In Search of the Miraculous

cause the rupture of some important vessel and in some cases it can even cause immediate death. Therefore only he who is quite certain in himself that he knows what he is doing can allow himself to command a 'stop.'

"At the same time 'stop' demands unconditional obedience, without any hesitations

or doubts. And this makes it the invariable method for

studying school discipline. School discipline is something quite different from military

discipline, for instance. In that discipline everything is mechanical and the more

mechanical it is the better. In this everything should be conscious because the aim

consists in awakening consciousness. And for many people school discipline is much

more difficult than military discipline. There it is always one and the same, here it is

always different.

"But very difficult cases occur. I will tell you of one case in my own life. It was

many years ago in Central Asia. We had put up a tent by the side of an arik, that is, an irrigation canal. And three of us were carrying things from one side of the arik to the other where our tent was. The water in the arik came up to our waists. I and another man had just come out on the bank with some things and were preparing to dress; the

third man was still in the water. He dropped something in the water, we afterwards

found out that it was an ax, and he was feeling about on the bottom with a stick. At

this moment we heard from the tent a voice which called 'Stop!' We both stood stockstill on the bank as we were. Our comrade in the water was just within our field of vision. He was standing bending down towards the water and when he heard 'stop' he

remained in that posture. One or two minutes passed by and suddenly we saw that the

water in the arik was rising. Someone perhaps a mile away had opened a sluice to let water into the small arik. The water rose very rapidly and soon reached the chin of the man in the water. We did not know if the man in the tent knew that the water was

rising. We could not call out to him, we could not even turn our heads to see where he

was, we could not look at each other. I could only hear my friend breathing. The water

began to rise very rapidly and soon the head of the man in the water was completely

covered. Only one hand was raised supported by a long staff. Only this hand was to be

seen. It seemed to me that a very long time passed by. At length we heard: 'Enough!'

We both sprang into the water and dragged our friend out of it. He had been almost

suffocated."

We also very soon became convinced that the "stop" exercise was not at all a joke.

In the first place it required us to be constantly on the alert, constantly ready to

interrupt what we were saying or doing; and secondly it sometimes required

endurance and determination of quite a special kind.

"Stop" occurred at any moment of the day. Once during tea P., who was sitting

opposite me, had raised to his lips a glass of hot tea, just poured out, and he was

blowing on it. At this moment we heard "Stop" from the next room. P.'s face, and his hand holding the glass, were just in front of my eyes. I saw him grow purple and I saw

a little muscle near his eye quiver. But he held onto the glass. He said afterwards that

his fingers only pained him during the first minute, the chief difficulty afterwards was

with his arm which was bent awkwardly at the elbow, that is,

stopped halfway through a movement. But he had large blisters on his fingers and they

were painful for a long time.

Another time a stop caught Z. when he had just inhaled smoke from his cigarette. He

said afterwards that never in his life had he experienced anything so unpleasant. He

could not exhale the smoke and he sat with eyes full of tears and smoke slowly coming

out of his mouth.

"Stop" had an immense, influence on the whole of our life, on the understanding of our work and our attitude towards it. First of all, attitude towards "stop" showed with undoubted accuracy what anyone's attitude was to the work. People who had tried to

evade work evaded "stop." That is, either they did not hear the command to "stop" or they said that it did not directly refer .to them. Or, on the other hand, they were always prepared for a "stop," they made no careless movements, they took no glasses of hot tea in their hands, they sat down and got up very quickly and so on. To a certain extent

it was even possible to cheat with the "stop." But of course this would be seen and would at once show who was sparing himself and who was able not to spare himself,

able to take the work seriously, and who was trying to apply ordinary methods to it, to

avoid difficulties, "to adapt themselves." In exactly the same way "stop" showed the people who were incapable and undesirous of submitting to school discipline and the

people who were not taking it seriously. We saw quite clearly that without "stop" and other exercises which accompanied it, nothing whatever could be attained in a purely

psychological way.