In Search of the Miraculous

Knowledge, however, the real objective knowledge towards which man, as he asserts, is struggling, is possible only in the fourth state of consciousness, that is, it is

conditional upon the full possession of the fourth state of consciousness. Knowledge

which is acquired in the ordinary state of consciousness is intermixed with dreams.

There you have a complete picture of the being of man number one, two, and three."

G. began the next talk as follows:

"Man's possibilities are very great. You cannot conceive even a shadow of what

man is capable of attaining. But nothing can be attained in sleep. In the consciousness

of a sleeping man his illusions, his 'dreams' are mixed with reality. He lives in a

subjective world and he can never escape from it. And this is the reason why he can

never make use of all the powers he possesses and why he always lives in only a small

part of himself.

"It has been said before that self-study and self-observation, if rightly conducted, bring man to the realization of the fact that something is wrong with his machine and

with his functions in their ordinary state. A man realizes that it is precisely because he is asleep that he lives and works in a small part of himself. It is precisely for this

reason that the vast majority of his possibilities remain unrealized, the vast majority of his powers are left unused. A man feels that he does not get out of life all that it can

give him, that he fails to do so owing to definite functional defects in his machine, in

his receiving apparatus. The idea of self-study acquires in his eyes a new meaning. He

feels that possibly it may not even be worth while studying himself as he is now. He

sees every function as it is now and as it could be or ought to be. Self-observation

brings man to the realization of the necessity for self-change. And in observing him-

self a man notices that self-observation itself brings about certain changes in his inner processes. He begins to understand that self-observation is an instrument of selfchange, a means of awakening. By observing himself he throws, as it were, a ray of light onto his inner processes which have hitherto worked in complete darkness. And

under the influence of this light the processes themselves begin to change. There are a

great many chemical processes that can take place only in the absence of light.

Exactly in the same way many psychic processes can take place only in the dark.

Even a feeble light of consciousness is enough to change completely the character of a

process, while it makes many of them altogether impossible. Our inner psychic

processes (our inner alchemy) have much in common with those chemical processes

in which light changes the character of the process and they are subject to analogous

laws.

"When a man comes to realize the necessity not only for self-study and selfobservation but also for work on himself with the object of changing himself, the character of his self-observation must change. He has so far studied the details of the

work of the centers, trying only to register this or that phenomenon, to be an impartial

witness. He has studied the work of the machine. Now he must begin to see himself,

that is to say, to see, not separate details, not the work of small wheels and levers, but to see everything taken together as a whole—the whole of himself such as others see

him.

"For this purpose a man must learn to take, so to speak, 'mental photographs' of

himself at different moments of his life and in different emotional states: and not

photographs of details, but photographs of the whole as he saw it. In other words

these photographs must contain simultaneously everything that a man can see in

himself at a given moment. Emotions, moods, thoughts, sensations, postures,

movements, tones of voice, facial expressions, and so on. If a man succeeds in seizing

interesting moments for these photographs he will very soon collect a whole album of

pictures of himself which, taken together, will show him quite clearly what he is. But

it is not so easy to learn how to take these photographs at the most interesting and

characteristic moments, how to catch characteristic postures, characteristic facial

expressions, characteristic emotions, and characteristic thoughts. If the photographs

are taken successfully and if there is a sufficient number of them, a man will see that

his usual conception of himself, with which he has lived from year to year, is very far

from reality.

"Instead of the man he had supposed himself to be he will see quite another man.

This 'other' man is himself and at the same time not himself. It is he as other people

know him, as he imagines himself and as he appears in his actions, words, and so on;

but not altogether such as he actually is. For a man himself knows that there is a great

deal that is

unreal, invented, and artificial in this other man whom other people know and whom

he knows himself. You must learn to divide the real from the invented. And to begin