In search of the miraculous

G. was silent for a time, and then said slowly, looking into the distance:

'Some have died, some are working, some have gone into seclusion.'

This word from the monastic language, heard so unexpectedly, gave me a strange and uncomfortable feeling.

At the same time I felt a certain 'acting' on G.'s part, as though he were deliberately trying from time to time to throw me a word that would interest me and make me think in a definite direction.

When I tried to ask him more definitely where he had found what he knew, what the source of his knowledge was, and how far this knowledge went, he did not give me a direct answer.

'You know,' G. said once, 'when you went to India they wrote about your journey and your aims in the papers. I gave my pupils the task of reading your books, of determining by them what you were, and of establishing on this basis what you would be able to End. So we knew what you would End while you were still on. your way there.'

With this the talk came to an end.

I once asked G. about the ballet which had been mentioned in the papers and referred to in the story 'Glimpses of Truth' and whether this ballet would have the nature of a 'mystery play.'

'My ballet is not a 'mystery,'' said G. 'The object I had in view was to produce an interesting and beautiful spectacle. Of course there is a certain meaning hidden beneath the outward form, but I have not pursued the aim of exposing and emphasizing this meaning. An important place in the ballet is occupied by certain dances. I will explain this to you briefly. Imagine that in the study of the movements of the heavenly bodies, let us say the planets of the solar system, a special mechanism is constructed to give a visual representation of the laws of these movements and to remind us of them. In this mechanism each planet, which is represented by a sphere of appropriate size, is placed at a certain distance from a central sphere representing the sun. The mechanism is set in motion and all the spheres begin to rotate and to move along prescribed paths, reproducing in a visual form the laws which govern the movements of the planets. This mechanism reminds you of all you know about the solar system. There is something like this in the rhythm of certain dances. In the strictly defined movements and combinations of the dancers, certain laws are visually reproduced which arc intelligible to those who know them. Such dances are called 'sacred dances.' In the course of my travels in the East I have many times witnessed such dances being performed during sacred services in various ancient temples. Some of these dances are reproduced in The Struggle of the Magicians.' More­over there are three ideas lying at the basis of 'The Struggle of the Magi­ cians.' But if I produce the ballet on the ordinary stage the public will never understand these ideas.'

I understood from what he said subsequently that this would not be a ballet in the strict meaning of the word, but a series of dramatic and mimic scenes held together by a common plot, accompanied by music and intermixed with songs and dances. The most appropriate name for these scenes would be 'revue,' but without any comic element. The 'ballet' or 'revue' was to be called 'The Struggle of the Magicians.' The important scenes represented the schools of a 'Black Magician' and a 'White Magician,' with exercises by pupils of both schools and a struggle between the two schools. The action was to take place against the background of the life of an Eastern city, intermixed with sacred dances. Dervish dances, and various national Eastern dances, all this interwoven with a love story which itself would have an allegorical meaning.

I was particularly interested when G. said that the same performers would have to act and dance in the 'White Magician' scene and in the 'Black Magician' scene; and that they themselves and their movements had to be attractive and beautiful in the first scene and ugly and discordant in the second.

'You understand that in this way they will see and study all sides of themselves; consequently the ballet will be of immense importance for self- study,' said G.

I understood this far from clearly at the time, but I was struck by a certain discrepancy.

'In the notice I saw in the paper it was said that your 'ballet' would be staged in Moscow and that certain well-known ballet dancers would take part in it. How do you reconcile this with the idea of self-study?' I asked. 'They will not play and dance in order to study themselves.'

'All this is far from being decided,' said G. 'And the author of the notice you read was not fully informed. All this may be quite different. Although, on the other hand, those taking part in the ballet will see themselves whether they like it or not.'

'And Who is writing the music?' I asked.

'That also is not decided,' said G. He did not say anything more, and I only came across the 'ballet' again five years later.

Once I was talking with G. in Moscow. I was speaking about London, where I had been staying a short while before, about the terrifying mechanization that was being developed in the big European cities and without which it was probably impossible to live and work in those im­mense whirling 'mechanical toys.'

'People are turning into machines,' I said. 'And no doubt sometimes they become perfect machines. But I do not believe they can think. If they tried to think, they could not have been such fine machines.'

'Yes,' said G., 'that is true, but only partly true. It depends first of all on the question which mind they use for their work. If they use the proper mind they will be able to think even better in the midst of all their work with machines. But, again, only if they think with the proper mind.'

I did not understand what G. meant by 'proper mind' and understood it only much later.

'And secondly,' he continued, 'the mechanization you speak of is not at all dangerous. A man may be a man' (he emphasized this word), 'while working with machines. There is another kind of mechanization which is much more dangerous: being a machine oneself. Have you ever thought about the fact that all peoples themselves are machines?'

'Yes,' I said, 'from the strictly scientific point of view all people are machines governed by external influences. But the question is, can the scientific point of view be wholly accepted?'

'Scientific or not scientific is all the same to me,' said G. 'I want you to understand what I am saying. Look, all those people you see,' he pointed along the street, 'are simply machines—nothing more.'

'I think I understand what you mean,' I said. 'And I have often thought how little there is in the world that can stand against this form of mechanization and choose its own path.'

'This is just where you make your greatest mistake,' said G. 'You think there is something that chooses its own path, something that can stand against mechanization; you think that not everything is equally mechanical.'

'Why, of course not!' I said. 'Art, poetry, thought, are phenomena of quite a different order.'

'Of exactly the same order,' said G. 'These activities are just as mechanical as everything else. Men are machines and nothing but mechanical actions can be expected of machines.'

'Very well,' I said. 'But are there no people who are not machines?'

'It may be that there are,' said G., 'only not those people you see. And you do not know them. That is what I want you to understand.'

I thought it rather strange that he should be so insistent on this point. What he said seemed to me obvious and incontestable. At the same time, I had never liked such short and all-embracing metaphors. They always omitted points of difference. I, on the other hand, had always maintained differences were the most important thing and that in order to understand things it was first necessary to see the points in which they differed. So I felt that it was odd that G. insisted on an idea which seemed

to be obvious provided it were not made too absolute and exceptions were admitted.

'People are so unlike one another,' I said. 'I do not think it would be possible to bring them all under the same heading. There are savages, there are mechanized people, there are intellectual people, there are geniuses.'

'Quite right,' said G., 'people are very unlike one another, but the real difference between people you do not know and cannot see. The difference of which you speak simply does not exist. This must be understood. All the people you see, all the people you know, all the people you may get to know, are machines, actual machines working solely under the power of external influences, as you yourself said. Machines they are born and machines they die. How do savages and intellectuals come into this? Even now, at this very moment, while we are talking, several millions of machines are trying to annihilate one another. What is the difference between them? Where are the savages and where are the intellectuals? They are all alike . . .

'But there is a possibility of ceasing to be a machine. It is of this we must think and not about the different kinds of machines that exist. Of course there are different machines; a motorcar is a machine, a gramophone is a machine, and a gun is a machine. But what of it? It is the same thing—they are all machines.'