“I mentioned before about FATE and accident in man’s life. We will now take the meaning of these words in more detail. Fate also exists but not for everyone. Most people are separated from their FATE and live under the law of accident only. Fate is the result of planetary influences which correspond to a man’s type. We will speak about types later. In the meantime you must grasp one thing. A man can have the FATE which corresponds to his type but he practically never does have it. This arises because FATE has relation to only one part of man, namely to his essence. Fragments: Eight

“No, it does not mean this at all,” G. answered him. “Fate is better than accident only in the sense that it is possible to take it into account, it is possible to know it beforehand; it is possible to prepare for what is ahead. In regard to accident one can know nothing. But FATE can be also unpleasant or difficult. In this event, however, there are means for isolating oneself from one’s FATE. The first step towards this consists in getting away from general laws. Just as there is individual accident, so is there general or collective accident. And in the same way as there is individual FATE, there is a general or collective FATE. Collective accident and collective FATE are governed by general laws. If a man wishes to create individuality of his own he must first free himself from general laws. General laws are by no means all obligatory for man; he can free himself from many of them if he frees himself from ‘buffers’ and from imagination. All this is connected with liberation from personality. Personality feeds on imagination and falsehood. If the falsehood in which man lives is decreased and imagination is decreased, personality very soon weakens and a man begins to be controlled either by FATE or by a line of work which is in its turn controlled by another man’s will; this will lead him until a will of his own has been formed, capable of withstanding both accident and, when necessary, FATE.” Fragments: Eight

“In order to know the future it is necessary first to know the present in all its details, as well as to know the past. Today is what it is because yesterday was what it was. And if today is like yesterday, tomorrow will be like today. If you want tomorrow to be different, you must make today different. If today is simply a consequence of yesterday, tomorrow will be a consequence of today in exactly the same way. And if one has studied thoroughly what happened yesterday, the day before yesterday, a week ago, a year, ten years ago, one can say unmistakably what will and what will not happen tomorrow. But at present we have not sufficient material at our disposal to discuss this question seriously. What happens or may happen to us may depend upon three causes: upon accident, upon FATE, or upon our own will. Such as we are, we are almost wholly dependent upon accident. We can have no FATE in the real sense of the word any more than we can have will. If we had will, then through this alone we should know the future, because we should then make our future, and make it such as we want it to be. If we had FATE, we could also know the future, because FATE corresponds to type. If the type is known, then its FATE can be known, that is, both the past and the future. But accidents cannot be foreseen. Today a man is one, tomorrow he is different: today one thing happens to him, tomorrow another.” Fragments: Six

“If essence is subject to the influence of FATE, does it mean that compared with accident FATE is always favorable to a man?” asked somebody present. “And can FATE bring a man to the work?” Fragments: Eight

“If we think about this, we shall see that it is not difficult for us to distinguish influences created in life from influences whose source lies outside life. To enumerate them, to make up a catalogue of the one and the other, is impossible. It is necessary to understand; and the whole thing depends upon this understanding. We have spoken about the beginning of the way. The beginning of the way depends precisely upon this understanding or upon the capacity for discriminating between the two kinds of influences. Of course, their distribution is unequal. One man receives more of the influences whose source lies outside life, another less; a third is almost isolated from them. But this cannot be helped. This is already FATE. Speaking in general and taking normal life under normal conditions and a normal man, conditions are more or less the same for everybody, that is, to put it more correctly, difficulties are equal for everybody. The difficulty lies in separating the two kinds of influences. If a man in receiving them does not separate them, that is, does not see or does not feel their difference, their action upon him also is not separated, that is, they act in the same way, on the same level, and produce the same results. But if a man in receiving these influences begins to discriminate between them and put on one side those which are not created in life itself, then gradually discrimination becomes easier and after a certain time a man can no longer confuse them with the ordinary influences of life. Fragments: Ten

“That is an entirely different thing,” said G. “These people came under a general law. We do not speak of them and we cannot. We can only speak of people who, thanks to chance, or FATE, or their own cleverness, do not come under a general law, that is, who stay outside the action of any general law of destruction. For instance it is known through statistics that a certain definite number of people have to fall under trams in Moscow during the year. Then if a man, even one with a great hunger, falls under a tram and the tram crushes him we can no longer speak of him from the point of view of work on the ways. We can speak only of those who are alive and only while they are alive. Trams or war — they are exactly the same thing. One is merely larger, the other smaller. We are speaking of those who do not fall under trams. Fragments: Seventeen

In normal times a colony like ours could not have existed in Essentuki nor probably anywhere else in Russia. We should have excited curiosity, we should have attracted attention, the police would have appeared, some kind of scandal would undoubtedly have arisen, all possible kinds of accusations would have made their appearance, political tendencies would certainly have been ascribed to us, or sectarian or anti­moral. People are made in such a way that they invariably make accusations against the things they fail to understand. But at that time, that is, in 1918, those who would have been curious about us were occupied in saving their own skins from the bolsheviks, and the bolsheviks were not yet strong enough to be interested in the lives of private people or private organizations having no direct political character. And, seeing that, among the intellectuals from the capital who found themselves by the will of FATE at Mineralni Vodi at that time, a number of groups and working associations had Just been organized, nobody paid any attention to us. Fragments: Eighteen