GURDJIEFF, G.I. – Life is real only then, when I am - Integral Book

enthusiasm was that during our stay in New York he had started aromance, which at this time was at its apogee, with a saleswoman ofthat bookshop with the very original name "Sunwise Turn," where Ibegan there in New York among a very small number of yourcompatriots, according to my habit, to hold meetings in the form oflecture talks, answering among other things different questions whichwere asked me regarding my ideas.Well then, as I have already said, on my return to Europe after mysojourn among you, at the end of the first week there occurred to methat motor accident, as a result of which for over three months I entirelylost my memory and powers of combination, and then for six monthsmore lay in a semiconscious state, half controlling these twofundamental capacities on which depend and which generally imposeresponsibility on the individuality of man, and when as a consequenceof all this a great crisis arose in all my affairs gradually takingproportions which announced a complete catastrophe, then I, just at thebeginning of this said second period of my physical state, still quitehelpless in body and kept in bed, clearly realizing in lucid intervals ofmy consciousness the created situation, began, on the one hand, to giveorders and take all kinds of measures for the most rapid liquidation ofeverything connected with the Institute on account of the constantlyrequired great expense with a complete lack of revenues, and also theabsence among the people round me of a "businessman," and, on theother hand, to invent all kinds of combinations for the regulation ofinnumerable misunderstandings, arising thanks to the mentionedliquidation as well as to the pernicious manifestations of various typesusually proceeding, as I have said, among degenerated people of ourclass.