How many books have I talked about in the P.P.S? Hmmm?

“Forty, Osho.”

Forty?

“Yes, Osho.”

I am a stubborn man you know. I am going to end it at fifty whatsoever happens; otherwise I will start another P.P.P.S. My stubbornness has really repaid me: it has helped me to fight all kinds of nonsense that the world is full of. It has been of tremendous help in saving my own intelligence against the mediocrity that surrounds everyone everywhere. So I don’t feel at all sorry that I am stubborn; in fact, I thank God that he has made me this way: utterly stubborn.

The first book is by Bennett, an Englishman, a perfect Englishman. The book is about an absolutely unknown Indian mystic, Shivapuri Baba. The world has come to know about him only through Bennett’s book.

Shivapuri Baba was certainly one of the rarest flowerings, particularly in India where so many idiots are pretending to be mahatmas. To find a man like Shivapuri Baba in India is really either luck or else a tremendous work of research. There are five hundred thousand mahatmas in India; that is the actual number. To find a real man among this crowd is almost impossible.

But Bennett was fortunate in many ways. He was also the first man to discover Gurdjieff. It was neither Ouspensky nor Nicoll, nor anyone other than Bennett. Bennett found Gurdjieff in a refugee camp in Constantinople. Those were the days of the Russian Revolution. Gurdjieff had to leave Russia; on the way he was shot twice before he escaped. Our styles are different, but in a strange way destiny may play the same game again….

Gurdjieff in a refugee camp! – just thinking of it, I can’t believe humanity can fall so low. Putting a Buddha, or Gurdjieff, Jesus or Bodhidharma in a refugee camp…. When Bennett discovered him, Gurdjieff was standing in a food queue. The food was given only once a day, and the queue was long. There were thousands of refugees who had left Russia because the communists were murdering people without any consideration who they were murdering, or for what. You will be surprised to know they murdered almost ten million Russians.

How did Bennett discover Gurdjieff? Gurdjieff sitting among his disciples would not be difficult to recognize, but Bennett recognized him in dirty rotten clothes, unwashed for many days. How did he recognize him in that queue? Those eyes – you cannot hide them. Those eyes – whether the man is sitting on a golden throne, or standing in a refugee camp, they are the same. Bennett brought Gurdjieff to the West.