But first of all, as I said before, it is necessary to understand what self-remembering is, why it is better to self-remember, what effect it will produce, and so on. It needs thinking about. Besides, in trying to selfremember it is necessary to keep the connection with all the other ideas of the system. If one takes one thing and omits another thing—for instance, if one seriously works on self-remembering without knowing about the idea of the division of 'I's, so that one takes oneself as one (as a unity) from the beginning—then self-remembering will give wrong results and may even make development impossible. There are schools, for instance, or systems which, although they do not formulate it in this way, are actually based on false personality and on struggle against conscience. Such work must certainly produce wrong results. At first it will create a certain kind of strength, but it will make the development of higher consciousness an impossibility. False personality either destroys or distorts memory. Self-remembering is a thing that must be based on right function. At the same time as working on it you must work on the weakening of false personality. Several lines of work are suggested and explained from the beginning, and all must go together. You cannot just do one thing and not another. All are necessary for creating this right combination, but first must come the understanding of the struggle with false personality. Suppose one tries to remember oneself and does not wish to make efforts against false personality. Then all its features will come into play, saying, 'I dislike these people', 'I do not want this', 'I do not want that', and so on. Then it will not be work but quite the opposite. As I said, if one tries to work in this wrong way it may make one stronger than one was before, but in such a case the stronger one becomes, the less is the possibility of development. Fixing before development—that is the danger

• the fourth way
• self-remembering
• false personality
• consciousness
• conscious development
• memory
• unity
• time
• work
• will
• self
• conscience
• danger
• strength
• personality
• understanding
• ideas
• struggle
• schools
• other

All our life, all our habitual ways of thinking, have only one aim—to avoid shocks, unpleasant feelings, unpleasant realizations about ourselves. And this is the chief thing that keeps us asleep, because in order to awake we must not be afraid; we must be brave enough to see the contradictions. Even quite apart from the question of conscience, it is important to find in yourself that, when you have strong emotions (it does not refer to small emotions), when you feel strongly about some particular thing, you may be practically certain that at another moment you will have a different emotion about the same thing. If you cannot see it in yourself, see it in other people. When you realize the existence of these contradictory emotions, it will help you to understand your mechanicalness and your lack of understanding of yourself—lack of self-knowledge. So long as we feel different emotions at different times, what are we like? One moment we trust, another moment we are suspicious; one moment we like, another moment we dislike. So the aim is to bring those different emotions together, otherwise we will never know ourselves. If we always feel only one emotion at a time and do not remember other emotions, we are identified with it. When we have another emotion we forget the first; when we have a third, we forget the first and the second. Very early in life, by imitation and in different other ways, we learn to live in a kind of imaginary state to save ourselves from unpleasantness, so people develop in themselves this capacity to see only one emotion at a time. Remember to work. Remember yourself in one mood, then remember yourself in another mood. Try to connect them together and you will see

• the fourth way
• buffers
• aim
• thought
• habit
• sleep
• awakening
• fear
• contradictions
• conscience
• emotion
• mechanicalness
• self-awareness
• self-observation
• identification
• imagination
• life
• time
• work
• will
• self
• knowledge
• existence
• understanding
• trust
• emotions
• shocks
• other

Whereas the collective intellect developed explosively, the collective conscience (emotional equivalent of the collective intellect) remained on a rudimentary level. This explains why man of the twentieth century, despite technological achievements of considerable magnitude, has been guilty of collective atrocities which might have brought a blush to the hairy features of Australopithecus. It explains the extraordinary casualness with which contemporary man discusses, among the cocktails and canapes of this afternoon jabberfests, the prospect of total thermonuclear war and its attendant horrors. They will roast us, we will roast them. Abombs, Hbomb, Nbombs,..all discussed without a blush, without a grimace, without shame or any impulse to resign from the human race as if roasting the entire population of a large city were the most natural thing in the world. A curious phenomenon, demonstrating once again that the expansion of man's cerebral cortex took place without any corresponding development in the mid-brain, a primordial hell's kitchen in which are brewed the crude patterns of emotional behavior that, though they may once have aided man's survival, now merely serve to imperil his very existence.

• humanity
• evolution
• consciousness
• war
• death
• society
• will
• survival
• existence
• conscience
• behavior
• collective
• hell
• shame
• patterns

It is more like a hall out of which doors open into several rooms. If I can bring anyone into that hall I shall have done what I attempted. But it is in the rooms, not in the hall, that there are fires and chairs and meals. The hall is a place to wait in, a place from which to try the various doors, not a place to live in. For that purpose the worst of the rooms (whichever that may be) is, I think, preferable. It is true that some people may find they have to wait in the hall for a considerable time, while others feel certain almost at once which door they must knock at. I do not know why there is this difference, but I am sure God keeps no one waiting unless He sees that it is good for him to wait. When you do get into your room you will find that the long wait has done you some kind of good which you would not have had otherwise. But you must regard it as waiting, not as camping. You must keep on praying for light: and, of course, even in the hall, you must begin trying to obey the rules which are common to the whole house. And above all you must be asking which door is the true one; not which pleases you best by its paint and panelling. In plain language, the question should never be: 'Do I like that kind of service?' but 'Are these doctrines true: Is holiness here? Does my conscience move me towards this? Is my reluctance to knock at this door due to my pride, or my mere taste, or my personal dislike of this particular door-keeper?'\n\n 'When you have reached your own room, be kind to those who have chosen different doors and to those who are still in the hall. If they are wrong they need your prayers all the more; and if they are your enemies, then you are under orders to pray for them. That is one of the rules common to the whole house.

• dogma
• god
• religion
• spirituality
• understanding
• unity
• time
• will
• language
• light
• conscience
• pride
• rules

You run ahead? Are you doing it as a shepherd? Or as an exception? A third case would be the fugitive. First question of conscience.\r\n \r\nAre you genuine? Or merely an actor? A representative? Or that which is represented? In the end, perhaps you are merely a copy of an actor. Second question of conscience.\r\n \r\nAre you one who looks on? Or one who lends a hand? Or one who looks away and walks off? Third question of conscience.\r\n \r\nDo you want to walk along? Or walk ahead? Or walk by yourself? One must know what one wants and that one wants. Fourth question of conscience.

• conscience
• will
• aim
• self-observation

Gentlemen of the jury, lo, we shall condemn him, and he will say to himself: 'These men did nothing for my fortunes, for my upbringing, my education, in order make me better, to make me a man.  These men did not feed me and did not give me a drink, nor did they visit me as I lay naked in prison, and now they have sent me into penal servitude.  I am quits with them, I owe them nothing now and shall owe no one anything until the end of the ages.  They are wicked, and I shall be wicked.  They are cruel, and I shall be cruel.'  That is what he will say, gentlemen of the jury!  And I swear: with your accusation you will only relieve him, relieve his conscience, he will continue to curse the blood he has spilt, and will have no remorse for it.  At the same time, you will bring to ruin the man still possible within him, for he will remain wicked and blind all the rest of his days.  But do you wish to punish him terribly, ferociously, with the most dreadful punishment that one may imagine, but with the purpose of saving and regenerating his soul forever?  If so, then crush him with your mercy!  You will see, you will hear his soul shudder, show horror.  'Am I to endure this mercy, am I to receive all this love, am I worthy of it?' - that is what he will exclaim!  There are souls that in their limitation accuse the entire world, but crush this soul with mercy, show it love, and it will curse its handiwork, for within it there are so many good beginnings.  And then what he will say is not: 'I am quits with them,' but 'I am guilty before all men and am the most unworthy of all men.  Men are better than I, for they wished not to destroy me but to save me!

• justice
• mercy
• soul
• love
• education
• time
• will
• conscience
• prison
• limitation