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

tions, principles, religious and economic opinions, etc., and instead ofthe already established pastimes, that is to say, reading newspapers andperiodicals, playing cards, arranging balls and masquerades and variousconcerts, which generally, especially in these days, proceed with the"gentle participation" of those who in the opinion of the majority of contemporarypeople are "known" and "famous" and, in my opinion, withthe participation principally of such people who, on account of theabnormal life of their ancestors as well as their own, represent nothingmore than the types who in the period of Babylonian civilization weredesignated as "moving sources of an evil radiation"—well then, insteadof all that, usually proceeding in similar clubs, which gives absolutelynothing for the welfare of their members and the real development oftheir individuality, to introduce the habit of getting acquainted graduallyand in strict sequence, through common reading, lectures andexplanations given by people specially prepared for this purpose andsent from the mentioned sections, with various fragments of that totalityof theoretical information, on the principles of which the Institutefounded by me is based, namely, that totality of information, accessibleto the comprehension of each contemporary man, after learning which,everybody must acknowledge that, even if all this is not yet known inthe life of people, it is at the same time by its truth as axiomatic as forinstance that "when it rains, the pavements are wet," so that this maybecome, of everything that one is required to cognize in order to lead alife suitable for man and not for a wild animal, really the mostimportant, even more indispensable than the air we breathe, and thenafterwards, on the basis of and in accordance with the convictionobtained thanks to such theoretical information regarding the possibilityand also the very means