Gurdjieff called his work “school” work. The individuals don’t count. The whole school together is needed.

To me, each individual is enough unto himself. He lacks nothing – just a little understanding of himself, a little awareness, a little more consciousness, of which everybody is capable.

And this is the purpose of my having a world tour – to make you aware that you are not dependent on anyone, that you are not part of any school work, that my approach is individualistic, that I want each individual to be absolutely independent in his spiritual growth.

And it is far easier than school work, but it depends on what kinds of methods are used. Gurdjieff was using the methods he had collected from the Sufis – they are all school methods: the individual has to surrender completely to the group. The group evolves, and with the group the individual evolves. If the group is stuck, then the individual is stuck. Then there is no way for the individual to find his own way, because from the very beginning it was a kind of collective growth.

My work differs totally from Gurdjieff’s. It is individual from the very beginning. Even though you are living in a commune, it is not that you are part of the commune – no. On the contrary, the commune is simply a name: it has no existence of itself. Because you love each other and you feel to be together…it is just living together.

But your work remains individual.

Your growth remains individual.

And remember this, that the final freedom is possible only if from the very first step you are free. If you are not free from the very first step, you cannot hope for the last step to be out of freedom, because the last step is essentially the growth of the first step. What was a seed at the first step has come to a flowering at the last step.

No sannyasin needs to feel that he is stuck in the middle. But right now the feeling may be there because I removed all the structure that was created to have a centralized system about everything – erasing individuality, dissolving it into collectivity. So there is a gap right now.

So I want to meet all the sannyasins around the world to tell them, “You need not be worried at all. Wherever you are you can start growing individually.”

And it is beautiful not to depend on others. It is dangerous to have a centralized system. It is efficient, but it is dangerous. It is efficient like any machine, but it reduces human beings to robots. Their individuality is not respected. They are respected as a part, as a cog in the wheel, but in themselves they are just a cog, of no use. Their use is only in the wheel. If they fit in the centralized system completely, then they are useful, and they will be praised, and they will be rewarded.