“The fourth way requires no retirement into the desert, does not require a man to give up and renounce everything by which he formerly lived. The fourth way begins much further on than the way of the yogi. This means that a man must be prepared for the fourth way and this preparation must be acquired in ORDINARY LIFE and be a very serious one, embracing many different sides. Furthermore a man must be living in conditions favorable for work on the fourth way, or, in any case, in conditions which do not render it impossible. It must be understood that both in the inner and in the external life of a man there may be conditions which create insuperable barriers to the fourth way. Furthermore, the fourth way has no definite forms like the ways of the fakir, the monk, and the yogi. And, first of all, it has to be found. This is the first test. It is not as well known as the three traditional ways. There are many people who have never heard of the fourth way and there are others who deny its existence or possibility. Fragments: Two

“Right external considering is very important in the work. It often happens that people who understand very well the necessity of external considering in life do not understand the necessity of external considering in the work; they decide that just because they are in the work they have the right not to consider. Whereas in reality, in the work, that is, for a man’s own successful work, ten times more external considering is necessary than in life, because only external considering on his part shows his valuation of the work and his understanding of the work; and success in the work is always proportional to the valuation and understanding of it. Remember that work cannot begin and cannot proceed on a level lower than that of the obyvatel,1 that is, on a level lower than ORDINARY LIFE. This is a very important principle which, for some reason or other, is very easily forgotten. But we will speak about this separately afterwards.” Fragments: Eight

“In ORDINARY LIFE the concept ‘conscience’ is taken too simply. As if we had a conscience. Actually the concept ‘conscience’ in the sphere of the emotions is equivalent to the concept ‘consciousness’ in the sphere of the intellect. And as we have no consciousness we have no conscience. Fragments: Eight

“Therefore it is impossible to answer the question, from what does the way start? The way starts with something that is not in life at all, and therefore it is impossible to say from what. Sometimes it is said: in ascending the stairway a man is not sure of anything, he may doubt everything, his own powers, whether what he is doing is right, the guide, his knowledge and his powers. At the same time, what he attains is very unstable; even if he has ascended fairly high on the stairway, he may fall down at any moment and have to begin again from the beginning. But when he has passed the last threshold and enters the way, all this changes. First of all, all doubts he may have about his guide disappear and at the same time the guide becomes far less necessary to him than before. In many respects he may even be independent and know where he is going. Secondly, he can no longer lose so easily the results of his work and he cannot find himself again in ORDINARY LIFE. Even if he leaves the way, he will be unable to return where he started from. Fragments: Ten

“More difficult tasks, although they are only subjectively difficult, are called ‘barriers.’ The peculiarity of barriers consists in the fact that, having surmounted a serious barrier, a man can no longer return to ordinary sleep, to ORDINARY LIFE. And if, having passed the first barrier, he feels afraid of those that follow and does not go on, he stops so to speak between two barriers and is unable to move either backwards or forwards. This is the worst thing that can happen to a man. Therefore the teacher is usually very careful in the choice of tasks and barriers, in other words, he takes the risk of giving definite tasks requiring the conquest of inner barriers only to those people who have already shown themselves sufficiently strong on small barriers. Fragments: Eleven

Our talks about people who could be interested in the system and able to work, involuntarily led us towards a valuation of our friends from an entirely new point of view. In this respect we all experienced bitter disappointment. Even before G. had formally requested us to speak of the system to our friends we had of course all tried in one way or another to talk about it at any rate with those of them whom we met most often. And in most cases our enthusiasm in regard to the ideas of the system met with a very cold reception. They did not understand us; the ideas which seemed to us new and original seemed to our friends to be old and tedious, leading nowhere, and even repellent. This astonished us more than anything else. We were amazed that people with whom we had felt an inner intimacy, with whom in former times we had been able to talk about all questions that worried us, and in whom we had found a response, could fail to see what we saw and above all that they could see something quite opposite. I have to say that, in regard to my own personal experience, it gave me a very strange even painful impression. I speak of the absolute impossibility of making people understand us. We are of course accustomed to this in ORDINARY LIFE, in the realm of ordinary questions, and we know that people who are hostile to us at heart or narrow-minded or incapable of thought can misunderstand us, twist and distort anything we say, can ascribe to us thoughts we never had, words which we never uttered, and so on. But now when we saw that all this was being done by those whom we used to regard as our kind of people, with whom we used to spend very much of our time, and who formerly had seem to us to understand us better than anyone else, it produced on us a discouraging impression. Such cases of course constituted the ex­ceptions; most of our friends were merely indifferent, and all our attempts to infect them with our interest in G.’s system led to nothing. But sometimes they got a very curious impression of us. I do not remember now who was the first to notice that our friends found we had begun to change for the worse. They found us less interesting than we had been before; they told us we were becoming colorless, as though we were fading, were losing our former spontaneity, our former responsiveness to everything, that we were becoming “machines,” were ceasing to think originally, were ceasing to feel, that we were merely repeating like parrots what we heard from G. Fragments: Twelve

“In literature which acknowledges the existence of esotericism humanity is usually divided into two circles only and the ‘exoteric circle’ as opposed to the ‘esoteric,’ is called ORDINARY LIFE. In reality, as we see, the ‘exoteric circle’ is something very far from us and very high. For ordinary man this is already ‘esotericism.’ Fragments: Fifteen

“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

“Let us try to follow what occurs. A man is walking, or sitting, or working. At that moment he hears a signal. A movement that has begun is interrupted by this sudden signal or command to stop. His body becomes immovable and arrested in the midst of a transition from one posture to another, in a position in which he never stays in ORDINARY LIFE. Feeling himself in this state, that is, in an unaccustomed posture, a man involuntarily looks at himself from new points of view, sees and observes himself in a new way. In this unaccustomed posture he is able to think in a new way, feel in a new way, know himself in a new way. In this way the circle of old automatism is broken. The body tries in vain to adopt an ordinary comfortable posture. But the man’s will, brought into action by the will of the teacher, prevents it The struggle goes on not for life but till the death. But in this case will can conquer. This exercise taken together with all that has been said is an exercise for self-remembering. A man must remember himself so as not to miss the signal; he must remember himself so as not to take the most comfortable posture at the first moment; he must remember himself in order to watch the tension of the muscles in different parts of the body, the direction in which he is looking, the facial expression, and so on; he must remember himself in order to overcome very considerable pain sometimes from unaccustomed positions of the legs, arms, and back, so as not to be afraid of falling or dropping something heavy on his foot. It is enough to forget oneself for a single moment and the body will adopt, by itself and almost un-noticeably, a more comfortable position, it will transfer the weight from one foot to another, will slacken certain muscles, and so on. This exer­cise is a simultaneous exercise for the will, the attention, the thoughts, the feelings, and for moving center. Fragments: Seventeen

“This is not self-confidence in the ordinary sense,” I said, “quite the contrary, rather is it a confidence in the unimportance and the insignificance of self, that self which we usually know. But what I am confident about is that if something terrible happened to me like things that have happened to many of my friends during the past year, then it would be not I who would meet it, not this ordinary I, but another I within me who would be equal to the occasion. Two years ago G. asked me whether I felt a new I inside me and I had to answer that I felt no change whatever. Now I can speak otherwise. And I can explain how the change takes place. It does not take place at once, I mean that the change does not embrace every moment of life. All the ORDINARY LIFE goes on in the ordinary way, all those very ordinary stupid small I’s, excepting perhaps a few which have already become impossible. But if something big were to happen, something which would require the straining of every nerve, then I know that this big thing would be met not by the ordinary small I, which is now speaking, and which can be made afraid, nor by anything like it — but by another, a big I, which nothing can frighten and which would be equal to everything that happened. I cannot describe it better. But for me it is a fact. And this fact is definitely connected for me with this work. You know my life and you know that I was not afraid of many things, both inward and outward, that people are often afraid of. But this is something different, a different taste. Therefore I know, for myself, that this new confidence has not come simply as a result of a great experience of life. It is the result of that work on myself which I began four years ago.” Fragments: Eighteen

In Ekaterinodar and afterwards in Rostov during the winter, I collected together a small group and, on a plan that I had worked out the preced ing winter, I gave them lectures expounding G.’s system as well as the things from ORDINARY LIFE which lead up to it. Fragments: Eighteen