When I asked what was the system they were studying and what were its distinguishing features, I was answered very indefinitely. Then they spoke of “WORK ON ONESELF,” but in what this work consisted they failed to explain. On the whole my conversation with G.’s pupils did not go very well and I felt something calculated and artificial in them as though they were playing a part learned beforehand. Besides, the pupils did not match with the teacher. They all belonged to that particular layer of Moscow rather poor “intelligentsia” which I knew very well and from which I could not expect anything interesting. I even thought that it was very strange to meet them on the way to the miraculous. At the same time they all seemed to me quite nice and decent people. The stories I had heard from M. obviouslydid not come from them and did not refer to them. Fragments: One

“To explain how, would need a very long talk,” said G. “So we will talk about this some other time. At this moment I want you to understand one thing: it is impossible to become free from one influence without becoming subject to another. The whole thing, all WORK ON ONESELF, consists in choosing the influence to which you wish to subject yourself, and actually falling under this influence. And for this it is necessary to know beforehand which influence is the more profitable.” Fragments: One

“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

“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

“And in practice, in order to study the future one must learn to notice and to remember the moments when we really know the future and when we act in accordance with this knowledge. Then judging by results, it will be possible to demonstrate that we really do know the future. This happens in a simple way in business, for instance. Every good commercial businessman knows the future. If he does not know the future his business goes smash. In WORK ON ONESELF one must be a good businessman, a good merchant. And knowing the future is worth while only when a man can be his own master. Fragments: Six

I told them that this was the center of gravity of the whole system and of all WORK ON ONESELF; that now WORK ON ONESELF was not only empty words but a real fact full of significance thanks to which psychology becomes an exact and at the same time a practical science. Fragments: Seven

“The fourth state of consciousness in man means an altogether different state of being; it is the result of inner growth and of long and difficult WORK ON ONESELF. Fragments: Eight

“The first stage of WORK ON ONESELF consists in separating oneself from ‘Ouspensky’ mentally, in being separated from him in actual fact, in keeping apart from him. But the fact must be borne in mind that the whole attention must be concentrated upon ‘Ouspensky’ for a man is unable to explain what he himself really is. But he can explain ‘Ouspensky’ to himself and with this he must begin, remembering at the same time that he is not ‘Ouspensky,’ Fragments: Eight

“In order to know why this is so you must remember a great deal of what has been said earlier. As was said earlier, self-observation brings a man to the realization of the fact that he does not remember himself. Man’s inability to remember himself is one of the chief and most characteristic features of his being and the cause of everything else in him. The inability to remember oneself finds expression in many ways. A man does ‘not remember his decisions, he does not remember the promises lie has made to himself, does not remember what he said or felt a month, a week, a day, or even an hour ago. He begins work of some kind and after a certain lapse of time he does not remember why he began it. It is especially in connection with WORK ON ONESELF that this happens particularly often. A man can remember a promise given to another person only with the help of artificial associations, associations which have been educated into him, and they, in their turn, are connected with conceptions which are also artificially created of ‘honor,’ ‘honesty,’ ‘duty,’ and so on. But speaking in general one can say truthfully that if a man remembers one thing he forgets ten other things which are much more important for him to remember. And a man particularly easily forgets what relates to himself, those ‘mental photographs’ of himself which perhaps he has previously taken. Fragments: Eight

“But this happens very seldom. As a rule a man’s essence is either primitive, savage, and childish, or else simply stupid. The development of essence depends on WORK ON ONESELF. Fragments: Eight

“A very important moment in the WORK ON ONESELF is when a man begins to distinguish between his personality and his essence. A man’s real I, his individuality, can grow only from his essence. It can be said that a man’s individuality is his essence, grown up, mature. But in order to enable essence to grow up, it is first of all necessary to weaken the constant pressure of personality upon it, because the obstacles to the growth of essence are contained in personality. Fragments: Eight

“As has been said earlier, in the case of less cultured people essence is often more highly developed than it is in cultured man. It would seem that they ought to be nearer the possibility of growth, but in reality it is not so because their personality proves to be insufficiently developed. For inner growth, for WORK ON ONESELF, a certain development of personality as well as a certain strength of essence are necessary. Personality consists of ‘rolls,’ and of ‘buffers’ resulting from a certain work of the centers. An insufficiently developed personality means a lack of ‘rolls,’ that is, a lack of knowledge, a lack of information, a lack of the material upon which WORK ON ONESELF must be based. Without some store of knowledge, without a certain amount of material ‘not his own,’ a man cannot begin to work on himself, he cannot begin to study himself, he cannot begin to struggle with his mechanical habits, simply because there will be no reason or motive for undertaking such work. Fragments: Eight

“It does not mean that all the ways are closed to him. The way of the fakir and the way of the monk, which do not require any intellectual development, remain open to him. But the methods and the means which are possible for a man of a developed intellect are impossible for him. Thus evolution is equally difficult for a cultured or an uncultured man. A cultured man lives far from nature, far from natural conditions of existence, in artificial conditions of life, developing his personality at the expense of his essence. A less cultured man, living in more normal and more natural conditions, develops his essence at the expense of his personality. A successful beginning of WORK ON ONESELF requires the happy occurrence of an equal development of personality and essence. Such an occurrence will give the greatest assurance of success. If essence is very-little developed, a long preparatory period of work is required and this work will be quite fruitless if a man’s essence is rotten inside or if it develops some irreparable defects. Conditions of this kind occur fairly often. An abnormal development of personality very often arrests the development of essence at such an early stage that the essence becomes a small deformed thing. From a small deformed thing nothing else can be got. Fragments: Eight

“All that has been said before about WORK ON ONESELF, about the formation of inner unity and of the transition from the level of man number one, number two, and number three to the level of man number four and further, pursues one and the same aim. What is called according to one terminology the ‘astral body,’ is called in another terminology the ‘higher emotional center,’ although the difference here does not lie in the terminology alone. These are, to speak more correctly, different aspects of the next stage of man’s evolution. It can be said that the ‘astral body’ is necessary for the complete and proper functioning of the ‘higher emotional center’ in unison with the lower. Or it can be said that the ‘higher emotional center’ is necessary for the work of the ‘astral body.’ Fragments: Nine

“Small accumulators suffice for the ordinary, everyday work of life. But for WORK ON ONESELF, for inner growth, and for the efforts which are required of a man who enters the way, the energy from these small accumulators is not enough. Fragments: Eleven

“Is complete sexual abstinence necessary for transmutation and is sexual abstinence, in general, useful for WORK ON ONESELF?” we asked him. 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 WORK 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

THERE were certain points to which G. invariably used to return in all his talks with us after the formal lectures, to which outside people were admitted, were over. The first was the question of self-remembering and the necessity of constant WORK ON ONESELF in order to attain this, and the second was the question of the imperfection of our language and of the difficulty of conveying “objective truths” in our words. Fragments: Fourteen

All the ideas we had come to know up to that time brought us face to face with a whole series of questions connected with the practical realization of WORK ON ONESELF, and, naturally, they evoked many discussions among the members of our group. Fragments: Seventeen

“If a man were able to work on himself everything would be very simple and schools would be unnecessary. But he cannot, and the reasons for this lie very deep in his nature. I will leave for the moment his insincerity with himself, the perpetual lies he tells himself, and so on, and take only the division of the centers. This alone makes independent work on himself impossible for a man. You must understand that the three principal centers, the thinking, the emotional, and the moving, are connected together and, In a normal man, they are always working in unison. This unison is what presents the chief difficulty in WORK ON ONESELF. What is meant by this unison? It means that a definite work of the thinking center is connected with a definite work of the emotional and moving centers — that is to say, that a certain kind of thought is inevitably connected with a certain kind of emotion (or mental state) and with a cer-tain kind of movement (or posture); and one evokes the other, that is, a certain kind of emotion (or mental state) evokes certain movements or postures and certain thoughts, and a certain kind of movement or posture evokes certain emotions or mental states, and so forth. Everything is connected and one thing cannot exist without another thing. Fragments: Seventeen

“You will remember that when we spoke of the work of the ‘three-story factory,’ I pointed out to you that most of the energy produced by the factory is wasted uselessly, among other things energy is wasted on unnecessary muscular tension. This unnecessary muscular tension eats up an enormous amount of energy. And with WORK ON ONESELF attention must first be turned to this. Fragments: Seventeen

“The idea of this exercise and its results differ very much. Let us take it first of all from the point of view of the study of movements and postures. This exercise affords a man the possibility of getting out of the circle of automatism and it cannot be dispensed with, especially at the beginning of WORK ON ONESELF. Fragments: Seventeen

I very soon saw that the struggle with the habit of talking, of speaking, in general, more than is necessary, could become the center of gravity of WORK ON ONESELF because this habit touched everything, penetrated everything, and was for many people the least noticed. It was very curious to observe how this habit (I say “habit” simply for lack of another word, it would be more correct to say “this sin” or “this misfortune”) at once took possession of everything no matter what a man might begin to do. Fragments: Seventeen

The more we saw and realized the complexity and the diversity of methods of WORK ON ONESELF, the clearer became for us the difficulties of the way. We saw the indispensability of great knowledge, of immense efforts, and of help such as none of us either could or had the right to count upon. We saw that even to begin WORK ON ONESELF in any serious form was an exceptional phenomenon needing thousands of favorable inner and outward conditions. And the beginning gave no guarantee for the future. Each step required an effort, each step needed help. The possibility of attaining anything seemed so small in comparison with the difficulties that many of us lost the desire to make efforts of any kind. Fragments: Seventeen

“When a man comes to the conclusion that he cannot, and does not desire, to live any longer in the way he has lived till then; when he really sees everything that his life is made up of and decides to work, he must be truthful with himself in order not to fall into a still worse position. Because there is nothing worse than to begin WORK ON ONESELF and then leave it and find oneself between two stools; it is much better not to begin. And in order not to begin in vain or risk being deceived on one’s own account a man should test his decision many times. And principally he must know how far he is willing to go, what he is willing to sacrifice. There is nothing more easy to say than everything. A man can never sacrifice everything and this can never be required of him. But he must define exactly what he is willing to sacrifice and not bargain about it afterwards. Or it will be the same with him as with the wolf in the Armenian fairy tale. “Do you know the Armenian fairy tale of the wolf and the sheep? “Once there lived a wolf who slaughtered a great many sheep and reduced many people to tears. Fragments: Seventeen

My friend from St. Petersburg asked me, when we had spoken of G.’s system and of WORK ON ONESELF, whether I could indicate any practical results of this work. Fragments: Eighteen