Gurdjieff played unbearable tricks on people

George Gurdjieff, who lived in Russia in the early part of the twentieth century, was a wonderful master. But Gurdjieff was known as a rascal saint because his methods were very drastic and he did crazy things with people. He played unbearable tricks on people!
He had a powerful presence in England and when he spoke, people wanted to listen. If Gurdjieff was going to speak on a particular evening at six o’ clock, five hundred people would come to one great hall somewhere in London. If somebody was late by even a minute, the doors would be closed. So people came at six o’ clock and they waited… six-thirty, seven, eight, nine o’ clock; they just kept waiting. Every fifteen minutes, Gurdjieff’s disciples would come and say, “He will be coming now.” Like this, people were kept waiting till ten o’ clock.

Then the disciples would come and say, “Gurdjieff is not going to speak today. Today night at twelve o’ clock, he is going to speak in another town, which is a hundred kilometers away.” So out of these five hundred people, fifty people would leave for that town to be there at twelve o’clock. The rest would be tired and would go home. In the next town also, these fifty people were kept waiting till morning. In the early hours of the morning, the disciples would say, “Gurdjieff is not going to speak here. He is going to speak tomorrow afternoon at twelve o’ clock in some other place.” Only five of the fifty people would go there. Then Gurdjieff would come and say, “That’s good. I want to speak only to these five people. The others just came for entertainment. It is good that they are gone.” And he spoke only to these five people.

For Lords and Ladies
In Germany, he opened an ashram which was known as a camp. The elite of European society – lords, counts and countesses – came to these camps. These people, who had never worked in their lives, would be given spades, pick axes and crow bars and Gurdjieff would say, “Today, you must dig this trench with tremendous intensity. Do not even break for lunch.” They would all start digging the trench because when the Master says something, there must be some purpose. By evening, they would all be dead tired and in unbearable pain. When Gurdjieff sees that they cannot bear it anymore, he would say, “Okay, just dig a little more and then close the trench and come.” These people would go mad. For days together he would keep doing this with them. By this time, ninety percent of the people would run away from the camps because they had their Rolls Royces’ waiting. They were that kind of people. Then Gurdjieff would take the remaining ten percent and do the actual work with them.

Excerpted from Sadhguru.org. The 134th birth anniversary of George Gurdjieff was observed on January 13.

Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev