In search of the miraculous

others. Therefore nobody ever understands either himself or anyone else. Think—could there be such discord, such deep misunderstanding, and such hatred towards the views and opinions of others, if people were able to understand one another? But they cannot understand because they cannot help lying. To speak the truth is the most difficult thing in the world; and one must study a great deal and for a long time in order to be able to speak the truth. The wish alone is not enough. To speak the truth one must know what the truth is and what a lie is, and first of all in oneself. And this nobody wants to know.'

Talks with G., and the unexpected turn he gave to every idea, interested me more and more every day. But I had to go to Petersburg.

I remember my last talk with him.

I had thanked him for the consideration he had given me and for his explanations which, I already saw, had changed many things for me.

'But all the same, you know, the most important thing is facts, ' I said. 'If I could see genuine and real facts of a new and unknown character, only they would finally convince me that I am on the right way.'

I was again thinking of 'miracles.'

'There will be facts,' said G. 'I promise you. But many other things are necessary first.'

I did not understand his last words then, I only understood them later when I really came up against 'facts,' for G. kept his word. But this was not until about a year and a half later, in August, 1916.

Of the last talks in Moscow there is still another which remains in my memory during which G. said several things which, again, became intelligible only subsequently.

He was talking about a man I had met while with him, and he spoke of his relations with certain people.

'He is a weak man,' said G. 'People take advantage of him, unconsciously of course. And all because he considers them. If he did not consider them, everything would be different, and they themselves would be different.'

It seemed odd to me that a man should not consider others.

'What do you mean by the word 'consider'?' I asked. 'I both understand you and do not understand you. This word has a great many different meanings.'

'Precisely the contrary,' said G. 'There is only one meaning. Try to think about this.'

Later on I understood what G. called 'considering,' and realized what an enormous place it occupies in life and how much it gives rise to. G. called 'considering' that attitude which creates inner slavery, inner dependence. Afterwards we had occasion to speak a great deal about this.

I remember another talk about the war. We were sitting in the Phillipov's Cafe on the Tverskaya. It was very full of people and very noisy. War and profiteering had created an unpleasant, feverish atmosphere. I had even refused to go there. G. insisted and as always with him I gave way. I had already realized by then that he sometimes purposely created difficult conditions for conversation, as though demanding of me some sort of extra effort and a readiness to reconcile myself to unpleasant and uncomfortable surroundings for the sake of talking with him.

But this time the result was not particularly brilliant because, owing to the noise, the most interesting part of what he was saying failed to reach me. At first I understood what G. was saying. But the thread gradually began to slip away from me. After several attempts to follow his remarks, of which only isolated words reached me, I gave up listening and simply observed how he spoke.

The conversation began with my question: 'Can war be stopped?' And G. answered: 'Yes, it can. ' And yet I had been certain from previous talks that he would answer: 'No, it cannot.'

'But the whole thing is: how?' he said. 'It is necessary to know a

great deal in order to understand that. What is war? It is the result of planetary influences. Somewhere up there two or three planets have approached too near to each other; tension results. Have you noticed how, if a man passes quite close to you on a narrow pavement, you become all tense? The same tension takes place between planets. For them it lasts, perhaps, a second or two. But here, on the earth, people begin to slaughter one another, and they go on slaughtering maybe for several years. It seems to them at the time that they hate one another; or perhaps that they have to slaughter each other for some exalted purpose; or that they must defend somebody or something and that it is a very noble thing to do; or something else of the same kind. They fail to realize to what an extent they are mere pawns in the game. They think they signify something;

they think they can move about as they like; they think they can decide to do this or that. But in reality all their movements, all their actions, are the result of planetary influences. And they themselves signify literally nothing. Then the moon plays a big part in this. But we will speak about the moon separately. Only it must be understood that neither Emperor Wilhelm, nor generals, nor ministers, nor parliaments, signify anything or can do anything. Everything that happens on a big scale is governed from outside, and governed either by accidental combinations of influences or by general cosmic laws.'

This was all I heard. Only much later I understood what he wished to tell me—that is, how accidental influences could be diverted or transformed into something relatively harmless. It was really an interesting idea referring to the esoteric meaning of 'sacrifices.' But, in any case at the present time, this idea has only an historical and a psychological value. What was really important and what he said quite casually, so that I did not even notice it at once, and only remembered later in trying to reconstruct the conversation, was his words referring to the difference of time for planets and for man.

And even when I remembered it, for a long time I did not realize the full meaning of this idea. Later very much was based on it.

Somewhere about this time I was very much struck by a talk about the sun, the planets, and the moon. I do not remember how this talk began. But I remember that G. drew a small diagram and tried to explain what he called the 'correlation of forces in different worlds.' This was in connection with the previous talk, that is, in connection with the influences acting on humanity. The idea was roughly this: humanity, or more correctly, organic life on earth, is acted upon simultaneously by influences proceeding from various sources and different worlds: influences from the planets, influences from the moon, influences from the sun, influences from the stars. All these influences act simultaneously; one influence predominates at one moment and another influence at another moment. And for man there is a certain possibility of making a choice of influences; in other words, of passing from one influence to another.

'To explain how, would need a very long talk,' said G. 'So we will talk about this some other time. At this moment I want you to understand one thing: it is impossible to become free from one influence without becoming subject to another. The whole thing, all work on oneself, consists in choosing the influence to which you wish to subject yourself, and actually falling under this influence. And for this it is necessary to know beforehand which influence is the more profitable.'

What interested me in this talk was that G. spoke of the planets and the moon as living beings, having definite ages, a definite period of life and possibilities of development and transition to other planes of being. From what he said it appeared that the moon was not a 'dead planet,' as is usually accepted, but, on the contrary, a 'planet in birth'; a planet at the very initial stages of its development which had not yet reached 'the degree of intelligence possessed by the earth,' as he expressed it.

'But the moon is growing and developing,' said G., 'and some time, it will, possibly, attain the same level as the earth. Then, near it, a new moon will appear and the earth will become their sun. At one time the sun was like the earth and the earth like the moon. And earlier still the sun was like the moon.'

This attracted my attention at once. Nothing had ever seemed to me more artificial, unreliable, and dogmatic than all the usual theories of the origin of planets and solar systems, beginning with the Kant-Laplace theory down to the very latest, with all their additions and variations. The 'general public' considers these theories, or at any rate the last one known to it, to be scientific and proven. But in actual fact there is of course nothing less scientific and less proven than these theories. Therefore the fact that G.'s system accepted an altogether different theory, an organic theory having its origin in entirely new principles and showing a different universal order, appeared to me very interesting and important.