In Search of the Miraculous

So I decided to travel to London and to try to organize lectures and groups there like

those at St. Petersburg. This only came to pass three and a half years later.

In the beginning of June, 1919, 1 at last succeeded in leaving Essentuki. At that time

it had become quite calm there and life had been a little re-established. But I did not

trust this calm. It was necessary to go abroad. At first I went to Rostov and then to

Ekaterinodar and Novorossiysk and then returned again to Ekaterinodar. Ekaterinodar

at that time was the capital of Russia. There I met some of our company who had left

Essentuki before me as well as some friends and acquaintances from St. Petersburg.

There remains in my memory one of my first talks.

My friend from St. Petersburg asked me, when we had spoken of G.'s system and of

work on oneself, whether I could indicate any practical results of this work.

Remembering all I had experienced during the preceding year, particularly after G.'s

departure, I said that I had acquired a strange confidence, one which I could not define in one word but which I must describe.

"This is not self-confidence in the ordinary sense," I said, "quite the contrary, rather is it a confidence in the unimportance and the insignificance of self, that self which we usually know. But what I am confident about is that if something terrible happened to

me like things that have happened to many of my friends during the past year, then it

would be not I who would meet it, not this ordinary I, but another I within me who would be equal to the occasion. Two years ago G. asked me whether I felt a new I

inside me and I had to answer that I felt no change whatever. Now I can speak

otherwise. And I can explain how the change takes place. It does not take place at

once, I mean that the change does not embrace every moment of life. All the ordinary

life goes on in the ordinary way, all those very ordinary stupid small I's, excepting

perhaps a few which have already become impossible. But if something big were to

happen, something which would require the straining of every nerve, then I know that

this big thing would be met not by the ordinary small I, which is now speaking, and

which can be made afraid, nor by anything like it—but by another, a big I, which

nothing can frighten and which would be equal to everything that happened. I cannot

describe it better. But for me it is a fact. And this fact is definitely connected for me with this work. You know my life and you know that I was not afraid of many things,

both inward and outward, that people are often afraid of. But this is something

different, a different taste. Therefore I know, for myself, that this new confidence has

not come simply as a result of a great experience of life. It is the result of that work on myself which I began four years ago."

In Ekaterinodar and afterwards in Rostov during the winter, I collected together a

small group and, on a plan that I had worked out the preced ing winter, I gave them

lectures expounding G.'s system as well as the things from ordinary life which lead up

to it.

During the summer and autumn of 1919 I received two letters from G. in

Ekaterinodar and Novorossiysk. ... He wrote that he had opened in Tiflis an "Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man" on a very broad program and enclosed a

prospectus of this "Institute" which made me very thoughtful indeed. The prospectus began in this way:

With the permission of the Minister for National Education the Institute for the

Harmonious Development of Man based on G. I. G.'s system is being opened in Tiflis.

The Institute accepts children and adults of both sexes. Study will take place morning

and evening. The subjects of study are:

gymnastics of all kinds (rhythmical, medicinal, and others). Exercises for the

development of will, memory, attention, hearing, thinking, emotion, instinct, and so

on.

To this was added that G. I. G.'s system

was already in operation in a whole series of large cities such as Bombay, Alexandria,

Cabul, New York, Chicago, Christiania, Stockholm, Moscow, Essentuki, and in all

departments and homes of the true international and laboring fraternities.

At the end of the prospectus in a list of "specialist teachers" of the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man I found my own name as well as the names of

"Mechanical Engineer" P. and still another of our company, ]., who was living at that time in Novorossiysk and had no intention whatever of going to Tiflis.

G. wrote in his letter that he was preparing his ballet "The Struggle of the

Magicians" and without making any reference at all to past difficulties he invited me to go and work with him in Tiflis. This was very characteristic of him. But for various

reasons I could not go there. In the first place there were very great material obstacles and secondly the difficulties which had arisen in Essentuki were for me very real ones.

My decision to leave G. had cost me very dear and I could not give it up so easily, the