In Search of the Miraculous

not understand. This comes about because the taste of understanding was quite

unknown to you before. And now the taste of understanding seems to you to be a lack

of understanding."

In our talks we often returned to the impressions our friends had of us and to our

new impressions of our friends. And we began to realize that, more than anything

else, these ideas could either unite people or separate them.

There was once a very long and interesting talk about "types." G. repeated

everything he had said before about this together with many additions and indications

for personal work.

"Each of you," he said, "has probably met in life people of one and the same type.

Such people often even look like one another, and their inner reactions to things are

exactly the same. What one likes the other will like. What one does not like the other

will not like. You must remember such occasions because you can study the science

of types only by meeting types. There is no other method. Everything else is

imagination. You must understand that in the conditions in which you live you cannot

meet with more than six or seven types although there are in life a greater number of

fundamental types. The rest are all combinations of these fundamental types."

"How many fundamental types are there in all?" asked someone.

"Some people say twelve," said G. "According to the legend the twelve apostles represented the twelve types. Others say more."

He paused.

"May we know these twelve types, that is, their definitions and characteristics?"

asked one of those present.

"I was expecting this question," said G. "There has never been an occasion when I have spoken of types when some clever person has not asked this question. How is it

you do not understand that if it could be explained it would have been explained long

ago. But the whole thing is that types and their differences cannot be defined in

ordinary language, and the language in which they could be defined you do not as yet

know and will not know for a long time. It is exactly the same as with the 'forty-eight

laws.' Someone invariably asks whether he may not know these forty-eight laws. As if

it were possible. Understand that you are being given everything that can be given.

With the help of what is given to you, you must find the rest. But I know that I am

wasting time now in saying this. You still do not understand me and will not

understand for a long time yet. Think of the difference between knowledge and being.

There are things for the understanding of which a different being is necessary."

"But if there are no more than seven types around us, why can we not know them,

that is, know what is the chief difference between them, and, when meeting them, be

able to recognize and distinguish them?" said one of us.

"You must begin with yourself and with the observations of which I have already

spoken," said G., "otherwise it would be knowledge of which you would be able to make no use. Some of you think you can see types but they are not types at all that

you see. In order to see types one must know one's own type and be able to 'depart'

from it. In order to know one's own type one must make a good study of one's life,

one's whole life from the very beginning; one must know why, and how, things have

happened. I want to give you all a task. It will be a general and an individual task at

one and the same time. Let every one of you in the group tell about his life.

Everything must be told in detail without embellishment, and without suppressing

anything. Emphasize the principal and essential things without dwelling on trifles and

details. You must be sincere and not be afraid that others will take anything in a wrong

way, because everyone is in the same position; everyone must strip himself;

everyone must show himself as he is. This task will once more show you why nothing

must be taken outside the groups. Nobody would dare to speak if he thought or

suspected that what he said in the group would be repeated outside. But he ought to be

fully and firmly convinced that nothing will be repeated. And then he will be able to

speak without fear with the understanding that others must do the same."

Soon afterwards G. went to Moscow and in his absence we tried in various ways to

carry out the tasks allotted to us. First of all, in order to put G.'s task more easily into practice, some of us, at my suggestion, tried telling the story of our lives not at the

general group meeting but in small groups composed of people they knew best.

I am bound to say that all these attempts came to nothing. Some said too much,

others said too little. Some went into unnecessary details or into descriptions of what

they considered were their particular and original characteristics; others concentrated

on their "sins" and errors. But everything taken together failed to produce what G.

evidently expected. The result was anecdotes, or chronological memoirs which