Gurdjieff used to say, sometimes to very prominent people, famous in some way or other great authors, painters, poets, politicians, the people who dominate this world, the great egoists… He used to say to these people a very significant thing — remember it. Suddenly he would say to them, “You have a very good facade. Now to say to a politician, to a president of a country or to a prime minister or to a king, “You have a very good facade,” is to invite trouble. And Gurdjieff lived his whole life in trouble. But there is no other way. He also used to say, more than once… Whenever some egoist would ask him, “Do you love me? Do you like me?” this was his answer: “For what you could be I have nothing but benevolence, but as you are I hate you — back to your grandmother!” This is not diplomacy: this is creating enemies.
Jesus must have been a really great artist in creating enemies because he was only thirty-three when he was crucified, and there were only three years of work because he appeared at the age of thirty. Up to that time, he was with the mystery schools, going around the world to Egypt, to India, and the possibility is even to Tibet and to Japan. Hence the Bible has no record of his years of preparation; the record is very abrupt. Something about his childhood is said, very fragmentary. And only once is he mentioned: when he was twelve years of age and he started arguing with the priests in the temple — that’s all. Then there is a gap of eighteen years… nothing is mentioned.
Now a man like Jesus cannot just live an ordinary life for eighteen years and then suddenly explode into Christhood; that is not possible. These eighteen years he was moving with different Masters, with different systems, getting initiated into different mystery schools, learning whatsoever was available, getting in tune with as many Masters as possible. He appears at the age of thirty and by the age of thirty-three, he is crucified. In three years he really did a good job! He was quick! You cannot think that he was diplomatic; he was the most undiplomatic man ever. In fact, that’s the way the awakened people behave.
What exactly is diplomacy, Satsanga?
“Daddy, what is diplomacy?” asked little Bill, just home from school.
“Well, son, it is like this,” replied his dad. “If I were to say to your mother, ‘Your face would stop a clock,’ that would be stupidity. But if I were to say, ‘When I look at you, time stands still,’ that is diplomacy!”
Yes, you would like me to be a little more diplomatic; that will save a lot of trouble. But that will save you also from the truth, remember. Truth brings many troubles. It is bound to be so because people live in lies, and when you bring truth into the world, their lies, their lives rooted in lies, react. A great antagonism is bound to happen. And people as they are, in their unconsciousness, cannot live without lies.
Friedrich Nietzsche is right. He says, “Please, don’t destroy people’s lies, their illusions, because if you destroy their illusions they will not be able to live at all; they will collapse.” They will not find anything worth living for. They live because of the illusions; the illusions keep on giving them hope. They live in the tomorrow which never comes. They live in their ambitions which are never fulfilled; but whether fulfilled or not, through those ambitions and desires and illusions and expectations and hopes they can drag their lives up to their graves. If you destroy their illusions, they may simply drop dead here and now because then there would be no point in living. And whenever you think of suicide, remember, why are you thinking of suicide? Some hope has turned sour, some expectation has turned into frustration, some desire has proved futile.
You have become aware; even in your unawareness, a little ray of awareness has penetrated you. You have seen, maybe only for a moment, a glimpse, just like lightning in the dark night. For a moment all was light and you have seen that the way you are living is false and there is no fulfilment if you live in a false way. Immediately the idea of suicide arises in you. More and more people are committing suicide today, more than ever. More people commit suicide in the West than in the East. It looks very strange, very illogical. It should not be so, because in the East people are starving but they don’t commit suicide. In the West, they have all that man has always desired. People have two houses — one in the city, one in the mountains or on the seabeach, in the country. They have two-car garages…and all kinds of gadgets that technology has made available.
For the first time, the West has succeeded in being affluent, but more people are committing suicide there than in the East. Why? — for the simple reason that the East can still hope and the West is becoming aware that there is no hope. When you don’t have something you can hope for it; when you have it, how can you hope anymore? The thing is there and nothing has happened through it. You have the money, you have a good wife, children, husband, prestige, respectability — and suddenly you become aware in this affluence that deep down you are hollow, poor, a beggar and nothing else. The whole effort of achieving all these things has failed. Things are there, but no fulfilment has happened through them. This is the cause of more suicide in the West. In the West, too, more Americans commit suicide than anybody else because they are the most affluent, they are the most in a state of shock: “All the hopes for which we have lived for centuries are fulfilled, and yet nothing is fulfilled.” And this is going to be so more and more: more and more people will commit suicide.
Friedrich Nietzsche is correct: the ordinary man cannot live without illusions. Don’t take his illusions away from him! And the Master does exactly that: he tries to take your illusions away. He creates a situation in which, ordinarily, you would commit suicide. But if you are fortunate enough to have communion with a Master, the same situation creates sannyas. It is the same situation, the SAME crisis! This is my observation: that true sannyas happens only when you have come to the verge of suicide. When you see that the outside world is finished, then there are only two alternatives left: either commit suicide and be finished because there is nothing to live for any more, or turn in. “The outer world has failed, now let us try the inner”: that is sannyas. Sannyas and suicide are two aspects of the same coin. If you are focused and obsessed with the outside, then suicide; if you are a little loose, flexible, then sannyas. But a Master cannot be diplomatic. He has to create this crisis in which suicide is possible — and also sannyas, also transformation, also a new birth. But new birth is possible only when you die to the old when you die to the past.
