It is fear which does not allow you to move into faith. It is not disbelief, remember; it is not disbelief which hinders your moving into faith, it is fear.

Of course you rationalize your disbelief, your fear. You hide it in words and you say, “I am skeptical, I am doubtful. How can I move unless I am totally convinced?” But look deep down within yourself and you will find fear.

Fear means half of you wants to go and half does not want to go. Half is allured by the unknown, has heard the call, the invocation; and half is afraid of the unknown, clinging to the known. Because the known is known, there is no fear in it.

You do something; that something has become known. Now if you want to move into a new job, into a new pattern of life, new habits, new style, half of you clings to the known, saying, “Don’t move! Who knows, it may be worse than this. And once you are gone you cannot come back.” So, half says, “Cling!”

This half belongs to the past, because the past is known, the memory. And the other half always is excited, feels the call to move on the unknown path through the uncharted – because something new will become ecstatic.

This is the fear. You are divided. Fear divides you, and if you are divided there is irresolution. You take one step towards the unknown, the other step remains in the past, in the grave of the past. And then you are stuck, because nobody can move with one step, with one leg, one foot – nobody can move. You have to take both your wings into it, both your parts into it. Only then can you move.

Irresolute, and you are stuck – and everybody is stuck. That is the problem, that is the anxiety. Stuck, and you cannot move, and life goes on flowing, and you have become rock-like, blocked, a prisoner of the past.

…but those with limited views
are fearful and irresolute:
the faster they hurry, the slower they go…

Their whole life is contradictory. They do something with one hand and immediately they undo it with the other – irresolute. You love a person on the one hand, you hate on the other. You create love on the one hand, on the other you sow the seeds of hatred. And you never see what you are doing.

Just last night I was talking with someone about a hidden monastery in Bokhara. Gurdjieff lived in that monastery for at least six years. He learned many techniques from that Sufi school. One of their techniques is still used in that monastery.