In Search of the Miraculous

the possibility of growth, but in reality it is not so because their personality proves to be insufficiently developed. For inner growth, for work on oneself, a certain

development of personality as well as a certain strength of essence are necessary.

Personality consists of 'rolls,' and of 'buffers' resulting from a certain work of the

centers. An insufficiently developed personality means a lack of 'rolls,' that is, a lack of knowledge, a lack of information, a lack of the material upon which work on

oneself must be based. Without some store of knowledge, without a certain amount of

material 'not his own,' a man cannot begin to work on himself, he cannot begin to

study himself, he cannot begin to struggle with his mechanical habits, simply because

there will be no reason or motive for undertaking such work.

"It does not mean that all the ways are closed to him. The way of the fakir and the

way of the monk, which do not require any intellectual development, remain open to

him. But the methods and the means which

are possible for a man of a developed intellect are impossible for him. Thus evolution

is equally difficult for a cultured or an uncultured man. A cultured man lives far from

nature, far from natural conditions of existence, in artificial conditions of life,

developing his personality at the expense of his essence. A less cultured man, living in

more normal and more natural conditions, develops his essence at the expense of his

personality. A successful beginning of work on oneself requires the happy occurrence

of an equal development of personality and essence. Such an occurrence will give the

greatest assurance of success. If essence is very-little developed, a long preparatory

period of work is required and this work will be quite fruitless if a man's essence is

rotten inside or if it develops some irreparable defects. Conditions of this kind occur

fairly often. An abnormal development of personality very often arrests the

development of essence at such an early stage that the essence becomes a small

deformed thing. From a small deformed thing nothing else can be

got. "Moreover, it happens fairly often that essence dies in a man while his personality and his body are still alive. A considerable percentage of the people we meet in the

streets of a great town are people who are empty inside, that is, they are actually

already dead.

"It is fortunate for us that we do not see and do not know it. If we knew what a

number of people are actually dead and what a number of these dead people govern

our lives, we should go mad with horror. And indeed people often do go mad because

they End out something of this nature without the proper preparation, that is, they see

something they are not supposed to see. In order to see without danger one must be on

the way. If a man who can do nothing sees the truth he will certainly go mad. Only

this rarely happens. Usually everything is so arranged that a man can see nothing

prematurely. Personality sees only what it likes to see and what does not interfere with

its life. It never sees what it does not like. This is both good and bad at the same time.

It is good if a man wants to sleep, bad if he wants to awaken."

"If essence is subject to the influence of fate, does it mean that compared with

accident fate is always favorable to a man?" asked somebody present. "And can fate bring a man to the work?"

"No, it does not mean this at all," G. answered him. "Fate is better than accident only in the sense that it is possible to take it into account, it is possible to know it

beforehand; it is possible to prepare for what is ahead. In regard to accident one can

know nothing. But fate can be also unpleasant or difficult. In this event, however,

there are means for isolating oneself from one's fate. The first step towards this

consists in getting away from general laws. Just as there is individual accident, so is there general or collective accident. And in the same way as there is individual fate,

there is a general or collective fate. Collective accident and collective

fate are governed by general laws. If a man wishes to create individuality of his own he must first free himself from general laws. General laws are by no means all

obligatory for man; he can free himself from many of them if he frees himself from

'buffers' and from imagination. All this is connected with liberation from personality.

Personality feeds on imagination and falsehood. If the falsehood in which man lives is

decreased and imagination is decreased, personality very soon weakens and a man

begins to be controlled either by fate or by a line of work which is in its turn controlled by another man's will; this will lead him until a will of his own has been formed,

capable of withstanding both accident and, when necessary, fate."

The talks given embrace a period of a few months. It stands to reason that it is not

possible to re-establish the talks in their exact order because very often G. touched