In Search of the Miraculous

about cigarettes, and how at this thought I seemed all at once to fall and disappear into a deep sleep.

At the same time, while immersed in this sleep, I had continued to perform

consistent and expedient actions. I left the tobacconist, called at my Hat in the Liteiny, telephoned to the printers. I wrote two letters.

Then again I went out of the house. I walked on the left side of the Nevsky up to the

Gostinoy Dvor intending to go to the Offitzerskaya. Then I had changed my mind as it

was getting late. I had taken an izvostchik and was driving to the Kavalergardskaya to my printers. And on the way while driving along the Tavricheskaya I began to feel a

strange uneasiness, as though I had forgotten something.— And suddenly I remem-

bered that I had forgotten to remember myself.

I spoke of my observations and deductions to the people in our group as well as to

my various literary friends and others.

I told them that this was the center of gravity of the whole system and of all work

on oneself; that now work on oneself was not only empty words but a real fact full of

significance thanks to which psychology becomes an exact and at the same time a

practical science.

I said that European and Western psychology in general had overlooked a fact of

tremendous importance, namely, that we do not remember ourselves; that we live and act and reason in deep sleep, not metaphorically but in absolute reality. And also that,

at the same time, we can remember ourselves if we make sufficient efforts, that we can awaken.

I was struck by the difference between the understanding of the people who

belonged to our groups and that of people outside them. The people who belonged to

our groups understood, though not all at once, that we had come into contact with a

"miracle," and that it was something "new," something that had never existed anywhere before.

The other people did not understand this; they took it all too lightly and sometimes

they even began to prove to me that such theories had existed before.

A. L. Volinsky, whom I had often met and with whom I had talked a great deal

since 1909 and whose opinions I valued very much, did not find in the idea of "selfremembering" anything that he had not known before.

"This is an apperception." He said to me, "Have you read Wundt's Logic? You will find there his latest definition of apperception. It is exactly the same thing you speak

of. 'Simple observation' is perception. 'Observation with self-remembering,' as you

call it, is apperception. Of course Wundt knew of it."

I did not want to argue with Volinsky. I had read Wundt. And of course what

Wundt had written was not at all what I had said to Volinsky. Wundt had come close

to this idea, but others had come just as close and had afterwards gone off in a

different direction. He had not seen the magnitude of the idea which was hidden

behind his thoughts about different forms of perception. And not having seen the magnitude

of the idea he of course could not see the central position which the idea of the

absence of consciousness and the idea of the possibility of the voluntary creation of

this consciousness ought to occupy in our thinking. Only it seemed strange to me that

Volinsky could not see this even when I pointed it out to him.

I subsequently became convinced that this idea was hidden by an impenetrable veil

for many otherwise very intelligent people—and still later on I saw why this was so.

The next time G. came from Moscow he found us immersed in experiments in selfremembering and in discussions about these experiments. But at his first lecture he spoke of something else.

"In right knowledge the study of man must proceed on parallel lines with the study

of the world, and the study of the world must run parallel with the study of man. Laws

are everywhere the same, in the world as well as in man. Having mastered the

principles of any one law we must look for its manifestation in the world and in man

simultaneously. Moreover, some laws are more easily observed in the world, others

are more easily observed in man. Therefore in certain cases it is better to begin with

the world and then to pass on to man, and in other cases it is better to begin with man

and then to pass on to the world.

"This parallel study of the world and of man shows the student the fundamental

unity of everything and helps him to find analogies in phenomena of different orders.

"The number of fundamental laws which govern all processes both in the world and

in man is very small. Different numerical combinations of a few elementary forces

create all the seeming variety of phenomena.

"In order to understand the mechanics of the universe it is necessary to resolve

complex phenomena into these elementary forces.

"The first fundamental law of the universe is the law of three forces, or three