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

tioned, which had even before then been forming about theseAmericans and which after a little while brought me inwardly to thecategorical decision, if it were not yet too late, to take certaincorresponding measures for their welfare.At the end of the "handshaking" and the interchange of all the usualvacuous words called "amiabilities" particularly used amongAmericans, I requested my secretary to read aloud the final chapter ofthe first series of my writings, which I had recently finished and whichhe had with him owing to the established custom of always having inhis briefcase all my current work. I did this chiefly for the purpose ofcreating thus the necessary conditions for an unhindered observation ofthose present.As to myself, sitting to one side in a corner, I began to observeattentively each of those present, and at the same time drew up in mythoughts a plan for further subsequent action in regard to all of them, aswell as to each separately.On that first evening, as it was late, I interrupted the reader in themiddle of the chapter he was reading, and, addressing all present,promised first of all to arrange a general reading within the next fewdays in order to finish that chapter and went on to propose that theyshould choose three or four persons from among those present thatevening, asking them to come to me in three days together with Mr. S.,to decide collectively all the questions connected with my stay in NewYork.True to say, I made this invitation with the premeditated purpose, inintimate talk with these four or five persons, of sounding them out, ofcourse indirectly, about various details which were not yet clear to mein connection with the suspicions which had arisen in me that eveningduring the reading, suspicions in this case related only to theseAmerican "sorry followers" of my ideas.