“It was said, for instance, that somebody wanted to help people. In order to be able to help people one must first learn to help oneself. A great number of people become absorbed in thoughts and feelings about helping others simply out of laziness. They are too lazy to WORK ON THEMSELVES; and at the same time it is very pleasant for them to think that they are able to help others. This is being false and insincere with oneself. If a man looks at himself as he really is, he will not begin to think of helping other people: he will be ashamed to think about it. Love of mankind, altruism, are all very fine words, but they only have meaning when a man is able, of his own choice and of his own decision, to love or not to love, to be an altruist or an egoist. Then his choice has a value. But if there is no choice at all, if he cannot be different, if he is only such as chance has made or is making him, an altruist today, an egoist tomorrow, again an altruist the day after tomorrow, then there is no value in it whatever. In order to help others one must first learn to be an egoist, a conscious egoist. Only a conscious egoist can help people. Such as we are we can do nothing. A man decides to be an egoist but gives away his last shirt instead. He decides to give away his last shirt, but instead, he strips of his last shirt the man to whom he meant to give his own. Or he decides to give away his own shirt but gives away somebody else’s and is offended if somebody refuses to give him his shirt so that he may give it to another. This is what happens most often. And so it goes on. Fragments: Six

“Those who dislike war have been trying to do so almost since the creation of the world,” said G. “And yet there has never been such a war as the present. Wars are not decreasing, they are increasing and war cannot be stopped by ordinary means. All these theories about universal peace, about peace conferences, and so on, are again simply laziness and hypocrisy. Men do not want to think about themselves, do not want to WORK ON THEMSELVES, but think of how to make other people do what they want. If a sufficient number of people who wanted to stop war really did gather together they would first of all begin by making war upon those who disagreed with them. And it is still more certain that they would make war on people who also want to stop wars but in another way. And so they would fight. Men are what they are and they cannot be different. War has many causes that are unknown to us. Some causes are in men themselves, others are outside them. One must begin with the causes that are in man himself. How can he be independent of the external influences of great cosmic forces when he is the slave of everything that surrounds him? He is controlled by everything around him. If he becomes free from things, he may then become free from planetary influences. Fragments: Six

“A man identifies with a small problem which confronts him and he completely forgets the great aims with which he began his work. He identifies with one thought and forgets other thoughts; he is identified with one feeling, with one mood, and forgets his own wider thoughts, emotions, and moods. In WORK ON THEMSELVES people are so much identified with separate aims that they fail to see the wood for the trees. Two or three trees nearest to them represent for them the whole wood. Fragments: Eight

“But fortunately for man, that is, for his peace and for his sleep, this state of conscience is very rare. From early childhood ‘buffers’ begin to grow and strengthen in him, taking from him the possibility of seeing his inner contradictions and therefore, for him, there is no danger whatever of a sudden awakening. Awakening is possible only for those who seek it and want it, for those who are ready to struggle with themselves and WORK ON THEMSELVES for a very long time and very persistently in order to attain it. For this it is necessary to destroy ‘buffers,’ that is, to go out to meet all those inner sufferings which are connected with the sensations of contradictions. Moreover the destruction of ‘buffers’ in itself requires very long work and a man must agree to this work realizing that the result of his work will be every possible discomfort and suffering from the awakening of his conscience. Fragments: Eight

“The next demand made of members of a group is that they must remember why they came to the group. They came to learn and to WORK ON THEMSELVES and to learn and to work not as they understand it themselves but as they are told to. If, therefore, once they are in the group, they begin to feel or to express mistrust towards the teacher, to criticize his actions, to find that they understand better how the group should be conducted and especially if they show lack of external considering in relation to the teacher, lack of respect for him, asperity, impatience, tendency to argument, this at once puts an end to any possibility of work, for work is possible only as long as people remember that they have come to learn and not to teach. 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