In Search of the Miraculous

understanding by giving explanations to other people. And under the impetus of this sensation, as soon as I had said that examples or analogies of the transition of the

forces 1, 2, 3 and 1, 3, 2 must be found in the real world, I at once saw these examples

both in the human organism and in the astronomical world and in mechanics in the

movements of waves.

I afterwards had a talk with G. about various scales, the purpose of which I did not

understand.

"We waste time on guessing riddles," I said. "Would it not be simpler to help us to solve these more quickly? You know that before us there are many other difficulties,

we shall never even reach them going at this pace. You yourself have said, and very

often, that we have very little time."

"It is precisely because there is little time and because there are many difficulties ahead that it is necessary to do as I am doing," said G. "If you are afraid of these difficulties, what will it be like later on? Do you think that anything is given in a

completed form in schools? You look at this very naively. You must be cunning, you

must pretend, lead up to things in conversation. Sometimes things are learned from

jokes, from stories. And you want everything to be very simple. This never happens.

You must know how to take when it is not given, to steal if necessary, but not to wait for somebody to come and give it to you."

Chapter Fourteen

THERE were certain points to which G. invariably used to return in all his talks with

us after the formal lectures, to which outside people were admitted, were over. The

first was the question of self-remembering and the necessity of constant work on

oneself in order to attain this, and the second was the question of the imperfection of

our language and of the difficulty of conveying "objective truths" in our words.

As I have already mentioned before, G. used the expressions "objective" and

"subjective" in a special sense, taking as a basis the divisions of "subjective" and

"objective" states of consciousness. All our ordinary knowledge which is based on ordinary methods of observation and verification of observations, all scientific

theories deduced from the observation of facts accessible to us in subjective states of

consciousness, he called subjective. Knowledge based upon ancient methods and

principles of observation, knowledge of things in themselves, knowledge accompanying "an objective state of consciousness," knowledge of the All, was for him objective knowledge.

I will try to convey what followed as far as I remember it, making use partly of

notes made by some of G.'s Moscow pupils and partly of notes of my own on the

Petersburg talks.

"One of the most central of the ideas of objective knowledge," said G., "is the idea of the unity of everything, of unity in diversity. From ancient times people who have

understood the content and the meaning of this idea, and have seen in it the basis of

objective knowledge, have endeavored to find a way of transmitting this idea in a

form comprehensible to others. The successive transmission of the ideas of objective

knowledge has always been a part of the task of those possessing this knowledge. In

such cases the idea of the unity of everything, as the fundamental and central idea of

this knowledge, had to be transmitted first and transmitted with adequate

completeness and exactitude. And to do this the idea had to be put into such forms as

would insure its proper perception by others and avoid in its transmission the

possibility of

distortion and corruption. For this purpose the people to whom the idea was being

transmitted were required to undergo a proper preparation, and the idea itself was put

either into a logical form, as for instance in philosophical systems which endeavored

to give a definition of the 'fundamental principle' or

from which everything else

was derived, or into religious teachings which endeavored to create an element of faith

and to evoke a wave of emotion carrying people up to the level of 'objective

consciousness.' The attempts of both the one and the other, sometimes more

sometimes less successful, run through the whole history of mankind from the most

ancient times up to our own time and they have taken the form of religious and

philosophical creeds which have remained like monuments on the paths of these

attempts to unite the thought of mankind and esoteric thought.

"But objective knowledge, the idea of unity included, belongs to objective

consciousness. The forms which express this knowledge when perceived by subjective

consciousness are inevitably distorted and, instead of truth, they create more and more

delusions. With objective consciousness it is possible to see and feel the unity of

everything. But for subjective consciousness the world is split up into

millions of separate and unconnected phenomena. Attempts to connect

these phenomena into some sort of system in a scientific or a philosophical way lead