“But no one will ever believe you if you tell him he can do nothing. This is the most offensive and the most UNPLEASANT thing you can tell people. It is particularly UNPLEASANT and offensive because it is the truth, and nobody wants to know the truth. Fragments: One

I remember another talk about the war. We were sitting in the Phillipov’s Café on the Tverskaya. It was very full of people and very noisy. War and profiteering had created an UNPLEASANT, feverish atmosphere. I had even refused to go there. G. insisted and as always with him I gave way. I had already realized by then that he sometimes purposely created difficult conditions for conversation, as though demanding of me some sort of extra effort and a readiness to reconcile myself to UNPLEASANT and uncomfortable surroundings for the sake of talking with him. Fragments: One

“And each separate small I is able to call itself by the name of the Whole, to act in the name of the Whole, to agree or disagree, to give promises, to make decisions, with which another I or the Whole will have to deal. This explains why people so often make decisions and so seldom carry them out. A man decides to get up early beginning from the following day. One I, or a group of I’s, decide this. But getting up is the business of another I who entirely disagrees with the decision and may even know absolutely nothing about it. Of course the man will again go on sleeping in the morning and in the evening he will again decide to get up early. In some cases this may assume very UNPLEASANT consequences for a man. A small accidental I may promise something, not to itself, but to someone else at a certain moment simply out of vanity or for amusement. Then it disappears, but the man, that is, the whole combination of other I’s who are quite innocent of this, may have to pay for it all his life. It is the tragedy of the human being that any small I has the right to sign checks and promissory notes and the man, that is, the Whole, has to meet them. People’s whole lives often consist in paying off the promissory notes of small accidental I’s. Fragments: Three

“Sensation and emotion do not reason, do not compare, they simply define a given impression by its aspect, by its being pleasant or UNPLEASANT in one sense or another, by its color, taste, or smell. Moreover, sensations can be indifferent — neither warm nor cold, neither pleasant nor UNPLEASANT: ‘white paper,’ ‘red pencil.’ In the sensation of white or red there is nothing either pleasant or UNPLEASANT. At any rate there need not necessarily be anything pleasant or UNPLEASANT connected with this or that color. These sensations, the so-called ‘five senses,’ and others, like the feeling of warmth, cold, and so on, are instinctive. Feeling functions or emotions are always pleasant or UNPLEASANT; indifferent emotions do not exist. Fragments: Six

“‘Imagination’ is one of the principal sources of the wrong workwork of centers. Each center has its own form of imagination and daydreaming, but as a rule both the moving and the emotional centers make use of the thinking center which very readily places itself at their disposal for this purpose, because daydreaming corresponds to its own inclinations. Daydreaming is absolutely the opposite of ‘useful’ mental activity. ‘Useful’ in this case means activity directed towards a definite aim and undertaken for the sake of obtaining a definite result. Daydreaming does not pursue any aim, does not strive after any result. The motive for daydreaming always lies in the emotional or in the moving center. The actual process is carried on by the thinking center. The inclination to daydream is due partly to the laziness of the thinking center, that is, its attempts to avoid the efforts connected with work directed towards a definite aim and going in a definite direction, and partly to the tendency of the emotional and the moving centers to repeat to themselves, to keep alive or to recreate experiences, both pleasant and UNPLEASANT, that have been previously lived through or ‘imagined.’ Daydreaming of disagreeable, morbid things is very characteristic of the unbalanced state of the human machine, After all, one can understand daydreaming of a pleasant kind and find logical justification for it. Daydreaming of an UNPLEASANT character is an utter absurdity. And yet many people spend nine tenths of their lives in just such painful daydreams about misfortunes which may overtake them or their family, about illnesses they may contract or sufferings they will have to endure. Imagination and daydreaming are instances of the wrong work of the thinking center. Fragments: Six

“In the sphere of the emotions it is very useful to try to struggle with the habit of giving immediate expression to all one’s UNPLEASANT emotions. Many people find it very difficult to refrain from expressing their feelings about bad weather. It is still more difficult for people not to express UNPLEASANT emotions when they feel that something or someone is violating what they may conceive to be order or justice. Fragments: Six

“Besides being a very good method for self-observation, the struggle against expressing UNPLEASANT emotions has at the same time another significance. It is one of the few directions in which a man can change himself or his habits without creating other undesirable habits. Therefore self-observation and self-study must, from the first, be accompanied by the struggle against the expression of UNPLEASANT emotions. Fragments: Six

The second thing was the demand “not to express UNPLEASANT emotions.” I at once felt something big behind this. And the future showed that I was right, for the study of emotions and the work on emotions became the basis of the subsequent development of the whole system. But this was much later. Fragments: Six

“Let us suppose, for example, that a man called Ivanov hears the description of this method of self-observation. He is told that a man must divide himself, ‘he’ or ‘I’ on one side and ‘Ouspensky,’ ‘Tetrov,’ or ‘Zakharov’ on the other side. And he divides himself literally as he hears it. ‘This is I,’ he says, ‘and that is “Ouspensky,” “Petrov,” or “Zakharov.”‘ He will never say ‘Ivanov.’ He finds that UNPLEASANT, so he will inevitably use somebody else’s surname or Christian name. Moreover he calls ‘I’ what he likes in himself or at any rate what he considers to be strong, while he calls ‘Ouspensky,’ ‘Petrov,’ or ‘Zakharov’ what he does not like or what he considers to be weak. On this basis he begins to reason in many ways about himself, quite wrongly of course from the very beginning, since he has already deceived himself in the most important point and has taken not his real self, that is, he has taken, not Ivanov, but the imaginary ‘Ouspensky,’ ‘Petrov’ or ‘Zakharov.’ Fragments: Eight

“As I have already said, people very often think that if they begin to struggle with considering within themselves it will make them ‘insincere’ and they are afraid of this because they think that in this event they will be losing something, losing a part of themselves. In this case the same thing takes place as in attempts to struggle against the outward expression of UNPLEASANT emotions. The sole difference is that in one case a man struggles with the outward expression of emotions and in the other case with an inner manifestation of perhaps the same emotions. Fragments: Eight

“This fear of losing sincerity is of course self-deception, one of those formulas of lying upon which human weaknesses are based. Man cannot help identifying and considering inwardly and he cannot help expressing his UNPLEASANT emotions, simply because he is weak. Identifying, considering, the expressing of UNPLEASANT emotions, are manifestations of his weakness, his impotence, his inability to control himself. But not wishing to acknowledge this weakness to himself, he calls it ‘sincerity’ or ‘honesty’ and he tells himself that he does not want to struggle against sincerity, whereas in fact he is unable to struggle against his weaknesses. Fragments: Eight

“You often think in a very naive way,” he said. “You already think you can do. To get rid of this conviction is more difficult than anything else for a man. You do not understand all the complexity of your organization and you do not realize that every effort, in addition to the results desired, even if it gives these, gives thousands of unexpected and often undesirable results, and the chief thing that you forget is that you are not beginning from the beginning with a nice clean, new machine. There stand behind you many years of a wrong and stupid life, of indulgence in every kind of weakness, of shutting your eyes to your own errors, of striving to avoid all UNPLEASANT truths, of constant lying to yourselves, of self-justification, of blaming others, and so on, and so on. All this cannot help affecting the machine. The machine is dirty, in places it is rusty, and in some places artificial appliances have been formed, the necessity for which has been created by its own wrong way of working. Fragments: Eight

” ‘Buffer’ is a term which requires special explanation. We know what buffers on railway carriages are. They are the contrivances which lessen the shock when carriages or trucks strike one another. If there were no buffers the shock of one carriage against another would be very UNPLEASANT and dangerous. Buffers soften the results of these shocks and render them unnoticeable and imperceptible. 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

“Energy is spent chiefly on unnecessary and UNPLEASANT emotions, on the expectation of UNPLEASANT things, possible and impossible, on bad moods, on unnecessary haste, nervousness, irritability, imagination, daydreaming, and so on. Energy is wasted on the wrong workwork of centers; on unnecessary tension of the muscles out of all proportion to the work produced; on perpetual chatter which absorbs an enormous amount of energy; on the ‘interest’ continually taken in things happening around us or to other people and having in fact no interest whatever; on the constant waste of the force of ‘attention’; and so on, and so on. Fragments: Nine

“The practice of not expressing UNPLEASANT emotions, of not ‘identifying,’ of not ‘considering inwardly,’ is the preparation for the second effort. Fragments: Nine

“A great deal of energy is also spent on work which is completely unnecessary and harmful in every respect, such as on the activity of UNPLEASANT emotions, on the expression of UNPLEASANT sensations, on worry, on restlessness, on haste, and on a whole series of automatic actions which are completely useless. As many examples as you like can be found of such unnecessary activity. First of all there is the constantly moving flow of thoughts in our mind, which we can neither stop nor control, and which takes up an enormous amount of our energy. Secondly there is the quite unnecessary constant tension of the muscles of our organism. The muscles are tense even when we are doing nothing. As soon as we start to do even a small and insignificant piece of work, a whole system of muscles necessary for the hardest and most strenuous work is immediately set in motion. We pick up a needle from the floor and we spend on this action as much energy as is needed to lift up a man of our own weight. We write a short letter and use as much muscular energy upon it as would suffice to write a bulky volume. But the chief point is that we spend muscular energy continually and at all times, even when we are doing nothing. When we walk the muscles of our shoulders and arms are tensed unnecessarily; when we sit the muscles of our legs, neck, back, and stomach are tensed in an unnecessary way. We even sleep with the muscles of our arms, of our legs, of our face, of the whole of our body tensed, and we do not realize that we spend much more energy on this continual readiness for work we shall never do than on all the real, useful work we do during our life. Fragments: Nine

“It must be noted that the organism usually produces in the course of one day all the substances necessary for the following day. And it very often happens that all these substances are spent or consumed upon some unnecessary and, as a rule, UNPLEASANT emotion. Bad moods, worry, the expectation of something UNPLEASANT, doubt, fear, a feeling of injury, irritation, each of these emotions in reaching a certain degree of intensity may, in half an hour, or even half a minute, consume all the substances prepared for the next day; while a single flash of anger, or some other violent emotion, can at once explode all the substances prepared in the laboratory and leave a man quite empty inwardly for a long time or even forever. Fragments: Nine

“In reality rules are the chief and the first help that they get from the work. It stands to reason that rules do not pursue the object of affording them amusement or satisfaction or of making things more easy for them. Rules pursue a definite aim: to make them behave as they would behave ‘if they were,’ that is, if they remembered themselves and realized how they ought to behave with regard to people outside the work, to people in the work, and to the teacher. If they remembered themselves and realized this, rules would not be necessary for them. But they are not able to remember themselves and understand this at the beginning of work, so that rules are indispensable, although rules can never be either easy, pleasant, or comfortable. On the contrary, they ought to be difficult, UNPLEASANT, and uncomfortable; otherwise they would not answer their purpose. Rules are the alarm clocks which wake the sleeping man. But the man, opening his eyes for a second, is indignant with the alarm clock and asks: Can one not awaken without alarm clocks? Fragments: Eleven

“In the first place it must be noted that normally in the sex center as well as in the higher emotional and the higher thinking centers, there is no negative side. In all the other centers except the higher ones, in the thinking, in the emotional, in the moving, in the instinctive, in all of them there are, so to speak, two halves — the positive and the negative; affirmation and negation, or ‘yes’ and ‘no,’ in the thinking center, pleasant and UNPLEASANT sensations in the moving and instinctive centers. There is no such division in the sex center. There are no positive and negative sides in it. There are no UNPLEASANT sensations or UNPLEASANT feelings in it; there is either a pleasant sensation, a pleasant feeling, or there is nothing, an absence of any sensation, complete indifference. But in consequence of the wrong workwork of centers it often happens that the sex center unites with the negative part of the emotional center or with the negative part of the instinctive center. And then, stimulation of a certain kind of the sex center, or even any stimulation at all of the sex center, calls forth UNPLEASANT feelings and UNPLEASANT sensations. People who experience UNPLEASANT feelings and sensations which have been evoked in them through ideas and imagination connected with sex are inclined to regard them as a great virtue or as something original; in actual fact it is simply disease. Everything connected with sex should be either pleasant or indifferent. Unpleasant feelings and sensations all come from the emotional center or the instinctive center. Fragments: Twelve

I was particularly affected when he began to repeat in front of everyone something I had told him in absolute confidence, what I thought of Dr. S. What he said was very UNPLEASANT for me principally because I had always condemned such talk in others. Fragments: Thirteen

His small apartment on the Bolshaia Dmitrovka, all the floors and walls of which were covered in the Eastern style with carpets and the ceilings hung with silk shawls, astonished me by its special atmosphere. First of all the people who came there — who were all G.’s pupils — were not afraid to keep silent. This alone was something unusual. They came, sat down, smoked, they often did not speak a single word for hours. And there was nothing oppressive or UNPLEASANT in this silence; on the con-trary, there was a feeling of assurance and of freedom from the necessity of playing a forced and invented role. But on chance and curious visitors this silence produced an extraordinarily strange impression. They began to talk and they talked without stopping as if they were afraid of stopping and feeling something. On the other hand others were offended, they thought that the “silence” was directed against them in order to show them how much superior G.’s pupils were and to make them understand that it was not worth while even talking to them; others found it stupid, amusing, “unnatural,” and that it showed our worst features, particularly our weakness and our complete subordination to G. who was “oppressing us.” Fragments: Thirteen

At the same time I realized that this contained something important. And I left Moscow with the UNPLEASANT feeling that not only had I not acquired anything new but that I seemed to have lost the old, that is, what I thought I had already understood. Fragments: Thirteen

“Man, in the normal state natural to him, is taken as a duality. He consists entirely of dualities or ‘pairs of opposites.’ All man’s sensations, impressions, feelings, thoughts, are divided into positive and negative, useful and harmful, necessary and unnecessary, good and bad, pleasant and UNPLEASANT. The work of centers proceeds under the sign of this division. Thoughts oppose feelings. Moving impulses oppose instinctive craving for quiet. This is the duality in which proceed all the perceptions, all the reactions, the whole life of man. Any man who observes himself, however little, can see this duality in himself. Fragments: Fourteen

“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

Another time a stop caught Z. when he had just inhaled smoke from his cigarette. He said afterwards that never in his life had he experienced anything so UNPLEASANT. He could not exhale the smoke and he sat with eyes full of tears and smoke slowly coming out of his mouth. Fragments: Seventeen

But with all this, one was struck by the striving in her to make the best use even of these last days, to find the truth whose presence she clearly felt but which she was unable to touch. I did not think that I should see her again. But I could not refuse when she asked me for the address of my friends in Paris, for the address of people with whom she would be able to talk about the same things she had talked about with me. And so I had met her again at the Prieuré. We sat in the evening in one of the salons and she spoke in a feeble voice which seemed to come from the void, but it was not UNPLEASANT. Fragments: Eighteen