Psychology of Man's Possible Evolution: Notes on the Decision to Work

1973 Vintage Books; pp. 115-119 (omitted from 1981 edition of same)

Think very seriously before you decide to work on yourself with the idea of changing yourself, that is, to work with the definite aim to become conscious and to develop the connection with higher centers. This work admits of no compromise and it requires a great amount of self-discipline and readiness to obey all rules and particularly direct instructions.

Think very seriously: are you really ready and willing to obey, and do you fully understand the necessity for it? There is no going back. If you agree and then go back, you will lose everything that you have acquired up to that time, and you will lose more really, because all that you acquired will turn into something wrong in you. There is no remedy against this.

Understanding of the necessity for obeying rules and direct instructions must be based on the realization of your mechanicalness and your helplessness. If this realization is not strong enough, you had better wait and occupy yourself with ordinary work: study of the system, work in groups, etc. If you do this work sincerely and remember all rules, it will bring you to the realization of your state and your needs. But you must not delay too long. If you want to come to real work you must hurry. You must understand that the opportunity that exists today may not come to your way again. You may lose all your chances by hesitating and waiting too long.

If you decide to work and accept all that comes in the work, you must learn to think quickly. If you are offered a task you must answer at once that you accept it. If you hesitate or take time to answer, the offer of the task will be withdrawn and it will not be repeated. You may be given time before actually doing what you were told to do, but you must accept the task at once. An attempt to talk things over, an ironical, suspicious, or negative attitude, fear, or lack of confidence, these will make the task impossible at once. If you feel hesitation about the task offered to you, think about your mechanicalness, about your self-will---but think quickly. You can do nothing against your weak sides by yourself. The tasks offered to you have the aim to help you. If you hesitate or refuse them, you refuse help. This must be quite clear in your mind.

The realization of your helplessness and your deep sleep must be permanent in you. You can strengthen it by constantly reminding yourself of your nothingness, of your meanness, of your weakness of all possible sorts. You have absolutely nothing to be proud of. You have nothing to base your judgment on. You can see, if you are sincere with yourself, all the blunders and all the mistakes which you made when you tried to act by yourself. You cannot think rightly. You cannot feel rightly. You need constant help. And you can have it. But you must pay for it---at least, by not arguing.

You have to do gigantic work if you want to become different. How can you ever hope to get anything if you hesitate and argue on the first steps, or don't even realize the necessity for help, or become suspicious and negative?

If you want to work seriously you have to conquer many things in yourself. You cannot carry with yourself your prejudices, your fixed opinions, your personal identifications or animosities.

But at the same time try to understand that personality is not always wrong. Personality can even help in the work, but personality can be very dangerous too, if it is not cleared by the struggle with identification and by the realization of your mechanicalness and your weakness.

Try to understand the necessity for 'deliberate suffering' and 'conscious effort.' These are the only two things that can change you and bring you to your aim.

'Deliberate suffering' does not mean necessary suffering inflicted on you by yourself. It means attitude towards suffering. Suffering may come as a result of your feelings, thoughts, and actions connected with your task; it may come by itself as a result of your own faults or as a result of other people's actions, attitudes, or feelings. But what is important is your attitude towards it. It becomes deliberate if you don't rebel against it, if you don't try to avoid it, if you don't accuse anybody, if you accept it as a necessary part of your work at the moment and as a means for attaining your aim.

'Conscious effort' is the effort based on understanding; understanding of its necessity first of all, and understanding of the causes which make it necessary. The chief cause for conscious effort is your need for breaking the walls of mechanicalness, of self-will and lack of self-remembering, which constitute your being at present.

In order to understand better the necessity for accepting tasks given to you without hesitation, the necessity for 'deliberate suffering' and 'conscious effort,' think about ideas which brought you to the work, think about the first realization of your mechanicalness and the first realization that you know nothing. In the beginning you realized this and you came for help, but now you doubt whether you must really do as you are told. And you try to find ways to evade it, to stand on your own judgment and on your own understanding. You understood clearly once, that your judgment and your understanding are false and weak, but now you try to keep them again. You don't want to give them up. Well, you can keep them, but you must understand that with them you will keep all that is false and weak in yourself. There are no half measures. You must decide: do you want to work or not?