In search of the miraculous

something precious at the moment, to sacrifice for a long time and to sacrifice a great deal. But still, not forever. This must be understood because often it is not understood. Sacrifice is necessary only while the process of crystallization is going on. When crystallization is achieved, renunciations, privations, and sacrifices are no longer necessary. Then a man may have everything he wants. There are no longer any laws for him, he is a law unto himself.'

From among those who came to our lectures a small group of people was gradually formed who did not miss a single opportunity of listening to G. and who met together in his absence. This was the beginning of the first Petersburg group.

During that time I was a good deal with G. and began to understand him better. One was struck by a great inner simplicity and naturalness in him which made one completely forget that he was, for us, the representative of the world of the miraculous and the unknown. Furthermore, one felt very strongly in him the entire absence of any kind of affectation or desire to produce an impression. And together with this one felt an absence of personal interest in anything he was doing, a complete indifference to ease and comfort and a capacity for not sparing himself in work whatever that work might be. Sometimes he liked to be in gay and lively company; he liked to arrange big dinners, buying a quantity of wine and food of which however he often ate or drank practically nothing. Many people got the impression that he was a gourmand, a man fond of good living in general, and it seemed to us that he often wanted to create this impression, although all of us already saw that this was 'acting.'

Our feeling of this 'acting' in G. was exceptionally strong. Among ourselves we often said we never saw him and never would. In any other man so much 'acting' would have produced an impression of falsity. In him 'acting' produced an impression of strength, although, as I have already mentioned, not always; sometimes there was too much of it.

I was particularly attracted by his sense of humor and the complete absence of any pretensions to 'sanctity' or to the possession of 'miraculous' powers, although, as we became convinced later, he possessed then the knowledge and ability of creating unusual phenomena of a psychological character. But he always laughed at people who expected miracles from him.

He was an extraordinarily versatile man; he knew everything and could do everything. He once told me he had brought back from his travels in the East a number of carpets among which were many duplicates and others having no particular value from an artistic point of view. During his visits he had found that the price of carpets in Petersburg was higher than in Moscow, and every time he came he brought a bale of carpets which he sold in Petersburg.

According to another version he simply bought the carpets in Moscow at the 'Tolkutchka' and brought them to Petersburg to sell.

I did not altogether understand why he did this, but I felt it was connected with the idea of 'acting.'

The sale of these carpets was in itself remarkable. G. put an advertisement in the papers and all kinds of people came to buy carpets. On such occasions they took him, of course, for an ordinary Caucasian carpet-seller. I often sat for hours watching him as he talked to the people who came. I saw that he sometimes played on their weak side.

One day he was either in a hurry or had grown tired of acting the carpet-seller and he offered a lady, obviously rich but very grasping, who had selected a dozen fine carpets and was bargaining desperately, all the carpets in the room for about a quarter of the price of those she had chosen. At first she was surprised but then she began to bargain again. G. smiled and said he would think it over and give her his answer the next day. But next day he was no longer in Petersburg and the woman got nothing at all.

Something of this sort happened on nearly every occasion. With these carpets, in the role of traveling merchant, he again gave the impression of a man in disguise, a kind of Haroun-al-Raschid, or the man in the invisible cap of the fairy tale.

Once, when I was not there, an 'occultist' of the charlatan type came to him, who played a certain part in some spiritualistic circles in Petersburg and who later became a 'professor' under the bolsheviks. He began by saying he had heard a great deal about G. and his knowledge and wanted to make his acquaintance.

G., as he told me himself, played the part of a genuine carpet-seller. With the strongest Caucasian accent and in broken Russian he began to assure the 'occultist' that he was mistaken and that he only sold carpets; and he immediately began to unroll and offer him some.

The 'occultist' went away fully convinced he had been hoaxed by his friends.

'It was obvious that the rascal had not got a farthing,' added G, 'otherwise I would have screwed the price of a pair of carpets out of him.'

A Persian used to come to him to mend carpets. One day I noticed that G. was very attentively watching how the Persian was doing his work.

'I want to understand how he does it and I don't understand yet,' said G. 'Do you see that hook he has? The whole thing is in that. I wanted to buy it from him but he won't sell it.'

Next day I came earlier than usual. G. was sitting on the floor mending a carpet exactly as the Persian had done. Wools of various colors were strewn around him and in his hand was the same kind of hook I had seen with the Persian. It transpired that he had cut it with an ordinary file from the blade of a cheap penknife and, in the course of the morning, had fathomed all the mysteries of carpet mending.

He told me a great deal about carpets which, as he often said, represented one of the most ancient forms of art. He spoke of the ancient customs connected with carpet making in certain parts of Asia; of a whole village working together at one carpet; of winter evenings when all the villagers, young and old, gather together in one large building and, dividing into groups, sit or stand on the floor in an order previously known and determined by tradition. Each group then begins its own work. Some pick stones and splinters out of the wool. Others beat out the wool with sticks. A third group combs the wool. The fourth spins. The fifth dyes the wool. The sixth or maybe the twenty-sixth weaves the actual carpet. Men, women, and children, old men and old women, all have their own traditional work. And all the work is done to the accompaniment of music and singing. The women spinners with spindles in their hands dance a special dance as they work, and all the movements of all the people engaged in different work are like one movement in one and the same rhythm. Moreover each locality has its own special tune, its own special songs and dances, connected with carpet making from time immemorial.

And as he told me this the thought flashed across my mind that perhaps the design and coloring of the carpets are connected with the music, are its expression in line and color; that perhaps carpets are records of this music, the notes by which the tunes could be reproduced. There was nothing strange in this idea to me as I could often 'see' music in the form of a complicated design.

From a few incidental talks with G. I obtained some idea of his previous life.

His childhood was passed on the frontier of Asia Minor in strange, very remote, almost biblical circumstances of life. Flocks of innumerable sheep. Wanderings from place to place. Coming into contact with various strange people. His imagination was particularly struck by the Yezidis, the 'Devil Worshipers,' who, from his earliest youth, had attracted his attention by their incomprehensible customs and strange dependence upon unknown laws. He told me, among other things, that when he was a child he had often observed how Yezidi boys were unable to step out of a circle traced round them on the ground.

He had passed his young years in an atmosphere of fairy tales, legends, and traditions. The 'miraculous' around him was an actual fact. Predictions of the future which he heard, and which those around him fully believed, were fulfilled and made him believe in many other things.

All these things taken together had created in him at a very early age a leaning towards the mysterious, the incomprehensible, and the magical. He told me that when quite young he made several long journeys in the East. What was true in these stories I could never decide exactly. But, as he said, in the course of these journeys he again came across many phenomena telling him of the existence of a certain knowledge, of certain powers and possibilities exceeding the ordinary possibilities of man, and of people possessing clairvoyance and other miraculous powers. Gradually, he told me, his absences from home and his travels began to follow one definite aim. He went in search of knowledge and the people who possessed this knowledge. And, as he said, after great difficulties, he found the sources of this knowledge in company with several other people who were, like him, also seeking the miraculous.

In all these stories about himself a great deal was contradictory and hardly credible. But I had already realized that no ordinary demands could be made of him, nor could any ordinary standards be applied to him. One