Soon afterwards G. went to Moscow and in his absence we tried in various ways to carry out the tasks allotted to us. First of all, in order to put G.'s task more easily into practice, some of us, at my suggestion, tried telling the story of our lives not at the general group meeting but in small groups composed of people they knew best.
I am bound to say that all these attempts came to nothing. Some said too much, others said too little. Some went into unnecessary details or into descriptions of what they considered were their particular and original characteristics; others concentrated on their "sins" and errors. But everything taken together failed to produce what G. evidently expected. The result was anecdotes, or chronological memoirs which interested nobody, and family recollections which made people yawn. Something was wrong, but what exactly was wrong even those who had tried to be as sincere as they could were unable to determine. I remember my own attempts. In the first place I tried to convey certain early childhood impressions which seemed to me psychologically interesting because I remembered myself as I was at a very early age and was always myself astonished by some of these early impressions. But nobody was interested in this and I quickly saw that this was certainly not what was required of us. I proceeded further but almost immediately I felt a certainty that there were many things that I had no intention whatever of telling. This was a quite unexpected realization. I had accepted G.'s idea without any opposition and I thought I would be able to tell the story of my life without any particular difficulty. But in reality it turned out to be quite impossible. Something in me registered such a vehement protest against it that I did not even attempt to struggle and in speaking of certain periods of my life I tried to give only the general idea and the significance of the facts which I did not want to relate. In this connection I noted that my voice and intonations changed when I talked in this way. This helped me to understand other people. I began to hear that, in speaking of themselves and their lives, they also spoke in different voices and different intonations. And there were intonations of a particular kind which I had first heard in myself and which showed me that people wanted to hide something in what they were talking about. But intonations gave them away. Observation of intonations afterwards made it possible for me to understand many other things.
不久葛吉夫就到莫斯科去了。他不在的期间我们试过各种方法想要完成这项任务。首先，为了使葛吉夫指派的任务比较容易实行，有一些人依据我的建议尝试不在整个团体谈个人的生活，而是找几个最熟的朋友一起谈。
我得说所有这些企图通通失败。有些人说得太多，其它人说得太少。有些人谈到不必要的细节，或是描述他自认特别而独创的特性。有些人净谈他们的「罪恶」或过错。但是总而
言之却无法产生葛吉夫期待的效果，所呈现的总是使人不感兴趣的轶事或编年史，以及使人呵欠连连的家庭回忆。这中间定有差错，但是到底错在哪里？即使是那些设法尽可能真诚的
人也不能确定。
我记得自己的尝试，首先我设法表达某些使我非常感兴趣的幼年印象，因为我记得非常年幼时的样子，而且总是惊讶于其中一些早年的印象。但是没有人对这感兴趣，我很快就看
出这一定不是我们被要求做的。我继续谈下去，却立刻确定有许多事情我一点也不想说。这个发现着实出其不意。我接受葛吉夫的观念，没有一点反对，而且认为我可以毫无困难地说
出我的生活故事，但事实上竟然不可能。我里面有某个东西如此激烈抗议这个观念，而我甚至一点也不企图去对抗它。在谈到我生命中的某些时期时，有一些事实我不想提起，便设法只带过它们的大要和意义。
我注意到以这种方式说话时，声音和语调都会改变，这帮助我去了解别人；我开始听出他们在谈自己和他们的生活时，声音和语调也有变化。一开始我是在自己身上听到一种特别的语调，这种语调显示出人们对于正在谈论的事情，想要有所保留，但是语调却泄漏了秘密。其后对于语调的观察使我得以了解其它许多事情。
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