In Search of the Miraculous (Harvest Book)

396 Pages·2001·3.69 MB·english

by  P. D. Ouspensky

P. D. OUSPENSKY
IN SEARCH OF THE
MIRACULOUS
FRAGMENTS OF AN UNKNOWN TEACHING
CONTENTS

CHAPTER I
Return from India. The war and the "search for the miraculous." Old thoughts
The question of schools. Plans for further travels. The East and Europe. A
notice in a Moscow newspaper. Lectures on India. The meeting with G. A
"distinguished man." The first talk, G.'s opinion on schools. G.'s group.
"Glimpses of Truth." Further meetings and talks. The organization of G.'s
Moscow group The question of payment and of means for the work. The
question of secrecy and of the obligations accepted by the pupils. A talk about
the East. "Philosophy," "theory," and "practice." How was the system found?
G's ideas. "Man is a machine" governed by external influences Everything
"happens." Nobody "does" anything In order "to do" it is necessary "to be." A
man is responsible for his actions, a machine is not responsible. Is
psychology necessary for the study of machines? The promise of "facts." Can
wars be stopped? A talk about the planets and the moon as living beings. The
"intelligence" of the sun and the earth. "Subjective" and "objective" art.
CHAPTER II
Petersburg in 1915 G. in Petersburg. A talk about groups. Reference to
"esoteric" work "Prison" and "Escape from prison." What is necessary for this
escape? Who can help and how? Beginning of meetings in Petersburg. A
question on reincarnation and future life. How can immortality be attained?
Struggle between "yes" and "no." Crystallization on a right, and on a wrong,
foundation. Necessity of sacrifice. Talks with G and observations. A sale of
carpets and talks about carpets. What G. said about himself. Question about
ancient knowledge and why it is hidden. G's reply. Knowledge is not hidden.
The materiality of knowledge and man's refusal of the knowledge given to
him. A question on immortality. The "four bodies of man." Example of the
retort filled with metallic powders. The way of the fakir, the way of the monk,
and the way of the yogi The "fourth way." Do civilization and culture exist?
CHAPTER III
G.'s fundamental ideas concerning man. Absence of unity. Multiplicity of I's.
Construction of the human machine. Psychic centers. G.'s method of
exposition of the ideas of the system. Repetition unavoidable. What the
evolution of man means Mechanical progress impossible. European idea of
man's evolution. Connectedness of everything in nature. Humanity and the
moon. Advantage of individual man over the masses Necessity of knowing
the human machine.
Absence of a permanent I in man. Role of small I's. Absence of individuality
and will in man. Eastern allegory of the house and its servants. The "deputy
steward." Talks about a fakir on nails and Buddhist magic.
CHAPTER IV
General impressions of G.'s system. Looking backwards. One of the
fundamental propositions. The line of knowledge and the line of being. Being
on different levels Divergence of the line of knowledge from the line of being.
What a development of knowledge gives without a corresponding change of
being—and a change of being without an increase in knowledge. What
"understanding" means. Understanding as the resultant of knowledge and
being. The difference between understanding and knowledge. Understanding
as a function of three centers. Why people try to find names for things they do
not understand. Our language. Why people do not understand one another.
The word "man" and its different meanings. The language accepted in the
system. Seven gradations of the concept "man." The principle of relativity in
the system. Gradations parallel to the gradations of man. The word "world."
Variety of its meanings. Examination of the word "world" from the point of view
of the principle of relativity. The fundamental law of the universe. The law of
three principles or three forces. Necessity of three forces for the appearance
of a phenomenon. The third force. Why we do not see the third force. Three
forces in ancient teachings. The creation of worlds by the will of the Absolute.
A chain of worlds or the "ray of creation." The number of laws in each world.
CHAPTER V
A lecture on the "mechanics of the universe." The ray of creation and its
growth from the Absolute. A contradiction of scientific views. The moon as the
end of the ray of creation. The will of the Absolute. The idea of miracle. Our
place in the world. The moon feeds on organic life. The influence of the moon
and liberation from the moon. Different "materiality" of different worlds. The
world as a world of "vibrations." Vibrations slow down proportionately to the
distance from the Absolute. Seven kinds of matter. The four bodies of man
and their relation to different worlds. Where the earth is. The three forces and
the cosmic properties of matter. Atoms of complex substances. Definition of
matter according to the forces manifested through it. "Carbon," "oxygen,"
"nitrogen," and "hydrogen." The three forces and the four matters. Is man
immortal or not? What does immortality mean? A man having the fourth body.
The story of the seminarist and the omnipotence of God. Talks about the
moon. The moon as the weight of a clock. Talk about a universal language.
Explanation of the Last Supper.
CHAPTER VI
Talk about aims. Can the teaching pursue a definite aim? The aim of
existence. Personal aims. To know the future. To exist after death. To be
master of oneself. To be a Christian. To help humanity. To stop wars. G.'s
explanations. Fate, accident, and will. "Mad machines." Esoteric Christianity.
What ought man's aim to be? The causes of inner slavery. With what the way
to liberation begins. "Know thyself." Different understandings of this idea. Self­
study. How
to study? Self-observation. Recording and analysis. A fundamental principle of
the working of the human machine. The four centers: Thinking, emotional,
moving, instinctive. Distinguishing between the work of the centers. Making
changes in the working of the machine. Upsetting the balance. How does the
machine restore its balance? Incidental changes. Wrong work of centers.
Imagination. Daydreaming. Habits. Opposing habits for purposes of self­
observation. The struggle against expressing negative emotions. Registering
mechanicalness. Changes resulting from right self-observation. The idea of
the moving center. The usual classification of man's actions. Classification
based upon the division of centers. Automatism. Instinctive actions. The
difference between the instinctive and the moving functions. Division of the
emotions. Different levels of the centers.
CHAPTER VII
Is "cosmic consciousness" attainable? What is consciousness? G.'s question
about what we notice during self-observation. Our replies. G.'s remark that we
had missed the most important thing. Why do we not notice that we do not
remember ourselves? "It observes," "it thinks," "it speaks." Attempts to
remember oneself. G.'s explanations. The significance of the new problem.
Science and philosophy. Our experiences. Attempts to divide attention. First
sensation of voluntary self-remembering. What we recollect of the past.
Further experiences. Sleep in a waking state and awakening. What European
psychology has overlooked. Differences in the understanding of the idea of
consciousness.
The study of man is parallel to the study of the world. Following upon the law
of three comes the fundamental law of the universe: The law of seven or the
law of octaves. The absence of continuity in vibrations. Octaves. The seven­
tone scale. The law of "intervals." Necessity for additional shocks. What
occurs in the absence of additional shocks. In order to do it is necessary to be
able to control "additional shocks." Subordinate octaves. Inner octaves.
Organic life in the place of an "interval." Planetary influences. The lateral
octave sol-do. The meaning of the notes la, sol, fa. The meaning of the notes
do, si. The meaning of the notes mi, re. The role of organic life in changing the
earth's surface.
CHAPTER VIII
Different states of consciousness. Sleep. Waking state. Self-consciousness.
Objective consciousness. Absence of self-consciousness. What is the first
condition for acquiring self-consciousness? Higher states of consciousness
and the higher centers. The "waking state" of ordinary man as sleep. The life
of men asleep. How can one awaken? What man is when he is born. What
"education" and the example of those around him do. Man's possibilities. Self­
study. "Mental photographs." Different men in one man. "I" and "Ouspensky."
Who is active and who is passive? Man and his mask. Division of oneself as
the first stage of work on oneself. A fundamental quality of man's being. Why
man does not remember himself. "Identification." "Considering." "Internal con­
sidering" and "external considering." What "external" considering a machine
means. "Injustice." Sincerity and weakness. "Buffers." Conscience. Morality.
Does an idea of morality common to all exist? Does Christian morality exist?
Do conceptions of good and evil common to all exist? Nobody does anything
for the sale of evil. 'Different conceptions of good and the results of these
different conceptions. On what can a permanent idea of good and evil be
based? The idea of truth and falsehood. The struggle against "buffers" and
against lying. Methods of school work. Subordination. Realization of one's
nothingness. Personality and essence. Dead people. General laws. The
question of money.
CHAPTER IX 1
The "ray of creation" in the form of the three octaves of radiations. Relation of
matters and forces on different planes of the world to our life. Intervals in the
cosmic octaves and the shocks which fill them. "Point of the universe."
Density of vibrations. Three forces and four matters. "Carbon," "Oxygen,"
"Nitrogen," "Hydrogen." Twelve triads. "Table of Hydrogens." Matter in the
light of its chemical, physical, psychic and cosmic properties. Intelligence of
matter. "Atom." Every human function and state depends on energy.
Substances in man. Man has sufficient energy to begin work on himself, if he
saves his energy. Wastage of energy. "Learn to separate the fine from the
coarse." Production of fine hydrogens. Change of being. Growth of inner
bodies. The human organism as a three-storied factory. Three kinds of food.
Entrance of food, air and impressions into the organism. Transformation of
substances is governed by the law of octaves. Food octave and air octave.
Extracting "higher hydrogens." The octave of impressions does not develop.
Possibility of creating an artificial shock at the moment of receiving an
impression. Conscious effort. "Self-remembering. " Resulting development of
impressions and air octaves. A second conscious shock. Effort connected
with emotions Preparation for this effort. Analogy between the human
organism and the universe. Three stages in the evolution of the human
machine. Transmutation of the emotions. Alchemy. The centers work with
different hydrogens. Two higher centers. Wrong work of lower centers.
Materiality of all inner processes.
CHAPTER X
From what does the way start? The law of accident. Kinds of influences.
Influences created in life. Influences created outside life, conscious in their
origin only. The magnetic center. Looking for the way. Finding a man who
knows. Third kind of influence: conscious and direct. Liberation from the law
of accident. "Step," "stairway," and "way." Special conditions of the fourth
way. Wrong magnetic center is possible. How can one recognize wrong
ways? Teacher and pupil. Knowledge begins with the teaching of cosmoses.
The usual concept of two cosmoses: the "Macro-cosmos" and "Microcosmos."
The full teaching of seven cosmoses. Relation between cosmoses: as zero to
infinity. Principle of relativity. "The way up is at the same time the way down."
What a miracle is. "Period of dimensions." Survey of the system of cosmoses
from the point of view of the theory of many dimensions. G's comment, that
"Time is breath." Is the "Microcosmos" man or the "atom"?
CHAPTER XI
"Except a corn of wheat die, it bringeth forth no fruit." A book of aphorisms. To
awake, to die, to be born. What prevents a man from being born again? What
prevents a man from "dying"? What prevents a man from awakening?
Absence of the realization of one's own nothingness. What does the
realization
of one's own nothingness mean? What prevents this realization? Hypnotic
influence of life. The sleep in which men live is hypnotic sleep. The magician
and the sheep. "Kundalini." Imagination. Alarm clocks. Organized work.
Groups. Is it possible to work in groups without a teacher? Work of self-study
in groups. Mirrors. Exchange of observations. General and individual
conditions. Rules. "Chief fault." Realization of one's own nothingness. Danger
of imitative work. "Barriers." Truth and falsehood. Sincerity with oneself.
Efforts. Accumulators. The big accumulator. Intellectual and emotional work.
Necessity for feeling. Possibility of understanding through feeling what cannot
be understood through the mind. The emotional center is a more subtle
apparatus than the intellectual center. Explanation of yawning in connection
with accumulators. Role and significance of laughter in life. Absence of
laughter in higher centers.
CHAPTER XII
Work in groups becomes more intensive. Each man's limited "repertoire of
roles." The choice between work on oneself and a "quiet life."' Difficulties of
obedience. The place of "tasks." G. gives a definite task. Reaction of friends
to the ideas. The system brings out the best or the worst in people. What
people can come to the work? Preparation. Disappointment is necessary.
Question with which a man aches. Revaluation of friends. A talk about types.
G. gives a further task. Attempts to relate the story of one's life. Intonations.
"Essence" and "personality." Sincerity. A bad mood. G. promises to answer
any question. "Eternal Recurrence." An experiment on separating personality
from essence. A talk about sex. The role of sex as the principal motive force
of all mechanicalness. Sex as the chief possibility of liberation. New birth.
Transmutation of sex energy. Abuses of sex. Is abstinence useful? Right work
of centers. A permanent center of gravity.
CHAPTER XIII
Intensity of inner work. Preparation for "facts." A visit to Finland. The "miracle"
begins. Mental "conversations" with G. '"You are not asleep." Seeing
"sleeping people." Impossibility of investigating higher phenomena by ordinary
means. A changed outlook on "methods of action." "Chief feature." G. defines
people's chief feature. Reorganization of the group. Those who leave the
work. Sitting between two stools. Difficulty of coming back. G.'s apartment.
Reactions to silence. "Seeing lies." A demonstration. How to awake? How to
create the emotional state necessary? Three ways. The necessity of sacrifice.
"Sacrificing one's suffering." Expanded table of hydrogens. A "moving
diagram." A new discovery. "We have very little time."
CHAPTER XIV
Difficulty of conveying "objective truths" in ordinary language. Objective and
subjective knowledge. Unity in diversity. Transmission of objective knowledge.
The higher centers. Myths and symbols. Verbal formulas. "As above, so
below." "Know thyself." Duality. Transformation of duality into trinity. The line
of will. Quaternity, Quinternity—the construction of the pentagram. The five
centers. The Seal of Solomon. The symbolism of numbers, geometrical
figures, letters, and words. Further symbologies. Right and wrong
understanding
of symbols. Level of development. The union of knowledge and being: Great
Doing. "No one can give a man what he did not possess before." Attainment
only through one's own efforts. Different known "lines" using symbology. This
system and its place. One of the principal symbols of this teaching. The
enneagram. The law of seven in its union with the law of three. Examination of
the enneagram. "What a man cannot put into the enneagram, he does not
understand." A symbol in motion. Experiencing the enneagram by movement.
Exercises. Universal language. Objective and subjective art. Music. Objective
music is based on inner octaves. Mechanical humanity can have subjective art
only. Different levels of man's being.
CHAPTER XV
Religion a relative concept. Religions correspond to the level of a man's being.
"Can prayer help? " Learning to pray. General ignorance regarding
Christianity. The Christian Church a school. Egyptian "schools of repetition."
Significance of rites. The "techniques" of religion. Where does the word "I"
sound in one? The two parts of real religion and what each teaches. Kant and
the idea of scale. Organic life on earth. Growth of the ray of creation. The
moon. The evolving part of organic life is humanity. Humanity at a standstill.
Change possible only at "crossroads." The process of evolution always begins
with the formation of a conscious nucleus. Is there a conscious force fighting
against evolution? Is mankind evolving? "Two hundred conscious people could
change the whole of life on earth." Three "inner circles of humanity." The
"outer circle." The four "ways" as four gates to the "exoteric circle." Schools of
the fourth way. Pseudoesoteric systems and schools. "Truth in the form of a
lie." Esoteric schools in the East. Initiation and the Mysteries. Only self­
initiation is possible.
CHAPTER XVI
Historical events of the winter 1916-17. G.'s system as a guide in a labyrinth of
contradictions, or as "Noah's Ark." Consciousness of matter. Its degrees of
intelligence. Three-, two- and one-storied machines. Man composed of man,
sheep and worm. Classification of all creatures by three cosmic traits: what
they eat, what they breathe, the medium they live in. Man's possibilities of
changing his food. "Diagram of Everything Living."
G. leaves Petersburg for the last time. An interesting event—
"transfiguration" or "plastics"? A Journalist's impressions of G. The downfall of
Nicholas II. "The end of Russian history." Plans for leaving Russia, A
communication from G. Continuation of work in Moscow. Further study of
diagrams and of the idea of cosmoses. Development of the idea "time is
breath" in relation to man, the earth and the sun; to large and small cells.
Construction of a "Table of Time in Different Cosmoses." Three cosmoses
taken together include in themselves all the laws of the universe. Application of
the idea of cosmoses to the inner processes of the human organism. The life
of molecules and electrons. Time dimensions of different cosmoses.
Application of the Minkovski formula. Relation of different times to centers of
the human body. Relation to higher centers. "Cosmic calculations of time" in
Gnostic and Indian literature.
"If you want to rest, come here to me." A visit to G. at Alexandropol. G.'s
relationship with his family. Talk about the impossibility of doing anything in
the midst of mass madness. "Events are not against us at all." How to
strengthen the feeling of "I"? Brief return to Petersburg and Moscow. A
message to the groups there. Return to Piatygorsk. A group of twelve
foregathers at Essentuki.
CHAPTER XVII
August 1917. The six weeks at Essentuki. G. unfolds the plan of the whole
work. "Schools are imperative." "Super-efforts." The unison of the centers is
the chief difficulty in work on oneself. Man the slave of his body. Wastages of
energy from unnessary muscular tension. G. shows exercises for muscular
control and relaxation. The "stop" exercise. The demands of "stop." G. relates
a case of "stop" in Central Asia. The influence of "stop" at Essentuki. The
habit of talking An experiment in fasting. What sin is. G. shows exercises in
attention. An experiment in breathing. Realization of the difficulties of the Way
Indispensability of great knowledge, efforts, and help. "Is there no way outside
the 'ways'?" The "ways" as help given to people according to type. The
"subjective" and "objective" ways. The obyvatel. What does "to be serious"
mean? Only one thing is serious. How to attain real freedom? The hard way
of slavery and obedience. What is one prepared to sacrifice. The fairy tale of
the wolf and the sheep. Astrology and types. A demonstration. G. announces
the dispersal of the group. A final trip to Petersburg.
CHAPTER XVIII
Petersburg. October 1917. Bolshevik revolution. Return to G. in the
Caucasus. G 's attitude to one of his pupils. A small company with G at
Essentuki. More people arrive Resumption of work. Exercises are more
difficult and varied than before Mental and physical exercises, dervish
dances, study of psychic "tricks." Selling silk Inner struggle and a decision.
The choice of gurus. The decision to separate. G goes to Sochi. A difficult
time: warfare and epidemics. Further study of the enneagram, "Events" and
the necessity of leaving Russia. London the final aim Practical results of work
on oneself: feeling a new I, "a strange confidence." Collecting a group in
Rostov and expounding G.'s system. G. opens his Institute in Tiflis. Journey
to Constantinople. Collecting people. G arrives New group introduced to G.
Translating a dervish song. G the artist and poet. The Institute started in
Constantinople. G authorizes the writing and publishing of a book. G. goes to
Germany. Decision to continue Constantinople work in London, 1921 G
organizes his Institute at Fontainebleau. Work at the Chateau de la Prieuré. A
talk with Katherine Mansfield. G. speaks of different kinds of breathing.
"Breathing through movements." Demonstrations at the Theatre des Champs
Elysées, Pans. G.'s departure for America, 1924. Decision to continue work in
London independently.
THE SEARCH of P. D. Ouspensky in Europe, in Egypt and the

Orient for a teaching which would solve for him the problems

of Man and the Universe, brought him in 1915 to his meeting in

St. Petersburg with Georges Gurdjieff. (It is Gurdjieff who is

referred to, throughout the text of this book, as G.) In Search of

the Miraculous:

Fragments of an Unknown Teaching is the record of

Ouspensky's eight years of work as Gurdjieff's pupil.