I remember my grandfather telling me about an immense forest in the Gran
Chaco, a region of Argentina, which is called “El Impenetrable”. He said that there were no paths and the only way to advance was to use machetes to cut your way through. —Then I imagined that forest to be mysterious, the home of goblins and creatures of the night.
There are imaginations of children and others of adults, the subject I want to tell in this note. A fellow student who knew about my practices in the Gurdjieff line, imagined that there were secret techniques, only accessible to the initiated, and that I would not reveal them. To my surprise, I could not convince him that there were no secrets.
Belief in magic words or secret methods is common to all cultures.
There is a story on that subject. It is about an old master and his disciples, a
very prestigious old guru surrounded by young practitioners, eager to find out what were the secret techniques that made him famous in eastern lands.
Although they had little knowledge, they knew that the practices when they woke up were very important because they resonated throughout the day.
There must be the secret.
Then a spokesperson for the group asks the teacher what he was doing when he got up. Obviously, the old man understood the intent of the question and smiled.
—First, I wash myself, later I make the tea, and then… I drink the tea.
The young people looked at each other. It wasn’t the answer they expected.
They waited a few moments in case the teacher added something.
Finally, the young spokesman protested: —But we do the same!
—It’s not the same —the old guru says.
—I wash, I make the tea, I drink the tea.
The master was not referring to the egocentric “I” that we use in daily life. He was trying to explain in his own way that he was present in every act, here and now, living in the state of presence: the result of a life of practice. There were no secrets.
According to Gurdjieff it is the normal state of a human being, or should be. But it was lost in the distant past due to force majeure, which is insinuated in the dark myths of the fall, of the lost paradise, the time of dreaming, and in the legends of several cultures.
That’s a long story I’ll leave for another note. The purpose is to try to return to that lucid state, coming out of the bustle of the variable ideas, feelings and moods that are considered perfectly “normal” in today’s culture.
Some criticize these purposes, believing that this is a selfish “salvation” that leaves others behind. But that is impossible because we are like the leaves of a huge tree that is humanity, and others will inherit what we do.
Someday there will be a wide road to lucid awareness for many of us.
Now we move forward by opening up one’s own paths in the impenetrable.
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