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| | | Book Name: Sufis - The People of the Path, Vol 1 | Previous Next | |
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it was only a small speaking part, but it was a start. The hero was to come on the scene and say, 'Did you see this man get killed?' His part was simply to look the hero straight in the eyes and answer, 'I did.'
For weeks he practised with those two words -- I did, I did, I did -- studying elocution, practising facial expressions and intonations Then came the big day. The hero walked in glanced at the body on the floor looked at the actor and asked, 'Did you see this man get killed?'
Looking full into the eyes of the hero he answered clearly, 'Did I?'
People are not alert at all. They are asleep. A kind of dullness, a kind of fog surrounds your being. It is very foggy and confused. Very rarely do you become alert, very, very rarely; rare are those moments. Gurdjieff used to say that if a man had them seven times in his life it is more than you can expect. Very rarely.
In very great danger sometimes you become alert. Somebody comes to kill you and puts a revolver on your chest -- then for a single moment the fog disappears. Death is there. Or, if you are driving at ninety, a hundred miles per hour and then suddenly at a turn you see that now everything is gone, for a moment the accident seems to be certain, absolutely certain -- the fog disappears. Hence the appeal of danger -- because only in danger do you sometimes feel that you are. Hence the appeal of war. When people go to war and move into the clutches of death, sometimes rare moments come. But otherwise, in an ordinary comfortable, convenient life, people go on snoring.
A traveller enquired the way to the post office from a drunkard. The drunkard was an old inhabitant of the town.
'Well, you go down two blocks and turn right... no, you go down two blocks and turn left... no, that ain't right either, you go up this street one block, turn right and go one block.... Truth is mister, I don't think you can get to the post office from here at all.'
People are living in that fog. And it is not only that when you drink you become foggy -- you are drinking a thousand and one kinds of alcohol every moment. Somebody is money-mad -- then money is his alcohol. Somebody is
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