And this is the purpose of meditation: to give you small glimpses that you are not the mind. If even for a few moments the mind stops, you are still there! On the contrary, you are more, overflowing with being. When the mind stops it is as if a drainage which was continuously draining you has stopped. Suddenly you are overflowing with energy. You feel more!

If even for a single moment you become aware that the mind is not there but “I am,” you have reached a deep core of truth. Then it will be easy to drop the mind. You are not the mind, otherwise how can you drop yourself? The identification has to be dropped first, then the mind can be dropped.

The whole Gurdjieff method is how to get unidentified. Next time a desire comes, look at it. Say within yourself, “Okay, I will watch where this mind is moving.” And you will feel a distance, you are looking at it. Who is this looker, the spectator? And the desire moves and creates dreams.

Sometimes you may forget, sometimes you may become one with the desire. Pull yourself together again, look at the desire again: the desire is moving on its own. It is as if a cloud has entered, a thought has come into the sky of your being. Just look at it, watch it. And remember, if you can be unidentified even for a fragment of a second – the desire is there and you are here, and there is a distance – suddenly there is illumination, a light has happened to you.

Now you know that the mind works on its own, it is a mechanism. You can drop it! You may not use it, you may use it; you are the master. Now the slave, the mechanism, is put in its place; it is no longer the master. Then dropping is possible. When you are different from it, only then is dropping possible.

Meditation, witnessing, silently sitting and looking at the mind, will be of much help. Not forcing, simply sitting and looking. Not doing much, just watching as one watches birds flying in the sky. Just lying down on the ground and watching, nothing to do, indifferent… Not your concern really, where they are going; they are going on their own.

Remember, thoughts are also just like birds: they are moving on their own. And sometimes it happens that the thoughts of the people who are around you enter into your sky, your thoughts go on entering into their sky. That’s why sometimes you feel that with some man you suddenly become sad; with some other man you suddenly feel an upsurge of energy and happiness and delight. Just looking at somebody, being near him, something changes in your mood.

It happens even with places. You go into a house and suddenly a gloom settles on you. You go into another house, and suddenly you feel light, as if wings have come to you, you can fly, you are weightless. You enter a crowd and you are no longer yourself, something has changed. You enter another crowd, again something has changed.