Later on I understood what G. called “CONSIDERING,” and realized what an enormous place it occupies in life and how much it gives rise to. G. called “CONSIDERING” that attitude which creates inner slavery, inner dependence. Afterwards we had occasion to speak a great deal about this. Fragments: One

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 dis­tinguish 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. Fragments: Three

“Man such as we know him, the ‘man-machine,’ the man who cannot ‘do,’ and with whom and through whom everything ‘happens,’ cannot have a permanent and single I. His I changes as quickly as his thoughts, feelings, and moods, and he makes a profound mistake in CONSIDERING himself always one and the same person; in reality he is always a different person, not the one he was a moment ago. Fragments: Three

“Such a course of things, that is, a change of direction, we can observe in everything. After a certain period of energetic activity or strong emotion or a right understanding a reaction comes, work becomes tedious and tiring; moments of fatigue and indifference enter into feeling; instead of right thinking a search for compromises begins; suppression, evasion of difficult problems. But the line continues to develop though now not in the same direction as at the beginning. Work becomes mechanical, feeling becomes weaker and weaker, descends to the level of the common events of the day; thought becomes dogmatic, literal. Everything proceeds in this way for a certain time, then again there is reaction, again a stop, again a deviation. The development of the force may continue but the work which was begun with great zeal and enthusiasm has become an obligatory and useless formality; a number of entirely foreign elements have entered into feeling — CONSIDERING, vexation, irritation, hostility; thought goes round in a circle, repeating what was known before, and the way out which had been found becomes more and more lost. Fragments: Seven

“But man does not know of the third state of consciousness or even suspect it. Nor can he suspect it because if you were to explain to him what the third state of consciousness is, that is to say, in what it consists, he would say that it was his usual state. He considers himself to be a conscious being governing his own life. Facts that contradict that, he considers to be accidental or temporary, which will change by themselves. By CONSIDERING that he possesses self-consciousness, as it were by nature, a man will not of course try to approach or obtain it. And yet without self­consciousness, or the third state, the fourth, except in rare flashes, is impossible. Knowledge, however, the real objective knowledge towards which man, as he asserts, is struggling, is possible only in the fourth state of consciousness, that is, it is conditional upon the full possession of the fourth state of consciousness. Knowledge which is acquired in the ordinary state of consciousness is intermixed with dreams. There you have a complete picture of the being of man number one, two, and three.” Fragments: Eight

“After general forms of identification attention must be given to a particular form of identifying, namely identifying with people, which takes the form of ‘CONSIDERING’ them. Fragments: Eight

“There are several different kinds of ‘CONSIDERING.’ Fragments: Eight

“And he ‘considers’ not only separate persons but society and historically constituted conditions. Everything that displeases such a man seems to him to be unjust, illegal, wrong, and illogical. And the point of departure for his judgment is always that these things can and should be changed. ‘Injustice’ is one of the words in which very often CONSIDERING hides itself. When a man has convinced himself that he is indignant with some injustice, then for him to stop CONSIDERING would mean ‘reconciling himself to injustice.’ Fragments: Eight

“All this and much else besides is merely a form of identification. Such CONSIDERING is wholly based upon ‘requirements.’ A man inwardly ‘re-quires’ that everyone should see what a remarkable man he is and that they should constantly give expression to their respect, esteem, and admiration for him, for his intellect, his beauty, his cleverness, his wit, his presence of mind, his originality, and all his other qualities. Requirements in their turn are based on a completely fantastic notion about themselves such as very often occurs with people of very modest appearance. Various writers, actors, musicians, artists, and politicians, for instance, are almost without exception sick people. And what are they suffering from? First of all from an extraordinary’ opinion of themselves, then from requirements, and then from CONSIDERING, that is, being ready and prepared beforehand to take offense at lack of understanding and lack of appreciation. Fragments: Eight

“There is still another form of CONSIDERING which can take a great deal of energy from a man. This form starts with a man beginning to think that he is not CONSIDERING another person enough, that this other person is offended with him for not CONSIDERING him sufficiently. And he begins to think himself that perhaps he does not think enough about this other, does not pay him enough attention, does not give way to him enough. All this is simply weakness. People are afraid of one another. But this can lead very far. I have seen many such cases. In this way a man can finally lose his balance, if at any time he had any, and begin to perform entirely senseless actions. He gets angry with himself and feels that it is stupid, and he cannot stop, whereas in such cases the whole point is precisely ‘not to consider.’ Fragments: Eight

“As I have already said, people very often think that if they begin to struggle with CONSIDERING within themselves it will make them ‘insincere’ and they are afraid of this because they think that in this event they will be losing something, losing a part of themselves. In this case the same thing takes place as in attempts to struggle against the outward expression of unpleasant emotions. The sole difference is that in one case a man struggles with the outward expression of emotions and in the other case with an inner manifestation of perhaps the same emotions. Fragments: Eight

“This fear of losing sincerity is of course self-deception, one of those formulas of lying upon which human weaknesses are based. Man cannot help identifying and CONSIDERING inwardly and he cannot help expressing his unpleasant emotions, simply because he is weak. Identifying, CONSIDERING, the expressing of unpleasant emotions, are manifestations of his weakness, his impotence, his inability to control himself. But not wishing to acknowledge this weakness to himself, he calls it ‘sincerity’ or ‘honesty’ and he tells himself that he does not want to struggle against sincerity, whereas in fact he is unable to struggle against his weaknesses. Fragments: Eight

“So far I have spoken of internal CONSIDERING. It would be possible to bring forward many more examples. But you must do this yourselves, that is, you must seek these examples in your observations of yourselves and of others. Fragments: Eight

“The opposite of internal CONSIDERING and what is in part a means of fighting against it is external CONSIDERING. External CONSIDERING is based upon an entirely different relationship towards people than internal CONSIDERING. It is adaptation towards people, to their understanding, to their requirements. By CONSIDERING externally a man does that which makes life easy for other people and for himself. External CONSIDERING requires a knowledge of men, an understanding of their tastes, habits, and prejudices. At the same time external CONSIDERING requires a great power over oneself, a great control over oneself. Very often a man desires sincerely to express or somehow or other show to another man what he really thinks of him or feels about him. And if he is a weak man he will of course give way to this desire and afterwards justify himself and say that he did not want to lie, did not want to pretend, he wanted to be sincere. Then he convinces himself that it was the other man’s fault. He really wanted to consider him, even to give way to him, not to quarrel, and so on. But the other man did not at all want to consider him so that nothing could be done with him. It very often happens that a man begins with a blessing and ends with a curse. He begins by deciding not to consider and afterwards blames other people for not CONSIDERING him. This is an example of how external CONSIDERING passes into internal CONSIDERING. But if a man really remembers himself he understands that another man is a machine just as he is himself. And then he will enter into his position, he will put himself in his place, and he will be really able to understand and feel what another man thinks and feels. If he can do this his work becomes easier for him. But if he approaches a man with his own requirements nothing except new internal CONSIDERING can ever be obtained from it. Fragments: Eight

“Right external CONSIDERING is very important in the work. It often happens that people who understand very well the necessity of external CONSIDERING in life do not understand the necessity of external CONSIDERING in the work; they decide that just because they are in the work they have the right not to consider. Whereas in reality, in the work, that is, for a man’s own successful work, ten times more external CONSIDERING is necessary than in life, because only external CONSIDERING on his part shows his valuation of the work and his understanding of the work; and success in the work is always proportional to the valuation and understanding of it. Remember that work cannot begin and cannot proceed on a level lower than that of the obyvatel,1 that is, on a level lower than ordinary life. This is a very important principle which, for some reason or other, is very easily forgotten. But we will speak about this separately afterwards.” Fragments: Eight

“The practice of not expressing unpleasant emotions, of not ‘identifying,’ of not ‘CONSIDERING inwardly,’ is the preparation for the second effort. Fragments: Nine

“The next demand made of members of a group is that they must remember why they came to the group. They came to learn and to work on themselves and to learn and to work not as they understand it themselves but as they are told to. If, therefore, once they are in the group, they begin to feel or to express mistrust towards the teacher, to criticize his actions, to find that they understand better how the group should be conducted and especially if they show lack of external CONSIDERING in relation to the teacher, lack of respect for him, asperity, impatience, tendency to argument, this at once puts an end to any possibility of work, for work is possible only as long as people remember that they have come to learn and not to teach. Fragments: Eleven

“As I have said already, one of the first demands is sincerity. But there are different kinds of sincerity. There is clever sincerity and there is stupid sincerity, just as there is clever insincerity and stupid insincerity. Both stupid sincerity and stupid insincerity are equally mechanical. But if a man wishes to learn to be cleverly sincere, he must be sincere first of all with his teacher and with people who are senior to him in the work. This will be ‘clever sincerity.’ But here it is necessary to note that sincerity must not become ‘lack of CONSIDERING.’ Lack of CONSIDERING in relation to the teacher or in relation to those whom the teacher has appointed, as I have said already, destroys all possibility of any work. If he wishes to learn to be cleverly insincere he must be insincere about the work and he must learn to be silent when he ought to be silent with people outside it, who can neither understand nor appreciate it. But sincerity in the group is an absolute demand, because, if a man continues to lie in the group in the same way as he lies to himself and to others in life, he will never learn to distinguish the truth from a lie. Fragments: Eleven

On the small table beside him there stood an unfinished glass of tea. He gazed at it for a long time as though CONSIDERING something. He glanced around him twice, then again looked at the glass, and said in such a serious voice and with such serious intonations that we all looked at one another: “I think I should like some raspberry jam.” Fragments: Twelve

The talk about impressions brought us once more to “inner” and “outward CONSIDERING.” Fragments: Thirteen

“There cannot be proper outward CONSIDERING while a man is seated in his chief feature,” said G. “For instance So-and-So” (he named one of our party). “His feature is that he is never at home. How can he consider anything or anybody?” Fragments: Thirteen