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alert for sixty seconds continuously, not thinking of anything else, never forgetting for a single moment what you are doing, not even distracted for a single split second, you will be accepted.'
And it was so rare, because within five, seven seconds, your mind would be distracted. It was so rare for anybody to remain alert for sixty seconds, just one minute! Now this is very shattering.
When Ouspensky, a great mathematician, world-famous author, went to him, he could not keep alert for more than nine seconds, and then he fell asleep! That's what sleep is: he started thinking of other things. Suddenly he awoke again but by that time a few seconds had passed. Gurdjieff started laughing and he said, 'You are a great mathematician and you have lived a life of sleep. You are a somnambulist. You are not a mathematician, you are a machine!' Now, it hurts.... Ouspensky had thought to escape from this man: this man was dangerous. He had simply reduced him into a ridiculous state. He had taken all fame and name away within a second, by a simple strategy.
Now there are many strategies all around here, not as visible; but every group, every meditation, and everything that I am doing and saying will hit you again and again and will make you alert about how asleep you are, how unconscious you are.
It simply hurts, but if you are a little understanding you should be happy, because there are a few people who will not even become aware here that they are asleep. They are really asleep. You are not so deeply asleep, mm? You are just hovering between sleep and wakefulness.
It is just like in the morning one hovers, mm? The sleep is gone but one is not yet awake. One can hear some noise coming from the outside: the milkman knocking on the door, the wife preparing the tea, the children preparing for the school. One can hear little bits floating and then one falls asleep, and then again one hears.... That hovering, that wavering state, that's where you are, that's why you became aware. It is good! You are not very fast asleep; you are not snoring! Otherwise there are people -- you are nothing compared to them -- who are so deeply asleep that they will
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