In Search of the Miraculous

that is to say, in evoking the same sensations. It is true that the fast had come to an

end and that the success of my experiment had been, to a considerable extent,

connected with it.

When I told G. about this experiment he said that without general work, that is,

without work on the whole organism, such things could only succeed by chance.

Later on I several times heard descriptions of experiences very similar to mine from

people who were studying dances and dervish movements with G.

The more we saw and realized the complexity and the diversity of methods of work

on oneself, the clearer became for us the difficulties of the way. We saw the

indispensability of great knowledge, of immense efforts, and of help such as none of

us either could or had the right to count upon. We saw that even to begin work on

oneself in any serious form was an exceptional phenomenon needing thousands of

favorable inner and outward conditions. And the beginning gave no guarantee for the

future. Each step required an effort, each step needed help. The possibility of attaining anything seemed so small in comparison with the difficulties that many of us lost the

desire to make efforts of any kind.

This was an inevitable stage through which everybody passes until they have

learned to understand that it is useless to think of the possibility or impossibility of

big and distant achievements, and that a man must value what he gets today without

thinking of what he may get tomorrow.

But certainly the idea of the difficulty and the exclusiveness of the way was right.

And at different times questions arose out of it which were put to G.:

"Can it be possible that there is any difference between us and those people who

have no conception of this system?"—"Must we understand that people who are not passing along any of the ways are doomed to turn eternally in one and the same circle,

that they are merely 'food for the moon,' that they have no escape and no

possibilities?"—"Is it correct to think that there are no ways outside the ways; and how is it arranged that some people, much better people perhaps, do not come across

a way, while others, weak and insignificant, come into contact with the possibilities of

a way?"

On one occasion while talk was proceeding on these subjects, to which we were

constantly returning, G. began to talk in a somewhat different way to what he had

done before, because he had previously always insisted on the fact that outside the

ways there was nothing.

"There is not and there cannot be any choice of the people who come into touch

with the 'ways.' In other words, nobody selects them, they select themselves, partly by

accident and partly by having a certain hunger. Whoever is without this hunger cannot

be helped by accident. And whoever has this hunger very strongly can be brought by

accident to the beginning of a way in spite of all unfavorable circumstances."

"But what of those who were killed and who died from disease in the war for

instance?" someone asked. "Could not many of them have had this hunger? And how then could this hunger have helped?"

"That is an entirely different thing," said G. "These people came under a general law. We do not speak of them and we cannot. We can only speak of people who,

thanks to chance, or fate, or their own cleverness, do not come under a general law,

that is, who stay outside the action of any general law of destruction. For instance it is known through statistics that a certain definite number of people have to fall under

trams in Moscow during the year. Then if a man, even one with a great hunger, falls

under a tram and the tram crushes him we can no longer speak of him from the point

of view of work on the ways. We can speak only of those who are alive and only

while they are alive. Trams or war—they are exactly the same thing. One is merely

larger, the other smaller. We are speaking of those who do not fall under trams.

"A man, if he is hungry, has a chance to come into contact with the beginning of a

way. But besides hunger still other 'rolls' are necessary. Otherwise a man will not see

the way. Imagine that an educated European, that is, a man who knows nothing about

religion, comes into touch with the possibility of a religious way. He will see 'nothing

and he will understand nothing. For him it will be stupidity and superstition. But at

the same time he may have a great hunger though formulated intellectually. It is

exactly the same thing for a man who has never heard of yoga methods, of the

development of consciousness and so on. For him, if he comes into touch with a yoga

way, everything he hears will be dead. The fourth way is still more difficult. In order

to give the fourth way a right valuation a man must have thought and felt and been

disappointed in many things beforehand. He ought, if not actually to have tried the

way of the fakir, the way of the monk, and the way of the yogi previously, at least to

have known and thought about them and to be convinced that they are no good for