“At the same time the same work of art will produce different impressions on people of different levels. And people of lower levels will never receive from it what people of higher levels receive. This is real, OBJECTIVE art. Imagine some scientific work — a book on astronomy or chemistry. It is impossible that one person should understand it in one way and another in another way. Everyone who is sufficiently prepared and who is able to read this book will understand what the author means, and precisely as the author means it. An OBJECTIVE work of art is just such a book, except that it affects the emotional and not only the intellectual side of man.” “Do such works of OBJECTIVE art exist at the present day?” I asked. “Of course they exist,” answered G. “The great Sphinx in Egypt is such a work of art, as well as some historically known works of architecture, certain statues of gods, and many other things. There are figures of gods and of various mythological beings that can be read like books, only not with the mind but with the emotions, provided they are sufficiently developed. In the course of our travels in Central Asia we found, in the desert at the foot of the Hindu Kush, a strange figure which we thought at first was some ancient god or devil. At first it produced upon us simply the impression of being a curiosity. But after a while we began to feel that this figure contained many things, a big, complete, and complex system of cosmology. And slowly, step by step, we began to decipher this system. It was in the body of the figure, in its legs, in its arms, in its head, in its eyes, in its ears; everywhere. In the whole statue there was nothing accidental, nothing without meaning. And gradually we understood the aim of the people who built this statue. We began to feel their thoughts, their feelings. Some of us thought that we saw their faces, heard their voices. At all events, we grasped the meaning of what they wanted to convey to us across thousands of years, and not only the meaning, but all the feelings and the emotions connected with it as well. That indeed was art!” Fragments: One

I was very interested in what G. said about art. His principle of the division of art into subjective and OBJECTIVE told me a great deal. I still did not understand everything he put into these words. I had always felt in art certain divisions and gradations which I could neither define nor formulate, and which nobody else had formulated. Nevertheless I knew that these divisions and gradations existed. So that all discussions about art without the recognition of these divisions and gradations seemed to me empty and useless, simply arguments about words. In what G. had said, in his indications of the different levels which we fail to see and understand, I felt an approach to the very gradations that I had felt but could not define. Fragments: One

“The knowledge of man number four is a very different kind of knowledge. It is knowledge which comes from man number five, who in turn receives it from man number six, who has received it from man number seven. But, of course, man number four assimilates of this knowledge only what is possible according to his powers. But, in comparison with man number one, man number two, and man number three, man number four has begun to get free from the subjective elements in his knowledge and to move along the path towards OBJECTIVE knowledge. Fragments: Four

“The knowledge of man number five is whole, indivisible knowledge. He has now one indivisible I and all his knowledge belongs to this I. He cannot have one I that knows something which another does not know. What he knows, the whole of him knows. His knowledge is nearer to OBJECTIVE knowledge than the knowledge of man number four. Fragments: Four

“The knowledge of man number seven is his own knowledge, which cannot be taken away from him; it is the OBJECTIVE and completely practiced knowledge of All. “It is exactly the same with being. There is the being of man number one, that is, the being of a man living by his instincts and his sensations; the being of man number two, that is to say, the being of the sentimental, the emotional man; the being of man number three, that is, the being of the rational, the theoretical man, and so on. It is quite clear why knowledge cannot be far away from being. Man number one, two, or three cannot, by reason of his being, possess the knowledge of man number four, man number five, and higher. Whatever you may give him, he may interpret it in his own way, he will reduce every idea to the level on which he is himself. Fragments: Four

“It is impossible to study a system of the universe without studying man. At the same time it is impossible to study man without studying the universe. Man is an image of the world. He was created by the same laws which created the whole of the world. By knowing and understanding himself he will know and understand the whole world, all the laws that create and govern the world. And at the same time by studying the world and the laws that govern the world he will learn and understand the laws that govern him. In this connection some laws are understood and assimilated more easily by studying the OBJECTIVE world, while man can only understand other laws by studying himself. The study of the world and the study of man must therefore run parallel, one helping the other. Fragments: Four

“But at the beginning it is enough to understand the general principle: every phenomenon, of whatever magnitude it may be, is inevitably the manifestation of three forces; one or two forces cannot produce a phenomenon, and if we observe a stoppage in anything, or an endless hesitation at the same place, we can say that, at the given place, the third force is lacking. In trying to understand this it must be remembered at the same time that people cannot observe phenomena as manifestations of three forces because we cannot observe the OBJECTIVE world in our subjective states of consciousness. And in the subjectively observed phenomenal world we see in phenomena only the manifestation of one or two forces. If we could see the manifestation of three forces in every action, we should then see the world as it is (things in themselves). Only it must here be remembered that a phenomenon which appears to be simple may actually be very complicated, that is, it may be a very complex combination of trinities. But we know that we cannot observe the world as it is and this should help us to understand why we cannot see the third force. The third force is a property of the real world. The subjective or phenomenal world of our observation is only relatively real, at any rate it is not complete. Fragments: Four

“The fourth state of consciousness is called the OBJECTIVE state of consciousness In this state a man can see things as they are. Flashes of this state of consciousness also occur in man. In the religions of all nations there are indications of the possibility of a state of consciousness of this kind which is called ‘enlightenment’ and various other names but which cannot be described in words. But the only right way to OBJECTIVE consciousness is through the development of self-consciousness. If an ordinary man is artificially brought into a state of OBJECTIVE consciousness and afterwards brought back to his usual state he will remember nothing and he will think that for a time he had lost consciousness. But in the state of self-consciousness a man can have Hashes of OBJECTIVE consciousness and remember them. Fragments: Eight

“The two higher states of consciousness — ‘self-consciousness’ and ‘OBJECTIVE consciousness’ — are connected with the functioning of the higher centers in man. Fragments: Eight

“Now turn your attention to what I have pointed out to you before. A fully developed man, which I call ‘man in the full sense of the word,’ should possess four states of consciousness. Ordinary man, that is, man number one, number two, and number three, lives in two states of consciousness only. He knows, or at least he can know, of the existence of the fourth state of consciousness. All these ‘mystical states’ and so on are wrong definitions but when they are not deceptions or imitations they are flashes of what we call an OBJECTIVE state of consciousness. Fragments: Eight

“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

“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

“The results of the work of a man who takes on himself the role of teacher do not depend on whether or not he knows exactly the origin of what he teaches, but very much depends on whether or not his ideas come in actual fact from the esoteric center and whether he himself understands and can distinguish esoteric ideas, that is, ideas of OBJECTIVE knowledge, from subjective, scientific, and philosophical ideas. Fragments: Ten

“There are certain states in ordinary sleep in which a man wants to awaken but cannot. He tells himself that he is awake but, in reality, he continues to sleep — and this can happen several times before he finally awakes. But in ordinary sleep, once he is awake, he is in a different state; in hypnotic sleep the case is otherwise; there are no OBJECTIVE characteristics, at any rate not at the beginning of awakening; a man cannot pinch himself in order to make sure that he is not asleep. And if, which God forbid, a man has heard anything about OBJECTIVE characteristics, Kundalini at once transforms it all into imagination and dreams. Fragments: Eleven

“Questions have often been asked at these lectures as to what is ‘black magic’ and I have replied that there is neither red, green, nor yellow magic. There is mechanics, that is, what ‘happens,’ and there is ‘doing.’ ‘Doing’ is magic and ‘doing’ can be only of one kind. There cannot be two kinds of ‘doing.’ But there can be a falsification, an imitation of the outward appearance of ‘doing,’ which cannot give any OBJECTIVE results but which can deceive naive people and produce in them faith, infatuation, enthusiasm, and even fanaticism. Fragments: Eleven

THERE were certain points to which G. invariably used to return in all his talks with us after the formal lectures, to which outside people were admitted, were over. The first was the question of self-remembering and the necessity of constant work on oneself in order to attain this, and the second was the question of the imperfection of our language and of the difficulty of conveying “OBJECTIVE truths” in our words. Fragments: Fourteen

As I have already mentioned before, G. used the expressions “OBJECTIVE” and “subjective” in a special sense, taking as a basis the divisions of “subjective” and “OBJECTIVE” states of consciousness. All our ordinary knowledge which is based on ordinary methods of observation and verification of observations, all scientific theories deduced from the observation of facts accessible to us in subjective states of consciousness, he called subjective. Knowledge based upon ancient methods and principles of observation, knowledge of things in themselves, knowledge accompany­ing “an OBJECTIVE state of consciousness,” knowledge of the All, was for him OBJECTIVE knowledge. Fragments: Fourteen

“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

“But OBJECTIVE knowledge, the idea of unity included, belongs to OBJECTIVE consciousness. The forms which express this knowledge when perceived by subjective consciousness are inevitably distorted and, instead of truth, they create more and more delusions. With OBJECTIVE consciousness it is possible to see and feel the unity of everything. But for subjective consciousness the world is split up into millions of separate and unconnected phenomena. Attempts to connect these phenomena into some sort of system in a scientific or a philosophical way lead to nothing because man cannot reconstruct the idea of the whole starting from separate facts and they cannot divine the principles of the division of the whole without knowing the laws upon which this division is based. Fragments: Fourteen

“None the less the idea of the unity of everything exists also in intellectual thought but in its exact relation to diversity it can never be clearly expressed in words or in logical forms. There remains always the insurmountable difficulty of language. A language which has been constructed through expressing impressions of plurality and diversity in subjective states of consciousness can never transmit with sufficient completeness and clarity the idea of unity which is intelligible and obvious for the OBJECTIVE state of consciousness. Fragments: Fourteen

“Realizing the imperfection and weakness of ordinary language the people who have possessed OBJECTIVE knowledge have tried to express the idea of unity in ‘myths,’ in ‘symbols,’ and in particular ‘verbal formulas’ which, having been transmitted without alteration, have carried on the idea from one school to another, often from one epoch to another. Fragments: Fourteen

“It has already been said that the higher psychic centers work in man’s higher states of consciousness: the ‘higher emotional’ and the ‘higher mental.’ The aim of ‘myths’ and ‘symbols’ was to reach man’s higher centers, to transmit to him ideas inaccessible to the intellect and to transmit them in such forms as would exclude the possibility of false interpretations. ‘Myths’ were destined for the higher emotional center; ‘symbols’ for the higher thinking center. By virtue of this all attempts to understand or explain ‘myths’ and ‘symbols’ with the mind, or the formulas and the expressions which give a summary of their content, are doomed beforehand to failure. It is always possible to understand anything but only with the appropriate center. But the preparation for receiving ideas belonging to OBJECTIVE knowledge has to proceed by way of the mind, for only a mind properly prepared can transmit these ideas to the higher centers without introducing elements foreign to them. Fragments: Fourteen

“The symbols that were used to transmit ideas belonging to OBJECTIVE knowledge included diagrams of the fundamental laws of the universe and they not only transmitted the knowledge itself but showed also the way to it. The study of symbols, their construction and meaning, formed a very important part of the preparation for receiving OBJECTIVE knowledge and it was in itself a test because a literal or formal understanding of symbols at once made it impossible to receive any further knowledge. Fragments: Fourteen

“The development of the human machine and the enrichment of being begins with a new and unaccustomed functioning of this machine. We know that a man has five centers: the thinking, the emotional, the moving, the instinctive, and the sex. The predominant development of any one center at the expense of the others produces an extremely one-sided type of man, incapable of further development. But if a man brings the work of the five centers within him into harmonious accord, he then ‘locks the pentagram within him’ and becomes a finished type of the physically perfect man. The full and proper functioning of five centers brings them into union with the higher centers which introduce the missing principle and put man into direct and permanent connection with OBJECTIVE consciousness and OBJECTIVE knowledge. Fragments: Fourteen

“And in this sense it is possible to speak of the symbolism of speech although this symbolism is not understood by everyone. To understand the inner meaning of what is said is possible only on a certain level of development and when accompanied by the corresponding efforts and state of the listener. But on hearing things which are new for him, instead of making efforts to understand them, a man begins to dispute them, or refute them, maintaining against them an opinion which he considers to be right and which as a rule has no relation whatever to them. In this way he loses all chance of acquiring anything new. To be able to understand speech when it becomes symbolical it is essential to have learned before and to know already how to listen. Any attempt to understand literally, where speech deals with OBJECTIVE knowledge and with the union of diversity and unity, is doomed to failure beforehand and leads in most cases to further delusions. Fragments: Fourteen

“You must first of all remember that there are two kinds of art, one quite different from the other — OBJECTIVE art and subjective art. All that you know, all that you call art, is subjective art, that is, something that I do not call art at all because it is only OBJECTIVE art that I call art. Fragments: Fourteen

“To define what I call OBJECTIVE art is difficult first of all because you ascribe to subjective art the characteristics of OBJECTIVE art, and secondly because when you happen upon OBJECTIVE works of art you take them as being on the same level as subjective works of art. Fragments: Fourteen

“I will try to make my idea clear. You say — an artist creates. I say this only in connection with OBJECTIVE art. In relation to subjective art I say that with him ‘it is created.’ You do not differentiate between these, but this is where the whole difference lies. Further you ascribe to subjective art an invariable action, that is, you expect works of subjective art to have the same reaction on everybody. You think, for instance, that a funeral march should provoke in everyone sad and solemn thoughts and that any dance music, a komarinsky for instance, will provoke happy thoughts. But in actual fact this is not so at all. Everything depends upon association. If on a day that a great misfortune happens to me I hear some lively tune for the first time this tune will evoke in me sad and oppressive thoughts for my whole life afterwards. And if on a day when I am particularly happy I hear a sad tune, this tune will always evoke happy thoughts. And so with everything else. Fragments: Fourteen

“The difference between OBJECTIVE art and subjective art is that in OBJECTIVE art the artist really does ‘create,’ that is, he makes what he intended, he puts into his work whatever ideas and feelings he wants to put into it. And the action of this work upon men is absolutely definite; they will, of course each according to his own level, receive the same ideas and the same feelings that the artist wanted to transmit to them. There can be nothing accidental either in the creation or in the impressions of OBJECTIVE art. Fragments: Fourteen

“In subjective art everything is accidental. The artist, as I have already said, does not create; with him ‘it creates itself.’ This means that he is in the power of ideas, thoughts, and moods which he himself does not understand and over which he has no control whatever. They rule him and they express themselves in one form or another. And when they have accidentally taken this or that form, this form just as accidentally produces on man this or that action according to his mood, tastes, habits, the nature of the hypnosis under which he lives, and so on. There is nothing invariable; nothing is definite here. In OBJECTIVE art there is nothing indefinite.” Fragments: Fourteen

“I do not know what you are talking about,” said G. “We have different standards: I measure the merit of art by its consciousness and you measure it by its unconsciousness. We cannot understand one another. A work of OBJECTIVE art ought to be a ‘book’ as you. call it; the only difference is that the artist transmits his ideas not directly through words or signs or hieroglyphs, but through certain feelings which he excites consciously and in an orderly way, knowing what he is doing and why he does it.” Fragments: Fourteen

“Can you not indicate other works of OBJECTIVE art?” “Is there anything that it is possible to call OBJECTIVE in contemporary art?” “When was the last OBJECTIVE work of art created?” Nearly everyone present began to put these and similar questions to G. Fragments: Fourteen

“I will cite you one example only — music. Objective music is all based on ‘inner octaves.’ And it can obtain not only definite psychological results but definite physical results. There can be such music as would freeze water. There can be such music as would kill a man instantaneously. The Biblical legend of the destruction of the walls of Jericho by music is precisely a legend of OBJECTIVE music. Plain music, no matter of what kind, will not destroy walls, but OBJECTIVE music indeed can do so. And not only can it destroy but it can also build up. In the legend of Orpheus there are hints of OBJECTIVE music, for Orpheus used to impart knowledge by music. Snake charmers’ music in the East is an approach to OBJECTIVE music, of course very primitive. Very often it is simply one note which is long drawn out, rising and falling only very little; but in this single note ‘inner octaves’ are going on all the time and melodies of ‘inner octaves’ which are inaudible to the ears but felt by the emotional center. And the snake hears this music or, more strictly speaking, he feels it, and he obeys it. The same music, only a little more complicated, and men would obey it. Fragments: Fourteen

“So you see that art is not merely a language but something much bigger. And if you connect what I have just said with what I said earlier about the different levels of man’s being, you will understand what is said about art. Mechanical humanity consists of men number one, number two, and number three and they, of course, can have subjective art only. Objective art requires at least flashes of OBJECTIVE consciousness; in order to understand these flashes properly and to make proper use of them a great inner unity is necessary and a great control of oneself.” Fragments: Fourteen

“It depends upon whose prayer,” said G. “The prayer of subjective man, that is, of man number one, number two, and number three, can give only subjective results, namely, self-consolation, self-suggestion, self-hypnosis. It cannot give OBJECTIVE results.” Fragments: Fifteen

“But cannot prayer in general give OBJECTIVE results?” asked one of those present. Fragments: Fifteen

“Whether general evolution is proceeding or not is again another question. It is enough for us to realize that it is possible, and therefore evolu’ on for people outside the ‘ways’ is possible. Speaking more correctly there are two ‘ways.’ One we will call the ‘subjective way.’ It includes all four ways of which we have spoken. The other we will call the ‘OBJECTIVE way.’ This is the way of people in life. You must not take the names ‘subjective’ and ‘OBJECTIVE’ too literally. They express only one aspect. I take them only because there are no other words.” Fragments: Seventeen

“No,” said G. “It would be more incorrect than ‘subjective’ and ‘OBJECTIVE’ because the subjective way is not individual in the general meaning of this word, because this way is a ‘school way.’ From this point of view the ‘OBJECTIVE way’ is much more individual because it admits of many more individual peculiarities. No, it is better to leave these names — ‘subjective’ and ‘OBJECTIVE.’ They are not altogether suitable but we will take them conditionally. Fragments: Seventeen

“People of the OBJECTIVE way simply live in life. They are those whom we call good people. Particular systems and methods are not necessary for them; making use of ordinary religious or intellectual teachings and ordinary morality, they live at the same time according to conscience. They do not of necessity do much good, but they do no evil. Sometimes they happen to be quite uneducated, simple people but they understand life very well, they have a right valuation of things and a right outlook. And they are of course perfecting themselves and evolving. Only their way can be very long with many unnecessary repetitions.” Fragments: Seventeen

I had for a long time wanted to get G. to talk about repetition but he always avoided it. So it was on this occasion. Without answering my question about repetition he continued: “It often seems to people of the ‘way,’ that is, of the subjective way, especially those who are just beginning, that other people, that is, people of the OBJECTIVE way, are not moving. But this is a great mistake. A simple obyvatel may sometimes do such work within him that he will overtake another, a monk or even a yogi. Fragments: Seventeen

“Obyvatel is a strange word in the Russian language. It is used in the sense of ‘inhabitant,’ without any particular shade. At the same time it is used to express contempt or derision — ‘obyvatel’ — as though there could be nothing worse. But those who speak in this way do not understand that the obyvatel is the healthy kernel of life. And from the point of view of the possibility of evolution, a good obyvatel has many more chances than a ‘lunatic’ or a ‘tramp.’ Afterwards I will perhaps explain what I mean by these two words. In the meantime we will talk about the obyvatel. I do not at all wish to say that all obyvatels are people of the OBJECTIVE way. Nothing of the kind. Among them are thieves, rascals, and fools; but there are others. I merely wish to say that being a good obyvatel by itself does not hinder the ‘way’ And finally there are different types of obyvatel. Imagine, for example, the type of obyvatel who lives all his life just as the other people round him, conspicuous in nothing, perhaps a good master, who makes money, and is perhaps even close-fisted. At the same time he dreams all his life of monasteries, for instance, and dreams that some time or other he will leave everything and go into a monastery. And such things happen in the East and in Russia. A man lives and works, then, when his children or his grandchildren are grown up, he gives everything to them and goes into a monastery. This is the obyvatel of which I speak. Perhaps he does not go into a monastery, perhaps he does not need this. His own life as an obyvatel can be his way. Fragments: Seventeen