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those who are not capable of the method will not be able to do it.
With the method of trust, many distinctions will have to be made. The kind of trust one has differs from person to person. It may be that one person can trust a living teacher. For that, a deeper trust is needed. Or it may be that someone can only trust a dead teacher. Then much trust is not needed because it is not possible to find faults with the teacher. You cannot find faults with Mahavir now, you cannot find faults with Buddha now. Everything has become absolute.
With a living teacher... if Mahavir was here now, you would find faults with him. When he was alive, people found faults. They will always find them, it is not significant. Even if someone has no faults, if you are a fault-finder you will find them.
To be with a dead teacher doesn't require deep trust. That's why the more ancient the teacher is, the deeper the trust you feel you can give him. Bot it is not really that you have faith in him, that you trust him. Faith is required only when the person is alive because then every moment he can behave in such a way as to challenge your faith. He can make it almost impossible for you to believe in him.
Alan Watts has written about Gurdjieff that he was a scoundrel saint. And it is so! Sometimes he would behave just like a scoundrel. And in that way, he helped so many people. He would just cut you off. Then neither your time would be wasted nor his.
One day at Fountainbleu, a journalist came to see him. He never allowed journalists to come to him but somehow the journalist arrived with someone and was introduced as a treat journalist attached to an international paper. Gurdjieff asked the man who was introducing the journalist, "What day is today?"
The man said, "Saturday."
Gurdjieff said, "How can it be? Yesterday was Friday so how can it be that today is Saturday? It is impossible!"
The journalist just fled! He ran away! His friend followed him and asked, "Where are you going?"
"Is he mad? He says, 'How is it that Saturday can follow Friday? Yesterday it was just Friday, so how can it be that today is Saturday?'"!
The
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