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January 22, 2020
One of the first characteristics of materiality is that matter is always limited, that is to say, the quantity of matter in a given place and under given conditions is limited.
"The fact is that the enormous majority of people do not want any knowledge whatever; they refuse their share of it and do not even take the ration allotted to them, in the general distribution, for the purposes of life.
Owing to this, enormous quantities of knowledge remain, so to speak, unclaimed and can be distributed among those who realize its value.
"The collecting of knowledge by some depends upon the rejection of knowledge by others.
One must learn from him who knows"
that man is not born with the finer bodies, and that they can only be artificially cultivated in him provided favorable conditions both internal and external are present.
If a man gives way to all his desires, or panders to them, there will be no inner struggle in him, no 'friction,' no fire.
But if, for the sake of attaining a definite aim, he struggles with desires that hinder him, he will then create a fire which will gradually transform his inner world into a single whole.
The law for man is existence in the circle of mechanical influences, the state of 'man-machine.'
The way of the development of hidden possibilities is a way against nature, against God.
A man must do nothing that he does not understand, except as an experiment under the supervision and direction of his teacher.
'Civilized' and 'cultured' people live with exactly the same interests as the most ignorant savages.
"People are machines. Machines have to be blind and unconscious, they cannot be otherwise, and all their actions have to correspond to their nature.
Everything happens. No one does anything.
They cannot appear as the result of unconscious mechanical actions.
It is precisely in unconscious involuntary manifestations that all evil lies.
Imagine a country where everyone can be king for five minutes and do during these five minutes just what he likes with the whole kingdom. That is our life."
referring to non-identification, non-considering, and not expressing negative emotions,
But the evolution of humanity as a whole, that is, the development of these possibilities in all men, or in most of them, or even in a large number of them, is not necessary for the purposes of the earth or of the planetary world in general, and it might, in fact, be injurious or fatal.
The man must understand this: his evolution is necessary only to himself. No one else is interested in it. And no one is obliged or intends to help him.
On the contrary, the forces which oppose the evolution of large masses of humanity also oppose the evolution of individual men.
What is possible for individual man is impossible for the masses.
The evolution of man is the evolution of his consciousness. And 'consciousness' cannot evolve unconsciously.
The evolution of man is the evolution of his will, and 'will' cannot evolve involuntarily. The evolution, of man is the evolution of his power of doing, and 'doing' cannot be the result of things which 'happen.'
"One of man's important mistakes," he said, "one which must be remembered, is his illusion in regard to his I.
"Man has no permanent and unchangeable I.
Each minute, each moment, man is saying or thinking 'I.' And each time his I is different. Just now it was a thought, now it is a desire, now a sensation, now another thought, and so on, endlessly. Man is a plurality. Man's name is legion.
"And each separate small I is able to call itself by the name of the Whole, to act in the name of the Whole, to agree or disagree, to give promises, to make decisions, with which another I or the Whole will have to deal.
It is the tragedy of the human being that any small I has the right to sign checks and promissory notes and the man, that is, the Whole, has to meet them.
man is compared to a house in which there is a multitude of servants but no master and no steward.
"There are," he said, "two lines along which man's development proceeds, the line of knowledge and the line of being.
But if the line of knowledge gets too far ahead of the line of being, or if the line of being gets ahead of the line of knowledge, man's development goes wrong,
And it is forgotten that the level of knowledge is determined by the level of being.
A change in the nature of knowledge is possible only with a change in the nature of being.
It may surprise you if I say that the chief feature of a modern man's being which explains everything else that is lacking in him is sleep.
Everything happens, a man can do nothing either in himself or outside himself.
People whose being can still be changed are very lucky.
"Knowledge is one thing, understanding is another thing.
"Knowledge by itself does not give understanding.
Understanding depends upon the relation of knowledge to being.
But understanding appears only when a man feels and senses what is connected with it.
But outside the sphere of practical activity people do not clearly understand what 'understanding' means.
As a matter of fact, no one understands anyone else.
an exact language is necessary, which would make it possible to establish what a man actually means, would include an indication of the point of view from which a given concept is taken and determine the center of gravity of this concept.
it bases the construction of speech upon a new principle, namely, the principle of relativity; that is to say, it introduces relativity into all concepts and thus makes possible an accurate determination of the angle of thought—for
"The fundamental property of the new language is that all ideas in it are concentrated around one idea,
Help from outside is possible only in so far as it is valued and accepted, even if it is only by feeling in the beginning.
"Every man is born number one, number two, or number three.
"Man number four is not born ready-made. He is born one, two, or three, and becomes four only as a result of efforts of a definite character.
"The knowledge of man number six is the complete knowledge possible to man; but it can still be lost.
