All the scientists, even the great ones, have proved foolish in many ways outside their specific field. They behave childishly. Bennett was a scientist and mathematician of a certain standing, but he wavered, he missed. He started looking for another master again. And it is not that he remained with Shivapuri either…. Shivapuri Baba was a very old man when Bennett met him. He was almost one hundred and ten years old. He was really made of steel. He lived for almost one and a half centuries. He was seven feet tall and one hundred and fifty years old and still there was no sign that he was going to die. He decided to leave the body – it was his decision.

Shivapuri was a silent man, he did not teach. Particularly a man who had known Gurdjieff and his tremendous teaching would find it very ordinary to be with Shivapuri Baba. Bennett wrote his book and started searching again for a master. Shivapuri Baba was not even dead yet.

Then, in Indonesia, Bennett found Mohammed Subud, the founder of the movement called Subud. Subud is a short form of Sushil Buddha-Dharma; it is just the first letter of these three words. What foolishness! Bennett started introducing Mohammed Subud, a very good man, but not a master…nothing even compared to Shivapuri Baba; no question arises about Gurdjieff. Bennett brought Mohammed Subud to the West, and started introducing him as the successor to Gurdjieff. Now this is utter stupidity!

But Bennett writes beautifully, mathematically, systematically. His best book is Shivapuri Baba. Although Bennett was a fool, even if you allow a monkey to sit at a typewriter once in a while he may come upon something beautiful – perhaps a statement which only a buddha could make – just by knocking the typewriter keys here and there. But he will not understand what he has written.

Bennett continued in this way. Soon he became disillusioned with Mohammed Subud and started searching for yet another master. Poor fellow, his whole life he was searching and searching unnecessarily. He had already found the right man in Gurdjieff. He has written about Gurdjieff, and what he says is beautiful, efficient, but his heart is dark, there is no light in it. Still, I count his book as one of the best. You can see that I am impartial.

Second: this is a strange book, nobody reads it. You may not even have heard about it, yet it was written in America. The book is Listen Little Man, by Wilhelm Reich. It is a very small book, but it reminds one of the Sermon on the Mount, Tao Te Ching, Thus Spake Zarathustra, The Prophet. In reality Reich was not of that status to write such a book, but he must have been possessed by some unknown spirit.

Listen Little Man created much antagonism towards Reich, particularly among the professional psychoanalysts, his colleagues, because he was calling everyone “little man” – and he was thinking he was so great? I want to tell you: he was! Not in the sense of a buddha, but in the same sense as Sigmund Freud, Carl Gustav Jung, Assagioli. He belongs to the same category. He was a great man – of course still a man, not superman, but great. And it was not out of his egoism that this book was born; he could not help it, he had to write it. It is almost like when a woman is pregnant, she has to give birth to the child. He carried this small book within himself for years, resisting the idea of writing it because he knew perfectly well it was going to create hell for him. And it did. After that book he was condemned from every corner.