“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

“A modern man lives in sleep, in sleep he is born and in sleep he dies. About sleep, its significance and its role in life, we will speak later. But at present just think of one thing, what knowledge can a sleeping man have? And if you think about it and at the same time remember that sleep is the chief feature of our being, it will at once become clear to you that if a man really wants knowledge, he must first of all think about how to WAKE, that is, about how to change his being. Fragments: Four

“Work on oneself must begin with the driver. The driver is the mind. In order to be able to hear the master’s voice, the driver, first of all, must not be asleep, that is, he must WAKE up. Then it may prove that the master speaks a language that the driver does not understand. The driver must learn this language. When he has learned it, he will understand the master. But concurrently with this he must learn to drive the horse, to harness it to the carriage, to feed and groom it, and to keep the carriage in order — because what would be the use of his understanding the master if he is not in a position to do anything? The master tells him to go yonder. But he is unable to move, because the horse has not been fed, it is not harnessed, and he does not know where the reins are. The horse is our emotions. The carriage is the body. The mind must learn to control the emotions. The emotions always pull the body after them. This is the order in which work on oneself must proceed. But observe again that work on the ‘bodies,’ that is, on the driver, the horse, and the carriage, is one thing. And work on the ‘connections’ — that is, on the ‘driver’s understanding,’ which unites him to the master; on the ‘reins,’ which connect him with the horse; and on the ‘shafts’ and the ‘harness,’ which connect the horse with the carriage — is quite, another thing. Fragments: Five

“Let us take some event in the life of humanity. For instance, war. There is a war going on at the present moment. What does it signify? It signifies that several millions of sleeping people are trying to destroy several millions of other sleeping people. They would not do this, of course, if they were to WAKE up. Everything that takes place is owing to this sleep. Fragments: Eight

“How can one aWAKEn? How can one escape this sleep? These questions are the most important, the most vital that can ever confront a man. But before this it is necessary to be convinced of the very fact of sleep. But it is possible to be convinced of this only by trying to aWAKEn. When a man understands that he does not remember himself and that to remember himself means to aWAKEn to some extent, and when at the same time he sees by experience how difficult it is to remember himself, he will understand that he cannot aWAKEn simply by having the desire to do so. It can be said still more precisely that a man cannot aWAKEn by himself. But if, let us say, twenty people make an agreement that whoever of them aWAKEns first shall WAKE the rest, they already have some chance. Even this, however, is insufficient because all the twenty can go to sleep at the same time and dream that they are waking up. Therefore more still is necessary. They must be looked after by a man who is not asleep or who does not fall asleep as easily as they do, or who goes to sleep consciously when this is possible, when it will do no harm either to himself or to others. They must find such a man and hire him to WAKE them and not allow them to fall asleep again. Without this it is impossible to aWAKEn. This is what must be understood. 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

“Speaking in general, what is necessary to aWAKE a sleeping man? A good shock is necessary. But when a man is fast asleep one shock is not enough. A long period of continual shocks is needed. Consequently there must be somebody to administer these shocks. I have said before that if a man wants to aWAKEn he must hire somebody who will keep on shaking him for a long time. But whom can he hire if everyone is asleep? A man will hire somebody to WAKE him up but this one also falls asleep. What is the use of such a man? And a man who. can really keep aWAKE will probably refuse to waste his time in waking others up: he may have his own much more important work to do. Fragments: Eleven

“There is also the possibility of being aWAKEned by mechanical means. A man may be aWAKEned by an alarm clock. But the trouble is that a man gets accustomed to the alarm clock far too quickly, he ceases to hear it. Many alarm clocks are necessary and always new ones. Otherwise a man must surround himself with alarm clocks which will prevent him sleeping. But here again there are certain difficulties. Alarm clocks must be wound up; in order to wind them up one must remember about them; in order to remember one must WAKE up often. But what is still worse, a man gets used to all alarm clocks and after a certain time he only sleeps the better for them. Therefore alarm clocks must be constantly changed, new ones must be continually invented. In the course of time this may help a man to aWAKEn. But there is very little chance of a man doing all the work of winding up, inventing, and changing clocks all by himself, without outside help. It is much more likely that he will begin this work and that it will afterwards pass into sleep, and in sleep he will dream of inventing alarm clocks, of winding them up and changing them, and simply sleep all the sounder for it. Fragments: Eleven

“Therefore, in order to aWAKEn, a combination of efforts is needed. It is necessary that somebody should WAKE “the man up; it is necessary that somebody should look after the man who WAKEs him; it is necessary to have alarm clocks and it is also necessary continually to invent new alarm clocks. Fragments: Eleven

“Before anything else he needs help. But help cannot come to one man alone. Those who are able to help put a great value on their time. And, of course, they would prefer to help, say, twenty or thirty people who want to aWAKE rather than one man. Moreover, as has been said earlier, one man can easily deceive himself about his aWAKEning and take for aWAKEning simply a new dream. If several people decide to struggle together against sleep, they will WAKE each other. It may often happen that twenty of them will sleep but the twenty-first will be aWAKE and he will WAKE up the rest. It is exactly the same thing with alarm clocks. One man will invent one alarm clock, another man will invent another, afterwards they can make an exchange. Altogether they can be of very great help one to another, and without this help no one can attain anything. Fragments: Eleven

“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

“You already know by this time,” he said, “that nothing terrible is demanded of you. But there is no sense in sitting between two stools. Whoever does not want to WAKE up, at any rate let him sleep well.” Fragments: Thirteen

It was a very interesting time for me. G. often came to me in Prinkipo. We went together through the Constantinople bazaars. We went to the Mehlevi dervishes and he explained something to me that I had not been able to understand before. And this was that the whirling of the Mehlevi dervishes was an exercise for the brain based upon counting, like those exercises that he had shown to us in Essentuki. Sometimes I worked with him for entire days and nights. One such night in particular remains in my memory, when we “translated” a dervish song for “The Struggle of the Magicians.” I saw G. the artist and G. the poet, whom he had so carefully hidden inside him, particularly the latter. This translation took the form of G. recalling the Persian verses, sometimes repeating them to himself in a quiet voice and then translating them for me into Russian. After a quarter of an hour, let us say, when I had completely disappeared beneath forms, symbols, and assimilations, he said: “There, now make one line out of that.” I did not try to create any measure or to find a rhythm. This was quite impossible. G. continued and again after a quarter of an hour he said: “That is another line.” We sat until the morning. This was in Koumbaradji Street a little below the former Russian consulate. At length the town began to WAKE. I had written, I think, five verses and had stopped at the last line of the fifth verse. No kind of effort could make my brain turn any more. G. laughed but he also was tired and could not go on. So the verse remained as it was, unfinished, because he never returned again to this song. Fragments: Eighteen