“He cannot be what he would like to be; and what he considers himself to be, he is not that. “Man — how mighty it sounds! The very name ‘man’ means ‘the acme of Creation’; but . . . how does his title fit contemporary man? “At the same time, man should indeed be the acme of Creation, since he is formed with and has in himself all the possibilities for acquiring all the data exactly similar 399 to the data in the ACTUALIZEIR OF EVERYTHING EXISTING in the Whole of the Universe.” To possess the right to the name of “man,” one must be one. And to be such, one must first of all, with an indefatigable persistence and an unquenchable impulse of desire, issuing from all the separate independent parts constituting one’s entire common presence, that is to say, with a desire issuing simultaneously from thought, feeling, and organic instinct, work on an all‑round knowledge of oneself — at the same time struggling unceasingly with one’s subjective weaknesses — and then afterwards, taking one’s stand upon the results thus obtained by one’s consciousness alone, concerning the defects in one’s established subjectivity as well as the elucidated means for the possibility of combatting them, strive for their eradication without mercy towards oneself. Speaking frankly, and wholly without partiality, contemporary man as we know him is nothing more nor less than merely a clockwork mechanism, though of a very complex construction. About his mechanicality, a man must without fail think deeply from every aspect and with an entire absence of partiality and well understand it, in order fully to appreciate what significance that mechanicality and all its involved consequences and results may have both for his own further life as well as for the justification of the sense and aim of his arising and existence. For one who desires to study human mechanicality in general and to make it clear to himself, the very best object of study is he himself with his own mechanicality; and to study this practically and to understand it sensibly, with all one’s being, and not “psychopathically,” that is, with only one part of one’s entire presence, is possible only as the result of correctly conducted self-observation 400 And as regards this possibility of correctly conducting self‑observation and conducting it without the risk of incurring the maleficent consequences which have more once been observed from people’s attempts to do this without proper knowledge, it is necessary that the warning must be given — in order to avoid the possibility of excessive zeal — that our experience, based on the vast exact information we have, has shown that this is not so simple a thing as at first glance it may appear. This is why we make the study of the mechanicality of contemporary man the groundwork of a correctly conducted self-observation. Before beginning to study this mechanicality and all the principles for a correctly conducted self‑observation, a man in the first place must decide, once and forever, that he will be sincere with himself unconditionally, will shut his eyes to nothing, shun no results wherever they may lead him, be afraid of no inferences, and be limited by no previous, self‑imposed limits; and secondly, in order that the elucidation of these principles may be properly perceived and transubstantiated in the followers of this new teaching, it is necessary to establish a corresponding form of “language,” since we find the established form of language quite unsuitable for such elucidations. As regards the first condition, it is necessary now at the very outset to give warning that a man unaccustomed think and act along lines corresponding to the principles of self‑observation must have great courage to accept sincerely the inferences obtained and not to lose heart; and submitting to them, to continue those principles further with the crescendo of persistence, obligatorily requisite for this. These inferences may, as is said, “upset” all the convictions and beliefs previously deep‑rooted in a man, as well as also the whole order of his ordinary mentaion; 401 and, in that event, he might be robbed, perhaps forever of all the pleasant as is said “values dear to his heart,’ which have hitherto made up his calm and serene life. Thanks to correctly conducted self‑observation, a man will from the first days clearly grasp and indubitably establish his complete powerlessness and helplessness in the face of literally everything around him. With the whole of his being he will be convinced that everything governs him, everything directs him. He neither governs nor directs anything at all. He is attracted and repelled not only by everything animate which has in itself the capacity to influence the arising of some or other association in him, but even by entirely inert and inanimate things. Without any self‑imagination or self‑calming‑impulses which have become inseparable from contemporary men — he will cognize that his whole life is nothing but a blind reacting to the said attractions and repulsions. He will clearly see how his what are called world‑outlooks, views, character, taste, and so on are molded — in short, how his individuality was formed and under what influences its details are liable to change. And as regards the second indispensable condition, that is, the establishment of a correct language; this is necessary because our still recently established language which has procured, so to say, “rights‑of‑citizenship,” and in which we speak, convey our knowledge and notions to others, and write books, has in our opinion already become such as to be now quite worthless for any more or less exact exchange of opinions. The words of which our contemporary language consists, convey, owing to the arbitrary thought people put into them, indefinite and relative notions, and are therefore perceived by average people “elastically.” In obtaining just this abnormality in the life of man 402 a part was played in our opinion, by always that same established abnormal system of education of the rising generation. And it played a part because, based, as we have already said, chiefly on compelling the young to “learn by rote” as many words as possible differentiated one from the other only by the impression received from their consonance and not by the real pith of the meaning put into them, this system of education has resulted in the gradual loss in people of the capacity to ponder and reflect upon what they are talking about and upon what is being said them. As a result of the loss of this capacity and in view, at the same time, of the necessity to convey thoughts more less exactly to others, they are obliged, in spite of the endless number of words already existing in all contemporary languages, either to borrow from other languages or to invent always more and more words; which has finally brought it about that when a contemporary man wishes to express an idea for which he knows many apparently suitable words and expresses this idea in a word which seems, according to his mental reflection, to be fitting, he still instinctively feels uncertain whether his choice is correct, and unconsciously gives this word his own subjective meaning. Owing on the one hand to this already automatized usage, and on the other hand to the gradual disappearance of the capacity to concentrate his active attention for any length of time, the average man on uttering or hearing any word, involuntarily emphasizes and dwells upon this or that aspect of the notion conveyed by the word, invariably concentrating the whole meaning of the word upon one feature of the notion indicated by it; that is to say, the word signifies for him not all the implications of the given idea, but merely the first chance significance de‑ 403 pendent upon the ideas formed in the link of automatic associations flowing in him. Hence every time that in the course of conversation, the contemporary man hears or speaks one and the same word, he gives it another meaning, at times quite contradictory to the sense conveyed by the given word. For any man who has become aware of this to some degree, and has learned more or less how to observe, this “tragicomic feast of sound” is particularly sharply constated and made evident when others join the conversation of two contemporary people. Each of them puts his own subjective sense into all the words that have become gravity‑center words in the said so to say “symphony of words without content,” and to the ear of this impartial observer it is all perceived only as what is called in the ancient Sinokooloopianian tales of The Thousand and One Nights, “cacophonousfantastic‑nonsence.” Conversing in this fashion, contemporary people nevertheless imagine they understand one another and are certain that they are conveying their thoughts to each other. We, on the other hand, relying upon a mass of indisputable data confirmed by psycho‑physico‑chemical experiments, categorically affirm that as long as contemporary people remain as they are, that is to say “average people,” they will never, whatever they may be talking about among themselves, and particularly if the subject be abstract, understand the same notions by the same words nor will they ever actually comprehend one another. This is why in the contemporary average man, every inner experience and even every painful experience which engenders mentation and which has obtained logical results which might in other circumstances be very beneficent to those round about, is not manifested outwardly 404 but is only transformed into so to say an “enslaving factor” for him himself. Thanks to this, even the isolation of the inner life of each individual man is increased, and as a consequence what is called the "“mutual instruction” so necessary to people’s collective existence is always more and more destroyed. Owing to the loss of the capacity to ponder and reflect, whenever the contemporary average man hears or employs in conversation any word with which he is familiar only by its consonance, he does not pause to think, nor does there even arise in him any question as to what exactly is meant by this word, he having already decided, once and for all, both that he knows it and that others know it too. A question, perhaps, does sometimes arise in him when he hears an entirely unfamiliar word the first time; but in this case he is content merely to substitute for the unfamiliar word another suitable word of familiar consonance and then to imagine that he has understood it. To bring home what has just been said, an excellent example is provided by the word so often used by every contemporary man — “world.” If people knew how to grasp for themselves what passes in their thoughts when they hear or use the word ‘world,” then most of them would have to admit — if of course they intended to be sincere — that the word carries no exact notion whatever for them. Catching by ear simply the accustomed consonance, the meaning of which they assume that they know, it is as if they say to themselves “Ah, world, I know what this is,” and serenely go on thinking. Should one deliberately arrest their attention on this word and know how to probe them to find just what they understand by it, they will at first be plainly as is said 405 “embarrassed,” but quickly pulling themselves together, that is to say, quickly deceiving themselves, and recalling the first definition of the word that comes to mind, they will then offer it as their own, although, in fact, they had not thought of it before. If one has the requisite power and could compel a group of contemporary people, even from among these who have received so to say “a good education,” to state exactly how they each understand the word “world,” they would all so “beat about the bush” that involuntarily one would recall even castor oil with a certain tenderness. For instance, one of them who among other things had read up a few books on astronomy, would say that, the “world” is an enormous number of suns surrounded by planets situated at colossal distances from each other and together forming what we call the “Milky Way”; beyond which, at immeasurable distances and beyond the limits of spaces accessible to our investigation, are presumably other constellations and other worlds. Another, interested in contemporary physics, would speak of the world as a systematic evolution of matter, beginning with the atom and winding up with the very largest aggregates such as planets and suns; perhaps he would refer to the theory of the similitude of the world of atoms and electrons and the world of suns and planets, and so on in the same strain. One who, for some reason or other, had made a hobby of philosophy and read all the mishmash on that subject, would say that the world is only the product of our subjective picturings and imaginings, and that our Earth, for example, with its mountains and seas, its vegetable and animal kingdoms, is a world of appearances, an illusory world. A man acquainted with the latest theories of poly-dimensional space would say that the world is usually 406 looked upon as an infinite three‑dimensional sphere, but that in reality a three‑dimensional world as such cannot exist and is only an imagined cross section of another four‑dimensional world out of which comes and into which goes everything proceeding around us. A man whose world view is founded on the dogmas of religion would say that the world is everything existing, visible and invisible, created by God and depending on His Will. Our life in the visible world is brief, but in the invisible world, where a man receives reward or punishment for all his acts during his sojourn in the visible world, life is eternal. One bitten with spiritualism would say that, side by side with the visible world, there exists also another, a world of the “Beyond,” and that communication has already been established with the beings populating this world of the “Beyond.” A fanatic of theosophy would go still further and say that seven worlds exist interpenetrating each other and composed of more and more rarefied matter, and so on. In short, not a single contemporary man would be able to offer a single definite notion, exact for all acceptances, of the real meaning of the word “world.” The whole psychic inner life of the average man is nothing but an “automatized contact” of two or three series of associations previously perceived by him of impressions fixed under the action of some impulse then arisen in him in all the three heterogeneous localizations or “brains” contained in him. When the associations begin to act anew, that is to say, when the repetition of corresponding impressions appears, they begin to constate, under the influence of some inner or outer accidental shock, that in another localization, the homogeneous impressions evoked by them begin to be repeated. All the particularities of the world view of the ordinary 407 man and the characteristic features of his individuality ensue, and depend on the sequence of the impulse proceeding in him at the moment of the perception of new impressions and also on the automatism established for the arising of the process of the repetition of those impressions. And it is this that explains the incongruity, always observed even by the average man during his passive state, in the several associations having nothing in common, which simultaneously flow within him. The said impressions in the common presence of a man are perceived owing to the three, as it were, apparatuses in him — as there are apparatuses in general in the presences of all animals — acting as perceivers for all the seven what are called “planetary‑gravity‑ center‑vibrations.” The structure of these perceptive apparatuses is the same in all the parts of the mechanism. They consist in adaptations recalling clean wax phonograph disks; on these disks, or, as they might otherwise be called, “reels,” all the impressions received begin to be recorded from the first days after the appearance of a man in the world, and even before, during the period of his formation in his mother’s womb. And the separate apparatuses constituting this general mechanism possess also a certain automatically acting adaptation, owing to which newly arriving impressions, in addition to being recorded alongside those previously perceived and similar to them, are also recorded alongside those impressions perceived simultaneously with these latter. Thus every impression experienced is inscribed in several places and on several reels, and there, on these reels, it is preserved unchanged. These impressed perceptions have such a property that 408 from contact with homogeneous vibrations of the same quality, they, so to say, “rouse themselves,” and there is then repeated in them an action similar to the action which evoked their first arising. And it is this repetition of previously perceived impressions engendering what is called association, and the parts of this repetition which enter the field of a man’s attention, that together condition what is termed “memory.” The memory of the average man, in comparison with the memory of a man harmoniously perfected, is a very very imperfect adaptation for his utilization, during his responsible life, of his previously perceived store of impressions. With the aid of memory, the average man from among impressions previously perceived, can make use of and, so to say, keep track of, only a very small part of his whole store of impressions, whereas the memory proper to the real man keeps track of all his impressions without exception, whenever they may have been perceived. Many experiments have been made, and it has been established with indubitable exactitude, that every man in definite states, as for example, in the state of a certain stage of hypnotism, can remember to the most minute particular everything that has ever happened to him; he can remember all the details of the surroundings and the faces and voices of the people around him, even those of the first days of his life, when he was still, according to people’s notions, an unconscious being. When a man is in one of these states, it is possible, artificially, to make even the reels hidden in the most obscure corners of the mechanism start working; but it often happens that these reels begin to unwind of themselves under the influence of some overt or hidden shock evoked by some experiencing, whereupon there suddenly 405 rise up before the man long‑forgotten scenes, picturings, faces, and so on.
Posted on: Sat, 28 Sep 2013 06:41:47 +0000
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