
Maurice Nicoll
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Osho on Gurdjieff and
Gurdjieff Disciple Nicoll
Question: Beloved Osho, You have been critical of
most of the masters, but i don’t recall hearing Your
criticism of Gurdjieff. Is that significant? He talked
about the sly man Who stole his Enlightenment from the
Master. I’m puzzled about how to do It. How can i steal
your silence, your bliss, your grace?
Osho: Gurdjieff was really
a remarkable Mystic, one of the most remarkable who has
ever walked on the earth. But to understand him is more
difficult than to understand anybody else.
With Gurdjieff it was true – he was very secretive. If
anybody wanted to get anything from him, it was not an
easy job. Even if you read his book, you cannot read
more than ten pages. It is a one-thousand-page book. All
And Everything is the name of the book, but you cannot
go on more than ten pages, for the simple reason that he
writes in such a way that to find out what he is saying
is difficult. One sentence goes on running over the
whole page.
By the time you end the sentence you have forgotten the
beginning. And what happened in the middle, nobody
knows. He was inventing words of his own, so you cannot
consult any dictionary. Those words belonged to no
language, he simply invented them. And they are long
words – sometimes half the sentence is only one word.
Even to read it is difficult, to pronounce it is
difficult. In that book of one thousand pages, perhaps
there are ten sentences at the most which are really
profound.
Gurdjieff could have printed them on a postcard, but
that man was a category in himself. He wants you to find
those ten sentences in that one-thousand-page book,
which he has made as difficult as possible. No book has
been written the way Gurdjieff’s book was written.
People go to silent places, holiday homes, beaches,
mountains, to write books. Gurdjieff used to go to
restaurants, pubs. And sitting in the middle of the
restaurant where everything was going on – hundreds of
people coming in and going out, all kinds of talk – he
was writing his book, his masterpiece.
Every day, in the evening, his disciples would gather in
his house, and one disciple would read what he had
written that day. Gurdjieff would watch the faces of the
other disciples, to see whether they were understanding
it or not. If they understood it, he would have to
change it the next day. If nobody understood it, it
remained. It took ten years for him to write that book,
and he has hidden the secrets in those one thousand
pages. He is right: you have to steal. It is almost like
stealing.
You enter a house you have never been in. In the
darkness of the night – when even the people who live in
the house cannot move, in case they stumble upon some
table or some chair – the man who has come to steal has
a tremendous artfulness. In the darkness, in a strange
house, he manages not to stumble, not to make any noise.
And miraculously, he finds the place where the treasure
is. He has no map, he has no way to find out where the
treasure is. But the master thieves have an insight.
Gurdjieff’s sly man is the man who has a knack for
finding the right door when there are thousands of
similar doors all around. It is true that Gurdjieff was
a difficult man, almost impossible to cope with.
One of his disciples, Nicoll,
was traveling with Gurdjieff in America. In the
middle of the night, they went aboard a train, and
Gurdjieff, although not drunk, started behaving like a
drunkard, utterly drunk.
The disciple said, ”What are you doing, Master?”
Gurdjieff hit Nicoll, and he said, ”Who are you? I have
never seen you before.”
He woke up the whole train, because he was stumbling
from one compartment to another compartment, shouting
obscenities, waking people who were asleep, throwing
their bags out of the train. Finally the train was
stopped; the driver and the conductor came in. But
Gurdjieff was a very strong man, solid rock, and nobody
dared to catch hold of him; he might throw the man out
of the window!
And Nicoll, poor man, was trying to tell the people that
he is a great master! The people started looking at
Nicoll and they thought, ”You are mad. He is a drunkard
and you are mad. He is a great master? – in the middle
of the night waking strangers, throwing their things
around, shouting obscenities, speaking strange
languages!”
Somehow Nicoll persuaded the conductor and the driver,
”He is a famous master, but what to do? This is his
way.”
They agreed to let him stay on board only if Gurdjieff
and Nicoll went into the compartment and they locked it
from the outside. Then whatsoever they wanted to do
inside they could do – the great master and the great
follower – ”But don’t disturb the whole train.” As the
door was locked, Gurdjieff relaxed, laughed, and he
asked Nicoll, ”How was the scene?” Nicoll was perspiring
in the air-conditioned compartment.
He said, ”The scene? You almost killed me. They thought
I was mad, and I knew perfectly well you were not drunk,
because up to then you were absolutely alright. And
suddenly...?”
Gurdjieff said, ”It was a test for you, whether you can
stay with me if I behave in such a manner. Can you still
see the master in me?” Nicoll said, ”I am ready to go to
hell with you. Whatever you do, there is a deep trust in
me that it must be for something good. I knew it all the
way, but what to do with the passengers, the conductor,
with the driver? The whole crowd was against me, and I
am not so strong a man as you are.”
Gurdjieff was Caucasian, and the Caucasus is famous for
producing really strong men. Another Caucasian was
Joseph Stalin. The word ‘stalin’ in Russian means man of
steel. But Gurdjieff was far ahead of Joseph Stalin.
This was a test for the follower. Just think of yourself
– you would have escaped. Seeing the situation, that he
is going to be caught and thrown into a jail.... That’s
what the driver and the conductor and the engineer were
all saying: ”If you don’t stop, we are going to throw
your master into jail. At the next station the police
will be there, we have already informed them.”
But to trust a man like me is very simple. I will not
put you in any such situation. You need not steal
anything from me, because I am putting everything on the
table before you. So Gurdjieff’s statement is relevant
only to him and to his disciples. It is absolutely
irrelevant to me and you. I am not your master, I am not
hiding anything from you. You need not steal. I am
trying to give you the gift and you go on running!
I am trying to present you the truth, as a gift. But
truth – even to accept it as a gift – is a difficult
phenomenon, because if you accept the truth, then all
the lies that you have been living up to now have to be
dropped. Gurdjieff was his type. I am my type. And I
know there is no need for me to hide anything, because
you are hiding from me, and I am trying to push truth,
love, compassion, meditation – everything – into your
pockets. And you go on running away from me because you
know that I am a lazy man and I will not run after you.
You have simply to receive with grace. There is no need
to steal here. Why should you be reduced to thieves? Why
should you be made the sly man? I want you to be the
innocent child, who is ready and open and vulnerable.
And I am so full of my ecstasy that I want to rain on
anybody without asking his qualifications, his
characteristics. But you are so afraid seeing the rain
cloud coming up, you rush into your homes just to save
your clothes, afraid that they will get wet. Yes, it is
true you are dry, and if you allow me to shower on you,
you are going to become juicy.
People have asked, ”We see the women here in the commune
are becoming juicier and juicier, and the men are
becoming more and more tight, straight, afraid.” The
reason is simple: the woman is always ready to open her
heart. The man thinks a thousand times before opening
his heart. He takes all precautions, because ”Who knows
what a man is going to do when you open your heart?” But
the woman is more trusting, more loving, more feeling.
That’s why they are becoming juicier and juicier. Soon
they will all be rain clouds ready to shower.
Now, it is up to you, a great challenge to man. Are you
going to save your clothes? Then you will remain dry
bones, straight, tight, but with no juice. I am
available. You just drink out of me. The well cannot run
after you, you have to come to the well. But there is no
need to steal, because the well is available, waiting
for you. This is one of the fundamental laws of
spiritual life, that the more you give, the more you
have. And I can say from my own experience that the law
is one hundred percent true. The more I have given,
suddenly I have found, from unknown sources of
existence, more juices have flowed towards me.
Source : "From Death to Deathlessness" - Osho
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