In search of the miraculous

helping him in everything that he does. There can be no other attitude towards the work. And G. himself said several times that a most important thing in the work was to remember that one came to learn and to take no other role upon oneself.

At the same time this does not at all mean that a man has no choice or that he is obliged to follow something which does not respond to what he is seeking. G. himself said that there are no 'general' schools, that each 'guru' or leader of a school works at his own specialty, one is a sculptor, another is a musician, a third is again something else, and that all the pupils of such a guru have to study his specialty. And it stands to reason that here a choice is possible. A man has to wait until he meets a guru whose specialty he is able to study, a specialty which suits his tastes, his tendencies, and his abilities.

There is no doubt that there may be very interesting ways, like music and like sculpture. But it cannot be that every man should be required to learn music or sculpture. In school work there are undoubtedly obligatory subjects and there are, if it is possible to put it in this way, auxiliary subjects, the study of which is proposed merely as a means of studying the obligatory. Then the methods of the schools may differ very much. According to the three ways the methods of each guru may approximate either to the way of the fakir, the way of the monk, or the way of the yogi. And it is of course possible that a man who is beginning work will make a mistake, will follow a leader such as he cannot follow for any distance. It stands to reason that it is the task of the leader to see to it that people do not begin to work with him for whom his methods or his special subjects will always be alien, incomprehensible, and unattainable. But if this does happen and if a man had begun to work with a leader whom he cannot follow, then of course, having noticed and realized this, he ought to go and seek another leader or work independently, if he is able to do so.

In regard to my relations with G. I saw clearly at that time that I had been mistaken about many things that I had ascribed to G. and that by staying with him now I should not be going in the same direction I went at the beginning. And I thought that all the members of our small group, with very few exceptions, were in the same or in a similar situation.

This was a very strange 'observation' but it was absolutely a right one. I had nothing to say against G.'s methods except that they did not suit me. A very clear example came to my mind then. I had never had a nega-

tive attitude towards the 'way of the monk,' to religious, mystical ways. At the same time I could never have thought for one moment that such a way was possible for me or suitable. And so, if after three years of work I perceived that G. was leading us in fact towards the way of religion, of the monastery, and required the observance of all religious forms and ceremonies, there would be of course a motive for disagreeing with this and for going away, even though at the risk of losing direct leadership. And certainly this would not, at the same time, mean that I considered the religious way a wrong way in general. It may even be a more correct way than my way but it is not my way.

The decision to leave G.'s work and leave him exacted from me a great inner struggle. I had built very much upon it and it was difficult for me now to reconstruct everything from the beginning. But there was nothing else to do. Of course, all that I had learned during those three years I retained. But a whole year passed by while I was going into all this and until I found it possible to continue to work in the same direction as G. but independently.

I went into a separate house and again began work abandoned in St. Petersburg, on my book which afterwards appeared under the title A New Model of the Universe.

In the 'Home' lectures and demonstrations still continued for a certain time and then stopped.

Sometimes I met G. in the park or on the street, sometimes he came to my house. But I avoided going to the 'Home.'

At this time the position of affairs in the north Caucasus began to get very much worse. We were completely cut off from central Russia; what was going on there we did not know.

After the first Cossack raid on Essentuki the position quickly began to change for the worse and G. decided to leave Mineralni Vodi. Where he actually intended to go he did not say and it was difficult to say, having regard to the circumstances of the time.

The public who had left Mineralni Vodi at that time had tried to get through to Novorossiysk and I supposed that he would also go in that direction. I also decided to leave Essentuki. But I did not want to leave before he did. In this respect I had a strange kind of feeling. I wanted to wait until the end; to do everything that depended upon me so that afterwards I could tell myself that I had not let a single possibility escape me. It was very difficult for me to reject the idea of working with G.

In the beginning of August G. left Essentuki. Most of those living in the 'Home' left with him. A few people had gone earlier. About ten persons were left in Essentuki.

I decided to go to Novorossiysk. But circumstances began to change swiftly. Within a week of G.'s departure communications even with places nearest to us came to a stop. Cossacks began to raid the branch line to

Mineralni Vodi and where we were, bolshevik robberies, 'requisitions,' and so on began. This was the time of the massacre of 'hostages' in Pyatigorsk when General Russki, General Radko-Dimitriev, and Prince Ouroussov and many others perished.

I must confess that I felt very silly. I had not gone abroad when it was possible in order to work with G. and the final outcome was that I had parted from G. and stopped with the bolsheviks.

All of us who had stayed in Essentuki had to live through a very difficult time. For me and my family things turned out comparatively favorably. Only two people out of four got ill with typhoid. No one died. Not once were we robbed. And all the time I had work and earned money. Things were much worse for others. In January, 1919, we were set free by the Cossacks of Denikin's Army. But I was only able to leave Essentuki in the following summer of 1919.

The news we had of G. was very brief. He had traveled by railway to Maikop and from there the whole of the party with him went on foot by a very interesting but very difficult way, through the mountains to the sea at Sochi which had then been seized by the Georgians. Carrying with them the whole of their baggage they walked, with all possible kinds of adventures and dangers, over lofty passes where there were no roads and where hunters crossed but seldom. It was, apparently, only about a month after their departure from Essentuki that they reached Sochi.

But the inner situation had changed. In Sochi the greater part of the company, as I had foreseen, parted company with G. Among them were P. and Z. Only four people stayed with G. of whom Dr. S. alone belonged to the original St. Petersburg group. The others had only been in 'young' groups.

In February P., who had established himself in Maikop after the rupture with G., came to Essentuki for his mother who had remained there, and from him we learned the details of everything that had taken place on the way to and on arrival at Sochi. Moscow people had gone to Kiev. G. with his four companions had gone to Tiflis. In the spring we learned that he was continuing work in Tiflis with new people and in a new direction, basing it principally on art, that is, on music, dances, and rhythmic exercises.

At the end of winter when conditions of living became slightly easier I began to look through my notes and drawings of G.'s diagrams which with G.'s permission I had preserved since St. Petersburg. My attention was particularly attracted by the enneagram. The explanation of the enneagram had clearly not been finished and I felt that there were in it hints at a possible continuation. I very soon saw that a continuation must be sought in connection with the wrong situation of the 'shock'

which came into the enneagram at the interval sol-la. Then I turned my attention to what the Moscow notes, in connection with commentaries on the enneagram, said about the influences of the three octaves on one another in the 'food diagram.' I drew the enneagram as it had been given to us and I saw that it represented up to a certain point the 'food diagram.'

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