I love George Gurdjieff but I don’t agree with him. He used to call the search “the work.” He has a reason to say so: his reason was that all else that you are doing is futile, it is just making castles in sand which will disappear. Do something which will be eternally yours, which will be forever a part of your being.

Because of this he called his own style of life, his teachings, his philosophy, “the work.” He said, “Except this, all else is childish, stupid. People are wasting time, a time which is immensely valuable in which they can crystallize themselves, in which they can become what is hidden in them: the golden splendor.”

In a way, he was right. But I don’t call my search “the work” because to me…the “work”…the very word perspires! It really stinks. I call it playfulness, I call it joyfulness, I call it a hilarious search. And it is certainly hilarious, because you are searching yourself!

Just say “Yaa-Hoo” and be yourself there is not much search in it. I cannot call it “the work.”

My people are not workers, laborers, slaves.

My people are lovers of truth.

In the ultimate sense, it is a love affair.

It cannot be anything else than a love affair, falling in tune with existence, dancing with the trees and the winds, being silent with the stars and the sky, listening to the roaring ocean and feeling this all as your own empire.

The moment your heart beats with the heartbeat of the universe, nothing more is needed. This is not work, this is love; love in the ultimate sense.

Gurdjieff says, “It is a terror to behold, a joy to experience. It is the connecting ends of a great and secret circle closing the gap betwixt all and nothing, it is the work.”

I have told you, in one sense he is right. But in a very ordinary sense he is right. He was not a poet. He was a tremendously beautiful man, but he had no sense of beauty. To him, everything was hard work and the meaning that he is giving to his work is creating a “secret circle closing the gap between all and nothing.” But that gap can only be closed by a loving silence, not by any work.

And there is no need to go far away to search. Just this moment, if you are silent, you are all and you are nothing. The gap is closed. And certainly it is not work. It is a simple intelligence, a loving intelligence. But Gurdjieff had never known any love. Although he has left behind him in perhaps a dozen countries, boys and girls he made love to many women but that was not love. He never asked the woman, “What is your name?” because he never wanted to see her again; what is the point of unnecessarily noting her address and telephone number?

I have come across one girl…the moment I saw her she had come to me I could not believe my eyes. She looked so much like Gurdjieff. I asked her, “Do you know your father’s name?”

She said, “It is strange. You don’t ask my name, you ask my father’s name.”