"You do not realize your own situation. You are in prison.

All you can wish for,

if you are a sensible man, is to escape. But how escape? It is necessary to tun
nel under a wall. One man can do nothing. But let us suppose there are ten or tw
enty men if they work in turn and if one covers another they can complete the tunn
el and escape.
"Furthermore, no one can escape from prison without the help of those who have e
scaped before. Only they can say in what way escape is possible or can send tool
s, files, or whatever may be necessary. But one prisoner alone cannot find these
people or get into touch with them. An organization is necessary. Nothing can b
e achieved without an organization."
G. often returned afterwards to this example of "prison" and "escape from prison
" in his talks. Sometimes he began with it, and then his favorite statement was
that, if a man in prison was at any time to have a chance of escape, then he mus
t first of all realize that he is in prison. So long as he fails to realize this
, so long as he thinks he is free, he has no chance whatever. No one can help or
liberate him by force, against his will, in opposition to his wishes. If libera
tion is possible, it is possible only as a result of great labor and great effor
ts, and, above all, of conscious efforts, towards a definite aim.
"If a man could understand all the horror of the lives of ordinary people who ar
e turning round in a circle of insignificant interests and insignificant aims, i
f he could understand what they are losing, he would understand that there can b
e only one thing that is serious for him to escape from the general law, to be fre
e. What can be serious for a man in prison who is condemned to death? Only one t
hing: How to save himself, how to escape: nothing else is serious.

Question: Then how can we change ourselves, and use all our forces?
Answer: That is another matter. The chief cause of our weak- ness is our inabili
ty to apply our will to all three of our centers simultaneously.
Question: Can we apply our will to any of them?
Answer: Certainly, sometimes we do. Sometimes we may even be able to control one
of them for a moment with very extraordinary results. (He relates the story of
a prisoner throw- ing a ball of paper with a message to his wife through a high
and difficult window.) This is his only means to become free. If he fails the fi
rst time he will never have another chance. He succeeds for the moment in having
absolute con- trol over his physical center so that he is able to accomplish wh
at otherwise he never could have done.
"the chief evil is that on reaching responsible age
we acquire thanks to the various conditions of our ordinary existence established
by us
ourselves, chiefly in consequence of the abnormal what is called 'education' a com
mon
presence corresponding only to that stream of the river of life which ultimately
empties
itself into the 'nether regions,' and, entering it, we remain passive and, witho
ut reflecting
about the consequences of this state, submit to the flow and drift on and on.
"The foresight of Equitable Nature consists in the given case in this, that
the possibility is given to us after our completed formation into responsible li
fe, by our own
intentions through certain inner experiencings and certain outer conditions to c
rystallize in
our common presence data for the obtaining of such a kernel of course with greater
difficulty than in preparatory age.
The soul, like the physical body, is
also matter only, it consists of "finer" matter. The matter from which the soul is
formed
and from which it later nourishes and perfects itself is, in general, elaborated
during the
processes that take place between the two essential forces upon which the entire
Universe is founded. The matter in which the soul is coated can be produced excl
usively
by the action of these two forces, which are called "good" and "evil" by ancient
science, or
"affirmation" and "negation," while contemporary science calls them "attraction"
and
"repulsion."
'The years of youth are for every human being, whether male or
female, the period given for the further development of the initial
conception in the mother's womb up to, so to say, its full completion.
'From this time on, that is, from the moment the process of his
development is finished, a man becomes personally responsible for all
his voluntary and involuntary manifestations.
'According to laws of nature elucidated and verified through many
centuries of observation by people of pure reason, this process of
development is finished in males between the ages of twenty and
twenty-three, and in females between the ages of fifteen and nineteen,
depending on the geographical conditions of the place of their arising
and formation.

Our body begins to die at a very early age and continues until as a whole it can
no longer exist and dies. If we do not wish to die with the physical body, each
day, each moment we need to become unidentified, 'wake up'. We need an attenti
on that is not asleep in the body - but aware of the body and its functioning.