21

is probable, had been reached and stirred by the very brokenness of my outward life. It had been watered, I am sure, by Walt Whitman's largeness. It had been given definite encouragement, and sunlight perhaps, by the idea, implicit in Whitman's life and explicit in certain of the books written about him, that a larger being and a higher consciousness are possible to men. The purpose of human life, said this idea, is human development. The meaning of life and the tending of evolution are to be found in progress towards and the attainment of cosmic consciousness by human individuals.

In my twenty-fifth year some tendril of this inward growing pressed into my consciousness and I was made feel, as well as think of, a larger being and a greater consciousness as a very real and a very vivid possibility. I was made feel, with a sense of urge, that higher attainment is what we are, or should be, living for. This goal fired my imagination and I was urged towards it with strong desire.

After considerable reading along these lines, and pondering, it became clear to me that general experience is not enough if one would go, really go, from here to there. I, goodness knows, had had general experience, enough and to spare. I was still here. No, just to live was not enough. One had to shape his life towards just this goal. One had to experience *in line* with this goal. One had to think and feel and act *for* this, not for something else. In short, one had to live *this way*.

22

Besides, one had to be helped and implemented. If a teacher was necessary to help one learn the rudiments of ordinary living, then surely a teacher was needed to help one learn the elements of extraordinary living. If a master was necessary to help an apprentice learn to shape wood, then surely a master was needed to enable a man shape his life. Thinking and feeling along these lines I began to see the role of great men, that of Christ in particular, in the capacity of teachers of the way towards greater being and consciousness. I began to see the meaning of disciples, discipleship. I felt I wanted, and needed, to become a pupil in this new sense, and find a teacher. But where, where find a teacher? The more I thought of it the more certain I became that such men were somewhere on the earth of the present day, to be sought and found. But where?

Gradually, too, I began to surmise that there were, and had existed from ancient times, particular means by which those who would really go from here to there. These methods, I felt, were not only desirable but absolutely essential. Means were essential to science. Technique was necessary to writing. Means were required for art of all kinds and, for that matter, for all kinds of life. Then surely means were required for the effective transformation of man's being and awareness. What began as a surmise became a certainty. I became, as I later called it, "means-conscious". I

23

became convinced that such means did exist, that they
had been used by many if not all of the men who had
attained to greatness, and that the use of these means
in no small measure accounted for the fact that those
men had been successful in this most creative but most
difficult of all undertakings. It was not up to me to
work these means out for myself. They had already been
worked out. They already existed. Already they were in
use. It was up to me to seek them, to find them, to learn
them, to use them myself upon myself, as others had done
and doubtless were doing at the present time. So I
began looking for these means.

Where to look for a teacher I did not know; but
I had a feeling I might find the means, or at any rate
some clue to them, in books written by men who had
travelled this road. I read every such book I could lay
my hands on. I did not find, but I kept searching.

I searched for means. When I was not seeking means
I was doing my own writing. When I was not doing my own
writing I was seeking means and reading books that,
whether they gave means or not, did certainly make the
goal more definite, more vivid, more desirable.

Conscious means to the goal of Consciousness. Trying
to put down in words my own thoughts and life-experiences.
This was my double dedication. Reading the mystics,
the philosophers and religious writers of America and
Europe, ancient Greece and Egypt and India. Reading the

24

men and women who were articulating themselves, the
regions and the peoples of modern America, whose books
were creating a new literature and, indeed, a new
culture in this land. This was my double dedication.

From this time on there were these two strong
currents in my life, the one moving me towards a life
beyond this life, the other drawing me ever closer
into a creative relationship with the life at hand.
My career, from then on, was to be, in essential terms,
the careers of these two movements.

25

III Unease Continued: The Life and the Work

Surely I had awakened somewhat; just as surely I remained blind to myself. How long, how many shocks, how much effort, how much suffering before a man really awakens to himself?

I had been working up, or thought I had. Suddenly I was made realize I had also been working down. When it was too late to save myself, I realized I had been over-working, living too much by myself, too much alone, without change or rest. The bottom dropped out. I was sapped, exhausted, as if burnt out, and in a pocket, a tight pocket.

Had there been only myself to consider I doubtless would have contrived some way of escape. I had done so before, but this was different. Now there were others, people very close to me for whom I was responsible, and I could not leave them. I was their cook, housekeeper, nurse, and more. I was their grandson in whom they had hope, and who puzzled them. No money was to be had to pay for a temporary substitute. No other means were available for making new arrangements. So far as I could see there wasn't a single chance of my getting free of the situation even for a day. Sapped within, I was hemmed in from without, and what had been a happy responsibility became a cause of further drain.

For what seemed an endless time I dragged through wretched days and wretched nights without prospect of

26

deliverance unless the reluctant sap again began to
flow. I remember looking up at the stars at night,
momentarily escaping into the boundless universe only
to fall back into the prison of myself. I came to know
I was in the prison of myself. This was my first full
realization of self-IMPRISONMENT imprisonment. Myself came
to have a new, and a far from pleasant, meaning. FOR MYSELF
Imprisonment came to have new meaning. And so did
be
freedom, and I longed to be free from the very myself whom
I had formerly prized, pampered, and set such great
store by. Myself - an obsession, a cell, a trap. Myself-
a burning bush from which no light came, and from whose
ashes there would be no resurrection, none whatsoever
unless I could somehow find the straight and narrow
way out.

I remember looking at people by day, the everyday
people of the streets and shops, with a feeling akin
to envy. How lucky they were. How fortunate to be able
to go on day in day out, living their lives, doing their
work, keeping themselves and the world going, maintain-
ing a level existence, not suffering acute swings from
high to low, not suffering the strains of the big climb,
not suffering the end of energy. I came to minimize
the defects and the dullness of their lives. I came to
magnify their routine virtues, and to admire them, and
to wish more than once that I was one of them. Yet
I never forgot, something in me would not let me
forget, that the solution was to be found, for myself

27

and for them as well, not by slipping back but by going on and up.

Just when I felt most sure I would stay drained and locked in for the rest of my life, a surprise came. It came from a man as remote from me as any man could be. Out of the blue, one day he presented himself, having been directed to me by a friend. Had he appeared on the scene when I was in an up state, I'd not have been interested. As it was, I accepted his offer as a man takes hold of a hand that will lift him from a pit. I accepted his offer, arranged for the care of my grandparents during my absence, walked out of my prison and went to a part of the country new me. There things happened.

In my mobile days, during the time I travelled here and there over America, I had seen some lovely parts of this earth. No plot of ground had been like this, or so moved me. Here the earth seemed part of the people, and the people part of the earth, and they worked upon each other and upon me, so that my earth-life was liberated from the pot of myself. The roots of my earth-life went down and found hold in this red soil, and the soil became a shining ground.

I had seen and met with people of all kinds. I had never before met with a folk. I had never before lived in the midst of a people gathered together by a group-spirit. Here they were. They worked and lived

28

close to the earth, close to each other. They worked and sang as part of living. They worked and loved and hated and got into trouble and felt a great weight on them. Here they were, and they were about to lose what they had, lose their group-spirit, lose their singing, give way to a different kind of life, a life made up of gramaphones and player-pianos, book-learning, machines, commerce, city living, the trend that was modernizing the entire world and suspending everyone midway between the folk-world and the world of developed world-citizens. And what I saw and felt and shared entered me, so that my people-life was uncased from the pot of myself. The roots of my people-life went out to these folk, and found purchase in them, and the people became people of beauty and sorrow.

As soon as I left that place I began writing. I wrote and wrote as though fired. Writing, now, was my single dedication. Both my lives, all my life, seemed to be in this, in this creative KAIKIAU relationship with the life at hand. I felt invisibly connected and leagued with all those who were expressing the regions and the peoples of America. Conscious means to the goal of Consciousness were forgotten.

Had I myself been more pure, more whole, more free, and more a master of my art, something great/moving might have been written. Certainly the moving was in me. There was a long accumulating moving, as well as that caused

29

by my recent experiences, a moving dating back to that
last year in high school, perhaps farther. Ah my, could
I have but put it all into words. As it was - well,
some fraction of what I felt found its way onto my
pages, and, here and there, an essence.

My words became a book. At long last I had written
a book, parts of which at least I felt measured up. A
book! I had actually finished something. The fellow who
had seldom carried any one specific project through
to a conclusion had done it at last.

Through Waldo Frank this book of mine found a
publisher. I was then in my twenty-seventh year. Rather
tardily, but surely so it seemed, I had "arrived".

To "arrive" meant a great deal in those days of
the early 20's. If you were doing anything worthwhile in
any of the arts, and in the modern idiom, to arrive
meant that you were welcomed, officially as it were,
into the most remarkable up-swing yet to occur in our
national culture. It meant that you found yourself not
only with name and place in a local movement or "school"
but with function in a regenerative life which transcended
national boundaries and quickened people in every country
of the post-war world. You were part of a living world
of great promise. And in this world, if you so felt it,
there was not only art but something of religion. A
number of us, including Gorham Munson and Hart Crane,
came to sense that we were as men with missions pioneer-

30

ing up "the new slope of consciousness".

Meanwhile my personal life had become involved in
a situation of unexpected developments and great
tension. I was being stretched powerfully for and against.
I was being ploughed up. I was being put through a
drama of development. One day of a sudden I entered
into an experience that began as a purgation, as an
astonishing release, and culminated in my birth into
another life.

The barriers that stood between myself and myself
were broken down. The walls that stood between myself
and others were put aside. My flood-gates were thrown
open by inward surging and out poured the accumulated
suffering of my entire life. Out came the hard knots
of my experience, as though they had been reached by
fire, and melted down, and purified. In great upheavals
out came my hitherto unsuspected lumps of pain and
bitterness and frustration, as though my innermost
pockets were being opened and the contents washed out; and
all became sweet before it left me, so that what I gave
back to the world was not hurt but tenderness, not hate
but love. And I discovered the strength of tenderness,
and a tender strength. A weight rolled from me, and I
was freed, and nobody hurt. I was washed clean. I came
to know the meaning of purity. Thereafter I breathed
freely.

How wonderful it was! I breathed freely. I was

31

breathing freely for the first time in my remembered
life. I drew the air deep into my lungs, deep into my
very being. The air, though it was the air of New York,
was fragrant like the air of the countryside in spring-
time. My body was light, bouyant, as if etherialized
to flow and dance in a subtle medium. And I came to
feel that there is a mystery in breathing, as though
breath were life itself, as though all we were and could
come to be depended essentially not upon food, not upon
what we thought or did, but upon the way we breathed.

And after the dross was swept away, and even while
I passed through purgatory, I was moved to an utter
surrender of myself. And as I did surrender I was made
realize that never before in this life had I altogether
relinquished my final hold upon my falsely precious
self. Even when I had most loved, something had been
held back. Even when most dedicated, there had been
some reservation, a basic unwillingness to put all of
myself into heart and soul into it, a basic unyieldingness,
a hidden clinging to my own will, a virulent death-
grip upon my person as a thing preciousty set apart
from other people and separated from Great Life.

Now that grip was broken. Without a vestige of
clinging, with no reservation whatsoever, I surrendered.
I was surrendered in rapture to something vastly greater
than I. I gave. I gave with abandon the flow of myself,
a flow that swept my surface will aside and took orders
only from a mysterious inner regulator. What I gave was

32

good. And even as I gave I was given to myself. Outer
man and inner man, conscious and subconscious, were
merged. My very being, my soul itself, long buried under
the pretender, came to me as I gave myself. My soul was
ressurected and we were joined. There was holy union.
And I, united in myself, found myself thereby joined to
people and the whole of life, and I lived in life, in
love. And I was made realize that separateness is unholy,
not real, false, not life, not man, not woman, not
beauty, not love, not reverence, not sacrifice, not
being, not human, but a tragic mistake that men perpet-
uate because they do not know it is a mistake and do
not realize they can be together and whole.

In my soul I found my life. There I discovered what
I had sought elsewhere, without finding. In their souls
I found their life. And there we met. My life and their
their life became our life. Life was revealed as One.

There were my roots. Again I became joined with
the roots of my earth-life. These roots, uncased, again
went down, now not into a particular plot of ground
alone, but into the broad earth itself, so that even
the covered soil of New York became shining ground.
Again I became joined with the roots of my people-life,
and these roots mingled with the life of people of
the world of every kind, and I discovered that of God
in every man, something to be loved in the people of
the streets, something to be respected in the people of

33

the subways, a beauty, a sorrow, and a nearness in all.

There I also became joined with newly found roots
that went deep back and straight up, extending backward
through all past time, extending forward through the
future, and were forever as Now. These, I surmised,
were the roots of my immortal life and being. In them
I seemed to come to new birth, and as I grew up in
this new birth I entered the world I had aspired to.
No longer was I looking at this world as from the out-
side. No longer was I trying to approach it by means of
the written records of those who dwelt there. I was
admitted. I was in. All I had formerly thought and felt
about a larger being and a higher consciousness became
for me a living reality of actual experience. And when
I read Plato again, as I did, and Dante, and Spinoza
and the Bible, I felt inside contact, inside compre-
hension, inside meeting and living together as of spirit
with spirit. Not that I was or thought myself to be
high in this world, but that I was in it, at whatever
level. I breathed the air of this world. I was in
constant contact with its substance. Its realities were
real for me. Therein I centered; and, when I thought of
it, it seemed incredible that I had ever been out of
this world, in exile.

Though I did not so understand it, though I did
not then have these terms, the fact would seem to be
that I was in the middle flow where the currents of the
First and Second Rivers meet and mingle. Indeed it would

34

seem that I was as close to the Second River as one can
get without actually entering it.

I did not enter a different order of consciousness;
but surely this given consciousness was transformed
and enlarged by unimpeded contributions from the sub-
conscious. I did not wake up out of this waking state;
but surely the waking state was made wonderful. I did
not pass over the bridge into another life and being;
but surely this usual life was regenerated and made
deep and wide and golden. I experienced an inexpressable
essence.

Nor was I taken into the Power; but in me there
was an astonishing fertility. New feelings, new thoughts,
new sensations, new insights, new discoveries welled
up as from a glowing fountain. I had not believed it
possible to be so entirely creative. All of me was in
it. All circulated, and in concord, and flowed in and
out, and was augmented.

I lived it as it came, in life with people, in
events, in sheer adventure with my friends. I had no wish
to confine this life to any one form of creative activity.
Let it be, I said. Let writing come if writing comes.
As a matter of fact I wrote quite a few notes, as I
called them. Rather, the notes wrote themselves. Here
are three of them:

> Figure of a world within, what flesh,
> what fire! And all around, sun-dew, dancing
> points, luminous and sparkling fill the air.
> They blind my eyes, and suddenly the whole

35

world is haloed. The hard, tough bolts of
past experience, infused, melt and dis-
appear into a stream of life whose upward
surging sings a hymnal to complete
surrender.

have
I had come upon great words. I have
come to know great words in the life. I
have to know that great words are the only
ones that can carry and contain the emotions
of which they are symbols. The great words
live again.

Equation

The cruel cycles:
Death...life...death...life...
Birth...dying...birth...dying...

and

The dual existences:
Living in death,
Dying in life,

s
Survived,
equal$:

TRANSFIGURATION

While the experience lasted I lived in and from
a deep rich being. There was a measure of art in my
human relationships. There was a measure of religion
in my love. Having formerly encountered my limitations,
I was now given some taste of my possibilities. Having
formerly collided with the stops in people, I was now
granted a sense of the limitless potentialities of
human beings.

From it all I came to three clearly defined
attitudes towards life. They were more than attitudes,
they were burning convictions. I came to believe that

36

there should be a deep religious impulse in life and in literature. I came to believe that there should be art in human relationships as well as in poetry, painting, music. I came to know that a true human individual is not born at the time of birth into this world but must be made, must be developed and created by life-experience as he goes along; and I came to believe that the creation of human beings is more important than the creation of books.

These convictions became as it were my creed. Years ago I had cast out an anthropomorphic God. Years ago I had withdrawn from organized religion and disavowed the dogmas. Now I had come by a personal religion arisen out of my experience.

Had the experience lasted long enough, I doubtless would have begun to write from it in a sustained way. Had the experience gone on and on, so that I continued growing in this world, so that I continued living in it and writing from it, I would have been a happy man and certainly would not have asked for anything more or different. And my life, irregular for so many years, would have become creatively regular. But that was not to be for me.

The time came when I fell from this world. I was thrown into reverse. Conscious and subconscious parted company. I fissured, as Gerald Heard would say. I split. I could feel it happening. By far the larger, deeper, most important and real part of myself broke

37

away and submerged. I was left stranded as it were,
sank out of touch, out of contact. My roots back out
of reach. My fullness shrank. My soul left me. Life left
me. Great Life passed away. I was as a leaf broken off
from the tree of its life. I was empty. All too literally
I was left holding the empty bag of myself.

It was unbearable. If some one we love passes from
this life we know loss, we feel loss acutely. I had
known that experience. This was different. When we lose
a person dear to us, suffering melts us and grief comes
in to fill, at least in some measure, our hollowness.
Moreover, we can look forward with moderate assurance
to the coming of some one else who will take the place
of the one who has left. Nothing came in to fill my
emptiness. I knew perfectly well that the only thing
that could fill the place of what had left was that thing
itself.

One thing remained - an unforgettable taste, a
burning memory of how it had been when my soul visited
me. And gradually a yearning welled up, a yearning to
return to Life, to get out of the body of this death
and touch Life again. A question fixed itself in my
mind. How? It could be done, but how? How to do for
myself what had been done for me by circumstance?

Back to me came the certainty that means, particular
means, methods, training, are necessary. Conscious means
to the goal of Consciousness. Conscious means to the

38

goal of Being. These words had meaning for me as never
before. But what good did it do me to remember my
certainty. Having forgotten it for several years I had
done nothing about it. Having done nothing about it I
was as empty-handed as ever. This was no time to begin
a search for means. I was so hollow I had to get going
at once or the least pressure from the outside would
utterly collapse me.

I decided to try to write. True, there was no inner
fullness into which I could dip; true, too, I had no
inward moving to write; but writing was the one way
of voluntary working that I had more or less at my
command, and it just might be that if I repeatedly
cranked myself the motor might start. Besides, I had
already outlined a novel. Now I saw the possibility
of drawing on my recent experience to make something of
that project in terms of a drama of regeneration and
new birth.

I set to work. It was difficult. It was dry. It
was unliving. On I worked. Then I became aware of a
strange disquieting thing happening in me. Shell that
I was, I seemed to be undergoing some further dissolution,
some further break-up. The shell itself seemed to be
failing to pieces right under my eyes. It seemed to me
as though my soul, when it had vistied me, had begun
to destruction of whatever in me was inimical to it.
It seemed to me as though my soul, itself having departed,

39

on
had left in me a dissolent to carry the work of demolition.
Therefore it seemed to me that what was happening was
good, and necessary, and that I should accept it and
not try to have it otherwise. After all, this was what
not
I was living for: to get rid of all that did belong
in me as a human being, to find and to have and never
again to leave all that did belong. It was up to me to
endure whatever was necessary to this end. It was up to me
to accept this way, together with all that pertained to
it, without reservation. It was up to me to renounce,
to have the courage and the faith to renounce, all other
strivings and all props and stays. Let the break-up
continue, I said.

Not easy to say. Less easy to do. I simply couldn't
lie
lay on a bed and let myself deliquesce. I had to keep
up and going. I had to work. I had to make effort. I
had to struggle. And work and struggle I did. Out of
this friction some fire came into me. Progress was
made - and the dissolution continued.

One of my notes, dated Sept.26, '23, shows how I
saw the situation:

Condition on arriving:

Strong, mentally.

Using this strength to achieve a workable
balance between physical fatigue, old forms
that are dissolving, and a basis which is
still peripheral to his deepest self.

Using this strength to stay the dissolution of past discipline.

Making an objective use (literary functioning) of this strength rather than an introspective one.

40

Determined to work through the doctor's prescription to creation.

Generally, using his residue of strength to force a crystal coating over rapidly breaking issues, to adhere at any cost to an old, accustomed, and on the whole satisfying discipline.

## Statement:

Layers, peripheral to your deepest self, are rapidly breaking up and dissolving.

A basis, tangential to your true center, has been shaken. The consequent motion is carrying off the inessential elements of this basis. It will discard them. It is likewise bringing the essential elements in organic contact with your true center.

The active agent of the whole distressing shake-up is your real pure self.

The active agent of the new synthesis will necessarily be your real pure self.

## Direction:

Do not resist this peripheral dissolution. In losing your outer layers you will not lose yourself; you will more readily achieve yourself.

Do not try to force a premature and for the moment satisfying crystallization.

Do not feel it necessary to adhere to the old discipline at any cost.

Do not let the break-up of the old basis distress or drain you.

Rather, consciously aid the process of dissolving. At least be passive to it.

Hold the old forms in close contact with your deepest self. In this way, they will more readily dissolve. In this way too, with the Self as the crystallizing agent, new forms, aligned to it and consonant, will inevitably synthesize. And the new forms will contain their own discipline.

## Condition on leaving:

Mental strength diffused, melting in, commingling with physical, emotional, and spiritual strength. Total of strength clearly greater. And general tone good.

This strength no longer being dissipated in an attempt at a transitory balance, in a need to stay and hold the old discipline.

Literary and inner functioning equally

41

receive an equivalent deep energy.

The % rhythm of a new diet and physical
routine accepted as present needs. Receptive
of medical aids and advice.

And he has a pure faith and knowledge that
new forms will in time crystallize about
the essences of this new. And that, cleansed,
freshened, deepened, he will inevitably
achieve a more powerful, easeful, luminous
creation.

So ends the note on a note of faith. That faith
was well-founded, as later events proved; but if I
expected a new synthesis to occur in the immediate
future I was very much mistaken. A month or so after
that note was written my energies petered out, and I
dropped into a pocket. This was nothing new. I'd been
in pockets before, worse ones than this seemed to be,
and somehow I'd gotten out. Nor was it anything new to
feel imprisoned in myself - except, now, I knew by
experience what it was to be free of myself. Nor was it
new to see my mind pulling one way, my emotions another,
my body still another - except, now, I knew by experience
what it was to be integrated and whole. This pocket
wasn't serious. I'd work out of it, or something would
happen. Something did happen, a strange, unprecedented,
rather terrible thing.

I was rushed upon. Due to a conjunction between the
state I was in and certain taxing issues that had arisen
in my larger life-situation, I was taken hold of, turned
up side down as it were, and shaken; and into my empti-
ness, as into a vacuum, there rushed what seemed to be
a distillation of the worst plagues and problems of my

42

entire life. Faults and vices I had forgotten, dilemmas
I thought I had left behind, difficulties I thought I
had outgrown, all tumbled into me, presenting themselves
to me afresh. There was a compulsory recapitulation. My
past life passed in review, and what I saw was pretty
awful. It was as if my sins were catching up with me,
all of them and all at once, and saying unmistakably,
"You must meet and overcome us before you can go on."
And I was made realize that it is when you think to
enter heaven that the hell of your past rushes up and
bars the way.

I could have said as did the religious men of an
earlier period, "My sins are ordered before me." My
sins massed against me with such weight and force that
for a time I felt I would be overwhelmed and swept out
of the world of humanity and carried down to the lower
region of the demons. Then I was aroused and, not un-
like those religious men, I entered into tussle with
the devil. Not a devil out in the world; a devil starkly
in myself.

A temporary victory was won. Though I by no means
vanquished that devil, though I by no means overcame
my sins, I did surprisingly emerge on a higher level
and there experience a most extraordinary reconciliation.
As suddenly as it had begun the struggle ceased and I
found myself not only on a plane above the battle, not
only in the peace that follows warfare, but awakened in
a new way, granted a vision of life as an essentially

43

religious process working its way upward by means of
opposing forces. Force opposes force, on a given level.
Two contrary principles fight it out, on a given plane.
From this contest something new is brought forth, and
this new birth occurs on a level above that of the
original struggle. This new birth is the evolutionary
fruit. I seemed to see all Nature in this labor. I
seemed to see all mankind in this purposive contest
for new births on higher and ever higher levels. And
behind this vast and wonderful scheme there was One,
the One who had created it and did now maintain and
guide it, and make all things possible.

Having seen myself in it, I knew there was such a
process, and I knew I was part of it, and I knew all
men are part of it. Having experienced it, I knew I
had not originated it, but that I partook of it along
with countless myriads of living creatures through the
ages. Its origin evidently was outside of me, outside
of men, outside of Nature, outside of what we call time;
yet everything was in it. My reason and my feelings
joined in realizing that the existence of what I had
experienced bore witness to the existence of a Source,
a Great Source, a Sacred Source, the Being whom men
call God.

This high point of my religious experience was
marked by the following memorandum:

Let the evening of November 17, 1923

44

mark the time of my greatest illumination,
of my purest vision, of the most comprehensive
experience that has yet come to me.

Having reacclled that experience to my mind and
heart, I am reluctant to resume writing of the ups and
downs of little me. It seems beside the point to continue
tracing the rises and falls of this particle in the
First River, towards the Second River. Indeed it seems
profane impertinence to do so. But I must. I've set a
pattern of procedure, and only by pursuing it can we
reach the larger things that are to come.

I was up again. By life itself I was lifted up,
through reconciliation, through vision. How did I come
to fall? What occasioned my fall this time? How does
a wave rise and fall? A wind blows over it. A ship
passes by. Far shores attract. Its momentum gathers
and gives out. It is subject to periodicity.

Soon after that evening of the seventeenth I began
shrinking and slipping down the easy incline to my
shut-in small self. I knew what was coming. It had
happened often enough by now so that I knew what to
expect. Having risen to a new high, I'd probably fall
to a new low. This is exactly what did occur. On the
way down, however, I saw certain truths with new
clarity.

It had been given me to know that Life is something.
Love is something. Beauty is something. There is wonder-
ful substance in Man, ineffable substance in God. But

45

I, this "I" that was continually in my thoughts, this
"me" with whom I was perpetually preoccupied, do what
I would to become otherwise - what substance was in me,
what reality? Was I something or nothing?

It depended, it seemed to me, upon where I was.
If I was in Life, in Love, in Beauty, in Man, in God,
I was something. I was invested with reality. I was
something precisely because I was in those realities.
But if I was out of Life, out of Love, out of Beauty,
out of Man, out of God, as I most often was, I was
nothing. I was divested of reality. Left to myself I
was as nothing, a mere hollow, a mere cypher.

There was no escaping this fact. Left to myself
I was as nothing. Anyone and everyone left to himself
is as nothing. This, it seemed to me, was the common
condition, the general truth. Experience had shown it
to me time and again. Now I let the fact sink in.
I was touched with a realization of my nothingness. I
did not shrink from it. It did not cast me down. For
now I also knew, and also by experience, that it is
possible to become something.

Years ago, on losing my anthropomorphic God, I
had been bowed down by a feeling of my smallness in
the colossus of a world, I had been depressed and over-
whelmed by a sense of my insignificance in the spectacular
universe. The collapse, the sinking and the anguish that
had been mine at that time had been due, I now recognized,

46

only partly to the feeling of my own nothingness; in
larger part it had been due to the feeling that it was im-
possible for me or anyone or any thing to become other-
wise. Men, evidently, are without hope of meaning if
the larger world in which they live is meaningless. It
was that feeling of utter hopelessness of inescapable
meaninglessness, that had taken the heart out of my
life.

Now, though face to face with my nothingness, I
had heart, I had knowledge of the possible, a belief,
a faith, a creed founded upon life-experience. What
I actually was was less important than what I could
become. My chief concern was functional. How, how to
become? Granting that I was small, how to become large?
Granting that I was empty, how to become full? Granting
that I was nothing, how to become something? How, in
fine, to gain and maintain a relationship with Something
greater than I? This was the question. This, it seemed
to me, was the question of questions.

How simple to formulate - once you had formulated
it. How difficult to answer. True, Great Life sometimes
answered it for you. But how could you answer it for
yourself so that you were not dependent upon circumstance?
Could you so answer it? I felt you
could. More, I felt you had to. It was up to a man to
do so. It was a man's duty, a man's responsibility. A man
had will and power and ability. A man was not a child.

47

It was a man's essential business to use his will, his power and ability so to live his life that he gained self-purity, self-unification, self-development. These, it seemed to me, were the three requirements for a greater man and a greater life. It was a man's chief concern so to shape his life that he eventually gained and became able to maintain a relationship with Something greater than himself.

It had been given me to know the magnificent sweep of the created world; I, however, small a part, was part of it; yet I, though a part, was somehow, inexplicably, as an outcast most of the time. I was part; but, more often than not, I was not allowed to participate. And then, due to powers deeper than my personal will, I would be granted inclusion. And then, due also to powers deeper than my will, I would be thrust out. What I wanted, what I needed, was clear. I needed to become able, increasingly, to promote my participation, to prevent my exclusion. I needed to enlighten my will. My will needed to become one with those deeper powers. Means, what means to these ends?

Again and again I went over the situation, seeing it from different angles, formulating it in different ways. Invariably I came back to the need of means - means of enlightening and aligning the will; means of promoting self-purity, self-unification, self-development; conscious means to the goal of Consciousness;

48

means of relating oneself to Something greater than
oneself. The curious part of it was that I never once
questioned my certainty that there were such means. It
was as though I knew of their existence. Because I
dimly recalled myself having used them long ago in some
past life.

Again I was on the lookout for means. A new idea
presented itself. Perhaps I would not find them in the
world of my time. Perhaps I'd have to work them out
myself. Perhaps, if I looked deep enough into myself,
I'd come upon clues.

Writing? Writing was out. I had given it a trial.
It wouldn't and couldn't meet what I now realized to
be my needs as of this time. From one point of view,
writing had failed me. It, alone, evidently was not
a consciousness means to the goal of Consciousness.
It was excellent as one practice, as one way of working;
but more was necessary if one was really to go from
here to there. From another point of view, I had failed
writing. In my present condition I simply wasn't up to
writing. Writing, real writing, it now seemed to me,
presupposed the possession of the very things I knew
I lacked, namely, self-purity, self-unfication, self-
development. I wasn't fit to write. I felt and felt
strongly that one ought to be something before one
assayed to say something. I felt and felt deeply that
a man ought to be a Man before he elected to write.

49

There was an ironic twist to the situation. The book I had finished some time ago, ages ago it seemed to me, had since been published and was now circulating. It was being read and talked about, reviewed and hailed as a new voice, a work of talent, power and promise. This was gratifying; but, as I say, it was ironic too. I knew very well I'd have to serve a long apprenticeship to manhood before I'd write another book. I knew, moreover, that when the next work of mine did appear faint it would have but fix me a resemblance to the writing on which my reputation was being built up.

There was another ironic twist. Thanks to my book, to the way it was being received, to the many new friends and connections I had made, my position in the world was more favorable than it had ever been. Indeed, looking at things from the outside, one might have said that I was well on my way to success not only in the literary world but in the world that values worldly success. I saw how it looked from the outside. I also saw how looked, and how it was, from the inside. And there came into my mind one of the "precepts" that in one form or another had been dinned into me as I grew up - "If you make the grade and succeed in the world you will be all right." So? Really?

Yes, in truth, there was a grade, there is a grade which, if you succeed in climbing, you will come out all right; but it is not the grade of wordly success;

50

it is more inward, more related to the real nature of
human beings, directly in line with the meaning and the
purpose of our living. One's position on the outward
grade is no measure of one's position on the inward
grade. One's position on the inward grade does not
guarantee a similar position on the outward grade. My own
case, and the cases of many another, had made this quite
clear me. More than one worldly success was a spiritual
failure. More than one spiritual success was a wordly
failure. Sometimes, but not often, the two went together.
More often, the wordly success was not also a spiritual
success in this life, and the spiritual success became
a worldly success only after he had passed from this
life. In my own mind there was no question as to which
of the two was the more important. Neither was there
any doubt as to which grade I had chosen. So far as I
could see, I had never at any time cared enough
for worldly success to put all of my strength into
making that grade. Now I cared less than ever. Come
what might to my outward life, I was irrevocably dedicated
to the inward way of progress.

What had been true for me for the past nine years
was now more true than ever: I could not go back, I had
to go. Now, however, I changed that statement. I did
not want to go back, I did want to go on. For I had
been permitted to know the heaven of presence, and I
had been let fall to suffer the hell of absence, and I

51

would never rest until I had gained that heaven, never
to fall. Since the inward grade was my preferred grade,
I meant to make it. I meant to succeed up hill on it.
I meant to attain.

Well said, my boy; but was I _doing_ it? Dedicated,
yes, self-dedicated; committed to the inward grade by
powers outside my will, true; but was I making progress?
Thanks to the consequences of past efforts I, or any
rate my name, was m rolling up the outward grade without
any present effort on my part. Was I, for all my
efforts and m efforts and m desires, really making way up the
inward grade? Could I make such headway unless I found
means, either in the world or in myself, unless I
found, either in the world or in myself, a teacher?

One thing alone was sure. I was still in the
rapids of the Relentless Stream. I had worked myself
away, and that stream had carried me off from the
shore of the ordinary world. I was as though dead to
that world. Not yet had I been brought within sure reach
of another shore of another world. I was out of my
depths, and though I continued swimming I sometimes
had the feelings of a man who knows his strength is
giving out and fears he will sink unless help comes.

A steam? Yes it was that; but often it seemed to me
that the medium I was in was not that substantial. It
seemed more like vapor of some kind, and then I'd feel
I was up in the air, suspended between the solid ground
and the blue sky.

52

Being a poet as well as some less worthy things,
I made record of the sufficiently taxing situation
in the following pleasant words:

My feet have left the earth,
They have found as yet
No pavements on the arch of heaven;
The stars are pins and needles.

And then one day, as if to hasten the approach of
I knew not what, I asked myself a perfectly natural
but, as it turned out, a very shocking question. I
had been thinking of what I was and what I was not.
I had been thinking of what people are and ~~what people~~
are not. Suddenly I asked point-blank - Who am I?

IV Unease Continued: The Life and the Work

It was while feeling suspended between two worlds,
"one dead, the other powerless to be born", that I was
moved to re-examine the life of people in the light of
what I had discovered about myself. The survey was given
impetus by the fact that I had been finding out some
rather unpleasant things as to the actual inside con-
idition of ceratin other people; these adverse accumulations
came to a head at this time. With a curious mixture of
feelings of detachment and involvement, utter unconcern
and a very deep concern, I took a fresh look, a deeper
look, into the life of America, 1923.

As a matter of fact, a re-vewing and re-evaluating
of the world around us had been going on for some time
among the members of the group to which I belonged. One
for thing, we had been on the track of the "latent
assumptions", the hidden attitudes that, as it seemed
to us, were responsible for the outward acts of people
and were behind the expressed views and values of our
civilization.

Now, for my part, I went at it with new zest, and,
so I felt, with important new findings. Day and night I
worked on my friends, they worked on me, we worked to-
gether and helped clarify and energize each other. There
was enough basic agreement to give us a sense of unity
with one another. There was enough difference of view-
point to make it a spirited exchange.

2

In these sessions with my associates I worked from
and worked deeper into the new basis that was developing
within me. My creed became more cogent and of broader
scope. A number of fundamental understandings and
propositions took shape. I came to see my position with
increasing clarity and sureness. I began to feel my
function, my possible function in the world at large.
In the background of my mind, if not in my spoken words,
there came to be these basic general principles:

The proper concern of a man is precisely a proper
concern for himself.

The proper concern of men is precisely a proper
concern for men.

Human beings, not books, are of paramount importance.
We should never lose sight of human beings. Human beings,
not science, are of first and last importance. Men and
women, the concrete living people, not business, not
politics, not government, not systems, not skyscrapers,
not the modern aesthetic, not machines, not money, not
name and fame, not anything else but human beings are
the essential matter.

A man is humanly obligated to attend to himself.
He is humanly obligated to attend to his essential self,
and to struggle against whatever is contrary to his
essential self. Men, women, all the adults of the world,
are humanly obligated so to attend to themselves, and
so to help others.

Human beings are not born into the world fully

3

developed. Human beings must be developed, by themselves,
as they go along. Human beings are not developed by
attending to something else. They are developed by
direct and directed cultivation.

Education should not stop when we "graduate".
Growth should not stop when we become "adult". Through-
out life people should work upon themselves.

People ought not neglect themselves. People ought
not lose faith in their possibilities of growing and
perfecting. People ought not lose faith in themselves,
give themselves up as hopeless, and transfer their
desires for beauty onto the outward machinery of living.
in

People need to open to a new faith themselves,
based on experience. Moved by this faith, people ought
to work more upon themselves, and, if need be, less upon
externalities.

We ought to work upon ourselves more earnestly,
more sincerely, more awarely, more wisely.

Life is to be regarded, regarded and felt, felt and
lived as a religious process wherein we work consciously
to face ourselves, to see ourselves, to know ourselves,
to promote purity, unification, development.

We should come to see life directly and psychologic-
ally in experience, not exclusively through books or
art or mental learning, not exclusively through "systems",
but directly through one's own perceptions and insight.

The art of human relationships is the fundamental
art. Artists of art should also be artists of life.

4

 Creators of art and science should also be creators in life. Self-creation on the part of the individual, the creation of fully developed human beings on the part of all - this is the main thing.

 Real art demands the intense purity and wholeness of the very materials we artists often irresponsibly mutilate.

 One must became a man before he can be an artist.

 If art does not promote human development in those who produce it and in those who receive it, of what use art? The same question is to be asked of science, education, religion, business, government, etc., etc.

 There are no "ends" in this life. Everything in this life - writing, art of all kinds, politics, economics, etc., etc., - all are means. All are means and should be regarded and used as means to larger being and higher consciousness. Life itself is a means to a Greater Life.

 The ultimate value of great experience is not that it enables men to write great books, paint great pictures, compose great music. It is the other way round. The ultimate value of great books, paintings, music, etc., is that they make for great experience, and great experience makes for great human beings.

 Great art has been the mainline of many a great man. Yet these men did not become great through art alone. They became great through great experience, of

5

which art was an integral part.

Great art is at once a means and a by-product of human greatness.

Great art is the means used by great men to enable their lesser brothers to climb the steeps to greatness and in their turn become great.

All civilization is an instrument of human evolution, an agent of life perfecting itself towards Deity.

If the means now available to us are not enough to enable us to do the essential work of human beings, then we must search for, find, discover, develop additional means.

Do you think that all means that Dante used are explicit in his poems? Who knows how Walt Whitman worked within himself? And did Christ arise by teaching what is recorded in the Bible? He had already arisen when he gave what is recorded in the Bible. How did he arise? By what training? What means?

There are two selves in a man, one false, the other real, one nothing, the other something. A man's job is to break down and destroy the false self in himself. A man's job is to work his way into that which is greater than himself.

The breaking down of the false self is to be done actively, consciously, voluntarily. The false self that is nothing, the false self that is nothing and yet stands in the way, is to be voluntarily demolished. This is a job for a fighter. Let the fighters destroy the

6

false in themselves, the vicious, the brutal, the ugly,
the savage, the stupid, the hateful, the anti-human,
the evil in themselves. In this sense, all of us ought
to be fighters. We don't want to make peace with that
fellow. We need use the sword that Christ proclaimed.

A man, if he would be Man, is called upon to cast
out the devil in himself. He is called upon to die,
voluntarily die to his old life, to his old self, let
go, surrender. He is called upon to have this unseen
courage. He is called upon to have the courage to lose
his false base, even though it seems to him that in
losing his false base he is losing all. By inner imperative
he is called upon to suffer whatever may be needed that
he suffer in this process of catharsis.

A man's position in the world is to be rated as of
less importance that his position in himself. If need
be, he must have the courage and the faith to sacrifice
his position in the world for the sake of improving his
position in himself. A man's work in the world is of
less importance than his work in himself. If need be,
he must have the faith and the daring to sacrifice,
temporarily, his work in the world for the sake of im-
proving his work within himself. In time, he will "come
back". He will come back enriched and more useful for
taken
having taken what seemed to others a "detour", an
"escape".

A man who faces himself is not escaping. He is

7

meeting what others are trying to escape from.

The greater part of what people are pleased to
call "real life" is nothing more nor less than the maze
in which people race as they try to escape from their
nothingness, their emptiness, their frustrations, their
fears, their self-imprisonment.

Why this greedy clutching at whatever promises to
make me _seem_ important? Why these drives into work? Why
these dives into sex? Why this mean striving to get
mean advantage over others for things that aren't worth
possessing and that give no satisfaction whatsoever
to those who at the sacrifice of their humanity finally
obtain them? Why this hate of others? Why this prejudice?

Is this the way people who were Something, some-
thing real, would behave? Is this the way people, filled
with Love and Beauty, Life, Light, and the power of
Truth, the wonder of creation - is this the way full
human beings would behave?

After what would a man chase if he possessed his
own soul and lived in brotherhood with others? For
what would a man make war if he had God and God had him?

How many face their nothingness? This is the measure
of those who have chance of becoming something real.
How many face their emptiness? This is the measure of
those who may be fulfilled. How many face their self-
imprisonment? This is the measure of those with hope of
becoming free. How many face the warfare within themselves?
This is the measure of those who will find peace.

8

The false self is motivated by self-interest. What I want, what I think I want, what I fear, what I think I fear - these are the four coils of the *mx* mainspring of this kind of self-interest. In so far as a man is ruled by his false self he is ruled by this kind of self-interest.

The real Self is motivated by Self-interest. Love, Beauty, the Good and the True, are the four forces of the moving power of this kind of Self-interest. In so far as a man is in touch with his real Self he is moved by these forces.

A man left to himself - that is, left to his false self, is as nothing. A man is something in direct proportion to his contact with a Great, Something.

Left to himself a man is literally left to himself: he is separated from his Self *and* from his fellow beings. He is bottled up. He exists in unholy separateness.

If he would become joined with his fellows he must become joined with Himself. If, by good fortune, he is joined with his fellows, he will find himself also joined with Himself.

Love of brother and love of God are native functions of the human soul. They are outside the false self. The false self is alien to them. They never will be found in the false self. Therefore those who perpetuate the false self are depriving not only themselves but their fellows of human love. No man can deprive another man

9

of divine love.

The destruction of the false self is the most creative thing a man can do. That is, it is the most creative thing a man can do until, by such work, he frees himself of obstructions, builds himself up, and comes into contact with the creative powers of his greater being and the Being of beings.

Charge - "It is selfish to work upon oneself."
Reply - "Is it selfish to uproot the seat of selfishness?"

Charge - "A man oughtn't be concerned for himself. He ought to be interested in things and people outside himself." Reply - "Indeed yes. A man ought to be interested in things and people outside his false self. How is he to do it? True, people may call him forth. Fine. But how otherwise? How is he to attain these extra self interests, these beyond himself concerns, as long as his false self stands in the way? With his false self in the way, a man actually is interested just in this false self; he but tries to push open a stubborn door; at worst he but pretends to be interested in others. His words say 'We'; his acts say 'Me'."

"Thou shall love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. Thou shall love thy neighbour as thyself." These, surely, are the two great commandments of the religion of living. But who can live them? Therefore it seems to me that the religion of living needs be preceded by the religion

10

of training. Put more exactly, the religion of living
the life needs be preceded by the religion of training
to live the life.

Twice I had had some taste of the love of brother.
Once I had had a foretaste of the love of God. Neither
taste nor forestate had been sustained, much less
expanded. I had fallen from that state and lost both.

"Know Thyself" is the first commandment of the
religion of training.

For the purpose of training, everything depends
upon self-knowledge.

r

You face yourself. So you see yourself. You see
yourself. So you know yourself - the compound, the false
and the true, the mean and the noble, the animal, the
human, the homunculus, the godly. You know yourself
and so you discriminate. You discriminate and so you
know what to do - what to deny, what to affirm, what to
tear down, what to build up. You know what to do and
so you do it.

You begin with work and end in love. Or, if you're
lucky, you being with love and proceed to work. Love
and work, work and love lead to love of God and love
of brother.

The love of man for woman, and of woman for man,
if it is love, and as long as it is love, is a glowing
path of revelation, a song of the mysteries.

The only evil in the human world is that which

11

causes - to our modes of perception - the essential to be transient, the nonessential to be lasting.

At the time, not all of these understandings and propositions were as clearly defined as I have just given them. Some were, some were not. But there they were, in varying degrees of crystallization, at the background if not in the foreground of my thoughts and expressions. All in all, as can be seen, they amounted to a developing attitude towards life, a frame of reference, a basis of evaluating, and a way of living in the making, a way compounded of moral, aesthetic, psychological, and mystical elements. In a sense, I had come by more than I realized. Certain it is that I did not appreciate what had been forming in me until I tried out, first with my close friends and later with almost everyone I met.

The more I talked these things the more I saw their application not only to myself, not only to WKEN with whom I was in immediate touch, but to the general situation. The more I saw their general application the more I felt I had gotten hold of something important for others as well as for myself. I came to feel I had come by certain truths that went straight to the root of the human trouble and pointed to the way out.

Again I felt power and purpose and a moving towards people. I felt I might be of meaning and use in a new way. The entire aspect of life changed. Without quite

12

realizing I had been doing it, I had in fact for several
months been withdrawing from the world; now I missed no
chance to be present where people were assembled.

I ran into difficulties, of course. But I found
I thrived on them. I had great zest to overcome difficulties.
I met with opposition. I met with indifference. Indiffer-
ence was like a wet blanket; but opposition, as I used to
say as a boy, was "my meat". It aroused and fired me
and set me going all the more.

The trouble was, as the trouble always is, that one-
self, in this case myself, was a graphic example of the
wrongs that one would correct in the world. All too
often, without really being aware of it, I went on
sprees of egotism and stood in the way of the very
findings, truths as they seemed to me, that I wanted to
communicate. My friends, bless them, absorbed these
sprees and were not thrown off by them. But others -
well, we will come to that.

Ah yes, the false self was still lodged in me.
Though he was, or seemed to be, in dissolution, though
I worked on him to expedite his break-up and hasten
his exit, there he was. To call the false self the
"old man" is a bit misleading. There is tough life
in the old boy. Yes indeed, that triumphant rate of
trouble-makers - devil, barbarian, and egotist - was
still in force and as alert as ever to catch me un-
awares and seize its chance to dominate my human being.

13

Meanwhile, I was discovering some things. I was finding out, for example, that it is one thing to *feel* you have a function and quite another to *know* how to go about it. It is one thing to feel you have come by truths that apply to the situation but quite another to see at what exact point you can best come to grips with the matter. In my spoken words I continued making statements that rang with certainty and conviction, but back in my mind I began asking some very puzzling questions.

Sure, there was trouble. Here it was in me. There it was in people. It was right under our noses. But what precisely was it? What was the cause? The devil in people? Yes. All manner of impurities? Yes. Viciousness? Yes. The stops in people? Yes. Overconcern for the nonessential, underconcern for the essential? Yes. Blindness, separatism, etc? Yes, yes. But these things, the presence of them in people, didn't explain what I was after now.

Said I to myself - The devil in people wouldn't be so bad if people contended with him. Why don't people contend with him? The impurities wouldn't be so awful if people struggled to eliminate them. Why don't people so struggle? And why, on the other hand, do people not work more seriously, more sincerely, more devotedly for the good in themselves, for the beauty in themselves, for love and creative togetherness? People labor and

14

slave to get hold of Nature's resources. Why they not
work and strive to get hold of their own resources?

You may say that people do not work to tap their
own resources because they do not realize they have
these resources. True. But why not? They know there are
coal, oil, and gold to be found in the earth. Why do
they not also know there are the spiritual equivalents
of coal, oil, and gold to be found in themselves?

You may say that people are prevented from having
such knowledge because the majority of them are forced
to be preoccupied with the grim struggle for bare
physical survival. Yes, but then why do not the few
who have great material wealth also acquire great
spiritual wealth? Because the few are obsessed and
overpowered by their material possessions? But how
comes it that human beings can be overpowered by material
things? One time you tell me that people do not attend
their own resources because they have too little. An-
other time you tell me that people do not attend to
their own resources because they have too much. Don't
you see, explanations in terms of material things
simply do not explain the psychological condition of
people. Things have no power over us unless we give them
unlimited purchase in us. Dogs, for example, are relatively
unaffected by the things that affect us. It is what
we are that determines what we do and don't do. It is
what we are that needs explaining.

15

What are we? How do we come to be what we are? Why
do we do this? Why don't we do that? How can we change?
What is the key? What is the lever?

These questions were too much for me; but I came
upon something.

I looked out upon the world of my present life,
the world of writers, editors, publishers, painters,
photographers, friends and patrons of the arts. From
time to time I looked back and out upon the many lives
of the varied worlds I had passed through. The college
life I had known, farm life when I had worked on a
farm, grocery store life, physical education life,
shipyard life, social service life, white life, black
black life, Jewish life, gentile life, the life of the
masses, middle class life, radical life, life in
Washington, Chicago, Massachusetts, Georgia, New York.
One day it suddenly struck me that the human life of
all these worlds had a common feature, a strange feature.
In all these worlds, in all these lives, people were
being virtually neglected. People were neglecting them-
selves. Human beings were neglecting themselves as
human beings. They were neglecting each other. Each one
was neglecting himself.

The under-priveleged and the privileged, the poor
and the rich, the black and the white, the illiterate
and the educated, whatever the class, whatever the
occupation, all men and women with but few exceptions

16

were as though under a compulsion to by-pass themselves.

The farmer saw his farm, but did not see himself.
The farmer attended to his farm. Did he give anywhere
near an equivalent attention to himself? The grocer
saw his store, but not himself. The business man saw
his business, but not himself. What work he put in on
his business. On himself? The poor man saw his poverty,
but not himself. The rich man saw his wealth, but not
himself. The clergyman saw his church, but not himself.
The painter saw his painting, but not himself. The
scientist saw his laboratory, but not himself. The writer
saw his book, but not himself. What effort the writer
spent on his books. Did he spend an equivalent effort
upon himself, except by way of getting himself to write?

There was an outward rush. Everything was out-
bound. The people themselves, it seemed to me, were
being by-passed by the very streams they set in motion.
The waters of their own lives did not reach them. The
fruits of their own hands did not feed them. Their
works did not satisfy them. There was perpetual hunger
and dissatisfaction. Stunted growths in the midst of
growing cities. Malnutrition, physical and spiritual,
in the midst of plenty. A lack of change in the midst of
change. A lack of corresponding development in the very
men who were developing, often amazingly, the instruments
of civilization.

It was an astounding condition, if true. Was it so?

17

I looked again. I looked again and again.

No, it wasn't supposed to be so. Not in theory. It was in theory, in belief, all that being done was being done precisely for human beings. Human beings were said to be the center, the ends and objects of the world's work. Government was supposed to be for people. Education was supposed to be for people. Science was supposed to be for people. Architecture was supposed to be for people. But somehow it wasn't working out just that way.

In practice, human beings were in effect pushed aside by the fixation of their own minds on concrete "things" and on abstractions such as "farming", "doing", "business", "literature", "art", "science", "education", "politics", "name", "status", "race", "class", "nation", "creed", "success", and above all on "money".

Though self-interest in one form or another was the ruling force of their lives, *thousands* of people simply did not see that self in which they were so interested. The more egotistical a man was, the less was he really and properly concerned for himself.

Strange. A strange state of affairs. But it didn't seem *thousands* of people. They were so used to it they accepted it as a matter of course. Or, rather, they just didn't see it. They *were* by-passed themselves without knowing they were doing it.

The bent of the mind was on something else. The bent of the desires was on something else. Always that

18

"something else"; seldom _this_ human being, seldom _these living growing people_ of the earth - except in words and documents and proclamations.

The bent of the mind was on what people did, not on what people were. Hence, much gossip, _little understanding_. The bent of the mind was on the business of living, not on the spirit of living; on the things of life, not on the meaning of life. It was on products, not on the produce's of those products except as these producers were needed to produce more products. The products received the main attention; the human beings received but a by-the-way. The mind, in short, was so externalized that it by-passed the very people whose mind it was.

The result? Actions increased; being remained stationary. The business of living became more and more complicated with each passing day; people became progressively the slaves of the business of living. Doing business to live? No. Living to do business. Things multiplied; people also multiplied human bodies; people added little or nothing to their own statures. There was more and more life; less and less meaning in life. Products improved; the producers of those products remained unimproved, impure, conflicted, undeveloped, unmatured.

It was a strange condition. Everyone, so far as I could see, was more or less caught in it. All of us were by-passing ourselves and each other. Humanity was

19

marooned on a no-man's land bounded by "things" on one side and by "abstractions" on the other.

How to break through these blinders? How to cut through the fog of things and words? How to reach the quick of what we were? And who would rescue us? No one, apparently, except we ourselves? What would deliver us? Surely not the "things" and the "abstractions" that had put us where we were. The way out, it seemed clear to me, had to be in a direction completely different from our given direction. The direction had to be that which led man to himself.

Man himself was the cause of his trouble. Man himself was the cure of his trouble. Man's mind, not the outer environment, was the thing to work on. Man's heart, not the "system", was the organ to be changed. Man's consciousness, not the world, must become transformed.

As I thought about these matters, and felt them too, I knew very well I had no explanation of why people by-passed themselves. Though I could see myself tending to by-pass myself, though I could look back and see the thousand and one things I had by-passed myself in the past, I was quite aware that I had no real grasp of the mechanisms that were at work. It was but one step to discover that the mind and the desires had an outward rush. The next step was to discover why the mind and the desires were so exclusively bent. I couldn't see. I was stopped. But I hit upon a "latent "assumption" that seemed to have something to do with it.

20

It was generally assumed, it seemed to me, that if a man did good work in a specialized field he was thereby exempt from doing good work also in the general field of living, that if a man did a good piece of work on a particular thing, he was thereby exempt from also doing a good piece of work on himself. I called this _ASSUMPTION_ the "exemption assumption".

There were, in addition, two other closely related beliefs. One said that if a man did good work in a specialty it was _needless_ for him also to do good work upon himself and in the general field of living. The other maintained that if a man did good work in a speciality he _thereby_ did do good work, all needed work, upon himself and in the broader sphere of life.

So? Really? So I invited people to investigate these assumptions with me. So I asked even those whom I should not have asked to check up and see just what happened in the lives of the men over whom these assumptions held sway.

Take the case of a writer, I would say, who believes that all he has to do is to write. Or a scientist who thinks that all he was to do is to advance science. Or a clergyman who assumes that all he was to do is to build up his church. Or a business man who believes that he's done everything when he builds up a business. What happens?

Let my book be fine, says the writer, let me be

21

as you find me. What matter that my personal life is in
a mess. That gives me something to write about.

If the book is fine, that 's splendid. The writer
had really done something. It's not easy to write a
fine book. But if the writer's personal life is in a
mess, then we clearly see that in shaping his book he
did not thereby shape himself. As a writer he may be
exempt from trying to purify, integrate, develop and
fully realize himself. But, in point of fact, no man
is only a writer. Every writer is also a human being.
Is he humanly exempt from developing himself as a human
being? If so, then he is exempt from being a human
being - which is plain nonsense. But I suspect that it
is just this nonsense that some writers believe. They
assume they are exempt from being human beings - and
it works out that way. They become cut off from themselves.
They become cut off from their other possibilities.
Their lives, instead of broadening, became narrower and
narrower. What self-development they gain is a lopsided
development. Pretty soon it becomes a fact - though they
are human beings, the only thing they can do is to
write. They are out of place in any other kind of life.
Is that living? Is that doing what a human being ought
to do with his life?

Let science advance, says the scientist, I don't
matter. Science is everything; I am nothing. Knowledge
is the great thing; human beings? - oh, don't bother me
about them. My personal life? Come, now. Do you expect

22

me, as a man, to live up to the standards I set for my-
self as a scientist? What strange ideas you have. True,
I'm experimental in the laboratory, but I feel quite
at liberty to be dogmatic in life. Of course, I am
careful to keep my emotions from discoloring my work,
but why shouldn't they discolor life? After all, I'm
a man and I have my personal prejudices and biases. I
must express them somewhere, sometime. Don't blame me
if I let them out on my wife.

Let the church expand, says the preacher, but don't
expect me and my congregation to become more and more
Christ-like in our daily relationships. The church, the
church, my dear young man. Don't you see? The Chruch,
the greater and greater Chruch. See how the Church is
growing! Myself? My fellow Christians? God will take care
of us if we take care of His Church. The Church Beautiful,
that's it! Did you say something about the beauty in
human beings? Oh, that will come out in due time. The
snobbishness in people of my congregation? The bigotry,
the race prejudice, the class prejudice, cut-throat
business practices, the exploiting of men? These little
things are quite compatible with the Christian life.
Besides, you know, when in Rome we must do as the
Romans do.

Let business boo@m, says the business man. Every-
thing is all right if business booms and profits come
in. What matter that we, the individual men, are not
what we ought to be as human beings? And don't forget

23

men
this. It is the business who doing most of the work to
raise the standard of living. The Standard of Living,
see? If the Standard goes up we all go up. Keep your
eye on the Standard. Don't bother about the people on
the streets. You don't have to look at them. You just
know that everything is improving if the standard goes
up. And business - if business booms - is lifting the
standard every day. It's a matter of figures. It's a
counting proposition. Count the nations wealth in dollars,
and you'll know how well off we are.

And so it goes. And so it goes. Writing goes.
Science goes. Industry goes. The church goes. Business
goes. Government goes. Education goes. Money goes.
People? Human beings? Human beings as human beings?
Though we drive to "get something out of life", what
precisely do we get? Where to find the man who is Man
in his own life, rounded out, with balanced development?
Of course, we are not literally stationary. We, too,
do move. Nor are we as lopsided as our views. Nature
takes a hand in it. Nor are we as bent as our own
envisioned ends. Great Life spreads us out in spite of
of the narrow ends we set ourselves. But - we are
men, and where are the Men? Nine times out of ten
those who are men physically are babies mentally and
emotionally. Nine times out of ten, those who are men
mentally are babies physically and emotionally. We
are particularly weak emotionally, in maturity of Rarely
feeling

24

do you meet a man matured in feelings, rich in the
power of heart and spirit. Yet why not? We are living,
aren't we? We are living for ourselves, aren't we?
We have everything, haven't we? We have the whole earth
at our disposal. No other creature denies us the full
use of all the natural wealth of our world. No other
 creature denies us the full use of all the human wealth
of our own souls and beings. Could it be, you do you think,
that we, we ourselves, deny ourselves all but a pittance
of the vast reserves granted man by Nature and by God?

Pittance-men, that's exactly what we were. By-
passers. Exemptionists. But why? Surely we were not this
way consciously, deliberately. People in their right
minds do not voluntarily harm themselves. What hidden
causes? What mechanisms? What unseen and unsuspected
compulsions? The tantalizing fact was that I knew that
the answers to these questions were to be found right
in myself, and I could not see them.

Meanwhile and all the while I myself was under a
compulsion to open the eyes of people to the extent
that mine were opened. I was as a man with a mission.
I was energizing. I was instructing myself as well as
expressing myself. New discoveries came to me as I
talked. I was having a great time, even though some of
the things I pointed to were enough to give a man a
very bad time.

See the condition we are in, the psychological
condition. This came to be my main theme which I

25

repeated again and again in different ways. See man
himself. See the psychological factors. It is not
enough to see the environmental factors. Think psycholog-
ically. It is not enough to think in terms of the
environment. Environmental thinking leads us astray.
It leads us to assume that we ourselves are all right
and would be all right but for what the other fellow
does to us, but for lack of money, food, jobs, but
for circumstantial misfortune of some kind, but for
miseries brought upon us from the outside. And so,
working on the basis of this assumption, we put all of
our effort into an attempt to alter our circumstances,
no effort into an attempt to change ourselves. There-
fore our circumstances do change; we remain unaltered.
Blame is put on the other fellow; we exempt ourselves.
Environmental thinking, in short, leads us precisely
to exempt ourselves, to remain blind to ourselves -
and it is just this self-blindness, just this failure
to take ourselves in hand, that is the real cause of the
trouble we see "out there". It simply isn't true that
we are "all right". On the contrary, it is just we who
are wrong. Something is radically wrong with us, with
me, with you. We have it in us to become all right, but
we never will as long as we by-pass ourselves. So let
us face about. Let us work to become aware of what is
wrong with us. Let us work to understand why we tend
to by-pass ourselves. Let us get leverage on our own

26

workings. The first job for those who cry against in-
justice is themselves to become just. The first task
for those who want beauty in life is themselves to
become beautiful. The first work for those who would
reform the world is to transform themselves.

The more I talked the more I felt that everything
depended upon this primary awakening of man to himself.
And when I found that quite a few people either could
not or would not recognize this need, I became impatient
and it began to seem to me that the great majority of
human beings were asleep, and, worse, had no desire to
wake up. So I began to drive and pound and hammer.
Wherever I went, whatever the occasion, I'd try to turn
the gathering to a discussion of these matters, and I'd
go at it with the feeling that I had to break something
down in people so as to get them to see and to care
and to realize what we were missing. I'd got at it with
the feeling that I had to shake people in order to
wake them up. And I got into trouble.

We do not like to be shaken. Had I been in the
position of the others I would not have liked it. We
do not like to be awakened - at any rate, not by an
outside agency. We want to wake up, if at all, in our
own sweet time and because we've slept enough. We re-
sent the hand that routs us from bed in the morning.
We similarly resent the hand, be it that of friend or
enemy or savior, that tries to stir us from our sleeping
life. We do not like being talked to - at any rate not

27

point-blank about ourselves and the way we ought to
live. In short, I was bent on doing just about every-
thing that people do not like having done to them.

Little me, I had grasped a truth, I felt its power
in me, and with this meager equipment I was embarked
on an undertaking that would tax the full ability and
all the wisdom of a veritable master. Impure me, I
had the rudiments of a vision, but how I obstructed
and distorted the communication of it to others. Ego-
tistical me, how I stood in my own way.

Back in myself, I was calling people to be people,
human beings to be human beings, human beings to become
essential and to live the essential way, and I had some
pretty deep feelings about the positive potentialities
of all of us. But, when I talked with others, particularly
when I talked with comparative strangers, I tended to
keep my affirmations in the background and to stress
what was wrong with us. Unwittingly I gave the impression
of myself as a caustic and sometimes self-righteous
critic who found fault with others, who tore down but
had nothing constructive to offer.

My basis was that of personal experience. What I
knew I knew because I myself had experienced it. What I
saw in life I saw because I had seen it in myself. What
I said do, I myself tried to do. My feelings of
ought, must, should, were applied to myself more than
to any other. There was at least this virtue in my

28

position. My close friends, those who had been partners
in my development, understand these things. So they were
able to balance my virtues against my vices, my sincerity
against my egotism, my realness against my picture of
myself, my genuine understanding against my questionable
evangelism. So my close friends remained my close
friends, and there continued to be mutual profit in
our exchanges.

Comparative strangers, however, knew nothing of my
personal history, nothing of my inside position, and
I gave them no chance to know. For in their company I
said little or nothing about myself and how I saw my
condition but was very vocal as to the condition of
other people. This made it seem that I regarded myself
as superior to the common plight of men, felt "holier
than thou", and was sitting in judgement on the ways of
the world. And, to tell the truth, I was to some extent,
more than I realized. Though knowing that left to myself
I was as nothing, though recognizing that I tended to
by-pass myself and was as much a "pittance-man" as
any other, I did not realize the degree to which I felt
pride and superiority in the very fact that I did know
these things. False pride of person had been pretty well
left behind; but false pride of understanding was still
with me, and, as I say, was stronger than I had any
idea of.

Add to what I have already said the fact that ever
so often I went on sprees of undiluted egotism and it
is clear to

29

is clear to see what had to happen. My "mission" mis-
carried. I offended people. I alienated a number of the
very human beings I wanted to reach. What I did to
them rebounded upon me. There came to be a rift between
myself and a large part of my world. Strange. Some
nine or ten years had passed since that last year of
mine in high school. During these years I had had
enough varied experiences, it would seem, to have changed
me completely. But no. Here I was, now, repeating the
pattern of actions that back in those days had divorced
me from many of my friends and caused my "push-out"
from that earlier life.

Not only was I repeating the pattern of actions,
I was acting from much the same base, for much the same
reasons and desires, with much the same basic attitude
towards human life, and I would say that the identical
forces were at work. Beneath the brokenness of my out-
ward life there had been this continuity. Underneath
the surface chaos there had been this development. Now
the forces were stronger. Now the reasons had increased
in number and in scope. Now the attitude was more informed.
Now the desires were more experienced in the life of
the world.

Now once again I was being moved by the drive
that had never let me come to rest for very long, that
had pushed me out of one life and into another, and
out of this second into a third, in and out, up and
down, through world after world, saying to each in

30

turn - Not this, not that.

Not that I was aware of what was happening in these
terms. I had forgotten all about that last year in
high school and the moral awakening that had come to me
then. I saw no relation whatsoever between the forces
now moving me and the powers that had quickened me in
those earlier days. I recognized no parallel between
what I was doing to people now and what I done to people
years ago, and, indeed, throughout my life. Had you
pointed it out I would have been a very surprised man.
Nevertheless the similarity was there.

I had not been in this cultural world very long;
already I was podding from it. Within myself I was
thinking, feeling, and seeing in such a way that the
more I circulated in this world the more I withdrew
from it. Outwardly I was doing things to people that
made them push me away. Neither I nor they were aware
of the significance of what was being done. It was
being done nonetheless. I was moving towards a new
phase of my life. I was being made move on to a new
sphere of life.

What is it that moves us? Some power of life, to
be sure, but what power? What guidance? I did not know
at the time. I do not know now. I surmise, however,
that its decisions take into account our developmental
needs. It makes us enter a world, not because that world
in itself is good or bad or indifferent, but because it

31

suits our needs of catharsis-development as of that time.
So we enter a world, develop in it, develop through it,
and, in time, develop out of it. The power makes us
leave a world, again not because the world in itself
is good or bad or indifferent, but because it has given
to us and we have given to it all that can be given and
received as of that time. The various worlds, in short,
are as pods, we are as peas. The essential concern seems
to be the unending moving of human beings through life
after life, through world after world, towards a long-
range objective which remains undefined although here
and there along the way a man thinks he has put it into
words.

During the period I am writing of I grasped the
truth that each and all of us are in developmental
motion, and that this motion is obstructed by impedi-
ments within ourselves as well as by obstacles in the
world around. I believed that it was up to us to make
a double effort: an effort to promote our development
and so live up to our possibilities, an effort to
overcome the internal and external obstacles to development.
This double effort constituted what I meant by morality.
The trouble was that I made little or no allowance for
individual differences. I wanted everyone to move at
the same rate in the same way, that is, at my rate, in
my way.

I have since come to understand that there are
individual differences and that these must be taken

32

into account. The rate of moving seems to depend upon
the developmental level. The way of moving seems to
depend upon the psycho-physical type. There are as many
rates as there are notes on the developmental scale.
There are as many ways as there are human types. If
you and I are at different levels, our rates will be
different, and so will our views of life. If you and I
are of different types, our ways will be different, and
so will our work. Only those of similar type who have
reached similar stages of development will see eye to
eye and move together, keeping pace.

Given two men of similar type and level, neither
will be tempted to impose his will on the other. Given
two men of different types and levels, each may be
tempted to make the other conform to his way, but both
will fail. Coercion is unnecessary among the united.
Coercion among the different never succeeds. & The
attempt to coerce in the name of development obstructs
development. The attempt to regiment in the name of
religion impedes religion. It were better to live and
let live, each man going his own way at his own rate,
those going together who are drawn together because they
have something essential to give each other.

At the same time I do believe that as we are one
kind of conscious being, so there is one goal towards
which we all are tending. Let us converge, each in his
own time, each in his own way, eventually to meet at
the center. Meanwhile let us oppose each other if need

33

be; but, over all, may we help one another all we can.
It is no longer true that all roads lead to Rome. It
is still true, and, I think, forever will be true that
all the ways of men, provided that they are ways and not
mazes, do lead to the kingdom of heaven which is within.

And now, before going on to the new phase that I
was about to enter, I would like to give some of the
notes I made at that time. Some of these notes, as will
be seen, summarize what has already been shown. Others
presage changes in me and point to what was to come.

Power dare not co-exist with impurity,
unless indeed it be the power of purifying.

I do not want to convert my friends to
my imperfections.

The destruction of him is the most
creative thing I've ever done.

(This expressed my value of the destruction
of the false self, not my belief that I had
accomplished it.)

Some of our finest men are satisfied with
a workable balance between their beauty and
their viciousness.

People have given up hope of perfecting
themselves. Their best efforts are turned
to improving externalities.

One age differs from another only in the
specific nature of its disease. All ages are
similar in their higher forms.

Rma

People are rated by what they do, not by
what they are.

There is something in a man that makes
his own difficulties.

There is something in a man that chooses
his difficulties for him.

There is no chaos.

V Unease Continued: The Work and the Ideas

Humanity marooned on a no-man's land bounded by
things and abstractions. Mankind in a pocket, by-passed
by-passed by the Great Stream. The way out. The way out
must be a new way. The way that led into the trouble
will not lead out of the trouble. A new direction. The
direction that leads man to himself. Man, the cause of
his trouble. Man, the cure of his trouble. Improve the
environment? Yes, all we can. Improve the social set
up? All possible improvement. But the main work is that
of man upon himself. Change of mind. Change of heart.
Transformation of consciousness. How? How work? How
change? What means? Means. Must has no real power unless
it is implemented. Ought is ineffective until given
means. What means? A religion of training.

I lived with these thoughts. These thoughts lived
with me, day in, day out, constantly. Even during sleep
I would sometimes think of them and awake in the
morning with the feeling that I had gotten hold of
some luminous truth, if only I could recall it.

Then, one day, I was brought up sharp. I suddenly
saw myself going around tackling anyone and everyone
I met. I saw myself as others, no doubt, had been seeing
me for some time. I saw my presumption. I saw my
impatience. I saw my egotism. I saw my pseudo-evangelism
and was made realize that in my very efforts to
"awaken" others I was by-passing myself. I saw, in fine,
that in my outward behavior I myself was my best

2

advertisement of the things that I said people ought to
overcome. And the words of the Master reached my
very essence - "Physician, heal thyself."

Yes, that was it. Heal myself. It was not for me
to bring others to see what I perceived. It was for me
to increase my sight. It was not for me to make others
realize the need of conscious means. It was for me
to find these means and use them in silence until, by
the changes wrought in this human being, I had demonstrated
me
their worth. It was not for me to try to change others; I
myself had to be transformed.

After pondering and feeling these truths for a
time, I decided on a new course. I had begun my quest
for conscious means, it will be necessary recalled, under
the belief that I would come upon them somewhere in the
world. Not finding them in the world, I had thought it
was up to me to find them in myself, work them out as
I went along. Not finding them in myself, I had been
stopped. Now a new idea occurred to me. Perhaps it was
a task for a number of people working together. Perhaps
if a number of us pooled our resources we could develop
not only a set of adequate means but a system of
training that would meet the needs of modern
people. I adopted this new idea and set about to try
it out.

Whenever I came upon a likely person, I'd mention
conscious means, give my reasons for believing they

3

were necessary, state my conviction that no one man
could work them out alone, and then propose that we
become partners in this undertaking. In no time at all
I discovered I was speaking a strange language. By and
large, people simply did not see the point. Therefore
they were indifferent.

I remember particularly a session I had with a
scientist. He was a heart specialist engaged chiefly
in research. He was, moreover, a very patient man. For
more than an hour he let me state the case as I saw it,
and I went into it pretty thoroughly. I began by pointing
out that in every human being there are mind, emotions,
and body. So WE ARE we were, so we are, three-fold. And
so we needed means of developing and coordinating all
three parts. Such was the need. But what did we have?
We had means addressed to one part only. I mentioned
athletics as a means of physical training that provided
work for the body but neglected the mind and the emotions.
I mentioned psychoanalysis as a means of reforming the
emotions that did bring about emotional changes but
neglected the body. I mentioned science as a means of
mental training that developed the mind but left the
body and the emotions to get along as best they could.
No one of these means met the total needs of the human
being. Nor would these needs be met if a person studied
science one day, went to a psychoanalyist the next,
and played tennis the third. There ought to be, I

4

maintained, a system of training addressed to the whole
human being and so designed that all three parts, mind,
emotions, and body, were given coordinated exercise at
one and the same time. There ought to be a system of
training whose purpose was not only to enable people to
do more but to be more. So, and only so, would we
develop ourselves as fully rounded out individuals and
progress towards a larger being and a higher consciousness. Might such a system be worked out if those who
knew about the body and those who knew about the emotions
to
and those who knew about the mind got together and worked
together with this aim in view?

The scientist, as I say, was a patient man. He
followed my line of thought. He let me finish. But,
when all was said and done, he just wasn't interested.
He wasn't interested in all around development. The
prospect of "a larger being and a higher consciousness"
left him unmoved, except, perhaps, that he eyed it with
suspicion. The proposal that the specialists get to-
gether and work out an inclusive system of training, a
sort of master method, struck him, I dare say, as a bit
preposterous. At any rate it fell flat. So I began to
wonder about him. I began to wonder how he saw life,
and the purpose of life, and for what we are living.
I asked him. I asked why he was doing his work. Because
it interested him, he said. For no other reason? I
asked. None whatever, he said. He was interested in

5

science, interested in research, and that was why he
did it. And that was that. I got nothing more out of
him, but I couldn't quite accept it that there was
nothing more in him.

Interest? Splendid. Surely one had to have interest.
But is interest enough to sustain a man and give meaning
to his life as a human being? For many days thereafter
I thought about that scientist, and the more I thought
the more it seemed to me that he was typical of the
good points and the limitations of the age we lived in.
He was bent on his specialty. That bent, apparently,
satisfied him. He had narrowed his life to this, and
was no longer moved by the larger issues of man's
relation to man and to the mysteries. He was able in
his specialty. To science he made his contributions; to
the other fields of life he was indifferent. He probably
made more contributions to science in a month than I
had made to any one thing in the entire course of my
life. Directly or indirectly he was probably of more
specific service to people than I would ever be. Specific
service, yes. Many useful acts. But what use useful acts
unless they serve a grand purpose? He was able and he was
candid. He did not dress up in glowing terms of
benefitting humanity. He was linked to science and
science was something greater than himself. Through science
he was related to the vast physical universe. But, some-
how, he remained a small man. There was no largeness in

6

him, no vision, no great moving. He seemed out of touch
with the inner core of life. He seemed out of contact
with the spiritual universe that was greater than
himself, and was content to remain out of contact. He
was a heart specialist but, himself without heart.

That talk with the scientist was my last attempt
to get people to see the need of what I meant by
conscious means. Evidently it was hopeless. Either I
was unable to show the need, or people were unable to
see it, or a combination of both. So I stopped trying,
and I was back where I started. I had completed a
circuit.

Conscious means, so it would seem, were not to be
found in myself. Conscious means, plainly, were not
to be developed by group enterprise, at any rate not
here and now. But there were conscious means. I was
as certain of it as ever. Might I have been right in
the first place? Perhaps my original intuition had been
correct. Perhaps they were to be found in the world,
already worked out, already in use by some men in some
part of the earth. If not in America, in Europe? If
not in Europe, in India? These were earnest questions.
It seemed to me that all other doors had closed. It
seemed to me that this was the one door remaining
open. It seemed to me that all the factors of my
inner life and all the features of my circumstances were
pointing to a trip to Europe and to India as the next
logical inevitable step.

7

It was while I was preparing myself to accept the
need for such a step, and was casting about to see
how it was to be done, that something happened that
made the trip unnecessary. Conscious means to the goal
of Consciousness, indeed an entire system of training,
came within (easy) reach.

One day I was told that an English editor and
writer named Orage had arrived in New York to prepare
for the arrival of a man named Gurdjieff. Neither name
meant a thing to me, but I asked questions. Gurdjieff,
I learned, was the founder of an institute for the
harmonious development of man. He had once been Ouspensky's teacher. The institute was located in France. Now
he was on his way to America with a number of his
pupils. I had read Ouspensky's "Tertium Organum".
Gurdjieff, Ouspensky's teacher, coming to New York? I
became interested at once.

Shortly after hearing this news there came into
my hands a pamphlet entitled:

G. Gurdjieff's
Institute for the Harmonious
Development of Man

I began reading it. The first words made me feel
that I was close to what I sought. I read with eagerness.
I read with glow. I gave cries of joy as I came upon
statement after statement that said what I wanted to hear
said. Here it was. This was it. At last I came upon

8

something that "spoke to my condition". At last I had
found a knowledge of man that spoke, I felt, not to my
condition alone but to the condition of all people who
had any psychological understanding of themselves and
any realization of the need to be helped by those
possessing a greater understanding.

I talked of nothing else. I dreamed of nothing
else, save to become a member of the Institute and
begin actual work.

Here are passages taken from that, to me, wonder-
ful little pamphlet, that vital piece of good news:

9

...It is true that civilisation has opened up for man new paths in the domains of knowledge, science and economic life, and thereby enlarged his world perception. But, instead of raising him to a higher all-around level of development, civilisation has developed only certain sides of his nature to the detriment of other faculties, some of which it has destroyed altogether. Civilisation has robbed man of the natural advantages of his type, without at the same time providing him with what was needed for the harmonious development of a new type....

...modern man's world perception and his own mode of living are not the conscious expression of his being taken as a complete whole. Quite on the contrary, they are only the unconscious manifestation of one or another part of him....

...our psychic life, both as regards our world perception and our expression of it, fail to present a unique and indivisible whole, that is to say a whole acting both as a common repository of all our perceptions and as the source of all our expressions. On the contrary, it is divided into three separate entities, which have nothing to do with one another, but are distinct both as regards their functions and their constituent substances.

These three entirely separate sources of the intellectual, emotional and instinctive or moving life of man, each taken in the sense of the whole set of functions proper to them, are called by the system under notice the thinking, the emotional and the moving centers.

Every really conscious perception and expression of man must be the result of the simultaneous and coordinated working of all three centers, each of which must fulfil its share of the whole task, i.e. furnish its quota of associations. A complete apperception in any given case is possible only if all three centers work together. But, owing to many disturbing influences affecting modern man, the working of the psychic centers is almost disconnected. Consequently his intellectual, emotional and instinctive or moving functions fail to complete and correct one another, but, on the contrary, they travel along different roads which very rarely meet, and thus allow of very few moments of consciousness.

The failure of the three centers to co-ordinate is due to the fact that there are, as it were, three different men in a single individual, the first of whom does nothing but think, the second only

2

feels and the third only lives by his instincts and
motor functions: a logical man, an emotional man and
an automatic man.

These three men in one never understand one
another; consciously and unconsciously they frustrate
the plans, the intentions and the work of one an-
other; and yet each of them at the moment when he is
in action occupies a prepotent position and calls
himself "I".

Observation of the disunited and contradictory
action of the centers shows that man cannot be
master of himself, since it is not he who governs
his centers, and he himself does not know which of
his centers will begin to function next. People do
not notice this, because they are under the illusion
of the unity of their "I's" and of their general
psychic constitution.

... It is clear from the foregoing that the first
thing necessary to the harmonious development of man
is to train him to be able to introduce immediately
the work of his three centers into each of his psych-
ic functions. The work of the centers must be of
equal intensity at one time, and then the three main
wheels of the human machine will work smoothly with-
out obstructing one another and with the highest
efficiency, both as regards their separate functions
and as regards the level of consciousness which it
is possible for man to obtain, but which he never
reaches in ordinary circumstances.

When it is borne in mind that the degree of
development possible in each center differs with
every individual and that their contents (impress-
ions registered) are also different, we are forced
to the obvious conclusion that each person's
approach to the work must be strictly individual.

All the functional disorders to which the human
machine is liable, in the conditions of ordinary
life increase as time goes on. And this machine can
only be made to run smoothly after a long and
determined struggle with the defects that have arisen.

But man is unable to carry on this struggle un-
aided and by his own efforts of will. Nor will it
avail him to work upon himself by the various methods
of self-training and self-development now widely
current. These recommend for all and sundry general
methods and processes, such as various physical

3

exercises, exercises in meditation and concentrat-
ion, breathing, various systems of diet, fasting, etc.

Such methods, prescribed for everybody without
distinction of individual needs and abilities and
without due regard to the peculiarities and qualit-
ies of each person, are not only useless, but may
even become dangerous, for while ignorant attempts
to overhaul a defective machine may possibly bring
about ceratin changes, these will at the same time
cause other changes, which an inexperienced and
ignorant person can neither foresee nor guard against.
It should be borne in mind that the human machine
is always in mechanical equilibrium, whether running
smoothly or irregularly. Therefore any change wrought
in one direction is bound to bring about a change
in another direction, and it is absolutely essential
that this should be foreseen and allowed for.

In order to obviate unexpected and undesirable
consequences, it is necessary when working upon
oneself to conform to the discipline imposed by the
special and strictly individual methods aiming at
the development of new and particular "inertias",
by means of which the old ones may be regulated and
changed. In other words it is necessary to develop
new faculties, unattainable in ordinary life, and
which man can neither develop unaided nor by re-
course to any general method.

The adoption of strictly individualized methods
of education of this kind is possible only on the
condition that every particular of man's organic
and psychic condition as well as his previous up-
bringing and all the conditions and circumstances
of his life are taken into account. In order to
determine these particulars with absolute accuracy,
a long time is necessary. This is mainly owing to
the fact that man from his earliest days, as a
result of our modern upbringing, acquires an external
mask, that is to say an external type that has
nothing in common with his real type. During his
lifetime, this mask gradually grows thicker and
thicker, until man is unable to see himself for his
mask.

But as it is necessary, in order to establish
the individual particulars relating to each person,
to discover the features and faculties of his type,
his mask has to be destroyed, which is a question of
time. It is only then that we can proceed to study
and observe the man, that is to say his real type;
it is only then that a programme can be drawn up for
his further work....

12

Gurdjieff and his pupils arrived. Public demonstrations were given of varied aspects of the Institute's program of training. To my mind they were amazing events that satisfied and exceeded anything that I could have asked for. I was in the audience but I saw and felt what went on as if I were already one of the participants. The performances began at theater time and continued on and on as though the pupils were capable of endless endurance. By twelve o'clock most of the on-lookers had left. The demonstrations continued. I stayed to the very last, for I was endlessly fascinated and would have been happy had the program gone on through the night, every night.

There were demonstrations of gymnastic exercises. In past years I had practiced both Swedish and German gymnastics. More recently I had learned some of the exercises worked out by F. Matthias Alexander for the conscious control of the individual. Not anywhere at any time had I come upon exercises that, to my way of thinking and feeling, were comparable to these shown by Gurdjieff's pupils. These seemed to take hold of the body and literally re-create it. To see them being done made me want to do them. Nor was their appeal limited to the physical. To me they were strangely beautiful, and, in a way I could not explain, profound. No mere manual motions, these. They involved the whole man, I felt sure,

13

and were means in the service of an essentially religious
aim.

There were dances and sacred dances. From time to
time I had seen a number of the individual dancers, and
the groups and ballets that came to New York. Never had
I witnessed dancing like this. It seemed of a different
category, of another world. One dance in particular,
a dance called "The Initiation of a Priestess", im-
pressed me as being simply marvelous. It was pure
religion. I felt I would want to become a member of the
Institute if for no other reason than to learn and
take part in this dance.

There was music. It was a powerful, dynamic, deeply
moving music that touched chords of my being and seemed
to awaken an ancient memory of a music I had once known,
a life I had once lived, a world that had been mine
and that I had left and forgotten. It made me feel as
a wayfarer who was being recalled to his rightful way
and destiny. It made me feel that all of us were as
wayfarers who had gone astray and become lost, and I felt
sorrow, pity, yearning, and then I was gathered into an
irresistible march. It was a majestic march. It was a
march of men. It was a march of resurrected people
aware of their worth and dignity and the part they played
in the noble procession of the universe.

Orage gave expositions of the ideas. Gurdjieff's
total body of knowledge began to unfold. It was a most

14

extraordinary body. Man and the world were gradually
revealed in a light not to be found in modern science,
not to be found in the sacred books of the East, not
to be anywhere, so far as I knew, other than in this
Gurdjieff work. Here was food for those vitally concerned
to understand the answers to such questions as these.
What is the world? Are there cosmic laws? Are there
laws which apply to the psychological as well as to the
physical universe? What is man's relation to the world?
What is man? What are the chief components of the total
human being? What is the human norm? What are we basically
up against? What can man do? What are our possible
attainments? How can we do what it is possible for us
to do? What preliminary understandings, what initial
methods of training, are indispensable if we would make
a real beginning of the work of man?

I met Orage and had several talks with him. From
certain things he said I was pretty sure that he knew
and practiced methods in addition to those shown to the
general public at these demonstrations. I will always
remember the light that suddenly shone came from him when,
after discussing the sufficiently terrible plight of man,
he ended with these words - "Yes, but there is a way out."
That was just what I wanted to hear, in just so many
words, from him. I myself was intuitively certain there
was a way out; but I wanted it said by someone who
impressed me as having found it.

15

I watched Gurdjieff. Said I to myself - There is a man, if ever I have seen one. He seemed to have everything that could be asked of a developed human being, a teacher, a master. Knowledge, integration, many-sidedness, power - in fact he had a bit too much power for my comfort.

In addition to all the rest, there was an over-all impression. Each thing that was done was part of a whole. The exercises, the dances, the music, the ideas, each in their different ways said essentially the same thing. Each, through different approaches, impressed the same message on the heart. All together they evoked a life and a world that seemed utterly native to me. Here, without doubt, was a religion of training. Here was a discipline, an invitation to conscious experiment, a flexible and complete system, a life and a way to which I felt I could dedicate my whole mind and heart and body and strength.

One would think, then, that I was quite set to ask to become a member of the Institute without further delay. Strange as it may seem, I did no such thing. I held back. Gurdjieff's power disturbed me. I was not sure of it, and I wanted to be sure before I placed myself wholly in his hands. This, at any rate, was how I explained it to myself. Then there were other reasons which we need not go into. It is enough to say that I did something that surprised everyone except the one person who knew the intimate facts of my personal life.

16

I left New York. While the demonstrations were still going on I left New York and went to another part of the country. There some further things happened, and I was completely made ready.

The plain truth, was I realized later, was this. Despite what I had been through, despite the understandings that had come to me, there were still lodged in my psyche a deep-seated unwillingness to put my life under the direction of anyone other than myself, and a stubborn belief that I could make my way on my own, aided by such help as I would receive in the course of ordinary life. So-called independence, so-called self-reliance and belief in myself, were this strong, still. By leaving New York, by breaking the connections that had begun to be formed between myself and the Institute, I gave myself another, and, as it proved, a final try at making an extraordinary grade without having extraordinary help.

Now what would I do? Circumstances supplied a partial answer. Certain things I had to do, and wanted to do. By digging into myself I supplied the rest of the answer. An idea had expressed in one of my notes came back to me. One's highest gift should be utilized until one has attained a faculty that is higher than it. It seemed to me that if I possessed any gift at all it was that of psychological thinking and understanding, and so I proposed to exercise it, now, intensively, hoping that I might thereby develop the

17

"new and particular 'inertias' referred to in the
prospectus of the Institute. To aid the exercise of this
faculty I began writing. I took up writing again and
began work on the opening section of what I thought
might develop into a book.

Little did I know what was in store for me. Yet
signs of the coming event were sprinkled here and there
on the very pages I wrote. I give several passages
taken from what was to be the first chapter, a chapter
titled "Beliefs and Assumptions".

To say that the universe is Being and Becoming
is to state that a Thing and its Motion constitute
the universe. And this indeed is what I hold.
Creation then is that point at which Motion, as
distinguished from the Thing, begins. Return is
that point at which Motion ends in identity with
the Thing. This cycle is the universe in time.
Time begins with Motion, and ends with it. Now
the object of Being is Becoming, while Becoming
terminates in Being. And as with the universe
conceived as a whole, so with the universe divided
and diverse. There is the Thing or Essence of a
stone, and the Motion of this Thing. The purpose
of the Essence is to generate Motion, the purpose
of the Motion is to return to Essence. In the
human unit, I hold the highest self or spirit to
be the Thing or Essence, while the intellect, mind,
emotions, vitality, and body constitute its Motion.
The purpose of the Spirit is to generate these,
while the purpose of these is to return to Spirit.
But each of these may be considered as a unit. In
which case, for example, there is a Thing or
Essence of the body, and the Motion of this Thing.
The purpose of the Essence of the body is to
generate Motion, the purpose of this Motion is to
return to its Essence.

I believe that the universe is one in Essence.
I necessarily believe that I am of this Essence,
that somewhere within me there is Being, uncondition-
ed, and that my present sense of obstructive
multiplicity is due to some cause resident within
the human constitution, but I do not know this

18

cause. I believe that when this cause is removed, I
shall then be conscious of unconditioned oneness.
I believe that an adequate discipline in elimination will
remove this cause. I believe, then, that
through an adequate discipline I - not the I and
Is that I am now aware of, but the highest potential
I - shall attain identity.

I assume that identity is the predetermined and
highest goal of the human unit. I attempt no
reason for the present separation and diversity.
I do assume, however, that I, in so far as I am
aware of being separate and containing motion, have
been flung off, and that I, in so far as I am an
expanding consciousness, shall return. I assume
therefore a practical reality within myself, as I
am now aware of myself, a practical reality within
others as they are now aware of themselves, and a
practical reality in the universe as we severally
are conscious of it. Hence, though I believe in an
essential oneness, I assume the practical reality
of becoming and the diverse, and I admit the need
of those distinctions that I shall now name and
as will be made in the body of this work. But I
recognize one prime need only, viz. to eliminate,
that is, to purify, in order to attain identity.
Consequently everything I do and name must be done
and named in terms of this need.

I make a distinction between the subject and
the object, holding that neither the one nor the
other can be unconditionally known while there is
such a distinction. But their contact may yield
a conditioned knowledge: an intellectual, emotional,
perceptual knowledge, in which case the intellect
or emotions or perceptions are purified, and
purification is reciprocal. On the other hand, their
contact may yield confusion, and the confusion will
be reciprocal.

I assume that all contacts and experiences
must purify, or deposit imperfections. A purity
will tend to extend and intensify itself. An
imperfection will tend to extend and intensify
itself. I hold joy yo attend the process of
purification, while pain or sorrow attends the
contrary process.

Now if man were free to select, he would
select those experiences that purified, because
of their joy. But man is not free to select, and he
is in greater measure confused. (But isn't man
free to select, and isn't just this the crux of
the whole issue? Man can. Out of this canness arises

19

our chief trouble and our great hope.) I do not
attempt the reason for his determination or for
his confusion.

I hold that man does not meet the world, that
is, himself, in purity. He does not meet his
experience in this way. Man is bound by what is
less than himself. To free himself of this binding
is his essential concern. I hold that the generality
of men are not conscious of this binding, for they
assume this very limitation, or elements of it, to
be themselves. With the elimination of this assump-
tion, and the awareness of this binding, I hold
that man's higher conscious life begins. For then
it is seen that neither the senses, nor the emotions,
nor the mind, nor the intellect, nor the sum of
these faculties constitute the Self, but that the
Self is bound by these things. For then it is also
seen that none of these things are ends, that life
as we are now aware of it is not an end.

In the human unit I make distinctions between
the body, the vitality, the emotions, mind,
intellect, and spirit. To the body, the external
world is an object. To the vitality, the body and
the external world are objects. To the emotions,
the vitality, the body and the external world are
objects. And so with the mind, intellect, and
spirit. The rest of the human unit is an object
to the spirit.

It is clear that the body, if left to itself,
would disintegrate, that is, become part of the
external world. The body, then, is bound into the
human unit by a factor not contained in it. Each
sub-unit of the human unit tends to pursue its
separate way, and evolution. Factors not contained
in them unify them into the whole. Thus the human
unit is seen to contain a series of cross-pulls.
The results of these cross-pulls determine
whether the man is moving towards purity or
impurity, the spirit or the body, the godhead or
the external world.

While I believe that the godhead and the
external world are essentially one, I am forced
to make a working distinction between them. For
the same reason I distinguish between the spirit
and the body, the spirit being the highest
factor in the human unit because it and the god-
head are identical, the body being the lowest
factor because it and the godhead are most separat-
ed. Each sub-unit of the total man should be
strictly subjected to the needs of the sub-units

20

that are higher than it. The spirit should control
the whole. It should control what it has set in
motion.

Since I posit identity as the predetermined
and highest goal of the human unit, I must assume
the preservation of the human unit, of some factor
of this unit, until that goal has been attained.
But I have seen many die, and I think that the
generality of men die without having reached it.
Consequently I believe in immortality, in a
continuation of the unit, or some factor of it,
until identity.

I assume that the godhead is the end, I assume
that it is the beginning, hence I hold that beginn-
ing and end are one.

With this, my notation of general assumptions
and beliefs closes. But beliefs and assumptions
constitute this entire work, for the only thing
that can replace these is unconditional knowledge,
which I do not possess.