"The struggle against the 'false I,' against one's chief feature or chief fault, is the
most important part of the work, and it must proceed in deeds, not in words. For this
purpose the teacher gives each man definite tasks which require, in order to carry them
out, the conquest of his chief feature. When a man carries out these tasks he struggles
with himself, works on himself. If he avoids the tasks, tries not to carry them out, it
means that either he does not want to or that he cannot work.
"As a rule only very easy tasks are given at the beginning which the teacher does
not even call tasks, and he does not say much about them but gives them in the form of
hints. If he sees that he is understood and that the tasks are carried out he passes on to
more and more difficult ones.
"More difficult tasks, although they are only subjectively difficult, are called
'barriers.' The peculiarity of barriers consists in the fact that, having surmounted a
serious barrier, a man can no longer return to ordinary sleep, to ordinary life. And if,
having passed the first barrier, he feels afraid of those that follow and does not go on,
he stops so to speak between two barriers and is unable to move either backwards or
forwards. This is the worst thing that can happen to a man. Therefore the teacher is
usually very careful in the choice of tasks and barriers, in other words, he takes the
risk of giving definite tasks requiring the conquest of inner barriers only to those
people who have already shown themselves sufficiently strong on small barriers.
"It often happens that, having stopped before some barrier, usually the smallest and
the most simple, people turn against the work, against the teacher, and against other
members of the group, and accuse them of the very thing that is becoming revealed to
them in themselves.
"Sometimes they repent later and blame themselves, then they again blame others,
then they repent once more, and so on. But there is nothing that shows up a man better
than his attitude towards the work and the teacher after he has left it. Sometimes such
tests are arranged intentionally. A man is placed in such a position that he is obliged to
leave and he is fully justified in having a grievance either against the teacher or against
some other person. And then he is watched to see how he will behave. A decent man
will behave decently even if he thinks that he has been
treated unjustly or wrongly. But many people in such circumstances show a side of
their nature which otherwise they would never show. And at times it is a necessary
means for exposing a man's nature. So long as you are good to a man he is good to
you. But what will he be like if you scratch him a little?
"But this is not the chief thing; the chief thing is his own personal attitude, his own
valuation of the ideas which he receives or has received, and his keeping or losing this
valuation. A man may think for a long time and quite sincerely that he wants to work
and even make great efforts, and then he may throw up everything and even definitely
go against the work; justify himself, invent various fabrications, deliberately ascribe a
wrong meaning to what he has heard, and so on."
"What happens to them for this?" asked one of the audience.
"Nothing—what could happen to them?" said G. "They are their own punishment.
And what punishment could be worse?
"It is impossible to describe in full the way work in a group is conducted," continued
G. "One must go through it. All that has been said up to now are only hints, the true
meaning of which will only be revealed to those who go on with the work and learn
from experience what 'barriers' mean and what difficulties they represent.
"Speaking in general the most difficult barrier is the conquest of lying. A man lies so
much and so constantly both to himself and to others that he ceases to notice it.
Nevertheless lying must be conquered. And the first effort required of a man is to
conquer lying in relation to the teacher. A man must either decide at once to tell him
nothing but the truth, or at once give up the whole thing.
"You must realize that the teacher takes a very difficult task upon himself, the
cleaning and the repair of human machines. Of course he accepts only those machines
that are within his power to mend. If something essential is broken or put out of order
in the machine, then he refuses to take it. But even such machines, which by their
nature could still be cleaned, become quite hopeless if they begin to tell lies. A lie to
the teacher, even the most insignificant, concealment of any kind such as the
concealment of something another has asked to be kept secret, or of something the man
himself has said to another, at once puts an end to the work of that man, especially if
he has previously made any efforts.
"Here is something you must bear in mind. Every effort a man makes increases the
demands made upon him. So long as a man has not made any serious efforts the
demands made upon him are very small, but his efforts immediately increase the
demands made upon him. And the greater the efforts that are made, the greater the new
demands.
"At this stage people very often make a mistake that is constantly made. They think
that the efforts they have previously made, their former merits, so to speak, give them
some kind of rights or advantages, diminish the
demands to be made upon them, and constitute as it were an excuse should they not
work or should they afterwards do something wrong. This, of course, is most
profoundly false. Nothing that a man did yesterday excuses him today. Quite the
reverse, if a man did nothing yesterday, no demands are made upon him today; if he
did anything yesterday, it means that he must do more today. This certainly does not
mean that it is better to do nothing. Whoever does nothing receives nothing.
"As I have said already, one of the first demands is sincerity. But there are different
kinds of sincerity. There is clever sincerity and there is stupid sincerity, just as there is
clever insincerity and stupid insincerity. Both stupid sincerity and stupid insincerity
are equally mechanical. But if a man wishes to learn to be cleverly sincere, he must be
sincere first of all with his teacher and with people who are senior to him in the work.
This will be 'clever sincerity.' But here it is necessary to note that sincerity must not
become 'lack of considering.' Lack of considering in relation to the teacher or in
relation to those whom the teacher has appointed, as I have said already, destroys all
possibility of any work. If he wishes to learn to be cleverly insincere he must be
insincere about the work and he must learn to be silent when he ought to be silent with
people outside it, who can neither understand nor appreciate it. But sincerity in the
group is an absolute demand, because, if a man continues to lie in the group in the
same way as he lies to himself and to others in life, he will never learn to distinguish
the truth from a lie.
"The second barrier is very often the conquest of fear. A man usually has many
unnecessary, imaginary fears. Lies and fears—this is the atmosphere in which an
ordinary man lives. Just as the conquest of lying is individual, so also is the conquest
of fear. Every man has fears of his own which are peculiar to him alone. These fears
must first be found and then destroyed. The fears of which I speak are usually
connected with the lies among which a man lives. You must realize that they have
nothing in common with the fear of spiders or of mice or of a dark room, or with
unaccountable nervous fears.
"The struggle against lying in oneself and the struggle against fears is the first
positive work which a man begins to do.
"One must realize in general that positive efforts and even sacrifices in the work do
not justify or excuse mistakes which may follow. On the contrary, things that could be
forgiven in a man who has made no efforts and who has sacrificed nothing will not be
forgiven in another who has already made great sacrifices.
"This seems to be unjust, but one must understand the law. There is, as it were, a
separate account kept for every man. His efforts and sacrifices are written down on
one side of the book and his mistakes and misdeeds on the other side. What is written
down on the positive side can never atone for what is written down on the negative
side. What is recorded on the negative side can only be wiped out by the truth, that
is to say, by an instant and complete confession to himself and to others and above all
to the teacher. If a man sees his fault but continues to justify himself, a small offense
may destroy the result of whole years of work and effort. In the work, therefore, it is
often better to admit one's guilt even when one is not guilty. But this again is a
delicate matter and it must not be exaggerated. Otherwise the result will again be
lying, and lying prompted by fear."
