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the teachings of Jesus in the Bible itself consists only of his purported public discourses. There was a lot missing, and Gurdjieff spoke as one with authority. What’s more, it rang of truth. The book was retrieved again. I was curious to see what further remarks might be made about Christianity. Ouspensky asked the same question I would have asked myself: “For a man of Western culture, it is of course difficult to believe and to accept the idea that an ignorant fakir, a naive monk, or a yogi who has retired from life may be on the way to evolution while an educated European, armed with ‘exact knowledge’ and all the latest methods of investigation, has no chance whatever and is moving in a circle from which there is no escape”. 22 Att £0 2.2 ~~ A. Yes, that is because people believe in progress and culture. There is no progress whatever. Everything is just the same as it was thousands, and tens of thousands, of years ago. The outward form changes. The essence does not change. Man remains just the same. ‘Civilized’ and ‘cultured’ people live with exactly the same interests as the most ignorant savages. Modern civilization is based on violence and slavery and fine words. ...What do you expect? People are machines. Machines have to be blind and unconscious, they cannot be otherwise, and all their actions have to correspond to their nature. Everything happens. No one does anything. ‘Progress’ and ‘civilization,’ in the real meaning of these words, can appear only as the result of conscious efforts. They cannot appear as the result of unconscious mechanical actions. And what conscious effort can there be in unconscious, and so are a thousand machines, or a hundred thousand, or a million. And the unconscious activity of a million machines must necessarily result in destruction and extermination. It is precisely in unconscious involuntary manifestations that all evil lies. You do not yet understand and cannot imagine all the results of this evil. But the time will come when you will understand. Gurdjieff was right. He was speaking at the beginning of the First World War, in the opening rounds of a century of unprecedented warfare. My copy of In Search of the Miraculous flew across the room at least a dozen more times. I fumed and raged inside each time I was confronted with an idea that, upon reflection and comparison to my observations and experiences, seemed a far better explanation of the dynamics of human existence than anything I had ever read in my life. 41 High Strangeness — Part One Gurdjieff answered: machines? And if one machine is unconscious, then a hundred machines are As for this “unconscious evil” that Gurdjieff mentioned, he explained in the Tale of the Evil Magician: