In search of the miraculous

are means for isolating oneself from one's fate. The first step towards this consists in getting away from general laws. Just as there is individual accident, so is there general or collective accident. And in the same way as there is individual fate, there is a general or collective fate. Collective accident and collective

fate are governed by general laws. If a man wishes to create individuality of his own he must first free himself from general laws. General laws are by no means all obligatory for man; he can free himself from many of them if he frees himself from 'buffers' and from imagination. All this is connected with liberation from personality. Personality feeds on imagination and falsehood. If the falsehood in which man lives is decreased and imagination is decreased, personality very soon weakens and a man begins to be controlled either by fate or by a line of work which is in its turn controlled by another man's will; this will lead him until a will of his own has been formed, capable of withstanding both accident and, when necessary, fate.'

The talks given embrace a period of a few months. It stands to reason that it is not possible to re-establish the talks in their exact order because very often G. touched upon twenty different subjects in an evening. Much was repeated, much depended upon the questions asked by those present, many ideas were so closely connected that they could 'only be separated artificially.

At this time certain definite types of people had already begun to show a negative attitude towards our work. Besides the absence of 'love' many people were very indignant at the demand for payment, for money. In this connection it was very characteristic that those who were indignant were not those who could pay only with difficulty, but people of means for whom the sum demanded was a mere trifle.

Those who could not pay or who could pay very little always understood that they could not count upon getting something for nothing, and that G.'s work, his journeys to Petersburg, and the time that he and others gave to the work cost money. Only those who had money did not understand and did not want to understand this.

'Does this mean that we must pay to enter the Kingdom of Heaven?' they said. 'People do not pay nor is money asked for such things. Christ said to his disciples: 'Take neither purse nor scrip,' and you want a thousand roubles. A very good business could be made of it. Suppose that you had a hundred members. This would already make a hundred thousand, and if there were two hundred, three hundred? Three hundred thousand a year is very good money.'

G. always smiled when I told him about talks like this.

'Take neither purse nor scrip! And need not a railway ticket be taken either? The hotel paid? You see how much falsehood and hypocrisy there is here. No, even if we needed no money at all it would still be necessary to keep this payment. It rids us at once of many useless people. Nothing shows up people so much as their attitude towards money. They are ready to waste as much as you like on their own personal fantasies but they have no valuation whatever of another person's labor. I must work for them and give them gratis everything that they vouchsafe to take from me. 'How is it possible to trade in knowledge? This ought to be free.' It is precisely for this reason that the demand for this payment is necessary. Some people will never pass this barrier. And if they do not pass this one, it means that they will never pass another. Besides, there are other considerations. Afterwards you will see.'

The other considerations were very simple ones. Many people indeed could not pay. And although in principle G. put the question very strictly, in practice he never refused anybody on the grounds that they had no money. And it was found out later that he even supported many of his pupils. The people who paid a thousand roubles paid not only for themselves but for others.

Chapter Nine

AT ONE lecture G. began to draw the diagram of the universe in an entirely new way. 'So far we have spoken of the forces that create worlds,' he said, 'of the process of creation proceeding from the Absolute. We will now speak of the processes which take place in the already created and existing world. But you must remember that the process of creation never stops, although, on a planetary scale, growth proceeds so slowly that if we reckon it in our time planetary conditions can be regarded as per­manent for us.

'Therefore, let us take the 'ray of creation' after the universe has already been created.

'The action of the Absolute upon the world, or upon the worlds created by it or within it, continues. The action of each of these worlds upon subsequent worlds continues in exactly the same way. 'All suns' of the Milky Way influence our sun. The sun influences the planets. 'All planets' influence our earth and the earth influences the moon. These influences are transmitted by means of radiations passing through starry and interplanetary space.

'In order to study these radiations let us take the 'ray of creation' in an abridged form: Absolute-sun-earth- moon, or in other words let us imagine the 'ray of creation' in the form of three octaves of radiations:

the first octave between the Absolute and the sun, the second octave between the sun and the earth, and the third octave between the earth and the moon; and let us examine the passage of radiations between these four fundamental points of the universe.

'We have to find our place and understand our functions in this universe, which is taken in the form of three octaves of radiations between four points.

'In the first octave the Absolute will include two notes, do and si, with the 'interval' between them.

ABSOLUTE

Interval

Fig. 20

'Then an interval, and the 'shock' filling it, unknown to us but nevertheless inevitably existing, then mi, re.

ABSOLUTE

Interval

la sol fa