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Since I could no longer maintain my very active participation in life in a physical way, I was forced, by the universe, as it were, to find other outlets for my energy. I decided this would be the perfect time to not only catch up on my reading, but also to master the art of meditation which might assist in my investigation into this question of Eternal Life. Several years earlier I had found a book on a “bargain table” in a book store entitled Jn Search of the Miraculous by P.D. Ouspensky. The blurb on the cover said: “The noted author of Tertium Organum combines the logic of a mathematician with the vision of a mystic in his quest for solutions to the problems of Man and the Universe”. Since it was a bargain and promised to reveal secrets about our world, naturally, I bought it immediately. When I got home and tried to read it, it proved to be rather dry, and I gave it up. It had lain on the shelf ever after. But now that I was bedridden, the door was wide open to reading as much as I liked. In that sense, it was a blessing. So, I remembered this book that I had put aside; it seemed that a book that promised insight to the issues I was struggling with - even a very dry book - didn’t seem like such a bad idea when I could do nothing else. I asked for it, and I realized pretty quickly that this book would go to the top of the list of “forbidden works” according to the elders of the church, but I didn’t care. After my experiences with the church over the past few years, the teachings were rapidly declining as the standard by which reality ought to be measured. I was still “on guard” against “evil ideas”, but I was sure that I could filter out anything too “dangerous” in a work that promised insight on the issues for which I was seeking answers. Everything was fine for about 17 pages, and I was getting “into” the style of writing and found it to be deeply interesting and then - well - then this mysterious “G” (about whom I knew nothing), made a remark that completely knocked the wind out of my still mostly Protestant sails. In response to Ouspensky’s speculation that, in the industrial age, humans were becoming more “mechanized” and had stopped thinking, “There is another kind of mechanization which is much more dangerous: being a machine oneself. Have you ever thought about the fact that all people themselves are machines? ...Look, all those people you see are simply machines - nothing more. ... You think there is something that chooses its own path, something that can stand against mechanization; you think that not everything is equally mechanical.” 37 High Strangeness — Part One soon it was located and brought to me. Gurdjieff said: