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ENERGY
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GAIN ENERGY
APPRENTICE
LEVEL1
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THE
ENERGY BLOCKAGE REMOVAL
PROCESS
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THE
KARMA CLEARING
PROCESS
APPRENTICE
LEVEL3
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MASTERY
OF RELATIONSHIPS
TANTRA
APPRENTICE
LEVEL4
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2005 AND 2006
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Taoism - Daoism - Tao - DaoVOL. 3, TAO: THE THREE TREASURESChapter-10What next?Eighth Question
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Question 8 LAO TZU SEEMS TO BE THE MOST TRUTHFUL MAN, BUT GEORGE GURDJIEFF USED TO PAINT SPARROWS AND SELL THEM AS CANARIES. LAO TZU SAYS TO DO NOTHING AND REALIZE, GURDJIEFF SAYS ONLY A SUPERHUMAN EFFORT WILL DO. IS GURDJIEFF'S REALIZATION AS GREAT AS LAO TZU'S? HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN THE DIFFERENCE? Yes, there are no degrees of enlightenment; either it is or it is not. Lao Tzu and Gurdjieff are both enlightened, and there are no degrees, so nobody is more enlightened and nobody is less enlightened. But their working is different, their time is different, the age they live in is different, the people they have to tackle and the disciples they get are different. Lao Tzu lived in a very primitive world. People were very simple, humble, not tense, not in a hurry -- in fact they had no time sense, they were more natural. Gurdjieff lived in a totally opposite time. Lao Tzu lived in the East and Gurdjieff lived in the West -- and in the twentieth century -- the maddest century ever; almost everybody is neurotic. Gurdjieff had to devise different things for this different type of person. This type of man had not existed in Lao Tzu's time. He may sometimes have come across such a man as an exception but now that is the rule; and the man who was the rule at Lao Tzu's time is now the exception. So everything has changed. LAO TZU SEEMS TO BE THE MOST TRUTHFUL MAN -- he is. And Gurdjieff does not seem to you to be so truthful -- he is also as much truthful as Lao Tzu, but he has compassion for you, and if he needs to lie to help you, he lies. And you are such a liar that Lao Tzu won't be of much help to you. Even a Gurdjieff finds it difficult to help you. He is just the right type of person for the West. Lao Tzu, in the first place, will not appeal to you because he is so simple and so innocent. In fact if he had been born in the twentieth century he would have been called: The idiot. Even in those old days there were many people who thought that he was an idiot. He himself says, Everybody else seems to be very very clever, only I am stupid -- and that too twenty-five centuries before. Now everybody would think him an idiot. Not only that, if he had been born in the West they may even have psychoanalyzed and treated him to bring him back to normal. They have done that same thing to many other people. In Western mental asylums there are many people who are not mad, who are simply very innocent people. But they cannot be liars, and they cannot be in tune with this lying century; that's their difficulty. Gurdjieff was exactly the right person. He lied very easily. But those lies were meant to help you. You need lies. Gurdjieff says: superhuman effort is needed and Lao Tzu says: no effort. Both are superhuman. When you make superhuman effort you come to a point where Lao Tzu becomes immediately meaningful to you. Only after passing through Gurdjieff will you be able to drop all effort. Now immediate approach to Lao Tzu is not possible. In fact, you are so cunning and clever that if you listen to Lao Tzu and read Lao Tzu it is not possible that you will drop all effort; it is more possible that you will cling to laziness. I Bee people here, when I start talking about Lao Tzu they start asking questions, the 'right' questions -- Then what about in the ashram where we have to work? Shouldn't we stop working? They want to stop working. Not that they have understood, because if they had understood they would not ask that. Lao Tzu is not saying stop working, he is saying stop making effort. DO without making effort, do naturally. He is not helping you to become lazy, saying: Don't do anything and just lie down -- and that too is good if you don't expect others to come and feed you, that too is perfectly good; but then you are looking all around -- are people coming or not to respect you as a great PARAMAHANSA, as one who has realized? You will become lazy. Gurdjieff is perfectly right: he says make superhuman effort; he forces people to make effort. He brings -- he drives them to such a point that beyond it there is nowhere to go. Then the effort drops by itself -- YOU CANNOT DROP it, you have been clinging to it so.... I was reading once in somebody's memoirs: Gurdjieff was making an ashram near Paris, in Fontainebleau. The structure was being built, and he told one man to work continuously -- the carpenter, a disciple: Don't go to sleep. You go on working. Eight hours, ten hours, twelve hours, twenty-four hours, and still he was working -- and after thirty-six hours Gurdjieff suddenly rushed to the place where he was. He was sitting on top of the roof completely asleep, with his tools in his hand. If a little noise had been made he would have fallen from there -- and it was dangerous, so Gurdjieff told everybody to keep quiet. Just like a cat he moved to the roof, got hold of the man and shook him. The man opened his eyes -- he could not believe where he was, what had happened. Thirty six hours of continuous work.... That day Gurdjieff told him: Now you need not work. IT DROPPED ITSELF. If the man had dropped it he would have come down to sleep, if the man himself had dropped the effort then he would have come down because it was dangerous -- sitting on the roof, you can fall. But it was not a question of his conscious decision; he did whatsoever he could do consciously, then a moment came and he simply slipped into sleep. He did nothing on his part. Everything stopped. Even the tools were in his hand. On his part he was still ready to work. He may even have been working in his dream. But that day Gurdjieff released him; he said: Now you start meditating. Sometimes he used to force people to do such purposeless things that it would drive you crazy. He would tell them to dig a ditch one day and another day to refill it, and a third day to dig it again and a fourth day to refill it. And it would continue for months. People who were too rationalistic would say: This is absurd. They would leave. Only people who were really surrendered would continue without raising questions. And if you can follow a Master to such an extent, that you don't ask, you don't raise a question, you simply think that there must be something in it.... When he says: Dig the ditch the whole day -- that was ten hours work -- and then fill it again, and then dig it again, and fill it again, what is he doing? He is trying to pull you out of your reasoning. Superhuman effort. For three months somebody would be doing the same thing every day -- you can understand that after three months that man would be totally different; now he was ready for meditation. Gurdjieff would not give you meditations just in the beginning. First he would test you from every point, from every corner of your being he will see whether you can surrender; surrender to some absurdity also? He helped many people. He was the right person for this age, particularly in the West. Don't try to see any contradiction between the two -- there is none. All awakened people have been showing the same thing, saying the same thing; their words differ, they may appear contradictory to you -- they cannot be contradictory. If they appear contradictory to you then something is wrong with your reasoning. Go deeper. One day you will come to the stratum where you will see that they are saying the same thing. Gurdjieff says DO as much as you can, and Lao Tzu says don't DO, let things happen -- and both are saying the same thing; because only after doing too much will you able to understand Lao Tzu. Lao Tzu would have understood Gurdjieff perfectly. If they both had worked in collaboration, that would have been perfect. That's what I am trying to do: Gurdjieff, Lao Tzu, both. That's why you will see many contradictions in me. In Lao Tzu there is no contradiction -- in himself. In Gurdjieff there is no contradiction -- in himself. If you bring them together, then you see the contradiction. But in me you will see contradiction every moment. There is no need to bring any other enlightened man to find my contradictions. I am contradictory. Because I see that life is polar. You have to be forced to the utmost of doing -- only then surrender happens, let-go becomes possible. |
Next: Chapter 10, What next?, Ninth Question
Energy Enhancement Enlightened Texts Taoism Tao: The three treasures
Chapter 10
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