center occupies itself with sport, creates various records, climbs mountains, jumps, fences, wrestles, fights, and so on. In all these instances, that is, in the work of the thinking center as well as in the work of the emotional and the moving CENTERS, when they work with the energy of the sex center, there is always one general characteristic and this is a certain particular vehemence and, together with it, the uselessness of the work in question. Neither the thinking nor the emotional nor the moving CENTERS can ever create anything useful with the energy of the sex center. This is an example of the ‘abuse of sex.’ Chapter Twelve

“But this is only one aspect of it. Another aspect consists in the fact that, when the energy of the sex center is plundered by the other CENTERS and spent on useless work, it has nothing left for itself and has to steal the energy of other CENTERS which is much lower and coarser than its own. And yet the sex center is very .important for the general activity, and particularly for the inner growth of the organism, because, working with ‘hydrogen’ 12, it can receive a very fine food of impressions, such as none of the ordinary CENTERS can receive. The fine food of impressions is very important for the manufacture of the higher ‘hydrogens.’ But when the sex center works with energy that is not its own, that is, with the comparatively low ‘hydrogens’ Chapter Twelve

“The role of the sex center in creating a general equilibrium and a permanent center of gravity can be very big. According to its energy, that is to say, if it uses its own energy, the sex center stands on a level with the higher emotional center. And all the other CENTERS are subordinate to it. Therefore it would be a great thing if it worked with its own energy. This alone would indicate a comparatively very high level of being. And in this case, that is, if the sex center worked with its own energy and in its own place, all other CENTERS could work correctly in their places and with their own energies.” Chapter Twelve

“It has already been said that the higher psychic CENTERS work in man’s higher states of consciousness: the ‘higher emotional’ and the ‘higher mental.’ The aim of ‘myths’ and ‘symbols’ was to reach man’s higher CENTERS, to transmit to him ideas inaccessible to the intellect and to transmit them in such forms as would exclude the possibility of false interpretations. ‘Myths’ were destined for the higher emotional center; ‘symbols’ for the higher thinking center. By virtue of this all attempts to understand or explain ‘myths’ and ‘symbols’ with the mind, or the formulas and the expressions which give a summary of their content, are doomed beforehand to failure. It is always possible to understand anything but only with the appropriate center. But the preparation for receiving ideas belonging to objective knowledge has to proceed by way of the mind, for only a mind properly prepared can transmit these ideas to the higher CENTERS without introducing elements foreign to them. Chapter Fourteen

“Man, in the normal state natural to him, is taken as a duality. He consists entirely of dualities or ‘pairs of opposites.’ All man’s sensations, impressions, feelings, thoughts, are divided into positive and negative, useful and harmful, necessary and unnecessary, good and bad, pleasant and unpleasant. The work of CENTERS proceeds under the sign of this division. Thoughts oppose feelings. Moving impulses oppose instinctive craving for quiet. This is the duality in which proceed all the perceptions, all the reactions, the whole life of man. Any man who observes himself, however little, can see this duality in himself. Chapter Fourteen

“Strengthening this decision and bringing it constantly and infallibly into all those events where formerly accidental neutralizing ‘shocks’ used to act and give accidental results, gives a permanent line of results in time and is the transformation of trinity into quaternity. The next stage, the transformation of quaternity into quinternity and the construction of the pentagram has not one but many different meanings even in relation to man. And of these is learned, first of all, one, which is the most beyond doubt, relating to the work of CENTERS. Chapter Fourteen

“The development of the human machine and the enrichment of being begins with a new and unaccustomed functioning of this machine. We know that a man has five CENTERS: the thinking, the emotional, the moving, the instinctive, and the sex. The predominant development of any one center at the expense of the others produces an extremely one-sided type of man, incapable of further development. But if a man brings the work of the five CENTERS within him into harmonious accord, he then ‘locks the pentagram within him’ and becomes a finished type of the physically perfect man. The full and proper functioning of five CENTERS brings them into union with the higher CENTERS which introduce the missing principle and put man into direct and permanent connection with objective consciousness and objective knowledge. Chapter Fourteen

In the following square he put figures 3 and 12 and two circles, each with a point at their CENTERS, and called it the “Eternal Unchanging,” and in the next square he put the figures 1 and 6; he put a circle in the middle and in this circle a triangle containing another circle with a point at its center and called it the “Absolute.” Chapter Sixteen

When I began to compare the movements of various cosmoses, I obtained some very startling correlations, for example, for the earth, the period of its rotation on its axis was equal to one ten-thousandth of a second, that is, the speed of an electric spark. It is very doubtful whether at such a speed the earth could notice its rotation on its axis. If man rotated, rotation round the sun should occupy about one twenty-fifth of a second, the speed of an instantaneous photograph. And taking into consideration the enormous distance which the earth has had to traverse in this time, the inevitable inference is that the earth could not be conscious of itself as we know it, that is, in the form of a sphere, but must be conscious of itself as a ring, or as a long spiral of rings. The latter was the more probable on the basis of the definition of the present as the time of breath. This was by the way the first thought that came into my mind when, a year previously, after the first lecture on cosmoses, G., in adding to what he had said earlier, said that time is breath. I thought at the time that perhaps he meant that breath was the unit of time, that is to say, that for direct sensation the period of breath is felt as the present. Starting from this and supposing that the sensation of self, that is, of one’s body, is connected with the sensation of the present, I came to the conclusion that for the earth, with one breath in eighty years, the sensation of itself should be connected with eighty rings of a spiral. I had obtained a completely unexpected confirmation of all the conclusions and inferences of the New Model of the Universe. Passing to the lower cosmoses, that is, to the cosmoses in my table which stood to the left of man, I found already in the first of them the explanation of what had always appeared to me the most enigmatic and most inexplicable in the work of our organism, namely, the astonishing speed, which was almost instantaneous, of many inner processes. It had always seemed to me to be almost charlatanism on the part of physi ologists that no due significance had been attributed to this fact. Science, of course, explains only what it can explain. But in this case it ought not, in my opinion, to conceal the fact and avoid it as if it did not exist, but should constantly draw attention to it, put it on record on every suitable occasion. A man who gives no thought to questions of physiology may not be astonished at the fact that the drinking of a cup of strong coffee or a glass of brandy, or inhaling the smoke of a cigarette is immediately felt in the whole body, changes all the inner correlation of forces and the form and character of the reactions, but it ought to be clear to a physiologist that in this quite imperceptible interval of time, approximately equal to one breath, a long series of complicated chemical and other processes are accomplished in the organism. The substance which has entered the organism is carefully analyzed, the smallest divergence from the usual is immediately noticed; in the process of analysis it passes through a series of laboratories; it is resolved into its component parts and mixed with other substances and in the form of these mixtures it is added to the fuel which nourishes the various nerve CENTERS. All this must occupy a great deal of time. The seconds in our time in which this is accomplished make all this entirely fantastic and miraculous. But the fantastic side falls away when we realize that for the large cells which obviously govern the life of the organism, our one breath continues for over twenty-four hours. In twenty-four hours, even in half that time, even in a third, that is, in eight hours (which is equal to one second), it is possible to imagine all the processes which, have been indicated being completed in an orderly way, exactly as they would be completed in a large and well-arranged “chemical factory” with various laboratories at its service. Chapter Sixteen

The next thing that interested me in the “table of time in different cosmoses,” as I called it, was the relation of cosmoses and of the time of different cosmoses to the CENTERS of the human body. Chapter Sixteen

G. spoke many times about the enormous difference in the speed of the different CENTERS. The reasoning which I have cited above in regard to the speed of the inner work of the organism led me to the thought that this speed belongs to the instinctive center. With this as a basis I tried to proceed from the thinking center, taking as the unit of its work, for example, the time necessary for one full apperception, that is, for the reception of an outside impression, the classification and definition of this impression — and for the responding reaction. Then if the CENTERS actually stand to one another in the relation of cosmoses, in exactly the same amount of time through the instinctive center there could pass 30, 000 apperceptions, through the higher emotional and in the sex CENTERS 30, 0002 apperceptions and through the higher thinking 30, 0003 apperceptions. Chapter Sixteen

At the same time according to the law, pointed out by G., of the correlation of cosmoses, the instinctive center in relation to the head or thinking center should embrace two cosmoses, that is, the second Microcosmos and the Tritocosmos. Further, the higher emotional and the sex CENTERS taken separately, should embrace the third Microcosmos and the Mesocosmos. And finally the higher thinking center should embrace the fourth Microcosmos and the Deuterocosmos. Chapter Sixteen

But the latter refers to higher development, to that development of man which cannot be obtained accidentally or in a natural way. In man’s normal state, an enormous advantage, in the sense of speed, over all the other CENTERS should be possessed by the sex center, working 30, 000 times faster than the instinctive or the moving and 30, 0002 times faster than the intellectual. Chapter Sixteen

In the relation of CENTERS to cosmoses in general very many possibilities of study, from my point of view, had been opened up. Chapter Sixteen

“If a man were able to work on himself everything would be very simple and schools would be unnecessary. But he cannot, and the reasons for this lie very deep in his nature. I will leave for the moment his insincerity with himself, the perpetual lies he tells himself, and so on, and take only the division of the CENTERS. This alone makes independent work on himself impossible for a man. You must understand that the three principal CENTERS, the thinking, the emotional, and the moving, are connected together and, In a normal man, they are always working in unison. This unison is what presents the chief difficulty in work on oneself. What is meant by this unison? It means that a definite work of the thinking center is connected with a definite work of the emotional and moving CENTERS — that is to say, that a certain kind of thought is inevitably connected with a certain kind of emotion (or mental state) and with a cer tain kind of movement (or posture); and one evokes the other, that is, a certain kind of emotion (or mental state) evokes certain movements or postures and certain thoughts, and a certain kind of movement or posture evokes certain emotions or mental states, and so forth. Everything is connected and one thing cannot exist without another thing. Chapter Seventeen

“Then work on moving center can only be properly organized in a school. As I have already said, the wrong, independent, or automatic work of the moving center deprives the other CENTERS of support and they involuntarily follow the moving center. Often, therefore, the sole possibility of making the other CENTERS work in a new way is to begin with the moving center; that is with the body. A body which is lazy, automatic, and full of stupid habits stops any kind of work.” Chapter Seventeen

“I do not know,” said G., “we are again talking in different languages. A wave of emotion is indispensable, but it cannot change moving habits; it cannot of itself make CENTERS work rightly which all their lives have been working wrongly. To change and repair this demands separate, special, and lengthy work. Then you say; transpose a man to another level of being. But from this point of view a man does not exist for me. There is a complex mechanism consisting of a whole series of complex parts. ‘A wave of emotion’ ‘takes place in one part but the other parts may not be affected by it at all. No miracles are possible in a machine. It is miracle enough that a machine is able to change. But you want all laws to be violated.” Chapter Seventeen

“Even if a man recognizes this and begins to struggle with it, his will is not sufficient. You must understand that a man’s will can be sufficient to govern one center for a short time. But the other two CENTERS prevent this. And a man’s will can never be sufficient to govern three CENTERS. Chapter Seventeen

“In order to oppose this automatism and gradually to acquire control over postures and movements in different CENTERS there is one special exercise. It consists in this — that at a word or sign, previously agreed upon, from the teacher, all the pupils who hear or see him have to arrest their movements at once, no matter what they are doing, and remain stock-still in the posture in which the signal has caught them. Moreover not only must they cease to move, but they must keep their eyes on the same spot at which they were looking at the moment of the signal, retain the smile on their faces, if there was one, keep the mouth open if a man was speaking, maintain the facial expression and the tension of all the muscles of the body exactly in the same position in which they were caught by the signal. In this ‘stopped’ state a man must also stop the flow of his thoughts and concentrate the whole of his attention on preserving the tension of the muscles in the various parts of the body exactly as it was, watching this tension all the time and leading so to speak his attention from one part of the body to another. And he must remain in this state and in this position until another agreed-upon signal allows him to adopt a customary posture or until he drops from fatigue through being unable to preserve the original posture any longer. But he has no right to change anything in it, neither his glance, points of support, nothing. If he cannot stand he must fall — but, again, he should fall like a sack without attempting to protect himself from a blow. In exactly the same way, if he was holding something in his hands he must hold it as long as he can and if his hands refuse to obey him and the object falls it is not his fault. Chapter Seventeen

“And this is particularly important in connection with the study of the divisions of CENTERS in oneself. Mention has been made of this several times before. You must understand that each center is divided into three parts in conformity with the primary division of CENTERS into ‘thinking,’ ’emotional,’ and ‘moving.’ On the same principle each of these parts in its turn is divided into three. In addition, from the very outset each center is divided into two parts: positive and negative. And in all parts there are groups of ‘rolls* connected together, some in one direction and others in another direction. This explains the differences between people, what is called ‘individuality.’ Of course there is in this no individuality at all, but simply a difference of ‘rolls’ and associations.” Chapter Eighteen