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the idea that you have a disease

Posted at 2:52, 19.3.2007

Simply relax and start enjoying life! That is your prayer. You don't need to work at all, you need only to play. If you work you will create trouble; if you just play around things will settle by themselves. It is as if you don't have any disease and you go to the doctor and insist on having some medicine... but you don't have any disease! The only disease that you have is the idea that you have a disease; that's the only disease.

So what can the doctor do? He will give you a placebo, he will give you sugar pills. And he will say: 'Take these and the disease will go -- don't be worried'. But you will not be satisfied because you would like him to examine you rightly first. He should do an x-ray examination, cardiogram and things like that. If the doctor is very alert about problems like this he will send you to the x-ray specialist, send you to have a urine test, a stool test, this and that. He knows that you don't have any disease but just to satisfy you he does those things so that you know you have been examined perfectly well. Otherwise from the very beginning he could have said to you that you have nothing but that wouldn't satisfy you. You can create your problem; the problem is not there. There are many people who don't have any problem but they cannot trust this -- that they don't have any problem. This looks so unusual, in fact so abnormal -- not to have any problem. When everybody has problems, when everybody is going crazy and you don't have any problems, you cannot believe that you can be so abnormal. You must be having some problems somewhere maybe hidden in the unconscious, in some deep nook and corner in the darkness of your soul, but you must have some problem! How is it possible that you don't have any problem? That's why you cannot accept it -- but you don't have! Simply start enjoying life! Love, eat, work and enjoy! Enjoy small moments. Small things are there: sipping tea or coffee or just lying on the bed and relaxing, enjoy! And make them so tremendously enjoyable that they become almost divine, sacred. Turn small things into great things. Taking a bath enjoy it so deeply... as if you are in prayer. And how can a person be deeply in prayer if he cannot be in prayer while he is sitting under a shower? It is so beautiful; the water falling on you is god falling on you! It is god's element and it is very basic to life, life cannot exist without water. Your body consists of eighty percent of water. The moon is lifeless because there is no water, millions of stars are lifeless because there is no water. Unless water is, life cannot exist: first comes water, then life starts. The first glimpse of life comes in the sea; the fish is the first to evolve life. So while sitting under a shower become a fish. Enjoy it! It is so beautiful. It is the very substratum of life, the very substance. Sway, sing, pray... feel grateful. Eating, make it a sacrament. Loving your woman, make it meditation. Playing with your child, play with god... because it is only god! Names are different, forms are different. That's why it is very simple. You don't have problems, you have to start living! Don't wait -- there is no problem to be solved!... So you try to live. It is really simple.

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for Brooke Cardoso

Posted by tao at 12:23, 6.5.2007

Gurdjieff used to say to his disciples, 'When my grandfather died I was only nine years old. He called me close to his death-bed and whispered in my ear.' He had tremendous love for this small boy. He must have seen the potential of the boy. He whispered in the ears of the boy, 'I have nothing to give to you except a simple piece of advice, and I don't know whether you will be able to understand it right now or not. But remember it! Some day you may become capable enough, mature enough to understand it. Just remember it. And it is simple advice. If you want to do anything wrong, postpone it for twenty-four hours. And if you want to do something right, never postpone it even for a single moment. If you want to be angry, violent, aggressive, postpone it for twenty-four hours. If you want to be loving, sharing, do not postpone it even for a single moment. Just live it right now, immediately!'
And Gurdjieff used to say to his disciples, 'That simple advice transformed my whole life.' How can you be angry if you can postpone it for twenty-four hours? It is impossible. To be so calm and quiet as to postpone it for twenty-four hours is enough guarantee that you are not going to be angry. And who can be angry if he can postpone it for twenty-four hours? Twenty-four hours of contemplation, and the whole absurdity will be plain to you: the whole thing will look ridiculous.
And Gurdjieff was really transformed by this simple message. Sometimes very simple messages can transform you, but you have to live them.
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for Lillian Ackermann

Posted by tao at 1:40, 6.5.2007

A man was browsing through an antique shop near Mount Vernon and ran across a rather ancient-looking axe. 'That's a mighty old axe you have there,' he said to the shop owner. 'Yes,' said the man, 'it once belonged to George Washington.' 'Really?' said the customer.'It certainly stood up well.' 'Of course,' said the antique dealer, 'it has had three new handles and two new heads.'
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for Rebecca Babacan

Posted by tao at 1:06, 7.5.2007

Three yogis were eating their lunch on the seventeenth-floor girder of a new skyscraper. They were working on their bodies, talking about it continuously, discovering new mysteries.
"Wow," said the second man, who was new on the job. "I see why you guys like to eat your lunch here. The view of the city is beautiful!"
"Yes, the view is nice," said the first man. "But do you want to know why we really like to eat lunch here?"
"Yes," said the new yogi.
"Well," explained the first, "there's the most incredible updraft right at the fourth floor, and when we finish lunch we like to jump off and ride back up on that air current. It puts you right back on the very spot you jumped from."
"Bullshit!" said the second man. "I don't believe you."
"You don't?" said the first, putting down his coffee thermos. "Then I'll show you."
He jumped. Down he went, and sure enough, right at the fourth floor -- whoosh! He was turned back and landed on the seventeenth-floor girder on the exact spot from which he had leaped.
"Wow!" said the second man in total amazement. "That beats the hell out of hang-gliding or anything! Let me do it next!"
He stood up and jumped. Down he went -- then fourth floor, third floor, second floor... splat! All over the sidewalk! Finished!
Back up on the seventeenth floor, the third man, who had been silent until now, turned to the first and said, "You know, Superman, sometimes you're a real prick!"
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for Trinity Martins

Posted by tao at 4:29, 7.5.2007

TWO MADMEN WENT INTO A PUB AND WHILE LOOKING AROUND FOR A PLACE TO SIT THEY SAW THEMSELVES IN A BIG MIRROR ON THE OPPOSITE WALL. ONE MADMAN SAID TO THE OTHER, "HEY, LOOK AT THOSE TWO GUYS OVER THERE. THEY LOOK SO FAMILIAR TO ME. LET'S GO OVER AND SAY HELLO TO THEM."
AS THEY START MOVING, HOWEVER, THE OTHER MADMAN SAYS, "NEVER MIND, THEY ARE ALREADY COMING TO SEE US!"
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for Ian Soares

Posted by tao at 8:07, 8.5.2007

In America, the number thirteen is very superstitious! You will find in hotels that after the twelfth storey comes the fourteenth. The thirteenth storey does not exist at all because nobody is ready to stay on the thirteenth floor.
I have seen one book: a man had done great research work proving that this superstition of the number thirteen is not just superstition, it has a scientific background. I was very much amazed so I went through the book. It was sheer nonsense what he had done. He had collected the number of accidents which had happened on the thirteenth date, the number of people who died on the thirteenth, the number of people who got cancer on the thirteenth... all kinds of calamities that happened on the thirteenth. He had collected such a list that anybody would be greatly impressed that certainly this number thirteen is dangerous.
I wrote a letter to the man saying, "Unless you do the same research for the eleventh and for the twelfth -- just two dates will do, one before thirteenth... and find out what happens on the twelfth, what happens on the eleventh, all the calamities... And unless you find that more accidents happen on the thirteenth than on the twelfth or eleventh, that more people die on the thirteenth than on any other date, your thesis is just nonsense. This way you can prove any date dangerous, because people are dying on every date, every day. There is no quota given for dates."
I received a letter saying that the man had died; unfortunately he died on the eleventh! One of his friends replied that the man himself had missed the thirteenth. But in America that superstition is very prevalent. People don't want the number thirteen on their car; they avoid the number thirteen in every way. In the army you won't find a soldier whose number is thirteen.
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for Kyla Nascimento

Posted by tao at 8:43, 13.5.2007

A religious man can create playfully but cannot be serious. Seriousness is part of obsession.
For example, Karl Marx is the ideal obsessional man. His whole life he spent in the British Museum library. He had no actual experience of poverty; he had never been part of the proletariat, the laborers for whom he was going to be the messiah. He had not a single friend who was a laborer.
He had only one friend, who was a capitalist, Friedrich Engels. And he had to be friendly towards Engels because who was going to feed him? His obsession was to create the whole philosophy of communism, in its entirety, so there would be no need for anybody else to add anything. He was a Jew -- and somehow it is very difficult to get rid of your conditioning. Although he became an atheist, denied God, denied soul, a Jew is a Jew -- he wanted to make communism absolutely complete.
Before the museum library was open, he was standing there at the door. The librarian would come after him; before he came, Marx was waiting. And the whole day he was in the library. The library would be closed, and the librarian would be persuading him, "Now please, you stop. Come tomorrow."
And Marx would say, "Just wait a few minutes more; something is still incomplete. I have to complete this note."
In the beginning they used to be nice to him. Finally they found this was not going to help: they had to forcibly throw him out of the library. Four people would take him out, and he would be shouting, "Just a few minutes more! Now, are you mad, or what? What are you doing? Tomorrow I will have to work hours to find those few sentences that I could write just now. Just wait!"
But the library has to be closed at a certain time, and those people have to go to their homes. They are just servants. They don't care about your communism and what philosophy you are writing. And you have been doing this for twenty years, thirty years, forty years! Forty years continuously! And sometimes it used to happen that he would not eat. The food would be with him, because he used to come with his tiffin carrier so that he did not have to go home or to a hotel and waste time.
So he would be just eating and referring to encyclopedias and books: with one hand he would be continually writing, and with the other hand he would be eating. And sometimes he forgot to eat; and as he became older, many times it happened that he was taken not to his home but to the hospital, because he was found unconscious: hungry, continuously reading, writing, reading, writing.
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