Beelzebubs-Tales-to-His-Grandson-by-G-I-Gurdjieff

I must enter, leave, and move, and when to speak, and in what words."Not only for two full hours did he show me by his own example how toconduct myself, but he then announced that he would return on the morrow,and he ordered me to practice so that, as he expressed it, 'nomisunderstanding would arise' which might lead to 'where even Makar didnot drive his goats.'"On the day of my 'supreme presentation,' as they call it, I arrived at theplace where the chief of this large community had his residence, and was metat the railway station by His Excellency in person, attended by a half dozen ofhis adjutants, and from that moment—of course quite without theparticipation of his 'personal subjective initiative,' but guided only byautomatic habit, acquired thanks to doing always one and the same thing—hebegan to subjugate all the separate spiritualized parts and the manifestationsof my common presence, taking it all, as it were, under the directive of hisown 'I.'"From that moment, as far as my outer manifestations were concerned, Iwas obliged, as our esteemed Mullah Nasr Eddin would say, 'to dance to histune. '"No sooner were we seated in the carriage and driving away from thestation than he started showing me and prompting me as to how I must actand speak and what I must not do or say."And later, in the hall where the celebrated presentation took place, whenhe further instructed me and directed my presence this can neither bespoken of in the language of a Scheherazade, nor described with the pen of a'Mr Canineson.'"In that hall every step I took, every movement I made, even the blinkingof my eyelids, was foreseen and 'prompted' by this important general."However, in spite of all the absurdity of this procedure,