“The state in which we find ourselves is deep Darkness. We are (unfortunately) miserable, programmed robots. Now is the time to understand these things; we must begin to OBSERVE OURSELVES PSYCHOLOGICALLY.

Above all, we must admit that we have a Particular Psychology. People easily accept that they have a physical body that they can touch, but the majority do not accept the fact that they have their own Particular Psychology, because they can not see it.

The Sensual Mind can not see one’s Intimate Psychology. But when someone really accepts that they have a particular Psychology, then they can begin to observe themselves. As they begin to observe, then this gives them hope, and in fact they become different from others.

Someone who is observing themselves can, unquestionably, change if they want to. But until we start to see ourselves, we will continue with the consciousness asleep, in deep Darkness, and this is unfortunate…

Practical life is wonderful: We can observe our attitudes (what are they?) There is an intimate relationship between ATTITUDES AND EVENTS. An event, however serious, would be wonderful if we assume a positive attitude. A circumstance, however magnificent it is, could turn negative and detrimental, if we assume a mistaken attitude.

The attitude that we assume at each instant is definitive. How do we conduct ourselves, for example, with the employee of a convenience store, of a hardware store, of a clothing store? In what way? Maybe we get upset because they did not bring the exact merchandise we ask for; or because they are dull (are at least we consider them to be so); or because they do not comprehend us, and then we look at them angrily, right? And we scold them.

We would like to change them, when in fact it is us who must change, we are the insolent or arrogant ones. Possibly we are conceited; and that’s why we look at the shopkeeper or employee of a store in such a way. Let us not fill ourselves with conceit, because this defect is the worst enemy of the dissolution of the psychic aggregates.”

He has all sorts of wrong ideas about himself. [1] First of all, he does not realize that he actually is a machine. What does it mean that the human being is a machine? It means that he has no independent movements, inside or outside of himself. He is a machine which is brought into motion by external influences and external impacts.

This is clear if we consider that people react mechanically when faced with the diverse circumstances of life… When flattered, they smile; when humiliated, they suffer. They insult if insulted; they hurt if they are hurt. They are never free: their fellow human beings have the power to drive them from happiness to sadness, from hope to despair.

Each of these persons is similar to a musical instrument upon which each of their fellow human beings can play whatever tune they wish… All their movements, actions, words, ideas, emotions, moods, and thoughts are produced by external influences. By himself, the human being is just like a robot with a certain store of memories from previous experiences, and with a certain amount of reserved energy.

We must understand that the human being can do nothing in this state. But he does not realize this and ascribes to himself the capacity to ‘do’. [2] This is the second wrong thing that the human being ascribes to himself and which must be understood very clearly: The undeveloped human being cannot do anything. Everything that human beings think they do, really just happens to them.

We say that a person thinks, reads, writes, loves, hates, starts wars, fights, and so on. Actually, all this happens . The human being cannot move, think, or speak of their own accord. They are a marionette or puppet pulled here and there by invisible strings. What happened to them yesterday happens to them today, and will happen to them again tomorrow…

All things repeat themselves in their life; they say the same things, do the same things and complain about the same things…

If a person understands this, then they can learn more about themselves, and, possibly, then things may begin to change for them. But if they cannot realize and understand their utter mechanicity, or if they do not wish to accept it as a fact, then they can learn nothing more, and things cannot change for them. The human being is a machine, but a very peculiar machine.”

In this system of teaching, the human being is not regarded as a unity. The human being’s physical body is a unity and works as an organized whole unless it is sick. But the human being’s inner life is not a unity and has no organization and does not work harmoniously as a whole.

In regard to his/her internal state, the human being is a multiplicity, and from one angle in this teaching, this inner multiplicity is spoken of in terms of “I’s” or egos in a person. One moment he/she is one, another moment he/she is another, the third moment he/she is a third, and so on, almost without an end. He/She does not posses a defined individuality and this lack of Psychological unity is the cause of many difficulties.

The illusion of unity or oneness is created in them:
    1. by the sensation of one physical body,
    2. by his or her name, which in normal cases always remains the same,
    3. and, by a number of mechanical habits which are implanted in them by education or acquired by imitation.

Having always the same physical sensations, hearing always the same name and noticing in themselves the same habits and inclinations they had before: they believe themselves to always be the same. In reality there is no oneness in the human being and there is no controlling center, no permanent “I” or Ego. From a psychological point of view, he/she is continuously changing…”

“This is the general picture of him: Every thought, every feeling, every sensation, every desire, every like and every dislike is an “I” or ego. It is a great mistake to suppose that oneself or others have one permanent unchanging ‘I’ —or ego— in them. To think that a person named Louis is always Louis is like a bad joke… That individual called Louis has other “I’s”, other “egos” in himself, who, in different moments, express themselves through the personality.

A person is never the same for long. He is continually changing. But we imagine that if a person is called James then he is always James. And this is quite untrue. This person whom we call James has in him other “I’s”, other egos, which take charge of him at different moments, and although perhaps James does not like telling lies, another ‘I’ or ego in him—let us call it Peter—likes to lie and so on.

A multitude of different people live in each of us. These are all the different “I’s” belonging to the personality, which it is necessary to observe, and try to get to know, otherwise no self-knowledge is possible —that is, if one really seeks self-knowledge and not invention and imagination or fantasy about oneself.

We are all nothing but a crowd of different people, some better and some worse, and each of these people —each of these “I’s” in us— takes charge of us (at particular moments) and makes us do what it wants and say what it wishes and feel and think as it feels and thinks. No person is the same in a continuous way, because many people, many “I’s” live inside each person.

These “I’s” are not necessarily connected together but each of them depends on the change in external circumstances, and on the change of impressions. Some of them mechanically follow another or some others, some appear always accompanied by others, and there are certain groups of “I’s” which are naturally connected (we will speak about these groups later).

Now, we must try to understand that there are groups of “I’s” connected only by associations, memories, or quite imaginary similarities. Each of these “I’s” or egos represent (at every given moment) a very small part of our “self” “mind,” or “consciousness,” but each of them wants itself to represent the whole.

When a human being says “I”, it sounds as if he meant the whole of himself, but really (even when he himself thinks that he means it), it is only a passing thought, a passing mood, or passing desire. In an hour’s time he may completely forget it, and with the same conviction express an opposite opinion, opposite view, opposite interests. The worst of it is that the human being does not remember nor realize this. In most cases he believes in the last “I” which expressed itself through him, as long as it lasts: that is, as long as another “I” (sometimes quite unconnected with the preceding one) does not express its opinion or its desire louder than the first.”

“You will be astonished when you realize that a multitude of these Louis(s), James(s) and Peters live in one human being. If you learn to observe them there is no need to go to a movie. But even though these Louis(s) and James(s) are all different: they all still call themselves “I”. That is, they consider themselves masters and none wants to recognize another.

Each of them is the President or C.E.O. for an hour or 20 minutes, doing what it likes regardless of anything else, and, later on, the others have to pay for it. And there is no order among them whatsoever. Whoever gets the upper hand is master. And then whips everyone on all sides and doesn’t care about anyone else. But the next moment another “I” or ‘ego’ seizes the whip and beats the previous one. And so it goes on all one’s life.

Imagine a country where everyone can be king for 5 or 10 minutes and that they do just whatever they like with the whole kingdom during this time. That is our life.”

If a person were a unity instead of being a multiplicity, then they would have true individuality. They would be one and so would have one will. But, the human being such as we know him, the ‘human-machine’, the person who cannot ‘do’, and with whom and through whom everything ‘happens’, does not have a permanent and single “I”. His “I” changes as quickly as his thoughts, feelings, and moods, and he makes a profound mistake in considering himself always one and the same person; in reality he is always a different person, not the one he was a moment ago. The human being has no permanent and unchangeable “I”.

Every thought, every mood, every desire, every sensation, says “I”. And in each case it seems to be taken for granted that this “I” belongs to the Whole, to the whole person, and that a thought, a desire, or an aversion is expressed by this Whole. In actual fact there is no foundation whatsoever for this assumption. The human being’s every thought and desire appears and lives quite separately and independently of the Whole. But the Whole never expresses itself, for the simple reason that it exists, as such, only physically as a thing, and in the abstract as a concept.

The human being has no individual “I”. But there are, instead, hundreds and thousands of separate small “I’s”, very often entirely unknown to one another, never coming into contact, or even hostile to each other, mutually exclusive and incompatible.

Each minute, each moment, the human being is saying or thinking “I” and each time his “I” is different. Just now it was a thought, now it is a desire, now a sensation, now another thought, and so on, endlessly. The human being is a plurality. His name is legion.”

“The alternation of “I’s”, their continual obvious struggle for supremacy, is controlled by accidental external influences. Warmth, sunshine, fine weather, immediately call up a whole group of “I’s”. Cold, fog, rain, call up another group of “I’s”, other associations, other feelings, other actions. There is nothing in the human being that is able to control this change of “I’s”, mainly because the human being does not notice, or know of it; he lives always in the last “I”.

Some “I’s”, of course, are stronger than others… They have been created by the strength of circumstances, of mechanical external stimuli, of accidents, etc. Education, imitation, reading, the hypnotism of religion, caste, and traditions, or the glamour of new slogans, create very strong “I’s” in the human being’s personality, which dominate whole series of other, weaker, “I’s”.

The human being has no individuality. He has no single, big “I”. The human being is divided into a multiplicity of small “I’s”. And each separate small “I” is able to call itself by the name of the Whole, and even to act in the name of the Whole, to agree or disagree, to give promises, to make decisions, with which another “I” or the Whole will have to deal with.

This explains why people so often make decisions and so seldom carry them out. A person decides to get up early starting the following day. One “I”, or a group of “I’s”, decide this. But getting up is the business of another “I” who entirely disagrees with the decision and may even know absolutely nothing about it. Of course the person will again go on sleeping in the morning and in the evening he will again decide to get up early.

In some cases this may assume very unpleasant consequences for a person. A small accidental “I” may promise something, not to itself, but to someone else at a certain moment simply out of vanity or for amusement. Then it disappears, but the human being, that is, the whole combination of other “I’s” who are quite innocent of this promise, may have to pay for it all their life.

This is the tragedy of the human being that any small “I” has the right to sign checks and promissory notes and the human being (that is, the Whole) has to meet or fulfill them. People’s whole lives often consist in paying off the promissory notes of small accidental or temporary “I’s”.”

The comparison of the human being to a house awaiting the arrival of the master is frequently met with in Eastern teachings which have preserved traces of ancient knowledge, and, as we know, the subject appears under various forms in many of the parables in the Gospels. In order to change our present situation (and address this multiplicity) we must have a very great longing for liberation and be willing to sacrifice everything, to risk everything, for the sake of this liberation.”

“It is necessary to understand the structure of the human machine. One of the greatest errors that we have about ourselves is that we think we have one mind. We call the functions of this mind ‘conscious’; everything that does not enter this mind we call ‘unconscious’ or ‘subconscious’. So, let’s understand why this is one of our principle errors.

Of the conscious and the unconscious we will speak later. At this moment we want to explain to you that the activity of the human machine, that is, of the physical body, is controlled, not by one, but by several minds, entirely independent of each other, having separate functions and separate spheres in which they manifest themselves. This must be understood first of all, because unless this is understood nothing else can be understood.

The most critical aspect of all of this is the lack of Psychological organization in the intimate depths of each person. Certainly under these conditions, the internal lives of people do not exist as a completely harmonious working unity. The Humanoid, in regards to his internal state, is a psychological multiplicity, a sum of “I’s”.

The greatest error of cheap Pseudo-Esotericism and Pseudo-Occultism is to assume that others or that we (ourselves) have or possess a permanent and immutable “I”, without a beginning and an end… If for at least an instant, those who think in the way previously described were to awaken their consciousness, they would then clearly see for themselves that the rational humanoid is never the same for very long…

The intellectual mammal, from a psychological point of view, is continuously changing… Therefore, to assume that someone possesses a permanent and immutable “I” is equivalent to committing an abuse against others and against oneself… Thus, many people (many “I’s” or egos) live inside each person. Any awakened or conscious person can, in a direct way, verify this by themselves…”

“When a person begins to observe themselves from the angle that they are not one but many, then they begin to work on their being. We cannot do this if we remain under the conviction that we are one, for then we will not be able to separate ourselves from ourselves, since we will take everything in ourselves: every thought, mood, feeling, impulse, desire, emotion, and so on, as ourselves —that is, as ‘I’, as the Whole.

But if we begin to observe ourselves, we will then, at that moment, become two — an observing side and an observed side (the Observer and Observed). And unless we divide ourselves in this way and struggle to make this division more and more distinct, we will never be able to shift from where we are, because, always taking everything that takes place in us as ourselves, we will say “I” to it all and so everything will then be “I” in us, and by identifying ourselves with everything that happens in ourselves, and taking it all as “I”, we will make it impossible to change anything, since everything will hide itself behind this illusion of “I” and continue to live in us.

In fact, the whole crowd of people in a man, the crowd of separate “I’s” in him —both the useful and useless— will have, as it were, equal rights and be equally protected by that person because he will be quite unable to distinguish them from one another since he takes them all as himself (as who and what he is). This is merely one way of explaining the situation within a person who remains convinced that he is one.”

“Now a person cannot begin to change until they are able (as the result of self-observation) to say: “This is an ego” or “this is an ‘I'”. As soon as a person can begin to say this internally to something they observe in themselves, then they begin to separate it from themselves. That is, they begin to take the feeling of “I” or Self out of it and the result is that, eventually, and often only after a struggle (including further interior work), what they have observed can be comprehended and eliminated.

But this is impossible if a man thinks that what he has observed is himself, then no separation will be possible and he will remain united with what he has observed, by taking it as “I” —that is, as himself— instead of taking it as an “I” or an ‘ego’ in him. When a person is thinking he believes that it is himself who is thinking. But our thoughts come at random, unless we are thinking deeply and with attention, which is very rare. Almost all of the thoughts that pass across our minds come from different “I’s” or “egos” in us.

Let us suppose a man notices that he is having negative thoughts about the work or about a person or something that has happened, etc. Let us suppose that he takes these thoughts as his own —as himself, that is, as “I”— and let us also suppose that he feels some discomfort about them. He says to himself: “I must really not think in this way.” This may have some result or it may not. But the point is that he is making a mistake —namely, the mistake of taking all that happens within him as himself. If he observes himself rightly, he notices these thoughts not as himself but as coming from a negative “I” in him, which perhaps he knows something about already.

Let us suppose he knows this “I” in him fairly well. He recognizes at once that this “I” is talking in him and communicating its thoughts to him through the intellectual center and stirring up at the same time a particular kind of negative emotion. He does not for a moment take this negative “I” as himself but sees it as something in him, apart from himself.

But if he goes to sleep in himself —that is, if he ceases to be conscious of what is going on in him and which “I’s” are close to him— then he falls under its power and, becoming identified with it, imagines that it is he himself who is thinking in that way. By doing this, he strengthens the power of this negative “I” over him —because whatever we identify with immediately has power over us, and the more often we identify with something, the more we are slaves to it.”

“The illusion, therefore, that the human being has about himself (that he is one) refers to a possibility. The human being can attain unity of being. He can reach true individuality. But it is precisely this illusion (the illusion that he already has real individuality) that stands, first of all, in the way of man’s attainment of this possibility.

As long as a person imagines he has something, he will not seek for it. Why should a man strive for something that he has never doubted for a moment that he possesses already? This is one of the effects of imagination or fantasy, it can fill up what is lacking or makes it appear that we are like this, or like that, when actually we are the reverse.

In this work it is constantly said that we must struggle with mechanical imagination or fantasy and you must understand that this refers also to imagination about ourselves. It is necessary to struggle with our mechanical imagination or fantasy about ourselves, not only because it puts us into false experiences, artificial emotions and often ridiculous situations, but because it stops all possibility of inner growth. And it is easy now to see why this is so from what has been said already. Since if we imagine that we already have qualities of being that we are far from possessing, then we can never expect to have them. But our imagination or fantasy will easily supply what is missing (meaning it will fill in the gap).

In fact, we will never know that we lack anything in regard to ourselves —that is, in regard to the quality of our being— and we will think that the only things that we lack are appreciation, fame, money, opportunity or some other external thing, but that in regard to ourselves (to our internal work) [we will believe] nothing is seriously lacking.

This is the power that illusion has and for this reason it is said, in the work-parable of the sheep and the magicians, that man is hypnotized through his mechanical imagination and is under the illusion that he is a lion or an eagle when he is really a sheep; and at the same time, as a sheep he has the power of escaping from the magicians, who are too lazy to build fences to shut him in.”

“What we have to understand from all of this is that an illusion is something very real and definite in its effects. The imagination is not merely nothing—”nothing but imagination”, as is sometimes said. It is something very powerful indeed.

Mechanical imagination or fantasy is an actual force acting universally on mankind and keeping the human being in a state of psychological sleep, whether he is so-called ‘primitive’ or ‘civilized’. And until a person begins to know what it is to remember himself —that is, to reach up to the third state of consciousness— the force that manifests itself as imagination or fantasy in the two lower states of consciousness acts against him.

This is because, as we have seen, the human being imagines he is one and due to this illusion he cannot shift from where he is in himself.”

“Everyone, every person is, in themselves, at a certain stage of themselves, and no one can shift from this stage where he or she is in themselves unless they see (very distinctly for themselves) that they are not one and the same person, but many different people and that to continue to think they are one is an illusion.

This realization, this inner perception, changes a person’s feeling of themselves, of what a person is. It changes, or begins to change, one’s feeling of “Self”, or feeling of “Myself”. As long as a person lives in the illusion that he or she is one, then they have a wrong feeling of “I” or wrong feeling about the Self.

But they do not know this: nor do they know that because of it not only is their life all wrong, and their interaction with others all wrong, but their own personal development is made impossible. Because a man cannot change as long as he ascribes to himself oneness of being, for then everything in him is himself. He will ascribe to himself everything good or bad in himself. He will be responsible for every thought and for every mood, by taking everything in himself as himself, because if he believes that everything he thinks and does and says, he thinks and does and says from himself, then it will be his own because he makes it all his own by ascribing it all to himself.

The illusion that he is always one and the same person and that he is fully conscious of everything, and that he has willpower and so is in control of himself, will totally blind him to the fact that he is not the conscious origin of all that he thinks, feels, says and does, etc. Self-observation will show him that he has practically no control of his thoughts and cannot even stop thinking if he tries to do so and that thoughts of every kind come and go in his mind whether he wishes them or not. And it is the same with his feelings and with his moods, and his words and his actions.

Unless he can admit that he is not fully conscious of all he says and does and not in full control of his thoughts and moods and feelings and not always one and the same person, all this will remain hidden, concealed from him by the power of his own imagination (his illusion of “Self”), and the whole sense of himself, his whole sense of “I”, and, thus, his relationship to his inner states, will be false.

But if a person, through practical and sincere self-observation, no longer believes that he or she is one and no longer ascribes to this imagined one person all that exists and all that enters in his or her inner world, then that person begins to make it possible to change themselves. On the other hand, when a person sees that he or she has no right to think of themselves as one and that very many different people (and even some very unpleasant ones) exist in them and that they are by no means fully conscious and certainly has no individual will, although this goes against their vanity and is painful to their pride, it is the starting-point of changing their being.”

“Whosoever takes all their psychological processes as the functioning of a Unique, Individual and Permanent “I” is identified with all their errors, they have them so tied to themselves that they have lost the capacity to separate them from their Psyche.”