In search of the miraculous

"At this point in our reasoning it would be entirely right to raise the question: Why is one of the 'intervals' which is designated by the number 3 found in its right place between the notes mi and fa, and the other, which is designated by the number 6, found between sol and la, when its right place is between si and do.

"If the conditions had been observed as to the appearance of the second interval (6) in its own place, we should have had the following circle:

And the nine elements of the closed cycle would have been grouped symmetrically together in the following way:

that is, in one case x between mi and fa, and in the other between sol and la, where it is not necessary.

"The apparent placing of the interval in its wrong place itself shows to those who are able to read the symbol what kind of 'shock' is required for the passage of si to do.

"In order to understand this, it is essential to recollect what was said about the role of 'shocks' in the processes proceeding in man and in the universe.

"When we examined the application of the law of octaves to the cosmos then the step 'sun-earth' was represented in this way:

"In relation to the three octaves of radiation it was pointed out that the passage of do to si, the filling of the interval, takes place within the organism of the sun. It was pointed out in the cosmic octave in relation to the 'interval' do-si that this passage is accomplished by the will of the Absolute. The passage fa-mi in the cosmic octave is accomplished mechanically with the help of a special machine which makes it possible for fa, which enters it, to acquire by a series of inner processes the characteristics of sol standing above it, without changing its note, that is, to accumulate, as it were, the inner energy for passing independently into the next note, into mi.

"The distribution we do get: do

"Exactly the same relationship is repeated in all completed processes. In examining the processes of nutrition in the human organism and the transformation of the substances taken into the organism, we find in these processes exactly the same 'intervals' and 'shocks.'

"As we pointed out before, man takes in three kinds of food. Each one of them is the beginning of a new octave. The second octave, that is, the air octave, joins up with the first, that is, the octave of food and drink, at the point where the first octave comes to a stop in its development at the note mi. And the third octave joins up with the second at the point where the second octave comes to a stop in its development at the note mi.

"But it must be understood that, just as in many chemical processes, only definite quantities of substances, exactly determined by nature, give compounds of the required quality, so in the human organism the 'three kinds of food' must be mixed in definite proportions.

"The final substance in the process of the food octave is the substance si ('hydrogen' 12 in the third scale), which needs an 'additional shock* in order to pass into a new do. But as three octaves have taken part in the production of this substance their influence is also reflected in the final result by determining its quality. The quality and quantity can be regulated by regulating the three kinds of food received by the organism. Only in the presence of a full and harmonious conformity between all three kinds of food, by a strengthening or weakening of the different parts of the process, is the required result obtained.

"But it is essential to remember that no arbitrary attempts to regulate food, in the literal sense of the word, or breathing can lead to the desired end unless one knows exactly what one is doing and why, and what kind of result it will give.

"And furthermore, even if a man were to succeed in regulating two components of the process, food and breathing, again this would not be enough, because it is still more important to know how to regulate the food of the third story—'impressions.'

"Therefore before even thinking of influencing practically the inner processes it is essential to understand the exact mutual relationship of the substances entering the organism, the nature of the possible 'shocks,' and the laws governing the transition of notes. These laws are everywhere the same. In studying man we study the cosmos, in studying the cosmos we study man.

"The cosmic octave 'Absolute-moon' has, according to the law of three, been broken into three subordinate octaves. In these three octaves the cosmos is like man; the same 'three stories,' the same three shocks.

"Where, in the cosmic octaves of radiation, the place of the interval fa-mi appears, in the diagram are marked the 'machines' which are found there in the same way as in the human body.

"The process of the transition fa-mi can be represented in the most schematic way thus: the cosmic fa enters this machine like the food of the lower story and begins its cycle of changes. Therefore in the beginning it sounds in the machine as do. The substance sol of the cosmic octave

serves as the substance which enters the middle story like the air in breathing, which helps the note fa inside the machine to pass into the note mi. This sol on entering the machine also sounds as do. The matter which has now been obtained is joined in the upper story by the substance of the cosmic la, which enters the upper story of the machine, also as do.

"As we see from this the following notes la, sol, fa serve as food for the machine. In the order of their succession, according to the law of three, la will be the (Jq active element, sol the neutralizing, and fa the passive. The active

si /"(кГ\ principle reacting with the passive (that is, becoming connected with it by wj/ the help of the neutralizing principle) gives a certain definite result. This l_a is represented symbolically thus:

sol fa

la -­mi re

To

"This symbol points out that the substance fa in being mixed with the substance la gives as a result the substance sol. And as this process proceeds in the octave, developing as it were inside the note fa, it is therefore possible to say that fa without changing its pitch acquires the properties of sol.

"All that has been said about the octaves of radiation and about the food octaves in the human organism has a direct connection with the symbol consisting of a circle divided into nine parts. This symbol, as the л J expression of a perfect synthesis, contains within itself all the elements of the laws it represents, and from it can be extracted, and by its help trans­mitted, everything that is connected with these octaves and much else besides."

G. returned to the enneagram many times and in various connections. dO "Each completed whole, each cosmos, each organism, each plant, is an

re enneagram," he said. "But not each of these enneagrams has an inner

triangle. The inner triangle stands for the presence of higher elements, according to the scale of 'hydrogens,' in a given organism. This inner triangle is possessed by such plants, for example, as hemp, poppy, hops, tea, coffee, tobacco, and many other plants which play a definite role in the life of man. The study of these plants can reveal much for us in regard

to the enneagram.

"Speaking in general it must be understood that the enneagram is a universal symbol. All knowledge can be included in the enneagram and with the help of the enneagram it can be interpreted. And in this connection only what a man is able to put into the enneagram does he actually know, that is, understand. What he cannot put into the enneagram he does not understand. For the man who is able to make use of it, the enneagram makes books and libraries entirely unnecessary. Everything can be included and read in the enneagram. A man may be quite alone in the desert and he can trace the enneagram in the sand and in it read the eternal laws of the universe. And every time he can learn something new, something he did not know before.

"If two men who have been in different schools meet, they will draw the enneagram and with its help they will be able at once to establish which of them knows more and which, consequently, stands upon which step, that is to say, which is the elder, which is the teacher and which the pupil. The enneagram is the fundamental hieroglyph of a universal language which has as many different meanings as there are levels of men.

"The enneagram is perpetual motion, the same perpetual motion that men have sought since the remotest antiquity and could never find. And it is clear why they could not find perpetual motion. They sought outside themselves that which was within them; and they attempted to construct perpetual motion as a machine is constructed, whereas real perpetual motion is a part of another perpetual motion and cannot be created apart from it. The enneagram is a schematic diagram of perpetual motion, that is, of a machine of eternal movement. But of course it is necessary to know how to read this diagram. The understanding of this symbol and the ability to make use of it give man very great power. It is perpetual motion and it is also the philosopher's stone of the alchemists.

"The knowledge of the enneagram has for a very long time been preserved in secret and if it now is, so to speak, made available to all, it is only in an incomplete and theoretical form of which nobody could make any practical use without instruction from a man who knows.

"In order to understand the enneagram it must be thought of as in motion, as moving. A motionless enneagram is a dead symbol; the living symbol is in motion."

Much later—it was in the year 1922—when G. organized his Institute in France and when his pupils were studying dances and dervish exercises, G. showed them exercises connected with the "movement of the enneagram." On the floor of the hall where the exercises took place a large enneagram was drawn and the pupils who took part in the exercises stood on the spots marked by the numbers 1 to 9. Then they began to move in the direction of the numbers of the period in a very interesting movement, turning round one another at the points of meeting, that is, at the points where the lines intersect in the enneagram.

G. said at that time that exercises of moving according to the enneagram would occupy an important place in his ballet the "Struggle of the Magicians." And he said also that, without taking part in these exercises, without occupying some kind of place in them, it was almost impossible to understand the enneagram.

"It is possible to experience the enneagram by movement," he said. "The rhythm itself of these movements would suggest the necessary ideas and maintain the necessary tension; without them it is not possible to feel what is most important."

There was yet another drawing of the enneagram which was made under his direction in Constantinople in the year 1920. In this drawing inside the enneagram were shown the four beasts of the Apocalypse—the bull, the lion, the man, and the eagle—and with them a dove. These additional symbols were connected with "centers."

In connection with talks about the meaning of the enneagram as a universal symbol G. again spoke of the existence of a universal "philosophical" language.

"Men have tried for a long time to invent a universal language," he said. "And in this instance, as in many others, they seek something which has long since been found and try to think of and invent something which has been known and in existence a long time. I said before that there exist not one but three universal languages, to speak more exactly, three degrees. The first degree of this language already makes it possible for people to express their own thoughts and to understand the thoughts of others in relation to things concerning which ordinary language is powerless."

"In what relation do these languages stand to art?" someone asked. "And does not art itself represent that 'philosophical language' which others seek intellectually?"

"I do not know of which art you speak," said G. "There is art and art. You have doubtless noticed that during our lectures and talks I have often been asked various questions by those present relating to art but I have always avoided talks on this subject. This was because I consider all ordinary talks about art as absolutely meaningless. People speak of one thing while they imply something quite different and they have no idea whatever what they are implying. At the same time it is quite useless to try to explain the real relationship of things to a man who does not know the A B C about himself, that is to say, about man. We have talked together now for some time and by now you ought to know this A B C, so that I can perhaps talk to you now even about art.

"You must first of all remember that there are two kinds of art, one quite different from the other—objective art and subjective art. All that

you know, all that you call art, is subjective art, that is, something that I do not call art at all because it is only objective art that I call art.

"To define what I call objective art is difficult first of all because you ascribe to subjective art the characteristics of objective art, and secondly because when you happen upon objective works of art you take them as being on the same level as subjective works of art.

"I will try to make my idea clear. You say—an artist creates. I say this only in connection with objective art. In relation to subjective art I say that with him 'it is created.' You do not differentiate between these, but this is where the whole difference lies. Further you ascribe to subjective art an invariable action, that is, you expect works of subjective art to have the same reaction on everybody. You think, for instance, that a funeral march should provoke in everyone sad and solemn thoughts and that any dance music, a komarinsky for instance, will provoke happy thoughts. But in actual fact this is not so at all. Everything depends upon association. If on a day that a great misfortune happens to me I hear some lively tune for the first time this tune will evoke in me sad and oppressive thoughts for my whole life afterwards. And if on a day when I am particularly happy I hear a sad tune, this tune will always evoke happy thoughts. And so with everything else.

"The difference between objective art and subjective art is that in objective art the artist really does 'create,' that is, he makes what he intended, he puts into his work whatever ideas and feelings he wants to put into it. And the action of this work upon men is absolutely definite;

they will, of course each according to his own level, receive the same ideas and the same feelings that the artist wanted to transmit to them. There can be nothing accidental either in the creation or in the impressions of objective art.

"In subjective art everything is accidental. The artist, as I have already said, does not create; with him 'it creates itself.' This means that he is in the power of ideas, thoughts, and moods which he himself does not understand and over which he has no control whatever. They rule him and they express themselves in one form or another. And when they have accidentally taken this or that form, this form just as accidentally produces on man this or that action according to his mood, tastes, habits, the nature of the hypnosis under which he lives, and so on. There is nothing invariable; nothing is definite here. In objective art there is nothing indefinite."

"Would not art disappear in being definite in this way?" asked one of us. "And is not a certain indefiniteness, elusiveness, exactly what distinguishes art from, let us say, science? If this indefiniteness is taken away, if you take away the fact that the artist himself does not know what he will obtain or what impression his work will produce on people, it will then be a 'book' and not art."

"I do not know what you are talking about," said G. "We have different standards: I measure the merit of art by its consciousness and you measure it by its unconsciousness. We cannot understand one another. A work of objective art ought to be a 'book' as you. call it; the only difference is that the artist transmits his ideas not directly through words or signs or hieroglyphs, but through certain feelings which he excites consciously and in an orderly way, knowing what he is doing and why he does it."

"Legends," said one of those present, "have been preserved of statues of gods in ancient Greek temples, for example the statue of Zeus at Olympia, which produced upon everybody a definite and always identical impression."

"Quite true," said G., "and even the fact that such stories exist shows that people understood that the difference between real and unreal art lay precisely in this, an invariable or else an accidental action."

"Can you not indicate other works of objective art?" "Is there anything that it is possible to call objective in contemporary art?" "When was the last objective work of art created?" Nearly everyone present began to put these and similar questions to G.

"Before speaking of this," said G., "principles must be understood. If you grasp the principles you will be able to answer these questions yourselves. But if you do not grasp them nothing that I may say will explain anything to you. It was exactly about this that it was said—they will see with their eyes and will not perceive, they will hear with their ears and will not understand.

"I will cite you one example only—music. Objective music is all based on 'inner octaves.' And it can obtain not only definite psychological results but definite physical results. There can be such music as would freeze water. There can be such music as would kill a man instantaneously. The Biblical legend of the destruction of the walls of Jericho by music is precisely a legend of objective music. Plain music, no matter of what kind, will not destroy walls, but objective music indeed can do so. And not only can it destroy but it can also build up. In the legend of Orpheus there are hints of objective music, for Orpheus used to impart knowledge by music. Snake charmers' music in the East is an approach to objective music, of course very primitive. Very often it is simply one note which is long drawn out, rising and falling only very little; but in this single note 'inner octaves' are going on all the time and melodies of 'inner octaves' which are inaudible to the ears but felt by the emotional center. And the snake hears this music or, more strictly speaking, he feels it, and he obeys it. The same music, only a little more complicated, and men would obey it.

"So you see that art is not merely a language but something much bigger. And if you connect what I have just said with what I said earlier

about the different levels of man's being, you will understand what is said about art. Mechanical humanity consists of men number one, number two, and number three and they, of course, can have subjective art only. Objective art requires at least flashes of objective consciousness; in order to understand these flashes properly and to make proper use of them a great inner unity is necessary and a great control of oneself."

Chapter Fifteen

AMONG the talks of the period I am describing, that is, the end of 1916, G. several times touched upon questions of religion. And when anyone asked him anything connected with religion G. invariably began by emphasizing the fact that there is something very wrong at the basis of our usual attitude towards problems of religion.

"In the first place," he always said, "religion is a relative concept; it corresponds to the level of a man's being; and one man's religion might not be at all suitable for another man, that is to say, the religion of a man of one level of being is not suitable for a man of another level of being.

"It must be understood that the religion of man number one is of one kind; the religion of man number two is of another kind; and the religion of man number three is of a third kind. The religion of man number four, number five, and further is something of a kind totally different from the religion of man number one, number two, and number three.

"In the second place religion is doing; a man does not merely think his religion or feel it, he 'lives' his religion as much as he is able, otherwise it is not religion but fantasy or philosophy. Whether he likes it or not he shows his attitude towards religion by his actions and he can show his attitude only by his actions. Therefore if his actions are opposed to those which are demanded by a given religion he cannot assert that he belongs to that religion. The vast majority of people who call themselves Christians have no right whatever to do so, because they not only fail to carry out the demands of their religion but they do not even think that these demands ought to be carried out.

"Christianity forbids murder. Yet all that the whole of our progress comes to is progress in the technique of murder and progress in warfare. How can we call ourselves Christians?

"No one has a right to call himself a Christian who docs not carry out Christ's precepts. A man can say that he desires to be a Christian if he tries to carry out these precepts. If he does not think of them at all, or laughs at them, or substitutes for them some inventions of his own,

or simply forgets about them, he has no right whatever to call himself a Christian.

"I took the example of war as it is the most striking example. But even without war the whole of life is exactly the same. People call themselves Christians but they do not realize that not only do they not want, but they are unable, to be Christians, because in order to be a Christian it is necessary not only to desire, but to be able, to be one.

"Man in himself is not one, he is not 'I,' he is 'we,' or to speak more correctly, he is 'they.' Everything arises from this. Let us suppose that a man decides according to the Gospels to turn the left cheek if somebody strikes him on the right cheek. But one 'I' decides this either in the mind or in the emotional center. One 'I' knows of it, one 'I' remembers it—the others do not. Let us imagine that it actually happens, that some­body strikes this man. Do you think he will turn the left cheek? Never. He will not even have time to think about it. He will either strike the face of the man who struck him, or he will begin to call a policeman, or he will simply take to flight. His moving center will react in its customary way, or as it has been taught to react, before the man realizes what he is doing.

"Prolonged instruction, prolonged training, is necessary to be able to turn the cheek. And if this training is mechanical—it is again worth nothing because in this case it means that a man will turn his cheek because he cannot do anything else."

"Cannot prayer help a man to live like a Christian?" asked someone.

"It depends upon whose prayer," said G. "The prayer of subjective man, that is, of man number one, number two, and number three, can give only subjective results, namely, self-consolation, self-suggestion, self-hypnosis. It cannot give objective results."

"But cannot prayer in general give objective results?" asked one of those present.

"I have already said, it depends upon whose prayer," G. replied.

"One must learn to pray, just as one must learn everything else. Whoever knows how to pray and is able to concentrate in the proper way, his prayer can give results. But it must be understood that there are different prayers and that their results are different. This is known even from ordinary divine service. But when we speak of prayer or of the results of prayer we always imply only one kind of prayer—petition, or we think that petition can be united with all other kinds of prayers. This of course is not true. Most prayers have nothing in common with petitions. I speak of ancient prayers; many of them are much older than Christianity. These prayers are, so to speak, recapitulations; by repeating them aloud or to himself a man endeavors to experience what is in them, their whole content, with his mind and his feeling. And a man can always make new prayers for himself. For example a man says—'I want to be serious.' But the whole

point is in how he says it. If he repeats it even ten thousand times a day and is thinking of how soon he will finish and what will there be for dinner and the like, then it is not prayer but simply self-deceit. But it can become a prayer if a man recites the prayer in this way: He says 'I' and tries at the same time to think of everything he knows about 'I.' It does not exist, there is no single 'I,' there is a multitude of petty, clamorous, quarrelsome 'I's. But he wants to be one 'I'—the master; he recalls the carriage, the horse, the driver, and the master. 'I' is master. 'Want'—he thinks of the meaning of 'I want.' Is he able to want? With him 'it wants' or 'it does not want' all the time. But to this 'it wants' and 'it does not want' he strives to oppose his own 'I want' which is connected with the aims of work on himself, that is, to introduce the third force into the customary combination of the two forces, 'it wants' and 'it does not want.' 'To be'— the man thinks of what to be, what 'being,' means. The being of a mechanical man with whom everything happens. The being of a man who can do. It is possible 'to be' in different ways. He wants 'to be' not merely in the sense of existence but in the sense of greatness of power. The words 'to be' acquire weight, a new meaning for him. 'Serious' —the man thinks what it means to be serious. How he answers himself is very important. If he understands what this means, if he defines correctly for himself what it means to be serious, and feels that he truly desires it, then his prayer can give a result in the sense that strength can be added to him, that he will more often notice when he is not serious, that he will overcome himself more easily, make himself be serious. In exactly the same way a man can 'pray'—'I want to remember myself.' 'To remember'—what does 'to remember' mean? The man must think about memory. How little he remembers! How often he forgets what he has decided, what he has seen, what he knows! His whole life would be different if he could remember. All ills come because he does not remember. 'Myself—again he returns to himself. Which self does he want to remember? Is it worth while remembering the whole of himself? How can he distinguish what he wants to remember? The idea of work! How can he connect himself with the idea of the work, and so on, and so on.

"In Christian worship there are very many prayers exactly like this, where it is necessary to reflect upon each word. But they lose all sense and all meaning when they are repeated or sung mechanically.

"Take the ordinary God have mercy upon me! What does it mean? A man is appealing to God. He should think a little, he should make a comparison and ask himself what God is and what he is. Then he is asking God to have mercy upon him. But for this God must first of all think of him, take notice of him. But is it worth while taking notice of him? What is there in him that is worth thinking about? And who is to think about him? God himself. You see, all these thoughts and yet many others should pass through his mind when he utters this simple prayer. And then it is precisely these thoughts which could do for him what he asks God to do. But what can he be thinking of and what result can a prayer give if he merely repeats like a parrot: 'God have mercy! God have mercy! God have mercy!' You know yourselves that this can give no result whatever.

"Generally speaking we know very little about Christianity and the form of Christian worship; we know nothing at all of the history and origin of a number of things. For instance, the church, the temple in which gather the faithful and in which services are carried out according to special rites; where was this taken from? Many people do not think about this at all. Many people think that the outward form of worship, the rites, the singing of canticles, and so on, were invented by the fathers of the church. Others think that this outward form has been taken partly from pagan religions and partly from the Hebrews. But all of it is untrue. The question of the origin of the Christian church, that is, of the Christian temple, is much more interesting than we think. To begin with, the church and worship in the form which they took in the first centuries of Christianity could not have been borrowed from paganism because there was nothing like it either in the Greek or Roman cults or in Judaism. The Jewish synagogue, the Jewish temple, Greek and Roman temples of various gods, were something quite different from the Christian church which made its appearance in the first and second centuries. The Christian church is—a school concerning which people have forgotten that it is a school. Imagine a school where the teachers give lectures and perform explanatory demonstrations without knowing that these are lectures and demonstrations; and where the pupils or simply the people who come to the school take these lectures and demonstrations for ceremonies, or rites, or 'sacraments,' i.e., magic. This would approximate to the Christian church of our times.

"The Christian church, the Christian form of worship, was not invented by the fathers of the church. It was all taken in a ready-made form from Egypt, only not from the Egypt that we know but from one which we do not know. This Egypt was in the same place as the other but it existed much earlier. Only small bits of it survived in historical times, and these bits have been preserved in secret and so well that we do not even know where they have been preserved.

"It will seem strange to many people when I say that this prehistoric Egypt was Christian many thousands of years before the birth of Christ, that is to say, that its religion was composed of the same principles and ideas that constitute true Christianity. Special schools existed in this prehistoric Egypt which were called 'schools of repetition.' In these schools a public repetition was given on definite days, and in some schools perhaps even every day, of the entire course in a condensed form of the sciences that could be learned at these schools. Sometimes this repetition lasted a week or a month. Thanks to these repetitions people who had

passed through this course did not lose their connection with the school and retained in their memory all they had learned. Sometimes they came from very far away simply in order to listen to the repetition and went away feeling their connection with the school. There were special days of the year when the repetitions were particularly complete, when they were carried out with particular solemnity—and these days themselves possessed a symbolical meaning.

"These 'schools of repetition' were taken as a model for Christian churches—the form of worship in Christian churches almost entirely represents the course of repetition of the science dealing with the universe and man. Individual prayers, hymns, responses, all had their own meaning in this repetition as well as holidays and all religious symbols, though their meaning has been forgotten long ago."

Continuing, G. quoted some very interesting examples of the explanations of various parts of orthodox liturgy. Unfortunately no notes were made at the time and I will not undertake to reconstruct them from memory.

The idea was that, beginning with the first words, the liturgy so to speak goes through the process of creation, recording all its stages and transitions. What particularly astonished me in G.'s explanations was the extent to which so much has been preserved in its pure form and how little we understand of all this. His explanations differed very greatly from the usual theological and even from mystical interpretations. And the principal difference was that he did away with a great many allegories. I mean to say that it became obvious from his explanations that we take many things for allegories in which there is no allegory whatever and which ought to be understood much more simply and psychologically. What he said before about the Last Supper serves as a good example of this.

"Every ceremony or rite has a value if it is performed without alteration," he said. "A ceremony is a book in which a great deal is written. Anyone who understands can read it. One rite often contains more than a hundred books."

Indicating what had been preserved up to our time, G. at the same time pointed out what had been lost and forgotten. He spoke of sacred dances which accompanied the "services" in the "temples of repetition" and which were not included in the Christian form of worship. He also spoke of various exercises, and of special postures for different prayers, that is, for different kinds of meditation; about acquiring control over the breathing and of the necessity of being able to tense or relax any group of muscles, or the muscles of the whole body at will; and about many other things having relation, so to speak, to the "technique" of religion.

On one occasion, in connection with the description of exercises in concentration and bringing the attention from one part of the body to another, G. asked:

"When you pronounce the word 'I' aloud, have you noticed where this word sounds in you?"

We did not at once understand what he meant. But we very soon began to notice that when pronouncing the word 'I' some of us definitely felt as if this word sounded in the head, others felt it in the chest, and others over the head—outside the body.

I must mention here that personally I was entirely unable to evoke this sensation in myself and that I have to rely on others.

G. listened to all these remarks and said that there was an exercise connected with this which, according to him, had been preserved up to our time in the monasteries of Mount Athos.

A monk kneels or stands in a certain position and, lifting his arms, which are bent at the elbows, he says—Ego aloud and drawn out while listening at the same time where the word "Ego" sounds.

The purpose of this exercise is to feel "I" every moment a man thinks of himself and to bring "I" from one center to another.

G. many times pointed out the necessity of studying this forgotten "technique" as well as the impossibility of attaining results of any kind on the way of religion without it, excepting purely subjective results.

"You must understand," he said, "that every real religion, that is, one that has been created by learned people for a definite aim, consists of two parts. One part teaches what is to be done. This part becomes common knowledge and in the course of time is distorted and departs from the original. The other part teaches how to do what the first part teaches. This part is preserved in secret in special schools and with its help it is always possible to rectify what has been distorted in the first part or to restore what has been forgotten.

"Without this second part there can be no knowledge of religion or in any case such knowledge would be incomplete and very subjective.

"This secret part exists in Christianity also as well as in other religions and it teaches how to carry out the precepts of Christ and what they really mean."

I must quote here still one more talk with G., once again in connection with cosmoses.

"This is connected with Kant's ideas of phenomena and noumena," I said. "But after all this is the whole point.—The earth as a three-dimensional body is the 'phenomenon,' as a six-dimensional body, the 'noumenon.' "

"Perfectly true," said G., "only add here also the idea of scale. If Kant

had introduced the idea of scale into his arguments many things he wrote would be very valuable. This was the only thing he lacked."

I thought while listening to G. that Kant would have been very surprised at this pronouncement. But the idea of scale was very near to me. And I realized that with this as a starting point it was possible to find very much that is new and unexpected in things which we think we know.

About a year afterwards while developing the ideas of the cosmoses in connection with problems of time I obtained a table of time in different cosmoses of which I will speak later on.

On one occasion when speaking of the orderly connectedness of everything in the universe, G. dwelt on "organic life on earth."

"To ordinary knowledge," he said, "organic life is a kind of accidental appendage violating the integrity of a mechanical system. Ordinary knowledge does not connect it with anything and draws no conclusions from the fact of its existence. But you should already understand that there is nothing accidental or unnecessary in nature and that there can be nothing;

everything has a definite function; everything serves a definite purpose. Thus organic life is an indispensable link in the chain of the worlds which cannot exist without it just as it cannot exist without them. It has been said before that organic life transmits planetary influences of various kinds to the earth and that it serves to feed the moon and to enable it to grow and strengthen. But the earth also is growing; not in the sense of size but in the sense of greater consciousness, greater receptivity. The planetary influences which were sufficient for her at one period of her existence become insufficient, she needs the reception of finer influences. To receive finer influences a finer, more sensitive receptive apparatus is necessary. Organic life, therefore, has to evolve, to adapt itself to the needs of the planets and the earth. Likewise also the moon can be satisfied at one period with the food which is given her by organic life of a certain quality, but afterwards the time comes when she ceases to be satisfied with this food, cannot grow on it, and begins to get hungry. Organic life must be able to satisfy this hunger, otherwise it does not fulfill its function, does not answer its purpose. This means that in order to answer its purpose organic life must evolve and stand on the level of the needs of the planets, the earth, and the moon.

"We must remember that the ray of creation, as we have taken it, from the Absolute to the moon, is like a branch of a tree—a growing branch. The end of this branch, the end out of which come new shoots, is the moon. If the moon does not grow, if it neither gives nor promises to give new shoots, it means that either the growth of the whole ray of creation will stop or that it must find another path for its growth, give out some kind of lateral branch. At the same time from what has been said before we see that the growth of the moon depends on organic life on earth. It follows that the growth of the ray of creation depends on organic life on earth. If this organic life disappears or dies the whole branch will immediately wither, in any case all that part of the branch which lies beyond organic life. The same thing must happen, only more slowly, if organic life is arrested in its development, in its evolution, and fails to respond to the demands made upon it. The branch may wither. This must be remembered. To the ray of creation, or let us say to its part earth-moon, exactly the same possibility of development and growth has been given as is given to each separate branch of a big tree. But the accomplishment of this growth is not at all guaranteed, it depends upon the harmonious and right action of its own tissues. The development of one tissue stops and all the others stop. Everything that can be said of the ray of creation or of its part earth-moon equally refers to organic life on earth. Organic life on earth is a complex phenomenon in which the separate parts depend upon one another. General growth is possible only on the condition that the 'end of the branch' grows. Or, speaking more precisely, there are in organic life tissues which are evolving, and there are tissues which serve as food and medium for those which are evolving. Then there are evolving cells within the evolving tissues, and cells which serve as food and medium for those which are evolving. In each separate evolving cell there are evolving parts and there are parts which serve as food for those which are evolving. But always and in everything it must be remembered that evolution is never guaranteed, it is possible only and it can stop at any moment and in any place.

"The evolving part of organic life is humanity. Humanity also has its evolving part but we will speak of this later; in the meantime we will take humanity as a whole. If humanity does not evolve it means that the evolution of organic life will stop and this in its turn will cause the growth of the ray of creation to stop. At the same time if humanity ceases to evolve it becomes useless from the point of view of the aims for which it was created and as such it may be destroyed. In this way the cessation of evolution may mean the destruction of humanity.

"We have no clues from which we are able to tell in what period of planetary evolution we exist and whether the moon and the earth have time to await the corresponding evolution of organic life or not. But people who know may, of course, have exact information about it, that is, they may know at what stage in their possible evolution are the earth, the moon, and humanity. We cannot know this but we should bear in mind that the number of possibilities is never infinite.

"At the same time in examining the life of humanity as we know it historically we are bound to acknowledge that humanity is moving in a circle. In one century it destroys everything it creates in another and the progress in mechanical things of the past hundred years has proceeded at

the cost of losing many other things which perhaps were much more important for it. Speaking in general there is every reason to think and to assert that humanity is at a standstill and from a standstill there is a straight path to downfall and degeneration. A standstill means that a process has become balanced. The appearance of any one quality immediately evokes the appearance of another quality opposed to it. The growth of knowledge in one domain evokes the growth of ignorance in another; refinement on the one hand evokes vulgarity on the other; freedom in one connection evokes slavery in another; the disappearance of some superstitions evokes the appearance and the growth of others; and so on.

"Now if we recall the law of octaves we shall see that a balanced process proceeding in a certain way cannot be changed at any moment it is desired. It can be changed and set on a new path only at certain 'cross-roads.' In between the 'crossroads' nothing can be done. At the same time if a process passes by a 'crossroad' and nothing happens, nothing is done, then nothing can be done afterwards and the process will continue and develop according to mechanical laws; and even if people taking part in this process foresee the inevitable destruction of everything, they will be unable to do anything. I repeat that something can be done only at certain moments which I have just called 'crossroads' and which in octaves we have called the 'intervals' mi-fa and si- do.

"Of course there are very many people who consider that the life of humanity is not proceeding in the way in which according to their views it ought to go. And they invent various theories which in their opinion ought to change the whole life of humanity. One invents one theory. Another immediately invents a contradictory theory. And both expect everyone to believe them. And many people indeed do believe either one or the other. Life naturally takes its own course but people do not stop believing in their own or other people's theories and they believe that it is possible to do something. All these theories are certainly quite fantastic, chiefly because they do not take into account the most important thing, namely, the subordinate part which humanity and organic life play in the world process. Intellectual theories put man in the center of everything; everything exists for him, the sun, the stars, the moon, the earth. They even forget man's relative size, his nothingness, his transient existence, and other tilings. They assert that a man if he wishes is able to change his whole life, that is, to organize his life on rational principles. And all the time new theories appear evoking in their turn opposing theories; and all these theories and the struggle between them undoubtedly constitute one of the forces which keep humanity in the state in which it is at present. Besides, all these theories for general welfare and general equality are not only unrealizable, but they would be fatal if they were realized. Everything in nature has its aim and its purpose, both the inequality of man and his suffering. To destroy inequality would mean destroying the possibility of evolution. To destroy suffering would mean, first, destroying a whole series of perceptions for which man exists, and second, the destruction of the 'shock,' that is to say, the force which alone can change the situation. And thus it is with all intellectual theories.

"The process of evolution, of that evolution which is possible for humanity as a whole, is completely analogous, to the process of evolution possible for the individual man. And it begins with the same thing, namely, a certain group of cells gradually becomes conscious; then it attracts to itself other cells, subordinates others, and gradually makes the whole organism serve its aims and not merely eat, drink, and sleep. This is evolution and there can be no other kind of evolution. In humanity as in individual man everything begins with the formation of a conscious nucleus. All the mechanical forces of life fight against the formation of this conscious nucleus in humanity, in just the same way as all mechanical habits, tastes and weaknesses fight against conscious self-remembering in man."

"Can it be said that there is a conscious force which fights against the evolution of humanity?" I asked.

"From a certain point of view it can be said," said G.

I am putting this on record because it would seem to contradict what he said before, namely, that there are only two forces struggling in the world—"consciousness" and "mechanicalness."

"Where can this force come from?" I asked.

"It would take a long time to explain," said G., "and it cannot have a practical significance for us at the present moment. There are two processes which are sometimes called 'involutionary' and 'evolutionary.' The difference between them is the following: An involutionary process begins consciously in the Absolute but at the next step it already becomes mechanical—and it becomes more and more mechanical as it develops; an evolutionary process begins half-consciously but it becomes more and more conscious as its develops. But consciousness and conscious opposition to the evolutionary process can also appear at certain moments in the, involutionary process. From where does this consciousness come? From the evolutionary process of course. The evolutionary process must proceed without interruption. Any stop causes a separation from the fundamental process. Such separate fragments of consciousnesses which have been stopped in their development can also unite and at any rate for a certain time can live by struggling against the evolutionary process. After all it merely makes the evolutionary process more interesting. Instead of struggling against mechanical forces there may, at certain moments, be a struggle against the intentional opposition of fairly powerful forces though they are not of course comparable with those which direct the

evolutionary process. These opposing forces may sometimes even conquer. The reason for this consists in the fact that the forces guiding evolution have a more limited choice of means; in other words, they can only make use of certain means and certain methods. The opposing forces are not limited in their choice of means and they are able to make use of every means, even those which only give rise to a temporary success, and in the final result they destroy both evolution and involution at the point in question.

"But as I have said already, this question has no practical significance for us. It is only important for us to establish the indications of evolution beginning and the indications of evolution proceeding. And if we remember the full analogy between humanity and man it will not be difficult to establish whether humanity can be regarded as evolving.

"Are we able to say for instance that life is governed by a group of conscious people? Where are they? Who are they? We see exactly the opposite: that life is governed by those who are the least conscious, by those who are most asleep.

"Are we able to say that we observe in life a preponderance of the best, the strongest, and the most courageous elements? Nothing of the sort. On the contrary we see a preponderance of vulgarity and stupidity of all kinds.

"Are we able to say that aspirations towards unity, towards unification, can be observed in life? Nothing of the kind of course. We only see new divisions, new hostility, new misunderstandings.

"So that in the actual situation of humanity there is nothing that points to evolution proceeding. On the contrary when we compare humanity with a man we quite clearly see a growth of personality at the cost of essence, that is, a growth of the artificial, the unreal, and what is foreign, at the cost of the natural, the real, and what is one's own.

"Together with this we see a growth of automatism.

"Contemporary culture requires automatons. And people are undoubtedly losing their acquired habits of independence and turning into automatons, into parts of machines. It is impossible to say where is the end of all this and where the way out— or whether there is an end and a way out. One thing alone is certain, that man's slavery grows and increases. Man is becoming a willing slave. He no longer needs chains. He begins to grow fond of his slavery, to be proud of it. And this is the most terrible thing that can happen to a man.

"Everything I have said till now I have said about the whole of humanity. But as I pointed out before, the evolution of humanity can proceed only through the evolution of a certain group, which, in its turn, will influence and lead the rest of humanity.

"Are we able to say that such a group exists? Perhaps we can on the basis of certain signs, but in any event we have to acknowledge that it is a very small group, quite insufficient, at any rate, to subjugate the rest of humanity. Or, looking at it from another point of view, we can say that humanity is in such a state that it is unable to accept the guidance of a conscious group."

"How many people could there be in this conscious group?" someone asked.

"Only they themselves know this," said G.

"Does it mean that they all know each other?" asked the same person again.

"How could it be otherwise?" asked G. "Imagine that there are two or three people who are awake in the midst of a multitude of sleeping people. They will certainly know each other. But those who are asleep cannot know them. How many are they? We do not know and we cannot know until we become like them. It has been clearly said before that each man can only see on the level of his own being. But two hundred conscious people, if they existed and if they found it necessary and legitimate, could change the whole of life on the earth. But either there are not enough of them, or they do not want to, or perhaps the time has not yet come, or perhaps other people are sleeping too soundly.

"We have approached the problems of esotericism.

"It was pointed out before when we spoke about the history of humanity that the life of humanity to which we belong is governed by forces proceeding from two different sources: first, planetary influences which act entirely mechanically and are received by the human masses as well as by individual people quite involuntarily and unconsciously;

and then, influences proceeding from inner circles of humanity whose existence and significance the vast majority of people do not suspect any more than they suspect planetary influences.

"The humanity to which we belong, namely, the whole of historic and prehistoric humanity known to science and civilization, in reality constitutes only the outer circle of humanity, within which there are several other circles.

"So that we can imagine the whole of humanity, known as well as unknown to us, as consisting so to speak of several concentric circles.

"The inner circle is called the 'esoteric'; this circle consists of people who have attained the highest development possible for man, each one of whom possesses individuality in the fullest degree, that is to say, an indivisible 'I,' all forms of consciousness possible for man, full control over these states of consciousness, the whole of knowledge possible for man, and a free and independent will. They cannot perform actions opposed to their understanding or have an understanding which is not expressed by actions. At the same time there can be no discords among them, no differences of understanding. Therefore their activity is entirely co-ordinated and leads to one common aim without any kind of compulsion because it is based upon a common and identical understanding.

"The next circle is called the 'mesoteric,' that is to say, the middle. People who belong to this circle possess all the qualities possessed by the members of the esoteric circle with the sole difference that their knowledge is of a more theoretical character.' This refers, of course, to knowledge of a cosmic character. They know and understand many things which have not yet found expression in their actions. They know more than they do. But their understanding is precisely as exact as, and therefore precisely identical with, the understanding of the people of the esoteric circle. Between them there can be, no discord, there can be no misunderstanding. One understands in the way they all understand, and all understand in the way one understands. But as was said before, this understanding compared with the understanding of the esoteric circle is somewhat more theoretical.

"The third circle is called the 'exoteric,' that is, the outer, because it is the outer circle of the inner part of humanity. The people who belong to this circle possess much of that which belongs to people of the esoteric and mesoteric circles but their cosmic knowledge is of a more philosophical character, that is to say, it is more abstract than the knowledge of the mesoteric circle. A member of the mesoteric circle calculates, a member of the exoteric circle contemplates. Their understanding may not be expressed in actions. But there cannot be differences in understanding between them. What one understands all the others understand.

"In literature which acknowledges the existence of esotericism humanity is usually divided into two circles only and the 'exoteric circle' as opposed to the 'esoteric,' is called ordinary life. In reality, as we see, the 'exoteric circle' is something very far from us and very high. For ordinary man this is already 'esotericism.'

" 'The outer circle' is the circle of mechanical humanity to which we belong and which alone we know. The first sign of this circle is that among people who belong to it there is not and there cannot be a common understanding. Everybody understands in his own way and all differently. This circle is sometimes called the circle of the 'confusion of tongues,' that is, the circle in which each one speaks in his own particular language, where no one understands another and takes no trouble to be understood. In this circle mutual understanding between people is impossible excepting in rare exceptional moments or in matters having no great significance, and which are confined to the limits of the given being. If people belonging to this circle become conscious of this general lack of understanding and acquire a desire to understand and to be understood, then it means they have an unconscious tendency towards the inner circle because mutual understanding begins only in the exoteric circle and is possible only there. But the consciousness of the lack of understanding usually comes to people in an altogether different form.

"So that the possibility for people to understand depends on the possi­bility of penetrating into the exoteric circle where understanding begins.

"If we imagine humanity in the form of four concentric circles we can imagine four gates on the circumference of the third inner circle, that is, the exoteric circle, through which people of the mechanical circle can penetrate.

"These four gates correspond to the four ways described before.

"The first way is the way of the fakir, the way of people number one, of people of the physical body, instinctive-moving-sensory people without much mind and without much heart.

"The second way is the way of the monk, the religious way, the way of people number two, that is, of emotional people. The mind and the body should not be too strong.

"The third way is the way of the yogi. This is the way of the mind, the way of people number three. The heart and the body must not be particularly strong, otherwise they may be a hindrance on this way.

"Besides these three ways yet a fourth way exists by which can go those who cannot go by any of the first three ways.

"The fundamental difference between the first three ways, that is, the way of the fakir, the way of the monk, and the way of the yogi, and the fourth way consists in the fact that they are tied to permanent forms which have existed throughout long periods of history almost without change. At the basis of these institutions is religion. Where schools of yogis exist they differ little outwardly from religious schools. And in dif­ferent periods of history various societies or orders of fakirs have existed in different countries and they still exist. These three traditional ways are permanent ways within the limits of our historical period.

"Two or three thousand years ago there were yet other ways which no longer exist and the ways now in existence were not so divided, they stood much closer to one another.

"The fourth way differs from the old and the new ways by the fact that it is never a permanent way. It has no definite forms and there are no institutions connected with it. It appears and disappears governed by some particular laws of its own.

"The fourth way is never without some work of a definite significance, is never without some undertaking around which and in connection with which it can alone exist. When this work is finished, that is to say, when the aim set before it has been accomplished, the fourth way disappears, that is, it disappears from the given place, disappears in its given form, continuing perhaps in another place in another form. Schools of the fourth way exist for the needs of the work which is being carried out in connection with the proposed undertaking. They never exist by themselves as schools for the purpose of education and instruction.

"Mechanical help cannot be required in any work of the fourth way. Only conscious work can be useful in all the undertakings of the fourth

way. Mechanical man cannot give conscious work so that the first task of the people who begin such a work is to create conscious assistants.

"The work itself of schools of the fourth way can have very many forms and many meanings. In the midst of the ordinary conditions of life the only chance a man has of finding a 'way' is in the possibility of meeting with the beginning of work of this kind. But the chance of meeting with such work as well as the possibility of profiting by this chance depends upon many circumstances and conditions.

"The quicker a man grasps the aim of the work which is being executed, the quicker can he become useful to it and the more will he be able to get from it for himself.

"But no matter what the fundamental aim of the work is, the schools continue to exist only while this work is going on. When the work is done the schools close. The people who began the work leave the stage. Those who have learned from them what was possible to learn and have reached the possibility of continuing on the way independently begin in one form or another their own personal work.

"But it happens sometimes that when the school closes a number of people are left who were round about the work, who saw the outward aspect of it, and saw the whole of the work in this outward aspect.

"Having no doubts whatever of themselves or in the correctness of their conclusions and understanding they decide to continue the work. To continue this work they form new schools, teach people what they have themselves learned, and give them the same promises that they themselves received. All this naturally can only be outward imitation. But when we look back on history it is almost impossible for us to distinguish where the real ends and where the imitation begins. Strictly speaking almost everything we know about various kinds of occult, masonic, and alchemical schools refers to such imitation. We know practically nothing about real schools excepting the results of their work and even that only if we are able to distinguish the results of real work from counterfeits and imitations.

"But such pseudo-esoteric systems also play their part in the work and activities of esoteric circles. Namely, they are the intermediaries between humanity which is entirely immersed in the materialistic life and schools which are interested in the education of a certain number of people, as much for the purposes of their own existences as for the purposes of the work of a cosmic character which they may be carrying out. The very idea of esotericism, the idea of initiation, reaches people in most cases through pseudo-esoteric systems and schools; and if there were not these pseudo-esoteric schools the vast majority of humanity would have no possibility whatever of hearing and learning of the existence of anything greater than life because the truth in its pure form would be inaccessible for them. By reason of the many characteristics of man's being, particu­larly of the contemporary being, truth can only come to people in the form of a lie— only in this form are they able to accept it; only in this form are they able to digest and assimilate it. Truth undefiled would be, for them, indigestible food.

"Besides, a grain of truth in an unaltered form is sometimes found in pseudo- esoteric movements, in church religions, in occult and theosophical schools. It may be preserved in their writings, their rituals, their traditions, their conceptions of the hierarchy, their dogmas, and their rules.

"Esoteric schools, that is, not pseudo-esoteric schools, which perhaps exist in some countries of the East, are difficult to find because they exist there in the guise of ordinary monasteries and temples. Tibetan monasteries are usually built in the form of four concentric circles or four concentric courts divided by high walls. Indian temples, especially those in Southern India, are built on the same plan but in the form of squares, one contained within the other. Worshipers usually have access to the first outer court, and sometimes, as an exception, persons of another religion and Europeans; access to the second court is for people of a certain caste only or for those having special permission; access to the third court is only for persons belonging to the temple; and access to the fourth is only for Brahmins and priests. Organizations of this kind which, with minor variations, are everywhere in existence, enable esoteric schools to exist without being recognized. Out of dozens of monasteries one is a school. But how is it to be recognized? If you get inside it you will only be inside the first court; to the second court only pupils have access. But this you do not know, you are told they belong to a special caste. As regards the third and fourth courts you cannot even know anything about them. And you can, in fact, observe the same order in all temples and until you are told you cannot distinguish an esoteric temple or monastery from an ordinary one.

"The idea of initiation, which reaches us through pseudo-esoteric systems, is also transmitted to us in a completely wrong form. The legends concerning the outward rites of initiation have been created out of the scraps of information we possess in regard to the ancient Mysteries. The Mysteries represented a special kind of way in which, side by side with a difficult and prolonged period of study, theatrical representations of a special kind were given which depicted in allegorical forms the whole path of the evolution of man and the world.

"Transitions from one level of being to another were marked by ceremonies of presentation of a special kind, that is, initiation. But a change of being cannot be brought about by any rites. Rites can only mark an accomplished transition. And it is only in pseudo-esoteric systems in which there is nothing else except these rites, that they begin to attribute to the rites an independent meaning. It is supposed that a rite, in being transformed into a sacrament, transmits or communicates certain forces

to the initiate. This again relates to the psychology of an imitation way. There is not, nor can there be, any outward initiation. In reality only self-initiation, self- presentation exist. Systems and schools can indicate methods and ways, but no system or school whatever can do for a man the work that he must do himself. Inner growth, a change of being, depend entirely upon the work which a man must do on himself."

Chapter Sixteen

BY THIS time, that is, by November, 1916, the position of affairs in Russia had begun to assume a very gloomy aspect. Up to this time we, at any rate most of us, had by some miracle kept clear of "events." Now "events" were drawing nearer to us, that is to say, they were drawing nearer to each one of us personally, and we could no longer fail to notice them.

It in no way enters into my task either to describe or to analyze what was taking place. At the same time it was such an exceptional period that I cannot altogether avoid all mention of what was going on around us, otherwise I should have to admit that I had been both blind and deaf. Besides, nothing could have given such material for the study of the "mechanicalness" of events, that is, of the entire and complete absence of any element of will, as the observation of events at this period. Some things appeared or might have appeared to be dependent on somebody's will, but even this was illusion and in reality it had never been so clear that everything happens, that no one does anything.

In the first place it was clear to everyone who was able and who wanted to see it that the war was coming to an end and that it was coming to an end by itself through some deep inner weariness and from the realization, though dull and obscure yet firmly rooted, of the senselessness of all this horror. No one believed now in words of any kind. No attempts of any kind to galvanize the war were able to lead to anything. At the same time it was impossible to stop anything and all talk about the necessity of continuing the war or of the necessity of stopping the war merely showed the helplessness of the human mind which was even incapable of realizing its own helplessness. In the second place it was clear that the crash was approaching. And it was clear that nobody could stop anything nor could they avert events or direct them into some safe channel. Everything was going in the only way it could go and it could go in no other way. I was particularly struck at this time by the position of professional politicians of the left who, up to this time, had played a passive role but were now preparing to pass into an active one. To be precise they showed themselves to be the blindest, the most unprepared, and the most in­capable of understanding what they were really doing, where they were going to, what they were preparing, even for themselves.

I remember Petersburg so well during the last winter of its life. Who could have known then, even assuming the very worst, that this was its last winter? But too many people hated this city and too many feared it and its last days were numbered.

Our meetings continued. During the last months of 1916 G. did not come to Petersburg but some of the members of our group went to Moscow and brought back new diagrams and some notes which had been made by G.'s Moscow pupils under his instruction.

Many new people made their appearance in our groups at this time, and although it was clear that everything must come to some unknown end, G.'s system gave us a certain feeling of confidence and security. We often spoke at this time of how we should feel in the midst of all this chaos if we had not got the system which was becoming more and more our own. Now we could not imagine how we could live without it and find our way in the labyrinth of all existing contradictions.

This period marks the beginning of talks about Noah's Ark. I had always considered the myth of Noah's Ark to be an esoteric allegory. Many of our company had now begun to see that this myth was not merely an allegory of the general idea of esotericism but was, at the same time, a plan of any esoteric work, our own included. The system itself was an "ark" in which we could hope to save ourselves at the time of the "flood."

G. arrived only at the beginning of February, 1917. At one of the first talks he showed us an entirely new side to everything he had spoken about up till then.

"So far," he said, "we have looked upon the 'table of hydrogens' as a table of vibrations and of the densities of matter which are in an inverse proportion to them. We must now realize that the density of vibrations and the density of matter express many other properties of matter. For instance, till now we have said nothing about the intelligence or the consciousness of matter. Meanwhile the speed of vibrations of a matter shows the degree of intelligence of the given matter. You must remember that there is nothing dead or inanimate in nature. Everything in its own way is alive, everything in its own way is intelligent and conscious. Only this consciousness and intelligence is expressed in a different way on different levels of being—that is, on different scales. But you must understand once and for all that nothing is dead or inanimate in nature, there are simply different degrees of animation and different scales.

"The 'table of hydrogens,' while serving to determine the density of matter and the speed of vibrations, serves at the same time to determine the degree of intelligence and consciousness because the degree of con-

sciousness corresponds to the degree of density or the speed or vibrations. This means that the denser the matter the less conscious it is, the less intelligent. And the denser the vibrations, the more conscious and the more intelligent the matter.

"Really dead matter begins where vibrations cease. But under ordinary conditions of life on the earth's surface we have no concern with dead matter. And science cannot procure it. All the matter we know is living matter and in its own way it is intelligent.

"In determining the degree of density of matter the 'table of hydrogens' also determines by this the degree of intelligence. This means that in making comparisons between the matters which occupy different places in the 'table of hydrogens,' we determine not only their density but also their intelligence. And not only can we say how many times this or that 'hydrogen' is denser or lighter than another, but we can say how many times one 'hydrogen' is more intelligent than another.

"The application of the 'table of hydrogens' for the determination of the different properties of things and of living creatures which consist of many 'hydrogens' is based on the principle that in each living creature and in each thing there is one definite 'hydrogen' which is the center of gravity; it is, so to speak, the 'average hydrogen' of all the 'hydrogens' constituting the given creature or thing. To find this 'average hydrogen' we will, to begin with, speak about living creatures. First of all it is neces­sary to know the level of being of the creature in question. The level of being is primarily determined by the number of stories in the given machine. So far we have spoken only about man. And we have taken man as a three-story structure. We cannot speak about animals and man at one and the same time because animals differ in a radical way from man. The highest animals we know consist of two stories and the lowest of only one story."

G. made a drawing.

MAN

SHEEP

WORM

Fig. 56

"A man consists of three stories. "A sheep consists of two stories. "A worm consists of only one story.

"At the same time the lower and middle stories of a man are, so to speak, equivalent to the sheep, and the lower story—to the worm. So that it can be said that a man consists of a man, a sheep, and a worm, and that a sheep consists of a sheep and a worm. Man is a complex creature;

the level of his being is determined by the level of being of the creatures of which he is

composed. The sheep and the worm may play a bigger or a smaller part in man. Thus

the worm plays the chief part in man number one; in man number two—the sheep; and

in man number three—man. But these definitions are important only in individual

cases. In a general sense 'man' is determined by the center of gravity of the middle

story.

"The center of gravity of the middle story of man is 'hydrogen' 96. The intelligence of 'hydrogen' 96 determines the average intelligence of 'man,' that is, the physical body of man. The center of gravity of the 'astral body' will be 'hydrogen' 48. The center of gravity of the third body will be 'hydrogen' 24, and the center of gravity of the fourth body will be 'hydrogen' 12.

"If you remember the diagram of the four bodies of man which has been previously given and in which the 'average hydrogens' of the upper story were shown, it will be easier for you to understand what I am now saying."

G. drew this diagram:

"The center of gravity of the upper story is only one 'hydrogen' higher than the center of gravity of the middle story. And the center of gravity of the middle story is one 'hydrogen' higher than the center of gravity of the lower story.

"But, as I have already said, to determine the level of being by the 'table of hydrogens' it is usual to take the middle story.

"With this as a point of departure it is possible for example to solve such problems:

"Let us suppose Jesus Christ to be man number eight, how many times is Jesus Christ more intelligent than a table?

"A table has no stories. It lies wholly between 'hydrogen' 1536 and 'hydrogen' 3072 according to the third scale of the 'table of hydrogens.' Man number eight is 'hydrogen' 6. This is the center of gravity of the middle story of man number eight. If we are able to calculate how many times 'hydrogen' 6 is more intelligent than 'hydrogen' 1536 we shall know how many times man number eight is more intelligent than a table. But, in this connection, it must be remembered that 'intelligence' is determined not by the density of matter but by the density of vibrations. The density

of vibrations, however, increases not by doubling as in the octaves of 'hydrogens' but in an entirely different progression which many times outnumbers the first. If you know the exact coefficient of this increase you will be in a position to solve this problem. I only want to show that, however strange it looks, the problem can be solved.

"Partly in connection with what I have just said it is imperative that you should understand the principles of the classification and the definition of living beings from the cosmic point of view, from the point of view of their cosmic existence. In ordinary science classification is made according to external traits—bones, teeth, functions; mammals, vertebrates, rodents, and so on; in exact knowledge classification is made according to cosmic traits. As a matter of fact there are exact traits, identical for every­thing living, which allows us to establish the class and the species of a given creature with the utmost exactitude, both in relation to other creatures as well as to its own place in the universe.

"These traits are the traits of being. The cosmic level of being of every living creature is determined:

"First of all by what this creature eats,

"Secondly by what he breathes, and

"Thirdly by the medium in which it lives.

"These are the three cosmic traits of being.

'Take for instance man. He feeds on 'hydrogen' 768, breathes 'hydrogen' 192, and lives in 'hydrogen' 192. There is no other being like him on our planet. Although there are beings higher than he is. Animals such as the dog can feed on 'hydrogen' 768 but they can also feed on a lower 'hydrogen' not 768 but approaching 1536, food of a kind impossible for man. A bee feeds on a 'hydrogen' much higher than 768, even higher than 384, but it lives in a hive in an atmosphere where man could not live. From an outward point of view man is an animal. But he is an animal of a different order from all other animals.

"Let us take another example—a flour worm. It feeds on flour, a 'hydrogen' far coarser than 'hydrogen' 768 because the worm can also live on rotten flour. Let us say that this also is 1536. It breathes 'hydrogen' 192 and lives in 'hydrogen' 1536.

"A fish feeds on 'hydrogen' 1536, lives in 'hydrogen' 384, and breathes 'hydrogen' 192.

"A tree feeds on 'hydrogen' 1536, breathes only partly 'hydrogen' 192 and partly 'hydrogen' 96, and lives partly in 'hydrogen' 192 and partly in 'hydrogen' 3072 (soil).

"If you try to continue these definitions you will see that this plan, so simple at the first glance, makes it possible to determine the most subtle distinctions between classes of living beings, especially if you bear in mind that 'hydrogens,' taking them as we have by octaves, are very broad concepts. For example, we took it that a dog, a fish, and a flour worm alike feed on 'hydrogen' 1536, implying by this 'hydrogen' substances of organic origin which are not good for human food. Now, if we realize that these substances in their turn can be divided into definite classes, we shall see the possibility of very exact definitions. It is exactly the same with air and exactly the same with the medium.

"These cosmic traits of being are immediately connected with the definition of intelligence according to the 'table of hydrogens.'

"The intelligence of a matter is determined by the creature for whom it can serve as food. For example, which is more intelligent from this point of view, a raw potato or a baked potato? A raw potato can serve as food for pigs and a baked potato as food for man. A baked potato is more intelligent than a raw potato.

"If these principles of classification and definition are understood in the right way, many things become clear and comprehensible. No living being can change its food at will, or the air it breathes, or the medium in which it lives. The cosmic order of each being determines its food as well as the air it breathes and the medium in which it lives.

"When we talked before about the octaves of food in the three-story factory we saw that 'all the finer 'hydrogens' needed for the working, the growth, and the evolution of the organism were prepared from three kinds of food, that is, from food in the strict meaning of the word—eatables and drink, from air which we breathe, and from impressions. Now let us suppose that we could improve the quality of food and air, feed, let us say, on 'hydrogen' 384 instead of 768 and breathe 'hydrogen' 96 instead of 192. How much simpler and easier the preparation of fine matters in the organism would be then. But the whole point is that this is impossible. The organism is adapted to transform precisely these coarse matters into fine matters, and if you give it fine matters instead of coarse matters it will not be in a position to transform them and it will very soon die. Neither air nor food can be changed. But impressions, that is, the quality of the impressions possible to man, are not subject to any cosmic law. Man cannot improve his food, he cannot improve the air. Improvement in this case would be actually making things worse. For instance 'hydrogen* 96 instead of 192 would be either very rarefied air or very hot incandescent gases which man cannot possibly breathe; fire is 'hydrogen' 96. It is exactly the same with food. 'Hydrogen' 384 is water. If man could improve his food, that is, make it finer, he would have to feed on water and breathe fire. It is clear that this is impossible. But while it is not possible for him to improve his food and air he can improve his impressions to a very high degree and in this way introduce fine 'hydrogens' into the organism. It is precisely on this that the possibility of evolution is based. A man is not at all obliged to feed on the dull impressions of H48, he can have both H24, H12, and H6, and even H3. This changes the whole picture and a man who makes higher 'hydrogens' the food for the upper story

of his machine will certainly differ from one who feeds on the lower 'hydrogens.'"

In one of the following conversations G. again returned to the subject of classification according to cosmic traits.

"There is still another system of classification,"' he said, "which you also ought to understand. This is a classification in an altogether different ratio of octaves. The first classification by 'food,' 'air,' and medium definitely refers to 'living beings' as we know them, including plants, that is to say, to individuals. The other classification of which I shall now speak leads us far beyond the limits of what we call 'living beings' both upwards, higher than living beings, as well as downwards, lower than living beings, and it deals not with individuals but with classes in a very wide sense. Above all this classification shows that there are no jumps whatever in nature. In nature everything is connected and everything is alive. The diagram of this classification is called the 'Diagram of Everything Living.'

"According to this diagram every kind of creature, every degree of being, is defined by what serves as food for this kind of creature or being of a given level and for what they themselves serve as food, because in the cosmic order each class of creature feeds on a definite class of lower creature and is food for a definite class of higher creatures."

G. drew a diagram in the form of a ladder with eleven squares. And in each square excepting the two higher he put three circles with numbers. (See Fig. 58.)

"Each square denotes a level of being," he said. "The 'hydrogen' in the lower circle shows what the given class of creatures feeds on. The 'hydrogen' in the upper circle shows the class which feeds on these features. And the 'hydrogen' in the middle circle is the average 'hydrogen' of this class showing what these creatures are.

"The place of man is the seventh square from the bottom or the fifth square from the top. According to this diagram man is 'hydrogen' 24, he feeds on 'hydrogen' 96, and is himself food for 'hydrogen' 6. The square next below man will be 'vertebrates'; the next 'invertebrates.' Invertebrates are 'hydrogen' 96. Consequently man feeds on 'invertebrates.'

"Do not for the moment look for contradictions but try to understand what this may mean. And equally do not compare this diagram with others. According to the diagram of food man feeds on 'hydrogen' 768;

according to this diagram on 'hydrogen' 96. Why? What does it mean? Both the one is right and the other is right. Later, when you grasp this you will piece everything together into one.

'The square next below is — plants. The next — minerals, the next - metals, which constitute a separate cosmic group among minerals; and the following square has no name in our language because we never meet

Fig. 58

with matter in this state on the earth's surface. This square comes into contact with the Absolute. You remember we spoke before about 'Holy the Firm.' This is 'Holy the Firm.'"

At the bottom of the last square he placed a small triangle with its apex below.

"Now, on the other side of man is square 3, 12, 48. This is a class of creatures which we do not know. Let us call them 'angels.' The next square—1, 6, 24; let us call these beings 'archangels.'"

In the following square he put figures 3 and 12 and two circles, each with a point at their centers, and called it the "Eternal Unchanging," and in the next square he put the figures 1 and 6; he put a circle in the middle and in this circle a triangle containing another circle with a point at its center and called it the "Absolute."

"This diagram will not be very comprehensible to you at first," he said. "But gradually you will learn to make it out. Only for a long time you will have to take it separately from all the rest."

This was in fact all I heard from G. about this strange diagram which actually appeared to upset a great deal of what had been said before.

In our conversations about this diagram we very soon agreed to take "angels" as planets and "archangels" as suns. Many other things gradually became clear to us. But what used to confuse us a great deal was the appearance of "hydrogen" 6144 which was absent altogether in the previous scale of "hydrogens" in the third scale which ended with "hydrogen" 3072. At the same time, G. insisted that the enumeration of "hydrogens" had been taken according to the third scale.

A long time afterwards I asked him what this meant.

"It is an incomplete 'hydrogen,'" he said. "A 'hydrogen' without the Holy Ghost. It belongs to the same, that is to the third, scale, but it is unfinished.

"Each complete 'hydrogen' is composed of 'carbon,' 'oxygen,' and 'nitrogen.' Now take the last 'hydrogen' of the third scale, 'hydrogen' 3072. This 'hydrogen' is composed of 'carbon' 512, 'oxygen' 1536, and 'nitrogen' 1024.

"Now further: 'Nitrogen' becomes 'carbon' for the next triad, but there is no 'oxygen' for it and no 'nitrogen.' Therefore by condensation it becomes itself 'hydrogen' 6144, but it is a dead hydrogen without any possibility of passing into anything further, a 'hydrogen' without the Holy Ghost."

This was G.'s last visit to Petersburg. I tried to speak to him about impending events. But he said nothing definite on which I could base my own actions.

A very interesting event took place in connection with his departure. This happened at the railway station. We were all seeing him off at the Nikolaievsky Station. G. was standing talking to us on the platform by the carriage. He was the usual G. we had always known. After the second bell he went into the carriage—his compartment was next to the door— and came to the window.

He was different! In the window we saw another man, not the one who had gone into the train. He had changed during those few seconds. It is very difficult to describe what the difference was, but on the platform he had been an ordinary man like anyone else, and from the carriage a man of quite a different order was looking at us, with a quite exceptional importance and dignity in every look and movement, as though he had sud-denly become a ruling prince or a statesman of some unknown kingdom to which he was traveling and to which we were seeing him off.

Some of our party could not at the time clearly realize what was happening but they felt and experienced in an emotional way something that was outside the ordinary run of phenomena. All this lasted only a few seconds. The third bell followed the second bell almost immediately, and the train moved out.

I do not remember who was the first to speak of this "transfiguration" of G. when we were left alone, and then it appeared that we had all seen it, though we had not all equally realized what it was while it was taking place. But all, without exception, had felt something out of the ordinary.

G. had explained to us earlier that if one mastered the art of plastics one could completely alter one's appearance. He had said that one could become beautiful or hideous, one could compel people to notice one or one could become actually invisible.

What was this? Perhaps it was a case of "plastics."

But the story is not yet over. In the carriage with G. there traveled A. (a well-known journalist) who was at that time being sent away from Petersburg (this was just before the revolution). We who were seeing G. off, were standing at one end of the carriage while at the other end stood a group seeing A. off.

I did not know A. personally, but among the people seeing him off were several acquaintances of mine and even a few friends; two or three of them had been at our meetings and these were going from one group to the other.

A few days later the paper to which A. was contributing contained an article "On the Road" in which A. described the thoughts and impressions he had on the way from Petersburg to Moscow. A strange Oriental had traveled in the same carriage with him, who, among the bustling crowd of speculators who filled the carriage, had struck him by his extraordinary dignity and calm, exactly as though these people were for him like small flies upon whom he was looking from inaccessible heights. A. judged him to be an "oil king" from Baku, and in conversation with him several enigmatic phrases that he received still further strengthened him in his conviction that here was a man whose millions grew while he slept and who looked down from on high at bustling people who were striving to earn a living and to make money.

My fellow traveler kept to himself also; he was a Persian or Tartar, a silent man in a valuable astrakhan cap; he had a French novel under his arm. He was drinking tea, carefully placing the glass to cool on the small window-sill table; he occasionally looked with the utmost contempt at the bustle and noise of those extraordinary, gesticulating people. And they on their part glanced at him, so it seemed to me, with great attention, if not with respectful awe. What interested me most was that he seemed to be of the same southern Oriental type as the rest of the group of speculators, a flock of vultures flying somewhere into Agrionian space in order to tear some carrion or other—he was swarthy, with jet-black eyes, and a mustache like ZeIim-Khan. . . . Why does he so avoid and despise his own flesh and blood? But to my good fortune he began to speak to me.

"They worry themselves a great deal," he said, his face motionless and sallow, in which the black eyes, polite as in the Oriental, were faintly smiling.

He was silent and then continued:

"Yes, in Russia at present there is a great deal of business out of which a clever man could make a lot of money." And after another silence he explained:

"After all it is the war. Everyone wants to be a millionaire."

In his tone, which was cold and calm, I seemed to detect a kind of fatalistic and ruthless boasting which verged on cynicism, and I asked him somewhat bluntly:

"And you?"

"What?" he asked me back.

"Do not you also want this?"

He answered with an indefinite and slightly ironical gesture.

It seemed to me that he had not heard or had not understood and I repeated:

"Don't you make profits too?"

He smiled particularly quietly and said with gravity:

"We always make a profit. It does not refer to us. War or no war it is all the same to us. We always make a profit."

[G. of course meant esoteric work, "the collecting of knowledge" and the collecting of people. But A. understood that he was speaking about "oil."]

It would be curious to talk and become more closely acquainted with the psychology of a man whose capital depends entirely upon order in the solar system, which is hardly likely to be upset and whose interests for that reason prove to be higher than war and peace. . . .

In this way A. concluded the episode of the "oil king."

We were particularly surprised by G.'s "French novel." Either A. invented it, adding it to his own impressions, or G. actually made him "see," that is, presume, a French novel in some small volume in a yellow, or perhaps not even a yellow cover, because G. of course did not read French.

After G.'s departure up to the time of the revolution we only got news of him from Moscow once or twice.

All my plans had long since been upset. I had not succeeded in publishing the books I intended to publish; I had not succeeded in preparing anything for foreign editions, although right from the beginning of the

war I saw that my literary work would have to be transferred abroad. During the past two years I had given up all my time to G.'s work, to his groups, to talks connected with this work, to journeys from Petersburg, and had completely neglected my own affairs.

Meanwhile the atmosphere was growing gloomier. One felt that something was bound to happen and that very soon. Only those upon whom the course of events still appeared to depend were unable to see and feel this. The marionettes failed to understand the danger that threatened them and did not understand that the very same wire which pulls the villain with a knife in his hand from behind a bush makes them turn and look at the moon. A marionette theater is worked in the same way.

Finally the storm broke. The "great bloodless revolution" took place— the most absurd and the most blatant lie that could have been thought of. But the most extraordinary thing of all was that people who were there on the spot, in the center of everything that was happening, could believe in this lie, and in the midst of all the murders could speak about a "bloodless" revolution.

I remember that we spoke at the time of the "power of theories." People who had been waiting for the revolution, who had put all their hopes in it, and who had seen in it liberation from something, could not and did not want to see what was actually happening and only saw what in their opinion ought to be happening.

When I read in a leaflet printed on one side only the news of the abdication of Nicholas II, I felt that in this lay the center of gravity of everything that took place.

"Ilovaisky may rise from the grave and write at the end of his books: 'March, 1917, the end of Russian history,'" I said to myself.

I had no feelings whatever for the dynasty, but I simply did not wish to deceive myself as many others were doing at that time.

I had always been interested in the person of the Emperor Nicholas II; he seemed to me to be a remarkable man in many ways; but he was completely misunderstood and did not understand his own self. That I was right is proved by the end of his diary which was published by the bolsheviks and which referred to the time when, betrayed and left by all, he showed wonderful strength and even greatness of mind.

But after all, the matter had nothing to do with him as a person but with the principle of the unity of power and the responsibility to this power which he represented in himself. It is true that this principle was denied by a considerable part of the Russian intelligentsia. And for the people the word "czar" had long lost all significance. But this word still had a very great significance for the army and for the bureaucratic machine which, though very imperfect, nevertheless worked and held every- thing together. The "czar" was the indispensable central part of this machine. The abdication of the "czar" at such a moment was bound to destroy the whole machine. And we had nothing else. The celebrated "public-co-operation," for the creation of which so many sacrifices had been made, proved, as was to be expected, to be bluff. To create anything "on the move" was impossible. Events were moving at a breathless speed. The army broke up in a few days. The war in reality had stopped earlier. But the new government did not wish to recognize this fact. A fresh lie was started. But what was most surprising in all this was that people should find something to be glad about. I do not speak of the soldiers who broke out of barracks or out of the trains which were ready to carry them to the slaughter. But I was surprised at our "intelligentsia" who from "patriots" immediately became "revolutionaries" and "socialists." Even the Novoe Vremya suddenly became a socialist paper. The famous Menshikov wrote one article "about freedom," but he evidently could not swallow it himself and gave it up.

I think it was about a week after the revolution that I collected the principal members of our group in the quarters of Dr. S. and put before them my views on the position of affairs. I said that in my opinion there was no sense whatever in staying in Russia and that we must go abroad;

that in all probability there would be only a short period of comparative calm before everything began to break up and collapse. We could do nothing to help and our own work would be impossible.

I cannot say that my idea met with much approval. Most of them did not realize the gravity of the situation and to them it seemed possible that everything might yet calm down and become normal. Others were in the grip of the customary illusion that everything that happens is for the best. To them my words seemed to be exaggeration; at all events they saw no need for haste. For others the main difficulty was that we had heard nothing from G. and had had no news of him for a long time. Since the revolution there had only been one letter from Moscow and from this it was possible to gather that G. had gone away but no one knew where. Finally we decided to wait.

At that time there were two groups numbering about forty persons in all and there were also some separate groups which met at irregular intervals.

Soon after the meeting at Dr. S.'s house I received a postcard from G. written a month before in the train on the way from Moscow to the Caucasus which had been lying all that time at the post office owing to the prevailing disorders. It was evident from the postcard that G. had left Moscow before the revolution and as yet knew nothing of events

when he wrote it. He wrote that he was going to Alexandropol; he asked me to continue the work of the groups until his arrival and he promised to return by Easter.

This communication faced me with a very difficult problem. I thought it senseless and stupid to stay in Russia. At the same time I did not want to leave without G.'s consent or, to speak more truthfully, without him. And he had gone to the Caucasus, and his card, written in February, that is, before the revolution, could have no relation to the present situation. At length I again decided to wait although I saw that what was possible today might become impossible tomorrow.

Easter came—there was no news whatever from G. A week after Easter came a telegram in which he said he was arriving in May. The first "provisional government" came to an end. It was already more difficult to get abroad. Our groups continued to meet and awaited G.

Our conversations used often to come back to the "diagrams," especially when we had to talk to new people in our groups. It seemed to me the whole time that in these "diagrams" which we had got from G. there was a good deal left unsaid and I often thought that perhaps gradually with a deeper study of the "diagrams," their inner meaning and significance would be revealed to us.

Once when looking through some notes, made the year before, I paused at the "cosmoses." I wrote earlier that the "cosmoses" particularly attracted me because they coincided completely with the "period of dimensions" of the New Model of the Universe. I mentioned also the difficulties which arose for us at one time in connection with the different understanding of the "Microcosmos" and the "Tritocosmos." But by this time we had already decided to understand "man" as the "Microcosmos" and organic life on earth as the "Tritocosmos." And in the last conversation G. silently approved of this. G.'s words about different time in different cosmoses intrigued me very much. And I tried to remember what P. had said to me about our "sleep and waking" and about the "breath of organic life." For a long time I could make nothing of it. Then I remembered G.'s words that "time is breath."

"'What is breath?" I asked myself.

"Three seconds. Man in a normal state takes about twenty full breaths, that is inhalations and exhalations, to the minute. Consequently a full breath takes about three seconds.

"Why are 'sleep and waking' the 'breath of organic life'? What are sleep and waking?

"For man and for all organisms commensurable with him and living in similar conditions to him, even for plants, this is twenty-four hours.

Besides this, sleep and waking are breath, as for instance plants when asleep, that is, at night, exhale, and when awake, that is, by day, inhale;

in exactly the same way for all mammals as well as for man there is a difference in the absorption of oxygen and CO₂ by night and day, in sleep and waking."

Reasoning in this way I arranged the periods of breath and of sleep and waking in the following way:

Microcosmos breath _{3 seconds}

sleep and waking 24 hours

Tritocosmos _brea_th 24 hours

sleep and waking ?

table 5

I obtained a simple "rule of three." By dividing 24 hours by 3 seconds I got 28, 800. By dividing 28, 800 (days and nights) by 365 I got within a small fraction 79 years. This interested me. Seventy-nine years, continuing the former reasoning, made up the sleep and waking of "organic life." This did not correspond to anything that I could think of in organic life, but it represented the life of man.

"Could one not continue the parallel further?" I asked myself. I arranged the figures I had obtained in the following way:

Microcosmos Man

Breath: 3 secs.

Day and Night: 24 hours

Life: 79 years

Tritocosmos Organic Life

Breath: 24 hours

Day and Night: 79 years

table 6

Again 79 years meant nothing in the life of the earth. I thereupon multiplied 79 years by 28, 800 and got a little less than two and a half million years. By multiplying 2, 500, 000 years by 30, 000 for shortness, I got a number of eleven figures, 75, 000, 000, 000 years. This figure should signify the duration of life of the earth. So far these figures appear logically possible;

two and a half million years for organic life and seventy-five milliards of years for the earth.

"But then there are cosmoses lower than man," I said to myself. "Let us try to see in what relation they will stand to this."

I decided to take two cosmoses on the left (on the diagram) from the Microcosmos, understanding by them first, comparatively large microscopic cells, and then the smallest (admissible), almost invisible cells.

Such a division of cells into two categories cannot be said to have been definitely accepted by science. But if we think of dimensions within the "micro-world," then it is impossible not to admit that this world consists of two worlds as distinct in themselves as is the world of people and the world of comparatively large micro­organisms and cells. I got the following picture:

Small Large Micro- Organic Life Earth Cells Cells cosmos

(Man)

- - 3 secs. 24 hours ^{79 yrs.}

- 3 secs. ²⁴ hours 79 yrs. 2.5 mn. yrs.

3 secs 24 h_ours 79 years 2.5 mn. yrs. 75 milliard yrs.

TABLE 7

This was coming out very interestingly. Twenty-four hours made up the period of life of the cell. And although the period of life of individual cells can in no way be considered as established, many investigators have arrived at the fact that for a specialized cell such as a cell of the human organism the period of life appears to be precisely 24 hours. The breath of the cell equals 3 seconds. This told me nothing. But the 3 seconds of life of the small cell told me a great deal and it indicated above all why it is so difficult to see these cells, although from their size they should be ac­cessible to vision in a good microscope.

I tried further to see what would be obtained if "breath," that is, 3 seconds, were divided by 30, 000. One ten-thousandth part of a second was obtained. The period of duration of an electric spark and at the same time the period of the shortest visual impression. For convenience in calculating and for clarity I took 30, 000 instead of 28, 800. Four periods appeared to be connected with, or separated from, one another by one and the same coefficient of 30, 000—the shortest visual impression, breath or the period of inhalation and exhalation, the period of sleep and waking, and the average maximum of life. At the same time each of these periods denoted a corresponding but lower period in a higher cosmos and a corresponding higher period in a lower cosmos. Without as yet drawing any conclusions I tried to make a fuller table, that is, to bring into it all the cosmoses and to add two more of the lower ones, the first of which I called the "molecule" and the second the "electron." Then, again for clarity when multiplying by 30, 000, I took only round numbers and only two coefficients, 3 and 9; thus 2, 400, 000 I took as 3, 000, 000; 72, 000, 000, 000 I took as 90, 000, 000, 000; and 79 as 80, and so on.

I obtained the following table:

MICRO-

SMALL LARGE COSMOS ELECTRON MOLECULE CELLS CELLS (Man)

TRITO- MESO- DEUTERO- MACRO- AYO- PROTO- COSMOS COSMOS COSMOS COSMOS COSMOS COSMOS

This table at once aroused in me very many thoughts. Whether it was possible to look upon it as correct and as defining exactly the relation of one cosmos to another I was as yet unable to say. The coefficient 30, 000 seemed too big. But at the same time I remembered that the relation of one cosmos to another is "as zero to infinity." And in the presence of such a relation no coefficient could be too big. 'The relation of zero to infinity" was the relation of magnitudes of different dimensions.

G. said that every cosmos was three-dimensional for itself. This meant that the next cosmos above it was four-dimensional for it and the next cosmos below it—two- dimensional. The next one above that—five-dimensional, and the next one lower— one-dimensional. One cosmos in relation to another is a magnitude of a greater or smaller number of dimensions. But there could only be six dimensions or, with zero, seven, and by this table eleven cosmoses were obtained. At the first glance this seemed strange, but only at the first glance, because as soon as I took into account the period of existence of any cosmos in relation to higher cosmoses, the lower cosmoses disappeared long before reaching the seventh dimension. Take for example man in relation to the sun. The sun appeared as the fourth cosmos in relation to man, taking man as the first cosmos, but man's long life, eighty years, was equal in time to one electric spark for the sun, one shortest possible visual impression.

I tried to remember everything that G. had said about cosmoses.

"Each cosmos is an animate and intelligent being. Each cosmos is born, lives, and dies. In one cosmos it is impossible to understand all the laws of the universe, but three cosmoses taken together include in themselves all the laws of the universe, or two cosmoses, the one above and the other below, determine the cosmos which stands between them." "By passing in his consciousness to the level of a higher cosmos, a man by this very fact passes to a level of a lower cosmos."

I felt that here in each word was a clue to the understanding of the structure of the world, but there were too many clues; I did not know from which to start.

How would movement from one cosmos to another appear and where and when would the movement disappear? In what relation would the figures found by me stand to the more or less established figures of cosmic movements, as for instance the speed of movement of the heavenly bodies, the speed of movement of the electrons in an atom, the speed of light, and so on?

When I began to compare the movements of various cosmoses, I obtained some very startling correlations, for example, for the earth, the period of its rotation on its axis was equal to one ten-thousandth of a second, that is, the speed of an electric spark. It is very doubtful whether at such a speed the earth could notice its rotation on its axis. If man rotated, rotation round the sun should occupy about one twenty-fifth of a second, the speed of an instantaneous photograph. And taking into consideration the enormous distance which the earth has had to traverse in this time, the inevitable inference is that the earth could not be conscious of itself as we know it, that is, in the form of a sphere, but must be conscious of itself as a ring, or as a long spiral of rings. The latter was the more probable on the basis of the definition of the present as the time of breath. This was by the way the first thought that came into my mind when, a year previously, after the first lecture on cosmoses, G., in adding to what he had said earlier, said that time is breath. I thought at the time that perhaps he meant that breath was the unit of time, that is to say, that for direct sensation the period of breath is felt as the present. Starting from this and supposing that the sensation of self, that is, of one's body, is connected with the sensation of the present, I came to the conclusion that for the earth, with one breath in eighty years, the sensation of itself should be connected with eighty rings of a spiral. I had obtained a completely unexpected confirmation of all the conclusions and inferences of the New Model of the Universe.

Passing to the lower cosmoses, that is, to the cosmoses in my table which stood to the left of man, I found already in the first of them the explanation of what had always appeared to me the most enigmatic and most inexplicable in the work of our organism, namely, the astonishing speed, which was almost instantaneous, of many inner processes. It had always seemed to me to be almost charlatanism on the part of physi­ologists that no due significance had been attributed to this fact. Science, of course, explains only what it can explain. But in this case it ought not, in my opinion, to conceal the fact and avoid it as if it did not exist, but should constantly draw attention to it, put it on record on every suitable occasion. A man who gives no thought to questions of physiology may not be astonished at the fact that the drinking of a cup of strong coffee or a glass of brandy, or inhaling the smoke of a cigarette is immediately felt in the whole body, changes all the inner correlation of forces and the form and character of the reactions, but it ought to be clear to a physiologist that in this quite imperceptible interval of time, approximately equal to one breath, a long series of complicated chemical and other processes are accomplished in the organism. The substance which has entered the organism is carefully analyzed, the smallest divergence from the usual is immediately noticed; in the process of analysis it passes through a series of laboratories; it is resolved into its component parts and mixed with other substances and in the form of these mixtures it is added to the fuel which nourishes the various nerve centers. All this must occupy a great deal of time. The seconds in our time in which this is accomplished make all this entirely fantastic and miraculous. But the fantastic side falls away when we realize that for the large cells which obviously govern the life of the organism, our one breath continues for over twenty-four

hours. In twenty-four hours, even in half that time, even in a third, that is, in eight hours (which is equal to one second), it is possible to imagine all the processes which, have been indicated being completed in an orderly way, exactly as they would be completed in a large and well-arranged "chemical factory" with various laboratories at its service.

Passing further to the cosmos of small cells, which stand on the border or beyond the border of microscopic vision, I again saw an explanation of the inexplicable. For example, cases of almost instantaneous infection by epidemic and infectious diseases in general, particularly those where the causes responsible for the infection have not yet been found. If three seconds is the limit of life for a small cell of this kind, and is equal to the long life of man, then what would be the speed at which these cells mul­tiply when for them fifteen seconds would be equal to four centuries!

Further, passing to the world of molecules, I first of all came face to face with the fact that the brevity of the existence of a molecule is an almost unexpected idea. It is usually supposed that a molecule, although structurally very complicated, taken as the basic, so to speak, living interior of the bricks from which matter is built up, exists as long as the matter exists. We are obliged to part from this pleasant and soothing thought. The molecule, which is alive inside cannot be dead outside and in remaining alive it must, like everything living, be born, live, and die- The term of its life, equal to an electric spark or to one ten-thousandth part of a second, is too small for it to act directly on our imagination. Some comparison, some analogy, is necessary in order to understand what this means. The dying cells of our organism and their replacement by others bring us near to this idea. Dead matter, iron, copper, granite, must be renewed from. within more quickly than our organism. In reality it changes under our eyes. If you look at a stone, shut your eyes, and immediately open them again, it will now not be the stone which you saw; in it not a single one of the molecules which you saw the first time now remain. But even then you did not see the molecules themselves, but only their traces.

I came again to the New Model of the Universe. This explained also "why we cannot see molecules," about which I have written in Chapter

II of the New Model of the Universe.

Further in the last cosmos, that is, in the world of the electron, I felt myself from the very beginning in the world of six dimensions. The question arose for me as to whether the relation of dimensions could not be worked out. The electron as a three- dimensional body is too unsatisfactory. To begin with it exists for one three-hundred- millionth part of a second. This is a quantity far beyond the limits of our possible imagination. It is considered that an electron within an atom moves in its orbit with the speed of one divided by a fifteen-figure number. And since the whole life of an electron in seconds is equal to one divided by a nine-figure number, it follows that during its lifetime an electron makes a number of revolu­tions round its "sun," equal to a six-figure, or taking into account the coefficient, a seven-figure number.

If we take the earth in its revolution round the sun, then according to my table it makes in the course of its lifetime a number of revolutions round the sun equal to an eleven-figure number. It looks as though there was an enormous difference between a seven-figure and an eleven-figure number but if we compare with the electron not the earth, but Neptune, then the difference will be considerably less, namely the difference between a seven-figure and a nine-figure number, that is, two figures in all instead of four. And besides the speed of revolution of an electron within the atom is a very approximate quantity. It should be remembered that the difference in the periods of revolution of the planets round the sun in our system represents a three-figure number because Mercury revolves 460 times faster than Neptune.

The relation of the life of an electron to our perception appears thus. Our quickest visual perception is equal to 1/10, 000 second. The existence of an electron is equal to 1/30, 000 of 1/10, 000 second, that is, one three-hundred-millionth part of a second, and in that time it makes seven million revolutions round the proton. Consequently, if we were to see an electron as a flash in 1/10, 000 second, we should not see the electron in the strict sense of the word, but the trace of the electron, consisting of seven million revolutions multiplied by thirty thousand, that is, a spiral with a thirteen-figure number of rings, or, expressed in the language of the New Model of the Universe, thirty thousand recurrences of the electron in eternity.

Time, according to the table which I had obtained, undoubtedly went beyond four dimensions. And I was interested by the thought whether it was not possible to apply to this table the Minkovski formula V-1 ct, denoting time as the fourth "world" co­ordinate. The "world" of Minkovski in my opinion corresponded precisely to each of the cosmoses separately. I decided to begin with the "world of electrons" and to take as t the duration of the life of an electron. This coincided with one of the propositions in the New Model of the Universe, that time is life. The result should show the distance (in kilometers) that light travels during the life of an electron.

In the next cosmos this should be the distance that light travels during the life of a molecule; in the next—during the life of a small cell; then during the life of a large cell; then during the life of a man; and so on. The results for all cosmoses should be obtained in lineal measurements, that is, they should be expressed in fractions of a kilometer or in kilometers. The multiplication of a number of kilometers by V-1, that is, by the square root of minus one, ought to show that here we are not dealing with lineal measurements and that the figure obtained is a measure

of time. The introduction of the square root of minus one into the formula, while it does not change the formula quantitatively, shows that the whole formula relates to another dimension.

In this way, in relation to the cosmos of electrons, the Minkovski formula takes the following form:

V-1. 300,000. 3.10^-1 that is, the square root of minus one, which has to be multiplied by the product of 300, 000, that is c, or the speed of light, 300, 000 kilometers per second, and 1/300, 000, 000 second, that is, the duration of the life of an electron. Multiplying 300, 000 by 1/300, 000, 000 will give 1/1000 kilometer, which is one meter. "One meter" shows the distance which light traverses during the life of an electron, traveling at the speed of 300, 000 kilometers a second. The square root of minus one, which makes "one meter" an imaginary quantity, shows that the lineal measurement of a meter in the case in question is a "measure of time," that is, of the fourth co-ordinate.

Passing to the "world of the molecule," we obtain the Minkovski formula in the following form:

V-1. 300,000. 1/10,000 One ten-thousandth part of a second, according to the table, is the duration of the life of a molecule. Multiplying 300, 000 kilometers by 1/10, 000 will give 30 kilometers. "Time" in the world of molecules is obtained in the form of the formula V-1. 30. Thirty kilometers represents the distance which light travels during the life of a molecule, or in 1/10, 000 second.

Further, in the "world of small cells" the Minkovski formula takes the following form:,

V-1/. 300, 000. 3 or V-1. 900, 000

that is, 900, 000 kilometers multiplied by the square root of minus one. 900, 000 kilometers represents the distance which light travels during the life of a small cell, that is in 3 seconds.

Continuing similar calculations for the further cosmoses, I obtained for "large cells" an eleven-figure number, showing the distance which light travels in 24 hours; for the "Microcosmos" a sixteen-figure number, showing the distance in kilometers which light travels in 80 years; for the "Tritocosmos" a twenty-figure number; for the "Mesocosmos" a twenty-five-figure number; for the "Deuterocosmos" a twenty-nine- figure number;

for the "Macrocosmos" a thirty-four-figure number; for the "Ayocosmos" a thirty- eight-figure number; for the "Protocosmos" a forty-two-figure number or V-1. 9. 10⁴¹; in other words it means that during the life of

the "Protocosmos" a ray of light travels 900, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000,-000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000 kilometers.[2]

The application of the Minkovski formula to the table of time, as I had obtained it, in my opinion showed very clearly that the "fourth coordinate" can be established only for one cosmos at a time, which then appears as the "four-dimensional world" of Minkovski. Two, three, or more cosmoses cannot be considered as a "four-dimensional" world and they require for their description five or six co-ordinates. At the same time Minkovski's consistent formula shows, for all cosmoses, the relation of the fourth co­ordinate of one cosmos to the fourth co-ordinate of another. And this relation is equal to thirty thousand, that is, the relation between the four chief periods of each cosmos and between one period of one cosmos and the corresponding, that is, the similarly named, period of another cosmos.

The next thing that interested me in the "table of time in different cosmoses," as I called it, was the relation of cosmoses and of the time of different cosmoses to the centers of the human body.

G. spoke many times about the enormous difference in the speed of the different centers. The reasoning which I have cited above in regard to the speed of the inner work of the organism led me to the thought that this speed belongs to the instinctive center. With this as a basis I tried to proceed from the thinking center, taking as the unit of its work, for example, the time necessary for one full apperception, that is, for the reception of an outside impression, the classification and definition of this impression—and for the responding reaction. Then if the centers actually stand to one another in the relation of cosmoses, in exactly the same amount of time through the instinctive center there could pass 30, 000 apperceptions, through the higher emotional and in the sex centers 30, 000² apperceptions and through the higher thinking 30, 000³ apperceptions.

At the same time according to the law, pointed out by G., of the correlation of cosmoses, the instinctive center in relation to the head or thinking center should embrace two cosmoses, that is, the second Microcosmos and the Tritocosmos. Further, the higher emotional and the sex centers taken separately, should embrace the third Microcosmos and the Mesocosmos. And finally the higher thinking center should embrace the fourth Microcosmos and the Deuterocosmos.

But the latter refers to higher development, to that development of man which cannot be obtained accidentally or in a natural way. In man's normal state, an enormous advantage, in the sense of speed, over all the other centers should be possessed by the sex center, working 30, 000 times faster than the instinctive or the moving and 30, 000² times faster than the intellectual.

In the relation of centers to cosmoses in general very many possibilities of study, from my point of view, had been opened up.

The next thing that caught my attention was the fact that my table coincided with some of the ideas and even the figures "of cosmic calculations of time," if it can be so expressed, which existed with the Gnostics and in India.

A day of light is a thousand years of the world, and thirty-six myriads of years and a half-myriad of years of the world (365, 000) are a single year of Light.¹

Here the figures do not coincide, but in Indian writings in some cases the correspondence was quite unquestionable. They speak of the "breath of Brahma," "days and nights of Brahma," "an age of Brahma."

If we take the figures for the years given in the Indian writings, then the Mahamanvantara, that is, the "age of Brahma," or 311, 040, 000, 000, 000

¹Pistis Sophia, p. 203, English translation, 1921.years (fifteen-figure number), almost coincides with the period of the existence of the sun (sixteen-figure number), and the "day and night of Brahma," 8, 640, 000, 000 (ten-figure number), almost coincides with the "day and night of the sun" (eleven- figure number).

If we take Indian ideas of cosmic time without relation to figures, other interesting correspondences appear. Thus, if we take Brahma as the Protocosmos, then the expression "Brahma breathes in and breathes out the universe" coincides with the table, because the breath of Brahma (or the Protocosmos—a twenty-figure number) coincides with the life of the Macrocosmos, that is, our visible universe or the starry world.

I spoke a great deal with Z. about the "table of time" and it interested us very much as to what G. would say about it when we saw him.

Meanwhile time was passing. At last—it was already early in June—I received a telegram from Alexandropol: "If you want to rest come here to me."—That was G.!

In two days I left Petersburg. Russia with "no authorities" presented a very curious spectacle. It felt as though everything was existing and holding together simply by momentum. But the trains still ran regularly and at the stations the sentries turned a deeply indignant crowd of ticketless travelers out of the carriages. I was traveling for five days to Tiflis instead of the normal three.

The train arrived at Tiflis at night. It was not possible to walk about the town. I was obliged to await the morning in the station buffet. The whole station was crammed with soldiers who had returned from the Caucasian front on their own account. Many of them were drunk. "Meetings" were held throughout the night on the platform facing the windows of the buffet—and resolutions of some sort were carried. During the meetings there were three "courts-martial" and three men were shot there on the platform. A drunken "comrade" who appeared in the buffet explained to everyone that the first man had been shot for theft. The second was shot by mistake because he had been mistaken for the first; and the third was also shot by mistake because he had been mistaken for the second.

I was obliged to spend the day in Tiflis. The train to Alexandropol went in the evening only. The following morning I was there. I found G. setting up a dynamo for his brother.

And again I observed, as before, his remarkable capacity for adapting himself to any kind of work, to any kind of business.

I met his family, his father, and his mother. They were people of a very old and very peculiar culture. G.'s father was an amateur of local tales, legends, and traditions, something in the nature of a "bard"; and he knew by heart thousands and thousands of verses in the local idioms. They were Greeks from Asia Minor, but the language of the house, as of all the others in Alexandropol, was Armenian.

For the first few days after my arrival G. was so busy that I had no opportunity to ask him what he thought of the general situation or what he thought of doing. But when at length I spoke to him about it G. told me that he disagreed with me, that in his opinion everything would soon quiet down and that we would be able to work in Russia. He then added that in any case he wanted to go to Petersburg to see the Nevsky with hawkers selling sunflower seeds that I had told him about and to decide on the spot what had best be done. I could not take what he said seriously because I knew by now his manner of speaking and I waited for something further.

Indeed while saying this with apparent seriousness G. along with it said something altogether different, that it would be good to go to Persia or even further, that he knew a place in the Transcaucasian Mountains where one could live for several years without anyone knowing, and so on.

On the whole there remained with me a feeling of uncertainty, but all the same I hoped on the way to Petersburg to persuade him to go abroad if this were still possible.

G. was evidently waiting for something. The dynamo was working faultlessly but we made no move.

In the house there was an interesting portrait of G. which told me very many things about him. It was a big enlarged portrait of G. when he was quite young, dressed in a black frock coat with his curly hair brushed straight back.

G.'s portrait determined for me with undoubted accuracy what his profession was at the time the portrait was made—though G. never spoke of it. This discovery gave me many interesting ideas. But since this was my own personal discovery I shall keep it to myself.

Several times I tried to speak to G. about my "table of time in different cosmoses," but he dismissed all theoretical conversations.

I liked Alexandropol very much. It contained a great deal which was peculiar and original.

Outwardly the Armenian part of the town calls to mind a town in Egypt or northern India. The houses with their flat roofs upon which grass grows. There is a very ancient Armenian cemetery on a hill from which the snow-clad summit of Mount Ararat can be seen. There is a wonderful image of the Virgin in one of the Armenian churches. The center of the town calls to mind a Russian country town but alongside it is the bazaar which is entirely oriental, especially the coppersmiths' row where they work in open booths. There is also the Greek quarter, the least interesting of all outwardly, where G.'s house was situated, and a Tartar suburb in the ravines, a very picturesque but, according to those in the other parts of the town, a rather dangerous place.

I do not know what is left of Alexandropol after all these autonomies, republics, federations, and so on. I think one could only answer for the view of Mount Ararat.

I hardly saw G. alone and seldom succeeded in speaking to him. He spent a great deal of time with his father and mother. I very much liked his relationship with his father which was full of extraordinary consideration. G.'s father was still a robust old man, of medium height, with an inevitable pipe in his mouth and wearing an astrakhan cap. It was dim-cult to believe that he was over eighty. He spoke very little Russian. But with G. he used to speak for hours on end and I always liked to watch how G. listened to him, occasionally laughing a little, but evidently never for a second losing the line of the conversation and the whole time sustaining the conversation with questions and comments. The old man evidently enjoyed these conversations and G. devoted to him all his spare time, and not only did not evince the least impatience, but on the contrary the whole time showed a very great deal of interest in what the old man was saying. Even if this was partly acting it could not in any case have been all acting, otherwise there would have been no sense in it. I was very interested and attracted by this display of feeling on the part of G.

I spent in all about two weeks in Alexandropol. At length on one fine morning G. said that we would be going to Petersburg in two days and we set off.

In Tiflis we saw General S. who at one time used to come to our Petersburg group and it looked as though the talk with him gave G. a fresh view on the general situation and made him somewhat change his plans.

On the journey from Tiflis I remember an interesting talk with G. at one of the small stations between Baku and Derbent. Our train stood there a long time letting through trains with "comrades" from the Caucasian front. It was very hot, a quarter of a mile away the surface of the Caspian Sea was glittering, and all around us was nothing but fine shining flint with the outlines of two camels in the distance.

I tried to lead G. to talk about the immediate future of our work. I wanted to understand what he was going to do and what he wanted from us.

"Events are against us," I said. "It is by now clear that it is not possible to do anything in the midst of this mass madness."

"It is only now that it is possible," G. replied, "and events are not against us at all. They are merely moving too quickly. This is the whole trouble. But wait five years and you will see for yourself how what hinders today will prove useful to us."

I did not understand what G. meant by this. Neither after five years nor after fifteen years did this become any clearer. Looked at from the point of view of "facts," it was difficult to imagine in what way we could be helped by events in the nature of "civil war," "murder," epidemics, hunger, the whole of Russia becoming savage, and then the endless lying of European politics and the general crisis which was undoubtedly the result of this lying.

But if looked at, not from the point of view of "facts," but from the point of view of esoteric principles, then what G. meant becomes more comprehensible.

Why were there not these ideas earlier? Why did we not have them when Russia existed and when Europe was a comfortable and pleasant place "abroad"? It was here probably that lay the solution to G.'s enigmatic remark. Why were there not these ideas? Probably precisely because these ideas could come only in such a time when the attention of the majority is distracted in some other direction and when these ideas can reach only those who look for them. I was right from the point of view of "facts." Nothing could have hindered us more than "events." At the same time it is probable that precisely the "events" made it possible for us to receive what we had.

There remains in my memory one other conversation during this journey. Once when the train was standing a long time in some station and our fellow travelers were walking on the platform, I put one question to G. which I could not answer for myself. This was, in the division of oneself into "I" and "Ouspensky," how can one strengthen the feeling of "I" and strengthen the activity of "I"?

"You cannot do anything about it," said G. "This should come as a result of all your efforts" (he emphasized the word "all"). "Take for example yourself. By now you should have felt your 'I' differently. Try to ask yourself whether you notice the difference or not."

I tried to "feel myself" as G. had shown us, but I must say that I did not notice any difference from the way I felt before.

"That will come," said G. "And when it does come you will know. No doubt whatever is possible. It is quite a different feeling."

Later I understood about what he was speaking, that is, about which kind of feeling and which kind of change. But I began to notice this only two years after this conversation.

On the third day of our journey from Tiflis, while the train was waiting at Mozdok, G. said to us (there were four of us) that I was to go alone to Petersburg while he and the others would stop at Mineralni Vodi and go to Kislovodsk.

"You will stop at Moscow and go to Petersburg afterwards," he said to me, "and tell them in Moscow and Petersburg that I am beginning

new work here. Those who want to work with me can come. And I advise you not to stay there long."

I said good-by to G. and his companions at Mineralni Vodi and traveled on alone.

It was clear that nothing remained of my plans for going abroad. But now this no longer troubled me. I did not doubt that we should have to live through a very difficult time but now it hardly mattered to me. I realized what I had been afraid of. I was not afraid of actual dangers, I was afraid of acting stupidly, that is, of not going away in time when I knew perfectly well what must be expected. Now all responsibility towards myself seemed to have been taken from me. I had not altered my opinions; I could say as before, that to stay in Russia was madness. But my attitude towards this was quite indifferent. It was not my decision.

I traveled still in the old way, alone in a first-class compartment, and near Moscow they charged me excess fare on my ticket because the reservation was issued for one direction and the ticket for another. In other words everything was as it ought to be. But the papers which I got on the way were full of news about shooting in the streets of Petersburg. Moreover it was now the bolsheviks who were shooting into the crowd; they were trying their strength.

The situation at this time was beginning to become defined. On the one side were the bolsheviks, as yet not fully realizing the incredible success which was awaiting them, but already beginning to feel the absence of resistance and to act more and more insolently. On the other side was the "second provisional government" with many serious people who understood the situation in the minor posts and with altogether insignificant babblers and theorists in the major posts; then there was the intelligentsia greatly decimated by the war; then the remains of former parties and the military circles. All these taken together were divided in their turn into two groups, one who, in the face of all the facts and common sense, accepted the possibility of peace parleys with the bolsheviks who very cleverly made use of this while gradually occupying one position after another; and the other who, while realizing the impossibility of any negotiations whatever with the bolsheviks, were at the same time not united and did not come out actively into the open.

The people were silent, although never perhaps in history has the will of the people been so clearly expressed—and that will was to stop the war!

Who could stop the war? This was the chief question of the moment. The provisional government did not dare. Naturally it could not come from the military circles. And yet power was bound to pass to whoever should be the first to pronounce the word: "Peace." And as often happens in such cases the right word came from the wrong side. The bolsheviks pronounced the word "peace." First of all because it was a matter of complete indifference to them what they said. They had no intention of meeting their promissory notes, therefore they could issue as many of them as they liked. This was their chief advantage and chief strength.

There was something else here besides this. Destruction is always far easier than construction. How much easier it is to bum a house than to build one.

The bolsheviks were the agents of destruction. Neither then nor since could they or can they be anything else notwithstanding all their boasting and notwithstanding all the support of their open and their hidden friends. But they could and they can destroy very well, not so much by their own activity as by their very existence which corrupts and disintegrates everything around them. This special property of theirs explained their approaching victory and all that happened much later.

We who were looking at things from the point of view of the system could see not only the fact that everything happens but even how it happens, that is, how easily everything goes downhill and breaks up once a single impulse is given to it.

I did not stay in Moscow but I managed to see a few people while waiting for the evening train to Petersburg, and I passed on to them what G. had said. Then I went to Petersburg and passed on the same message to the members of our groups.

In twelve days time I was again in the Caucasus. In Pyatigorsk I learned that G. was not living at Kislovodsk but at Essentuki and in two hours time I was with him in a small country villa in Panteleimon Street.

G. asked me in detail about everyone I had seen, what each had said, who was going to come and who not, and so on. Next day three more people followed me from Petersburg, then two more, and so on. In all, excluding G. and myself, there forgathered twelve people.

Chapter Seventeen

I ALWAYS have a very strange feeling when I remember this period. On this occasion we spent about six weeks in Essentuki. But this now seems to be altogether incredible. Whenever I chance to speak with any one of those who were there they can hardly believe that it lasted only six weeks. It would be difficult even in six years to find room for everything that was connected with this time, to such an extent was it filled.

Half of our number, myself among them, lived throughout this period with G. in a small house on the outskirts of the village; the others came in in the morning and stayed late into the night. We went to bed very late and got up very early. We slept for four hours, at the most, five. We did all the housework; and the rest of the time was occupied with exercises of which I will speak later. G. several times arranged excursions to Kislovodsk, Jeleznovodsk, Pyatigorsk, Beshtau, and so on.

G. superintended the kitchen, and often prepared dinner himself. He proved to be a wonderful cook and knew hundreds of remarkable eastern dishes. Every day we had dinner in the style of some eastern country; we ate Tibetan, Persian, and other dishes.

I am not attempting to describe everything that took place in Essentuki; a whole book would have to be written in order to do this. G. led us at a fast pace without losing a single minute. He explained many things during our walks, while music was being played in the Essentuki park, and in the midst of housework.

In general, during the short period of our stay at Essentuki, G. unfolded to us the plan of the whole work. We saw the beginnings of all the methods, the beginnings of all the ideas, their links, their connections and direction. Many things remained obscure for us; many things we did not rightly understand, quite the contrary; but in any case we were given some general propositions by which I thought we could be guided later on.

All the ideas we had come to know up to that time brought us face to face with a whole series of questions connected with the practical realization of work on oneself, and, naturally, they evoked many discussions among the members of our group.

G. always took part in these discussions and explained different aspects of the organization of schools.

"Schools are imperative," he once said, "first of all because of the complexity of man's organization. A man is unable to keep watch on the whole of himself, that is, all his different sides. Only school can do this, school methods, school discipline—a man is much too lazy, he will do a great deal without the proper intensity, or he will do nothing at all while thinking that he is doing something; he will work with intensity on something that does not need intensity and will let those moments pass by when intensity is imperative. Then he spares himself; he is afraid of doing anything unpleasant. He will never attain the necessary intensity by himself. If you have observed yourselves in a proper way you will agree with this. If a man sets himself a task of some sort he very quickly begins to be indulgent with himself. He tries to accomplish his task in the easiest way possible and so on. This is not work. In work only super-efforts are counted, that is, beyond the normal, beyond the necessary; ordinary efforts are not counted."

"What is meant by a super-effort?" someone asked.

"It means an effort beyond the effort that is necessary to achieve a given purpose," said G. "Imagine that I have been walking all day and am very tired. The weather is bad, it is raining and cold. In the evening I arrive home. I have walked, perhaps, twenty-five miles. In the house there is supper; it is warm and pleasant. But, instead of sitting down to supper, I go out into the rain again and decide to walk another two miles along the road and then return home. This would be a super-effort. While I was going home it was simply an effort and this does not count. I was on my way home, the cold, hunger, the rain—all this made me walk. In the other case I walk because I myself decide to do so. This kind of super-effort becomes still more difficult when I do not decide upon it myself but obey a teacher who at an unexpected moment requires from me to make fresh efforts when I have decided that efforts for the day are over.

"Another form of super-effort is carrying out any kind of work at a faster rate than is called for by the nature of this work. You are doing something—well, let us say, you are washing up or chopping wood. You have an hour's work. Do it in half an hour—this will be a super-effort.

"But in actual practice a man can never bring himself to make super-efforts consecutively or for a long time; to do this another person's will is necessary which would have no pity and which would have method.

"If a man were able to work on himself everything would be very simple and schools would be unnecessary. But he cannot, and the reasons for this lie very deep in his nature. I will leave for the moment his insincerity with himself, the perpetual lies he tells himself, and so on, and take only the division of the centers. This alone makes independent work on himself impossible for a man. You must understand that the three principal centers, the thinking, the emotional, and the moving, are con-

nected together and, In a normal man, they are always working in unison. This unison is what presents the chief difficulty in work on oneself. What is meant by this unison? It means that a definite work of the thinking center is connected with a definite work of the emotional and moving centers—that is to say, that a certain kind of thought is inevitably connected with a certain kind of emotion (or mental state) and with a cer­tain kind of movement (or posture); and one evokes the other, that is, a certain kind of emotion (or mental state) evokes certain movements or postures and certain thoughts, and a certain kind of movement or posture evokes certain emotions or mental states, and so forth. Everything is connected and one thing cannot exist without another thing.

"Now imagine that a man decides to think in a new way. But he feels in the old way. Imagine that he dislikes R." He pointed to one of those present. "This dislike of R. immediately arouses old thoughts and he forgets his decision to think in a new way. Or let us suppose that he is accustomed to smoking cigarettes while he is thinking—this is a moving habit. He decides to think in a new way. He begins to smoke a cigarette and thinks in the old way without noticing it. The habitual movement of lighting a cigarette has turned his thoughts round to the old tune. You must remember that a man can never break this accordance by himself. Another man's will is necessary, and a stick is necessary. All that a man who wants to work on himself can do at a certain stage of his work is to obey. He can do nothing by himself.

"More than anything else he needs constant supervision and observation. He cannot observe himself constantly. Then he needs definite rules the fulfillment of which needs, in the first place, a certain kind of self-remembering and which, in the second place, helps in the struggle with habits. A man cannot do all this by himself. In life everything is always arranged far too comfortably for man to work. In a school a man finds himself among other people who are not of his own choosing and with whom perhaps it is very difficult to live and work, and usually in uncomfortable and unaccustomed conditions. This creates tension between, him and the others. And this tension is also indispensable because it gradually chips away his sharp angles.

"Then work on moving center can only be properly organized in a school. As I have already said, the wrong, independent, or automatic work of the moving center deprives the other centers of support and they involuntarily follow the moving center. Often, therefore, the sole possibility of making the other centers work in a new way is to begin with the moving center; that is with the body. A body which is lazy, automatic, and full of stupid habits stops any kind of work."

"But theories exist," said one of us, "that a man ought to develop the spiritual and moral side of his nature and that if he attains results in this direction there will be no obstacles on the part of the body. Is this possible or not?"

"Both yes and no," said G. "The whole point is in the 'if.' If a man attains perfection of a moral and spiritual nature without hindrance on the part of the body, the body will not interfere with further achievements. But unfortunately this never occurs because the body interferes at the first step, interferes by its automatism, its attachment to habits, and chiefly by its wrong functioning. If the development of the moral and spiritual nature without interference on the part of the body is theoretically possible, it is possible only in the case of an ideal functioning of the body. And who is able to say that his body functions ideally?

"And besides there is deception in the very words 'moral' and 'spiritual' themselves. I have often enough explained before that in speaking of machines one cannot begin with their 'morality' or their 'spirituality,' but that one must begin with their mechanicalness and the laws governing this mechanicalness. The being of man number one, number two, and number three is the being of machines which are able to cease being machines but which have not ceased being machines."

"But is it not possible for man to be at once transposed to another stage of being by a wave of emotion?" someone asked.

"I do not know," said G., "we are again talking in different languages. A wave of emotion is indispensable, but it cannot change moving habits;

it cannot of itself make centers work rightly which all their lives have been working wrongly. To change and repair this demands separate, special, and lengthy work. Then you say; transpose a man to another level of being. But from this point of view a man does not exist for me. There is a complex mechanism consisting of a whole series of complex parts. 'A wave of emotion' 'takes place in one part but the other parts may not be affected by it at all. No miracles are possible in a machine. It is miracle enough that a machine is able to change. But you want all laws to be violated."

"What of the robber on the cross?" asked one of those present. "Is there anything in this or not?"

"That is another thing entirely," said G., "and it illustrates an altogether different idea. In the first place it took place on the cross, that is, in the midst of terrible sufferings to which ordinary life holds nothing equal;

secondly, it was at the moment of death. This refers to the idea of man's last thoughts and feelings at the moment of death. In life these pass by, they are replaced by other habitual thoughts. There can be no prolonged wave of emotion in life and therefore it cannot give rise to a change of being.

"And it must be further understood that we are not speaking of exceptions or accidents which may or may not occur, but of general principles, of what happens every day to everyone. Ordinary man, even if he comes

to the conclusion that work on himself is indispensable—is the slave of his body. He is not only the slave of the recognized and visible activity of the body but the slave of the unrecognized and the invisible activities of the body, and it is precisely these which hold him in their power. Therefore when a man decides to struggle for freedom he has first of all to struggle with his own body.

"I will now point out to you only one aspect of the functioning of the body which it is indispensable to regulate in any event. So long as this functioning goes on in a wrong way no other kind of work, either moral or spiritual, can go on in a right way.

"You will remember that when we spoke of the work of the 'three-story factory,' I pointed out to you that most of the energy produced by the factory is wasted uselessly, among other things energy is wasted on unnecessary muscular tension. This unnecessary muscular tension eats up an enormous amount of energy. And with work on oneself attention must first be turned to this.

"In speaking of the work of the factory in general it is indispensable to establish that it is necessary to stop useless waste before there can be any sense in increasing the production. If production is increased while this useless waste remains unchecked and nothing is done to stop it, the new energy produced will merely increase this useless waste and may even give rise to phenomena of an unhealthy kind. Therefore one of the first things a man must learn previous to any physical work on himself is to observe and feel muscular tension and to be able to relax the muscles when it is necessary, that is to say, chiefly to relax unnecessary tension of the muscles."

In this connection G. showed us a number of different exercises for obtaining control over muscular tension and he showed us certain postures adopted in schools when praying or contemplating which a man can only adopt if he learns to relax unnecessary tension of the muscles. Among them was the so-called posture of Buddha with feet resting on the knees, and another still more difficult posture, which he could adopt to perfection, and which we were able to imitate only very approximately.

To adopt this posture G. kneeled down and then sat on his heels (without boots) with feet closely pressed together. It was very difficult even to sit on one's heels in this way for more than a minute or two. He then raised his arms and, holding them on a level with his shoulders, he slowly bent himself backwards and lay on the ground while his legs, bent at the knees, remained pressed beneath him. Having lain in this position for a certain time he just as slowly raised himself up with arms outstretched, then he again lay down, and so on.

He gave us many exercises for gradually relaxing the muscles always beginning with the muscles of the face, as well as exercises for "feeling" the hands, the feet, the fingers, and so on at will. The idea of the necessity of relaxing the muscles was not actually a new one, but G.'s explanation that relaxing the muscles of the body should begin with the muscles of the face was quite new to me; I had never come across this in books on "Yoga" or in literature on physiology.

Very interesting was the exercise with a "circular sensation," as G. called it. A man lies on his back on the floor. Trying to relax all his muscles, he then concentrates his attention on trying to sense his nose. When he begins to sense his nose the man then transfers his attention and tries to sense his ear; when this is achieved he transfers his attention to the right foot. From the right foot to the left; then to the left hand; then to the left ear and back again to the nose, and so on.

All this interested me particularly because certain experiments I had carried out had led me long ago to conclude that physical states, which are connected with new psychological experiences, begin with feeling the pulse throughout the whole body, which is what we do not feel in ordinary conditions; in this connection the pulse is felt at once in all parts of the body as one stroke. In my own personal experiments "feeling" the pulsation throughout the whole body was brought about, for instance, by certain breathing exercises connected with several days of fasting. I came to no definite results whatever in my own experiments but there remains with me the deep conviction that control over the body begins with acquiring control over the pulse. Acquiring for a short time the possibility of regulating, quickening, and slowing the pulse, I was able to slow down or quicken the heart beat and this in its turn gave me very interesting psychological results. I understood in a general way that control over the heart could not come from the heart muscles but that it depended upon controlling the pulse (the second stroke or the "big heart") and G. had explained a great deal to me in pointing out that control over the "second heart" depends upon controlling the tension of the muscles, because we do not possess this control chiefly in consequence of the wrong and irregular tension of various groups of muscles.

Exercises in relaxing the muscles which we began to perform gave very interesting results to some of our company. Thus one of us was suddenly able to stop a bad neuralgic pain in his arm by relaxing his muscles. Then relaxation of the muscles had an immense significance in proper sleep and whoever did exercises in relaxation seriously very quickly noticed that his sleep became sounder and that he needed fewer hours of sleep.

In this connection G. showed us an exercise that was quite new for us, without which, according to him, it was impossible to master moving nature. This was, as he called it, the "stop" exercise.

"Every race," he said, "every nation, every epoch, every country, every class, every profession, has its own definite number of postures and movements. These movements and postures, as things which are the most per-

manent and unchangeable in man, control his form of thought and his form of feeling. But a man never makes use of even all the postures and movements possible for him. In accordance with his individuality a man takes only a certain number of the postures and movements possible for him. So that each individual man's repertory of postures and movements is very limited.

"The character of the movements and postures in every epoch, in every race, and in every class is indissolubly connected with definite forms of thinking and feeling. A man is unable to change the form of his thinking or his feeling until he has changed his repertory of postures and movements. The forms of thinking and feeling can be called the postures and movements of thinking and feeling. Every man has a definite number of thinking and feeling postures and movements. Moreover moving, thinking, and feeling postures are connected with one another in man and he can never move out of his repertory of thinking and feeling postures unless he changes his moving postures. An analysis of man's thoughts and feelings and a study of his moving functions, arranged in a certain way, show that every one of our movements, voluntary or involuntary, is an unconscious transition from one posture to another, both equally mechanical.

"It is illusion to say our movements are voluntary. All our movements are automatic. Our thoughts and feelings are just as automatic. The automatism of thought and feeling is definitely connected with the automatism of movement. One cannot be changed without the other. So that if a man's attention is concentrated, let us say, on changing automatic thoughts, then habitual movements and habitual postures will interfere with this new course of thought by attaching to it old habitual associations.

"In ordinary conditions we have no conception how much our thinking, feeling, and moving functions depend upon one another, although we know, at the same time, how much our moods and our emotional states can depend upon our movements and postures. If a man takes a posture which with him corresponds to a feeling of sadness or despondency, then within a short time he is sure to feel sad or despondent. Fear, disgust, nervous agitation, or, on the other hand, calm, can be created by an intentional change of posture. But as each of man's functions, thinking, emotional, and moving, has its own definite repertory all of which are in constant interaction, a man can never get out of the charmed circle of his postures.

"Even if a man recognizes this and begins to struggle with it, his will is not sufficient. You must understand that a man's will can be sufficient to govern one center for a short time. But the other two centers prevent this. And a man's will can never be sufficient to govern three centers.

"In order to oppose this automatism and gradually to acquire control over postures and movements in different centers there is one special exercise. It consists in this—that at a word or sign, previously agreed upon, from the teacher, all the pupils who hear or see him have to arrest their movements at once, no matter what they are doing, and remain stock-still in the posture in which the signal has caught them. Moreover not only must they cease to move, but they must keep their eyes on the same spot at which they were looking at the moment of the signal, retain the smile on their faces, if there was one, keep the mouth open if a man was speaking, maintain the facial expression and the tension of all the muscles of the body exactly in the same position in which they were caught by the signal. In this 'stopped' state a man must also stop the flow of his thoughts and concentrate the whole of his attention on preserving the tension of the muscles in the various parts of the body exactly as it was, watching this tension all the time and leading so to speak his attention from one part of the body to another. And he must remain in this state and in this position until another agreed-upon signal allows him to adopt a customary posture or until he drops from fatigue through being unable to preserve the original posture any longer. But he has no right to change anything in it, neither his glance, points of support, nothing. If he cannot stand he must fall—but, again, he should fall like a sack without attempting to protect himself from a blow. In exactly the same way, if he was holding something in his hands he must hold it as long as he can and if his hands refuse to obey him and the object falls it is not his fault.

"It is the duty of the teacher to see that no personal injury occurs from falling or from unaccustomed postures, and in this connection the pupils must trust the teacher fully and not think of any danger.

"The idea of this exercise and its results differ very much. Let us take it first of all from the point of view of the study of movements and postures. This exercise affords a man the possibility of getting out of the circle of automatism and it cannot be dispensed with, especially at the beginning of work on oneself.

"A non-mechanical study of oneself is only possible with the help of the 'stop' exercise under the direction of a man who understands it.

"Let us try to follow what occurs. A man is walking, or sitting, or working. At that moment he hears a signal. A movement that has begun is interrupted by this sudden signal or command to stop. His body becomes immovable and arrested in the midst of a transition from one posture to another, in a position in which he never stays in ordinary life. Feeling himself in this state, that is, in an unaccustomed posture, a man involuntarily looks at himself from new points of view, sees and observes himself in a new way. In this unaccustomed posture he is able to think in a new way, feel in a new way, know himself in a new way. In this way the circle of old automatism is broken. The body tries in vain to adopt an ordinary comfortable posture. But the man's will, brought into action

by the will of the teacher, prevents it The struggle goes on not for life but till the death. But in this case will can conquer. This exercise taken together with all that has been said is an exercise for self-remembering. A man must remember himself so as not to miss the signal; he must remember himself so as not to take the most comfortable posture at the first moment; he must remember himself in order to watch the tension of the muscles in different parts of the body, the direction in which he is looking, the facial expression, and so on; he must remember himself in order to overcome very considerable pain sometimes from unaccustomed positions of the legs, arms, and back, so as not to be afraid of falling or dropping something heavy on his foot. It is enough to forget oneself for a single moment and the body will adopt, by itself and almost un-noticeably, a more comfortable position, it will transfer the weight from one foot to another, will slacken certain muscles, and so on. This exer­cise is a simultaneous exercise for the will, the attention, the thoughts, the feelings, and for moving center.

"But it must be understood that in order to bring into action a sufficient strength of will to keep a man in an unaccustomed position an order or command from the outside: 'stop,' is indispensable. A man cannot give himself the command stop. His will will not obey this command. The reason for this, as I have said before, is that the combination of habitual thinking, feeling, and moving postures is stronger than a man's will. The command stop which, in relation to moving postures, comes from out­side, takes the place of thinking and feeling postures. These postures and their influence are so to speak removed by the command stop—and in this case moving postures obey the will."

Soon after that G. began to put "stop," as we called this exercise, into practice in the most varied circumstances.

G. first of all showed us how to "stand stock-still" immediately at the command "stop," and to try not to move, not to look aside no matter what was happening, not to reply if anyone spoke, for instance if one were asked something or even unjustly accused of something.

"The 'stop' exercise is considered sacred in schools," he said. "Nobody except the principal teacher or the person he commissions has the right to command a 'stop.' 'Stop' cannot be the subject of play or exercise among the pupils. You never know the position a man can find himself in. If you cannot feel for him, you do not know what muscles are tensed or how much. Meanwhile if a difficult tension is continued it can cause the rupture of some important vessel and in some cases it can even cause im­mediate death. Therefore only he who is quite certain in himself that he knows what he is doing can allow himself to command a 'stop.'

"At the same time 'stop' demands unconditional obedience, without any hesitations or doubts. And this makes it the invariable method for studying school discipline. School discipline is something quite different from military discipline, for instance. In that discipline everything is mechanical and the more mechanical it is the better. In this everything should be conscious because the aim consists in awakening consciousness. And for many people school discipline is much more difficult than military discipline. There it is always one and the same, here it is always different.

"But very difficult cases occur. I will tell you of one case in my own life. It was many years ago in Central Asia. We had put up a tent by the side of an arik, that is, an irrigation canal. And three of us were carrying things from one side of the arik to the other where our tent was. The water in the arik came up to our waists. I and another man had just come out on the bank with some things and were preparing to dress; the third man was still in the water. He dropped something in the water, we afterwards found out that it was an ax, and he was feeling about on the bottom with a stick. At this moment we heard from the tent a voice which called 'Stop!' We both stood stock- still on the bank as we were. Our comrade in the water was just within our field of vision. He was standing bending down towards the water and when he heard 'stop' he remained in that posture. One or two minutes passed by and suddenly we saw that the water in the arik was rising. Someone perhaps a mile away had opened a sluice to let water into the small arik. The water rose very rapidly and soon reached the chin of the man in the water. We did not know if the man in the tent knew that the water was rising. We could not call out to him, we could not even turn our heads to see where he was, we could not look at each other. I could only hear my friend breathing. The water began to rise very rapidly and soon the head of the man in the water was completely covered. Only one hand was raised supported by a long staff. Only this hand was to be seen. It seemed to me that a very long time passed by. At length we heard: 'Enough!' We both sprang into the water and dragged our friend out of it. He had been almost suffocated."

We also very soon became convinced that the "stop" exercise was not at all a joke. In the first place it required us to be constantly on the alert, constantly ready to interrupt what we were saying or doing; and secondly it sometimes required endurance and determination of quite a special kind.

"Stop" occurred at any moment of the day. Once during tea P., who was sitting opposite me, had raised to his lips a glass of hot tea, just poured out, and he was blowing on it. At this moment we heard "Stop" from the next room. P.'s face, and his hand holding the glass, were just in front of my eyes. I saw him grow purple and I saw a little muscle near his eye quiver. But he held onto the glass. He said afterwards that his fingers only pained him during the first minute, the chief difficulty afterwards was with his arm which was bent awkwardly at the elbow, that is,

stopped halfway through a movement. But he had large blisters on his fingers and they were painful for a long time.

Another time a stop caught Z. when he had just inhaled smoke from his cigarette. He said afterwards that never in his life had he experienced anything so unpleasant. He could not exhale the smoke and he sat with eyes full of tears and smoke slowly coming out of his mouth.

"Stop" had an immense, influence on the whole of our life, on the understanding of our work and our attitude towards it. First of all, attitude towards "stop" showed with undoubted accuracy what anyone's attitude was to the work. People who had tried to evade work evaded "stop." That is, either they did not hear the command to "stop" or they said that it did not directly refer .to them. Or, on the other hand, they were always prepared for a "stop," they made no careless movements, they took no glasses of hot tea in their hands, they sat down and got up very quickly and so on. To a certain extent it was even possible to cheat with the "stop." But of course this would be seen and would at once show who was sparing himself and who was able not to spare himself, able to take the work seriously, and who was trying to apply ordinary methods to it, to avoid difficulties, "to adapt themselves." In exactly the same way "stop" showed the people who were incapable and undesirous of submitting to school discipline and the people who were not taking it seriously. We saw quite clearly that without "stop" and other exercises which accompanied it, nothing whatever could be attained in a purely psychological way.

But later work showed us the methods of the psychological way.

The chief difficulty for most people, as it soon appeared, was the habit of talking. No one saw this habit in himself, no one could struggle with it because it was always connected with some characteristic which the man considered to be positive in himself. Either he wanted to be "sincere," or he wanted to know what another man thought, or he wanted to help someone by speaking of himself or of others, and so on, and so on.

I very soon saw that the struggle with the habit of talking, of speaking, in general, more than is necessary, could become the center of gravity of work on oneself because this habit touched everything, penetrated everything, and was for many people the least noticed. It was very curious to observe how this habit (I say "habit" simply for lack of another word, it would be more correct to say "this sin" or "this misfortune") at once took possession of everything no matter what a man might begin to do.

In Essentuki at that time G. made us, among other things, carry out a small experiment in fasting. I had carried out experiments of this kind before and a good deal was familiar to me. But for many others the feeling of days which were endlessly long, of complete emptiness, of a kind of futility of existence, was new.

"Well, now I clearly understand," said one of our people, "what we live for and the place that food occupies in our lives."

But I personally was particularly interested in observing the place that talk occupied in life. In my opinion our first fast consisted in everybody talking without stopping for several days about the fast, that is, everybody spoke about himself. In this respect I remember very early talks with a Moscow friend about the fact that voluntary silence could be the most severe discipline to which a man could subject himself. But at that time we meant absolute silence. Even into this G. brought that wonderfully practical element which distinguished his system and his methods from anything I had known previously.

"Complete silence is easier," he said, when I began once to tell him my ideas. "Complete silence is simply a way out of life. A man should be in the desert or in a monastery. We speak of work in life. And a man can keep silence in such a way that no one will even notice it. The whole point is that we say a good deal too much. If we limited ourselves to what is actually necessary, this alone would be keeping silence. And it is the same with everything else, with food, with pleasures, with sleep; with everything there is a limit to what is necessary. After this 'sin' begins. This is something that must be grasped, a 'sin' is something which is not necessary."

"But if people abstain from everything that is unnecessary now, at once, what will the whole of life become like?" I said. "And how can they know what is necessary and what is not necessary?"

"Again you speak in your own way," said G. "I was not talking of people at all. They are going nowhere and for them there are no sins. Sins are what keep a man on one spot if he has decided to move and if he is able to move. Sins exist only for people who are on the way or approaching the way. And then sin is what stops a man, helps him to deceive himself and to think that he is working when he is simply asleep. Sin is what puts a man to sleep when he has already decided to awaken. And what puts a man to sleep? Again everything that is unnecessary, everything that is not indispensable. The indispensable is always permitted. But beyond this hypnosis begins at once. But you must remember that this refers only to people in the work or to those who consider themselves in the work. And work consists in subjecting oneself volun­tarily to temporary suffering in order to be free from eternal suffering. But people are afraid of suffering. They want pleasure now, at once and forever. They do not want to understand that pleasure is an attribute of paradise and that it must be earned. And this is necessary not by reason of any arbitrary or inner moral laws but because if man gets pleasure before he has earned it he will not be able to keep it and pleasure will be turned into suffering. But the whole point is to be able to get pleasure and be able to keep it. Whoever can do this has nothing to learn. But

the way to it lies through suffering. Whoever thinks that as he is he can avail himself of pleasure is much mistaken, and if he is capable of being sincere with himself, then the moment will come when he will see this."

But I will return to the physical exercises we carried out at that time. G. showed us the different methods that were used in schools. Very interesting but unbelievably difficult were exercises in which a whole series of consecutive movements were performed in connection with taking the attention from one part of the body to another.

For instance, a man sits on the ground with knees bent and holding his arms, with the palms of the hands close together, between his feet. Then he has to lift one leg and during this time count: om, om, om, om, om, om, om, om, om, up to the tenth om and then nine times om, eight times om, seven times om, and so on, down to one and then again twice om, three times om, and so on, and at the same time "sense" his right eye. Then separate the thumb and "sense" his left ear and so on and so on.

It was necessary first to remember the order of the movements and "sensing," then not to go wrong in the counting, to remember the count of movements and sensing. This was very difficult but it did not end the affair. When a man had mastered this exercise and could do it, say, for about ten or fifteen minutes, he was given, in addition, a special form of breathing, namely, he must inhale while pronouncing om several times and exhale pronouncing om several times; moreover the count had to be made aloud. Beyond this there were still greater and greater complications of the exercise up to almost impossible things. And G. told us he had seen people who for days did exercises of this kind.

The short fast of which I spoke was also accompanied by special exercises. In the first place G. explained at the beginning of the fast that the difficulty in fasting consisted in not leaving unused the substances which are prepared in the organism for the digestion of food.

"These substances consist of very strong solutions," he said. "And if they are left without attention they will poison the organism. They must be used up. But how can they be used up if the organism gets no food? Only by an increase of work, an increase of perspiration. People make a tremendous mistake when they try to 'save their strength,' make fewer movements, and so on, when fasting. On the contrary it is necessary to expend as much energy as possible. Then fasting can be beneficial."

And when we began our fast we were not left in peace for a single second. G. made us run in the heat, doing a round of two miles, or stand with extended arms, or mark time at the double, or carry out a whole series of curious gymnastic exercises which he showed us.

And he, all the time, constantly said that these exercises we were doing were not real ones, but merely preliminary and preparatory exercises.

One experiment in connection with what G. said about breathing and fatigue explained many things to me and chiefly it explained why it is so difficult to attain anything in the ordinary conditions of life.

I had gone to a room where nobody could see me, and began to mark time at the double trying at the same time to breathe according to a particular count, that is, to inhale during a definite number of steps and exhale during a definite number. After a certain time when I had begun to tire I noticed, that is, to speak more correctly, I felt quite clearly, that my breathing was artificial and unreliable. I felt that in a very short time I would be unable to breathe in that way while continuing to mark time at the double and that ordinary normal breathing, very accelerated of course, without any count would gain the upper hand.

It became more and more difficult for me to breathe and to mark time, and to observe the count of breaths and steps. I was pouring with sweat, my head began to turn round, and I thought I should fall. I began to despair of obtaining results of any kind and I had almost stopped when suddenly something seemed to crack or move inside me and my breathing went on evenly and properly at the rate I wanted it to go, but without any effort on my part, while affording me all the amount of air I needed. It was an extraordinarily pleasant sensation. I shut my eyes and continued to mark time, breathing easily and freely and feeling exactly as though strength was increasing in me and that I was getting lighter and stronger. I thought that if I could continue to run in this way for a certain time I should get still more interesting results because waves of a sort of joyful trembling had already begun to go through my body which, as I knew from previous experiments, preceded what I called the opening of the inner consciousness.

But at this moment someone came into the room and I stopped.

Afterwards my heart beat strongly for a long time, but not unpleasantly. I had marked time and breathed for about half an hour. I do not recommend this exercise to people with weak hearts.

At all events this experiment showed me with accuracy that a given exercise could be transferred to the moving center, that is, that it was possible to make the moving center work in a new way. But at the same time I was convinced that the condition for this transition was extreme fatigue. A man begins any exercise with his mind; only when the last stage of fatigue is reached can the control pass to the moving center. This explained what G. had said about "super-efforts" and made many of his later requirements intelligible.

But afterwards, however much I tried I did not succeed in repeating the experiment, that is to say, in evoking the same sensations. It is true that the fast had come to an end and that the success of my experiment had been, to a considerable extent, connected with it.

When I told G. about this experiment he said that without general work, that is, without work on the whole organism, such things could only succeed by chance.

Later on I several times heard descriptions of experiences very similar to mine from people who were studying dances and dervish movements with G.

The more we saw and realized the complexity and the diversity of methods of work on oneself, the clearer became for us the difficulties of the way. We saw the indispensability of great knowledge, of immense efforts, and of help such as none of us either could or had the right to count upon. We saw that even to begin work on oneself in any serious form was an exceptional phenomenon needing thousands of favorable inner and outward conditions. And the beginning gave no guarantee for the future. Each step required an effort, each step needed help. The possibility of attaining anything seemed so small in comparison with the difficulties that many of us lost the desire to make efforts of any kind.

This was an inevitable stage through which everybody passes until they have learned to understand that it is useless to think of the possibility or impossibility of big and distant achievements, and that a man must value what he gets today without thinking of what he may get tomorrow.

But certainly the idea of the difficulty and the exclusiveness of the way was right. And at different times questions arose out of it which were put to G.:

"Can it be possible that there is any difference between us and those people who have no conception of this system?"—"Must we understand that people who are not passing along any of the ways are doomed to turn eternally in one and the same circle, that they are merely 'food for the moon,' that they have no escape and no possibilities?"—"Is it correct to think that there are no ways outside the ways; and how is it arranged that some people, much better people perhaps, do not come across a way, while others, weak and insignificant, come into contact with the possibilities of a way?"

On one occasion while talk was proceeding on these subjects, to which we were constantly returning, G. began to talk in a somewhat different way to what he had done before, because he had previously always insisted on the fact that outside the ways there was nothing.

"There is not and there cannot be any choice of the people who come into touch with the 'ways.' In other words, nobody selects them, they select themselves, partly by accident and partly by having a certain hunger. Whoever is without this hunger cannot be helped by accident. And whoever has this hunger very strongly can be brought by accident to the beginning of a way in spite of all unfavorable circumstances."

"But what of those who were killed and who died from disease in the war for instance?" someone asked. "Could not many of them have had this hunger? And how then could this hunger have helped?"