| |
you that Gurdjieff used to divide every person according to a certain plan. He had a few categories of idiots. Now this German and that Dutch fellow, whose name I have fortunately forgotten, both belong to the first category of fools... no, not fools -- that is reserved for my Jew disciple, Devageet -- idiots. The Dutch idiot proved, or tried to prove, in a long dissertation, that I am only enlightened, not illuminated. Now, these two idiots should meet and wrestle, and hit each other with their arguments and books.
As far as I am concerned, once and for all, let me declare to the world: I am neither illuminated nor enlightened. I am just a very ordinary, very simple man, with no adjectives and no degrees. I have burned all my certificates.
The idiots always ask the same question -- it makes no difference. This is the miracle. Everything is different between India, England, Canada, America, Germany -- but not the idiot. The idiot is universal, the same everywhere. You taste it from anywhere and it is the same. Perhaps Buddha would have agreed with me; after all he said, "Taste the Buddha from anywhere, and he is just like the ocean: wherever you taste it, it tastes of salt." Perhaps just as the Buddhas taste the same, buddhus -- which is the Indian name for idiots -- also taste the same. It is good, but only in the Indian languages, that "buddha" and buddhu are made from the same root, are almost the same word.
I am not at all concerned whether you believe me to be enlightened or not. What does it matter? But this man is so concerned that in his small book, fifty pages are devoted to this question, whether I am enlightened or not. It certainly proves one thing, that he was a first-class idiot. I am just myself. Why should I be enlightened or illuminated? And what great scholarship! Illumination is different from enlightenment? Perhaps you are enlightened when there is electricity, and you are only illuminated when there is only candlelight?
I don't know what the difference is. I am neither. I am light myself, neither enlightened nor illuminated; I have left those words far far behind. I can see them like dust, still stirring,
|
|
|