“The monk knows what he wants a little better; he is guided by religious feeling, by religious tradition, by a desire for achievement, for salvation; he trusts his teacher who tells him what to do, and he believes that his efforts and sacrifices are ‘pleasing to God.’ Let us suppose that a week of FASTING, continual prayer, privations, and so on, enables him to attain what the fakir develops in himself by a month of self-torture. Fragments: Two

I began a series of experiments or exercises, making use of a certain experience in this direction that I had acquired earlier. I carried out a series of short but very intensive fasts. I call them “intensive” because I did not take them at all from the hygienic point of view but tried, on the contrary, to give the strongest possible shocks to the organism. In addition to this I began to “breathe” according to a definite system which, together with FASTING, had given me interesting psychological results before; and also “repetition” on the method of the “prayer of the mind” which had helped me very much before to concentrate my attention and to observe myself. And also a series of mental exercises of a rather complicated kind for the concentration of the attention. I do not describe these experiments and exercises in detail because they were, after all, attempts to feel my way, without having exact knowledge of possible results. Fragments: Thirteen

All this interested me particularly because certain experiments I had carried out had led me long ago to conclude that physical states, which are connected with new psychological experiences, begin with feeling the pulse throughout the whole body, which is what we do not feel in ordinary conditions; in this connection the pulse is felt at once in all parts of the body as one stroke. In my own personal experiments “feeling” the pulsation throughout the whole body was brought about, for instance, by certain breathing exercises connected with several days of FASTING. I came to no definite results whatever in my own experiments but there remains with me the deep conviction that control over the body begins with acquiring control over the pulse. Acquiring for a short time the possibility of regulating, quickening, and slowing the pulse, I was able to slow down or quicken the heart beat and this in its turn gave me very interesting psychological results. I understood in a general way that control over the heart could not come from the heart muscles but that it depended upon controlling the pulse (the second stroke or the “big heart”) and G. had explained a great deal to me in pointing out that control over the “second heart” depends upon controlling the tension of the muscles, because we do not possess this control chiefly in consequence of the wrong and irregular tension of various groups of muscles. Fragments: Seventeen

In Essentuki at that time G. made us, among other things, carry out a small experiment in FASTING. I had carried out experiments of this kind before and a good deal was familiar to me. But for many others the feeling of days which were endlessly long, of complete emptiness, of a kind of futility of existence, was new. Fragments: Seventeen

The short fast of which I spoke was also accompanied by special exercises. In the first place G. explained at the beginning of the fast that the difficulty in FASTING consisted in not leaving unused the substances which are prepared in the organism for the digestion of food. Fragments: Seventeen

“These substances consist of very strong solutions,” he said. “And if they are left without attention they will poison the organism. They must be used up. But how can they be used up if the organism gets no food? Only by an increase of work, an increase of perspiration. People make a tremendous mistake when they try to ‘save their strength,’ make fewer movements, and so on, when FASTING. On the contrary it is necessary to expend as much energy as possible. Then FASTING can be beneficial.” Fragments: Seventeen

“You must realize that there are three kinds of breathing. One is normal breathing. The second is ‘inflation.’ The third is breathing assisted by movements. What does this mean? It means that normal breathing goes on unconsciously, it is managed and controlled by the moving center. ‘Inflation’ is artificial breathing. If for instance a man says to himself that he will count ten inhaling and ten exhaling, or that he will inhale through the right nostril and exhale through the left — this is done by the formatory apparatus. And the breathing itself is different because the moving center and the formatory apparatus act through different groups of muscles. The group of muscles through which the moving center acts are neither accessible nor subordinate to the formatory apparatus. But in the event of a temporary stoppage of the moving center the formatory apparatus has been given a group of muscles which it can influence and with whose help it can set the breathing mechanism in motion. But its work will of course be worse than the work of the moving center and it cannot go on for long. You have read the book about ‘yogi breathing,’ you have heard or have also read about the special breathing connected with the ‘mental prayer’ in Orthodox monasteries. It is all one and the same thing. Breathing proceeding from the formatory apparatus is not breathing but ‘inflation.’ The idea is that if a man carries out this kind of breathing long enough and often enough through the formatory apparatus, the moving center which remains idle during this period can get tired of doing nothing and start working in ‘imitation’ of the formatory apparatus. And indeed this sometimes happens. But so that this should happen many conditions are necessary, FASTING and prayer are necessary and little sleep and all kinds of difficulties and burdens for the body. If the body is well treated this cannot happen. You think there are no physical exercises in Orthodox monasteries? Well, you try to carry out one hundred prostrations according to all the rules. You will have an aching back that no kind of gymnastics could ever give. Fragments: Eighteen