“These four bodies are defined in different teachings in various ways.” G. drew a diagram and said: “The first is the physical body, in CHRISTIAN terminology the ‘carnal’ body; the second, in CHRISTIAN terminology, is the ‘natural’ body; the third is the ‘spiritual’ body; and the fourth, in the terminology of esoteric CHRISTIANity, is the ‘divine’ body. In theosophical terminology the first is the ‘physical’ body, the second is the ‘astral,’ the third is the ‘mental,’ and the fourth the ‘causal.’1 Fragments: Two

“In pronouncing the word ‘man’ everyone will involuntarily connect with this word the point of view from which he is generally accustomed to regard man, or from which, for some reason or other, he regards him at the moment. One man at the moment may be occupied with the question of the relation between the sexes. Then the word ‘man’ will have no general meaning for him and on hearing this word he will first of all ask himself — Which? man or woman? Another man may be religious and his first question will be — A CHRISTIAN or not a CHRISTIAN? The third man may be a doctor and the concept ‘man’ will mean for him a ‘sick man’ or a ‘healthy man,’ and, of course from the point of view of his speciality. A spiritualist will think of ‘man’ from the point of view of his ‘astral body,’ of ‘life on the other side,’ and so on, and he may say, if he is asked, that men are divided into mediums and non-mediums. A naturalist speaking of man will place the center of gravity of his thoughts in the idea of man as a zoological type, that is to say, in speaking of man he will think of the structure of his teeth, his fingers, his facial angle, the distance between the eyes. A lawyer will see in ‘man’ a statistical unit, or a subject for the application of laws, or a potential criminal, or a possible client. Fragments: Four

“In actual fact CHRISTIANity number one, number two, and number three is simply external imitation. Only man number four strives to be a CHRISTIAN and only man number five can actually be a CHRISTIAN. For to be a CHRISTIAN means to have the being of a CHRISTIAN, that is, to live in accordance with Christ’s precepts. Fragments: Four

“In a man with a religious conception of the world, a CHRISTIAN, the word ‘world’ will call up a whole series of religious ideas, will necessarily become connected with the idea of God, with the idea of the creation of the world or the end of the world, or of the ‘sinful’ world, and so on. Fragments: Four

“The souls that go to the moon, possessing perhaps even a certain amount of consciousness and memory, find themselves there under ninety-six laws, in the conditions of mineral life, or to put it differently, in conditions from which there is no escape apart from a general evolution in immeasurably long planetary cycles. The moon is ‘at the extremity,’ at the end of the world; it is the ‘outer darkness’ of the CHRISTIAN doctrine ‘where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ Fragments: Five

“I should like to understand the teaching of Christ, and to be a CHRISTIAN in the true sense of the term,” said the next. Fragments: Six

“Another question was how to become a CHRISTIAN. Fragments: Six

“First of all it is necessary to understand that a CHRISTIAN is not a man who calls himself a CHRISTIAN or whom others call a CHRISTIAN. A CHRISTIAN is one who lives in accordance with Christ’s precepts. Such as we are we cannot be CHRISTIANs. In order to be CHRISTIANs we must be able ‘to do.’ We cannot do; with us everything ‘happens.’ Christ says: ‘Love your enemies,’ but how can we love our enemies when we cannot even love our friends? Sometimes ‘it loves’ and sometimes ‘it does not love.’ Such as we are we cannot even really desire to be CHRISTIANs because, again, sometimes ‘it desires’ and sometimes ‘it does not desire.’ And one and the same thing cannot be desired for long, because suddenly, instead of desiring to be a CHRISTIAN, a man remembers a very good but very expensive carpet that he has seen in a shop. And instead of wishing to be a CHRISTIAN he begins to think how he can manage to buy this carpet, forgetting all about CHRISTIANity. Or if somebody else does not believe what a wonderful CHRISTIAN he is, he will be ready to eat him alive or to roast him on hot coals. In order to be a good CHRISTIAN one must be. To be means to be master of oneself. If a man is not his own master he has nothing and can have nothing. And he cannot be a CHRISTIAN. He is simply a machine, an automaton. A machine cannot be a CHRISTIAN. Think for yourselves, is it possible for a motorcar or a typewriter or a gramophone to be CHRISTIAN? They are simply things which are controlled by chance. They are not responsible. They are machines. To be a CHRISTIAN means to be re­sponsible. Responsibility comes later when a man even partially ceases to be a machine, and begins in fact, and not only in words, to desire to be a CHRISTIAN.” Fragments: Six

“Let us suppose, for example, that a man called Ivanov hears the description of this method of self-observation. He is told that a man must divide himself, ‘he’ or ‘I’ on one side and ‘Ouspensky,’ ‘Tetrov,’ or ‘Zakharov’ on the other side. And he divides himself literally as he hears it. ‘This is I,’ he says, ‘and that is “Ouspensky,” “Petrov,” or “Zakharov.”‘ He will never say ‘Ivanov.’ He finds that unpleasant, so he will inevitably use somebody else’s surname or CHRISTIAN name. Moreover he calls ‘I’ what he likes in himself or at any rate what he considers to be strong, while he calls ‘Ouspensky,’ ‘Petrov,’ or ‘Zakharov’ what he does not like or what he considers to be weak. On this basis he begins to reason in many ways about himself, quite wrongly of course from the very beginning, since he has already deceived himself in the most important point and has taken not his real self, that is, he has taken, not Ivanov, but the imaginary ‘Ouspensky,’ ‘Petrov’ or ‘Zakharov.’ Fragments: Eight

“It is difficult even to imagine how often a man dislikes to use his own name in speaking of himself in the third person. He tries to avoid it in every possible way. He calls himself by another name, as in the instance just mentioned; he devises an artificial name for himself, a name by which nobody ever has or ever will call him, or he calls himself simply ‘he,’ and so on. In this connection people who are accustomed in their mental conversations to call themselves by their CHRISTIAN name, or surname or by pet names are no exception. When it comes to self-observation they prefer to call themselves ‘Ouspensky’ or to say ‘Ouspensky in me,’ as though there could be an ‘Ouspensky’ in them. There is quite enough of ‘Ouspensky’ for Ouspensky himself. Fragments: Eight

“Morality consists of ‘buffers.’ And since ‘buffers’ are of various kinds, and as the conditions of life in different countries and in different ages or among different classes of society vary considerably, so the morality created by them is also very dissimilar and contradictory. A morality common to all does not exist. It is even impossible to say that there exists any general idea of morality, for instance, in Europe. It is said sometimes that the general morality for Europe is ‘CHRISTIAN morality.’ But first of all the idea of ‘CHRISTIAN morality’ itself admits of very many different interpretations and many different crimes have been justified by ‘CHRISTIAN morality.’ And in the second place modern Europe has very little in common with ‘CHRISTIAN morality,’ no matter how we understand this morality. Fragments: Eight

“In any case, if ‘CHRISTIAN morality’ brought Europe to the war which is now going on, then it would be as well to be as far as possible from such morality,” Fragments: Eight

“Of course not,” said G. “People are very fond of talking about morality. But morality is merely self-suggestion. What is necessary is conscience. We do not teach morality. We teach how to find conscience. People are not pleased when we say this. They say that we have no love. Simply because we do not encourage weakness and hypocrisy but, on the contrary, take off all masks. He who desires the truth will not speak of love or of CHRISTIANity because he knows how far he is from these. CHRISTIAN teaching is for CHRISTIANs. And CHRISTIANs are those who live, that is, who do everything, according to Christ’s precepts. Can they who talk of love and morality live according to Christ’s precepts? Of course they cannot; but there will always be talk of this kind, there will always be people to whom words are more precious than anything else. But this is a true sign! He who speaks like this is an empty man; it is not worth while wasting time on him. Fragments: Eight

“CHRISTIANity forbids murder. Yet all that the whole of our progress comes to is progress in the technique of murder and progress in warfare. How can we call ourselves CHRISTIANs? “No one has a right to call himself a CHRISTIAN who docs not carry out Christ’s precepts. A man can say that he desires to be a CHRISTIAN if he tries to carry out these precepts. If he does not think of them at all, or laughs at them, or substitutes for them some inventions of his own, or simply forgets about them, he has no right whatever to call himself a CHRISTIAN. Fragments: Fifteen

“I took the example of war as it is the most striking example. But even without war the whole of life is exactly the same. People call themselves CHRISTIANs but they do not realize that not only do they not want, but they are unable, to be CHRISTIANs, because in order to be a CHRISTIAN it is necessary not only to desire, but to be able, to be one. Fragments: Fifteen

“Cannot prayer help a man to live like a CHRISTIAN?” asked someone. Fragments: Fifteen

“In CHRISTIAN worship there are very many prayers exactly like this, where it is necessary to reflect upon each word. But they lose all sense and all meaning when they are repeated or sung mechanically. Fragments: Fifteen

“Generally speaking we know very little about CHRISTIANity and the form of CHRISTIAN worship; we know nothing at all of the history and origin of a number of things. For instance, the church, the temple in which gather the faithful and in which services are carried out according to special rites; where was this taken from? Many people do not think about this at all. Many people think that the outward form of worship, the rites, the singing of canticles, and so on, were invented by the fathers of the church. Others think that this outward form has been taken partly from pagan religions and partly from the Hebrews. But all of it is untrue. The question of the origin of the CHRISTIAN church, that is, of the CHRISTIAN temple, is much more interesting than we think. To begin with, the church and worship in the form which they took in the first centuries of CHRISTIANity could not have been borrowed from paganism because there was nothing like it either in the Greek or Roman cults or in Judaism. The Jewish synagogue, the Jewish temple, Greek and Roman temples of various gods, were something quite different from the CHRISTIAN church which made its appearance in the first and second centuries. The CHRISTIAN church is — a school concerning which people have forgotten that it is a school. Imagine a school where the teachers give lectures and perform explanatory demonstrations without knowing that these are lectures and demonstrations; and where the pupils or simply the people who come to the school take these lectures and demonstrations for ceremonies, or rites, or ‘sacraments,’ i.e., magic. This would approximate to the CHRISTIAN church of our times. Fragments: Fifteen

“The CHRISTIAN church, the CHRISTIAN form of worship, was not invented by the fathers of the church. It was all taken in a ready-made form from Egypt, only not from the Egypt that we know but from one which we do not know. This Egypt was in the same place as the other but it existed much earlier. Only small bits of it survived in historical times, and these bits have been preserved in secret and so well that we do not even know where they have been preserved. Fragments: Fifteen

“It will seem strange to many people when I say that this prehistoric Egypt was CHRISTIAN many thousands of years before the birth of Christ, that is to say, that its religion was composed of the same principles and ideas that constitute true CHRISTIANity. Special schools existed in this prehistoric Egypt which were called ‘schools of repetition.’ In these schools a public repetition was given on definite days, and in some schools perhaps even every day, of the entire course in a condensed form of the sciences that could be learned at these schools. Sometimes this repetition lasted a week or a month. Thanks to these repetitions people who had passed through this course did not lose their connection with the school and retained in their memory all they had learned. Sometimes they came from very far away simply in order to listen to the repetition and went away feeling their connection with the school. There were special days of the year when the repetitions were particularly complete, when they were carried out with particular solemnity — and these days themselves possessed a symbolical meaning. Fragments: Fifteen

“These ‘schools of repetition’ were taken as a model for CHRISTIAN churches — the form of worship in CHRISTIAN churches almost entirely represents the course of repetition of the science dealing with the universe and man. Individual prayers, hymns, responses, all had their own meaning in this repetition as well as holidays and all religious symbols, though their meaning has been forgotten long ago.” Fragments: Fifteen

Indicating what had been preserved up to our time, G. at the same time pointed out what had been lost and forgotten. He spoke of sacred dances which accompanied the “services” in the “temples of repetition” and which were not included in the CHRISTIAN form of worship. He also spoke of various exercises, and of special postures for different prayers, that is, for different kinds of meditation; about acquiring control over the breathing and of the necessity of being able to tense or relax any group of muscles, or the muscles of the whole body at will; and about many other things having relation, so to speak, to the “technique” of religion. Fragments: Fifteen