All writing in this blog are from the Masters who returned to THIS (this moment) after crossing THAT (enlightenment). Putting the names & images of the masters will change your perception about the content. That is against the teaching of the Masters. Unless all these images are dissolved, you cannot see yourself.
Millions of fingers can point to the same moon. Fingers are bound to be different -- but the moon is the same. By clinging to the fingers you will not see the moon. Forget the finger and look at where it is pointing. It is the very essence of all the teachings of all the buddhas of all the ages -- past, present, and future too.
The words of a Buddha may not be able to communicate the truth, but they can communicate the music, the music that exists in one who is enlightened.

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

A true master cannot adjust with you... his whole work is to disturb you...


Sufis always teach by demonstration. There is no better way. So it always happens that when outsiders come to a Sufi Master, they are always puzzled -- because they cannot understand what is happening. They don't know the whole story. They only take the fragment that is in front of their eyes. It may be a demonstration. It may be something in which the disciples and the Master know what is going on.

Gurdjieff used to do that. And outsiders were always puzzled. And there are hundreds of books written on Gurdjieff by outsiders. Naturally they are all against him, because they don't know the whole story. It is only possible for art, insider to know the whole story.

For example, if you had suddenly reached Gurdjieff, you might have been surprised. He might have been shouting -- humiliating somebody, using abusive words. He was a past master in using abusive words. And when he was in a rage, he was really in a rage -- it was as if he was going to murder.

If you saw it, naturally you would wonder what kind of Master he was. He did not seem to be at all enlightened -- because you have a certain idea about enlightenment: that the Master will be such and such. He should fulfil your expectation. But Masters don't exist to fulfil your expectations. They have something else far more important to do than to go on fulfilling your expectations. They are not here for that kind of work. They are not asking for your respect or for any respectability. They are not bothered by public opinion; they are not asking for your vote. They are doing something which is immense, which is possible to understand only when you are an insider.

The insider knows on whom Gurdjieff is throwing all kinds of abuse. He knows -- or maybe in some moments he knows and in some moments he also misses. There are some moments when you will feel, 'What kind of man is this? Why is he abusing me so hard? What have I don?' You may have done a very small wrong, negligible, and he is being mad out of all proportion -- as if you have committed a sin. Sometimes even the insider may miss. But the insider will be able to remember. Gurdjieff has said, 'You have to be watchful. I will provoke you. I will provoke you in many ways, so that you can lose your watchfulness.'

Now something is transpiring between Gurdjieff and his disciple. You as an outsider will miss it. He is not in rage. The rage is just acting, and the disciple is being provoked into being angry. If the disciple gets angry, he misses the point. He loses an opportunity. If the disciple remains calm and quiet, watchful; does not allow the content to change this consciousness; and does not try in any way to change Gurdjieff and his behaviour -- that is consciousness trying to change the content.... The content is there -- Gurdjieff is mad. So okay, Gurdjieff is mad. And one is there watching -- neither the consciousness is affecting the content nor the content is affecting the consciousness. And you cannot deceive Gurdjieff -- because a slight change in your consciousness and your whole behaviour changes. Your face changes, your aura changes, your energy pattern changes -- you are no longer the same person.

If the disciple can remain undisturbed, unperturbed, can remain as he was before Gurdjieff started going into this rage, he has taken one step into the inner journey. He has come closer to the Master.

But it will be difficult for people who come from the outside. If you had gone to Gurdjieff.... It was a rare phenomenon. Every night he would invite all his disciples. The whole community would gather together. And there would be eating and drinking -- so much that anybody from the outside would think that these people were just mad. What were they doing? And Gurdjieff would go on forcing people to eat and to drink. He would force people to drink so much alcohol that you would think that this was an epicurean phenomenon. What kind of religion was this? Just eat, drink, and be merry? And that too was going to extremes. And Gurdjieff was very insistent about going on drinking. He himself used to drink as much as a man could drink, but he was never drunk. That was the whole point. He would tell the disciple to drink.

And there comes a point when you lose control. Immediately your reality comes up, surfaces. You can never see the real person unless he is drunk. People have repressed themselves so much that only alcohol can bring them up from their repressions. It was one of the greatest experiments ever done by any Master.

In the East we know it has been done by tantricas down the ages, but Gurdjieff was the first man to do it in the West. Whenever he saw that a disciple had drunk too much and had come to his reality -- that now he was no longer the same person that he was pretending to be -- then he would watch. Now he could be helpful. Now he knew your unconscious. What psycho-analysis does in years, he did in one day. Psychoanalysis goes on poking you to bring your unconscious up. The psychoanalyst will sit, day in and day out, by the side of the couch and listen to all kinds of nonsense and rubbish, for years -- just to help you to go on throwing out rubbish. By and by the real will start-coming up. When the top rubbish is thrown out, then the inner rubbish-will start coming up. But it takes years.

Gurdjieff used to do it in a master-stroke, in a single day. The first day the disciple was there, the first initiation would be through alcohol. The Master wants to know the unconscious immediately because there the real work is to be done. He does not want to waste time with the conscious personality. That is a -mask. Once he has known, then there will be no need. But he will take you into deep drunkenness.

Now, if somebody comes from the outside -- the so-called religious people -- they will be puzzled, very puzzled. What is happening! If somebody comes who has been tasting. Gurdjieff will give him too much to eat, and if somebody comes who has been eating too much, he will put him on a fast. He will disturb your old patterns, because when patterns are disturbed, your reality comes up. It is like changing gears. When you change one gear to another, just in the middle you have to pass through the neutral.

if a person who has not even eaten tomatoes is forced to eat meat, you can understand what turmoil the Master is throwing him into. He is putting him upside-down. it will really be a destruction of all his patterns. He will vomit, he will fall ill, he may have fevers, he may have nightmares -- but this will destroy all his learned patterns and he will become again a child. And from there work can start.

If a man has been eating meat, drinking, Gurdjieff will put him on vegetable food. He will tell him not to drink at all. He will make him a vegetarian, a teetotaller -- he will force him to be as holy as possible. The technique is the same -- to disturb the past, to put things upside-down so that the facade no longer functions and the mask can be removed and the reality can be seen.

A Master has to put his disciples into their childhood again because from there they have been distracted. Somebody has become a Mohammedan, somebody has become a Hindu, somebody has become a Christian -- from that moment they have been distracted. The Master has to put them back into their childhood so another kind of life, another kind of reality, starts growing.

And remember, no true Master has ever fulfilled anybody's desire. He cannot, if he wants to help you. He has to annoy you, he has to shock you. He has to be shocking because his whole work is to shock you into awareness.

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