complete absurdity to think that it is possible to study phenomena of a higher order like "telepathy," "clairvoyance," foreseeing the future, mediumistic phenomena, and so on, in the same way as electrical, chemical, or meteorological phenomena are studied. There is something in phenomena of a higher order which requires a particular emotional state for their observation and study. And this excludes any possibility of "properly conducted" laboratory experiments and observations.
I had previously arrived at the same conclusions after experiments of my own described in the New Model of the Universe in the chapter "Experimental Mysticism," but now I understood the reason why this was impossible.
The second interesting conclusion that I came to is much more difficult to describe. It relates to a change which I noticed in certain of my views, in certain formulations of my aims, desires, and aspirations. Many aspects of this became clear to me only afterwards. And afterwards I saw clearly that it was at this time that certain very definite changes began in my views on myself, on those around me, and particularly on "methods of action," if this can be said without more precise definition. To describe the changes themselves is very difficult. I can only say that they were not in any way connected with what was said in Finland but that they had come as a result of the emotions which I had experienced there. The first thing I could record was the weakening in me of that extreme individualism which up to that time had been the fundamental feature in my attitude to life. I began to see people more, to feel my community with them more. And the second thing was that somewhere very deep down inside me I understood the esoteric principle of the impossibility of violence, that is, the uselessness of violent means to attain no matter what. I saw with undoubted clarity, and never afterwards did I wholly lose this feeling, that violent means and methods in anything whatever would unfailingly produce negative results, that is to say, results opposed to those aims for which they were applied. What I arrived at was like Tolstoi's non-resistance in appearance but it was not at all non-resistance because I had reached it not from an ethical but from a practical point of view; not from the standpoint of what is better or what is worse but from the standpoint of what is more effective and expedient.
The next time G. came to St. Petersburg was in the beginning of September. I tried to question him about what had actually occurred in Finland—was it true that he had said something that had frightened me, and why had I been frightened?
"If that was the case it means you were not ready," said G.
He explained nothing further.
On this visit the center of gravity of the talks was in the "chief feature" or "chief fault" of each one of us.
G. was very ingenious in the definition of features. I realized on this occasion that not everyone's chief feature could be defined. With some people this feature can be so hidden beneath different formal manifestations as to be almost impossible to find. And then a man can consider himself as his chief feature just as I could call my chief feature "Ouspensky" or, as G. always called it, "Piotr Demianovich." Mistakes there cannot be because the "Piotr Demianovich" of each person forms so to speak "round his chief feature."
Whenever anyone disagreed with the definition of his chief feature given by G. he always said that the fact that the person disagreed with him showed that he was right.
"I disagree only with what you say is actually my chief feature," said one of our people. "The chief feature which I know in myself is very much worse. But I do not dispute that people may see me as you describe."
"You know nothing in yourself," G. told him; "if you knew you would not have that feature. And people certainly see you in the way I told you. But you do not see how they see you. If you accept what I told you as your chief feature you will understand how people see you. And if you find a way to struggle with this feature and to destroy it, that is, to destroy its involuntary manifestation" (G. emphasized these words), "you will produce on people not the impression that you do now but any impression you like."
With this began long talks about the impressions that a man produces on other people and how he can produce a desirable or an undesirable impression.
Those around him see a man's chief feature however hidden it may be. Of course they cannot always define it. But their definitions are often very good and very near. Take nicknames. Nicknames sometimes define chief features very well.
The talk about impressions brought us once more to "inner" and "outward considering."
"There cannot be proper outward considering while a man is seated in his chief feature," said G. "For instance So-and-So" (he named one of our party). "His feature is that he is never at home. How can he consider anything or anybody?"
I was astonished at the artistic finish of the feature that was represented by G. It was not psychology even, it was art.
"And psychology ought to be art," G. replied, "psychology can never be simply a science."
To another of our party he said on the question of feature that his feature was that he did not exist at all.
"You understand, I do not see you," said G. "It does not mean that
you are always like that. But when you are like you are now, you do not exist at all."
He said to another that his chief feature was a tendency always to argue with everybody about everything.
"But then I never argue," the man very heatedly at once replied.
Nobody could help laughing.
G. told another of our party—it was the middle-aged man on whom he had carried out the experiment of dividing personality from essence and who asked for raspberry jam—that his feature was that he had no conscience.
The following day the man came and said that he had been in the public library and had looked through the encyclopedic dictionaries of four languages for the meaning of the word "conscience."
G. merely waved his hand.
To the other man, his companion in the experiment, G. said that he had no shame, and he at once cracked a rather amusing joke against himself.
On this occasion G. stopped in quarters on the Liteiny near the Nevsky. He had caught a severe chill and we met at his place in small groups.
He said once that there was no sense in our going on any further in this way and that we ought to make a definite decision whether we wanted to go on with him, wanted to work, or whether it was better to abandon all attempts in this direction, because a half-serious attitude could give no results whatever. He added that he would continue the work only with those who would make a definite and serious decision to struggle with mechanicalness in themselves and with sleep.
"You already know by this time," he said, "that nothing terrible is demanded of you. But there is no sense in sitting between two stools. Whoever does not want to wake up, at any rate let him sleep well."
He said that he would talk to each of us separately and that each of us must show him sufficient reason why he, that is, G., should trouble about him.
"You think perhaps that this affords me a great deal of satisfaction," he said. "Or perhaps you think that there is nothing else that I could do. If so you are very gravely mistaken in both cases. There are very many other things that I could do. And if I give my time to this it is only because I have a definite aim. By now you ought better to understand in what my aim consists and by now you ought to see whether you are on the same road as I am or not. I will say nothing more. But in the future I shall work only with those who can be useful to me in attaining my aim. And only those people can be useful to me who have firmly decided to struggle with themselves, that is, to struggle with mechanicalness."