Fragments, Chapter 16, pp.328-333 - Reading Club posting 59
This is this is the fifty ninth of our weekly readings in Fragments Reading Club from P.D. Ouspensky’s In Search of the Miraculous, where we are gradually working our way through the whole book.
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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."
I think it was about a week after the revolution that I collected the principal members of our group in the quarters of Dr. S. and put before them my views on the position of affairs. I said that in my opinion there was no sense whatever in staying in Russia and that we must go abroad; that in all probability there would be only a short period of comparative calm before everything began to break up and collapse. We could do nothing to help and our own work would be impossible.
I cannot say that my idea met with much approval. Most of them did not realize the gravity of the situation and to them it seemed possible that everything might yet calm down and become normal. Others were in the grip of the customary illusion that everything that happens is for the best. To them my words seemed to be exaggeration; at all events they saw no need for haste. For others the main difficulty was that we had heard nothing from G. and had had no news of him for a long time. Since the revolution there had only been one letter from Moscow and from this it was possible to gather that G. had gone away but no one knew where. Finally we decided to wait.
At that time there were two groups numbering about forty persons in all and there were also some separate groups which met at irregular intervals.
Soon after the meeting at Dr. S.'s house I received a postcard from G. written a month before in the train on the way from Moscow to the Caucasus which had been lying all that time at the post office owing to the prevailing disorders. It was evident from the postcard that G. had left Moscow before the revolution and as yet knew nothing of events
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when he wrote it. He wrote that he was going to Alexandropol; he asked me to continue the work of the groups until his arrival and he promised to return by Easter.
This communication faced me with a very difficult problem. I thought it senseless and stupid to stay in Russia. At the same time I did not want to leave without G.'s consent or, to speak more truthfully, without him. And he had gone to the Caucasus, and his card, written in February, that is, before the revolution, could have no relation to the present situation. At length I again decided to wait although I saw that what was possible today might become impossible tomorrow.
Easter came—there was no news whatever from G. A week after Easter came a telegram in which he said he was arriving in May. The first "provisional government" came to an end. It was already more difficult to get abroad. Our groups continued to meet and awaited G.
Our conversations used often to come back to the "diagrams," especially when we had to talk to new people in our groups. It seemed to me the whole time that in these "diagrams" which we had got from G. there was a good deal left unsaid and I often thought that perhaps gradually with a deeper study of the "diagrams," their inner meaning and significance would be revealed to us.
Once when looking through some notes, made the year before, I paused at the "cosmoses." I wrote earlier that the "cosmoses" particularly attracted me because they coincided completely with the "period of dimensions" of the New Model of the Universe. I mentioned also the difficulties which arose for us at one time in connection with the different understanding of the "Microcosmos" and the "Tritocosmos." But by this time we had already decided to understand "man" as the "Microcosmos" and organic life on earth as the "Tritocosmos." And in the last conversation G. silently approved of this. G.'s words about different time in different cosmoses intrigued me very much. And I tried to remember what P. had said to me about our "sleep and waking" and about the "breath of organic life." For a long time I could make nothing of it. Then I remembered G.'s words that "time is breath."
"'What is breath?" I asked myself.
"Three seconds. Man in a normal state takes about twenty full breaths, that is inhalations and exhalations, to the minute. Consequently a full breath takes about three seconds.
"Why are 'sleep and waking' the 'breath of organic life'? What are sleep and waking?
"For man and for all organisms commensurable with him and living in similar conditions to him, even for plants, this is twenty-four hours.
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Besides this, sleep and waking are breath, as for instance plants when asleep, that is, at night, exhale, and when awake, that is, by day, inhale; in exactly the same way for all mammals as well as for man there is a difference in the absorption of oxygen and CO2 by night and day, in sleep and waking."
Reasoning in this way I arranged the periods of breath and of sleep and waking in the following way:
I obtained a simple "rule of three." By dividing 24 hours by 3 seconds I got 28, 800. By dividing 28, 800 (days and nights) by 365 I got within a small fraction 79 years. This interested me. Seventy-nine years, continuing the former reasoning, made up the sleep and waking of "organic life." This did not correspond to anything that I could think of in organic life, but it represented the life of man.
"Could one not continue the parallel further?" I asked myself. I arranged the figures I had obtained in the following way:
Again 79 years meant nothing in the life of the earth. I thereupon multiplied 79 years by 28, 800 and got a little less than two and a half million years. By multiplying 2, 500, 000 years by 30, 000 for shortness, I got a number of eleven figures, 75, 000, 000, 000 years. This figure should signify the duration of life of the earth. So far these figures appear logically possible; two and a half million years for organic life and seventy-five milliards of years for the earth.
"But then there are cosmoses lower than man," I said to myself. "Let us try to see in what relation they will stand to this."
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I decided to take two cosmoses on the left (on the diagram) from the Microcosmos, understanding by them first, comparatively large microscopic cells, and then the smallest (admissible), almost invisible cells.
Such a division of cells into two categories cannot be said to have been definitely accepted by science. But if we think of dimensions within the "micro-world," then it is impossible not to admit that this world consists of two worlds as distinct in themselves as is the world of people and the world of comparatively large micro organisms and cells. I got the following picture:
This was coming out very interestingly. Twenty-four hours made up the period of life of the cell. And although the period of life of individual cells can in no way be considered as established, many investigators have arrived at the fact that for a specialized cell such as a cell of the human organism the period of life appears to be precisely 24 hours. The breath of the cell equals 3 seconds. This told me nothing. But the 3 seconds of life of the small cell told me a great deal and it indicated above all why it is so difficult to see these cells, although from their size they should be accessible to vision in a good microscope.
I tried further to see what would be obtained if "breath," that is, 3 seconds, were divided by 30, 000. One ten-thousandth part of a second was obtained. The period of duration of an electric spark and at the same time the period of the shortest visual impression. For convenience in calculating and for clarity I took 30,000 instead of 28,800. Four periods appeared to be connected with, or separated from, one another by one and the same coefficient of 30,000—the shortest visual impression, breath or the period of inhalation and exhalation, the period of sleep and waking, and the average maximum of life. At the same time each of these periods denoted a corresponding but lower period in a higher cosmos and a corresponding higher period in a lower cosmos. Without as yet drawing any conclusions I tried to make a fuller table, that is, to bring into it all the cosmoses and to add two more of the lower ones, the first of which I called the "molecule" and the second the "electron." Then, again for clarity when multiplying by 30,000, I took only round numbers and only two coefficients, 3 and 9; thus 2,400,000 I took as 3,000,000; 72,000,000,000 I took as 90,000,000,000; and 79 as 80, and so on.
I obtained the following table:
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This table at once aroused in me very many thoughts. Whether it was possible to look upon it as correct and as defining exactly the relation of one cosmos to another I was as yet unable to say. The coefficient 30,000 seemed too big. But at the same time I remembered that the relation of one cosmos to another is "as zero to infinity." And in the presence of such a relation no coefficient could be too big. 'The relation of zero to infinity" was the relation of magnitudes of different dimensions.
G. said that every cosmos was three-dimensional for itself. This meant that the next cosmos above it was four-dimensional for it and the next cosmos below it—two dimensional. The next one above that—five-dimensional, and the next one lower—one-dimensional. One cosmos in relation to another is a magnitude of a greater or smaller number of dimensions. But there could only be six dimensions or, with zero, seven, and by this table eleven cosmoses were obtained. At the first glance this seemed strange, but only at the first glance, because as soon as I took into account the period of existence of any cosmos in relation to higher cosmoses, the lower cosmoses disappeared long before reaching the seventh dimension. Take for example man in relation to the sun. The sun appeared as the fourth cosmos in relation to man, taking man as the first cosmos, but man's long life, eighty years, was equal in time to one electric spark for the sun, one shortest possible visual impression.