Gurdjieff used to give vast big dinners for his disciples, and the first toast was always for the idiots. These are the idiots. And then this drunkard, half asleep, half awake, interprets it according to the past, because there is no other way. The mind interprets the present according to the past. Everything is going wrong because the present is always new and the mind is always old. But there is no other way; the mind cannot do anything else. It has accumulated much knowledge in the past through these same idiots – as unreliable as anything – and that past is brought to the present, and the present is understood through the past. Everything goes wrong. It is almost impossible to know anything through this process.

That’s why Hindus call the whole world that is known through this process maya, illusion, dreamlike – it is. You have not known the reality yet. These four messengers won’t allow you, and you don’t know how to avoid these messengers or how to come out into the open. The situation is as if you are closed in a dark cell and you are just looking out through the keyhole – and the keyhole is not passive, the keyhole is active, it interprets. It says, “No, you are wrong; this is not so, this is like this.” Your hand interprets, your nervous system interprets, your brain interprets, and finally the drunkard interprets. And that interpretation is given to you and you live through that interpretation. This is the state of the ignorant mind, the state of the unenlightened.

In nirvichara samadhi, this whole state is shattered. You suddenly come out of this whole mechanism. You don’t rely on it, you simply drop the whole mechanism. You come directly to the source of knowledge; you look immediately at the flower.

This is possible. This is possible only in the highest state of meditation, nirvichara, when thoughts cease. Thought is the link. When thoughts cease, the whole mechanism ceases and you are separate. Suddenly you are no longer imprisoned. You are not looking through the keyhole. You have come out into the world under the open sky. You look at things as they are and you will see that things don’t exist; they were your interpretations. Only beings exist; there are no things in the world. Even a rock is a being, howsoever fast asleep, snoring – but a rock is a being because the ultimate source is a being. All its parts are beings, souls. A tree is a being, a bird is a being, a rock is a being. Suddenly, the world of things disappears. “Thing” is the interpretation of these idiots and the drunkard mind. Because of this process everything becomes dull. Because of this process only the surface is touched. Because of this process you miss the reality; you live in a dream.