P.D. OUSPENSKY. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MAN'S POSSIBLE EVOLUTION. A Puke(TM) Audiobook

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P.D. OUSPENSKY.
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MAN'S POSSIBLE EVOLUTION.
INTRODUCTION.

SOME YEARS ago I began to receive letters from readers of my books. All these letters contained one question, what I had been doing after I had written my books, which were published in English in 1920 and 1931, and had been written in 1910 and 1912.
I could never answer these letters. It would have needed books, even to attempt to do this. But when the people who wrote to me lived in London, where I lived after 1921, I invited them and arranged courses of lectures for them. In these lectures I tried to answer their questions and explain what I had discovered after I had written my two books, and what was the direction of my work.
In 1934 I wrote five preliminary lectures which gave a general idea of what I was studying, and also of the lines along which a certain number of people were working with me. To put all that in one, or even in two or three lectures, was quite impossible: so I always warned people that it was not worth while hearing one lecture, or two, but that only five, or better ten lectures could give an idea of the direction of my work. These lectures have continued since then, and throughout this time I have often corrected and rewritten them.
On the whole I found the general arrangement satisfactory. Five lectures were read, in my presence or without me; listeners could ask questions; and if they tried to follow the advice and indications given them, which referred chiefly to self-observation and a certain self-discipline, they very soon had a quite sufficient working understanding of what I was doing.
I certainly recognised all the time that five lectures were not sufficient, and in talks that followed them I elaborated and enlarged the preliminary data, trying to show people their own position in relation to the New Knowledge.
I found that the chief difficulty for most people was to realise that they had really heard new things, that is, things that they had never heard before.
They did not formulate it for themselves, but in fact they always tried to contradict this in their minds and translate what they heard into their habitual language, whatever it happened to be. And this certainly I could not take into account.
I know that it is not an easy thing to realize that one is hearing new things. We are so accustomed to the old tunes, and the old motives, that long ago we ceased to hope and ceased to believe that there might be anything new.
And when we hear new things, we take them for old, or think that they can be explained and interpreted by the old. It is true that it is a difficult task to realize the possibility and necessity of quite new ideas, and it needs with time a revaluation of all usual values. I cannot guarantee that you will hear new ideas, that is, ideas you never heard before, from the start; but if you are patient you will very soon begin to notice them. And then I wish you not to miss them, and to try not to interpret them in the old way.
New York, 1945.
FIRST LECTURE.
I SHALL speak about the study of psychology, but I must warn you that the psychology about which I speak is very different from anything you may know under this name.
To begin with I must say that practically never in history has psychology stood at so low a level as at the present time. It has lost all touch with its origin and its meaning so that now it is even difficult to define the term psychology: that is, to say what psychology is and what it studies. And this is so in spite of the fact that never in history have there been so many psychological theories and so many psychological writings.
Psychology is sometimes called a new science. This is quite wrong. Psychology is, perhaps, the oldest science, and, unfortunately, in its most essential features a forgotten science.
In order to understand how psychology can be denned it is necessary to realise that psychology except in modern times has never existed under its own name. For one reason or another psychology always was suspected of wrong or subversive tendencies, either religious or political or moral and had to use different disguises.
For thousands of years psychology existed under the name of philosophy. In India all forms of Yoga, which are essentially psychology, are described as one of the six systems of philosophy. Sufi teachings, which again are chiefly psychological, are regarded as partly religious and partly metaphysical. In Europe, even quite recently in the last decades of the nineteenth century, many works on psychology were referred to as philosophy. And in spite of the fact that almost all sub-divisions of philosophy such as logic, the theory of cognition, ethics, aesthetics, referred to the work of the human mind or senses, psychology was regarded as inferior to philosophy and as relating only to the lower or more trivial sides of human nature.
Parallel with its existence under the name of philosophy, psychology existed even longer connected with one or another religion. It does not mean that religion and psychology ever were one and the same thing, or that the fact of the connection between religion and psychology was recognised. But there is no doubt that almost every known religion—certainly I do not mean modern sham religions—developed one or another kind of psychological teaching connected often with a certain practice, so that the study of religion very often included in itself the study of psychology.
There are many excellent works on psychology in quite orthodox religious literature of different countries and epochs. For instance, in early Christianity there was a collection of books of different authors under the general name of Philokalia, used in our time in the Eastern Church, especially for the instruction of monks.
During the time when psychology was connected with philosophy and religion it also existed in the form of Art. Poetry, Drama, Sculpture, Dancing, even Architecture, were means for transmitting psychological knowledge. For instance, the Gothic Cathedrals were in their chief meaning works on psychology.
In the ancient times before philosophy, religion and art had taken their separate forms as we now know them, psychology had existed in the form of Mysteries, such as those of Egypt and of ancient Greece.
Later, after the disappearance of the Mysteries, psychology existed in the form of Symbolical Teachings which were sometimes connected with the religion of the period and sometimes not connected, such as Astrology, Alchemy, Magic, and the more modern: Masonry, Occultism and Theosophy.
And here it is necessary to note that all psychological systems and doctrines, those that exist or existed openly and those that were hidden or disguised, can be divided into two chief categories.
First: systems which study man as they find him, or such as they suppose or imagine him to be. Modern 'scientific' psychology or what is known under that name belongs to this category.
Second: systems which study man not from the point of view of what he is, or what he seems to be, but from the point of view of what he may become; that is, from the point of view of his possible evolution.
These last systems are in reality the original ones, or in any case the oldest and only they can explain the forgotten origin and the moaning of psychology.
When we understand the importance of the study of man from the point of view of his possible evolution, we shall understand that the first answer to the question: What is psychology?—should be that psychology is the study of the principles, laws and facts of man's possible evolution.
Here, in these lectures, I shall speak only from this point of view.
Our first question will be—what does evolution of man mean, and second, are there any special conditions necessary for it?
As regards ordinary modern views on the origin of man and his previous evolution I must say at once that they cannot be accepted. We must realise that we know nothing about the origin of man and we have no proof of man's physical or mental evolution.
On the contrary, if we take historical mankind; that is, humanity for ten or fifteen thousand years we may find unmistakable signs of a higher type of man, whose presence can be established on the evidence of ancient Monuments and Memorials which cannot be repeated or imitated by the present humanity.
As regards prehistoric man or creatures similar in appearance to man and yet at the same time very different from him, whose bones are sometimes found in deposits of glacial or pre-glacial periods, we may accept the quite possible view that these bones belong to some being quite different from man, which died out long ago. Denying previous evolution of man we must deny any possibility of future mechanical evolution of man; that is, evolution happening by itself according to laws of heredity and selection, and without man's conscious efforts and understanding of his possible evolution.
Our fundamental idea shall be that man as we know him is not a completed being; that nature develops him only up to a certain point and then leaves him, either
to develop further, by his own efforts and devices, or to live and die such as he was born, or to degenerate and lose capacity for development.
Evolution of man in this case will mean the development of certain inner qualities and features which usually remain undeveloped, and cannot develop by themselves.
Experience and observation show that this development is possible only in certain definite conditions, with efforts of a certain kind on the part of man himself, and with sufficient help from those who began similar work before and have already attained a certain degree of development, or at least a certain knowledge of methods.
We must start with the idea that without efforts evolution is impossible; without help, it is also impossible.
After this we must understand that in the way of development, man must become a different being, and we must learn and understand in what sense and in which direction man must become a different being; that is, what a different being means.
Then we must understand that all men cannot develop and become different beings. Evolution is the question of personal efforts and in relation to the mass of humanity evolution is the rare exception. It may sound strange but we must realise that it is not only rare, but is becoming more and more rare.
Many questions naturally arise from the preceding statements:—
What does it mean that in the way of evolution man must become a different being? What does 'different being' mean?
Which inner qualities or features can be developed in man and how can this be done?
Why cannot all men develop and become different beings? Why such an injustice?
I shall try to answer these questions and I shall begin with the last one.
Why cannot all men develop and become different beings?
The answer is very simple. Because they do not want it. Because they do not know about it and will not understand without a long preparation what it means, even if they are told.
The chief idea is that in order to become a different being man must want it very much and for a very long time. A passing desire or a vague desire based on dissatisfaction with external conditions will not create a sufficient impulse.
The evolution of man depends on his understanding of what he may get and what he must give for it.
If man does not want it, or if he does not want it strongly enough, and does not make necessary efforts, he will never develop. So there is no injustice in this. Why should man have what he does not want? If man were forced to become a different being when he is satisfied with what he is, then this would be injustice.
Now we must ask ourselves what a different being means. If we consider all the material we can find that refers to this question, we find an assertion that in becoming a different being man acquires many new qualities and powers which he does not possess now. This is a common assertion which we find in all kinds of systems admitting the idea of psychological or inner growth of man.
But this is not sufficient. Even the most detailed descriptions of these new powers will not help us in any way to understand how they appear and where they come from.
There is a missing link in ordinary known theories, even in those I already mentioned which are based on the idea of the possibility of evolution of man.
The truth lies in the fact that before acquiring any new faculties or powers which man does not know and does not possess now, he must acquire faculties and powers he also does not possess, but which he ascribes to himself; that is, he thinks that he knows them and can use and control them.
This is the missing link, and this is the most important point.
By way of evolution, as described before, that is, a way based on effort and help, man must acquire qualities which he thinks he already possesses, but about which he deceives himself.
In order to understand this better, and to know what are these faculties and powers which man can acquire, both quite new and unexpected and also those which he imagines that he already possesses, we must begin with man's general knowledge about himself.
And here we come at once to a very important fact.
Man does not know himself.
He does not know his own limitations and his own possibilities. He does not even know to how great an extent he does not know himself.
Man has invented many machines, and he knows that a complicated machine needs sometimes years of careful study before one can use it or control it. But he does not apply this knowledge to himself, although he himself is a much more complicated machine than any machine he has invented.
He has all sorts of wrong ideas about himself. First of all he does not realise that he actually is a machine.
What does it mean that man is a machine?
It means that he has no independent movements, inside or outside of himself. He is a machine which is brought into motion by external influences and external impacts. All his movements, actions, words, ideas, emotions, moods and thoughts are produced by external influences. By himself, he is just an automaton with a certain store of memories of previous experiences, and a certain amount of reserve energy.
We must understand that man can do nothing.
But he does not realise this and ascribes to himself the capacity to do. This is the first wrong thing that man ascribes to himself.
That must be understood very clearly. Man cannot do. Everything that man thinks he does, really happens. It happens exactly as 'it rains,' or 'it thaws.'
In the English language there are no impersonal verbal forms which can be used in relation to human actions. So we must continue to say that man thinks, reads, writes, loves, hates, starts wars, fights, and so on. Actually, all this happens.
Man cannot move, think or speak of his own accord. He is a marionette pulled here and there by invisible strings. If he understands this, he can learn more about himself, and possibly then things may begin to change for him. But if he cannot realise and understand his utter mechanicalness or if he does not wish to accept it as a fact, he can learn nothing more, and things cannot change for him,
Man is a machine, but a very peculiar machine. He is a machine which, in right circumstances, and with right treatment, can know that he is a machine, and having fully realised this, he may find the ways to cease to be a machine.
First of all, what man must know is that he is not one; he is many. He has not one permanent and unchangeable 'I' or Ego. He is always different. One moment he is one, another moment he is another, the third moment he is a third, and so on, almost without an end.
The illusion of unity or oneness is created in man first, by the sensation of one physical body, by his name, which in normal cases always remains the same, and third, by a number of mechanical habits which are implanted in him by education or acquired by imitation. Having always the same physical sensations, hearing always the same name and noticing in himself the same habits and inclinations he had before, he believes himself to be always the same.
In reality there is no oneness in man and there is no controlling centre, no permanent 'I' or Ego.
This is the general picture of man: A giant collection of states, each with the letter I in them.
Every thought, every feeling, every sensation, every desire, every like and every dislike is an 'I'. These 'I's are not connected and are not co-ordinated in any way. Each of them depends on the change in external circumstances, and on the change of impressions.
Some of them mechanically follow some other, and some appear always accompanied by others. But there is no order and no system in that.
There are certain groups of 'I's which are naturally connected. We will speak about these groups later. Now, we must try to understand that there are groups of 'I's connected only by accidental associations, accidental memories, or quite imaginary similarities.
Each of these 'I's represents at every given moment a very small part of our 'brain,' 'mind', or 'intelligence,' but each of them means itself to represent the whole. When man says 'I' it sounds as if he meant the whole of himself, but really even when he himself thinks that he means it, it is only a passing thought, a passing mood, or passing desire. In an hour's time he may completely forget it, and with the same conviction express an opposite opinion, opposite view, opposite interests. The worst of it is that man does not remember it. In most cases he believes in the last 'I' which expressed itself, as long as it lasts: that is, as long as another 'I'—sometimes quite unconnected with the preceding one—does not express its opinion or its desire louder than the first.
Now let us return to two other questions:
What does development mean? And what does it mean that man can become a different being? Or, in other words, what kind of change is possible in man, and how and when does this change begin?
It has already been said that the change will begin with those powers and capacities which man ascribes to himself, but which, in reality, he does not possess. which understood that only man himself can know certain things in relation to himself.
Applied to the question of consciousness it means that only man himself can know if his consciousness exists at the moment or not. That means that the presence 01 absence of consciousness in man cannot be proven by observation of his external actions. As I said, this fact was established long ago, but the importance of it was never fully understood because it was always connected with the understanding of consciousness as mental process or mind activity. If man realises that up to the moment of this realisation he was not conscious, and then forgets this realisation—or even remembers it—this is not consciousness. It is only memory of a strong realisation.
Now I want to draw your attention to another fact which has been missed by all modern psychological schools.
It is the fact that the consciousness in man, whatever it means, never remains in the same state. It is either there or not. The highest moments of consciousness create memory. Other moments man simply does not remember. This more than anything else produces in man the illusion of continuous consciousness or continuous awareness.
Some of the modern schools of psychology deny consciousness altogether, deny even the necessity of such a term, but this is simply an extravagance of misapprehension. Other schools—if they can be called by this name—speak about states of consciousness-—meaning thoughts, feelings, moving impulses and sensations. This is based on the fundamental mistake of mixing consciousness with psychic functions. About that we will speak later.
In reality modern thought in most cases still relies on the old formulation, that consciousness has no degrees. General, although tacit, acceptance of this idea, even though it contradicted many later discoveries, stopped many possible observations of variations of consciousness.
The fact is that consciousness has quite visible and observable degrees, certainly visible and observable in oneself.
First, there is duration: How long one was conscious.
Second, frequency of appearance: how often one became conscious.
Third, the extent and penetration: of what one was conscious, which can vary very much with the growth of man.
It we take only the first two, we will be able to understand the idea of possible evolution of consciousness. This idea is connected with the most important fact very well known by old psychological schools, like for instance authors of Philokalia, but completely missed by European philosophy and psychology of the last two or three centuries.
This is the fact that consciousness can be made continuous and controllable by special efforts and special study.
I shall try to explain how consciousness can be studied. Take a watch and look at the second hand, frying to be aware of yourself, and concentrating on the thought, 'I am Peter Ouspensky,' 'I am now here.' Try not to think about anything else, simply follow the movements of the second hand and be aware of yourself, your name, your existence and the place where you are. Keep all other thoughts away.
You will, if you are persistent, be able to do this for two minutes. This is the limit of your consciousness. And if you try to repeat the experiment soon after, you will find it more difficult than the first time.
This experiment shows that a man, in his natural state, can with great effort be conscious of one subject (himself) for two minutes or less.
The most important deduction one can make after making this experiment in the right way is that man is not conscious of himself. The illusion of his being conscious of himself is created by memory and thought processes.
For instance, a man goes to a theatre. If he is accustomed to it, he is not especially conscious of being there while he is there, although he can see things and observe them, enjoy the performance or dislike it, remember it, remember people he met and so on.
When he comes home he remembers that he was in the theatre, and certainly he thinks that he was conscious while he was there. So he has no doubts about his consciousness and he does not realise that his consciousness can be completely absent while he still can act reasonably, think, observe.
For general description, man has possibility of four states of consciousness. They are: sleep, waking state, self-consciousness and objective consciousness.
But although he has the possibility of these four states of consciousness, man actually lives only in two states. One part of his life passes in sleep, and the other part in what is called 'waking state,' though in reality his waking state differs very little from sleep.
In ordinary life, man knows nothing of 'objective consciousness' and no experiments in this direction are possible. The third state or 'self-consciousness' man ascribes to himself; that is, he believes he possesses it, although actually he can be conscious of himself only in very rare flashes and even then he probably does not recognise it because he does not know what it would imply if he actually possessed it. These glimpses of consciousness come in exceptional moments, in highly emotional states, in moments of danger, in very new and unexpected circumstances and situations; or sometimes in quite ordinary moments when nothing in particular happens. But in his ordinary or 'normal' state, man has no control over them whatever.
As regards our ordinary memory or moments of memory, we actually remember only moments of consciousness, although we do not realise that this is so.
What memory means in a technical sense, and different kinds of memory we possess, I shall explain later. Now I simply want you to turn your attention to your own observations of your memory. You will notice that you remember things differently. Some things you remember quite vividly, some very vaguely and some you do not remember at all. You only know that they happened.
You will be very astonished when you realise how little you actually remember. And it happens in this way because you remember only the moments when you were conscious.
So, in reference to the third state of consciousness, we can say that man has occasional moments of self-consciousness leaving vivid memories of circumstances accompanying them but he has no command over them. They come and go by themselves, being controlled by external circumstances, and occasional associations or memories of emotions.
The question arises: Is it possible to acquire command over these fleeting moments of consciousness, to evoke them more often, and to keep them longer, or even make them permanent? In other words, is it possible to become conscious?
This is the most important point, and it must be understood at the very beginning of our study that this point even as a theory has been entirely missed by all modern psychological schools without an exception.
For with right methods and the right efforts man can acquire control of consciousness, and can become conscious of himself with all that it implies. And what it implies we in our present state do not even imagine.
Only after this point has been understood does serious study of psychology become possible.
This study must begin with the investigation of obstacles to consciousness in ourselves, because consciousness can only begin to grow when at least some of these obstacles are removed.
In the following lectures, I shall speak about these obstacles, the greatest of which is our ignorance of ourselves, and our wrong conviction that we know ourselves at least to a certain extent and can be sure of ourselves, when in reality we do not know ourselves at all and cannot be sure of ourselves even in the smallest things.
We must understand now that psychology really means self-study. This is the second definition of psychology.
One cannot study psychology as one can study astronomy; that is, apart from oneself.
And at the same time one must study oneself as one studies any new and complicated machine. One must know the parts of this machine, its chief functions, the conditions of right work, the causes of wrong work, and many other things which are difficult to describe without using a special language, which it is also necessary to know in order to be able to study the machine.
The human machine has seven different functions:
1. Thinking (or intellect).
2. Feeling (or emotions).
3. Instinctive function (all inner work of the organism).
4. Moving function (all outer work of the organism, movement in space, and so on).
5. Sex (the function of two principles, male and female, in all their manifestations).
Besides these there are two more Junctions for which we have no name in ordinary language and which appear only in higher states of consciousness; one—higher emotional Junction, which appears in the state of self-consciousness, and the other, higher mental function, which appears in the state of objective consciousness. As we are not in these states of consciousness we cannot study these functions or experiment with them, and we learn about them only indirectly from those who have attained or experienced them.
In the religious and philosophical literature of different nations there are many allusions to the higher states of consciousness and to higher functions. What creates an additional difficulty in understanding these allusions is the lack of division between the higher states of consciousness. What is called samadhi or ecstatic state or illumination, or, in more recent works cosmic consciousness, may refer to one and may refer to another—sometimes to experiences of self-consciousness and sometimes to experiences of objective consciousness. And strange though it may seem we have more material for judging about the highest state; that is, objective consciousness, than about the intermediate state; that is, self-consciousness, although the former may come only after the latter.
Self-study must begin with the study of the four functions; thinking, feeling, instinctive function and moving function. Sex functions can be studied only much later; that is, when these four functions are already sufficiently understood. Contrary to some modern theories the sex function is really posterior; that is, it appears later in life when the first four functions are already fully manifested and is conditioned by them. Therefore, the study of the sex function can be useful only when the first four functions are fully known in all their manifestations. At the same time it must be understood that any serious irregularity or abnormality in the sex function makes self-development and even self-study impossible.
So now we must try to understand the four chief functions.
I will take it for granted that it is clear to you what I mean by the intellectual or thinking function. All mental processes are included here: realisation of an impression, formation of representations and concepts, reasoning, comparison, affirmation, negation, formation of words, speech, imagination, and so on.
The second function is feeling or emotions: joy, sorrow, fear, astonishment, and so on. Even if you are sure that it is clear to you how, and in what, emotions differ from thoughts I should advise you to verify all your views in regard to this. We mix thought and feelings in our ordinary thinking and speaking; but for the beginning of self-study it is necessary to know clearly which is which.
The two functions following, instinctive and moving, will take longer to understand, because in no system of
Ordinary psychology are these functions described and divided in the right way.
The words 'instinct,' 'instinctive' are generally used in the wrong sense and very often in no sense at all. In particular, to instinct are generally ascribed external functions which are in reality moving functions, and sometimes emotional.
Instinctive function in man includes in itself four different classes of functions:
First: All the inner work of the organism, all physiology so to speak; digestion and assimilation of food, breathing, circulation of the blood, all the work of inner organs, the building of new cells, the elimination of worked out materials, the work of glands of inner secretion, and so on.
Second: The so-called five senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, and all other senses such as the sense of weight, of temperature, of dryness or of moisture, and so on; that is, all indifferent sensations—sensations which by themselves are neither pleasant nor unpleasant.
Third: All physical emotions, that is, all physical sensations which are either pleasant or unpleasant. All kinds of pain or unpleasant feeling such as unpleasant taste or unpleasant smell, and all kinds of physical pleasure, such as pleasant taste, pleasant smell and so on.
Fourth: All reflexes, even the most complicated, such as laughter and yawning; all kinds of physical memory such as memory of taste, memory of smell, memory of pain, which are in reality inner reflexes.
Moving function includes in itself all external movements, such as walking, writing, speaking, eating and memories of them. To moving function also belong those movements which in ordinary language are called 'in-
stinctive,' such as catching a falling object without thinking.
The difference between the instinctive and the moving function is very clear and can be easily understood if one simply remembers that all instinctive functions without exception are inherent and that there is no necessity to learn them in order to use them; whereas on the other hand, none of the moving functions are inherent and one has to learn them all as a child learns to walk, or as one learns to write or to draw.
Besides these normal moving functions, there are also some strange moving functions which represent useless work of the human machine not intended by nature, but which occupy a very large place in man's life and use a great quantity of his energy. These are: formation of dreams, imagination, day-dreaming, talking with oneself, all talking for talking's sake, and generally, all uncontrolled and uncontrollable manifestations.
The four functions—intellectual, emotional, instinctive and moving—must first be understood in all their manifestations and later they must be observed in oneself. Such self-observation, that is, observation on the right basis, with a preliminary understanding of the states of consciousness and of different functions, constitutes the basis of self-study; that is, the beginning of psychology.
It is very important to remember that in observing different functions it is useful to observe at the same time their relation to different states of consciousness.
Let us take the three states of consciousness—sleep, waking state, and possible glimpses of self-consciousness, and the four functions—thinking, feeling, instinctive and moving. All four functions can manifest themselves in sleep, but their manifestations are desultory and unreliable; they cannot be used in any way, they just go by themselves. In the state of waking consciousness or relative consciousness, they can to a certain extent serve for our orientation. Their results can be compared, verified, straightened out, and although they may create many illusions, still in our ordinary state we have nothing else and must make of them what we can. If we knew the quantity of wrong observations, wrong theories, wrong deductions and conclusions made in this state, we should cease to believe ourselves altogether. But men do not realise how deceptive their observations and their theories can be and they continue to believe in them. It is this that keeps man from observing the rare moments when their functions manifest themselves in connection with glimpses of the third state of consciousness; that is, of self-consciousness.
All this means that each of the four functions can manifest itself in each of the three states of consciousness. But the results are quite different. When we learn to observe these results and their difference, we shall understand the right relation between functions and states of consciousness.
But before even considering the difference in function in relation to states of consciousness, it is necessary to understand that man's consciousness and man's functions are quite different phenomena, of quite different nature and depending on different causes and that one can exist without the other. Functions can exist without consciousness and consciousness can exist without functions.

SECOND LECTURE.
CONTINUING OUR study of man, we must now speak with more detail about the different states of consciousness.
As I have already said, there are four states of consciousness possible for man: Sleep, 'waking consciousness,' self-consciousness and 'objective consciousness'; but he lives only in two: partly in sleep and partly in what is sometimes called 'waking consciousness.' It is as though he had a four-storied house, but lived only in the two lower stories.
The first, or the lowest state of consciousness, is sleep. This is a purely subjective and passive state. Man is surrounded by dreams. All his psychic functions work without any direction. There is no logic, no sequence, no cause and no result in dreams. Purely subjective pictures—either reflections of former experiences or reflections of vague perceptions of the moment, such as sounds reaching the sleeping man, sensations coming from body, slight pains, sensations of muscular tension— fly through the mind, leaving only a very slight trace on the memory and more often, leaving no trace at all.
The second degree of consciousness comes when man awakes. This second state, the state in which we are now, that is, in which we work, talk, imagine ourselves conscious beings, and so forth, we often call 'waking consciousness' or 'clear consciousness' but really it should be called 'waking sleep' or 'relative consciousness.' This last term will be explained later.
It is necessary to understand here that the first state of consciousness, that is, sleep, does not disappear when the second state arrives, that is, when man awakes. Sleep remains there, with all its dreams and impressions, only a more critical attitude towards one's own impressions, more connected thoughts, more disciplined actions become added to it, and because of the vividness of sense impressions, desires and feelings— particularly the feeling of contradiction or impossibility, which is entirely absent in sleep—dreams become invisible exactly as the stars and moon become invisible in the glare of the sun. But they are all there, and they often influence all our thoughts, feelings and actions—sometimes even more than the actual perceptions of the moment.
In connection with this I must say at once that I do not mean what is called in modern psychology 'the subconscious' or the 'subconscious mind.' These are simply wrong expressions, wrong terms, which mean nothing and do not refer to any real facts. There is nothing permanently subconscious in us because there is nothing permanently conscious; and there is no 'subconscious mind' for the very simple reason that there is no 'conscious mind.' Later you will see how this mistake occurred and how this wrong terminology came into being, and became almost generally accepted.
But let us return to the states of consciousness which really exist. The first is sleep. The second is 'waking sleep' or 'relative consciousness.'
The first, as I have said, is a purely subjective state. The second is less subjective; man already distinguishes 'I' and 'not I' in the sense of his body and objects different from his body, and he can, to a certain extent, orientate among them and know their position and qualities. But it cannot be said that man is awake in this state, because he is very strongly influenced by dreams, and really lives more in dreams than in fact. All the absurdities and all the contradictions of people, and of human life in general, become explained when we realise that people live in sleep, do everything in sleep, and do not know that they are asleep.
It is useful to remember that this is the inner meaning of many ancient doctrines. The best known to us is Christianity, or the Gospel teaching, in which, the idea that men live in sleep and must first of all awake, is the basis of all the explanations of human life, although it is very rarely understood as it should be understood, in this case literally.
But the question is, how can a man awake?
The Gospel teaching demands awakening, but does not say how to awaken.
But the psychological study of consciousness shows that only when a man realises that he is asleep, is it possible to say that he is on the way to awakening. He never can awaken without first realising his sleep.
These two states, sleep and waking sleep, are the only two states of consciousness in which man lives. Besides them there are two states of consciousness possible for man, but they become accessible to a man only after a hard and prolonged struggle.
These two higher states of consciousness are called 'self-consciousness' and 'objective consciousness.'
We generally think that we possess self-consciousness, that is, that we are conscious of ourselves, or in any case that we can be conscious of ourselves, at any moment we wish, but in truth 'self-consciousness' is a state which we ascribe to ourselves without any right. 'Objective consciousness' is a state about which we know nothing.
Self-consciousness is a state in which man becomes objective towards himself, and objective consciousness is a state in which he comes into contact with the real, or objective world from which he is now shut off by the senses, dreams and subjective states of consciousness.
Another definition of the four states of consciousness can be made from the point of view of the possible cognition of truth.
In the first state of consciousness, that is, in sleep, we cannot know anything of the truth. Even if some real perceptions or feelings come to us, they become mixed with dreams, and in the state of sleep we cannot distinguish between dreams and reality.
In the second state of consciousness, that is, in waking sleep, we can only know relative truth, and from this comes the term relative consciousness.
In the third state of consciousness, that is, the state of self-consciousness, we can know the full truth about ourselves.
In the fourth state of consciousness, that is, in the state of objective consciousness, we are supposed to be able to know the full truth about everything: we can study 'things in themselves,' 'the world as it is.'
This is so far from us that we cannot even think about it in the right way, and we must try to understand that even glimpses of objective consciousness can only come in the fully developed state of self-consciousness.
In the state of sleep we can have glimpses of relative consciousness. In the state of relative consciousness we can have glimpses of self-consciousness. But if we want to have more prolonged periods of self-consciousness and not merely glimpses, we must understand that they cannot come by themselves, they need will action. This means that frequency and duration of moments of self-consciousness depend on the command one has over oneself. So it means that consciousness and will are almost one and the same thing, or, in any case aspects of the same thing.
At this point, it must be understood that the first obstacle in the way of the development of self-consciousness in man, is his conviction that he already possesses self-consciousness or at any rate, that he can have it at any time he likes. It is very difficult to persuade a man that he is not conscious and cannot be conscious at will. It is particularly difficult because here nature plays a very funny trick.
If you ask a man if he is conscious or if you say to him that he is not conscious, he will answer that he is conscious and that it is absurd to say that he is not, because he hears and understands you.
And he will be quite right, although at the same time quite wrong. This is nature's trick. He will be right because your question or your remark has made him vaguely conscious for a moment. Next moment consciousness will disappear. But he will remember what you said and what he answered, and he will certainly consider himself conscious.
In reality, acquiring self-consciousness means long and hard work. How can a man agree to this work if he thinks he already possesses the very thing which is promised him as the result of long and hard work? Naturally a man will not begin this work and will not consider it necessary until he becomes convinced that he possesses neither self-consciousness nor all that is connected with it, that is, unity or individuality, permanent 'I' and will.
This brings us to the question of schools, because methods for the development of self-consciousness, unity, permanent 'I' and will, can be given only by special schools.

That must be clearly understood. Men on the level of relative consciousness cannot find these methods by themselves; and these methods cannot be described in books or taught in ordinary schools for the very simple reason that they are different for different people, and there is no universal method equally applicable to all.
In other words, this means that men who want to change their state of consciousness need a school. But first, they must realise their need. As long as they think they can do something by themselves they will not be able to make any use of a school, even if they find it. Schools exist only for those who need them, and who know that they need them.
The idea of schools—the study of the kinds of schools that may exist, the study of school principles and school methods— occupies a very important place in the study of that psychology which is connected with the idea of evolution; because without a school there can be no evolution. One cannot even start, because one does not know how to start: still less can one continue or attain anything.
This means that having got rid of the first illusion, that one already has everything one can have, one must get rid of the second illusion that one can get anything by oneself; because by oneself one can get nothing.
These lectures are not a school—not even the beginning of a school. A school requires a much higher pressure of work. But in these lectures I can give to those who wish to listen, some ideas as to how schools work and how they can be found.
I gave before two definitions of psychology.
First, I said that psychology is the study of the possible evolution of man, and second, that psychology is the study of oneself.
I meant that only a psychology which investigates the evolution of man is worth studying, and that a psychology which is occupied with only one phase of man, without knowing anything about his other phases, is obviously not complete, and cannot have any value, even in a purely scientific sense, that is, from the point of view of experiment and observation. For the present phase, as studied by ordinary psychology, in reality does not exist as something separate and consists of many sub-divisions which lead from lower phases to higher phases. Moreover, the same experiment and observation show that one cannot study psychology as one can study any other science not directly connected with oneself. One has to begin the study of psychology with oneself.
Putting together, first what we may know about the next phase in the evolution of man, that is, that it will mean acquiring consciousness, inner unity, permanent ego and will, and second, certain material that we can get by self-observation, that is, realisation of the absence in us of many powers and faculties which we ascribe to ourselves, we come to a new difficulty in understanding the meaning of psychology, and to the necessity for a new definition.
The two definitions given in the previous lectures are not sufficient because man by himself does not know what evolution is possible for him, does not see where he stands at present and ascribes to himself features belonging to higher phases of evolution. In fact, he cannot study himself, being unable to distinguish between the imaginary and the real in himself.
What is lying?
As it is understood in ordinary language, lying means distorting or in some cases, hiding the truth, or what people believe to be the truth. This lying plays a very important part in life, but there are much worse forms of lying, when people do not know that they lie. I said in the last lecture that we cannot know the truth in our present state, and can only know the truth in the state of objective consciousness. How then can we lie? There seems to be a contradiction here, but in reality there is none. We cannot know the truth but we can pretend that we know. And this is lying. Lying fills all our life. People pretend that they know all sorts of things: about God, about the future life, about the universe, about the origin of man, about evolution, about everything; but in reality they do not know anything, even about themselves. And every time they speak about something they do not know as though they knew it, they lie. Consequently the study of lying becomes of the first importance in psychology.
And it may lead even to the third definition of psychology which is: the study of lying.
Psychology is particularly concerned with the lies a man says and thinks about himself. These lies make the study of man very difficult. Man, as he is, is not a genuine article. He is an imitation of something, and a very bad imitation.
Imagine a scientist on some remote planet who has received from the earth specimens of artificial flowers, without knowing anything about real flowers. It will be extremely difficult for him to define them— to explain their shape, their colour, the material from which they are made, that is, wire, cotton-wool and coloured paper—and to classify them in any way.
Psychology stands in a very similar position in relation to man. It has to study an artificial man, without knowing the real man.
Obviously, it cannot be easy to study a being such as man, who does not himself know what is real and what is imaginary in him. So psychology must begin with a division between the real and the imaginary in man.
It is impossible to study man as a whole, because man is divided into two parts: one part which, in some cases, can be almost all real, and the other part which, in some cases, can be almost all imaginary. In the majority of ordinary men these two parts are intermixed, and cannot be easily distinguished, although they are both there, and both have their own particular meaning and effect.
In the system we are studying, these two parts are called essence and personality.
Essence is what is born in man.
Personality is what is acquired. Essence is what is his own. Personality is what is not his own. Essence cannot be lost, cannot be changed or injured as easily as personality. Personality can be changed almost completely with the change of circumstances; it can be lost or easily injured.
If I try to describe what essence is, I must, first of all, say that it is the basis of man's physical and mental make-up. For instance, one man is naturally what is called a good sailor, another is a bad sailor, one has a musical ear, another has not, one has a capacity for languages, another has not. This is essence.
Personality is all that is learned in one or another way, in ordinary language, 'consciously' or 'unconsciously.' In most cases 'unconsciously' means by imitation which, as a matter of fact, plays a very important part in the building of personality. Even in instinctive functions, which naturally should be free from personality, there are usually many so-called 'acquired tastes,' that is, all sorts of artificial likes and dislikes, all of which are acquired by imitation and imagination. These artificial likes and dislikes play a very important and very disastrous part in man's life. By nature, man should like what is good for him and dislike what is bad for him. But this is so, only as long as essence dominates personality, as it should dominate it, in other words, when a man is healthy and normal. When personality begins to dominate essence and when man becomes less healthy, he begins to like what is bad for him and to dislike what is good for him.
This is connected with the chief thing that can be wrong in the mutual relations of essence and personality.
Normally, essence must dominate personality and then personality can be quite useful. But if personality dominates essence, this produces wrong results of many kinds.
It must be understood that personality is also necessary for man; one cannot live without personality and only with essence. But essence and personality must grow parallel, and the one must not outgrow the other.
Cases of essence outgrowing personality may occur among uneducated people. These so-called simple people may be very good, and even clever, but they are incapable of development in the same way as people with more developed personality.
Cases of personality outgrowing essence are often to be found among more cultured people, and in such cases, essence remains in a half-grown or half-developed state.
This means that with a quick and early growth of personality, growth of essence can practically stop at a very early age, and as a result we see men and women externally quite grown-up, but whose essence remains at the age of ten or twelve.

There are many conditions in modern life which greatly favour this under-development of essence. For instance, the infatuation with sport, particularly with games, can very effectively stop the development of essence, and sometimes at such an early age that essence is never fully able to recover later.
This shows that essence cannot be regarded as connected only with the physical constitution, in the simple meaning of the idea. In order to explain more clearly what essence means, I must again return to the study of functions.
I said in the last lecture that the study of man begins with the study of four functions: intellectual, emotional, moving and instinctive. From ordinary psychology, and from ordinary thinking, we know that the intellectual functions, thoughts, and so on, are controlled or produced by a certain centre which we call ' mind' or 'intellect,' or 'the brain.' And this is quite right. Only, to be fully right, we must understand that other functions are also controlled each by its own mind or centre. Thus, from the point of view of the system, there are four minds or centres which control our ordinary actions: intellectual mind, emotional mind, moving mind and instinctive mind. In further references to them we shall call them centres. Each centre is quite independent of the others, has its own sphere of action, its own powers, and its own ways of development.
Centres, that is, their structure, capacities, strong sides and defects, belong to essence. Their contents, that is, all that a centre acquires, belong to personality. The contents of centres will be explained later.
As I have already said, personality is as equally necessary for the development of man as is essence, only it must stand in its right place. This is hardly possible, because personality is full of wrong ideas about itself. It does not wish to stand in its right place, because its right place is secondary and subordinate; and it does not wish to know the truth about itself, for to know the truth will mean abandoning its falsely dominant position, and occupying the inferior position which rightly belongs to it.
The wrong relative positions of essence and personality determine the present disharmonious state of man. And the only way to get out of this disharmonious state is by self-knowledge.
To know oneself—this was the first principle and the first demand of old psychological schools. We still remember these words, but have lost their meaning. We think that to know ourselves, means to know our peculiarities, our desires, our tastes, our capacities and our intentions, when in reality it means to know ourselves as machines, that is, to know the structure of one's machine, its parts, functions of different parts, the conditions governing their work and so on. We realise in a general way that we cannot know any machine without studying it.

We must remember this in relation to ourselves and must study our own machines as machines. The means of study is self-observation.
There is no other way and no one can do this work for us. We must do it ourselves. But before this we must learn how to observe. I mean, we must understand the technical side of observation: we must know that it is necessary to observe different functions and distinguish between them, remembering, at the same time, about different states of consciousness, about our sleep, and about the many I's in us.
Such observations will very soon give results. First of all a man will notice that he cannot observe everything he finds in himself impartially. Some things may please him, other things will annoy him, irritate him, even horrify him. And it cannot be otherwise. Man cannot study himself as a remote star, or as a curious fossil. Quite naturally he will like in himself what helps his development and dislike what makes his development more difficult, or even impossible. This means that very soon after starting to observe himself, he will begin to distinguish useful features and harmful features in himself, that is, useful or harmful from the point of view of his possible self-knowledge, his possible awakening, his possible development. He will see sides of himself which can become conscious, and sides which cannot become conscious and must be eliminated. In observing himself, he must always remember that his self-study is the first step towards his possible evolution.
Now we must see what are those harmful features that man finds in himself.
Speaking in general they are all mechanical manifestations. The first as has already been said, is lying. Lying is unavoidable in mechanical life. No one can escape it and the more one thinks that one is free from lying, the more one is in it. Life, as it is could not exist without lying. But from the psychological side, lying has a different meaning. It means speaking about things one does not know, and even cannot know, as though one knows and can know.
You must understand that I do not speak from any moral point of view. We have not yet come to questions of what is good, and what is bad, by itself. I speak only from a practical point of view, of what is useful and what is harmful to self-study and self-development.
Starting in this way, man very soon learns to discover signs by which he can know harmful manifestations in himself. He discovers that the more he can control a manifestation, the less harmful it can be, and that the less he can control it, that is, the more mechanical it is, the more harmful it can become.
When man understands this he becomes afraid of lying, again not on moral grounds, but on the grounds that he cannot control his lying, and that lying controls him, that is, his other functions.

The second dangerous feature he finds in himself is imagination. Very soon after starting his observation of himself he comes to the conclusion that the chief obstacle to observation is imagination.

He wishes to observe something, but instead of that, imagination starts in him on the same subject, and he forgets about observation. Very soon he realises that people ascribe to the word imagination a quite artificial and quite undeserved meaning in the sense of creative or selective faculty. He realises that imagination is a destructive faculty, that he can never control it and that it always carries him away from his more conscious decisions in a direction in which he had no intention of going. Imagination is almost as bad as lying, it is, in fact, lying to oneself. Man starts to imagine something in order to please himself, and very soon he begins to believe what he imagines, or at least some of it.
Further, or even before that, one finds many very dangerous effects in the expression of negative emotions. The term 'negative emotions' means all emotions of violence or depression: self-pity, anger, suspicion, fear, annoyance, boredom, mistrust, jealousy and so on. Ordinarily, one accepts this expression of negative emotions as quite natural and even necessary. Very often people call it 'sincerity.' Of course it has nothing to do with sincerity; it is simply a sign of weakness in man, a sign of bad temper and of incapacity to keep his grievances to himself. Man realises this when he tries to oppose it. And by this he learns another lesson. He realises that in relation to mechanical manifestations it is not enough to observe them, it is necessary to resist them, because without resisting them one cannot observe them. They happen so quickly, so habitually and so imperceptibly, that one cannot notice them if one does not make sufficient efforts to create obstacles for them.
After the expression of negative emotions one notices in one self or in other people another curious mechanical feature. This is talking. There is no harm in talking by itself. But with some people, especially with those who notice it least, it really becomes a vice. They talk all the time, everywhere they happen to be, while working, while travelling, even while sleeping. They never stop talking to someone if there is someone to talk to, and if there is no one, they talk to themselves.
This too must not only be observed, but resisted as much as possible. With unresisted talking one cannot observe anything, and all the results of a man's observations will immediately evaporate in talking.
The difficulties he has in observing these four manifestations— lying, imagination, the expression of negative emotions and unnecessary talking—will show man his utter mechanicalness, and the impossibility even of struggling against this mechanicalness without help, that is, without new knowledge and without actual assistance. For even if a man has received certain material, he for-gets to use it, forgets to observe himself; in other words, he falls asleep again and must always be awakened.
This 'falling asleep' has certain definite features of its own, unknown, or at least unregistered and unnamed, in ordinary psychology. These features need special study.
There are two of them. The first is called identification.
'Identifying' or 'identification.' is a curious state in which man passes more than half of his life. He 'identifies' with everything: with what he says, what he feels, what he believes, what he does not believe, what he wishes, what he does not wish, what attracts him, what repels him. Everything absorbs him, and he cannot separate himself from the idea, the feeling or the object that absorbed him. This means that in the state of identification man is incapable of looking impartially on the object of his identification. It is difficult to find the smallest thing with which man is unable to 'identify.'
At the same time, in a state of identification, man has even less control over his mechanical reactions than at any other time. Such manifestations as lying, imagination, the expression of negative emotions and constant talking need identification. They cannot exist without identification. If man could get rid of identification, he could get rid of many useless and foolish manifestations.
Identification, its meaning, causes and results, is extremely well described in the Philokalia which was mentioned in the first lecture. But no trace of understanding of it can be found in modern psychology. It is a quite forgotten 'psychological discovery.'
The second sleep-producing state, akin to identification, is considering. Actually, 'considering' is identification with people. It is a state in which man constantly worries about what other people think of him; whether they give him his due, whether they admire him enough and so on, and so on. 'Considering' plays a very important part in everyone's life, but in some people it becomes an obsession. All their lives are filled with considering, that is, worry, doubt and suspicion, and there remains no place for anything else.
The myth of the 'inferiority complex' and other 'complexes' is created by the vaguely realised but not understood phenomenon of 'identification' and 'considering.'
Both 'identifying' and 'considering' must be observed most seriously. Only full knowledge of them can diminish them. If one cannot see them in oneself, one can easily see them in other people. But one must remember that one in no way differs from others. In this sense all people are equal.
Returning now to what was said before, we must try to understand more clearly how the development of man must begin, and in what way self-study can help this beginning.
From the very start we meet with a difficulty in our language. For instance, we want to speak about man from the point of view of evolution.

But the word 'man’ in ordinary language does not admit of any variation or any gradation.
Man who is never conscious and never suspects it, man who is struggling to become conscious, man who is fully conscious—it is all the same for our language. It is always 'man* in every case. In order to avoid this difficulty and to help the student in classifying his new ideas, the system divides man into seven categories.
The first three categories are practically on the same level.
Man Number 1, a man in whom the moving or instinctive centres predominate over the intellectual and emotional, that is, Physical Man.
Man Number 2, a man in whom the emotional centre predominates over the intellectual, moving and instinctive. Emotional man.
Man Number 3, a man in whom the intellectual centre predominates over the emotional, moving and instinctive. Intellectual man.
In ordinary life we meet only these three categories of man. Each one of us and everyone we know is either Number 1, Number 2, or Number 3. There are higher categories of man, but men are not born already belonging to these higher categories. They are all born Number 1, Number 2, Number 3 and can reach higher categories only through schools.
Man Number 4 is not born as such. He is a product of school culture. He differs from man Number 1, Num