When I went away I already knew I was going to look for a SCHOOL or SCHOOLs. I had arrived at this long ago. I realized that personal, individual efforts were insufficient and that it was necessary to come into touch with the real and living thought which must be in existence somewhere but with which we had lost contact. Fragments: One

On my departure I still admitted much that was fantastic in relation to SCHOOLs. “Admitted” is perhaps too strong a word. I should say better that I dreamed about the possibility of a non-physical contact with SCHOOLs, a contact, so to speak, “on another plane.” I could not explain it clearly, but it seemed to me that even the beginning of contact with a SCHOOL may have a miraculous nature. 1 imagined, for example, the possibility of making contact with SCHOOLs of the distant past, with SCHOOLs of Pythagoras, with SCHOOLs of Egypt, with the SCHOOLs of those who built Notre-Dame, and so on. It seemed to me that the barriers of time and space should disappear on making such contact. The idea of SCHOOLs in itself was fantastic and nothing seemed to me too fantastic in relation to this idea. And I saw no contradiction between these ideas and my attempts to find SCHOOLs in India. It seemed to me that it was precisely in India that it would be possible to establish some kind of contact which would afterwards become permanent and independent of any outside interferences. Fragments: One

On the return voyage, after a whole series of meetings and impressions, the idea of SCHOOLs became much more real and tangible and lost its fantastic character. This probably took place chiefly because, as I then realized, “SCHOOL” required not only a search but “selection,” or choice — I mean on our side. Fragments: One

There was another type of SCHOOL, with which I was unable to make contact and of which I only heard. These SCHOOLs promised very much but they also demanded very much. They demanded everything at once. It would have been necessary to stay in India and give up thoughts of returning to Europe, to renounce all my own ideas, aims, and plans, and proceed along a road of which I could know nothing beforehand. Fragments: One

Simultaneously with this I came to the conclusion that whatever the name of the SCHOOL: occult, esoteric, or yogi, they should exist on the ordinary earthly plane like any other kind of SCHOOL: a SCHOOL of painting, a SCHOOL of dancing, a SCHOOL of medicine. I realized that thought of SCHOOLs “on another plane” was simply a sign of weakness, of dreams taking the place of real search. And I understood then that these dreams were one of the principal obstacles on our possible way to the miraculous. 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

We came to a large empty flat over a municipal SCHOOL, evidently be­longing to teachers of this SCHOOL. I think it was in the place of the former Red Pond. Fragments: One

I came out with one of the young men. I felt myself very strange — a long reading which I very little understood, people who did not answer my questions, G. himself with his unusual manners and his influence on his people, which I all the time felt produced in me an unexpected desire to laugh, to shout, to sing, as though I had escaped from SCHOOL or from some strange detention. Fragments: One

“But where there are SCHOOLs of fakirs there are also SCHOOLs of yogis. Yogis generally keep an eye on fakirs. If a fakir attains what he has aspired to before he is too old, they take him into a yogi SCHOOL, where first they heal him and restore his power of movement, and then begin to teach him. A fakir has to learn to walk and to speak like a baby. But he now possesses a will which has overcome incredible difficulties on his way and this will may help him to overcome the difficulties on the second part of the way, the difficulties, namely, of developing the intellectual and emotional functions. Fragments: Two

“But all the ways, the way of the fakir as well as the way of the monk and the way of the yogi, have one thing in common. They all begin with the most difficult thing, with a complete change of life, with a renunciation of all worldly things. A man must give up his home, his family if he has one, renounce all the pleasures, attachments, and duties of life, and go out into the desert, or into a monastery or a yogi SCHOOL. From the very first day, from the very first step on his way, he must die to the world; only thus can he hope to attain anything on one of these ways. Fragments: Two

“It is difficult to explain in two words,” answered G. “First of all the man is not, of course, a ‘fakir’ in the sense in which I have been using the word. At the same time you are right in thinking it is not altogether a trick. But he does not know himself how he does it. If you bribed him and made him tell you what he knows he would probably tell you that he knows a certain word which he has to say to himself, after which he is able to lie down on the nails. He might even consent to tell you this word. But it would not help you in the least, because it would be a perfectly ordinary word which would have no effect whatever on you. This man has come from a SCHOOL, only he was not a disciple. He was an experiment. They simply experimented with him and on him. He had evidently been hypnotized many times and under hypnosis his skin had been rendered first insensitive to pricks and afterwards able to resist them. In a small way this is quite possible even for ordinary European hypnotism. Then afterwards both the insensitiveness and impenetrability of the skin were made permanent in him by means of post-hypnotic suggestion. You know what post-hypnotic suggestion is. A man is put to sleep and told that five hours after he wakes up he must do a certain thing; or he is told to pronounce a certain word and that as soon as he does so he will feel thirsty, or think himself dead, or something like that. Then he is awakened. When the time comes he feels an irresistible desire to do what he was told to do; or, if he remembers the word that was given to him, on pronouncing it he immediately falls into a trance. This is just what was done to your ‘fakir.’ They accustomed him to lie on nails under hypnosis; then they began to wake him and tell him that if he pronounced a certain word he would again be able to lie down on the nails. This word puts him into a hypnotic state. This is perhaps why he had such a sleepy, apathetic look. This often happens in such cases. They worked on him, perhaps, for many years and then simply let him go, to live as he could. So he put up that iron bed for himself and probably earns a few rupees a week. There are many such men in India. Schools take them for experiment, generally buying them when they are children from parents who gladly sell them because they afterwards profit from it. But of course the man himself does not know or understand what he is doing or how it is done.” Fragments: Three

“Man number four is not born ready-made. He is born one, two, or three, and becomes four only as a result of efforts of a definite character. Man number four is always the product of SCHOOL work. He can neither be born, nor develop accidentally or as the result of ordinary influences of bringing up, education, and so on. Man number four already stands on a different level to man number one, two, and three; he has a permanent center of gravity which consists in his ideas, in his valuation of the work, and in his relation to the SCHOOL. In addition his psychic centers have already begun to be balanced; one center in him cannot have such a preponderance over others as is the case with people of the first three categories. He already begins to know himself and begins to know whither he is going. Fragments: Four

I do not remember which of us was first to remember a well-known, though not very respectful SCHOOL story, in which we at once saw an illustration of this law. Fragments: Five

“In the guise of this formula ideas of the octave have been handed down from teacher to pupil, from one SCHOOL to another. In very remote times one of these SCHOOLs found that it was possible to apply this formula to music. In this way was obtained the seven-tone musical scale which was known in the most distant antiquity, then forgotten, and then discovered or ‘found’ again. Fragments: Seven

“It is only possible to learn this in a SCHOOL, that is to say, in a rightly organized SCHOOL which follows all esoteric traditions. Without the help of a SCHOOL a man by himself can never understand the law of octaves, the points of the ‘intervals,’ and the order of creating ‘shocks.’ He cannot understand because certain conditions are necessary for this purpose, and these conditions can only be created in a SCHOOL which is itself created upon these principles. Fragments: Seven

“How a SCHOOL is created on the principles of the law of octaves will be explained in due course. And this in its turn will explain to you one aspect of the union of the law of seven with the law of three. In the meantime it can be said only that in SCHOOL teaching, a man is given examples of both descending (creative) and ascending (or evolutionary) cosmic octaves. Western thought, knowing neither about octaves nor about the law of three, confuses the ascending and the descending lines and does not understand that the line of evolution is opposed to the line’ of creation, that is to say, it goes against it as though against the stream. Fragments: Seven

“This is why in SCHOOL work, which includes the destruction of ‘buffers,’ a man must be ready to obey another man’s will so long as his own will is not yet fully developed. Usually this subordination to another man’s will is studied before anything else. I use the word ‘studied’ because a man must understand why such obedience is necessary and he must learn to obey. The latter is not at all easy. A man beginning the work of self-study with the object of attaining control over himself is accustomed to believe in his own decisions. Even the fact that he has seen the necessity for changing himself shows him that his decisions are correct and strengthens his belief in them. But when he begins to work on himself a man must give up his own decisions, ‘sacrifice his own decisions,’ because otherwise the will of the man who directs his work will not be able to control his actions. Fragments: Eight

“A man usually begins his studies in a small group. This group is generally connected with a whole series of similar groups on different levels which, taken together, constitute what may be called a ‘preparatory SCHOOL.’ 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

My meetings with G.’s Moscow pupils were at that time quite unlike my first meeting with them in the spring of the preceding year. They did not appear to me now to be either artificial or to be playing a role which had been learned by heart. On the contrary, I always eagerly awaited their coming and tried to find out from them what their work consisted of in Moscow and what G. had said to them that we did not know. And I found out from them a great deal which came in very useful to me later in my work. In my new talks with them I saw the development of a very definite plan. We were not only learning from G. but we had also to learn one from another. I was beginning to see G.’s groups as a “SCHOOL” of some medieval painter whose pupils lived with him and worked with him and, while learning from him, taught one another. At the same time I understood why G.’s Moscow pupils could not answer my questions at our first meeting. I realized how utterly naive my questions had been: “On what is based their work on themselves?” “What constitutes the system which they study?” “What is the origin of this system?” And so on. Fragments: Twelve

“I was just waiting for that question,” he said. “But you already ought to understand that it is just as impossible to explain to a man who has not yet begun to work on himself and does not know the structure of the machine what the ‘abuse of sex’ means, as it is to say what must be done to avoid these abuses. Right workwork on oneself begins with the creation of a permanent center of gravity. When a permanent center of gravity has been created everything else begins to be disposed and distributed in subordination to it. The question comes to this: From what and how can a permanent center of gravity be created? And to this may be replied that only a man’s attitude to the work, to SCHOOL, his valuation of the work, and his realization of the mechanicalness and aimlessness of everything else can create in him a permanent center of gravity. Fragments: Twelve

“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

“Generally speaking we know very little about Christianity and the form of Christian worship; we know nothing at all of the history and origin of a number of things. For instance, the church, the temple in which gather the faithful and in which services are carried out according to special rites; where was this taken from? Many people do not think about this at all. Many people think that the outward form of worship, the rites, the singing of canticles, and so on, were invented by the fathers of the church. Others think that this outward form has been taken partly from pagan religions and partly from the Hebrews. But all of it is untrue. The question of the origin of the Christian church, that is, of the Christian temple, is much more interesting than we think. To begin with, the church and worship in the form which they took in the first centuries of Christianity could not have been borrowed from paganism because there was nothing like it either in the Greek or Roman cults or in Judaism. The Jewish synagogue, the Jewish temple, Greek and Roman temples of various gods, were something quite different from the Christian church which made its appearance in the first and second centuries. The Christian church is — a SCHOOL concerning which people have forgotten that it is a SCHOOL. Imagine a SCHOOL where the teachers give lectures and perform explanatory demonstrations without knowing that these are lectures and demonstrations; and where the pupils or simply the people who come to the SCHOOL take these lectures and demonstrations for ceremonies, or rites, or ‘sacraments,’ i.e., magic. This would approximate to the Christian church of our times. Fragments: Fifteen

“It will seem strange to many people when I say that this prehistoric Egypt was Christian many thousands of years before the birth of Christ, that is to say, that its religion was composed of the same principles and ideas that constitute true Christianity. Special SCHOOLs existed in this prehistoric Egypt which were called ‘SCHOOLs of repetition.’ In these SCHOOLs a public repetition was given on definite days, and in some SCHOOLs perhaps even every day, of the entire course in a condensed form of the sciences that could be learned at these SCHOOLs. Sometimes this repetition lasted a week or a month. Thanks to these repetitions people who had passed through this course did not lose their connection with the SCHOOL and retained in their memory all they had learned. Sometimes they came from very far away simply in order to listen to the repetition and went away feeling their connection with the SCHOOL. There were special days of the year when the repetitions were particularly complete, when they were carried out with particular solemnity — and these days themselves possessed a symbolical meaning. Fragments: Fifteen

“But it happens sometimes that when the SCHOOL closes a number of people are left who were round about the work, who saw the outward aspect of it, and saw the whole of the work in this outward aspect. Fragments: Fifteen

“Esoteric SCHOOLs, that is, not pseudo-esoteric SCHOOLs, which perhaps exist in some countries of the East, are difficult to find because they exist there in the guise of ordinary monasteries and temples. Tibetan monasteries are usually built in the form of four concentric circles or four concentric courts divided by high walls. Indian temples, especially those in Southern India, are built on the same plan but in the form of squares, one contained within the other. Worshipers usually have access to the first outer court, and sometimes, as an exception, persons of another religion and Europeans; access to the second court is for people of a certain caste only or for those having special permission; access to the third court is only for persons belonging to the temple; and access to the fourth is only for Brahmins and priests. Organizations of this kind which, with minor variations, are everywhere in existence, enable esoteric SCHOOLs to exist without being recognized. Out of dozens of monasteries one is a SCHOOL. But how is it to be recognized? If you get inside it you will only be inside the first court; to the second court only pupils have access. But this you do not know, you are told they belong to a special caste. As regards the third and fourth courts you cannot even know anything about them. And you can, in fact, observe the same order in all temples and until you are told you cannot distinguish an esoteric temple or monastery from an ordinary one. Fragments: Fifteen

“Transitions from one level of being to another were marked by ceremonies of presentation of a special kind, that is, initiation. But a change of being cannot be brought about by any rites. Rites can only mark an accomplished transition. And it is only in pseudo-esoteric systems in which there is nothing else except these rites, that they begin to attribute to the rites an independent meaning. It is supposed that a rite, in being transformed into a sacrament, transmits or communicates certain forces to the initiate. This again relates to the psychology of an imitation way. There is not, nor can there be, any outward initiation. In reality only self-initiation, self-presentation exist. Systems and SCHOOLs can indicate methods and ways, but no system or SCHOOL whatever can do for a man the work that he must do himself. Inner growth, a change of being, depend entirely upon the work which a man must do on himself.” Fragments: Fifteen

“Schools are imperative,” he once said, “first of all because of the complexity of man’s organization. A man is unable to keep watch on the whole of himself, that is, all his different sides. Only SCHOOL can do this, SCHOOL methods, SCHOOL discipline — a man is much too lazy, he will do a great deal without the proper intensity, or he will do nothing at all while thinking that he is doing something; he will work with intensity on something that does not need intensity and will let those moments pass by when intensity is imperative. Then he spares himself; he is afraid of doing anything unpleasant. He will never attain the necessary intensity by himself. If you have observed yourselves in a proper way you will agree with this. If a man sets himself a task of some sort he very quickly begins to be indulgent with himself. He tries to accomplish his task in the easiest way possible and so on. This is not work. In work only super-efforts are counted, that is, beyond the normal, beyond the necessary; ordinary efforts are not counted.” Fragments: Seventeen

“More than anything else he needs constant supervision and observation. He cannot observe himself constantly. Then he needs definite rules the fulfillment of which needs, in the first place, a certain kind of self-remembering and which, in the second place, helps in the struggle with habits. A man cannot do all this by himself. In life everything is always arranged far too comfortably for man to work. In a SCHOOL a man finds himself among other people who are not of his own choosing and with whom perhaps it is very difficult to live and work, and usually in uncomfortable and unaccustomed conditions. This creates tension between, him and the others. And this tension is also indispensable because it gradually chips away his sharp angles. Fragments: Seventeen

“Then work on moving center can only be properly organized in a SCHOOL. As I have already said, the wrong, independent, or automatic work of the moving center deprives the other centers of support and they involuntarily follow the moving center. Often, therefore, the sole possibility of making the other centers work in a new way is to begin with the moving center; that is with the body. A body which is lazy, automatic, and full of stupid habits stops any kind of work.” Fragments: Seventeen

“At the same time ‘stop’ demands unconditional obedience, without any hesitations or doubts. And this makes it the invariable method for studying SCHOOL discipline. School discipline is something quite different from military discipline, for instance. In that discipline everything is mechanical and the more mechanical it is the better. In this everything should be conscious because the aim consists in awakening consciousness. And for many people SCHOOL discipline is much more difficult than military discipline. There it is always one and the same, here it is always different. 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

“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

At the same time this does not at all mean that a man has no choice or that he is obliged to follow something which does not respond to what he is seeking. G. himself said that there are no “general” SCHOOLs, that each “guru” or leader of a SCHOOL works at his own specialty, one is a sculptor, another is a musician, a third is again something else, and that all the pupils of such a guru have to study his specialty. And it stands to reason that here a choice is possible. A man has to wait until he meets a guru whose specialty he is able to study, a specialty which suits his tastes, his tendencies, and his abilities. Fragments: Eighteen

There is no doubt that there may be very interesting ways, like music and like sculpture. But it cannot be that every man should be required to learn music or sculpture. In SCHOOL work there are undoubtedly obligatory subjects and there are, if it is possible to put it in this way, auxiliary subjects, the study of which is proposed merely as a means of studying the obligatory. Then the methods of the SCHOOLs may differ very much. According to the three ways the methods of each guru may approximate either to the way of the fakir, the way of the monk, or the way of the yogi. And it is of course possible that a man who is beginning work will make a mistake, will follow a leader such as he cannot follow for any distance. It stands to reason that it is the task of the leader to see to it that people do not begin to work with him for whom his methods or his special subjects will always be alien, incomprehensible, and unattainable. But if this does happen and if a man had begun to work with a leader whom he cannot follow, then of course, having noticed and realized this, he ought to go and seek another leader or work independently, if he is able to do so. Fragments: Eighteen

G. gave to the ballet the central position of his work at that time. Besides this he wanted to organize a continuation of his Tiflis Institute in Constantinople, the principal place in which would be taken by dances and rhythmic exercises which would prepare people to take part in the ballet. According to his ideas the ballet should become a SCHOOL. I worked out the scenario of the ballet for him and began to understand this idea better. The dances and all the other “numbers” of the ballet, or rather “revue,” demanded a long and an entirely special preparation. The people who were being prepared for the ballet and who were taking part in it, would, in so doing, be obliged to study and to acquire control over themselves, in this way approaching the disclosure of the higher forms of consciousness. Into the ballet there entered, and as a necessary part of it, dances, exercises, and the ceremonies of various dervishes as well as many little known Eastern dances. Fragments: Eighteen