13.07.2015 Views

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

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

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

SHOW MORE
SHOW LESS
  • No tags were found...

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.

It would, strictly speaking, even be unnatural if it were not so . . . Forthe processes of the involution of my health during my past life hadproceeded many times more rapidly and intensively than the processesof its evolution.In fact, all the functions of my organ<strong>is</strong>m which previously had been, asmy friends said, "steel-cast," had gradually degenerated, so that at thepresent moment due to constant overworking not one of them was, evenrelatively, functioning properly.Th<strong>is</strong> <strong>is</strong> not at all to be wondered at. ... Even without considering themany other events unusual in human experience which had taken placein the accidentally peculiar pattern of my past life, it would be enoughto recall that strange and inexplicable destiny pursuing me, whichcons<strong>is</strong>ted in my having been wounded three times in quite differentcircumstances, each time almost mortally and each time by a straybullet.If the full significance of <strong>only</strong> these three incidents were comprehended,which inevitably implanted ineffaceable results in my body, one couldunderstand that they in themselves were sufficient to have caused myfinal end long ago.The first of these three incomprehensible fateful events happened in1896, on the <strong>is</strong>land of Crete, one year before the Greco-Turk<strong>is</strong>h War.From there, while still unconscious, I was brought, I don't know why,by some unknown Greeks to Jerusalem.Soon, with consciousness returned, although with my health not yetquite restored, I in the company of other—just such as myself—"seekers of pearls in manure" set out from Jeru-

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!