BY THIS time, that is, by November, 1916, the position of affairs in Russia had begun to assume a very gloomy aspect. Up to this time we, at any rate most of us, had by some miracle kept clear of "events." Now "events" were drawing nearer to us, that is to say, they were drawing nearer to each one of us personally, and we could no longer fail to notice them.

It in no way enters into my task either to describe or to analyze what was taking place. At the same time it was such an exceptional period that I cannot altogether avoid all mention of what was going on around us, otherwise I should have to admit that I had been both blind and deaf. Besides, nothing could have given such material for the study of the "mechanicalness" of events, that is, of the entire and complete absence of any element of will, as the observation of events at this period. Some things appeared or might have appeared to be dependent on somebody's will, but even this was illusion and in reality it had never been so clear that everything happens, that no one does anything.

In the first place it was clear to everyone who was able and who wanted to see it that the war was coming to an end and that it was coming to an end by itself through some deep inner weariness and from the realization, though dull and obscure yet firmly rooted, of the senselessness of all this horror. No one believed now in words of any kind. No attempts of any kind to galvanize the war were able to lead to anything. At the same time it was impossible to stop anything and all talk about the necessity of continuing the war or of the necessity of stopping the war merely showed the helplessness of the human mind which was even incapable of realizing its own helplessness. In the second place it was clear that the crash was approaching. And it was clear that nobody could stop anything nor could they avert events or direct them into some safe channel. Everything was going in the only way it could go and it could go in no other way. I was particularly struck at this time by the position of professional politicians of the left who, up to this time, had played a passive role but were now preparing to pass into an active one. To be precise they showed themselves to be the blindest, the most unprepared, and the most in-capable of understanding what they were really doing, where they were going to, what they were preparing, even for themselves.

I remember Petersburg so well during the last winter of its life. Who could have known then, even assuming the very worst, that this was its last winter? But too many people hated this city and too many feared it and its last days were numbered.

Our meetings continued. During the last months of 1916 G. did not come to Petersburg but some of the members of our group went to Moscow and brought back new diagrams and some notes which had been made by G.'s Moscow pupils under his instruction.

Many new people made their appearance in our groups at this time, and although it was clear that everything must come to some unknown end, G.'s system gave us a certain feeling of confidence and security. We often spoke at this time of how we should feel in the midst of all this chaos if we had not got the system which was becoming more and more our own. Now we could not imagine how we could live without it and find our way in the labyrinth of all existing contradictions.

This period marks the beginning of talks about Noah's Ark. I had always considered the myth of Noah's Ark to be an esoteric allegory. Many of our company had now begun to see that this myth was not merely an allegory of the general idea of esotericism but was, at the same time, a plan of any esoteric work, our own included. The system itself was an "ark" in which we could hope to save ourselves at the time of the "flood."