volume 3 of the Psychological Commentaries
- G. once said: “You are all different kinds of machines—some are typewriters, some are sewing-machines, some are mincing-machines, and so on.” (780, 22 September 1945, 182nd commentary)
- “On one occasion G. was talking about decisions. At that time I happened to make a note about what he said which I will now give you in the exact words that I have recorded. He said: “You cannot make a decision from one ‘I’. For example, you make a small decision not to smoke, while you are sitting quietly. The next moment you get up and light a cigarette. When you are not in Moving Centre—that is, not moving about—you may make a decision that instantly is forgotten when you begin to move. This is making a decision from a small ‘I’, let us say, in the Intellectual Centre.” G. said that these decisions made in small ‘I’s when, as it were, you are in a certain passing state of mind, are quite useless. He added: “They are not quite useless because they shew you how difficult it is to make a real decision. Such decisions shew us how we cannot control our machines—namely, all our centres.” …
“G. went on to speak about decisions in the following terms that I will give you just as he said them: “The ordinary decisions we make are mechanical and these are quite different from conscious decisions. A man tries to alter one thing without seeing how it is connected with other things. This means that he is not properly conscious and so he makes a mechanical decision.”
“Then G. began talking about what he called binaries (the word binary comes from the Latin binarius=consisting of two). He gave us an example of a binary: necessary and unnecessary —these are opposites. He said that a decision in the Work-sense does not lie in the binaries but in the Neutralizing Force or Third Force that turns a binary into a ternary (meaning ‘threefold’ or a ‘triad’— from Latin ternarius). He said that our life is led in binaries—that is, opposites. This is called the Law of the Pendulum under which we are mechanical.”
“He said: “You have a dispute with yourself between Yes or No. This binary situation in yourself must be transformed by Third Force and turned into a ternary or triad. In general Man, since he does not remember himself and so has not got Third Force in his life, is always swinging between the opposites—that is, his life is always in binaries which are irreconcilable. This struggle between Yes or No is not solved by going either with Yes or with No. A third factor has to be found which turns these binaries into a triad or ternary which no longer resembles the situation that was produced by the state of being in which we can only describe as Yes and No. You will remember Third Force unites the opposites and contains something of them both and yet is neither of them. When the mind finds something between Yes and No a decision can be made:.”
In G.’s words, the binary becomes ternary—that is to say, the opposites become included in the triad and from this a result can take place which leads to what he called a quaternary (which comes from the Latin quaternarius = consisting of four). This quaternary is active. It consists in first of all a union of the binaries or opposites through the Third Force, so making a ternary and leading to a result which makes it a quaternary. Through this result, which in a sense can be called active, as was said, a further development can take place. G. said: “Every dispute with oneself should eventually lead to a new state of oneself. It should not give rise to a habitual or accustomed side. It leads to a new state via a ternary, which leads on to a quaternary. As long as the binary state remains, the old state, the former state, will remain, and the person will simply swing back to the old position. The path leading to the knowledge of unity consists first of all in a struggle of Yes or No—that is, a binary state, to begin with —but it should lead to decision—that is, to a ternary state which is neither Yes nor No—and this gives a real result—i.e. it leads to a quaternary. A struggle of Yes-No is not in itself soluble. A third factor must be found whereby Yes and No become combined by a Third Force into something quite different from Yes or No. This forms a ternary and this forms the result called a quaternary.”
“G. said that the whole secret lies in a man’s remembering himself —that is, giving himself the First Conscious Shock. He said that an ordinary man is incapable of growing or of doing in any real sense because he lacks this Third Force which is produced by this First Conscious Shock of Self-Remembering. “There is,” he said, “a kind of gap in Man which he should fill himself and which unless he fills it leads to continuing in binaries—that is, he continues in the opposites.”
On another occasion G. said: “At this point comes in the individual as distinct from mechanical man. What is the most important thing?” he once asked us. He said: “The most important thing is to realize that we do not remember ourselves, and that for this reason we do not actually exist as individuals in our experience.” …
“This state of Self-Remembering,” he said many times, “is a state that Man was born to possess but he has lost it. A man is born with the power to remember himself but as he is brought up amongst sleeping people—that is, amongst people who do not remember themselves—he soon loses this power. He falls asleep himself through the hypnotism of other sleeping people amongst whom he grows up, and for this reason this Work must start with talking about the state that Man must reach which is his birthright. That is why I say to you all that you must practise Self-Remembering.”
“G. used often to talk about this and I will give you in so many words what he said. He said that esoteric teaching at one time used to be only necessary in regard to the Second Conscious Shock, for Man is not born with the possibility of giving himself this shock and cannot give it to himself unless he is taught how to do it, but that now owing to the fact that Man has fallen so much asleep he has to be taught how to give himself the shock of Self-Remembering before anything can be done to transform him.”
“G. used to talk a great deal about how Man has lost this state given to him at birth and he used to point to the modern world and say in many different ways that if we want to study how Man has lost this state of Self-Remembering and what consequences have arisen from this loss of Consciousness we have only to look round and see what is happening in this world, this world in which millions of people are behaving in a way that can lead to no solution and can only get worse and worse. “No one,” he said, “now remembers himself or even thinks it is necessary, and for this reason there has been a drop in the level of Consciousness, and this level is descending more and more every day and as a consequence people are becoming more and more governed by external circumstances and more and more helpless to remedy their troubles.” …
“Now if we were in a state of Self-Remembering we should know how to make decisions, but when we are asleep in ourselves, when we are identified and worried about ourselves, we make decisions from binaries, as G. called them—from the opposites. G. said: “The struggle between Yes and No is not solved by Yes or No—i.e. the opposites or binaries.” If we were always in a state of Self-Remembering, always in the third state of Consciousness, our decisions would be real ones that would lead to a real result which G. called leading to a quaternary.” (786-788, 29 September 1945, 183rd commentary)