Is everyone drugged, in this world? Only a man, who works on his awareness, moment to moment, will know it.

"ALL ARE ASLEEP"

OUSPENSKY'S EXPERIENCES WITH GURDJEFF

Gurdjieff, in this century, emphasized this fact that man is asleep. ”In fact,” he said, ”man is a sort of sleep. Everyone is deeply asleep."

Gurdjieff worked on this method continuously. His chief disciple, P. D. Ouspensky, relates that when Gurdjieff was working on him with this method, and he was practicing for three months continuously this remembering of ”I am, I am, I am,” after three months everything stopped.

Thoughts, dreaming,everything stopped. Only one note remained inside like eternal music: ”I am, I am, I am, I am.” But then this was not an effort. This was a spontaneous activity going on: ”I am.”

Then Gurdjieff called Ouspensky out of the house. For three months he had been kept in the house and wasn’t allowed to move out.

Then Gurdjieff said, ”Come with me.” They were residing in a Russian town, Tiflis. Gurdjieff called him out and they went into the street. Ouspensky writes in his diary:

”For the first time I could understand what Jesus meant when he said that man is asleep. The whole city looked to me as if it was asleep. People were moving in their sleep; shopkeepers were selling in their sleep; customers were buying in their sleep. The whole city was asleep. I looked at Gurdjieff: only he was awake. The whole city was asleep. They were angry, they were fighting, they were loving, buying, selling, doingeverything.”

Ouspensky says, ”Now I could see their faces, their eyes: they were asleep. They were not there. The inner center was missing; it was not there.”

Ouspensky said to Gurdjieff, ”I do not want to go there any more. What has happened to the city? Everyone seems asleep, drugged.”

Gurdjieff said, ”Nothing has happened to the city, something has happened to you. You have been undrugged; the city is the same. It is the same place you moved around in three months ago, but you couldn’t see that other people are asleep because you were also asleep. Now you can see because a certain quality of awareness has come to you. With three months of practising ”I am”continuously, you have become aware in a very small measure. You have become aware! A part of your consciousness has gone beyond dreaming. That is why you can see that everyone is asleep, dead, moving, drugged, as if hypnotized.”

Ouspensky says, ”I couldn’t bear that phenomenon – everyone asleep! Whatsoever they are doing,
they are not responsible for it. They are not! How can they be responsible?”