Gurdjieff was born near the Caucasus in Russia ? still there are nomads,
wandering tribes. Even sixty years of communist torture has not been able to
settle those nomads, because they consider wandering to be man's birthright,
and perhaps they are right. He started moving from one group to another. He
learned many languages of the nomads, he learned many arts of the nomads. He
learned many exercises that are not available to civilized people any more,
but nomads need them.

For example; it may be very cold and the snow is falling, and to live
in a tent.... Nomads know certain exercises of breathing that change the
rhythm of the breath, the temperature of your body increases. Or if it is
too hot, if you are passing through a desert, then change again to a
different rhythm...and your body has an automatic, inbuilt, air-conditioning
system.

Gurdjieff learned his first lessons in hypnosis with these nomadic
groups. If the wife and the husband are both going to sell some things in
the market, in the village, what to do with the children, the small
children? These nomads have used hypnotism for centuries. They will just
draw a circle around the child and tell him, "Till we return you cannot get
out of this circle."

Now, this has been told for centuries to every child. From the moment
he could understand, he has heard it. He is hypnotized by it. The moment it
is uttered, the moment he sees the line being drawn around him, he simply
relaxes inside: there is no way to get out, he can't get out. Gurdjieff was
very puzzled, because he was ten or twelve years old then: And what nonsense
is this? And each child in every nomad camp is just surrounded by a line,
and that's all. The father and mother disappear for the whole day to work in
the town. By the evening when they come the child is still inside the
circle.

Gurdjieff started wondering how it happened, why it happened, and soon
he was able to figure out that it is just a question of your unconscious
accepting the idea.

Once your unconscious accepts the idea, then your body and your
conscious mind have no power to go against it.

In his own exercises that he developed later on when he became a
master, Gurdjieff used all these nomad techniques that he had learned from
those strange people ? uncivilized, with no language, no written alphabet,
but who knew very primitive methods. And he was surprised to see that
hypnotism works not only on children but on grown men, because those
children become young adults; then too it works. Then they become old, then
too it works. It does not change with age.

Gurdjieff used to play with the old people, drawing a circle around
them, and the old person would shout, "Don't do that, don't do that," and
before the circle was complete he would jump out. If the circle was complete
then it was impossible, you were caught. And this boy ? who could know
whether he would be coming back again or not? When the circle was half
completed, something was open: you could escape. Then you were saved,
otherwise you were caught in it. And many times Gurdjieff succeeded in
making the circle complete. Then even the old man would simply sit down,
just like a small child, and would pray to him, "Break your circle."

Gurdjieff used that technique in many ways ? and many other techniques
that he learned from those people.

He used to have an exercise called the "stop exercise," and he
exhibited it all over the world, particularly in America and Europe.

He would teach dances, strange dances, because nobody knew those
dances that the Caucasian nomads dance... strange instruments and strange
dances.

They had strange foods that Gurdjieff learned to make. His ashrama
near Paris was something just absolutely out of this world. His kitchen was
full of strange things, strange spices that nobody had ever heard of, and he
himself would prepare outlandish foods. He had learned it all from those
nomads. And those foods had a certain effect. Certain foods have certain
effects; certain dances have certain effects; certain drums, instruments,
have certain effects.

Gurdjieff had seen that if a certain music is played and people are
dancing a particular dance, then it is possible for them to dance on
red-hot, burning coals and still not be burned. The dance is creating a
certain kind of energy in them so that they can escape the law of fire ?
which is a lower law. Certainly, if consciousness knows something higher it
can escape from lower laws.

All the stories about miracles are nothing but stories about people
who have come to know certain higher laws; naturally, then the lower laws
don't function. Gurdjieff had seen all these things, he had experienced them
when he was a child, and children are very curious. There was no father, no
mother to prevent him from doing anything, so he was experimenting with
everything, in every possible way. And once he was finished with one nomad
group, he would simply move to another because from other groups he had
other things to learn. He developed all his exercises from these nomadic
people.

The stop exercise was tremendously significant, perhaps one of the
greatest contributions to the modern world ? and the modern world is not
even aware of it.

Gurdjieff would tell his disciples to be engaged in all kinds of
activities: somebody is digging in the garden, somebody is cutting wood,
somebody is preparing food, somebody is cleaning the floor. All kinds of
activities are going on, with the one condition that when he says "Stop!"
then wherever you are, in whatsoever posture you are, you stop dead. You are
not to be cunning, because then the whole point of the exercise is lost.

For example, if your mouth is open and you see that Gurdjieff is not
there to notice, and you just close your mouth and rest, you have missed the
point. One of your legs was up ? you were just moving ? and one leg was
down; now suddenly the "Stop!" call comes. You have to stop, knowing
perfectly well that soon you will fall down; you cannot stand on one foot
for long. But that is the whole point of the exercise: whatever the
consequence you simply stop as you are, you just become a statue.

You will be surprised that such a simple exercise gives you so much
release of awareness. Neither Buddha, nor Patanjali, nor Mahavira was aware
of it, that such a simple exercise...it is not complex at all.

When you become just a statue, you are not even allowed to blink an
eye; you stay exactly as you are at the moment you hear the word "Stop!" It
simply means stop and nothing else. You will be surprised that you suddenly
become a frozen statue ? and in that state you can see yourself
transparently.

You are constantly engaged in activity ? and with the activity of the
body, the mind's activity is associated. You cannot separate them, so when
the body completely stops, of course, immediately the mind also stops then
and there.

You can see the body, frozen, as if it is somebody else's body; you
can see the mind, suddenly unmoving, because it has lost its association
with the body in movement.

It is a simple psychological law of association that was discovered by
another Russian, Pavlov. Gurdjieff knew it long before Pavlov, but he was
not interested in psychology so he never worked it out that way. Pavlov also
got the idea from the same nomads, but he moved in a different direction ?
he was a psychologist. He started working on the lines of the law of
association.

Pavlov would give food to his dog, and while he was giving the food,
he would just go on ringing a bell. Now the bell and the bread had nothing
to do with each other, but to the dog they were becoming associated.
Whenever Pavlov gave the dog some bread, he would ring the bell too. After
fifteen days he would simply ring the bell and the dog's tongue would start
hanging out ready for the bread. Now, somewhere in the dog's mind, the bell
and the bread were no longer two separate things.

Gurdjieff was doing far higher work. He found a simple way of stopping
the mind. In the East people have been trying for centuries to concentrate
the mind, to visualize it, to stop it ? and Gurdjieff found a way through
physiology. But it was not his discovery, he had just found what those
nomads had been doing all along.

Gurdjieff would shout "Stop!" and everybody would freeze. And when the
body suddenly freezes, the mind feels a little weird: What happened? ?
because the mind has no association with the frozen body, it is just
shocked. They are in cooperation, in a deep harmony, moving together. Now
the body has completely frozen, what is the mind supposed to do? Where can
it go?

For a moment there is a complete silence; and even a single moment of
complete silence is enough to give you the taste of meditation.

Gurdjieff had developed dances, and during those dances suddenly he
would say "Stop!" Now, while dancing you never know in what posture you are
going to be. People would simply fall on the floor. But even if you fall,
the exercise continues. If your hand is in an uncomfortable position under
your body, you are not to make it comfortable because that means you have
not given a chance for the mind to stop. You are still listening to the
mind. The mind says, "It is uncomfortable, make it comfortable." No, you are
not to do anything.

In New York when he was giving his demonstration of the dance,
Gurdjieff chose a very strange situation. All the dancers were standing in a
line, and at a certain stage in the dance when they came dancing forwards
and were just standing in a queue with the first person just at the edge of
the stage, Gurdjieff said "Stop!" The first person fell, the second fell,
the third fell ? the whole line fell on each other. But there was dead
silence, no movement.

One man in the audience just seeing this got his first experience of
meditation. He was not doing it, he was just seeing it. But seeing so many
people suddenly stop and then fall, but falling as if frozen, with no effort
on their own to change their position or anything.... It was as if suddenly
they had all become paralyzed.

The man was just sitting in the front row, and without knowing he just
stopped, froze in the position he was in: his eyes stopped blinking, his
breath had stopped. Seeing this scene ? he had come to see the dance, but
what kind of dance was this? ? suddenly he felt a new kind of energy arising
within him. And it was so silent and he was so full of awareness, that he
became a disciple. That very night he reached Gurdjieff and said, "I can't
wait."

It was very difficult to be a disciple of Gurdjieff; he made it almost
impossible. And he was really a hard taskmaster.

And one can tolerate things if one can see some meaning in them, but
with Gurdjieff the problem was that there was no obvious meaning.

This man's name was Nicoll. Gurdjieff said, "It is not so easy to
become my disciple." Nicoll said, "It is not so easy to refuse me either. I
have come to become a disciple, and I will become a disciple. You may be a
hard Master, I know; I am a hard disciple!" Both men looked into each
other's eyes and understood that they belonged to the same tribe. This man
was not going to leave.

Nicoll said, "I am not going. I will be just sitting here my whole
life until you accept me as a disciple" and Nicoll's case is the only case
in which Gurdjieff accepted him without bitching; otherwise, he used to be
so difficult. Even for a man like P.D. Ouspensky, who made Gurdjieff
world-famous ? even with him Gurdjieff was difficult.

Ouspensky remembers that they were traveling from New York to San
Francisco in a train, and Gurdjieff started making a nuisance of himself in
the middle of the night. He was not drunk, he had not even drunk water, but
he was behaving like a drunkard ? moving from one compartment to another
compartment, waking people and throwing people's things about. And
Ouspensky, just following him, said, "What are you doing?" ? but Gurdjieff
wouldn't listen.

Somebody pulled the train's emergency chain, "This man seems to be
mad!" ? so the ticket-checker came in and the guard came in. Ouspensky
apologized and said, "He is not mad and he is not drunk, but what to do? It
is very difficult for me to explain what he is doing because I don't know
myself." And right in front of the guard and ticket-checker, Gurdjieff threw
somebody's suitcase out of the window."

The guard and the ticket-checker said, "This is too much. Keep him in
your compartment and we will give you the key. Lock it from within,
otherwise we will have to throw you both out at the next station."

Naturally Ouspensky was feeling embarrassed on the one hand and
enraged on the other hand ? that this man was creating such a nuisance. He
thought, "I know he is not mad, I know he is not drunk, but...." Gurdjieff
was behaving wildly, shouting in Russian, screaming in Russian, Caucasian ?
he knew so many languages ? and the moment the door was locked, he sat
silently and smiled. He said to Ouspensky, "How are you?"

Ouspensky said, "You are asking me,'How are you?'! You would have
forced them to put you in jail, and me too ? because I couldn't leave you in
such a condition. What was the purpose of all this?"
Gurdjieff said, "That is for you to understand. I am doing everything
for you, and you are asking me the purpose? The purpose is not to react, not
to be embarrassed, not to be enraged. What is the point of feeling
embarrassed? What are you going to get out of it? You are simply losing your
cool and gaining nothing."
"But," Ouspensky said, "You threw that suitcase out of the window. Now
what about the man whose suitcase it is?"
Gurdjieff said, "Don't be worried ? it was yours!"
Ouspensky looked down and saw that his was missing. What to do with
this master! Ouspensky writes: "l felt like getting down at the next station
and going back to Europe... because what else would Gurdjieff do?"
And Gurdjieff said, "I know what you are thinking ? you are thinking
of getting down at the next station. Keep cool!"
"But," Ouspensky said, "how can I keep cool now that my suitcase is
gone and my clothes are gone?"
Gurdjieff said, "Don't be worried ? your suitcase was empty. Your
clothes I've put in my suitcase. Now just cool down."

But later, when he was in the Caucasus and Ouspensky was in London,
Gurdjieff sent Ouspensky a telegram: "Come immediately!" ? and when
Gurdjieff says "Immediately," it means immediately!

Ouspensky was involved in some work, but he had to leave his job, pack
immediately, finish everything and go to the Caucasus. And in those days,
when Russia was in revolution, to go to the Caucasus was dangerous,
absolutely dangerous. People were rushing out of Russia to save their lives,
so to enter Russiaand for a well-known person like Ouspensky, well-known as
a mathematician, world famous.... It was also well-known that he was
anti-communist, and he was not for the revolution. Now, to call him back
into Russia, and that too, to the faraway Caucasus....

He would have to pass through the whole of Russia to reach to
Gurdjieff who was in a small place, Tiflis, but if Gurdjieff calls....
Ouspensky went. When he arrived there he was really boiling, because he had
passed by burning trains, stations, butchered people and corpses on the
platforms. And how he had managed ? he himself could not believe that he was
going to reach Gurdjieff, but somehow he managed to. And what did Gurdjieff
say? He said, "You have come, now you can go: the purpose is fulfilled. I
will see you later on in London."

Now this kind of man.... He has his purpose ? there is no doubt about
it ? but has strange ways of working. Ouspensky, even Ouspensky, missed. He
got so angry that he dropped all his connections with Gurdjieff after this
incident, because this man had pulled him into the very mouth of death for
nothing! But Ouspensky missed the point. If he had gone back as silently as
he had come, he may have become enlightened by the time he reached London ?
but he missed the point.

A man like Gurdjieff ? may not always do something that is apparently
meaningful, but it is always meaningful.

Nicoll became his disciple, and he had to make it through so many
strange tasks, strange in every possible way. No Master before Gurdjieff had
tried such strange ways. For example, he would force you to eat, to go on
eating; he would go on forcing you, "Eat!" ? and you could not say no to the
Master. While tears were coming to you he was saying "Eat!"... and those
spices, Caucasian spices ? Indian spices are nothing! Your whole throat was
burning, you could feel the fire even in your stomach, in your intestines,
and he was saying "Eat! Go on eating until I say stop."

But he had some hidden meaning in it. There is a point for the
body.... I said just the other day to you that a point comes for the body,
if you fast, when after five days it changes its system. That is, the body
starts absorbing its own fat, and then there is no more hunger. That is one
method that has been used. This is also a similar method ? in the opposite
direction. There is a point beyond which you cannot eat, but the master
says, "Go on." He is trying to bring you to the brink of the capacity of
your whole physiology, and you have never touched that. We are always in the
middle. Neither are we fasting, nor are we feasting like Gurdjieff; we are
always in the middle. The body is in a settled routine; hence, the mind is
also settled in its way of movement. Fasting destroys that.

That's why fasting became so important in all religions. It brings you
to a moment after fifteen days when you simply start forgetting thoughts.
Bigger gaps start appearing: for hours there is not a single thought, and
after twenty-one days your mind is empty. It's strange that when the stomach
is totally empty it creates a synchronicity in the mind ? the mind becomes
totally empty.

Fasting is not a goal in itself. Only idiots have followed it as a
goal in itself It is simply a technique to bring you to a stage where you
can experience a state of no-mind. Once that is experienced, you can go back
to food. Then there is no problem, you know the track. And then, eating
normally also you can go into that state any time you want.

Gurdjieff was doing just the opposite because that's what he had
learned from the nomads. Those are a totally different kind of people. They
don't have any scriptures. They don't have any people like Buddha, Mahavira,
or any others, but they have passed on by word of mouth, from generation to
generation, certain techniques that were given by the father to the son.
This technique Gurdjieff learned from those nomads. They eat too much, and
go on eating, and go on eating, and go on eating. A moment comes when it is
not possible to eat anymore ? and that is the point when Gurdjieff would
force you to eat.

If you say yes even then, suddenly there is an immediate state of
no-mind because you have broken the whole rhythm of body and mind.

Now it is inconceivable for the mind to grasp what is happening. It
cannot work any longer in this situation. It has not known it before because
? always remember ? mind is exactly like a computer. It is a bio-computer,
it functions according to its program. You may be aware of it, you may not
be aware of it, but it functions according to a program. Break the program
somewhere.... And you can break the program only at the ends, only at the
boundary, where you are facing an abyss.

Gurdjieff would force people to drink so much alcohol ? and all kinds
of alcoholic beverages ? that they would go almost crazy; so drunk that they
would forget completely who they were. And he would go on giving it to them.
If they fell he would shake them, sit them up and pour them some more,
because there is a moment when the person has come to a point where his
whole body, his whole consciousness is completely overtaken by the
intoxicant. In that moment his unconscious starts speaking.

Freud took three years, four years, five years of psychoanalysis to do
this. Gurdjieff did it in a single night! Your unconscious would start
speaking, would give all the clues about you of which you have not even been
aware. And you would not know that you had given those clues to Gurdjieff ?
but he would know. And then he would work according to those clues: what
exercises would be right for you, what dances would be suitable for you,
what music was needed for you.

All the clues have been given by your unconscious. You were not aware
of it because you were completely intoxicated. You were not present when he
worked on the unconscious and persuaded it to give all the clues about you.
Those were the secrets about you ? then he had the keys in his hands. So if
somebody refused, "Now I cannot drink any more," he would throw him out. He
would say, "Then this is not the place for you."

Osho, From Personality to Individuality, Number 9

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