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
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.'
