In Search of the Miraculous
What a strange little text. I’m not sure what I really think about this one. Many years ago I tried to read this because it was listed within the liner notes on one of my favorite Mark Mcguire albums which also has a song titled after the name of the book.
The text is about a Russian man in the 1920s who stumbles upon a man who is essentially a guru in the streets of Russia purporting to teach a method for synthesizing the teachings of eastern esotericism into a single coherrent system.
The guy is quite literally a conman who seems to be making up vast swathes of the system as he goes. He does many things throughout that are noted by the Russian in a quasi-oblivious fashion that scream scam artist.
One thing that struck me about this system is that it formalizes a very ancient form of NPC/simulation theory. This is actually what kept me reading through the text scouring for more tidbits of how his system functions.