Question 3:
Osho,
Gurdjieff calls whatever is happening between master and disciple "objective doing" as far as the master is concerned. he says that only a master can do something.
Please comment.
My approach towards life and George Gurdjieff's approach are very different.
I love Gurdjieff as one of the great masters history has produced, but it is not my path.
I will explain to you what he is saying, first according to him, second, according to me.
Gurdjieff had a division between subjective and objective actions: ordinary, unconscious people act subjectively; alert, conscious, crystallized beings act objectively. Now, this is a totally different language and a different philosophy, so you have to understand it clearly.
Sometimes you see somebody, and for no reason you feel a certain dislike. Or sometimes you feel a deep liking, but you cannot give any reasons. These are unconscious, subjective emotions - there must be reasons, but they are hidden in your unconscious mind and you will behave according to these reasons.
According to Gurdjieff, unconscious people are not doing anything; they are almost robots, machines. Their unconscious mind is driving them, and they are doing it; they cannot answer exactly why they did it.
Objective action needs awareness.
Gurdjieff's father died. He was only nine years old. The father called him... he was an extraordinarily intelligent child. The father said, "I have nothing to give to you. I am a poor man, I am not leaving any inheritance. I have condensed my whole life's experience in a simple statement, so that you can remember it. You are too young: right now you may understand it, you may not understand it - but you can remember; you are intelligent enough to remember it. Later on you may be able to understand it and when you understand it, start behaving accordingly."
The principle he gave was, strangely, very simple. He said, "If somebody insults you and you feel angry, don't act out of anger, because in that way you are becoming a slave. That man is your master: he insulted you, he manipulated your anger, he managed you in how to act. You think you are behaving on your own - you are not. So if somebody insults you, just tell him, 'I will think it over, and after twenty-four hours I will come and answer you.' And this has to be your lifestyle about everything: don't be in a hurry, take twenty-four hours' time to think."
Gurdjieff was very intelligent. He started behaving exactly like that from the next day. Somebody would insult him - and people were shocked when he would say, without any anger, as if nothing had happened, as if you had proposed a certain theoretical problem for him, "Please give me twenty-four hours just to think it over. It is possible that you may be right; then I will not come back. If you are not right, then I will see whether it is worth coming back to answer you or not - but twenty-four hours are absolutely necessary. My dying father has told me, and I have to follow him."
People were simply at a loss to understand what this boy was saying. And for twenty-four hours he would think it over: most of the time, the people who had insulted were right. So he would go just to thank them: "You were right, and I have come just to thank you. And please remember, whenever you find anything wrong in me, don't hesitate, just tell me. Tell me as harshly as you can."
He became phenomenal. In his young age, people started looking at him as if he were a sage. Or he would come and say, "Whatever you said was not right, but it is not worth quarreling about it; it is below me. So I have come only to remind you: you can say anything you want, but say something that is a proof of your superiority, of your intelligence. This was such that it is even below me, and I am just a child. I don't want to answer it."
And sometimes he would not come at all, and people would find him afterwards and say, "You did not turn up."
He would say, "It was so meaningless. It was not even worth coming to say to you that it was meaningless, it was so meaningless."
Gurdjieff remembers later on that that simple statement of his father changed his whole life. He started behaving objectively: emotions, sentimentality disappeared. Because you cannot remain for twenty-four hours angry; these things are momentary. And most often it happens that somebody insults you and you become hot and you become angry and you do something, and later on you repent: it was not worth it, you unnecessarily made a scene. It would have been better if you had remained calm and quiet; it would have shown your integrity, your strength. You proved to be very weak.
Gurdjieff divided everything into subjective and objective. For example, all the paintings and music of modern times he calls subjective. His statement is that the modern paintings are like vomiting:
you are subjectively filled with a certain idea and you paint it. You are not concerned with the people who will see it and what the effect will be on those people, whether it is going to be beneficial or not.
You are not concerned at all. Your whole concern is how to unburden yourself: you are feeling sick, you will feel relieved.
And that's why you will see so many paintings, particularly the most ultra-modern paintings... you cannot keep them in your bedroom, they will drive you crazy. Just look at them long enough and you will start feeling nauseous. Because they have come out of a nausea, naturally, their effect will be nauseating. These are subjective paintings, subjective stories, subjective fiction, subjective poetry.
There is no concern at all for the person who will be reading the poetry.
Objective art is a totally different thing.
For example, Gurdjieff used to say that the Taj Mahal is objective art. On the full moon night, if you sit silently near the Taj Mahal watching its beauty, you will fall into a deep serenity, into meditativeness.
The whole architecture, the stone work, everything, has been made in such a way that it will create in you a peace that passeth understanding.
So when he says that a disciple cannot do anything... because a disciple is one who is asleep.
For example, if you are all asleep here, what can you do? Only the person who is awake can do something.
The master is awake.
I am reminded of an old story.
A master had two disciples. He had many disciples but two were the chief disciples, and there was great competition between the two over who was going to be the successor.
It was a hot afternoon and the master was taking a nap, and both the disciples were massaging his feet. One disciple was on the right leg, another was on the left. The master turned, and the right foot went on top of the left foot. The disciple who was in charge of the left foot said to the other disciple, "Remove your foot! Remove it. Otherwise I will take my staff and hit the leg so that it will never be of any use at all."
The disciple said, "Nobody can touch my foot - and it is my foot, and it will do whatever it wants to do. You think only you have a staff? I have my staff here. If you hit my leg, I will hit your leg."
They were shouting and fighting, and the master woke up and listened to their talk. He said, "Just wait a minute! You idiots, both legs are mine! And you were going to make me crippled for my whole life."
But this is how the unconscious man behaves.
Gurdjieff's idea is that as far as doing is concerned, only the master can do something - because he is awake, and you are asleep. This is his approach, and it is perfectly right in its own context.
As far as my work is concerned, neither can the disciple do anything nor can the master do anything, because it is not a question of being asleep or being awake. The disciple is asleep; certainly he cannot do anything except dream. The master is awake; hence, he cannot interfere. Even to wake you is an interference in your life which a wakeful person cannot do. It is your life; he cannot trespass.
Waking you up, disturbing your dream or your sleep, is a trespass.
In my work, neither the master does anything nor the disciple - but things happen. There is no doing on either side, but things happen. The master goes on creating devices without interfering with the individuals.
For example, I am talking to you. It is possible that you may start at first by just hearing my words, and then hearing my silences - first the visible, and second, feeling the invisible presence.
This is only a device. I am not doing anything to you in particular. I am just available here and if by chance, by coincidence, you open your eyes, you wake up, you see something, you hear something, you feel something and it starts working on you.... I am not doing anything, you are not doing anything, but something starts happening.
You must have seen, and you must have wondered: a woman gives birth to a child, the first child; she has no experience, but in the night, perhaps a dozen times... a small movement on the part of the child and the mother wakes up. And there may be clouds, thunder, the house may be on fire and she will not wake up, but just the child... something... perhaps the blanket has slipped off the child's body and she wakes up. It seems that she is asleep for the whole world, but not for the child. There is a link - you can call it telepathic - a subtle link, so that every movement in the child is immediately transferred to the mother's heart.
Something similar happens between the master and the disciple.
The master is there with his immense presence, and the disciple - although he is asleep, he is not unconscious. He has somehow stumbled and found the place where the master is, perhaps from a faraway country.
Already there are three hundred sannyasins here from faraway countries, and we are preventing them because we don't have any space, we don't have any arrangement for them. So every center around the world is trying to prevent people: "Don't go, because right now there is no arrangement for you, and you will not be able to see Osho more than once or twice a week."
But still, three hundred sannyasins have arrived. We are preventing them, the Indian government is preventing, the American government is preventing, other governments are preventing - still, they have come. And soon you will find Bombay full of my sannyasins. You are not seeing them because I have allowed them not to use red clothes, not to use the mala.
For a few years, the sannyas movement has to go underground.
There must be some part of them which is awake, some part of them which is not only awake but is capable of finding the way, and they have reached here. Now, being with me, that small part that has brought them here will become bigger, stronger, nourished, and things will start happening.
Gurdjieff is a great doer. His whole philosophy is a philosophy of action.
My whole approach is of relaxing and allowing the existence to do whatever is right.
Trust the existence.
And existence has never betrayed anyone.
-Osho, "The Osho Upanishad, #42, Q3"