“The alternation of I’s, their continual obvious struggle for supremacy, is controlled by accidental external influences. Warmth, sunshine, fine weather, immediately call up a whole group of I’s. Cold, fog, rain, call up another group of I’s, other associations, other feelings, other actions. There is nothing in man able to control this change of I’s, chiefly because man does not notice, or know of it; he lives always in the last I. Some I’s, of course, are stronger than others. But it is not their own conscious strength; they have been created by the strength of accidents or mechanical external stimuli. Education, imitation, reading, the hypnotism of religion, caste, and traditions, or the glamour of new slogans, create very strong I’s in man’s PERSONALITY, which dominate whole series of other, weaker, I’s. But their strength is the strength of the ‘rolls’ in the centers. And all I’s making up a man’s PERSONALITY have the same origin as these ‘rolls’; they are the results of external influences; and both are set in motion and controlled by fresh external influences. Fragments: Three

“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

“It must be understood that man consists of two parts: essence and PERSONALITY. Essence in man is what is his own. Personality in man is what is ‘not his own.’ ‘Not his own’ means what has come from outside, what he has learned, or reflects, all traces of exterior impressions left in the memory and in the sensations, all words and movements that have been learned, all feelings created by imitation — all this is ‘not his own,’ all this is PERSONALITY. Fragments: Eight

“From the point of view of ordinary psychology the division of man into PERSONALITY and essence is hardly comprehensible. It is more exact to say that such a division does not exist in psychology at all. Fragments: Eight

“A small child has no PERSONALITY as yet. He is what he really is. He is essence. His desires, tastes, likes, dislikes, express his being such as it is. Fragments: Eight

“But as soon as so-called ‘education’ begins PERSONALITY begins to grow. Personality is created partly by the intentional influences of other people, that is, by ‘education,’ and partly by involuntary imitation of them by the child itself. In the creation of PERSONALITY a great part is also played by ‘resistance’ to people around him and by attempts to conceal from them something that is ‘his own’ or ‘real.’ 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

“But as a rule the PERSONALITY of such people is very little developed. They have more of what is their own, but very little of what is ‘not their own,’ that is to say, they lack education and instruction, they lack culture. Culture creates PERSONALITY and is at the same time the product and the result of PERSONALITY. We do not realize that the whole of our life, all we call civilization, all we call science, philosophy, art, and politics, is created by people’s PERSONALITY, that is, by what is ‘not their own’ in them. Fragments: Eight

“There exists a possibility of experimental verification of the relation of PERSONALITY to essence. In Eastern schools ways and means are known by the help of which it is possible to separate man’s PERSONALITY from his essence. For this purpose they sometimes use hypnosis, sometimes special narcotics, sometimes certain kinds of exercises. If PERSONALITY and essence are for a time separated in a man by one or another of these means, two beings, as it were, are formed in him, who speak in different voices, have completely different tastes, aims, and interests, and one of these two beings often proves to be on the level of a small child. Continuing the experiment further it is possible to put one of these beings to sleep, or the experiment may begin by putting to sleep either PERSONALITY or essence. Certain narcotics have the property of putting PERSONALITY to sleep without affecting essence. And for a certain time after taking this narcotic a man’s PERSONALITY disappears, as it were, and only his essence remains. And it happens that a man full of the most varied and exalted ideas, full of sympathies and antipathies, love, hatred, attachments, patriotism, habits, tastes, desires, convictions, suddenly proves quite empty, without thoughts, without feelings, without convictions, without views. Everything that has agitated him before now leaves him completely indifferent. Sometimes he sees the artificiality and the imaginary character of his usual moods or his high-sounding words, sometimes he simply forgets them as though they had never existed. Things for which he was ready to sacrifice his life now appear to him ridiculous and meaningless and unworthy of his attention. All that he can find in himself is a small number of instinctive inclinations and tastes. He is fond of sweets, he likes warmth, he dislikes cold, he dislikes the thought of work, or on the contrary he likes the idea of physical movement. And that is all. Fragments: Eight

“Sometimes, though very seldom, and sometimes when it is least expected, essence proves fully grown and fully developed in a man, even in cases of undeveloped PERSONALITY, and in this case essence unites together everything that is serious and real in a man. Fragments: Eight

“A very important moment in the work on oneself is when a man begins to distinguish between his PERSONALITY and his essence. A man’s real I, his individuality, can grow only from his essence. It can be said that a man’s individuality is his essence, grown up, mature. But in order to enable essence to grow up, it is first of all necessary to weaken the constant pressure of PERSONALITY upon it, because the obstacles to the growth of essence are contained in PERSONALITY. Fragments: Eight

‘If we take an average cultured man, we shall see that in the vast majority of cases his PERSONALITY is the active element in him while his essence is the passive element. The inner growth of a man cannot begin so long as this order of things remains unchanged. Personality must become passive and essence must become active. This can happen only if ‘buffers’ are removed or weakened, because ‘buffers’ are the chief weapon by the help of which PERSONALITY holds essence in subjection. Fragments: Eight

“As has been said earlier, in the case of less cultured people essence is often more highly developed than it is in cultured man. It would seem that they ought to be nearer the possibility of growth, but in reality it is not so because their PERSONALITY proves to be insufficiently developed. For inner growth, for work on oneself, a certain development of PERSONALITY as well as a certain strength of essence are necessary. Personality consists of ‘rolls,’ and of ‘buffers’ resulting from a certain work of the centers. An insufficiently developed PERSONALITY means a lack of ‘rolls,’ that is, a lack of knowledge, a lack of information, a lack of the material upon which work on oneself must be based. Without some store of knowledge, without a certain amount of material ‘not his own,’ a man cannot begin to work on himself, he cannot begin to study himself, he cannot begin to struggle with his mechanical habits, simply because there will be no reason or motive for undertaking such work. 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

“Moreover, it happens fairly often that essence dies in a man while his PERSONALITY and his body are still alive. A considerable percentage of the people we meet in the streets of a great town are people who are empty inside, that is, they are actually already dead. 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

“The results of the influences whose source lies outside life collect together within him, he remembers them together, feels them together. They begin to form within him a certain whole. He does not give a clear account to himself as to what, how, and why, or if he does give an account to himself, then he explains it wrongly. But the point is not in this, .but in the fact that the results of these influences collect together within him and after a certain time they form within him a kind of magnetic center, which begins to attract to itself kindred influences and in this manner it grows. If the magnetic center receives sufficient nourishment, and if there is no strong resistance on the part of the other sides of a man’s PERSONALITY which are the result of influences created in life, the magnetic center begins to influence a man’s orientation, obliging him to turn round and even to move in a certain direction. When the magnetic center attains sufficient force and development, a man already understands the idea of the way and he begins to look for the way. The search for the way may take many years and may lead to nothing. This depends upon conditions, upon circumstances, upon the power of the magnetic center, upon the power and the direction of inner tendencies which are not concerned with this search and which may divert a man at the very moment when the possibility of finding the way appears. Fragments: Ten

“Besides these general rules there are certain individual conditions which are given to each person separately and which are generally connected with his ‘chief fault,’ or chief feature. “This requires some explanation. “Every man has a certain feature in his character which is central. It is like an axle round which all his ‘false PERSONALITY’ revolves. Every man’s personal work must consist in struggling against this chief fault. This explains why there can be no general rules of work and why all systems that attempt to evolve such rules either lead to nothing or cause harm. How can there be general rules? What is useful for one is harmful for another. One man talks too much; he must learn to keep silent. Another man is silent when he ought to talk and he must learn to talk; and so it is always and in everything. General rules for the work of groups refer to everyone. Personal directions can only be individual. In this connection again a man cannot find his own chief feature, his chief fault, by himself. This is practically a law. The teacher has to point out this feature to him and show him how to fight against it. No one else but the teacher can do this. Fragments: Eleven

“But it must be remembered in this connection that a ‘black magician,’ whether good or evil, has at all events been at a school. He has learned something, has heard something, knows something. He is simply a ‘half-educated man’ who has either been turned out of a school or who has himself left a school having decided that he already knows enough, that he does not want to be in subordination any longer, and that he can work independently and even direct the work of others. All ‘work’ of this kind can produce only subjective results, that is to say, it can only increase deception and increase sleep instead of decreasing them. Nevertheless something can be learned from a ‘black magician’ although in the wrong way. He can sometimes by accident even tell the truth. That is why I say that there are many things worse than ‘black magic.’ Such are various ‘occult’ and theosophical societies and groups. Not only have their teachers never been at a school but they have never even met anyone who has been near a school. Their work simply consists in aping. But imitation work of this kind gives a great deal of self-satisfaction. One man feels himself to be a ‘teacher,’ others feel that they are ‘pupils,’ and everyone is satisfied. No realization of one’s nothingness can be got here and if people affirm that they have it, it is all illusion and self-deception, if not plain deceit. On the contrary, instead of realizing their own nothingness the members of such circles acquire a realization of their own importance and a growth of false PERSONALITY. Fragments: Eleven

When G. next came to St. Petersburg (he had been in Moscow this time for two or three weeks) we told him of our attempts; he listened to everything and merely said that we did not know how to separate “PERSONALITY” from “essence.” Fragments: Twelve

“Personality hides behind essence,” he said, “and essence hides behind PERSONALITY and they mutually screen each other.” Fragments: Twelve

“How can essence be separated from PERSONALITY?” asked one of those present. Fragments: Twelve

“How would you separate your own from what is not your own?” G. replied. “It is necessary to think, it is necessary to know where one or another of your characteristics has come from. And it is necessary to realize that most people, especially in your circle of society, have very little of their own. Everything they have is not their own and is mostly stolen; everything that they call ideas, convictions, views, conceptions of the world, has all been pilfered from various sources. And all of it together makes up PERSONALITY and must be cast aside.” Fragments: Twelve

“But you yourself said that work begins with PERSONALITY,” said someone there. Fragments: Twelve

“Quite true,” replied G. “Therefore we must first of all establish of what precisely we are speaking — of what moment in a man’s development and of what level of being. Just now I was simply speaking of a man in life who had no connection whatever with the work. Such a man, particularly if he belongs to the ‘intellectual’ classes, is almost entirely composed of PERSONALITY. In most cases his essence ceases to develop at a very early age. I know respected fathers of families, professors full of various ideas, well­known authors, important officials who were almost ministers, whose essence had stopped developing approximately at the age of twelve. And that is not so bad. It sometimes happens that certain aspects of essence stop at five or six years of age and then everything ends; all the rest is not their own; it is repertoire, or taken from books; or it has been created by imitating ready-made models.” After this there were many conversations, in which G. took part, during which we tried to find out the reason for our failure to fulfill the task set by G. But the more we talked the less we understood what he actually wanted from us. Fragments: Twelve

Conversations in groups continued as usual. Once G. said that he wanted to carry out an experiment on the separation of PERSONALITY from essence. We were all very interested because he had promised “experiments” for a long time but till then we had seen nothing. I will not describe his methods, I will merely describe the people whom he chose that first evening for the experiment. One was no longer young and was a man who occupied a fairly prominent position in society. At our meetings he spoke much and often about himself, his family, about Christianity, and about the events of the moment connected with the war and with all possible kinds of “scandal” that had very much disgusted him. The other was younger. Many of us did not consider him to be a serious person. Very often he played what is called the fool; or, on the other hand, entered into endless formal arguments about some or other details of the system without any relation whatever to the whole. It was very difficult to understand him. He spoke in a confused and intricate manner even of the most simple things, mixing up in a most impossible way different points of view and words belonging to different categories and levels. Fragments: Twelve

Neither of them remembered anything the next day. G. explained to us that with the first man everything that constituted the subject of his ordinary conversation, of his alarms and agitation, was in PERSONALITY. And when his PERSONALITY was asleep practically nothing remained. In the PERSONALITY of the other there was also a great deal of undue talkativeness but behind the PERSONALITY there was an essence which knew as much as the PERSONALITY and knew it better, and when PERSONALITY went to sleep essence took its place to which it had a much greater right. Fragments: Twelve

“Essence remembers,” said G., “PERSONALITY has forgotten. And this was necessary because otherwise PERSONALITY would have perverted everything and would have ascribed all this to itself.” Fragments: Twelve

“There is a good deal of truth in that,” said G. “But in that form it is, of course, much too general. Actually you did not see types of men and women but types of events. What I speak of refers to the real type, that is to say, to essence. If people were to live in essence one type would always find the other type and wrong types would never come together. But people live in PERSONALITY. Personality has its own interests and its own tastes which have nothing in common with the interests and the tastes of essence. Personality in our case is the result of the wrong workwork of centers. For this reason PERSONALITY can dislike precisely what essence likes — and like what essence does not like. Here is where the struggle between essence and PERSONALITY begins. Essence knows what it wants but cannot explain it. Personality does not want to hear of it and takes no account of it. It has its own desires. And it acts in its own way. But its power does not continue beyond that moment. After that, in some way or other, the two essences have to live together. And they hate one another. No sort of acting can help here. In one way or another essence or type gains the upper hand and decides. Fragments: Twelve

G. told another of our party — it was the middle-aged man on whom he had carried out the experiment of dividing PERSONALITY from essence and who asked for raspberry jam — that his feature was that he had no conscience. Fragments: Thirteen

P., the middle-aged man whom I have mentioned in connection with experiments in dividing PERSONALITY from essence, came out of the situation with honor and quickly became a very active member of our group, only on occasions going astray into a formal attitude or in “literal understanding.” Fragments: Thirteen

“So that in the actual situation of humanity there is nothing that points to evolution proceeding. On the contrary when we compare humanity with a man we quite clearly see a growth of PERSONALITY at the cost of essence, that is, a growth of the artificial, the unreal, and what is foreign, at the cost of the natural, the real, and what is one’s own. Fragments: Fifteen

“Yes,” said G., “it depends upon how they are understood. They can be of value and they can be without value. Astrology deals with only one part of man, with his type, his essence — it does not deal with PERSONALITY, with acquired qualities. If you understand this you understand what is of value in astrology.” Fragments: Seventeen

“It is fortunate for us that we do not see and do not know it. If we knew what a number of people are actually dead and what a number of these dead people govern our lives, we should go mad with horror. And indeed people often do go mad because they End out something of this nature without the proper preparation, that is, they see something they are not supposed to see. In order to see without danger one must be on the way. If a man who can do nothing sees the truth he will certainly go mad. Only this rarely happens. Usually everything is so arranged that a man can see nothing prematurely. Personality sees only what it likes to see and what does not interfere with its life. It never sees what it does not like. This is both good and bad at the same time. It is good if a man wants to sleep, bad if he wants to awaken.” Fragments: Eight