The Atomic Moment_

Gurdjieff once - in 1933 - treated Peters to a demonstration of this - the disappearance of social edicate - at the former's New York apartment in the Henry Hudson Hotel where Peters was convoked.

Peters was a young disciple of Gurdjieff, and Gurdjieff was one of the greatest Masters the world has ever known - and not a conventional Master at all, because no Master can be conventional. Conventionality is the quality of the priest, not of the Master. The Master is always revolutionary.

And this is a beautiful experiment. Read it attentively.

When he arrived he was asked to wash dishes and prepare vegetables for 'some very important people' who were coming to dinner. Gurdjieff said he needed Peters to give him an 'English lesson' consisting of words for all those parts and functions of the body 'that were not in the dictionary'.

By the time Gurdjieff had mastered all the four-letter words and obscene phrases, the guests started arriving, who turned out to be some fifteen well-dressed, well-mannered New Yorkers', of which a number were reporters or journalists.

After staging a late and obsequious entry, the host humbly began responding at table to the guests' blasé questions on his work and reasons for visiting America, when with a wink to his 'English teacher' he suddenly changed tone and explained that the sad degeneration of humankind and its transformation into a substance only describable by a four-letter expletive was particularly striking in their country, whence his coming to observe this phenomenon in the raw. The cause behind this distressing state of affairs, he continued, lay in the fact that people - especially Americans - never followed the dictates of intelligence or propriety, but only that of their genital organs. Then, signalling out one particularly handsome woman, he complimented her on her attire and make-up, after which he confided that in all honesty between them the real explanation behind her adornment was an irresistible sexual urge she felt for some particular person - graphically spelled out by Gurdjieff with his newly acquired vocabulary. Before the guests could react, he launched into a discourse on his own sexual prowess, followed by intimate and detailed descriptions of the sexual mores of various races and nations.

By the time dinner was over and the guests well plied with 'good old armagnac as always', they lost their inhibitions and joined in an exchange of obscenities which soon became more than verbal.

Gurdjieff retired with the lady he had insulted, and the others, by now conditioned to believe that an orgy or something was in the tenor of the evening, began entangling physically in different rooms of the apartment in various stages of undress.

Just when the carousel was at a ©limax, Gurdjieff briskly disengaged himself and thundered forth orders for the revels to cease, proclaiming that the lesson had been accomplished, that the guests had already amply verified through their comportment the soundness of his observations made earlier in the evening - that thanks to him they were now partly conscious of their true condition and that he would gladly accept from them cheques and cash in payment for this 'important lesson'.

Peters noted - without surprise, knowing Gurdjieff - that the take came to 'several thousand dollars'.

When everyone had left, Gurdjieff went into the kitchen to help Peters with the dishes, asking at the same time how he had enjoyed the evening.

'I was disgusted,' came the reply.

Gurdjieff laughed and scrutinized his companion with a 'piercing look'. 'It is fine feeling you have - this disgust. But now it is necessary to ask yourself one question: with who were you disgusted?'

This is the real situation. What you show on the surface is one thing. Those guests were annoyed, angered by the observation of George Gurdjieff that humanity has become very degraded, that what you do on the surface is one thing, what you mean deep inside is another. You may give explanations and you may rationalize, but your rationalizations are just rationalizations and nothing else. Deep down something else goes on working in the unconscious. You are not even aware of it.

Psychologists say that when a woman is raped, in the majority of cases, the woman wanted to be raped - she had the desire. She was inviting it, she was using certain gestures; the way she walked, the way she dressed, the way she talked were all gestures inviting rape. And then one day it happens...

And then she looks surprised, angry, violent, goes to the police, fights in the court. And if she had looked deep down in her own mind she would have been more surprised: that it was her own effort, her own desire which had been fulfilled.

There are people who go on living in this double way, not even aware what their real motives inside are. Watch, and that watching will make you very very alert. Just watch. What is your real motive?

Don't try to convince yourself that this is not so. Just become a mirror and see your behaviour. Just become a silent watcher of your behaviour, always alert as to why you are doing a certain thing, from where it is coming. And then you will see you have a dual being: one is the personality which says one thing, and the other is your reality which goes on doing just the opposite. And somehow they both have to manage with each other, hence the conflict, the friction, and the wastage of energy.

And it happens almost in all cases that you have one desire inside and just the opposite on the outside. And why the opposite? - because through the opposite you are repressing that desire.

The person who feels inferior deep inside pretends to be very superior on the outside. Only inferior people want to be superior. Those who are really superior don't care a bit. All people who suffer from inferiority complexes become politicians, because that is the only way to prove that they are very superior. The person who has the look on his face of 'holier-than-thou' knows that deep inside just the opposite is the case. He is suffering from guilt, he is suffering deep down from unworthiness; he knows that he is unholy. Now, the only way to hide it from the world is to have a mask of holiness.

Your so-called saints are not a bit different from the sinners. The only difference is: sinners are honest and your saints are not honest.

Out of one hundred saints, if you can find even one saint who is really a saint, that will be more than enough, more than one can expect. Ninety-nine are just pretending. And I am not saying that they are pretending only to you. The pretension can go so deep that not only are they deceiving others, they start deceiving themselves. In fact, to deceive yourself, first you have to deceive others, only then can you believe in it. When others start believing that you are a saint, only then can you believe in it.

The real saint is not concerned with others at all. He knows who he is. Even if the whole world says that he is not a saint, that doesn't matter. His understanding is inner. His encounter is directly with himself. His experience is immediate and existential. He knows his essence. And to know one's essence is the first step in knowing God, in becoming immortal, in going beyond death.

Henri Bergson spoke at the beginning of this century. He said, 'The addition to the body brought by technology calls for a corresponding addition to the soul.'

The modern man looks more soul-less than in any other age, and the reason is: science and technology have added much to the body. The body has become stronger, lives longer. The brain has become stronger, has become more knowledgeable. Compared to the body and the brain - and the brain is part of the body - the soul has remained very very poor. It is almost neglected, ignored.

Nobody cares about it. Who thinks about one's own essence?

Going to the church or to the temple is not going to help. You will have to go within yourself. You will have to put off your shoes. You will have to go into your naked essence. Only then will you be able to reconnect yourself with the cosmos. It is from there that you can be bridged again with reality.

 

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