The Long, the Short and the All

CHAPTER 1

Knowledge and understanding
Date Unknown

YOU ASK WHAT MY MESSAGE IS? It is a brief one indeed: those who are awake are alive; those
who are asleep miss everything.
NO MAN IS GIVEN MANHOOD READY-MADE. He has to build it by himself. This is both a blessing

and a bane. It is a blessing because there is always the possibility he will die without ever having
become a man.
MAN DOES NOT BECOME GOD BY DEVELOPING HIMSELF. If he were able to open himself fully,

he would know he is already God himself, here and now. As I see it, the complete revelation of the
self is the only development there is.

IT IS NO EXAGGERATION TO SAY THAT WE HAVE FORGOTTEN OURSELVES. Have we not
forgotten our own births? Then what else can one say about a life that rests on a foundation of
self-forgetfulness? Isn’t such a life really just a dream?
What, if any, is the difference between dreaming and being awake? In a dream the dreamer is
completely forgotten. The dream overwhelms him, it happens right in front of him, but he is not
present in the dream. In fact, his absence itself is his sleep because the moment he is present he is
neither asleep nor dreaming.

Then what shall we call this so-called life of ours? It is certainly not wakefulness because we cannot
remember our selves. So is it a dream too? Yes, my friend, this too is a dream. As long as there is
insensibility towards the self, like is but an empty dream.
GURDJIEFF HAS SAID THAT MAN IS A MACHINE. In all his activities man is nothing but a passive

participant. His actions are unconscious, unaware. They are really reactions. A mans may love,
hate and feel anger, but these are simply expressions of unconscious and mechanical forces at
work within him. He is really only an agent through which nature works. He has no conscious vitality
of his own. What we can call real life only begins when a man rises above this mechanical state of
existence.

A young man came to see me yesterday. He asked, ”How shall I conduct my life so I will never have
cause to repent anything in the future?”
I replied, ”There is only one answer to your question – discover real life. What you know as life is not
life at all.”

For one who has not yet attained to life the question of using it correctly has no meaning whatsoever.
Not attaining real life is to misuse life: attaining it is to use it correctly. The absence of real life causes
the need for repentance; living an authentic life results in bliss. What can a man accomplish when
his real life is still dormant within him?

A man who is asleep is not one, but many. He is a crowd. Mahavira has said that man has many
minds. It is true. Not one, but many individuals exist inside us. And a crowd cannot decide anything.
A crowd cannot make a judgment; a crowd cannot determine anything. To accomplish anything at
all it is imperative the soul in each one of us becomes activated, becomes awakened. We must
become one, instead of the disorderly crowd we are at present. We must become conscious of
our own individuality. Only then will reactions be replaced by actions. Jung has termed this the
individual’s attainment of his center.

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