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

whom, during the period of my intercourse with you, thanks to yourkind attitude toward me personally and to my work in the hard yearsafter the misfortune which happened to me, there was formed and stillis present now constantly functioning so to say "life-giving data" forbenevolence; besides, in the same period a firm conviction graduallyformed itself in me that in all of you, obviously thanks to an abnormallysuperfluous reading of newspaper literature, there developed,more than in other people, that abnormal psychic factor which in thelast centuries has generally become an imprescriptible inherency ofcontemporary people and which very definitely, as it can be easilyproved experimentally, acts on the general psyche of people in such away as to contribute to their being satisfied by superficial assimilationof all kinds of new impressions read or heard, without evoking in themthe forebodings of any bad consequences from this.As a result of these reflections, I think I succeeded finally in workingout in my thoughts an approximately corresponding form of exposition.In accordance with this so to say "scheme of exposition," I shall nowfirst of all arouse in you and explain several such questions which, as Ipresume, will appear on first sight quite unfitting for what you expectto hear from me in the sense of what I have promised to say withrespect to your welfare, whereas in reality only such a scheme ofsequential development of the promised explanations may, in myopinion, crystallize in your abnormally constructed "mental apparatus"those notions, the cognition of which I consider not only very useful foryou but absolutely indispensable.First of all, I want to acquaint you with two of the fundamental pointsof that detailed program worked out by me which was predeterminedfor gradual introduction into the