In Search of the Miraculous

had Just been organized, nobody paid any attention to us.

On one occasion during general conversation in the evening G. said that we must

think of a name for our colony and in general legalize ourselves. This was at the time

of the Pyatigorsk bolshevik government.

"Think out something like Sodroojestvo1 and 'earned by work' or 'international' at the same time," said G. "In any case they will not understand. But it is necessary for them to be able to give us some kind of name."

We began in turn to propose various designations.

Public lectures were arranged in our house twice a week to which a fair number of

people came and once or twice we gave demonstrations of imitation psychic

phenomena which were not very successful since our public submitted very poorly to

instruction.

But my personal position in G.'s work began to change. For a whole year

something had been accumulating and I gradually began to see that there were many

things I could not understand and that I had to go.

This may appear strange and unexpected after all I have written so far, but it had

accumulated gradually. I wrote that I had for some time begun to separate G. and the

ideas. I had no doubts about the ideas. On the contrary, the more I thought of them, the deeper I entered into them, the more I began to value them and realize their

significance. But I began very strongly to doubt that it was possible for me, or even

for the majority of our company, to continue to work under G.'s leadership. I do not

in the least mean that I found any of G.'s actions or methods wrong or that they failed

to respond to what I expected. This would be

1 Sodroojestvo: approximately "Union of friends for common aim."

strange and completely out of place in connection with a leader in work, the esoteric

nature of which I have admitted. The one excludes the other. In work of such a nature

there can be no sort of criticism, no sort of "disagreement" with this or that person. On the contrary, all work consists in doing what the leader indicates, understanding in

conformance with his opinions even those things that he does not say plainly, helping

him in everything that he does. There can be no other attitude towards the work. And G. himself said several times that a most important thing in the work was to remember that one came to learn and to take no other role upon oneself.

At the same time this does not at all mean that a man has no choice or that he is

obliged to follow something which does not respond to what he is seeking. G. himself

said that there are no "general" schools, that each "guru" or leader of a school works at his own specialty, one is a sculptor, another is a musician, a third is again something

else, and that all the pupils of such a guru have to study his specialty. And it stands to reason that here a choice is possible. A man has to wait until he meets a guru whose specialty he is able to study, a specialty which suits his tastes, his tendencies, and his abilities.

There is no doubt that there may be very interesting ways, like music and like

sculpture. But it cannot be that every man should be required to learn music or

sculpture. In school work there are undoubtedly obligatory subjects and there are, if it is possible to put it in this way, auxiliary subjects, the study of which is proposed

merely as a means of studying the obligatory. Then the methods of the schools may

differ very much. According to the three ways the methods of each guru may

approximate either to the way of the fakir, the way of the monk, or the way of the

yogi. And it is of course possible that a man who is beginning work will make a

mistake, will follow a leader such as he cannot follow for any distance. It stands to

reason that it is the task of the leader to see to it that people do not begin to work with him for whom his methods or his special subjects will always be alien,

incomprehensible, and unattainable. But if this does happen and if a man had begun to

work with a leader whom he cannot follow, then of course, having noticed and

realized this, he ought to go and seek another leader or work independently, if he is

able to do so.

In regard to my relations with G. I saw clearly at that time that I had been mistaken

about many things that I had ascribed to G. and that by staying with him now I should

not be going in the same direction I went at the beginning. And I thought that all the

members of our small group, with very few exceptions, were in the same or in a

similar situation.

This was a very strange "observation" but it was absolutely a right one. I had

nothing to say against G.'s methods except that they did not suit me. A very clear

example came to my mind then. I had never had a nega-

tive attitude towards the "way of the monk," to religious, mystical ways. At the same time I could never have thought for one moment that such a way was possible for me