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January 22, 2020
Whatever you may give him, he may interpret it in his own way, he will reduce every idea to the level on which he is himself.
The study of the world and the study of man must therefore run parallel, one helping the other.
it is necessary to understand from the very outset that there are many worlds, and that we live not in one world, but in several worlds.
We live in a world subject to forty-eight orders of laws, that is to say, very far from the will of the Absolute and in a very remote and dark corner of the universe.
In our world, that is, the earth, forty-eight orders of laws are operating to which we are subject and by which our whole life is governed.
"As has been said already, the will of the Absolute is only manifested in the immediate world created by it within itself, that is, in world 3;
The will of the Absolute cannot manifest itself in subsequent worlds apart from this plan, and, in manifesting itself in accordance with this plan, it takes the form of mechanical laws.
A 'miracle' is the manifestation in this world of the laws of another world.
"And the possibility for man thus gradually to free himself from mechanical laws exists.
Long and persistent attempts to gain freedom from them will convince him of his slavery.
But a great deal of knowledge is needed in order to become free from one law without creating for oneself another in its place.
The ray of creation establishes seven planes in the world, seven worlds one within another.
In the Absolute, where all is one, matter and force are also one.
"From this point of view, then, the world consists of vibrations and matter, or of matter in a state of vibration, of vibrating matter.
The atoms of the Absolute alone are really indivisible, the atom of the next plane, that is, of world 3, consists of three atoms of the Absolute or, in other words, it is three times bigger and three times heavier, and its movements are correspondingly slower.
Man is, in the full sense of the term, a 'miniature universe'; in him are all the matters of which the universe consists; the same forces, the same laws that govern the life of the universe, operate in him;
An undeveloped man, a man who has not completed the course of his evolution, cannot be taken as a complete picture or plan of the universe—he is an unfinished world.
The laws of a game make the essence of the game. A violation of these laws would destroy the entire game.
Turgenev wrote somewhere that all ordinary prayers can be reduced to one: "Lord, make it so that twice two be not four."
If he becomes the master of his life, he may become the master of his death.
"The first reason for man's inner slavery is his ignorance, and above all, his ignorance of himself.
"The chief method of self-study is self-observation.
"There are two methods of self-observation: analysis, or attempts at analysis, that is, attempts to find the answers to the questions: upon what does a certain thing depend, and why does it happen; and the second method is registering, simply 'recording' in one's mind what is observed at the moment.
In order really to observe oneself one must first of all remember oneself" (He again emphasized these words.) "Try to remember yourselves when you observe yourselves and later on tell me the results. Only those results will have any value that are accompanied by self-remembering.
Different numerical combinations of a few elementary forces create all the seeming variety of phenomena.
He is the slave. He has no will of his own. He has no means of expressing his desires because whatever he would like to do or say would be done for him by 'Ouspensky.'
As was said earlier, self-observation brings a man to the realization of the fact that he does not remember himself.
Namely, his constant 'identification' with what at a given moment has attracted his attention, his thoughts or his desires, and his imagination.
Man is always in a state of identification, only the object of identification changes.
In reality of course this is illusion. Man cannot do anything sensible when he is in a state of identifying.
"Identifying is the chief obstacle to self-remembering. A man who identifies with anything is unable to remember himself.
He must remember that there are two in him, that there is himself, that is 'I' in him, and there is another with whom he must struggle and whom he must conquer if he wishes at any time to attain anything.
Freedom is first of all freedom from identification.
enough. All this is simply weakness. People are afraid of one another. But this can lead very far.
When a man has an aim he 'ought' to do only what leads towards his aim and he 'ought not' to do anything that hinders him from going towards his aim.
We fail to see how contradictory and hostile the different I's of our personality are to one another.
He must either destroy contradictions or cease to see and to feel them.
It is very hard to live without 'buffers.' But they keep man from the possibility of inner development because 'buffers' are made to lessen shocks and it is only shocks that can lead a man out of the state in which he lives, that is, waken him.
'Buffers' are appliances by means of -which a man can always be in the right. 'Buffers' help a man not to feel his conscience.
A man cannot live in this state; he must either destroy contradictions or destroy conscience. He cannot destroy conscience, but if he cannot destroy it he can put it to sleep, that is, he can separate by impenetrable barriers one feeling of self from another, never see them together, never
Awakening is possible only for those who seek it and want it, for those who are ready to struggle with themselves and work on themselves for a very long time and very persistently in order to attain it.
"But conscience is the fire which alone can fuse all the powders
Fate is the result of planetary influences which correspond to a man's type.
Personality sees only what it likes to see and what does not interfere with its life.
"Fate is better than accident only in the sense that it is possible to take it into account, it is possible to know it beforehand; it is possible to prepare for what is ahead.
Just as there is individual accident, so is there general or collective accident. And in the same way as there is individual fate, there is a general or collective fate.
Personality feeds on imagination and falsehood.
The people who paid a thousand roubles paid not only for themselves but for others.
"The action of the Absolute upon the world, or upon the worlds created by it or within it, continues.
You now know that everything must be paid for and that it must be paid for in proportion to what is received.
