“The third state of consciousness is self-remembering or SELF-CONSCIOUSness or consciousness of one’s being. It is usual to consider that we have this state of consciousness or that we can have it if we want it. Our science and philosophy have overlooked the fact that we do not possess this state of consciousness and that we cannot create it in ourselves by desire or decision alone. Fragments: Eight

“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

“For most people, even for educated and thinking people, the chief obstacle in the way of acquiring SELF-CONSCIOUSness consists in the fact that they think they possess it, that is, that they possess SELF-CONSCIOUSness and everything connected with it; individuality in the sense of a permanent and unchangeable I, will, ability to do, and so on. It is evident that a man will not be interested if you tell him that he can acquire by long and difficult work something which, in his opinion, he already has. On the contrary he will think either that you are mad or that you want to deceive him with a view to personal gain. 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

“There is nothing new in the idea of sleep. People have been told almost since the creation of the world that they are asleep and that they must awaken. How many times is this said in the Gospels, for instance? ‘Awake,’ ‘watch,’ ‘sleep not.’ Christ’s disciples even slept when he was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane for the last time. It is all there. But do men understand it? Men take it simply as a form of speech, as an expression, as a metaphor. They completely fail to understand that it must be taken literally. And again it is easy to understand why. In order to understand this literally it is necessary to awaken a little, or at least to try to awaken. I tell you seriously that I have been asked several times why nothing is said about sleep in the Gospels. Although it is there spoken of almost on every page. This simply shows that people read the Gospels in sleep. So long as a man sleeps profoundly and is wholly immersed in dreams he cannot even think about the fact that he is asleep. If he were to think that he was asleep, he would wake up. So everything goes on. And men have not the slightest idea what they are losing because of this sleep. As I have already said, as he is organized, that is, being such as nature has created him, man can be a SELF-CONSCIOUS being. Such he is created and such he is born. But he is born among sleeping people, and, of course, he falls asleep among them just at the very time when he should have begun to be conscious of himself. Everything has a hand in this: the involuntary imitation of older people on the part of the child, voluntary and involuntary suggestion, and what is called ‘education.’ Every attempt to awaken on the child’s part is instantly stopped. This is inevitable. And a great many efforts and a great deal of help are necessary in order to awaken later when thousands of sleep-compelling habits have been accumulated. And this very seldom happens. In most cases, a man when still a child already loses the possibility of awakening; he lives in sleep all his life and he dies in sleep. Furthermore, many people die long before their physical death. But of such cases we will speak later on. 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 SELF-CONSCIOUSness, 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