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

to my sincere regret, instead of finding, in comparison with otherpeople, data of a "higher level"—which obligatorily ought to have beenformed during this time in you, as people who happened prematurely tocome in contact with the truths learned by me through my halfcentury'sconscientious labors, almost incomprehensible forcontemporary people, which give the possibility and chance to everyman to obtain the Being of a real man—there is formed, as I can nowimpartially constate, something quite contrary.Frankly speaking, almost everyone of you gives the impression of,and really is, a man who has all the data to become at any moment aclient of one of those, on an American scale, organized houses in NewYork which are called "madhouses" and which are supported here bythe followers of the English suffragettes.For you Americans, the arising of this evil which formed itself inconnection with my ideas began and gradually took a definite formthanks to the following events:When, as I have already said, at the beginning of the second year ofthe existence of the Institute in France, I was compelled to take thedecision, without waiting for the complete preparation of the materialfor demonstrations, to travel immediately to you Americans in orderthat here, among you, types still foreign to me, I should not becompelled to "live on beans mixed with thumbtacks" with such a largenumber of people indispensable for the realization of the aims I had inview, each of whom to my misfortune—as well as, later on, to themisfortune of many of your compatriots who have become throughthem the objects of my periodic chief speciality, which is "to shear halfthe wool of every near comer"— was at that period subject to a diseasewhich in the psyche of the patient evokes, among other things, the habitof having in his pockets exclusively "a louse on a leash" in one and inthe