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It is impossible to do anything. A man must first of all understand certain
things. He has thousands of false ideas and
false conceptions, chiefly about himself, and he must get rid of some before
beginning to acquire anything new. Otherwise the new will be built on a wrong
foundation and the result will be worse than before.
All people think that they can do, all people want to do,
and the first question all people ask is what they are to do.
But actually nobody does anything and nobody can do anything.
This is the first thing that must be understood. Everything happens. All that befalls a man,
all that is done by him, all that comes from
him: all this happens.
And it happens in exactly the same way as rain falls as a result
of a change in the temperature in the higher regions
of the atmosphere or the surrounding clouds, as snow melts under the rays of the sun,
as dust rises with the wind.
Man is a machine. All his deeds, actions, words,
thoughts, feelings, convictions, opinions, and habits are the
results of external influences, external impressions. Out of himself a man cannot produce a single
thought, a single action. Everything he says, does, thinks, feels: all
this happens. Man cannot discover anything, invent anything.
It all happens.
To establish this fact for oneself, to understand it,
to be convinced of its truth, meaning getting rid of a thousand illusions
about man, about his being creative and consciously organizing
his own life, and so on. There is nothing of this kind.
Everything happens. Popular movements, wars, revolutions,
changes of government, all this happens.
And it happens in exactly the same way as everything happens
in the life of individual man. Man is born, lives, dies, builds houses, writes
books, not as he wants to, but as it happens.
Everything happens. Man does not love, hate, desire
all this happens.
It is possible to stop being a machine, but for that it is necessary
first of all to know the machine. A machine, a real
machine, does not know itself and cannot know itself.
When a machine knows itself it is then no longer a machine,
at least, not such a machine as it was before. It already
begins to be responsible for its actions.
People are machines. Machines have to be blind and unconscious, they cannot be otherwise,
and all their actions have to correspond to their nature. Everything
happens. No one does anything. 'Progress' and 'civilization'
in the real meaning of these words, can appear only as the result of conscious
efforts.
They cannot appear as the result of unconscious mechanical actions.
And what conscious effort can there be in machines?
And if one machine is unconscious, then a hundred machines are unconscious,
and so are a thousand machines, or a hundred thousand, or a million.
And the unconscious activity of a million machines must
necessarily result in destruction and extermination. It is precisely in unconscious
involuntary manifestations that all evil lies. You do not yet understand and cannot
imagine all the results of this evil. But the time will come when you will understand.
It is the greatest mistake, to think that man is always one and the same.
A man is never the same for long.
He is continually changing. He seldom remains the
same even for half an hour and all of you think he is Ivan.
You know that Ivan cannot do a certain thing.
He cannot tell a lie for instance. Then you find he has told a lie and you are
surprised he could have done so. And, indeed, Ivan cannot
lie; it is Nicholas who lied.
And when the opportunity presents itself Nicholas cannot
help lying.
You will be astonished when you realize what a multitude
of these Ivans and Nicholases live in one man.
If you learn to observe them there is no need to go to a cinema.
I know that not only separate organs, but every part
of the body having a separate function has a separate consciousness.
The right hand has one consciousness and the left hand another.
These consciousnesses also exist but they are
comparatively harmless. Each of them knows its own place and its own
business.
The hands know they must work; the feet know they must walk.
But these Ivans, Peters, and Nicholases are different.
They all call themselves 'I'.
That is, they consider themselves masters and none wants to recognize
another. Each of them is caliph for an hour,
does what he likes regardless of everything, and, later on, the others have to pay for
it.
And there is no order among them whatever. Whoever gets the upper hand is master.
He whips everyone on all sides and takes heed of nothing.
But the next moment another seizes the whip and beats him.
And so it goes on all one's life.