“The second way is the way of the monk. This is the way of faith, the way of religious feeling, religious sacrifice. Only a man with very strong religious EMOTIONs and a very strong religious imagination can become a ‘monk’ in the true sense of the word. The way of the monk also is very long and hard. A monk spends years and tens of years struggling with himself, but all his work is concentrated on the second room, on the second body, that is, on feelings. Subjecting all his other EMOTIONs to one EMOTION, that is, to faith, he develops unity in himself, will over the EMOTIONs, and in this way reaches the fourth room. But his physical body and his thinking capacities may remain undeveloped. In order to be able to make use of what he has attained, he must develop his body and his capacity to think. This can only be achieved by means of fresh sacrifices, fresh hardships, fresh renunciations. A monk has to become a yogi and a fakir. Very few get as far as this; even fewer overcome all difficulties. Most of them either die before this or become monks in outward appearance only. Fragments: Two

“Sensation and EMOTION do not reason, do not compare, they simply define a given impression by its aspect, by its being pleasant or unpleasant in one sense or another, by its color, taste, or smell. Moreover, sensations can be indifferent — neither warm nor cold, neither pleasant nor unpleasant: ‘white paper,’ ‘red pencil.’ In the sensation of white or red there is nothing either pleasant or unpleasant. At any rate there need not necessarily be anything pleasant or unpleasant connected with this or that color. These sensations, the so-called ‘five senses,’ and others, like the feeling of warmth, cold, and so on, are instinctive. Feeling functions or EMOTIONs are always pleasant or unpleasant; indifferent EMOTIONs do not exist. Fragments: Six

“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

After the ‘hydrogens’ G. at once went further. “We want to ‘do,’ but” (he began the next lecture) “in everything we do we are tied and limited by the amount of energy produced by our organism. Every function, every state, every action, every thought, every EMOTION, requires a certain definite energy, a certain definite substance. Fragments: Nine

“It has been explained before that in ordinary conditions of life we do not remember ourselves; we do not remember, that is, we do not feel ourselves, are not aware of ourselves at the moment of a perception, of an EMOTION, of a thought or of an action. If a man understands this and tries to remember himself, every impression he receives while remembering himself will, so to speak, be doubled. In an ordinary psychic state I simply look at a street. But if I remember myself, I do not simply look at the street; I feel that I am looking, as though saying to myself: ‘I am looking.’ Instead of one impression of the street there are two impressions, one of the street and another of myself looking at it. This second impression, produced by the fact of my remembering myself, is the ‘additional shock.’ Moreover, it very often happens that the additional sensation connected with self-remembering brings with it an element of EMOTION, that is, the work of the machine attracts a certain amount of ‘carbon’ 12 to the place in question. Efforts to remember oneself, observation of oneself at the moment of receiving an impression, observation of one’s impressions at the moment of receiving them, registering, so to speak, the reception of impressions and the simultaneous defining of the impressions received, all this taken together doubles the intensity of the impressions and carries do 48 to re 24. At the same time the effort connected with the transition of one note to another and the passage of 48 itself to 24 enables do 48 of the third octave to come into contact with mi 48 of the second octave and to give this note the requisite amount of energy necessary for the transition of mi to fa. In this way the ‘shock’ given to do 48 extends also to mi 48 and enables the second octave to develop. Fragments: Nine

“The effort which creates this ‘shock’ must consist in work on the EMOTIONs, in the transformation and transmutation of the EMOTIONs. This transmutation of the EMOTIONs will then help the transmutation of si 12 in the human organism. No serious growth, that is, no growth of higher bodies within the organism, is possible without this transmutation. The idea of this transmutation was known to many ancient teachings as well as to some comparatively recent ones, such as the alchemy of the Middle Ages. But the alchemists spoke of this transmutation in the allegorical forms of the transformation of base metals into precious ones. In reality, however, they meant the transformation of coarse ‘hydrogens’ into finer ones in the human organism, chiefly of the transformation of mi 12. If this transformation is attained, a man can be said to have ‘achieved what he was striving for, and it can also be said that, until this transformation is attained, all results attained by a man can be lost because they are not fixed in him in any way; moreover, they are attained only in the spheres of thought and EMOTION. Real, objective results can be obtained only after the transmutation of mi 12 has begun. Fragments: 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. Fragments: Nine

“It must be noted that the organism usually produces in the course of one day all the substances necessary for the following day. And it very often happens that all these substances are spent or consumed upon some unnecessary and, as a rule, unpleasant EMOTION. Bad moods, worry, the expectation of something unpleasant, doubt, fear, a feeling of injury, irritation, each of these EMOTIONs in reaching a certain degree of intensity may, in half an hour, or even half a minute, consume all the substances prepared for the next day; while a single flash of anger, or some other violent EMOTION, can at once explode all the substances prepared in the laboratory and leave a man quite empty inwardly for a long time or even forever. Fragments: Nine

It all started with my beginning to hear his thoughts. We were sitting in a small room with a carpetless wooden floor as it happens in country houses. I sat opposite G., and Dr. S. and Z. at either side. G. spoke of our “features,” of our inability to see or to speak the truth. His words perturbed me very much. And suddenly I noticed that among the words which he was saying to us all there were “thoughts” which were intended for me. I caught one of these thoughts and replied to it, speaking aloud in the ordinary way. G. nodded to me and stopped speaking. There was a fairly long pause. He sat still saying nothing. After a while I heard his voice inside me as it were in the chest near the heart. He put a definite question to me. I looked at him; he was sitting and smiling. His question provoked in me a very strong EMOTION. But I answered him in the affirmative. Fragments: Thirteen

“One of the most central of the ideas of objective knowledge,” said G., “is the idea of the unity of everything, of unity in diversity. From ancient times people who have understood the content and the meaning of this idea, and have seen in it the basis of objective knowledge, have endeavored to find a way of transmitting this idea in a form comprehensible to others. The successive transmission of the ideas of objective knowledge has always been a part of the task of those possessing this knowledge. In such cases the idea of the unity of everything, as the fundamental and central idea of this knowledge, had to be transmitted first and transmitted with adequate completeness and exactitude. And to do this the idea had to be put into such forms as would insure its proper perception by others and avoid in its transmission the possibility of distortion and corruption. For this purpose the people to whom the idea was being transmitted were required to undergo a proper preparation, and the idea itself was put either into a logical form, as for instance in philosophical systems which endeavored to give a definition of the ‘fundamental principle’ or from which everything else was derived, or into religious teachings which endeavored to create an element of faith and to evoke a wave of EMOTION carrying people up to the level of ‘objective consciousness.’ The attempts of both the one and the other, sometimes more sometimes less successful, run through the whole history of mankind from the most ancient times up to our own time and they have taken the form of religious and philosophical creeds which have remained like monuments on the paths of these attempts to unite the thought of mankind and esoteric thought. Fragments: Fourteen

“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 cer­tain 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. Fragments: Seventeen

“But is it not possible for man to be at once transposed to another stage of being by a wave of EMOTION?” someone asked. “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.” Fragments: Seventeen

“That is another thing entirely,” said G., “and it illustrates an altogether different idea. In the first place it took place on the cross, that is, in the midst of terrible sufferings to which ordinary life holds nothing equal; secondly, it was at the moment of death. This refers to the idea of man’s last thoughts and feelings at the moment of death. In life these pass by, they are replaced by other habitual thoughts. There can be no prolonged wave of EMOTION in life and therefore it cannot give rise to a change of being. Fragments: Seventeen

During the summer and autumn of 1919 I received two letters from G. in Ekaterinodar and Novorossiysk. … He wrote that he had opened in Tiflis an “Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man” on a very broad program and enclosed a prospectus of this “Institute” which made me very thoughtful indeed. The prospectus began in this way: With the permission of the Minister for National Education the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man based on G. I. G.’s system is being opened in Tiflis. The Institute accepts children and adults of both sexes. Study will take place morning and evening. The subjects of study are: gymnastics of all kinds (rhythmical, medicinal, and others). Exercises for the development of will, memory, attention, hearing, thinking, EMOTION, instinct, and so on. Fragments: Eighteen