In Search of the Miraculous

I understood only much later, when lectures were over and when I tried to sum up

mentally all I had heard. Often, in thinking a question over, I remembered quite

distinctly that it had been spoken of at one of the lectures. But what precisely had been said I could unfortunately by no means always remember and I would have given a

great deal to hear it once more.

Nearly two years later, in November, 1917, a small party of us consisting of six

people, among whom was G., was living on the Black Sea shore twenty-five miles

north of Tuapse, in a small country house more than a mile from the nearest habitation.

One evening we sat and talked. It was already late and the weather was very bad, a

northeast wind was blowing which brought now rain, now snow, in squalls.

I was thinking just of certain deductions from the 'table of hydrogens,' chiefly about

one inconsistency in this diagram as compared with another of which we heard later.

My question referred to hydrogens below the normal level. Later on I will explain

exactly what it was I asked and what, long afterwards, G. answered­

1 A New Model of the Universe, ch. 8, "Experimental Mysticism"

This time he did not give me a direct answer.

"You ought to know that," he said, "it was spoken of in the lectures in St.

Petersburg. You could not have listened. Do you remember a lecture that you did not

want to hear, saying you knew it already? But what was said then is precisely what

you ask about now." After a short silence he said: "Well, if you now heard that somebody was giving the same lecture at Tuapse, would you go there on foot?"

"I would," I said.

And indeed, though I felt very strongly how long, difficult, and cold the road could

be, at the same time I knew that this would not stop me.

G. laughed.

"Would you really go?" he asked. "Think—twenty-five miles, darkness, snow, rain, wind."

"What is there to think about?" I said. "You know I have walked the whole way more than once, when there were no horses or when there was no room for me in the

cart, and for no reward, simply because there was nothing else to be done. Of course I

would go without a word if somebody were going to give a lecture on these things at

Tuapse."

"Yes," said G., "if only people really reasoned in this way. But in reality they reason in exactly the opposite way. Without any particular necessity they would face

any difficulties you like. But on a matter of importance that can really bring them

something they will not move a finger. Such is human nature. Man never on any

account wants to pay for anything; and above all he does not want to pay for what is

most important for him. You now know that everything must be paid for and that it

must be paid for in proportion to what is received. But usually a man thinks to the

contrary. For trifles, for things that are perfectly useless to him, he will pay anything.

But for something important, never. This must come to him of itself.

"And as to the lecture, what you ask was actually spoken of in St. Petersburg. If

you had listened then, you would now understand that there is no contradiction

whatever between the diagrams and that there cannot be any."

But to return to St. Petersburg.

In looking back now I cannot help being astonished at the speed with which G.

transmitted to us the principal ideas of his system. Of course a great deal depended

upon his manner of exposition, upon his astonishing capacity for bringing into

prominence all principal and essential points and for not going into unnecessary

details until the principal points had been understood.

After the 'hydrogens' G. at once went further.

"We want to 'do,' but" (he began the next lecture) "in everything we do we are tied and limited by the amount of energy produced by our

organism. Every function, every state, every action, every thought, every emotion,

requires a certain definite energy, a certain definite substance.

"We come to the conclusion that we must 'remember ourselves.' But we can

'remember ourselves' only if we have in us the energy for 'self-remembering.' We can

study something, understand or feel something, only if we have the energy for

understanding, feeling, or studying.

"What then is a man to do when he begins to realize that he has not enough energy

to attain the aims he has set before himself?

"The answer to this is that every normal man has quite enough energy to begin

work on himself. It is only necessary to learn how to save the greater part of the energy we possess for useful work instead of wasting it unproductively.

"Energy is spent chiefly on unnecessary and unpleasant emotions, on the

expectation of unpleasant things, possible and impossible, on bad moods, on

unnecessary haste, nervousness, irritability, imagination, daydreaming, and so on.

Energy is wasted on the wrong work of centers; on unnecessary tension of the muscles

out of all proportion to the work produced; on perpetual chatter which absorbs an

enormous amount of energy; on the 'interest' continually taken in things happening