“In order to grasp the essence of this teaching it is necessary clearly to understand the idea that the ways are the only possible methods for the development of man’s hidden possibilities. This in turn shows how difficult and rare such development is. The development of these possibilities is not a law. The law for man is existence in the circle of mechanical influences, the state of ‘man-machine.’ The way of the development of hidden possibilities is a way against NATURE, against God. This explains the difficulties and the exclusiveness of the ways. The ways are narrow and strait. But at the same time only by them can anything be attained. In the general mass of everyday life, especially modern life, the ways are a small, quite imperceptible phenomenon which, from the point of view of life, need not exist at all. But this small phenomenon contains in itself all that man has for the development of his hidden possibilities. The ways are opposed to everyday life, based upon other principles and subject to other laws. In this consists their power and their significance. In everyday life, even in a life filled with scientific, philosophical, religious, or social interests, there is nothing, and there can be nothing, which could give the possibilities which are contained in the ways. The ways lead, or should lead, man to immortality. Everyday life, even at its best, leads man to death and can lead to nothing eke. The idea of the ways cannot be understood if the possibility of man’s evolution without their help is admitted. Fragments: Two

“We have before us man at the present moment of his development. Nature has made him such as he is, and, in large masses, so far as we can see, such he will remain. Changes likely to violate the general requirements of NATURE can only take place in separate units. Fragments: Three

“In order to understand the law of man’s evolution it is necessary to grasp that, beyond a certain point, this evolution is not at all necessary, that is to say, it is not necessary for NATURE at a given moment in its own development. To speak more precisely: the evolution of mankind corresponds to the evolution of the planets, but the evolution of the planets proceeds, for us, in infinitely prolonged cycles of time. Throughout the stretch of time that human thought can embrace, no essential changes can take place in the life of the planets, and, consequently, no essential changes can take place in the life of mankind. Fragments: Three

“Only thought as theoretical and as far removed from fact as modem European thought could have conceived the evolution of man to be possible apart from surrounding NATURE, or have regarded the evolution of man as a gradual conquest of NATURE. This is quite impossible. In living, in dying, in evolving, in degenerating, man equally serves the purposes of NATURE — or, rather, NATURE makes equal use, though perhaps for different purposes, of the products of both evolution and degeneration. And, at the same time, humanity as a whole can never escape from NATURE, for, even in struggling against NATURE man acts in conformity with her purposes. The evolution of large masses of humanity is opposed to NATURE’s purposes. The evolution of a certain small percentage may be in accord with NATURE’s purposes. Man contains within him the possibility of evolution. But the evolution of humanity as a whole, that is, the development of these possibilities in all men, or in most of them, or even in a large number of them, is not necessary for the purposes of the earth or of the planetary world in general, and it might, in fact, be injurious or fatal. There exist, therefore, special forces (of a planetary character) which oppose the evolution of large masses of humanity and keep it at the level it ought, to be. Fragments: Three

“The advantage of the separate individual is that he is very small and that, in the economy of NATURE, it makes no difference whether there is one mechanical man more or less. We can easily understand this correlation of magnitudes if we imagine the correlation between a microscopic cell and our own body. The presence or absence of one cell will change nothing in the life of the body. We cannot be conscious of it, and it can have no influence on the life and functions of the organism. In exactly the same way a separate individual is too small to influence the life of the cosmic organism to which he stands in the same relation (with regard to size) as a cell stands to our own organism. And this is precisely what makes his ‘evolution’ possible; on this are based his ‘possibilities.’ Fragments: Three

“People do not know what man is. They have to do with a very complex machine, far more complex than a railway engine, a motorcar, or an aeroplane — but they know nothing, or almost nothing, about the construction, working, or possibilities of this machine; they do not even understand its simplest functions, because they do not know the purpose of these functions. They vaguely imagine that a man should learn to control his machine, just as he has to learn to control a railway engine, a motorcar, or an aeroplane, and that incompetent handling of the human machine is just as dangerous as incompetent handling of any other complex machine. Everybody understands this in relation to an aeroplane, a motorcar, or a railway engine. But it is very rarely that anyone takes this into account in relation to man in general or to himself in particular. It is considered right and legitimate to think that NATURE has given men the necessary knowledge of their machine. And yet men understand that an instinctive knowledge of the machine is by no means enough. Why do they study medicine and make use of its services? Because, of course, they realize they do not know their machine. But they do not suspect that it can be known much better than science knows it; they do not suspect that then it would be possible to get quite different work out of it.” Fragments: Three

“Examples of the action of the three forces, and the moments of entry of the third force, may be discovered in all manifestations of our psychic life, in all phenomena of the life of human communities and of humanity as a whole, and in all the phenomena of NATURE around us. Fragments: Four

“The principle of the discontinuity of vibration means the definite and necessary characteristic of all vibrations in NATURE, whether ascending or descending, to develop not uniformly but with periodical accelerations and retardations. This principle can be formulated still more precisely if we say that the force of the original impulse in vibrations does not act uniformly but, as it were, becomes alternately stronger and weaker. The force of the impulse acts without changing its NATURE and vibrations develop in a regular way only for a certain time which is determined by the NATURE of the impulse, the medium, the conditions, and so forth. But at a certain moment a kind of change takes place in it and the vibrations, so to speak, cease to obey it and for a short time they slow down and to a certain extent change their NATURE or direction; for example, ascending vibrations at a certain moment begin to ascend more slowly, and descending vibrations begin to descend more slowly. After this temporary retardation, both in ascending and descending, the vibrations again enter the former channel and for a certain time ascend or descend uniformly up to a certain moment when a check in their development again takes place. In this connection it is significant that the periods of uniform action of the momentum are not equal and that the moments of retardation of the vibrations are not symmetrical. One period is shorter, the other is longer. Fragments: Seven

“If we grasp its full meaning the law of octaves gives us an entirely new explanation of the whole of life, of the progress and development of phenomena on all planes of the universe observed by us. This law explains why there are no straight lines in NATURE and also why we can neither think nor do, why everything with us is thought, why everything happens with us and happens usually in a way opposed to what we want or expect. All this is the clear and direct effect of the ‘intervals,’ or retardations in the development of vibrations. Fragments: Seven

“Further observations show that a right and consistent development of octaves, although rare, can be observed in all the occasions of life and in the activity of NATURE and even in human activity. Fragments: Seven

“The greatest insult for a ‘man-machine’ is to tell him that he can do nothing, can attain nothing, that he can never move towards any aim whatever and that in striving towards one he will inevitably create another. Actually of course it cannot be otherwise. The ‘man-machine’ is in the power of accident. His activities may fall by accident into some sort of channel which has been created by cosmic or mechanical forces and they may by accident move along this channel for a certain time, giving the illusion that aims of some kind are being attained. Such accidental correspondence of results with the aims we have set before us or the attainment of aims in small things which can have no consequences creates in mechanical man the conviction that he is able to attain any aim, ‘is able to conquer NATURE’ as it is called, is able to ‘arrange the whole of his life,’ and so on. Fragments: Seven

“Like everything in NATURE the human body which represents a certain whole bears both within and without the same correlations. According to the number of the notes of the octave and its ‘intervals,’ the human body has nine basic measurements expressed by the numbers of a definite measure. In individuals these numbers of course differ widely but within certain definite limits. These nine basic measurements, giving a full octave of the first order, by combining in a certain definite way pass into measurements of subordinate octaves, which give rise in their turn to other subordinate octaves, and so on. In this way it is possible to obtain the measurements of any member or any part of the human body as they are all in a definite relationship one to another.” Fragments: Seven

“There is nothing new in the idea of sleep. People have been told almost since the creation of the world that they are asleep and that they must awaken. How many times is this said in the Gospels, for instance? ‘Awake,’ ‘watch,’ ‘sleep not.’ Christ’s disciples even slept when he was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane for the last time. It is all there. But do men understand it? Men take it simply as a form of speech, as an expression, as a metaphor. They completely fail to understand that it must be taken literally. And again it is easy to understand why. In order to understand this literally it is necessary to awaken a little, or at least to try to awaken. I tell you seriously that I have been asked several times why nothing is said about sleep in the Gospels. Although it is there spoken of almost on every page. This simply shows that people read the Gospels in sleep. So long as a man sleeps profoundly and is wholly immersed in dreams he cannot even think about the fact that he is asleep. If he were to think that he was asleep, he would wake up. So everything goes on. And men have not the slightest idea what they are losing because of this sleep. As I have already said, as he is organized, that is, being such as NATURE has created him, man can be a self­conscious being. Such he is created and such he is born. But he is born among sleeping people, and, of course, he falls asleep among them just at the very time when he should have begun to be conscious of himself. Everything has a hand in this: the involuntary imitation of older people on the part of the child, voluntary and involuntary suggestion, and what is called ‘education.’ Every attempt to awaken on the child’s part is instantly stopped. This is inevitable. And a great many efforts and a great deal of help are necessary in order to awaken later when thousands of sleep­compelling habits have been accumulated. And this very seldom happens. In most cases, a man when still a child already loses the possibility of awakening; he lives in sleep all his life and he dies in sleep. Furthermore, many people die long before their physical death. But of such cases we will speak later on. Fragments: Eight

“Exactly the same appliances are to be found within man. They are created, not by NATURE but by man himself, although involuntarily. The cause of their appearance is the existence in man of many contradictions; contradictions of opinions, feelings, sympathies, words, and actions. If a man throughout the whole of his life were to feel all the contradictions that are within him he could not live and act as calmly as he lives and acts now. He would have constant friction, constant unrest. We fail to see how contradictory and hostile the different I’s of our personality are to one another. If a man were to feel all these contradictions he would feel what he really is. He would feel that he is mad. It is not pleasant to anyone to feel that he is mad. Moreover, a thought such as this deprives a man of self-confidence, weakens his energy, deprives him of ‘self-respect.’ Somehow or other he must master this thought or banish it. He must either destroy contradictions or cease to see and to feel them. A man cannot destroy contradictions. But if ‘buffers’ are created in him he can cease to feel them and he will not feel the impact from the clash of contradictory views, contradictory emotions, contradictory words. Fragments: Eight

“Essence is the truth in man; personality is the false. But in proportion as personality grows, essence manifests itself more and more rarely and more and more feebly and it very often happens that essence stops in its growth at a very early age and grows no further. It happens very often that the essence of a grown-up man, even that of a very intellectual and, in the accepted meaning of the word, highly ‘educated’ man, stops on the level of a child of five or six. This means that everything we see in this man is in reality ‘not his own.’ What is his own in man, that is, his essence, is usually only manifested in his instincts and in his simplest emotions. There are cases, however, when a man’s essence grows in parallel with his personality. Such cases represent very rare exceptions especially in the circumstances of cultured life. Essence has more chances of development in men who live nearer to NATURE in difficult conditions of constant struggle and danger. Fragments: Eight

“It does not mean that all the ways are closed to him. The way of the fakir and the way of the monk, which do not require any intellectual development, remain open to him. But the methods and the means which are possible for a man of a developed intellect are impossible for him. Thus evolution is equally difficult for a cultured or an uncultured man. A cultured man lives far from NATURE, far from natural conditions of existence, in artificial conditions of life, developing his personality at the expense of his essence. A less cultured man, living in more normal and more natural conditions, develops his essence at the expense of his personality. A successful beginning of workwork on oneself requires the happy occurrence of an equal development of personality and essence. Such an occurrence will give the greatest assurance of success. If essence is very-little developed, a long preparatory period of work is required and this work will be quite fruitless if a man’s essence is rotten inside or if it develops some irreparable defects. Conditions of this kind occur fairly often. An abnormal development of personality very often arrests the development of essence at such an early stage that the essence becomes a small deformed thing. From a small deformed thing nothing else can be got. Fragments: Eight

“For its normal existence the organism must receive all three kinds of food, that is, physical food, air, and impressions The organism cannot exist on one or even on two kinds of food, all three are required But the relation of these foods to one another and their significance for the organism is not the same The organism can exist for a comparatively long time without a supply of fresh physical food Cases of starvation are known lasting for over sixty days, when the organism lost none of its vitality and recovered very quickly as soon as it began to take food Of course starvation of this kind cannot be considered as complete, since in all cases of such artificial starvation people have taken water Nevertheless, even without water a man can live without food for several days Without air he can exist only for a few minutes, not more than two or three, as a rule a man dies after being four minutes without air Without impressions a man cannot live a single moment If the flow of impressions were to be stopped in some way or if the organism were deprived of its capacity for receiving impressions, it would immediately die. The flow of impressions coming to us from outside is like a driving belt communicating motion to us. The principal motor for us is NATURE, the surrounding world. Nature transmits to us through our impressions the energy by which we live and move and have our being If the inflow of this energy is arrested, our machine will immediately stop working Thus, of the three kinds of food the most important for us is impressions, although it stands to reason that a man cannot exist for long on impressions alone Impressions and air enable a man to exist a little longer Impressions, air, and physical food enable the organism to live to the end of its normal term of life and to produce the substances necessary not only for the maintenance of life, but also for the creation and growth of higher bodies. Fragments: Nine

“Re 96 passes into mi 48 with the help of ‘carbon’ 24 and with this the development of the second octave comes to a stop. For the transition of mi into fa, an ‘additional shock’ is necessary, but at this point NATURE has not prepared any ‘additional shock’ and the second octave, that is, the air octave, cannot develop further and in the ordinary conditions of life it does not develop further. Fragments: Nine

“The first stage refers to the work of the human organism as it has been created by NATURE, that is to say, to the life and functions of man number one, number two, and number three. The first octave, that is, the octave of food, develops in a normal way to mi 192. At this point it automatically receives a ‘shock’ from the beginning of the second octave, and its development goes on consecutively to si 12. The second octave, that is, the air octave, begins with do 192 and develops to mi 48 where it stops. The third octave, that is, the octave of impressions, begins with do 48 and stops there. Thus seven notes of the first octave, three notes of the second, and one note of the third octave represent a complete picture of the work of the ‘human factory’ in its first or natural stage. Nature has provided only one ‘shock,’ that is, the ‘shock’ received from the entrance of the second octave which helps mi of the first octave to pass to fa. But NATURE did not foresee and did not provide for the second ‘shock,’ that is, the ‘shock’ that would help the development of the third octave and thereby enable mi of the second octave to pass to fa. A man must create this ‘shock’ by his own personal efforts if he desires to increase the output of the fine hydrogens in his organism. Fragments: Nine

“If we want to represent graphically the interrelation of the cosmoses,” I said, “we must take the Microcosmos, that is, man, as a point, that is to say, we must take him on a very small scale and, as it were, at a very great distance from ourselves. Then his life in the Tritocosmos, that is, among other people and in the midst of NATURE, will be the line which he traces on the surface of the earthly globe in moving from place to place. In the Mesocosmos, that is, taken in connection with the twenty-four hours’ motion of the earth around its axis, this line will become a plane, whereas taken in relation to the sun, that is, taking into consideration the motion of the earth around the sun, it will become a threedimensional body, or, in other words, it will be something really existing, something realized. But as the fundamental point, that is, the man or the Microcosmos, was also a three-dimensional body, we have consequently two three-dimensionalities. Fragments: Ten

“But it must be understood that, just as in many chemical processes, only definite quantities of substances, exactly determined by NATURE, give compounds of the required quality, so in the human organism the ‘three kinds of food’ must be mixed in definite proportions. Fragments: Fourteen

“To ordinary knowledge,” he said, “organic life is a kind of accidental appendage violating the integrity of a mechanical system. Ordinary knowledge does not connect it with anything and draws no conclusions from the fact of its existence. But you should already understand that there is nothing accidental or unnecessary in NATURE and that there can be nothing; everything has a definite function; everything serves a definite purpose. Thus organic life is an indispensable link in the chain of the worlds which cannot exist without it just as it cannot exist without them. It has been said before that organic life transmits planetary influences of various kinds to the earth and that it serves to feed the moon and to enable it to grow and strengthen. But the earth also is growing; not in the sense of size but in the sense of greater consciousness, greater receptivity. The planetary influences which were sufficient for her at one period of her existence become insufficient, she needs the reception of finer influences. To receive finer influences a finer, more sensitive receptive apparatus is necessary. Organic life, therefore, has to evolve, to adapt itself to the needs of the planets and the earth. Likewise also the moon can be satisfied at one period with the food which is given her by organic life of a certain quality, but afterwards the time comes when she ceases to be satisfied with this food, cannot grow on it, and begins to get hungry. Organic life must be able to satisfy this hunger, otherwise it does not fulfill its function, does not answer its purpose. This means that in order to answer its purpose organic life must evolve and stand on the level of the needs of the planets, the earth, and the moon. Fragments: Fifteen

“Of course there are very many people who consider that the life of humanity is not proceeding in the way in which according to their views it ought to go. And they invent various theories which in their opinion ought to change the whole life of humanity. One invents one theory. Another immediately invents a contradictory theory. And both expect everyone to believe them. And many people indeed do believe either one or the other. Life naturally takes its own course but people do not stop believing in their own or other people’s theories and they believe that it is possible to do something. All these theories are certainly quite fantastic, chiefly because they do not take into account the most important thing, namely, the subordinate part which humanity and organic life play in the world process. Intellectual theories put man in the center of everything; everything exists for him, the sun, the stars, the moon, the earth. They even forget man’s relative size, his nothingness, his transient existence, and other tilings. They assert that a man if he wishes is able to change his whole life, that is, to organize his life on rational principles. And all the time new theories appear evoking in their turn opposing theories; and all these theories and the struggle between them undoubtedly constitute one of the forces which keep humanity in the state in which it is at present. Besides, all these theories for general welfare and general equality are not only unrealizable, but they would be fatal if they were realized. Everything in NATURE has its aim and its purpose, both the inequality of man and his suffering. To destroy inequality would mean destroying the possibility of evolution. To destroy suffering would mean, first, destroying a whole series of perceptions for which man exists, and second, the destruction of the ‘shock,’ that is to say, the force which alone can change the situation. And thus it is with all intellectual theories. Fragments: Fifteen

“So far,” he said, “we have looked upon the ‘table of hydrogens’ as a table of vibrations and of the densities of matter which are in an inverse proportion to them. We must now realize that the density of vibrations and the density of matter express many other properties of matter. For instance, till now we have said nothing about the intelligence or the consciousness of matter. Meanwhile the speed of vibrations of a matter shows the degree of intelligence of the given matter. You must remember that there is nothing dead or inanimate in NATURE. Everything in its own way is alive, everything in its own way is intelligent and conscious. Only this consciousness and intelligence is expressed in a different way on different levels of being — that is, on different scales. But you must understand once and for all that nothing is dead or inanimate in NATURE, there are simply different degrees of animation and different scales. Fragments: Sixteen

“There is still another system of classification,”‘ he said, “which you also ought to understand. This is a classification in an altogether different ratio of octaves. The first classification by ‘food,’ ‘air,’ and medium definitely refers to ‘living beings’ as we know them, including plants, that is to say, to individuals. The other classification of which I shall now speak leads us far beyond the limits of what we call ‘living beings’ both upwards, higher than living beings, as well as downwards, lower than living beings, and it deals not with individuals but with classes in a very wide sense. Above all this classification shows that there are no jumps whatever in NATURE. In NATURE everything is connected and everything is alive. The diagram of this classification is called the ‘Diagram of Everything Living.’ Fragments: Sixteen