Thread by @YUKOWAS

Q. What are the essential features of esotericism?
A. It is difficult to speak about essential features, because it depends on how you take this word. The word 'esoteric' means inner. Esotericism includes in itself the idea of the existence of an inner circle of humanity.

You remember how humanity was described as consisting of four circles —esoteric, mesoteric and exoteric, which constitute the inner circle, and the outer circle in which we live. The idea of esotericism implies transmission of knowledge;

it presumes the existence of a group of people to whom a certain knowledge belongs. This must not be understood in some mystical way, but more definitely, concretely. There are a great many differences between the inner and the outer circles.

For instance, many things we want to find or create can exist only in the inner circle, such things as positive emotions, understanding between people, certain kinds of knowledge; all this belongs to the inner circle.

I think this is sufficient for understanding the idea of the inner or esoteric circle.
Q. I understand that the primary feature of esoteric knowledge is that it is hidden and one would not be likely to find it. So how can we recognize esoteric knowledge or an esoteric school?

A. We are studying a system which is supposed to be esoteric, so with its help we will be able to recognize it. And although esoteric knowledge is hidden from ordinary life, it can be found.

It is not hidden absolutely,
so that nobody can find it, otherwise it would have no meaning. This would be contrary to its aims and would spoil the results of its existence. The only meaning of hidden knowledge is that it can be found; the important thing is how to recognize it.

With the help of these ideas, comparing what can be found in the ordinary intellectual way and what cannot and then comparing it with the system, we shall be able to establish with a certain degree of probability the level of the knowledge we meet with.

If we take history in the ordinary way as a series of separate events, we shall not find proofs of esotericism. One thing will follow another, on the surface and without apparent connection. But if we know that things are connected, and look for connections,

we shall find them hidden beneath the surface. For instance, many big historical changes came apparently from nothing, with no antecedents, no origin. In ancient Greece there is nothing on the surface to explain the seventh century B.C. In the eighth

and ninth centuries there was apparently nothing leading up to it; there was no direct line of development.
In the same way Gothic art seemingly came out of nothing. It had no history, it appeared instantly.
In prehistoric art too, that is,

in all that belongs to more than ten thousand years ago, there is nothing on the surface to explain the big Sphinx, for instance. It is both bigger in concept and higher in level, &, so to speak, more clever (though this is not the right word) than anything we know. Who made it?

Why are such works of art found in the desert?
Then again, take literature, especially that of the East. We can find such things as the great Indian poems and the New Testament which are of a higher level than anything else we know. There is nothing similar to them,

nothing ordinary can explain them—all these things are absolutely unique. If they are taken separately and presupposing that they have no inner meaning, they cannot be explained. But if we try to use the psychological method we shall find the connection.

Try to think about esotericism, how it is possible, in which form it can exist, in which form it cannot exist. You can read of secret societies in the East, or in Tibet, of the existence of secret libraries, of groups of people living in hidden places

and preserving ancient knowledge. This is a crude form of thinking. There is nothing impossible in the idea that there are groups of people of this kind. But the idea of esotericism is more subtle. It does not require secret societies.

The idea of secret societies is a simplified form of thinking. It is quite possible that there are people here on the earth who possess much greater knowledge than we do, but if they have this knowledge, they have no need of secret societies. They need not live in the mountains;

they can live anywhere.
Q. Is it necessary to know an esoteric doctrine to recognize the presence of esoteric ideas?
A. No, you can recognize esoteric ideas by means of the psychological method. Only with the psychological method can you find more in the system which you know.

Q. What must one know to use the psychological method?
A. The psychological method requires no special knowledge. What is necessary is simple thinking, but not the narrow ordinary thinking. Logical thinking is narrow, but psychological thinking is broader thinking,

comparing not two things but maybe as many as five. Logical thinking always deals with two: one must be true, another false. For the psychological method it is not necessarily so; both may be wrong, or both may be right.
I will give you an example of the psychological method.

In 1915 I gave in St Petersburg a public lecture on Life after Death. I tried to bring together all the existing ideas about life after death: the positivist, scientific idea of death as disappearance,

the religious understanding of death connected with the idea of an immortal soul, heaven as reward and hell as punishment; the spiritualistic understanding of the idea of survival; the theosophical idea of reincarnation, the Buddhist idea of recurrence; and many others.

What is interesting is that they are all right; they only look contradictory. Logically they contradict one another, but from the point of view of the psychological method they complement one another.
In order to illustrate this I asked the question:

how can all these ideas be right since they look so different? It is because there is a law we do not understand. The human mind cannot invent anything absolutely wrong. The normal mind, working freely and not tied to some presupposed truth, always arrives at some kind of truth.

A complete lie can be invented only by an insane mind or a mind working in chains.
Q. Should one know other esoteric teachings and find connections?
A. Only in a general way, to find the place of this system. You do not know enough to compare and find connections.

When you think about this system and read something that reminds you of it, you take only one or another idea; you do not compare all ideas. Parts can always be analogous, but such comparing can be useful only when you can see the whole behind the parts—

and then you may find that the two have nothing in common, because in order to be similar everything must be similar. Suppose one point in one system is similar to one point in another, but these points are surrounded by fifteen other points that have no similarity,

this makes them essentially different. We cannot do it yet; we are not accustomed to finding the relation of a part to the whole in ordinary thinking. We think that parts can be compared and that parts can be right or wrong without relation to the whole.

Gurdjieff