In Search of the Miraculous

fascinate them and which they follow from street to street and at the end

arrive at the house of a certain Oriental to whom the eyes belong. Or people

who, in the presence of the same Oriental, suddenly feel he is looking right

through them, seeing all their feelings, thoughts, and desires; and they have a

strange sensation in their legs and cannot move, and then fall into his power

to such an extent that he can make them do everything he desires, even from

a distance. All this and many other stories of the same sort had always

seemed to me to be simply bad fiction. People invent miracles for themselves

and invent exactly what is expected from them. It is a mixture of

superstition, self-suggestion, and defective thinking, and, according to my

observation, these stories never appear without a certain collaboration on the

part of the men to whom they refer.

So that, in the light of previous experience, it was only after the persistent

efforts of one of my new acquaintances, M., that I agreed to meet G. and

have a talk with him.

My first meeting with him entirely changed my opinion of him and of

what I might expect from him.

I remember this meeting very well. We arrived at a small café in a noisy

though not central street. I saw a man of an oriental type, no longer young,

with a black mustache and piercing eyes, who astonished me first of all

because he seemed to be disguised and completely out of keeping with the

place and its atmosphere. I was still full of impressions of the East. And this

man with the face of an Indian raja or an Arab sheik whom I at once seemed

to see in a white burnoose or a gilded turban, seated here in this little cafe,

where small dealers and commission agents met together, in a black overcoat

with a velvet collar and a black bowler hat, produced the strange,

unexpected, and almost alarming impression of a man poorly disguised, the

sight of whom embarrasses you because you see he is not what he pretends

to be and yet you have to speak and behave as though you did not see it He

spoke Russian incorrectly with a strong Caucasian accent; and this accent,

with which we are accustomed to associate anything apart from

philosophical ideas, strengthened still further the strangeness and the

unexpectedness of this impression.

I do not remember how our talk began; I think we spoke of India, of

esotericism, and of yogi schools. I gathered that G. had traveled widely and

had been in places of which I had only heard and which I very much wished

to visit. Not only did my questions not embarrass him but it

seemed to me that he put much more into each answer than I had asked for. I

liked his manner of speaking, which was careful and precise. M. soon left us.

G. told me of his work in Moscow. I did not fully understand him. It

transpired from what he said that in his work, which was chiefly

psychological in character, chemistry played a big part. Listening to him for

the first time I, of course, took his words literally.

"What you say," I said, "reminds me of something I heard about a school

in southern India. A Brahmin, an exceptional man in many respects, told a

young Englishman in Travancore of a school which studied the chemistry of

the human body, and by means of introducing or removing various

substances, could change a man's moral and psychological nature. This is

very much like what you are saying."

"It may be so," said G., "but, at the same time, it may be quite different.

There are schools which appear to make use of similar methods but

understand them quite differently. A similarity of methods or even of ideas

proves nothing."

"There is another question that interests me very much," I said. "There are substances which yogis take to induce certain states. Might these not be, in

certain cases, narcotics? I have myself carried out a number of experiments

in this direction and everything I have read about magic proves to me quite

clearly that all schools at all times and in all countries have made a very wide

use of narcotics for the creation of those states which make 'magic' possible."

"Yes," said G. "In many cases these substances are those which you call

'narcotics' But they can be used in entirely different ways. There are schools

which make use of narcotics in the right way. People in these schools take

them for self-study; in order to take a look ahead, to know their possibilities

better, to see beforehand, 'in advance,' what can be attained later on as the

result of prolonged work. When a man sees this and is convinced that what

he has learned theoretically really exists, he then works consciously, he

knows where he is going. Sometimes this is the easiest way of being

convinced of the real existence of those possibilities which man often

suspects in himself. There is a special chemistry relating to this. There are

particular substances for each function. Each function can either be

strengthened or weakened, awakened or put to sleep. But to do this a great

knowledge of the human machine and of this special chemistry is necessary.