I do not remember how our talk began; I think we spoke of India, of esotericism, and of yogi schools. I gathered that G. had traveled widely and had been in places of which I had only heard and which I very much wished to visit. Not only did my questions not embarrass him but it seemed to me that he put much more into each answer than I had asked for. I liked his manner of speaking, which was careful and precise. M. soon left us. G. told me of his work in Moscow. I did not fully understand him. It transpired from what he said that in his work, which was chiefly PSYCHOLOGICAL in character, chemistry played a big part. Listening to him for the first time I, of course, took his words literally. Fragments: One

“What you say,” I said, “reminds me of something I heard about a school in southern India. A Brahmin, an exceptional man in many respects, told a young Englishman in Travancore of a school which studied the chemistry of the human body, and by means of introducing or removing various substances, could change a man’s moral and PSYCHOLOGICAL nature. This is very much like what you are saying.” Fragments: One

This was all I heard. Only much later I understood what he wished to tell me — that is, how accidental influences could be diverted or transformed into something relatively harmless. It was really an interesting idea referring to the esoteric meaning of “sacrifices.” But, in any case at the present time, this idea has only an historical and a PSYCHOLOGICAL value. What was really important and what he said quite casually, so that I did not even notice it at once, and only remembered later in trying to reconstruct the conversation, was his words referring to the difference of time for planets and for man. Fragments: One

I was particularly attracted by his sense of humor and the complete absence of any pretensions to “sanctity” or to the possession of “miraculous” powers, although, as we became convinced later, he possessed then the knowledge and ability of creating unusual phenomena of a PSYCHOLOGICAL character. But he always laughed at people who expected miracles from him. Fragments: Two

After this G. went on to explain man’s various functions and centers controlling these functions in the way they are set out in the PSYCHOLOGICAL lectures. Fragments: Three

These explanations, and all the talks connected with them, took a fairly long time, while at almost every talk we returned to the fundamental ideas of man’s mechanicalness, of the absence of unity in man, of man’s -having no choice, of his being unable to do, and so on. There is no possibility of giving all these talks in the way they actually took place. For this reason I collected all the PSYCHOLOGICAL and all the cosmological material in two separate series of lectures. Fragments: Three

“The teaching of the three forces is at the root of all ancient systems. The first force may be called active or positive; the second, passive or negative; the third, neutralizing. But these are merely names, for in reality all three forces are equally active and appear as active, passive, and neutralizing, only at their meeting points, that is to say, only in relation to one another at a given moment. The first two forces are more or less comprehensible to man and the third may sometimes be discovered either at the point of application of the forces, or in the ‘medium,’ or in the ‘result.’ But, speaking in general, the third force is not easily accessible to direct observation and understanding. The reason for this is to be found in the functional limitations of man’s ordinary PSYCHOLOGICAL activity and in the fundamental categories of our perception of the phenomenal world, that is, in our sensation of space and time resulting from these limitations. People cannot perceive and observe the third force directly any more than they can spatially perceive the ‘fourth dimension.’ Fragments: Four

“But by studying himself, the manifestations of his thought, consciousness, activity — his habits, his desires, and so on — man may learn to observe and to see in himself the action of the three forces. Let us suppose, for instance, that a man wants to work on himself in order to change certain of his characteristics, to attain a higher level of being. His desire, his initiative, is the active force. The inertia of all his habitual PSYCHOLOGICAL life which shows opposition to his initiative will be the passive or the negative force. The two forces will either counterbalance one another, or one will completely conquer the other, but, at the same time, it will become too weak for any further action. Thus the two forces will, as it were, revolve one around the other, one absorbing the other and producing no result whatever. This may continue for a lifetime. A man may feel desire and initiative. But all this initiative may be absorbed in overcoming the habitual inertia of life, leaving nothing for the purpose towards which the initiative ought to be directed. And so it may go on until the third force makes its appearance, in the form, for instance, of new knowledge, showing at once the advantage or the necessity of work on oneself and, in this way, supporting and strengthening the initiative. Then the initiative, with the support of this third force, may conquer inertia and the man becomes active in the desired direction. Fragments: Four

There were several points in G.’s PSYCHOLOGICAL theories that particularly aroused my interest. The first thing was the possibility of self-change, that is, the fact that in beginning to observe himself in the right way a man immediately begins to change himself, and that he can never End himself to be right. Fragments: Six

I began a series of experiments or exercises, making use of a certain experience in this direction that I had acquired earlier. I carried out a series of short but very intensive fasts. I call them “intensive” because I did not take them at all from the hygienic point of view but tried, on the contrary, to give the strongest possible shocks to the organism. In addition to this I began to “breathe” according to a definite system which, together with fasting, had given me interesting PSYCHOLOGICAL results before; and also “repetition” on the method of the “prayer of the mind” which had helped me very much before to concentrate my attention and to observe myself. And also a series of mental exercises of a rather complicated kind for the concentration of the attention. I do not describe these experiments and exercises in detail because they were, after all, attempts to feel my way, without having exact knowledge of possible results. Fragments: Thirteen

“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

All this interested me particularly because certain experiments I had carried out had led me long ago to conclude that physical states, which are connected with new PSYCHOLOGICAL experiences, begin with feeling the pulse throughout the whole body, which is what we do not feel in ordinary conditions; in this connection the pulse is felt at once in all parts of the body as one stroke. In my own personal experiments “feeling” the pulsation throughout the whole body was brought about, for instance, by certain breathing exercises connected with several days of fasting. I came to no definite results whatever in my own experiments but there remains with me the deep conviction that control over the body begins with acquiring control over the pulse. Acquiring for a short time the possibility of regulating, quickening, and slowing the pulse, I was able to slow down or quicken the heart beat and this in its turn gave me very interesting PSYCHOLOGICAL results. I understood in a general way that control over the heart could not come from the heart muscles but that it depended upon controlling the pulse (the second stroke or the “big heart”) and G. had explained a great deal to me in pointing out that control over the “second heart” depends upon controlling the tension of the muscles, because we do not possess this control chiefly in consequence of the wrong and irregular tension of various groups of muscles. Fragments: Seventeen

“Stop” had an immense, influence on the whole of our life, on the understanding of our work and our attitude towards it. First of all, attitude towards “stop” showed with undoubted accuracy what anyone’s attitude was to the work. People who had tried to evade work evaded “stop.” That is, either they did not hear the command to “stop” or they said that it did not directly refer .to them. Or, on the other hand, they were always prepared for a “stop,” they made no careless movements, they took no glasses of hot tea in their hands, they sat down and got up very quickly and so on. To a certain extent it was even possible to cheat with the “stop.” But of course this would be seen and would at once show who was sparing himself and who was able not to spare himself, able to take the work seriously, and who was trying to apply ordinary methods to it, to avoid difficulties, “to adapt themselves.” In exactly the same way “stop” showed the people who were incapable and undesirous of submitting to school discipline and the people who were not taking it seriously. We saw quite clearly that without “stop” and other exercises which accompanied it, nothing whatever could be attained in a purely PSYCHOLOGICAL way. Fragments: Seventeen

But later work showed us the methods of the PSYCHOLOGICAL way. Fragments: Seventeen

Exercises on this occasion were much more difficult and varied than during the preceding summer. We began rhythmic exercises to music, dervish dances, different kinds of mental exercises, the study of different ways of breathing, and so on. Particularly intensive were the exercises for studying various imitations of psychic phenomena, thought-reading, clairvoyance, mediumistic displays, and so forth. Before these exercises began G. explained to us that the study of these “tricks,” as he called them, was an obligatory subject in all Eastern schools, because without having studied all possible counterfeits and imitations it was not possible to begin the study of phenomena of a supernormal character. A man is in a position to distinguish the real from the sham in this sphere only when he knows all the shams and is able to reproduce them himself. Besides this G. said that a practical study of these “psychic tricks” was in itself an exercise which could be replaced by nothing else, which was the best of all for developing certain special characteristics: keenness of observation, shrewdness, and more particularly for the enlargement of other characteristics for which there are no words in ordinary PSYCHOLOGICAL language but which must certainly be developed. Fragments: Eighteen