In Search of the Miraculous

continuing the war or of the necessity of stopping the war merely showed the

helplessness of the human mind which was even incapable of realizing its own

helplessness. In the second place it was clear that the crash was approaching. And it

was clear that nobody could stop anything nor could they avert events or direct them

into some safe channel. Everything was going in the only way it could go and it could

go in no other way. I was particularly struck at this time by the position of

professional politicians of the left who, up to this time, had played a passive role but

were now preparing to pass into an active one. To be precise they showed themselves

to be the blindest, the most unprepared, and the most in-

capable of understanding what they were really doing, where they were going to, what

they were preparing, even for themselves.

I remember Petersburg so well during the last winter of its life. Who could have

known then, even assuming the very worst, that this was its last winter? But too many

people hated this city and too many feared it and its last days were numbered.

Our meetings continued. During the last months of 1916 G. did not come to

Petersburg but some of the members of our group went to Moscow and brought back

new diagrams and some notes which had been made by G.'s Moscow pupils under his

instruction.

Many new people made their appearance in our groups at this time, and although it

was clear that everything must come to some unknown end, G.'s system gave us a

certain feeling of confidence and security. We often spoke at this time of how we

should feel in the midst of all this chaos if we had not got the system which was

becoming more and more our own. Now we could not imagine how we could live

without it and find our way in the labyrinth of all existing contradictions.

This period marks the beginning of talks about Noah's Ark. I had always considered

the myth of Noah's Ark to be an esoteric allegory. Many of our company had now

begun to see that this myth was not merely an allegory of the general idea of

esotericism but was, at the same time, a plan of any esoteric work, our own included.

The system itself was an "ark" in which we could hope to save ourselves at the time of the "flood."

G. arrived only at the beginning of February, 1917. At one of the first talks he

showed us an entirely new side to everything he had spoken about up till then.

"So far," he said, "we have looked upon the 'table of hydrogens' as a table of vibrations and of the densities of matter which are in an inverse proportion to them.

We must now realize that the density of vibrations and the density of matter express

many other properties of matter. For instance, till now we have said nothing about the

intelligence or the consciousness of matter. Meanwhile the speed of vibrations of a matter shows the degree of intelligence of the given matter. You must remember that

there is nothing dead or inanimate in nature. Everything in its own way is alive,

everything in its own way is intelligent and conscious. Only this consciousness and

intelligence is expressed in a different way on different levels of being—that is, on

different scales. But you must understand once and for all that nothing is dead or

inanimate in nature, there are simply different degrees of animation and different

scales.

"The 'table of hydrogens,' while serving to determine the density of matter and the

speed of vibrations, serves at the same time to determine the degree of intelligence and

consciousness because the degree of con-

sciousness corresponds to the degree of density or the speed or vibrations. This means

that the denser the matter the less conscious it is, the less intelligent. And the denser the vibrations, the more conscious and the more intelligent the matter.

"Really dead matter begins where vibrations cease. But under ordinary conditions

of life on the earth's surface we have no concern with dead matter. And science cannot procure it. All the matter we know is living matter and in its own way it is intelligent.

"In determining the degree of density of matter the 'table of hydrogens' also

determines by this the degree of intelligence. This means that in making comparisons

between the matters which occupy different places in the 'table of hydrogens,' we

determine not only their density but also their intelligence. And not only can we say

how many times this or that 'hydrogen' is denser or lighter than another, but we can

say how many times one 'hydrogen' is more intelligent than another.

"The application of the 'table of hydrogens' for the determination of the different

properties of things and of living creatures which consist of many 'hydrogens' is based

on the principle that in each living creature and in each thing there is one definite

'hydrogen' which is the center of gravity; it is, so to speak, the 'average hydrogen' of

all the 'hydrogens' constituting the given creature or thing. To find this 'average