In Search of the Miraculous

some private houses or with some already existing groups. Thirty or forty people used

to come. After January, 1916, G. began to visit Petersburg regularly every fortnight,

sometimes with some of his Moscow pupils.

I did not understand everything about the way these meetings were arranged. It

seemed to me that G. was making much of it unnecessarily difficult. For instance, he

seldom allowed me to fix a meeting beforehand. A former meeting usually ended with

the announcement that G. was returning to Moscow the following day. On the

following morning he

would say that he had decided to stay till the evening. The whole day was passed in

cafés where people came who wanted to see G. It was only in the evening, an hour or

an hour and a half before we usually began our meetings, that he would say to me:

"Why not have a meeting tonight? Ring up those who wanted to come and tell them

we shall be at such and such a place."

I used to rush to the telephone but, of course, at seven or half-past seven in the

evening, everybody was already engaged and I could only collect a few people. And

some who lived outside Petersburg, in Tsarskoye, etc., never succeeded in coming to

our meetings.

A great deal I afterwards understood differently from the way I did then. And G.'s

chief motives became clearer to me. He by no means wanted to make it easy for

people to become acquainted with his ideas. On the contrary he considered that only

by overcoming difficulties, however irrelevant and accidental, could people value his

ideas.

"People do not value what is easily come by," he said. "And if a man has already felt something, believe me, he will sit waiting all day at the telephone in case he

should be invited. Or he will himself ring up and ask and inquire. And whoever

expects to be asked, and asked beforehand so that he can arrange his own affairs, let

him go on expecting. Of course, for those who are not in Petersburg this is certainly

difficult. But we cannot help it. Later on, perhaps, we shall have definite meetings on

fixed days. At present it is impossible to do this. People must show themselves and

their valuation of what they have heard."

All this and much else besides still remained for me at that time half-open to

question.

But the lectures and, in general, all that G. said at that time, both at the meetings

and outside them, interested me more and more.

On one occasion, at one of these meetings, someone asked about the possibility of

reincarnation, and whether it was possible to believe in cases of communication with

the dead.

"Many things are possible," said G. "But it is necessary to understand that man's being, both in life and after death, if it does exist after death, may be very different in quality. The 'man-machine' with whom everything depends upon external influences,

with whom everything happens, who is now one, the next moment another, and the

next moment a third, has no future of any kind; he is buried and that is all. Dust

returns to dust. This applies to him. In order to be able to speak of any kind of future life there must be a certain crystallization, a certain fusion of man's inner qualities, a certain independence of external influences. If there is anything in a man able to resist external influences, then this very thing itself may also be able to resist the death of

the physical body. But think for yourselves what there is to withstand physical death

in a man who faints

or forgets everything when he cuts his finger? If there is anything in a man, it may

survive; if there is nothing, then there is nothing to survive. But even if something

survives, its future can be very varied. In certain cases of fuller crystallization what

people call 'reincarnation' may be possible after death, and, in other cases, what

people call 'existence on the other side.' In both cases it is the continuation of life in the 'astral body,' or with the help of the 'astral body.' You know what the expression

'astral body' means. But the systems with which you are acquainted and which use this

expression state that all men have an 'astral body.' This is quite wrong. What may be called the 'astral body' is obtained by means of fusion, that is, by means of terribly

hard inner work and struggle. Man is not born with it. And only very few men acquire

an 'astral body.' If it is formed it may continue to live after the death of the physical body, and it may be born again in another physical body. This is 'reincarnation.' If it is not re-born, then, in the course of time, it also dies; it is not immortal but it can live long after the death of the physical body.

"Fusion, inner unity, is obtained by means of 'friction,' by the struggle between 'yes'

and 'no' in man. If a man lives without inner struggle, if everything happens in him

without opposition, if he goes wherever he is drawn or wherever the wind blows, he