In Search of the Miraculous

"Man number seven means a man who has reached the full development possible

to man and who possesses everything a man can possess, that is, will, consciousness,

permanent and unchangeable I, individuality, immortality, and many other properties

which, in our blindness and ignorance, we ascribe to ourselves. It is only when to a

certain extent we understand man number seven and his properties that we can understand the gradual stages through which we can approach him, that is, understand the process of development possible for us.

"Man number six stands very close to man number seven. He differs from man

number seven only by the fact that some of his properties have not as yet become

permanent.

"Man number five is also for us an unattainable standard of man, for it is a man

who has reached unity.

"Man number four is an intermediate stage. I shall speak of him later.

"Man number one, number two, and number three, these are people who constitute

mechanical humanity on the same level on which they are born.

"Man number one means man in whom the center of gravity of his psychic life lies in the moving center. This is the man of the physical body, the man with whom the

moving and the instinctive functions constantly outweigh the emotional and the

thinking functions.

"Man number two means man on the same level of development, but man in whom

the center of gravity of his psychic life lies in the emotional center, that is, man with whom the emotional functions outweigh all others; the man of feeling, the emotional man.

"Man number three means man on the same level of development but man in

whom the center of gravity of his psychic life lies in the intellectual center, that is,

man with whom the thinking functions gain the upper hand over the moving,

instinctive, and emotional functions; the man of reason, who goes into everything

from theories, from mental considerations.

"Every man is born number one, number two, or number three.

"Man number four is not born ready-made. He is born one, two, or three, and becomes four only as a result of efforts of a definite character. Man number four is

always the product of school work. He can neither be born, nor develop accidentally or as the result of ordinary influences of bringing up, education, and so on. Man number

four already stands on a different level to man number one, two, and three; he has a

permanent center of gravity which consists in his ideas, in his valuation of the work, and in his relation to the school. In addition his psychic centers have already begun to

be balanced; one center in him cannot have such a preponderance over others as is the

case with people of the first three categories. He already begins to know himself and

begins to know whither he is going.

"Man number five has already been crystallized; he cannot change as man number one, two, and three change. But it must be noted that man number five can be the

result of right work and he can be the result of wrong work. He can become number

five from number four and he can become number five without having been four. And in this case he cannot develop further, cannot become number six and seven. In order

to become number six he must again melt his crystallized essence, must intentionally

lose his being of man number five. And this can be achieved only through terrible

sufferings. Fortunately these cases of wrong development occur very rarely.

"The division of man into seven categories, or seven numbers, explains thousands of

things which otherwise cannot be understood. This division gives the first conception

of relativity as applied to man. Things may be one thing or another thing according to the kind of man from whose point of view, or in relation to whom, they are taken.

"In accordance with this, all the inner and all the outer manifestations of man, all that belongs to man, and all that is created by him, is also divided into seven

categories.

"It can now be said that there exists a knowledge number one, based upon imitation

or upon instincts, or learned by heart, crammed or drilled into a man. Number one, if

he is man number one in the full sense of the term, learns everything like a parrot or a

monkey.

"The knowledge of man number two is merely the knowledge of what he likes; what

he does not like he does not know. Always and in everything he wants something

pleasant. Or, if he is a sick man, he will, on the contrary, know only what he dislikes,

what repels him and what evokes in him fear, horror, and loathing.

"The knowledge of man number three is knowledge based upon subjectively logical

thinking, upon words, upon literal understanding. It is the knowledge of bookworms,

of scholastics. Men number three, for example, have counted how many times each

letter of the Arabic alphabet

is repeated in the Koran of Mohammed, and upon this have based a whole system of