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have to wait twenty-four hours, and then I will come to answer you. This is something sacred to me; I have given a promise to my dying father. So wait twenty-four hours and then go to the person. In those twenty-four hours you will see that he was right, or you may see that he was not right, but it is absolutely stupid to get into a quarrel. Those twenty-four hours will have given you a chance to be more alert. People react immediately -- there is not time enough to be aware. They react just like machines. So if you find that he was right, go and thank him. If you find he was wrong, there is no need to go; or if you want to go, you can go and say `You seem to be in a misunderstanding.'"
And Gurdjieff used to say, later in his life, "That simple advice of my dying father has transformed my whole life because it gave me a certain awareness, a certain awakening. I could not do anything immediately, instantly. I had to wait for twenty-four hours. And you cannot remain angry for twenty-four hours."
A man who is awake behaves in a totally different way from the whole humanity, which is fast asleep.
One of my friends, he was a colleague in the same university where I was a teacher, said to me "I have been trying to drop my smoking, for almost twenty years."
I said, "That is too long a time to drop a cigarette; just give me a cigarette and I can drop it right now."
He said, "Don't make a laughing stock of me. I have worked hard to drop it, and sometimes for a few hours, or sometimes even for few days, I manage not to smoke. But finally I have to give way. And now I have even dropped fighting; it is meaningless -- twenty years fighting."
I said, "You don't understand simple laws of life. You are a man fast asleep, and in sleep you cannot make any decisions, any commitments. My suggestion is that you do one thing: you smoke more consciously."
He said, "What -- smoke? I want to drop it."
I said, "Just listen to what I am saying, you smoke more consciously. Take the packet from your pocket very slowly and consciously. Pull the cigarette out very slowly -- there is no hurry. Look at the cigarette from all sides, put it
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