"Gurdjieff used the I AM method. Work deeply on I AM whatever you are
doing. Drinking water, eating, remember "I AM." Do not forget it! When
you walk remember I AM. Let the walking
be there, but be fixed on "I AM I AM I AM." Let this be constant in your
awareness. Then it will begin to penetrate your sleep also.
Gurdjieff worked on his method continuously. His chief disciple P.D.
Ouspensky relates that when Gurdjieff was working with him on this
method and he was practicing for 3 months continuously this remembering
of "I AM I AM I AM", everything stopped. Thoughts, dreaming, everything
stopped. Only one note like music remained "I AM." But it was not an
effort. This was a spontaneous activity going on. "I AM." Then Gurdjieff
called Ouspensky out of the house. For 3 months he had been kept inside
and was not allowed to go out.
Then Gurdjieff said 'Come with
me!'They were living in a Russian town of Tiflis. They went out into the
street. Ouspensky writes in his diary, "For the first time I could
understand what Jesus meant when he said that man is asleep. The whole
city looked to me as if asleep. People were moving in their sleep,
shopkeepers were selling in their sleep, customers buying in their
sleep. The whole city was asleep! I looked over at Gurdjieff. Only he
was awake. The whole city around us was asleep. They were angry,
fighting, they were loving, buying, selling, doing, everything."
Ouspensky said "I could see their faces, their eyes, they were asleep.
The inner center was missing, it was not there.' Ouspensky said to
Gurdjieff "I do not want to go there anymore. What happened to the city?
Everyone seems asleep, drugged."
Gurdjieff said "Nothing has
happened to the city. Something has happened to you. You have been
undrugged. The city remains the same. It is the same place you moved
into 3 months ago. But you couldn't see that other people are asleep
because you were also asleep. Now you can see because a certain quality
of awareness has come to you. With three months of practicing "I AM"
continuously, you have become aware in a very short matter of time. You
have become aware! A part of your consciousness has gone beyond
dreaming. That is why you can see that everyone is asleep, dead, moving,
drugged, as if hypnotized."
Ouspensky says "I could not bear this
phenomenon - everyone asleep! Whatsoever they are doing, they are not
responsible for it. They are not! How can they be responsible?" He came
back and asked Gurdjieff "What is this? Am I deceived somehow? Have you
done something to me that the whole city seems asleep? I cannot believe
my own eyes!"
But this will happen to anyone. If you can remember
yourself, then you will know that no one is remembering himself, and in
this way each one goes on moving. The whole world is asleep. But start
while you are awake. Any moment that you start "I AM."
I do not mean
that you have to repeat the words "I AM" but have the feeling. Take a
bath and feel "I AM." Let the touch of the cold shower be there, and let
yourself be there behind, feeling it and remembering "I AM."Remember I
am not saying that verbally you have to repeat "I AM." You can repeat it
but that repetition will not give you awareness. Repetition may even
create more sleep. So this "I AM", the remembering of "I AM", is not a
verbal mantra. Feel it! Be sensitive to your being. When you touch
someone else's hand do not only touch it, but feel it, feel your touch
also. While you eat, feel yourself eating as well. This feeling will
penetrate deeper and deeper into your mind.
One day suddenly you are
awake at your own center, functioning for the first time. And then the
whole world becomes a dream. And then you know that your dreaming is a
dreaming. And when you know that your dreaming is a dreaming, dreaming
stops. It can continue only if it is felt to be real. It is stopped if
it is felt as unreal.
And once dreaming stops, you are a different
man. The old man is dead; the sleepy man is dead. That human being which
you were, you are no more. For the first time, you become aware. For
the first time, in the whole world that is asleep, you are awake. You
become a Buddha, an Awakened One.
After this awakening, there is no
misery. After this awakening, there is no death. Through this awakening,
there is no more fear. You become, for the first time, free of
everything. To be free of sleep, to be free of dreaming, is to be free
of everything. Hate, greed, anger all disappear. You attain freedom. You
become just love."
- George Gurdjieff and P.D. Ouspensky (as related in the Book of Secrets by Osho)
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