YOU SAY, FIRST JUMP AND THEN THINK. BUT THIS IS WHAT MANKIND IS DOING. FIRST GOING TO THE MOON, AND THEN REALIZING THAT ROCKETS HAVE MADE HOLES IN THE OZONE LAYER, FOR INSTANCE. SOMETIMES IT CAN BE TOO LATE TO THINK. ON THE OTHER HAND, IF ONE THINKS TOO MUCH, ONE WILL NEVER JUMP — […]
HOW CAN WE PREPARE OURSELVES FOR DEATH? DON’T accumulate anything whatever: power, money, prestige, virtue, knowledge, even the so-called spiritual experiences. Don’t accumulate. If you don’t accumulate you are ready to die any moment, because you have nothing to lose. The fear of death is not really fear of death; the fear of death comes
When a great mathematician, P. D. Ouspensky, went to see a very strange mystic, George Gurdjieff, Ouspensky was already world-famous, and Gurdjieff was not known at all; nobody had heard about him. Ouspensky had already written one of the greatest books in the world, TERTIUM ORGANUM. It is said that there are only three great
TO BE PROUD WITH WEALTH AND HONORIS TO SOW THE SEEDS OF ONE’S OWN DOWNFALL.RETIRE WHEN YOUR WORK IS DONE.SUCH IS HEAVEN’S WAY.RETIRE WHEN YOUR WORK IS DONE. WHEN YOU SEE that a work has given you balance, that you have attained happiness, don’t ask formore; when you feel good don’t ask for more; when
02nd July is the birthday of German-born Swiss poet, novelist and painter Hermann Karl Hesse. Born in 1877, Hesse exhibited traits of being strong-willed, prodigious and passionate from early childhood. Hesse won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1946. His best-known works include Demian, Steppenwolf, Siddhartha and The Glass Bead Game, each of which explores an individual’s search for authenticity, self-knowledge and spirituality.
WHAT IS THE GREATEST PROBLEM IN THE WORLD? THE greatest problem or the smallest problem, it is the same: MAN. And when I say man, I do notmean something abstract. I mean I, you, he, she. There exists no man as such, separate from human beings. Man lives a problematic life, and dies a problematic
WHY DOES EVERYBODY WANT TO PROVE AND TO ASSERT? WHAT IS THE PSYCHOLOGY BEHIND PROVING AND ASSERTING ONESELF? PLEASE EXPLAIN. The psychology behind assertiveness, behind proving oneself, is very simple. Every child, from his very beginning, is told that he is not what he should be. Disciplines are given, commandments are given; he has to
You ask me: what is right, what is wrong? I say to you to be AWAKE is right. To be ASLEEP is wrong. I don’t determine acts wrong and right as such. My focus is your being. My effort is that you are there, in your being. Then whatever you do is right. One Zen
HOW DO YOU REDEFINE ”FREEDOM” AND ”THE MASTER”? The word ‘master’ creates confusion. It gives you the idea that you have become a slave, somebody has become your master. In the East, the word is used in the sense that you have become master of yourself, that you are no longer a slave, that you
Powerful people cannot tolerate somebody who has no power and yet is respected by millions of people. They understand only the language of power, they don’t understand the language of love, they don’t understand the language of creativity. They don’t understand that a song is more powerful than any nuclear weapon, that a poet is
