In search of the miraculous

by Ouspensky

  How would movement from one cosmos to another appear and where and when would the movement disappear? In what relation would the figures found by me stand to the more or less established figures of cosmic movements, as for instance the speed of movement of the heavenly bodies, the speed of movement of the electrons in an atom, the speed of light, and so on?

  When I began to compare the movements of various cosmoses, I obtained some very startling correlations, for example, for the earth, the period of its rotation on its axis was equal to one ten-thousandth of a second, that is, the speed of an electric spark. It is very doubtful whether at such a speed the earth could notice its rotation on its axis. If man rotated, rotation round the sun should occupy about one twenty-fifth of a second, the speed of an instantaneous photograph. And taking into consideration the enormous distance which the earth has had to traverse in this time, the inevitable inference is that the earth could not be conscious of itself as we know it, that is, in the form of a sphere, but must be conscious of itself as a ring, or as a long spiral of rings. The latter was the more probable on the basis of the definition of the present as the time of breath. This was by the way the first thought that came into my mind when, a year previously, after the first lecture on cosmoses, G., in adding to what he had said earlier, said that time is breath. I thought at the time that perhaps he meant that breath was the unit of time, that is to say, that for direct sensation the period of breath is felt as the present. Starting from this and supposing that the sensation of self, that is, of one's body, is connected with the sensation of the present, I came to the conclusion that for the earth, with one breath in eighty years, the sensation of itself should be connected with eighty rings of a spiral. I had obtained a completely unexpected confirmation of all the conclusions and inferences of the New Model of the Universe.

  Passing to the lower cosmoses, that is, to the cosmoses in my table which stood to the left of man, I found already in the first of them the explanation of what had always appeared to me the most enigmatic and most inexplicable in the work of our organism, namely, the astonishing speed, which was almost instantaneous, of many inner processes. It had always seemed to me to be almost charlatanism on the part of physi­ologists that no due significance had been attributed to this fact. Science, of course, explains only what it can explain. But in this case it ought not, in my opinion, to conceal the fact and avoid it as if it did not exist, but should constantly draw attention to it, put it on record on every suitable occasion. A man who gives no thought to questions of physiology may not be astonished at the fact that the drinking of a cup of strong coffee or a glass of brandy, or inhaling the smoke of a cigarette is immediately felt in the whole body, changes all the inner correlation of forces and the form and character of the reactions, but it ought to be clear to a physiologist that in this quite imperceptible interval of time, approximately equal to one breath, a long series of complicated chemical and other processes are accomplished in the organism. The substance which has entered the organism is carefully analyzed, the smallest divergence from the usual is immediately noticed; in the process of analysis it passes through a series of laboratories; it is resolved into its component parts and mixed with other substances and in the form of these mixtures it is added to the fuel which nourishes the various nerve centers. All this must occupy a great deal of time. The seconds in our time in which this is accomplished make all this entirely fantastic and miraculous. But the fantastic side falls away when we realize that for the large cells which obviously govern the life of the organism, our one breath continues for over twenty-four

  hours. In twenty-four hours, even in half that time, even in a third, that is, in eight hours (which is equal to one second), it is possible to imagine all the processes which, have been indicated being completed in an orderly way, exactly as they would be completed in a large and well-arranged "chemical factory" with various laboratories at its service.

  Passing further to the cosmos of small cells, which stand on the border or beyond the border of microscopic vision, I again saw an explanation of the inexplicable. For example, cases of almost instantaneous infection by epidemic and infectious diseases in general, particularly those where the causes responsible for the infection have not yet been found. If three seconds is the limit of life for a small cell of this kind, and is equal to the long life of man, then what would be the speed at which these cells mul­tiply when for them fifteen seconds would be equal to four centuries!

  Further, passing to the world of molecules, I first of all came face to face with the fact that the brevity of the existence of a molecule is an almost unexpected idea. It is usually supposed that a molecule, although structurally very complicated, taken as the basic, so to speak, living interior of the bricks from which matter is built up, exists as long as the matter exists. We are obliged to part from this pleasant and soothing thought. The molecule, which is alive inside cannot be dead outside and in remaining alive it must, like everything living, be born, live, and die- The term of its life, equal to an electric spark or to one ten-thousandth part of a second, is too small for it to act directly on our imagination. Some comparison, some analogy, is necessary in order to understand what this means. The dying cells of our organism and their replacement by others bring us near to this idea. Dead matter, iron, copper, granite, must be renewed from. within more quickly than our organism. In reality it changes under our eyes. If you look at a stone, shut your eyes, and immediately open them again, it will now not be the stone which you saw; in it not a single one of the molecules which you saw the first time now remain. But even then you did not see the molecules themselves, but only their traces.

  I came again to the New Model of the Universe. This explained also "why we cannot see molecules," about which I have written in Chapter

  II of the New Model of the Universe.

  Further in the last cosmos, that is, in the world of the electron, I felt myself from the very beginning in the world of six dimensions. The question arose for me as to whether the relation of dimensions could not be worked out. The electron as a three- dimensional body is too unsatisfactory. To begin with it exists for one three-hundred- millionth part of a second. This is a quantity far beyond the limits of our possible imagination. It is considered that an electron within an atom moves in its orbit with the speed of one divided by a fifteen-figure number. And since the whole life of an electron in seconds is equal to one divided by a nine-figure number, it follows that during its lifetime an electron makes a number of revolu­tions round its "sun," equal to a six-figure, or taking into account the coefficient, a seven-figure number.

  If we take the earth in its revolution round the sun, then according to my table it makes in the course of its lifetime a number of revolutions round the sun equal to an eleven-figure number. It looks as though there was an enormous difference between a seven-figure and an eleven-figure number but if we compare with the electron not the earth, but Neptune, then the difference will be considerably less, namely the difference between a seven-figure and a nine-figure number, that is, two figures in all instead of four. And besides the speed of revolution of an electron within the atom is a very approximate quantity. It should be remembered that the difference in the periods of revolution of the planets round the sun in our system represents a three-figure number because Mercury revolves 460 times faster than Neptune.

  The relation of the life of an electron to our perception appears thus. Our quickest visual perception is equal to 1/10, 000 second. The existence of an electron is equal to 1/30, 000 of 1/10, 000 second, that is, one three-hundred-millionth part of a second, and in that time it makes seven million revolutions round the proton. Consequently, if we were to see an electron as a flash in 1/10, 000 second, we should not see the electron in the strict sense of the word, but the trace of the electron, consisting of seven million revolutions multiplied by thirty thousand, that is, a spiral with a thirteen-figure number of rings, or, expressed in the language of the New Model of the Universe, thirty th
ousand recurrences of the electron in eternity.

  Time, according to the table which I had obtained, undoubtedly went beyond four dimensions. And I was interested by the thought whether it was not possible to apply to this table the Minkovski formula V-1 ct, denoting time as the fourth "world" co­ordinate. The "world" of Minkovski in my opinion corresponded precisely to each of the cosmoses separately. I decided to begin with the "world of electrons" and to take as t the duration of the life of an electron. This coincided with one of the propositions in the New Model of the Universe, that time is life. The result should show the distance (in kilometers) that light travels during the life of an electron.

  In the next cosmos this should be the distance that light travels during the life of a molecule; in the next—during the life of a small cell; then during the life of a large cell; then during the life of a man; and so on. The results for all cosmoses should be obtained in lineal measurements, that is, they should be expressed in fractions of a kilometer or in kilometers. The multiplication of a number of kilometers by V-1, that is, by the square root of minus one, ought to show that here we are not dealing with lineal measurements and that the figure obtained is a measure

  of time. The introduction of the square root of minus one into the formula, while it does not change the formula quantitatively, shows that the whole formula relates to another dimension.

  In this way, in relation to the cosmos of electrons, the Minkovski formula takes the following form:

  V-1. 300,000. 3.10-1 that is, the square root of minus one, which has to be multiplied by the product of 300, 000, that is c, or the speed of light, 300, 000 kilometers per second, and 1/300, 000, 000 second, that is, the duration of the life of an electron. Multiplying 300, 000 by 1/300, 000, 000 will give 1/1000 kilometer, which is one meter. "One meter" shows the distance which light traverses during the life of an electron, traveling at the speed of 300, 000 kilometers a second. The square root of minus one, which makes "one meter" an imaginary quantity, shows that the lineal measurement of a meter in the case in question is a "measure of time," that is, of the fourth co-ordinate.

  Passing to the "world of the molecule," we obtain the Minkovski formula in the following form:

  V-1. 300,000. 1/10,000 One ten-thousandth part of a second, according to the table, is the duration of the life of a molecule. Multiplying 300, 000 kilometers by 1/10, 000 will give 30 kilometers. "Time" in the world of molecules is obtained in the form of the formula V-1. 30. Thirty kilometers represents the distance which light travels during the life of a molecule, or in 1/10, 000 second.

  Further, in the "world of small cells" the Minkovski formula takes the following form:,

  V-1/. 300, 000. 3 or V-1. 900, 000

  that is, 900, 000 kilometers multiplied by the square root of minus one. 900, 000 kilometers represents the distance which light travels during the life of a small cell, that is in 3 seconds.

  Continuing similar calculations for the further cosmoses, I obtained for "large cells" an eleven-figure number, showing the distance which light travels in 24 hours; for the "Microcosmos" a sixteen-figure number, showing the distance in kilometers which light travels in 80 years; for the "Tritocosmos" a twenty-figure number; for the "Mesocosmos" a twenty-five-figure number; for the "Deuterocosmos" a twenty-nine- figure number;

  for the "Macrocosmos" a thirty-four-figure number; for the "Ayocosmos" a thirty- eight-figure number; for the "Protocosmos" a forty-two-figure number or V-1. 9. 1041; in other words it means that during the life of

  the "Protocosmos" a ray of light travels 900, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000,-000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000 kilometers.[2]

  The application of the Minkovski formula to the table of time, as I had obtained it, in my opinion showed very clearly that the "fourth coordinate" can be established only for one cosmos at a time, which then appears as the "four-dimensional world" of Minkovski. Two, three, or more cosmoses cannot be considered as a "four-dimensional" world and they require for their description five or six co-ordinates. At the same time Minkovski's consistent formula shows, for all cosmoses, the relation of the fourth co­ordinate of one cosmos to the fourth co-ordinate of another. And this relation is equal to thirty thousand, that is, the relation between the four chief periods of each cosmos and between one period of one cosmos and the corresponding, that is, the similarly named, period of another cosmos.

  World of electrons V-i. ct = V-1. 300,000. 1 = V-i. 1

  300,000,000 1000

  World of molecules v~. ct = V^TT 300,000. 1 = v~ 30

  10,000

  World of small cells V^r ct = V-i. 300,000. 3 = VTT 9.10

  World of large cells ct = 300,000. 30,000 = V™ 3.10

  Microcosmos (man) V^T. ct = V^IT 300,000. 9.10 = V^TT 9.10 14

  Tritocosmos ct = V~^I7 300,000. 3.10 18 = v^r: 3.10"

  (organic life)

  Mesocosmos T. ct = V~=T 300,000. 9.10 17 = V— 9.10 28

  (planets)

  Deuterocosmos ct = V^TT 300,000. 3-io 22 = v=r. 3.10 28

  (sun)

  Macrocosmos ct = 300,000. 9-io 2e = v=r 9.10 32

  (Milky Way)

  Ayocosmos ct = V=I7 300,000. 3.10 81 = v~ Зло 87

  (all worlds)

  Protocosmos ct = v~ 300,000. 9.10 35 = V3J7 9.10 41

  (Absolute)

  Table 9

  The next thing that interested me in the "table of time in different cosmoses," as I called it, was the relation of cosmoses and of the time of different cosmoses to the centers of the human body.

  G. spoke many times about the enormous difference in the speed of the different centers. The reasoning which I have cited above in regard to the speed of the inner work of the organism led me to the thought that this speed belongs to the instinctive center. With this as a basis I tried to proceed from the thinking center, taking as the unit of its work, for example, the time necessary for one full apperception, that is, for the reception of an outside impression, the classification and definition of this impression—and for the responding reaction. Then if the centers actually stand to one another in the relation of cosmoses, in exactly the same amount of time through the instinctive center there could pass 30, 000 apperceptions, through the higher emotional and in the sex centers 30, 0002 apperceptions and through the higher thinking 30, 0003 apperceptions.

  At the same time according to the law, pointed out by G., of the correlation of cosmoses, the instinctive center in relation to the head or thinking center should embrace two cosmoses, that is, the second Microcosmos and the Tritocosmos. Further, the higher emotional and the sex centers taken separately, should embrace the third Microcosmos and the Mesocosmos. And finally the higher thinking center should embrace the fourth Microcosmos and the Deuterocosmos.

  But the latter refers to higher development, to that development of man which cannot be obtained accidentally or in a natural way. In man's normal state, an enormous advantage, in the sense of speed, over all the other centers should be possessed by the sex center, working 30, 000 times faster than the instinctive or the moving and 30, 0002 times faster than the intellectual.

  In the relation of centers to cosmoses in general very many possibilities of study, from my point of view, had been opened up.

  The next thing that caught my attention was the fact that my table coincided with some of the ideas and even the figures "of cosmic calculations of time," if it can be so expressed, which existed with the Gnostics and in India.

  A day of light is a thousand years of the world, and thirty-six myriads of years and a half-myriad of years of the world (365, 000) are a single year of Light.1

  Here the figures do not coincide, but in Indian writings in some cases the correspondence was quite unquestionable. They speak of the "breath of Brahma," "days and nights of Brahma," "an age of Brahma."

  If we take the figures for the years given in the Indian writings, then the Mahamanvantara, that is, the "age of Brahma," or 311, 040, 000, 000, 000

  1 Pistis Sophia, p. 203, English t
ranslation, 1921.years (fifteen-figure number), almost coincides with the period of the existence of the sun (sixteen-figure number), and the "day and night of Brahma," 8, 640, 000, 000 (ten-figure number), almost coincides with the "day and night of the sun" (eleven- figure number).

  If we take Indian ideas of cosmic time without relation to figures, other interesting correspondences appear. Thus, if we take Brahma as the Protocosmos, then the expression "Brahma breathes in and breathes out the universe" coincides with the table, because the breath of Brahma (or the Protocosmos—a twenty-figure number) coincides with the life of the Macrocosmos, that is, our visible universe or the starry world.

  I spoke a great deal with Z. about the "table of time" and it interested us very much as to what G. would say about it when we saw him.

  Meanwhile time was passing. At last—it was already early in June—I received a telegram from Alexandropol: "If you want to rest come here to me."—That was G.!

  In two days I left Petersburg. Russia with "no authorities" presented a very curious spectacle. It felt as though everything was existing and holding together simply by momentum. But the trains still ran regularly and at the stations the sentries turned a deeply indignant crowd of ticketless travelers out of the carriages. I was traveling for five days to Tiflis instead of the normal three.

  The train arrived at Tiflis at night. It was not possible to walk about the town. I was obliged to await the morning in the station buffet. The whole station was crammed with soldiers who had returned from the Caucasian front on their own account. Many of them were drunk. "Meetings" were held throughout the night on the platform facing the windows of the buffet—and resolutions of some sort were carried. During the meetings there were three "courts-martial" and three men were shot there on the platform. A drunken "comrade" who appeared in the buffet explained to everyone that the first man had been shot for theft. The second was shot by mistake because he had been mistaken for the first; and the third was also shot by mistake because he had been mistaken for the second.