If you love a car, in a certain way you become one with it.,. You come closer and closer, and if the car is stolen, something of your being is stolen. If something goes wrong with the car, something goes wrong with you. If you fall in love with a house you become one with the house. Love means identification: coming so close, as if you put two wax candles closer, closer and closer, and put them very close, they become one. The heat, the burning of the flame, by and by they become one. This is identification. Two flames coming closer and closer and closer, they become one.

And when you are identified with something you have lost your soul. This is the meaning of losing your soul in the world: you have become identified with millions of things, and with everything a part of you has become a thing. Choice brings identification. Identification brings a hypnotic state of sleep.

Gurdjieff has only one thing to teach to his disciples, and that is not to be identified. His whole school, all his techniques, methods, situations, are based on single one base, and that base is: not to be identified.

You are crying… When you are crying, you have become one with the crying; there is nobody to watch it, nobody is there to see it. Be alert and aware of it. You are lost in crying, you have become the tears and the red, swollen eyes and your heart is in a crisis. Teachers like Gurdjieff, when they say not to be identified, they say, “Cry, nothing is wrong in it, but stand by the side and look at it, don’t be identified.” And it is a wonderful experience if you can stand by the side. Cry, let the body cry, let the tears flow, don’t suppress it because suppression helps nobody, but stand by the side and watch.

This can be done, because your inner being is a witness, it is never a doer. Whenever you think it is a doer there is identification. It is never a doer. You can walk the whole earth – your inner being never walks a single step. You can dream millions of dreams – your inner being never dreams a single dream. All movements are on the surface. Deep in the depth of your being there is no movement. All movements are on the periphery, just like a wheel moves, but at the center nothing moves. At the center everything remains as it is, and the wheel moves on the center.

Remember the center. Watch your behavior, your actions, your identifications, and a distance is created; by and by a distance comes into existence: the watcher and the doer become two. You can see yourself laughing, you can see yourself crying, you can see yourself walking, eating, making love; you can see many things, whatsoever is going around, and you remain the seer. You don’t jump and become one with whatsoever you are seeing.

This is the trouble, whatsoever happens. You start saying you are hungry, you say, “I am hungry” – you have become identified with the hunger. But just look inside – are you hunger or is hunger happening to you? Are you hunger or you are simply aware of the hunger happening in the body? You cannot be hunger; otherwise, when the hunger has disappeared, where you will be? When you have eaten well and the belly is full and you are satiated, where you will be if you are hunger? Evaporated? No. Then immediately you become the satiety. Before the hunger disappears a new identification has to be created; you become the satiety.