In Search of the Miraculous

impressions about them, making him see everything far from as it was.

At the same time G. himself had "completely changed," had become altogether

different from what he used to be before, had become harsh, requiring, had lost all

feeling and all interest for individual people, had ceased to demand the truth from

people; that he preferred to have round him people such as were afraid to tell him the

truth, who were hypocrites, who threw flowers at one another and at the same time

spied on the others.

We were amazed at all these and similar talks. They brought with them immediately

a kind of entirely new atmosphere which up to this time we had not had. And it was

particularly strange because precisely at this time most of us were in a very emotional

state and were particularly well disposed towards these two protesting members of our

group.

We tried many times to talk to G. about them. He laughed very much when we told

him that in their opinion we always gave him "wrong impressions" of them.

"How they value the work," he said, "and what a miserable idiot I am from their point of view; how easily I am deceived! You see that they have ceased to understand

the most important thing. In the work the teacher of the work cannot be deceived. This

is a law which proceeds from what has been said about knowledge and being. I may

deceive you if I want to. But you cannot deceive me. If it were otherwise you would

not learn from me and I would have to learn from you."

"How must we speak to them and how can we help them to come back to the

group?" some of us asked G.

"Not only can you do nothing," G. said to them, "but you ought not to try because by such attempts you will destroy the last chance they have of understanding and

seeing themselves. It is always very difficult to come back. And it must be an

absolutely voluntary decision without any sort of persuasion or constraint. You should

understand that everything you have heard about me and yourselves are attempts at

self-justification, endeavors to blame others in order to feel that they are in the right. It means more and more lying. It must be destroyed and it can only be destroyed through

suffering. If it was difficult for them to see themselves before, it will be ten times

more difficult now."

"How could this have happened?" others asked him. "Why did their attitude towards all of us and towards you change so abruptly and unexpectedly?"

"It is the first case for you," said G., "and therefore it appears strange to you, but later on you will see that it happens very often and you will see that it always takes

place in the same way. The principal reason for it is that it is impossible to sit between two stools. And people usually think that they can sit between two stools, that is, that

they can acquire the new and preserve the old; they do not think this consciously of

course but it comes to the same thing.

"And what is it that they most of all desire to preserve? First the right to have their own valuation of ideas and of people, that is, that which is more harmful for them than

anything else. They are fools and they already know it, that is to say, they realized it at one time. For this reason they came to learn. But they forget all about this the next

moment; they are already bringing into the work their own paltry and subjective

attitude; they begin to pass judgment on me and on everyone else as though they were

able to pass judgment on anything. And this is immediately reflected in their attitude

towards the ideas and towards what I say. Already 'they accept one thing' and 'they do

not accept another thing'; with one thing they agree, with another they disagree; they

trust me in one thing, in another thing they do not trust me.

"And the most amusing part is that they imagine they are able 'to work' under such

conditions, that is, without trusting me in everything and without accepting

everything. In actual fact this is absolutely impossible. By not accepting something or

mistrusting something they immediately invent something of their own in its place.

'Gagging' begins —new theories and new explanations which have nothing in

common either with the work or with what I have said. Then they begin to find faults

and inaccuracies in everything that I say or do and in everything that others say or do.

From this moment I now begin to speak of things about which I have no knowledge

and even of things of which I have no conception, but which they know and

understand much better than I do; all the other members of the group are fools, idiots.

And so on, and

so on, like a barrel organ. When a man says something on these lines I already know

all he will say later on. And you also will know by the consequences. And it is

amusing that people can see this in relation to others. But when they themselves do

crazy things they at once cease to see it in relation to themselves. This is a law. It is difficult to climb the hill but very easy to slide down it. They even feel no