In Search of the Miraculous

more so as all his motives were to be seen. I must confess that I was not very

enthusiastic about the program of the Institute for the Harmonious Development of

Man. I realized, of course, that it meant that G. was obviously obliged to give some

sort of outward form to his work having regard to outward conditions, as he had done

at Essentuki, and that this outward form was somewhat in the nature of a caricature.

But I also realized that behind this outward form stood the same thing as before and

that this could not change. I was doubtful only of my own ability to adapt myself to this outward form. At the same time I was confident that I should soon have to meet

G. again.

P. came to Ekaterinodar from Maikop and we spoke together a great deal about the

system and G. P. was in a fairly negative frame of mind. But it seemed to me that my

idea that it was imperative to make a distinction between the system and G. helped

him to understand the position of affairs better.

I was beginning to get very interested in my groups. I saw a possibility of continuing

the work. The ideas of the system found a response and obviously answered the needs

of people who wanted to understand what was taking place both in them and around

them. And around us was being concluded that brief little epilogue to Russian history

which had frightened our friends and "allies" so much. Ahead of us everything was quite dark. I was in Rostov in the autumn and beginning of winter. There

I met another two or three of the St. Petersburg company as well as Z. who had arrived

from Kiev. Z. like P. was in a very negative frame of mind in relation to all of the

work. We settled down together in the same quarters and it seemed that talks with me

made him revise many things and convince himself that the original valuations were

right. He decided to try to get through to G. in Tiflis. But he was not fated to

accomplish this. We left Rostov almost at the same time, Z. leaving one or two days

after me, but he arrived in Novorossiysk already ill and in the first days of January,

1920, he died of the smallpox.

Soon afterwards I managed to leave for Constantinople.

At that time Constantinople was full of Russians. I met acquaintances from St.

Petersburg and with their assistance I began to give lectures in the offices of the

"Russki Miyak." I at once collected a fairly large audience mostly of young men. I continued to develop the ideas begun in Rostov and Ekaterinodar, connecting general

ideas of psychology and philosophy with ideas of esotericism.

I got no further letters from G., but I was sure that he would come to

Constantinople. He actually arrived in June with a fairly large company.

In former Russia, even in its distant outskirts, work had become impossible and we

were gradually approaching the period which I had foreseen in St. Petersburg, that is,

of working in Europe.

I was very glad to see G. and to me personally it seemed then that, in the interests

of the work, all former difficulties could be set aside and that I could again work with

him as in St. Petersburg. I brought G. to my lectures and handed over to him all the

people who came to my lectures, particularly the small group of about thirty persons

who met upstairs in the offices of the "Miyak."

G. gave to the ballet the central position of his work at that time. Besides this he

wanted to organize a continuation of his Tiflis Institute in Constantinople, the

principal place in which would be taken by dances and rhythmic exercises which

would prepare people to take part in the ballet. According to his ideas the ballet

should become a school. I worked out the scenario of the ballet for him and began to

understand this idea better. The dances and all the other "numbers" of the ballet, or rather "revue," demanded a long and an entirely special preparation. The people who were being prepared for the ballet and who were taking part in it, would, in so doing,

be obliged to study and to acquire control over themselves, in this way approaching

the disclosure of the higher forms of consciousness. Into the ballet there entered, and

as a necessary part of it, dances, exercises, and the ceremonies of various dervishes as

well as many little known Eastern dances.

It was a very interesting time for me. G. often came to me in Prinkipo. We went

together through the Constantinople bazaars. We went to the Mehlevi dervishes and

he explained something to me that I had not been

able to understand before. And this was that the whirling of the Mehlevi dervishes was

an exercise for the brain based upon counting, like those exercises that he had shown

to us in Essentuki. Sometimes I worked with him for entire days and nights. One such

night in particular remains in my memory, when we "translated" a dervish song for

"The Struggle of the Magicians." I saw G. the artist and G. the poet, whom he had so carefully hidden inside him, particularly the latter. This translation took the form of G.

recalling the Persian verses, sometimes repeating them to himself in a quiet voice and