In Search of the Miraculous

of the meaning of knowledge and I quoted then one aphorism from this book.

"In relation to what we are speaking of now this book says the following:

" 'A man may be born, but in order to be born he must first die, and in order to die he must first awake.'

"In another place it says:

" 'When a man awakes he can die; when he dies he can be born.'

"We must find out what this means.

" 'To awake,' 'to die,' 'to be born.' These are three successive stages. If you study the Gospels attentively you will see that references are often made to the possibility of

being born, several references are made to the necessity of 'dying,' and there are very

many references to the necessity of 'awakening'—'watch, for ye know not the day and

hour . . .' and. so on. But these three possibilities of man, to awake or not to sleep, to die, and to be born, are not set down in connection with one another. Nevertheless this

is the whole point. If a man dies without having awakened he cannot be born. If a man

is born without having died he may become an 'immortal thing.' Thus the fact that he

has not 'died' prevents a man

from being 'born'; the fact of his not having awakened prevents him from 'dying'; and

should he be born without having died he is prevented from 'being.'

"We have already spoken enough about the meaning of being 'born.' This relates to

the beginning of a new growth of essence, the beginning of the formation of

individuality, the beginning of the appearance of one indivisible I.

"But in order to be able to attain this or at least begin to attain it, a man must die, that is, he must free himself from a thousand petty attachments and identifications

which hold him in the position in which he is. He is attached to everything in his life,

attached to his imagination, attached to his stupidity, attached even to his sufferings,

possibly to his sufferings more than to anything else. He must free himself from this

attachment. Attachment to things, identification with things, keep alive a thousand

useless I's in a man. These I's must die in order that the big I may be born. But how

can they be made to die? They do not want to die. It is at this point that the possibility of awakening comes to the rescue. To awaken means to realize one's nothingness, that

is to realize one's complete and absolute mechanicalness and one's complete and

absolute helplessness. And it is not sufficient to realize it philosophically in words. It is necessary to realize it in clear, simple, and concrete facts, in one's own facts. When a man begins to know himself a little he will see in himself many things that are

bound to horrify him. So long as a man is not horrified at himself he knows nothing

about himself. A man has seen in himself something that horrifies him. He decides to

throw it off, stop it, put an end to it. But however many efforts he makes, he feels that he cannot do this, that everything remains as it was. Here he will see his impotence,

his helplessness, and his nothingness; or again, when he begins to know himself a

man sees that he has nothing that is his own, that is, that all that he has regarded as his own, his views, thoughts, convictions, tastes, habits, even faults and vices, all these

are not his own, but have been either formed through imitation or borrowed from

somewhere ready-made. In feeling this a man may feel his nothingness. And in

feeling his nothingness a man should see himself as he really is, not for a second, not

for a moment, but constantly, never forgetting it.

"This continual consciousness of his nothingness and of his helplessness will

eventually give a man the courage to 'die,' that is, to die, not merely mentally or in his consciousness, but to die in fact and to renounce actually and forever those aspects of

himself which are either unnecessary from the point of view of his inner growth or

which hinder it. These aspects are first of all his 'false I,' and then all the fantastic ideas about his 'individuality,' 'will,' 'consciousness,' 'capacity to do,' his powers,

initiative, determination, and so on.

"But in order to see a thing always, one must first of all see it even if

only for a second. All new powers and capacities of realization come always in one

and the same way. At first they appear in the form of flashes at rare and short

moments; afterwards they appear more often and last longer until, finally, after very

long work they become permanent. The same thing applies to awakening. It is

impossible to awaken completely all at once. One must first begin to awaken for short

moments. But one must die all at once and forever after having made a certain effort, having surmounted a certain obstacle, having taken a certain decision from which

there is no going back. This would be difficult, even impossible, for a man, were it not