In Search of the Miraculous

place to place. Coming into contact with various strange people. His imagination was

particularly struck by the Yezidis, the "Devil Worshipers," who, from his earliest youth, had attracted his attention by

their incomprehensible customs and strange dependence upon unknown laws. He told

me, among other things, that when he was a child he had often observed how Yezidi

boys were unable to step out of a circle traced round them on the ground.

He had passed his young years in an atmosphere of fairy tales, legends, and

traditions. The "miraculous" around him was an actual fact. Predictions of the future which he heard, and which those around him fully believed, were fulfilled and made

him believe in many other things.

All these things taken together had created in him at a very early age a leaning

towards the mysterious, the incomprehensible, and the magical. He told me that when

quite young he made several long journeys in the East. What was true in these stories

I could never decide exactly. But, as he said, in the course of these journeys he again

came across many phenomena telling him of the existence of a certain knowledge, of

certain powers and possibilities exceeding the ordinary possibilities of man, and of

people possessing clairvoyance and other miraculous powers. Gradually, he told me,

his absences from home and his travels began to follow one definite aim. He went in

search of knowledge and the people who possessed this knowledge. And, as he said,

after great difficulties, he found the sources of this knowledge in company with

several other people who were, like him, also seeking the miraculous.

In all these stories about himself a great deal was contradictory and hardly credible.

But I had already realized that no ordinary demands could be made of him, nor could

any ordinary standards be applied to him. One could be sure of nothing in regard to

him. He might say one thing today and something altogether different tomorrow, and

yet, somehow, he could never be accused of contradictions; one had to understand and

connect everything together.

About schools and where he had found the knowledge he undoubtedly possessed he

spoke very little and always superficially. He mentioned Tibetan monasteries, the

Chitral, Mount Athos; Sufi schools in Persia, in Bokhara, and eastern Turkestan; he

mentioned dervishes of various orders; but all of them in a very indefinite way.

During one conversation with G. in our group, which was beginning to become

permanent, I asked: "Why, if ancient knowledge has been preserved and if, speaking

in general, there exists a knowledge distinct from our science and philosophy or even

surpassing it, is it so carefully concealed, why is it not made common property? Why

are the men who possess this knowledge unwilling to let it pass into the general

circulation of life for the sake of a better and more successful struggle against deceit, evil, and ignorance?"

This is, I think, a question which usually arises in everyone's mind on first

acquaintance with the ideas of esotericism.

"There are two answers to that," said G. "In the first place, this knowledge is not concealed; and in the second place, it cannot, from its very nature, become common

property. We will consider the second of these statements first. I will prove to you

afterwards that knowledge" (he emphasized the word) "is far more accessible to those capable of assimilating it than is usually supposed; and that the whole trouble is that

people either do not want it or cannot receive it.

"But first of all another thing must be understood, namely, that knowledge cannot

belong to all, cannot even belong to many. Such is the law. You do not understand this

because you do not understand that knowledge, like everything else in the world, is

material. It is material, and this means that it possesses all the characteristics of materiality. One of the first characteristics of materiality is that matter is always

limited, that is to say, the quantity of matter in a given place and under given conditions is limited. Even the sand of the desert and the water of the sea is a definite and unchangeable quantity. So that, if knowledge is material, then it means that there is a

definite quantity of it in a given place at a given time. It may be said that, in the course of a certain period of time, say a century, humanity has a definite amount of

knowledge at its disposal. But we know, even from an ordinary observation of life,

that the matter of knowledge possesses entirely different qualities according to

whether it is taken in small or large quantities. Taken in a large quantity in a given

place, that is by one man, let us say, or by a small group of men, it produces very good

results; taken in a small quantity (that is, by every one of a large number of people), it gives no results at all; or it may give even negative results, contrary to those expected.

Thus if a certain definite quantity of knowledge is distributed among millions of