In Search of the Miraculous

constituted according to the wish and choice of their members. Croups are constituted

by the teacher, who selects types which, from the point of view of his aims, can be

useful to one another.

"No work of groups is possible without a teacher. The work of groups with a wrong

teacher can produce only negative results.

"The next important feature of group work is that groups may be connected with

some aim of which those who are beginning work in them have no idea whatever and

which cannot even be explained to them until they understand the essence and the

principles of the work and the ideas connected with it. But this aim towards which

without knowing it they are going, and which they are serving, is the necessary

balancing principle in their own work. Their first task is to understand this aim, that is, the aim of the teacher. When they have understood this aim, although at first not fully,

their own work becomes more conscious and consequently can give better results.

But, as I have already said, it often happens that the aim of the teacher cannot be

explained at the beginning.

"Therefore, the first aim of a man beginning work in a group should be self-study.

The work of self-study can proceed only in properly or-

ganized groups. One man alone cannot see himself. But when a certain number of

people unite together for this purpose they will even involuntarily help one another. It

is a common characteristic of human nature that a man sees the faults of others more

easily than he sees his own. At the same time on the path of self-study he learns that

he himself possesses all the faults that he finds in others. But there are many things

that he does not see in himself, whereas in other people he begins to see them. But, as

I have just said, in this case he knows that these features are his own. Thus other

members of the group serve him as mirrors in which he sees himself. But, of course,

in order to see himself in other people's faults and not merely to see the faults of

others, a man must be very much on his guard against and be very sincere with

himself.

"He must remember that he is not one; that one part of him is the man who wants to

awaken and that the other part is 'Ivanov,' 'Petrov,' or 'Zakharov,' who has no desire

whatever to awaken and who has to be awakened by force.

"A group is usually a pact concluded between the I's of a certain group of people to make a common struggle against 'Ivanov,' 'Petrov,' and 'Zakharov,' that is, against

their own 'false personalities.'

"Let us take Petrov. Petrov consists of two parts—'I' and 'Petrov.' But 'I' is

powerless against 'Petrov.' 'Petrov' is the master. Suppose there are twenty people;

twenty 'I's' now begin to struggle against one 'Petrov.' They may now prove to be

stronger than he is. At any rate they can spoil his sleep; he will no longer be able to

sleep as peacefully as he did before. And this is the whole aim.

"Furthermore, in the work of self-study one man begins to accumulate material

resulting from self-observation. Twenty people will have twenty times as much

material. And every one of them will be able to use the whole of this material because

the exchange of observations is one of the purposes of the group's existence.

"When a group is being organized its members have certain conditions put before

them; in the first place, conditions general for all members, and secondly, individual

conditions for individual members.

"General conditions at the beginning of the work are usually of the following kind.

First of all it is explained to all the members of a group that they must keep secret

everything they hear or learn in the group and not only while they .are members of it

but forever afterwards.

"This is an indispensable condition whose idea should be clear to them from the

very beginning. In other words, it should be clear to them that in this there is no

attempt whatever to make a secret of what is not essentially a secret, neither is there

any deliberate intention to deprive them of the right to exchange views with those

near to them or with their friends.

"The idea of this restriction consists in the fact that they are unable to

transmit correctly what is said in the groups. They very soon begin to learn from their own personal experience how much effort, how much time, and how much explaining

is necessary in order to grasp what is said in groups. It becomes clear to them that they are unable to give their friends a right idea of what they have learned themselves. At

the same time also they begin to understand that by giving their friends wrong ideas

they shut them off from any possibility of approaching the work at any time or of

understanding anything in connection with the work, to say nothing of the fact that in

this way they are creating very many difficulties and even very much unpleasantness