In Search of the Miraculous

although all of us felt a great deal of potential energy in the idea of cosmoses, for a

long time we got no results. We were especially confused by the "Microcosmos."

"If it were possible to take man as the Microcosmos and the Tritocosmos as the

human race, or rather as organic life, it would be much easier to establish the relation

of man to other cosmoses," one of us, Z., said in this connection, who with me had

attempted to understand and to develop further the idea of the cosmoses.

But on the one or two occasions that we began to speak to G. about it he persisted

in his definitions.

I remember once when he was leaving Petersburg, it was possibly even

his final departure in 1917, one of us asked him at the station something relating to

cosmoses.

"Try to understand what the Microcosmos means," answered G. "If you succeed in understanding this, then all the rest about which you ask now will become clear to

you."

I remember that when we talked about it later the question was quite easy to solve

when we took the "Microcosmos" as man.

It was certainly conditional, but nevertheless it was in complete accord with the

whole system which studied the world and man. Every individual living being—a

dog, a cat, a tree—could be taken as a Microcosmos; the combination of all living

beings constituted the Tritocosmos or organic life on earth. These definitions seemed

to me the only ones that were logically possible. And I could not understand why G.

objected to them.

At any rate, some time later when I returned again to the problem of cosmoses I

decided to take man as the Microcosmos, and to take the Tritocosmos as organic life

on earth.

With such a construction a great number of things began to be much more

connected. And once, looking through a manuscript of "Glimpses of Truth" given me by G., that is, the beginning of the story that was read at the Moscow group the first

time I went there, I found in it the expressions "Macrocosmos" and "Microcosmos"; moreover "Microcosmos" meant man.

Now you have some idea of the laws governing the life of the Macrocosmos and

have returned to the Earth. Recall to yourself: "As above, so below." I think that already, without any further explanation, you will not dispute the statement that the

life of individual man—the Microcosmos—is governed by the same laws.

—"Glimpses of Truth"

This still further strengthened us in our decision to understand "Microcosmos" as applying to man. Later it became clear to us why G. wished to make us apply the

concept "Microcosmos" to small magnitudes as compared with man, and to what he

wished to direct our thought by this.

I remember one conversation on this subject.

"If we want to represent graphically the interrelation of the cosmoses," I said, "we must take the Microcosmos, that is, man, as a point, that is to say, we must take him

on a very small scale and, as it were, at a very great distance from ourselves. Then his

life in the Tritocosmos, that is, among other people and in the midst of nature, will be

the line which he traces on the surface of the earthly globe in moving from place to

place. In the Mesocosmos, that is, taken in connection with the twenty-four hours'

motion of the earth around its axis, this line will become a plane, whereas taken in

relation to the sun, that is, taking into consideration the motion of the earth around the sun, it will become a threedimensional body, or, in other words, it will be something really existing, something

realized. But as the fundamental point, that is, the man or the Microcosmos, was also

a three-dimensional body, we have consequently two three-dimensionalities.

"In this case all the possibilities of man are actualized in the sun. This corresponds to what has been said before, namely, that man number seven becomes immortal

within the limits of the solar system.

"Beyond the sun, that is, beyond the solar system, he has not and cannot have any

existence, or in other words, from the point of view of the next cosmos he does not

exist at all. A man does not exist at all in the Macrocosmos. The Macrocosmos is the

cosmos in which the possibilities of the Tritocosmos are realized and man can exist in

the Macrocosmos only as an atom of the Tritocosmos. The possibilities of the earth

are actualized in the Megalocosmos and the possibilities of the sun are actualized in

the Protocosmos.

"If the Microcosmos, or man, is a three-dimensional body, then the Tritocosmos—

organic life on earth—is a four-dimensional body. The earth has five dimensions and

the sun—six.

"The usual scientific view takes man as a three-dimensional body; it takes organic

life on earth as a whole, more as a phenomenon than a three-dimensional body; it

takes the earth as a three-dimensional body;

the sun as a three-dimensional body; the solar system as a three-dimensional body;

and the Milky Way as a three-dimensional body.

"The inexactitude of this view becomes evident if we try to conceive the existence