Return from India, 3
The war and the “search for the miraculous”, 3
Old thoughts, 3
The question of schools, 4
The East and Europe, 5
Plans for further travels, 5
A notice in a Moscow newspaper, 6
Lectures on India, 6
The meeting with G, 7
A “disguised man”, 7
The first talk, 7
G.’s opinion on schools, 9
G.’s group, 9
“Glimpses of Truth”, 10
Further meetings and talks, 12
The organization of G.’s Moscow group, 12
The question of payment and of means for the work, 12
The question of secrecy and of the obligations accepted by the pupils, 14
A talk about the East, 15
“Philosophy,” “theory,” and “practice”, 15
How was the system found?, 15
G.’s ideas, 16
Is psychology necessary for the study of machines?, 19
A man is responsible for his actions, a machine is not responsible, 19
Nobody “does” anything, 21
Everything “happens”, 21
“Man is a machine” governed by external influences, 21
In order “to do” it is necessary “to be”, 22
The promise of “facts”, 23
Can wars be stopped?, 23
A talk about the planets and the moon as living beings, 24
The “intelligence” of the sun and the earth, 25
“Subjective” and “objective” art, 27
Petersburg in 1915, 29
G.in Petersburg, 29
A talk about groups, 29
Reference to “esoteric” work, 30
“Prison” and “Escape from prison”, 30
What is necessary for this escape?, 30
Who can help and how?, 30
Struggle between “yes” and “no”, 32
Crystallization on a right, and on a wrong, foundation, 31
Talks with G. and observations, 33
Necessity of sacrifice, 33
Beginning of meetings in Petersburg, 33
A sale of carpets and talks about carpets, 34
What G. said about himself, 35
Question about ancient knowledge and why it is hidden, 36
G.’s reply, 37
Knowledge is not hidden, 37
The materiality of knowledge and man’s refusal of the knowledge given to him, 37
A question on reincarnation and future life, 40
A question on immortality, 40
The “four bodies of man”, 40
Example of the retort filled with metallic powders, 43
How can immortality be attained?, 44
The way of the fakir, the way of the monk, and the way of the yogi, 44
The “fourth way”, 48
Do civilization and culture exist?, 51
G.’s fundamental ideas concerning man, 53
Absence of unity, 53
Multiplicity of I’s, 53
Psychic centers, 54
G.’s method of exposition of the ideas of the system, 55
Repetition unavoidable, 56
What the evolution of man means, 56
Mechanical progress impossible, 56
European idea of man’s evolution, 57
Connectedness of everything in nature, 57
Humanity's evolution is fatal for the moon, 57
Advantage of individual man over the masses, 58
Nature does not want evolution, 58
Consciousness cannot evolve unconsciously, 58
Construction of the human machine, 58
Necessity of knowing the human machine, 59
Absence of a permanent I in man, 59
Role of small I’s, 60
Absence of individuality and will in man, 60
Eastern allegory of the house and its servants, 60
The “deputy steward”, 60
Talks about a fakir on nails and Buddhist magic, 61
General impressions of G.’s system, 64
Looking backwards, 64
One of the fundamental propositions, 64
The line of knowledge and the line of being, 64
Being on different levels, 65
Divergence of the line of knowledge from the line of being, 65
What a development of knowledge gives without a corresponding change of being—and a change of being without an increase in knowledge, 66
What “understanding” means, 67
Understanding as the resultant of knowledge and being, 67
The difference between understanding and knowledge, 67
Understanding as a function of three centers, 67
Why people try to find names for things they do not understand, 68
Our language, 68
Why people do not understand one another, 68
The word “man” and its different meanings, 69
The language accepted in the system, 70
Seven gradations of the concept “man”, 70
The principle of relativity in the system, 71
Gradations parallel to the gradations of man, 72
The word “world”, 73
Variety of its meanings, 73
Examination of the word “world” from the point of view of the principle of relativity, 73
The fundamental law of the universe, 74
The law of three principles or three forces, 74
Necessity of three forces for the appearance of a phenomenon, 74
The third force, 75
Why we do not see the third force, 75
Three forces in ancient teachings, 76
The creation of worlds by the will of the Absolute, 77
A chain of worlds or the “ray of creation”, 77
The number of laws in each world, 78
A lecture on the “mechanics of the universe”, 82
The ray of creation and its growth from the Absolute, 82
A contradiction of scientific views, 83
The moon as the end of the ray of creation, 83
The will of the Absolute, 82
The idea of miracle, 83
Our place in the world, 84
The moon feeds on organic life, 84
The influence of the moon and liberation from the moon, 85
Different “materiality” of different worlds, 85
The world as a world of “vibrations”, 86
Vibrations slow down proportionately to the distance from the Absolute, 86
Seven kinds of matter, 86
The four bodies of man and their relation to different worlds, 87
Where the earth is, 88
The three forces and the cosmic properties of matter, 88
Atoms of complex substances, 89
Definition of matter according to the forces manifested through it, 89
“Carbon,” “oxygen,” “nitrogen,” and “hydrogen”, 89
The three forces and the four matters, 90
Is man immortal or not?, 91
What does immortality mean?, 91
A man having the fourth body, 91
The story of the seminarist and the omnipotence of God, 92
Talks about the moon, 93
The moon as the weight of a clock, 93
Talk about a universal language, 95
Explanation of the Last Supper, 96
Talk about aims, 99
Can the teaching pursue a definite aim?, 99
The aim of existence, 99
Personal aims, 99
To know the future, 99
To exist after death, 100
To be master of oneself, 100
To be a Christian, 100
To help humanity, 100
To stop wars, 100
G.’s explanations, 101
Fate, accident, and will, 101
“Mad machines”, 102
Esoteric Christianity, 102
What ought man’s aim to be?, 103
The causes of inner slavery, 103
With what the way to liberation begins, 103
“Know thyself”, 103
Different understandings of this idea, 103
Self-study, 104
How to study?, 104
Self-observation, 104
Recording and analysis, 104
A fundamental principle of the working of the human machine, 105
The four centers: Thinking, emotional, moving, instinctive, 105
Distinguishing between the work of the centers, 106
Making changes in the working of the machine, 107
Upsetting the balance, 107
How does the machine restore its balance?, 107
Incidental changes, 107
Wrong work of centers, 108
Imagination, 109
Daydreaming, 109
Habits, 110
Opposing habits for purposes of self-observation, 110
The struggle against expressing negative emotions, 111
Registering mechanicalness, 111
Changes resulting from right self-observation, 111
The idea of the moving center, 112
The usual classification of man’s actions, 112
Classification based upon the division of centers, 112
Automatism, 113
Instinctive actions, 113
The difference between the instinctive and the moving functions, 113
Division of the emotions, 114
Different levels of the centers, 115
Is “cosmic consciousness” attainable?, 116
What is consciousness?, 116
G.’s question about what we notice during self-observation, 116
Our replies, 116
G.’s remark that we had missed the most important thing, 117
Why do we not notice that we do not remember ourselves?, 117
“It observes,” “it thinks,” “it speaks”, 117
Attempts to remember oneself, 118
G.’s explanations, 119
The signiftcance of the new problem, 119
Science and philosophy, 120
Our experiences, 121
Attempts to divide attention, 122
First sensation of voluntary self-remembering, 122
What we recollect of the past, 123
Further experiences, 123
Sleep in a waking state and awakening, 124
What European psychology has overlooked, 125
Differences in the understanding of the idea of consciousness, 125
The study of man is parallel to the study of the world, 126
Following upon the law of three comes the fundamental law of the universe: The law of seven or the law of octaves, 127
The absence of continuity in vibrations, 127
Octaves, 127
The seven-tone scale, 128
The law of “intervals”, 128
Necessity for additional shocks, 129
What occurs in the absence of additional shocks, 129
In order to do it is necessary to be able to control “additional shocks”, 130
Subordinate octaves, 131
Inner octaves, 131
Organic life in the place of an “interval”, 133
Planetary influences, 134
The lateral octave sol—do, 135
The meaning of the notes la, sol, fa, 136
The meaning of the notes do, si, 137
The meaning of the notes mi, re, 138
The role of organic life in changing the earth’s surface, 139
Different states of consciousness, 141
Sleep, 141
Waking state, 141
Self-consciousness, 141
Objective consciousness, 141
Absence of self-consciousness, 142
What is the first condition for acquiring self-consciousness?, 142
Higher states of consciousness and the higher centers, 142
The “waking state” of ordinary man as sleep, 143
The life of men asleep, 143
How can one awaken?, 143
What man is when he is born, 144
What “education” and the example of those around him do, 144
Man’s possibilities, 145
Self-study, 145
“Mental photographs”, 146
Different men in one man, 147
“I” and “Ouspensky”, 147
Who is active and who is passive?, 147
Man and his mask, 148
Division of oneself as the first stage of work on oneself, 148
A fundamental quality of man’s being, 147
Why man does not remember himself, 149
“Identification”, 150
“Considering”, 151
“Internal considering” and “external considering”, 152-3
What “external” considering a machine means, 153
“Injustice”, 151
Sincerity and weakness, 152-3
“Buffers”, 154-7
Conscience, 155
Morality, 156-7
Does an idea of morality common to all exist?, 157
Does Christian morality exist?, 157
Do conceptions of good and evil common to all exist?, 158
Nobody does anything for the sake of evil, 158
Different conceptions of good and the results of these different conceptions, 158
On what can a permanent idea of good and evil be based?, 158
The idea of truth and falsehood, 159
The struggle against “buffers” and against lying, 159
Methods of school work, 160
Subordination, 160
Realization of one’s nothingness, 160
Personality and essence, 161
Dead people, 164
General laws, 164
The question of money, 165
The “ray of creation” in the form of the three octaves of radiations, 167
Relation of matters and forces on different planes of the world to our life, 168
Intervals in the cosmic octaves and the shocks which fill them, 169
“Point of the universe”, 170
Density of vibrations, 171
Three forces and four matters, 172
“Carbon,” “Oxygen,” “Nitrogen,” “Hydrogen”, 172
Twelve triads, 173
“Table of Hydrogens”, 174
Matter in the light of its chemical, physical, psychic and cosmic properties, 175
Intelligence of matter, 176
“Atom”, 177
Every human function and state depends on energy, 178
Substances in man, 179
Man has sufficient energy to begin work on himself, if he saves his energy, 180
Wastage of energy, 181
“Learn to separate the fine from the coarse”, 182
Production of fine hydrogens, 182
Change of being, 183
Growth of inner bodies, 183
The human organism as a three-storied factory, 184
Three kinds of food, 185
Entrance of food, air and impressions into the organism, 186
Transformation of substances is governed by the law of octaves, 187
Food octave and air octave, 188
Extracting “higher hydrogens”, 189
The octave of impressions does not develop, 190
Possibility of creating an artificial shock at the moment of receiving an impression, 191
Conscious effort, 191
“Self-remembering”, 192
Resulting development of impressions and air octaves, 192
A second conscious shock, 193
Effort connected with emotions, 193
Preparation for this effort, 194
Analogy between the human organism and the universe, 195
Three stages in the evolution of the human machine, 195
Transmutation of the emotions, 196
Alchemy, 196
The centers work with different hydrogens, 197
Two higher centers, 197
Wrong work of lower centers, 197
Materiality of all inner processes, 198
From what does the way start?, 199
The law of accident, 199
Kinds of influences, 200
Influences created in life, 200
Influences created outside life, conscious in their origin only, 200
The magnetic center, 201
Looking for the way, 201
Finding a man who knows, 202
Third kind of influence: conscious and direct, 202
Liberation from the law of accident, 203
“Step,” “stairway,” and “way”, 203
Special conditions of the fourth way, 204
Wrong magnetic center is possible, 204
How can one recognize wrong ways?, 205
Teacher and pupil, 205
Knowledge begins with the teaching of cosmoses, 206
The usual concept of two cosmoses: the “Macrocosmos” and “Microcosmos”, 206
The full teaching of seven cosmoses, 207
Relation between cosmoses: as zero to infinity, 208
Principle of relativity, 208
“The way up is at the same time the way down”, 209
What a miracle is, 210
“Period of dimensions”, 211
Survey of the system of cosmoses from the point of view of the theory of many dimensions, 212
G.’s comment, that “Time is breath”, 213
Is the “Microcosmos” man or the “atom”?, 214
“Except a corn of wheat die, it bringeth forth no fruit”, 217
A book of aphorisms, 217
To awake, to die, to be born, 218
What prevents a man from being born again?, 218
What prevents a man from “dying”?, 219
What prevents a man from awakening?, 219
Absence of the realization of one’s own nothingness, 220
What does the realization of one’s own nothingness mean?, 220
What prevents this realization?, 221
Hypnotic influence of life, 221
The sleep in which men live is hypnotic sleep, 221
The magician and the sheep, 222
“Kundalini”, 223
Imagination, 224
Alarm clocks, 225
Organized work, 225
Groups, 226
Is it possible to work in groups without a teacher?, 226
Work of self-study in groups, 227
Mirrors, 227
Exchange of observations, 228
General and individual conditions, 228
Rules, 229
“Chief fault”, 229
Realization of one’s own nothingness, 230
Danger of imitative work, 230
“Barriers”, 231
Truth and falsehood, 231
Sincerity with oneself, 232
Efforts, 232
Accumulators, 233
The big accumulator, 233
Intellectual and emotional work, 234
Necessity for feeling, 234
Possibility of understanding through feeling what cannot be understood through the mind, 235
The emotional center is a more subtle apparatus than the intellectual center, 235
Explanation of yawning in connection with accumulators, 236
Role and significance of laughter in life, 236
Absence of laughter in higher centers, 237
Work in groups becomes more intensive, 238
Each man’s limited “repertoire of roles”, 238
The choice between work on oneself and a “quiet life”, 239
Difficulties of obedience, 240
The place of “tasks”, 240
G. gives a definite task, 241
Reaction of friends to the ideas, 242
The system brings out the best or the worst in people, 243
What people can come to the work?, 244
Preparation, 244
Disappointment is necessary, 245
Question with which a man aches, 245
Revaluation of friends, 246
A talk about types, 247
G. gives a further task, 248
Attempts to relate the story of one’s life, 249
Intonations, 249
“Essence” and “personality”, 250
Sincerity, 251
A bad mood, 252
G. promises to answer any question, 252
“Eternal Recurrence”, 253
An experiment on separating personality from essence, 254
A talk about sex, 255
The role of sex as the principal motive force of all mechanicalness, 255
Sex as the chief possibility of liberation, 256
New birth, 256
Transmutation of sex energy, 257
Abuses of sex, 257
Is abstinence useful?, 258
Right work of centers, 258
A permanent center of gravity, 259
Intensity of inner work, 260
Preparation for “facts”, 260
A visit to Finland, 261
The “miracle” begins, 262
Mental “conversations” with G, 263
“You are not asleep”, 264
Seeing “sleeping people”, 265
Impossibility of investigating higher phenomena by ordinary means, 266
A changed outlook on “methods of action”, 267
“Chief feature”, 268
G. defines people’s chief feature, 268
Reorganization of the group, 269
Those who leave the work, 270
Sitting between two stools, 270
Difficulty of coming back, 271
G.’s apartment, 271
Reactions to silence, 272
“Seeing lies”, 273
A demonstration, 273
How to awake?, 274
How to create the emotional state necessary?, 274
Three ways, 275
The necessity of sacrifice, 275
“Sacrificing one’s suffering”, 276
Expanded table of hydrogens, 276
A “moving diagram”, 277
A new discovery, 277
“We have very little time”, 277
Difficulty of conveying “objective truths” in ordinary language, 278
Objective and subjective knowledge, 278
Unity in diversity, 279
Transmission of objective knowledge, 279
The higher centers, 280
Myths and symbols, 280
Verbal formulas, 281
“As above, so below”, 281
“Know thyself”, 282
Duality, 282
Transformation of duality into trinity, 282
The line of will, 283
Quaternity, 283
Quinternity—the construction of the pentagram, 284
The five centers, 284
The Seal of Solomon, 285
The symbolism of numbers, geometrical figures, letters, and words, 285
Further symbologies, 286
Right and wrong understanding of symbols, 286
Level of development, 287
The union of knowledge and being: Great Doing, 287
“No one can give a man what he did not possess before”, 288
Attainment only through one’s own efforts, 288
Different known “lines” using symbology, 289
This system and its place, 289
One of the principal symbols of this teaching, 290
The enneagram, 290
The law of seven in its union with the law of three, 290
Examination of the enneagram, 291
“What a man cannot put into the enneagram, he does not understand”, 292
A symbol in motion, 293
Experiencing the enneagram by movement, 293
Exercises, 294
Universal language, 294
Objective and subjective art, 295
Music, 296
Objective music is based on inner octaves, 296
Mechanical humanity can have subjective art only, 297
Different levels of man’s being, 298
Religion a relative concept, 299
Religions correspond to the level of a man’s being, 299
“Can prayer help?”, 300
Learning to pray, 300
General ignorance regarding Christianity, 301
The Christian Church a school, 301
Egyptian “schools of repetition”, 302
Significance of rites, 302
The “techniques” of religion, 303
Where does the word “I” sound in one? 303
The two parts of real religion and what each teaches, 304
Kant and the idea of scale, 304
Organic life on earth, 305
Growth of the ray of creation, 305
The moon, 306
The evolving part of organic life is humanity, 306
Humanity at a standstill, 307
Change possible only at “crossroads”, 307
The process of evolution always begins with the formation of a conscious nucleus, 308
Is there a conscious force fighting against evolution? 308
Is mankind evolving? 309
“Two hundred conscious people could change the whole of life on earth”, 309
Three “inner circles of humanity”, 310
The “outer circle”, 310
The four “ways” as four gates to the “exoteric circle”, 311
Schools of the fourth way, 311
Pseudoesoteric systems and schools, 312
“Truth in the form of a lie”, 313
Esoteric schools in the East, 313
Initiation and the Mysteries, 314
Only self-initiation is possible, 315
Historical events of the winter 1916-17, 316
G.’s system as a guide in a labyrinth of contradictions, or as “Noah’s Ark,, 316
Consciousness of matter, 317
Its degrees of intelligence, 317
Three-, two- and one-storied machines, 318
Man composed of man, sheep and worm, 318
Classification of all creatures by three cosmic traits: what they eat, what they breathe, the medium they live in, 319
Man’s possibilities of changing his food, 320
“Diagram of Everything Living,, 321
G. leaves Petersburg for the last time, 322
An interesting event—"transfiguration” or “plastics”?, 323
A journalist’s impressions of G, 324
The downfall of Nicholas II, 325
“The end of Russian history,, 325
Plans for leaving Russia, 326
A communication from G, 327
Continuation of work in Moscow, 327
Further study of diagrams and of the idea of cosmoses, 328
Development of the idea “time is breath” in relation to man, the earth and the sun; to large and small cells, 329
Construction of a “Table of Time in Different Cosmoses,, 330
Three cosmoses taken together include in themselves all the laws of the universe, 331
Application of the idea of cosmoses to the inner processes of the human organism, 332
The life of molecules and electrons, 333
Time dimensions of different cosmoses, 334
Application of the Minkovski formula, 335
Relation of different times to centers of the human body, 336
Relation to higher centers, 337
“Cosmic calculations of time” in Gnostic and Indian literature, 338
“If you want to rest, come here to me,, 339
A visit to G. at Alexandropol, 340
G.’s relationship with his family, 340
Talk about the impossibility of doing anything in the midst of mass madness, 341
“Events are not against us at all,, 342
How to strengthen the feeling of “I”?, 343
Brief return to Petersburg and Moscow, 344
A message to the groups there, 344
Return to Piatygorsk, 345
A group of twelve foregathers at Essentuki, 345
August 1917, 346
The six weeks at Essentuki, 346
G. unfolds the plan of the whole work, 347
“Schools are imperative”, 347
“Super-efforts”, 348
The unison of the centers is the chief difficulty in work on oneself, 349
Man the slave of his body, 350
Wastage of energy from unnecessary muscular tension, 351
G. shows exercises for muscular control and relaxation, 352
The “stop” exercise, 353
The demands of “stop”, 353
G. relates a case of “stop” in Central Asia, 354
The influence of “stop” at Essentuki, 355
The habit of talking, 356
An experiment in fasting, 357
What sin is, 358
G. shows exercises in attention, 359
An experiment in breathing, 360
Realization of the difficulties of the Way, 361
Indispensability of great knowledge, efforts, and help, 361
“Is there no way outside the ‘ways’?”, 362
The “ways” as help given to people according to type, 362
The “subjective” and “objective” ways, 363
The obyvatel, 363
What does “to be serious” mean?, 364
Only one thing is serious, 364
How to attain real freedom?, 365
The hard way of slavery and obedience, 365
What is one prepared to sacrifice, 366
The fairy tale of the wolf and the sheep, 366
Astrology and types, 367
A demonstration, 367
G. announces the dispersal of the group, 368
A final trip to Petersburg, 368
Petersburg: October 1917, 369
Bolshevik revolution, 369
Return to G. in the Caucasus, 370
G.’s attitude to one of his pupils, 371
A small company with G. at Essentuki, 372
More people arrive, 373
Resumption of work, 373
Exercises are more difficult and varied than before, 374
Mental and physical exercises, dervish dances, study of psychic “tricks”, 375
Selling silk, 376
Inner struggle and a decision, 377
The choice of gurus, 378
The decision to separate, 378
G. goes to Sochi, 379
A difficult time: warfare and epidemics, 380
Further study of the enneagram, 380
“Events” and the necessity of leaving Russia, 381
London the final aim, 381
Practical results of work on oneself: feeling a new I, “a strange confidence”, 382
Collecting a group in Rostov and expounding G.’s system, 383
G. opens his Institute in Tiflis, 384
Journey to Constantinople, 384
Collecting people, 385
G. arrives, 385
New group introduced to G, 386
Translating a dervish song, 386
G. the artist and poet, 386
The Institute started in Constantinople, 387
G. authorizes the writing and publishing of a book, 387
G. goes to Germany, 387
Decision to continue Constantinople work in London, 1921, 388
G. organizes his Institute at Fontainebleau, 388
Work at the Château de la Prieuré, 388
A talk with Katherine Mansfield, 388
G. speaks of different kinds of breathing, 389
“Breathing through movements”, 389
Demonstrations at the Theâtre des Champs Elysées, Paris, 389
G.’s departure for America, 1924, 389
Decision to continue work in London independently, 389