In Search of the Miraculous

"What is your opinion of modem psychology?" I once asked G. with the intention

of introducing the subject of psychoanalysis which I had mistrusted from the time

when it had first appeared. But G. did not let me get as far as that.

"Before speaking of psychology we must be clear to whom it refers and to whom it

does not refer," he said. "Psychology refers to people, to men, to human beings. What psychology" (he emphasized the word) "can there be in relation to machines?

Mechanics, not psychology, is necessary for the study of machines. That is why we

begin with mechanics. It is a very long way yet to psychology."

"Can one stop being a machine?" I asked.

"Ah! That is the question," said G. "If you had asked such questions more often we might, perhaps, have got somewhere in our talks. It is possible to stop being a

machine, but for that it is necessary first of all to know the machine. A machine, a real machine, does not know itself and cannot know itself. When a machine knows itself it

is then no longer a machine, at least, not such a machine as it was before. It already

begins to be responsible for its actions."

"This means, according to you, that a man is not responsible for his actions?" I asked.

"A man" (he emphasized this word) "is responsible. A machine is not responsible."

In the course of one of our talks I asked G.:

"What, in your opinion, is the best preparation for the study of your method? For

instance, is it useful to study what is called 'occult' or 'mystical' literature?"

In saying this I had in mind more particularly the "Tarot" and the literature on the

"Tarot."

"Yes," said G. "A great deal can be found by reading. For instance, take yourself: you might already know a great deal if you knew how to read. I mean that, if you understood everything you have read in your life, you would already know what you are looking for now. If you understood everything you have written in your own book,

what is it called?"—he made something altogether impossible out of the words

"Tertium Organum"—"I should come and bow down to you and beg you to teach me.

But you do not understand either what you read or what you write. You do not even understand what the word 'understand' means. Yet understanding is essential, and

reading can be useful only if you understand what you read. But, of course, no book

can give real preparation. So it is impossible to say which is better. What a man

knows well" (he emphasized the word "well")—"that is his preparation. If a man knows how to make coffee well or how to make boots well, then it is already possible

to talk to him. The trouble is that nobody knows anything well. Everything is known

just anyhow, superficially."

This was another of those unexpected turns which G. gave to his explanations. G.'s

words, in addition to their ordinary meaning, undoubtedly contained another,

altogether different, meaning. I had already begun to realize that, in order to arrive at this hidden meaning in G.'s words, one had to begin with their usual and simple

meaning. G.'s words were always significant in their ordinary sense, although this was

not the whole of their significance. The wider or deeper significance remained hidden

for a long time.

There is another talk which has remained in my memory.

I asked G. what a man had to do to assimilate this teaching.

"What to do?" asked G. as though surprised. "It is impossible to do anything. A man must first of all understand certain things. He has thousands of false ideas and false conceptions, chiefly about himself, and he must get rid of some of them before

beginning to acquire anything new. Otherwise the new will be built on a wrong

foundation and the result will be worse than before."

"How can one get rid of false ideas?" I asked. "We depend on the forms of our perception. False ideas are produced by the forms of our perception."

G. shook his head.

"Again you speak of something different,"' he said. "You speak of errors arising from perceptions but I am not speaking of these. Within the limits of given perceptions

man can err more or err less. As I have said before, man's chief delusion is his

conviction that he can do. All people think that they can do, all people want to do, and the first question all people ask is what they are to do. But actually nobody does

anything and nobody can do anything. This is the first thing that must be understood.

Everything happens. All that befalls a man, all that is done by him, all that comes from him—all this happens. And it happens in exactly the same way as rain falls as a result of a change in the temperature in the higher regions of the atmosphere or the

surrounding clouds, as snow melts under the rays of the sun, as dust rises with the

wind.

"Man is a machine. All his deeds, actions, words, thoughts, feelings, convictions,