In search of the miraculous

prayer if a man recites the prayer in this way: He says 'I' and tries at the same time to think of everything he knows about 'I.' It does not exist, there is no single 'I,' there is a multitude of petty, clamorous, quarrelsome 'I's. But he wants to be one 'I'—the master; he recalls the carriage, the horse, the driver, and the master. 'I' is master. 'Want'—he thinks of the meaning of 'I want.' Is he able to want? With him 'it wants' or 'it does not want' all the time. But to this 'it wants' and 'it does not want' he strives to oppose his own 'I want' which is connected with the aims of work on himself, that is, to introduce the third force into the customary combination of the two forces, 'it wants' and 'it does not want.' 'To be'— the man thinks of what to be, what 'being,' means. The being of a mechanical man with whom everything happens. The being of a man who can do. It is possible 'to be' in different ways. He wants 'to be' not merely in the sense of existence but in the sense of greatness of power. The words 'to be' acquire weight, a new meaning for him. 'Serious' —the man thinks what it means to be serious. How he answers himself is very important. If he understands what this means, if he defines correctly for himself what it means to be serious, and feels that he truly desires it, then his prayer can give a result in the sense that strength can be added to him, that he will more often notice when he is not serious, that he will overcome himself more easily, make himself be serious. In exactly the same way a man can 'pray'—'I want to remember myself.' 'To remember'—what does 'to remember' mean? The man must think about memory. How little he remembers! How often he forgets what he has decided, what he has seen, what he knows! His whole life would be different if he could remember. All ills come because he does not remember. 'Myself—again he returns to himself. Which self does he want to remember? Is it worth while remembering the whole of himself? How can he distinguish what he wants to remember? The idea of work! How can he connect himself with the idea of the work, and so on, and so on.

'In Christian worship there are very many prayers exactly like this, where it is necessary to reflect upon each word. But they lose all sense and all meaning when they are repeated or sung mechanically.

'Take the ordinary God have mercy upon me! What does it mean? A man is appealing to God. He should think a little, he should make a comparison and ask himself what God is and what he is. Then he is asking God to have mercy upon him. But for this God must first of all think of him, take notice of him. But is it worth while taking notice of him? What is there in him that is worth thinking about? And who is to think about him? God himself. You see, all these thoughts and yet many others should pass through his mind when he utters this simple prayer. And then it is precisely these thoughts which could do for him what he asks God to do. But what can he be thinking of and what result can a prayer give if he merely repeats like a parrot: 'God have mercy! God have mercy! God have mercy!' You know yourselves that this can give no result whatever.

'Generally speaking we know very little about Christianity and the form of Christian worship; we know nothing at all of the history and origin of a number of things. For instance, the church, the temple in which gather the faithful and in which services are carried out according to special rites; where was this taken from? Many people do not think about this at all. Many people think that the outward form of worship, the rites, the singing of canticles, and so on, were invented by the fathers of the church. Others think that this outward form has been taken partly from pagan religions and partly from the Hebrews. But all of it is untrue. The question of the origin of the Christian church, that is, of the Christian temple, is much more interesting than we think. To begin with, the church and worship in the form which they took in the first centuries of Christianity could not have been borrowed from paganism because there was nothing like it either in the Greek or Roman cults or in Judaism. The Jewish synagogue, the Jewish temple, Greek and Roman temples of various gods, were something quite different from the Christian church which made its appearance in the first and second centuries. The Christian church is—a school concerning which people have forgotten that it is a school. Imagine a school where the teachers give lectures and perform explanatory demonstrations without knowing that these are lectures and demonstrations; and where the pupils or simply the people who come to the school take these lectures and demonstrations for ceremonies, or rites, or 'sacraments,' i.e., magic. This would approximate to the Christian church of our times.

'The Christian church, the Christian form of worship, was not invented by the fathers of the church. It was all taken in a ready-made form from Egypt, only not from the Egypt that we know but from one which we do not know. This Egypt was in the same place as the other but it existed much earlier. Only small bits of it survived in historical times, and these bits have been preserved in secret and so well that we do not even know where they have been preserved.

'It will seem strange to many people when I say that this prehistoric Egypt was Christian many thousands of years before the birth of Christ, that is to say, that its religion was composed of the same principles and ideas that constitute true Christianity. Special schools existed in this prehistoric Egypt which were called 'schools of repetition.' In these schools a public repetition was given on definite days, and in some schools perhaps even every day, of the entire course in a condensed form of the sciences that could be learned at these schools. Sometimes this repetition lasted a week or a month. Thanks to these repetitions people who had

passed through this course did not lose their connection with the school and retained in their memory all they had learned. Sometimes they came from very far away simply in order to listen to the repetition and went away feeling their connection with the school. There were special days of the year when the repetitions were particularly complete, when they were carried out with particular solemnity—and these days themselves possessed a symbolical meaning.

'These 'schools of repetition' were taken as a model for Christian churches—the form of worship in Christian churches almost entirely represents the course of repetition of the science dealing with the universe and man. Individual prayers, hymns, responses, all had their own meaning in this repetition as well as holidays and all religious symbols, though their meaning has been forgotten long ago.'

Continuing, G. quoted some very interesting examples of the explanations of various parts of orthodox liturgy. Unfortunately no notes were made at the time and I will not undertake to reconstruct them from memory.

The idea was that, beginning with the first words, the liturgy so to speak goes through the process of creation, recording all its stages and transitions. What particularly astonished me in G.'s explanations was the extent to which so much has been preserved in its pure form and how little we understand of all this. His explanations differed very greatly from the usual theological and even from mystical interpretations. And the principal difference was that he did away with a great many allegories. I mean to say that it became obvious from his explanations that we take many things for allegories in which there is no allegory whatever and which ought to be understood much more simply and psychologically. What he said before about the Last Supper serves as a good example of this.

'Every ceremony or rite has a value if it is performed without alteration,' he said. 'A ceremony is a book in which a great deal is written. Anyone who understands can read it. One rite often contains more than a hundred books.'

Indicating what had been preserved up to our time, G. at the same time pointed out what had been lost and forgotten. He spoke of sacred dances which accompanied the 'services' in the 'temples of repetition' and which were not included in the Christian form of worship. He also spoke of various exercises, and of special postures for different prayers, that is, for different kinds of meditation; about acquiring control over the breathing and of the necessity of being able to tense or relax any group of muscles, or the muscles of the whole body at will; and about many other things having relation, so to speak, to the 'technique' of religion.

On one occasion, in connection with the description of exercises in concentration and bringing the attention from one part of the body to another, G. asked:

'When you pronounce the word 'I' aloud, have you noticed where this word sounds in you?'

We did not at once understand what he meant. But we very soon began to notice that when pronouncing the word 'I' some of us definitely felt as if this word sounded in the head, others felt it in the chest, and others over the head—outside the body.

I must mention here that personally I was entirely unable to evoke this sensation in myself and that I have to rely on others.

G. listened to all these remarks and said that there was an exercise connected with this which, according to him, had been preserved up to our time in the monasteries of Mount Athos.

A monk kneels or stands in a certain position and, lifting his arms, which are bent at the elbows, he says— Ego aloud and drawn out while listening at the same time where the word 'Ego' sounds.

The purpose of this exercise is to feel 'I' every moment a man thinks of himself and to bring 'I' from one center to another.