The story is about an old failed singer who receives a call offering him a replacement concert gig at the Olympia theater, replacing another singer who had a heart attack. He eagerly practices and prepares, anxiously awaiting a possible telegram cancelling the gig if the other singer recovers by noon. At noon, there is a knock at the door, and a telegram is delivered. He reads it with trembling hands in front of his anxious wife. Upon reading it, he exclaims in triumph that it's nothing important - his mother just died, so the concert is still on.

1. Mullah
The Wisdom of Jokes
by Alejandro Jodorowsky
The Wisdom of Jokes, Part One
A Baby on her Back.
A tenant living in an apartment building in a big city goes to the office of the
groundskeeper, who has just had a baby.
“If I may,” says the surprised tenant, “I’d like to ask you an indiscreet
question: you’re single, right?”
“Yes,” replies the groundskeeper.
“And who, might I ask, is the lucky father of your charming baby?”
“As for the father, I have absolutely no idea,” begins the
groundskeeper. “You know perfectly well that when I’m cleaning the stairs,
I’m too busy to turn around at every little occasion.”
This joke reminds me of a story about Mullah Nasrudin, the hero of beautiful
initiating Sufi anecdotes:
Mullah Nasrudin, sitting in the shade, looks at the road whereas his
wife, seated beside him but with her back to his, looks the other way. She
suddenly says to her husband, “how beautiful! There are so many marvelous
birds and clouds. What a truly splendid landscape!”

2. “I don’t see anything… on my side there are neither clouds nor birds.”
Mullah Nasrudin makes no effort whatsoever to look at his wife’s side; he
limits himself to seeing his own world.
Likewise, the groundskeeper pays absolutely no attention to what’s
going on behind her back. It forms no part of her world and, therefore, it
doesn’t matter to her.
I worry exclusively about my own little universe and what happens
around me doesn’t concern me. Nevertheless, I suffer the consequences.
When someone says “my reality,” I reply, “what reality? Describe it to
me!”
What are the dimensions of my world, if I’m a groundskeeper who
cleans the stairs and I end up pregnant because I don’t turn around?
In this world where we’ve lost religious tradition and where God
represents a sort of infantile object that’s instilled in us during our early
years of life, I often ask people about divinity: “How do you see God? What
does he represent to you, since you speak of him? Describe him to me! By
describing God, you’re doing nothing more than describing your own reality.
If God exists somewhere, it’s here. If hell exists, it’s also here. Everything
that is exists in the moment. Therefore, if everything is present in the
moment, describe that moment as it is for you.”
When the person is incapable of replying, I propose another game. I
ask two questions. “First, let’s begin with the assumption that you’re
completely atheist. If God doesn’t exist and you must invent him, how would
you invent him?”
In the event that the person is stubborn and doesn’t want to answer, I
ask another question: “If God doesn’t exist for you, on what premise do you
base your reality? What force governs your reality and what consequences
do you extract from it?”
What I’m trying to say is, “who is that baby you’re carrying around
inside you? One way or another you’re going to find out that you’re carrying
a baby inside you, as a result of the fact that you fail to perceive all of
reality, that you fail to turn around, that you fail to think what the other
might think and you fail to see what humanity sees. You see nothing, not

3. the millions and millions of years of the past, nor the millions and millions of
years of the future. You fail to see the infinite extension of matter. Where
are you situated? Answer me this: what is your reality?”
If God didn’t exist, we would have to invent him. We’d have to invent
him to be the most magnificent, most incredible, least superficial, most
tolerant, most loving, most beautiful, and most powerful being. He would be
accessible to all, without religious wars, without exclusion, a sort of total
being for the entire world.
Given that day after day we invent our reality, likewise we can invent
our divinity.
The Dragon and the Maiden.
The stories of Mullah Nasrudin have always been considered initiating, but
what is an initiating story? It’s a story from which we can extract a lesson
about life.
Where do we find them? Anywhere. Everything is initiating. A tarot
card is initiating. Why? Not for the truth it transmits, rather for the
projections, associations of ideas, and reflections it awakens.
An initiated person is one who utilizes everything that falls into his
hands as a symbol or an object of wisdom.
In Iran and other Islamic countries, children tell the stories of Mullah
Nasrudin as if they were mere jokes; they find them funny. The wise, on the
other hand, use those same jokes as paths of knowledge. It’s been known
for a long time that jokes are profound in nature.
Here’s a little joke I found illustrated in a “train station book”:
From his castle high above, the king sees a knight arriving. The
knight is mounted on a horse and, quite content, carrying a
dragon in his arms. The king shouts: “Stupid! Your mission was
to kill the dragon and bring back the maiden!”

4. In the Marseille Tarot, Strength is card number eleven. The animal against
which the person is fighting could be a dog or a lion, but also a dragon as
well. But is the person fighting or dancing? Perhaps he’s collaborating with
the beast? Perhaps they have a mutual understanding of one another?
What do the dragon and the maiden represent? A maiden is a virgin.
For Jung, she would be the anima, the sacred part that we all carry within
us, our soul. The purest, most virgin part of ourselves. Our spiritual center.
The dragon is our dark side, our fiery side, our mysterious unconscious
that causes us fear. Saint George sank his lance into the animal the same
way that the spirit, in order to achieve self-realization, must penetrate into
the depths of its own mystery. Enter into its unconscious to liberate the
maiden. In other words, it must deeply enter into the coal in order to pluck
the diamond from its core.
We are simultaneously the knight, the king, the maiden, and the
dragon. Regardless of the role in question, our will insists that we must work
on ourselves.
If your father is destroying your life by keeping you in his
concentration camp, it’s up to you to get out of that camp! How much longer
are you going to remain tied to this Oedipus, the incestuous couple in which
you’re both victim and executioner, simply because in the past it was he who
was the victim and Hitler was the executioner?
The king commands: “Enough! Let’s kill this dragon!” So your spirit
starts up: your intelligence, your being advance on your horse, full of
strength and might and confront the dragon.
But what does it mean to kill the dragon? It means to deeply penetrate
it with the lance. To profoundly enter into the mystery of your unconscious
and ask: “What do you want?”
“I fear I may be homosexual. What can I do?” somebody asked me.
“Live a homosexual experience,” I replied. “It’s the most logical thing
to do: if you’re not homosexual, you’ll know; if you are, you’ll enjoy the
experience. It always brings us happiness to simply be who we really are.
Well then, confront yourself! But don’t choose an ugly guy you don’t like as
the subject of your experience, because in that case you’re just setting
yourself up for failure. Pick someone you really like! And be careful about
AIDS—take the appropriate precautions.

5. We enter profoundly into the dragon and ask ourselves: “Who am I?”
What are our criminal, cannibalistic, homosexual and incestuous impulses?
What are they?
Once we see the dragon, we direct him toward the light, toward
virginity, toward the diamond, toward faith, toward everything. I channel my
animal toward my spiritual self-realization.
But what happens to people all too often? They want to kill their anima
and awaken their dragon. They want to sit back with the dragon. The result:
they come back with the monster that’s going to destroy the castle.
There are individuals who have killed the maiden and full of pride
return carrying the beast in their arms. You can see them in the
supermarket strolling along with their dragon, feeding him fake meat, fake
caviar…
And so it is that this little joke is converted into a good initiating story.
Everything can be converted into an initiating story.
Déjà vu
A Frenchman and a Belgian are watching a movie.
“I’ll bet you a hundred francs the cowboy on the white horse is
going to fall off his horse,” says the Frenchman.
“You’re on,” accepts the Belgian.
Ten minutes later, the cowboy falls off his horse.
“Ok,” the Belgian concedes, “looks like you win a hundred
francs.”
“Actually, I already saw the movie,” confesses the Frenchman.
“Me too, but I never would have imagined that the cowboy was
going to fall off his horse the second time I watched the movie.”

6. I was wondering what lesson I could extract from this joke when I realized
just how often I run into situations like this one. The truth is, they’re
everywhere.
The typical example is the person who declares: “I married a woman
who didn’t love me and now she’s left me.”
Five years later, the same man states, “I married a second woman.
She didn’t love me and now she’s abandoned me.”
Ten years later, the same guy says, “nobody loves me; my third wife
just left.”
You could say he believes the movie recorded in his brain is going to
change; meanwhile, he does nothing but emotionally repeat the exact same
act. This is a very common occurrence: repetitive cycles.
I once met a writer who was in love with a woman. He remained in
love with her for seven years, at the end of which she married a famous
writer. This depressed him quite a bit. He quit writing and began painting.
He soon fell in love with another woman. It was a case of impossible love,
just as before, because she never devoted herself to him. This situation also
lasted seven years, at the end of which the woman married a famous
painter. He developed a complex and quit painting. Shortly thereafter, he
began to study the flute. He met a woman. He fell in love with her for seven
years, but then the woman left him for an orchestra conductor.
Twenty-one years of impossible love! All because he was trying to
escape from what?
When an impossible love repeats itself over the course of twenty-one
years in a row, that indicates that the man in question hates women. It’s as
simple as that! God keep me from people who live impossible love! When
you talk about impossible love, you’re really talking about hatred, because
love is either possible, or it’s not love.
Now you might think I’m crazy. I’m not… I’m just demented, that’s all.
In love, there’s a man, a woman, hormones, aromas… all abounding in
the air… The forces that unite a couple are a mystery. Attraction is
spontaneous. So when a man doesn’t obey the scent it’s because he doesn’t
love. In other words, when the aroma arrives, the man says, “No way! I
prefer ideal love.” And he remains with his ideal love; he continues to cling
to his mother.

7. After a shouting match, this man’s brother went directly to the
mother’s house. He took a shotgun, stuffed the barrel into her mouth and
blew her brains all over her bed…
A mother calls me and says, “What can I do for my son? He takes
drugs, and it hurts me to see him this way…”
“Of course it does! And that’s precisely why he takes drugs, to make
you suffer. What he wants is to ask you for what you never gave him. He’s
destroying himself in front of your very eyes in order to show you how you
yourself have destroyed him.”
“You’re right! I never should have done this or that to him”
“There you go! But it’s never too late. You have to become aware of
what’s going on. You have to go and seek his dragon and look for the death
impulses that have fed themselves against your son.”
This woman could just as easily have said, “I wanted to kill my son.
Now he’s killing himself in front of my own eyes to show me just how much.
A Marvelous Doctor
Two Jewish mothers are chatting:
“My son is a marvelous doctor,” affirms the first. “You absolutely
must go and see him!”
“But there’s nothing wrong with me,” replies the other. “Why
must I go?”
“He’s such a good doctor,” the first proudly proclaims, “that even
if you don’t have anything wrong, he’ll find something wrong
with you.”
Sometimes we try to help, but doing so, perhaps we do more harm than
good by forcing the other to receive something they didn’t ask for.
A therapist’s job requires extreme delicacy. It’s not an occupation that
permits you to shine your own ego, nor polish your fame and celebrity. If

8. you want to cure someone, you have to do so with all due respect, intervene
discreetly and never force them to receive your service. When we try to
prove we’re some sort of miracle curer, that’s when we cause the most
harm.
God keep us from those who make it their profession to cure with the
goal of reaffirming themselves! “I’m nothing, I’m worthless: I need to do
something.” As Gurdjieff would say, “they’re so lazy with themselves that
they want to help others.”
It’s pure laziness: I’m unable to cure myself, so I worry about others.
It’s at that very moment that catastrophe strikes: I want to affirm myself
and I do so based on the other. How? By creating problems that don’t exist
for him.
The Smoker and his Fumes.
A man and a woman share a compartment on a train. Along the
way, the man begins to get hot. He takes off his tie. A little later,
due to the fact that he’s feeling even hotter, he takes off his
jacket. Then he takes off his shirt, soon followed by his pants
and socks. In a matter of seconds, he’s completely nude and the
woman, more than disgusted, is on the verge of an attack. Just
then, the man takes a cigarette out of his pants pocket and,
before lighting up, he courteously asks his traveling companion,
“do you mind if I smoke, ma’am?”
I don’t know why, but this story strikes me as profound… It deals with the
quality of communication between us… Quite often we conduct ourselves in a
totally oblivious manner then suddenly, as an act of reflection, by force of
habit, we say something so banal as, “do you mind if I smoke?”
It’s as if all our clumsiness, our offences, our faux pas, etc., that we
committed before suddenly didn’t exist… We’re not conscious of the way we
communicate with each other.
Good News

9. This is the story of an old singer who has failed in his career.
Always awaiting a contract offer, he lives with his wife in a
rundown, barely furnished apartment; nevertheless, he has a
table and a telephone just in case someone were to call and offer
him contract.
One day, the phone rings:
”Is this the home of singer X?”
“Yes.”
“I’m talent agent Z. Singer Y just suffered a heart attack. It’s
likely he won’t be able to sing in the concert at the Olympia
tomorrow night. We need you to take his place. Do you have a
repertoire ready?”
“Yes, of course I do! I’ve got a whole program put together,”
responds the old singer, stupefied by his excellent good luck.
“Good! Show up tomorrow at six p.m. at the Olympia.”
“I’ll be there! You can count on me!”
“One more thing,” adds the agent, “we’re still hoping for the
rapid recovery of our star. If you don’t hear from us by way of a
telegram to the contrary before tomorrow at noon, consider your
contract signed!”
“At noon?”
“Yes, twelve noon precisely. From that moment on, we’ll know
exactly where we stand,” the agent concludes and hangs up.
Excited as a bug, the singer tirelessly practices his repertoire. He
doesn’t stop looking at himself in the mirror for even a moment,
confirming all the while that his suit looks good on him. The
whole night is torture, during which he prays for the death of his
rival. At dawn, the man is exhausted after staying up the entire
night. He begs the telephone not to ring. He neither drinks nor
eats.
Ten o’clock goes by. Eleven o’clock… Quarter to twelve… Five
minutes to noon… Four… Three… One minute… At exactly midday
there’s a knock at the door. The old singer goes to open it with

10. tears in his eyes. It’s a telegram. With trembling hands he reads
it before the anxious and catastrophic eye of his wife… When he
finishes, he triumphantly exclaims, “Don’t worry! Thank God it’s
nothing important! My mom just died, that’s all!”
This man doesn’t think about anyone but himself. There’s a gap between the
world of the emotions and reality. The latter is displaced by the former,
which acquires greater importance.
Sometimes, the creation of those who work on a masterpiece with a
clear spirit is suddenly blocked by an emotional gap. The past interferes and
prevents them from imagining a positive future when they see a hint of
darkness in the present.
The Little Red Man
A man arrives in tears at his therapist’s office.
“What’s wrong?” asks the specialist.
“Every night when I go to sleep I dream that a little man in a
little red hat and jacket comes to visit me and proposes, ‘Let’s
go pee together!’ And I wet the bed every night! I can’t take it
any more!” the patient sobs.
“Your case isn’t too serious,” comments the psychoanalyst. “I’m
going to give you a solution that will soon free you. The next
time the little red man appears, tell him, ‘I already went!’ and
then he’ll leave you alone.”
“That’s all there is to it?”
“Yes. Just repeat all day long, ‘I already went,’ to condition your
mind to this response.”
The man repeats the sentence all day, on the train, on the
subway, in the office, etc., even as he’s going to bed at night
just prior to falling asleep.
The next day, he returns, crying, to the therapist.

11. “What happened? Did you do as I advised you?” inquires the
specialist.
“Yes, I did!” the patient replies, between sobs.
“Let’s see… calmly tell me everything that happened.”
“I fell asleep and in a dream the little man in the little red hat
and jacket appeared as usual; he said to me, ‘Let’s go pee
together!’ and I replied, ‘I already went.”
“And then?” asks the therapist.
“And then the little red man said: ‘Then let’s go poop together!’”
In this story, my unconscious questions me. If I have a problem of
incontinence, it’s not the little red man that’s responsible. My incontinence is
the manifestation of a real problem inside me. So I go to a “guru” or some
other type of healer in order to find a solution. I look for someone who can
tell me how to suppress the symptom, but in reality I’m shielding myself
behind it. I don’t want to know what’s going on with myself.
For example, my marriage is going bad. I don’t want to be told why
it’s going bad. I just want my wife to come back. I want things to go back to
the way they were before. I don’t want to change. I don’t want to do the
work of introspection. I don’t want to evolve. Zero change!
When I agree to follow the methods of the “guru,” the bad that I’m
able to suppress in one place comes back to haunt me in another. But the
truth remains that I haven’t fundamentally improved my state. I don’t
resolve the problem by changing a symptom, rather by working on myself.
Below is an example of how to work on oneself.
A young woman gave birth to a baby prematurely, in her seventh
month of pregnancy. I advised her to keep the baby attached to her skin for
several hours a day. She followed my recommendation.
“This has done well for my baby, but how long do I have to keep him
next to me?” she asked.

12. “Two months,” I replied, “the time to complete the cycle that he didn’t
live in your womb.”
Later, the young woman told me that the baby was getting better, but
his three-year-old brother was reacting negatively.
“I suppose his behavior is normal,” she added. “I can’t just reject him
or insist that he not be jealous. The boy is only three years old. And he
suffers.”
“Have him participate!” I suggested.
“First the baby, then the child?”
“No, not at all. Share. In a family, nothing is experienced in isolation.
Problems are shared. Problems are collective. Therefore, when you give the
baby your breast, hold your child close to your left side. That way he too will
hear your heart beat and enter in paradise.”
Another problem presented itself. The older brother was included, but
now what about the father? I advised the young woman, “Place the father
beside the child!”
The relationship with the mother’s skin is beneficial, but what about
the relationship with the father’s skin? Contemporary psychoanalysis talks
about the mother’s skin, without ever referring to the father. Nevertheless,
most women know the odor of their father’s armpit. During infancy they curl
up in their father’s arms, with their noses in his armpit. Even though it may
smell bad, for them it’s a sort of divine perfume. When we have a father, his
odor is divine. The father’s skin and his physical presence are just as
important as the mother’s. Therefore, in a family with children, we need
skin-to-skin contact.
At first, maybe there were problems with the delivery. Later, the
mother didn’t have skin-to-skin contact with her baby and now she doesn’t
want it. The job at hand is to overcome the rejection. Rejection of contact is
one thing; realization of this rejection is another. And to decide not to give in
to this rejection (which, after all, doesn’t correspond to our essence) is yet
another. Thus, the woman becomes conscious of her rejection of contact,
but she vanquishes it. It’s possible that working in this manner, to combat
these impulses, the woman might feel bad. Still, once she’s able to
overcome this uneasiness, everything works itself out.

13. If this mother adds other members of the family, she would build a
great pile… I like to see families like great big naked balls where everybody
is arm in arm, immobile, in a big bunch. A complete family, arm in arm. A
complete family tree, including grandparents, great grandparents, father,
mother, children, aunts and uncles… everyone arm in arm and open!
Energy Spheres
Two psychiatrists are having a conversation. One is much older
than the other, but he finds himself in great shape. In contrast,
his colleague is exhausted to the extreme.
“I don’t understand,” suggests the younger psychiatrist, “how
you can listen to all those half-crazy patients all day long and
not be affected by it.”
“And who listens to them?” replies the older psychiatrist, as he
takes out his Energy Spheres. *
The veteran psychiatrist is sharing a lesson with us. In general terms, people
don’t normally want anything more than a presence. The person speaking to
you is effectively speaking to themselves. They don’t demand that you
listen, only that you perform the act of being present and maintain complete
calm. While the other person is unloading their problems, think of the people
who are important to you and fly! Put yourself in the eternal state of being!
From the perspective of eternity, who cares if people tell you whatever it is
they’re telling you?
By the time I was fifty years old, my filmmaking career had arrived at
its end. But at sixty it started up again when someone proposed a film to
me. Even though I never asked him, he paid me to make the film. As for
me, I make myself see these things coming. From the perspective of eternity
and at the point in life where I find myself right now, this almost doesn’t
affect me at all. Success, failure… I have my Energy Spheres in hand.
Someone once told me, “Why should I make more money? I can only
eat two steaks a day!”
With or without the film, I already make a decent living.

14. Life offers many surprising changes, you shouldn’t turn a deaf ear to
all the opportunities that arise unexpectedly… For example, my wife tells me
she’s leaving me in December. I accept it. I take out my Energy Spheres; I
put a halt to stress and worry. What day is today? October 8. I still have
November and December, as well as another three weeks in October. I have
almost three months of problem-free living. Three months without problems,
that’s great! I have her, she’s still at home.
I once suffered a terrible anguish related to death. It was crazy. Until
the age of forty I couldn’t accept the idea that my life was going to stop. But
one day I said to myself, “I’ve had it! This story isn’t for me. What do I love
most in the world? Life, and I suffer because one day I’m going to lose all I
have. I’m disposed to give everything, absolutely everything, to live, and
therefore I have what I love most in the world. Consequently, I choose to
live, I’m going to be content every second. From now on, every second will
be a gift, a jewel, and I’ll live it as such.” I no longer pay attention to that
anguish; it does me absolutely no good. Although we possess a dark side in
our interior, I’m not going to give in to mine. I’ll live the best I can and
that’s all there is to it. If I triumph or not, Energy Spheres; if this or that
happens to me, Energy Spheres… I live with delight the seconds I have at
my disposal.
If I adore a woman, to spend a minute with her is like an eternity, and
an hour is a marvel. I’ll cross the ocean to spend 24 hours with her; if I’m a
woman, I’m capable of doing the same for a man.
You can cross the entire planet just to spend 24 hours with the person
you love. Now then, you have three months ahead of you! That’s a lot! In
the course of those three months, anything can happen, since the being you
love is by your side.
* Chinese metal spheres, also known as chi, which are rotated and
alternated in the palm of the hand for therapeutic purposes or for meditation
and relaxation.
City Lights
A pair of lovers is in Algiers. The night is perfectly clear and at
their feet unfolds the magnificent bay, with its dark waters and a
great arc formed by the city lights.

15. “Look at all those lights, dear!” exclaims the young woman. “So
many people living, loving, cooking, watching tv, talking,
sleeping…”
“Well,” her companion intervenes, “I thought all those little
luminous points were just street lights.”
These two people observe exactly the same reality but their readings of it
are completely different.
Jokes are the same for everyone, but each person understands them
and interprets them as they like. The same holds true for the sacred books…
they’re the same for everybody, but each person interprets them only as
they can and want to. In this joke, the man’s perception is less rich than the
woman’s.
Based on my sensitivity, the world is rich or poor. I can see one aspect
of reality or I can se another.
It doesn’t matter if the world is poorer for me. What’s important is that
my vision isn’t yours and, instead of arguing over it or trying to convert the
matter into a question of arm-twisting, that we share our viewpoints.
An amorous, friendly, or family relationship does not have as its goal a
common viewpoint. Rather it has to do with being able to share our differing
points of view.
“I’m sorry you smoke. That’s my point of view. If you do so, too bad
for you.”
“I’m sorry you don’t smoke. You deprive yourself of a great pleasure.
Too bad for you.”
Each of us has the right to think what we want, but we also have the
right to share those thoughts with one another. We need to tell each other
what we think, not fight for a common point of view.
A harmonious couple is one that shares their differences, in which
neither member has the hypocrisy to play the part in which they’re similar to
the other in all respects.

16. Undoubtedly, in general terms, women are the ones who typically play
this part, given that men are such egomaniacs.
“Come on! The world is this way!” affirms the man.
“Oh dear, you’re absolutely right,” adds the woman.
But the woman thinks the opposite. For her, he’s like that and no other
way. To live with this man, she imitates him and sets a trap for herself. Or
vice versa:
“I want a spiritual man,” sustains the woman.
“That’s me,” confirms the man.
“Write me a poem!”
“Here you have it!”
I make myself out to be a poet, even though I’m not.
At first, when a couple hasn’t yet evolved, there’s a great neurosis:
both members wear masks to make each other mutually agreeable. But then
the moment arrives when they perceive their differences because the masks
fall off. Since they can’t tolerate the difference, they’re overcome by
catastrophe: “I thought you were this way, but you’re not. I thought you
were like me and now, suddenly, I realize you’re different. I can’t deal with
that!”
Before, we pretended to be twins, which was not reality. Now our
union has gone bad, the moment has arrived to improve it and see each
other unmasked, to recognize my will and your will, and to come to an
agreement in which nobody loses. A psychologist once said, “the solution in
which somebody loses isn’t a solution at all.”
When one of the members of a couple talks of sacrifice, it’s not a true
couple. When someone in a family talks of sacrifice, it’s not a true family. A
true family is complete joy.
One More Banana

17. A woman on a subway is carrying a large package of bananas in
her arms. At one of the stops, a ton of people get on board. As
she’s jostled about, she tries to hold on to her package.
Somehow or other, she manages to do so by placing one arm
beneath the package and the other above it. The hand below the
package firmly holds on to a banana. After passing several
stations in this position, she hears a little man’s voice tell her,
“Ma’am, could you please let go of me? I’m getting off at the
next station.”
Sometimes we find ourselves carrying our package of bananas in one way or
another and everything begins to fall. Resisting, we cling to false gimmicks.
We believe we’re holding on to God but in reality we’re holding on to sex, to
passion. Without realizing it, we reassure ourselves by grabbing on to
something that is an approximation of what we want.
“Here’s your purple sweater!” the salesperson assures you.
“But no… it’s blue…” you, the buyer, state.
“It’s the light that gives you that impression. It’s almost purple! The
truth is, we don’t have a purple sweater… on the other hand, take a look at
this yellow one! It looks great on you. Try it on! For the cold, a yellow
sweater is just as good as a purple one!”
The result: you wanted one thing and you ended up with another, an
approximation. As for me, I plan to take the thing, never the approximation.
Do you look for the approximation or the thing? The work you do, the
meditation, the spiritual work, material work, corporeal work, etc., does it
truly correspond to what you desire? Do you eat the cake you want or the
one that looks like it? Although you’re only a quarter inch from the center,
the truth is you’re not in the center and, therefore, you do not find yourself
on the path.
Another aspect of the same trap can be found in the act of taking the
approximation for the thing itself. The following story exemplifies just such a
trap:
A monk used to brag about how his arrows always hit their
targets regardless of the prevailing conditions.
“But that’s not possible!” the others incredulously exclaim.

18. “Sure… behind the back, in the dark, or from whatever position,
each time I shoot, the arrow will always hit the bulls eye,” the
monk boastfully affirms.
The others demand a demonstration. The monk immediately
shoots an arrow. It crashes against a wall. The second hits the
ceiling, and the third ends up on the couch.
“But… none of them hit the bulls eye,” state the others.
“Of course they did, look! It’s quite simple,” explains the monk,
taking a little paint and drawing a circle around each arrow.
This story is dedicated to those people who believe that, regardless of what
they do, they’re always on the money. Either we carry out actions that are
truly on the money or we think in the following manner: “given that I do it,
this can be nothing but perfect.”
Three Glasses of Champagne
A married couple is having a conversation at a cocktail party.
“It’s amazing how three glasses of champagne can transform
you!” says the husband tenderly.
“But… I’ve had nothing to drink!” comments the surprised wife.
“But I have.”
This joke in which three glasses of champagne are drunk and consequently
reality is seen in a different light reminds me of the maxim, In vino veritas.
If we perform psychological and spiritual work, our reality and our vision
change (the three glasses of champagne symbolize profound intellectual
work, emotional work, and sexual work).
Although the woman was probably perfect before, her husband needed
to drink the three glasses of champagne to see the truth.
On one occasion, a therapist came to see me:

19. “Business is bad. I don’t know what to do.” he said.
“Money does not exist in and of itself,” I suggested, remembering the
above joke, “it’s an invention.” We work with “raw materials.” If you try to
find diamonds in the horrendous mines of Brazil, you can behave like a
scoundrel. If you become a prostitute, you can become cold in human
relations. If you’re an unscrupulous shopkeeper, you can engage in shady or
vulgar business. If you play the stock market, you can arrange things like a
pirate. Your “raw material” will give you the money and the attitude that
correspond to you. But if you work in the psychological domain, doing
therapy, interpreting the tarot or doing some other type of therapeutic work,
and people reveal their human problems to you, you can’t behave like a
diamond trader, or a prostitute, or an unscrupulous shopkeeper, or like a
stockbroker. The situation changes completely. It’s essential to earn people’s
trust and not think in terms of customers or profits. It’s necessary to drink
the three glasses, to work on three levels… in a single word, to change!
I know a therapist who took a marketing class. Now, when he
elaborates his ads to promote his psychology classes, he always adds to the
margin observations such as, “Great novelty!” “A true gift!” “Last chance!”
“Act now to take advantage of our benefits!” etc. I don’t know what type of
students he’s going to attract… better yet, he should open up a supermarket
therapy chain…
So, be careful, careful, and careful!
With the foot on the brake
A man becomes angry when his wife tells him that her car got
stuck one morning because of the cold weather:
“Come on! That mechanic ripped you off charging you a fortune
just to tow you a mile down the road! That’s impossible!”
“Yeah, you’re right… but you know, my dear, I didn’t give him
anything for free. I had my foot on the brake the whole time!”
In the café where I do my tarot reading just prior to my weekly conference,
a woman sits down before me and asks me to read her cards. I invite her to
shuffle the deck, saying nothing more. So what does she do? She mixes the

20. cards up and turns them around and around, leaving some right side up and
others upside down. I immediately ask her to hand me the deck. But instead
of doing so in such a way that the cards would be aligned between us, in
other words, creating a union between us, she lays them transversally
between us. Unconsciously, she’s creating a barrier between us. Then,
instead of turning over the cards like you would the pages of a book, she
does so by turning them over from the top, causing a totally backwards
reading.
“Why do you want me to read the tarot for you?” I ask.
“Someone at the other table read my cards,” she replies, “but I don’t
agree with what they told me. I want a different answer.”
Just like the woman in the car, she wants to be towed a mile down the
road without taking her foot off the brake because she doesn’t accept the
answer, or the error, or the doubt.
“You’re wondering if you’ve got the right position where you work,” I
suggest. “In reality, what you’re asking for is an explanation of your
relationship with your boss. Actually, you’ve slipped him the figure of your
father.”
“My father just died.”
“Of course. And that’s why you find yourself in the midst of so much
conflict. Instead of letting your boss crush you, look for an uplifting father
figure… When we’re children, one of two things can happen to us: we can be
destroyed by adults or we can find adults who help us grow. Look for leaders
who help you and not those who crush you like your father did.”
We want to cure ourselves, but we don’t help our therapist at all.
In marital disputes, how many times have we been told to improve our
relationship, but we just keep our foot on the brake? Nobody makes
concessions. We go on for months or years without making them, until one
day “the hormone” grabs us… Then, in bed, we think we’ve found each other
once again; we’ve overcome our differences. Nevertheless, once the
moment’s gone, we go right back to braking without having resolved the
conflict at all.
The Traffic Jam.

21. Reclining comfortably in front of their tent, two Bedouins relax
alongside an oasis in the middle of the desert. Suddenly, the
noise of a car can be heard in the distance and the Bedouins see
an automobile pass by.
“If things keep up as they are, we’re going to end up with traffic
jams! That’s the second car that’s been through here in three
months,” one of them observes.
For some people, an event is enormous. For others, accustomed to a much
broader way of thinking, the same event is no big deal.
Before devoting myself to my spiritual development, I had a difficult
time understanding this concept. I was so closed in my own little oasis in my
own little desert that the immensity of divine or social themes, the
broadness of the world, never entered in the narrowness of my being. For
lack of experience, I found myself surprisingly limited.
Without experience, we look at the world with a jaundiced eye and
everything seems to be “too much” for us. But when we go from the
automobile to the airplane, this “too much” turns out to be “nothing at all.”
Gurdjieff recalls:
I asked a man to walk fifty miles in the middle of a blizzard. He
obeyed and walked that distance in circles. Completely
exhausted, having arrived at the limit of his strength, he
knocked at my door and said, “I’ve done it.” So I then ordered
him to begin all over again. The man reinitiated the walk,
convinced that he would die of exhaustion. Nevertheless, when
he finished the second round I found him in great shape. He
said, “I’ve finished. Shall I start over?”
Gurdjieff sustained that there exists a certain level of fatigue that must be
surpassed in order to enter in the next higher energy level, which, in other
circumstances, we could never allow to circulate.
We can say that human beings dispose of a very low level of energy
and that they never surpass the threshold of their capabilities. When they

22. surpass it they begin to suffer… they get depressed. They feel like they’re
dying. Then we say, “Keep going! Push harder! Do it again!”
I worked with Arno on the script for a comic strip called “The one
handed prince.” While in a trance, I recorded the story on tape. He put the
tape away and later lost it. Instead of getting upset, I committed myself to
starting all over. I recorded the same story a second time and the result was
much better.
The same thing happened with the novel I wrote in two months. I only
had that amount of time to get it to the publisher. I bought a word processor
and began writing. Since I didn’t know how to use this new machine, the
first chapter got erased four times… and I was under the gun! I had to start
all over each time completely unnerved. By the fourth time I found myself in
pure ecstasy, because that version was the best of all.
My first marriage failed. So did the second, the third, the fourth and
the fifth. In the sixth, instead of entering into it totally worn out, I’ve arrived
fresher than ever and everything is working out just fine.
I suffer, I suffer, I suffer, and, suddenly, I overcome the suffering
because I realize that pain is one thing and suffering another totally
different. I suffer, I suffer, I suffer, and, suddenly, I realize that this
suffering is the result of the pain that I myself amplify.
One day, in 1960, I was walking down the street with a very timid boy.
A parade of students from the school of fine arts advanced toward us. There
were about five hundred students partying, complete with a band and
everything.
“Let’s surpass our limits! Let’s stop this parade!” I suggested to the
boy.
“What???” replied my shy companion, amazed.
“Sure! We’re going to stop it.”
“No!!!”
I just sort of went crazy. I stood up in front of the parade, raised my
hand energetically, making a signal to stop, and in a categorical voice cried
out: “Halt!”

23. Immediately the parade stopped… and I didn’t quite know what to do.
So I stepped aside and said, “Move along!”
We stepped aside simply because we didn’t have a valid reason to stop
the students. It wasn’t important for the parade to stop. Five hundred
people… nothing more than a little experiment.
If we can immobilize a parade, there’s no doubt that we can demand
lots of things of ourselves.
We should take a look at the domains in which we’re small in order to
surpass our limits. In this respect, Luna taught me a great lesson.
Luna was a Mexican comic. He made all Mexico laugh. We put together
an excellent show and got a contract to present it in Paris, in la Comédie des
Champs-Elysées.
Back then (between 1960 and 1962), the Mexican comic was known as
a cross between Marceau and Belmondo. Arriving in Paris, Luna immediately
rented a huge apartment in Neuilly. He took photos of himself in front of all
the monuments in the French capital. He set aside these photos in an album
for his great grandchildren. After the first show, it was said that Luna only
had Belmondo’s teeth and nothing of Marceau, except the whiteness of his
face. The show was a total catastrophe.
Next, Luna quietly collected his clothes, pretended to unpack his
suitcase –to leave unnoticed— and left without paying a cent. He returned to
Mexico with complete serenity. The calm with which he swallowed his failure
was incredible.
Without a cent to his name, he bought nothing less than a Cadillac. He
went out in his new car to look for work, and he found it, thanks to a poster
where it was written: “Luna triumphs in France.” And we made the show
triumph in Mexico, because Luna was in his element there.
He never let himself get knocked down, but just kept on riding the
great train of life. Each time Luna had economic problems, he bought
himself a Cadillac.
The Deaf Worker.

24. A worker goes to the hospital to visit his boss. Over the years,
the worker has become deaf, but since he’s afraid his deafness
might cost him his job, he tries to hide it from his boss. Before
meeting him, he prepares his visit, silently rehearsing the
following dialogue:
“How are you doing, sir?” I will ask.
“Very well, thank you,” he’ll reply.
“That’s great! And what have you been eating?” I’ll continue.
“Fruit,” he’ll respond, since he’s sick.
“Who is your doctor?” I’ll ask very courteously.
“The best,” he’ll affirm, after which I’ll take my leave with
another word or two.
Once he arrives at the hospital, the worker has the following
conversation with his boss:
“How are you doing, sir?” asks the worker.
“I’m dying!” replies the boss.
“Ah! Praise God. And what have you been eating?”
“Poison!”
“I hope you’ve been enjoying it! Who’s your doctor?”
“The angel of death!”
“Well that’s great!”
Quite often we’re deaf to what people say to us. Without listening to others
we anticipate their response and think we’re communicating. It’s important
not to attribute a response to someone when it’s not their own, because the
reply we’ll receive won’t be the one we expected.

25. It’s for this very reason that some people are suddenly abandoned
when talking to others. They end up surprised at what’s happened to them
and think, “I’ve been abandoned!”
Actually, we can just as easily tell them: “Not at all. In fact it was you
who chased the other person away.”
The Onion and the Weeping Willow.
One day an onion bumped into a weeping willow. Frightened, he
exclaimed, “My god! I hope it wasn’t my fault!”
This joke is pure poetry. How often do we think we’re the ones who produce
reality despite the fact that it has nothing to do with us? We tell ourselves,
“What happened is my fault,” or, “It’s my fault such and such has committed
suicide. I destroyed them.”
Nevertheless, with or without the onion, the weeping willow will always
be the weeping willow.
Everything, Except My Toothbrush!
A Jew boards a train for Vienna. A distinguished Englishman
shares his compartment. At mealtime, the Englishman takes out
a sandwich.
“Sir, would you be so kind as to spare me a piece of your
sandwich? I’m hungry and I forgot to pack a lunch,” states the
Jew timidly.
“Sure,” replies the Englishman, offering half his sandwich to his
companion.
A little later, the travelers prepare for bed.
“Sir, could you please let me use some shaving cream? I seem
to have forgotten mine,” solicits the Jew.

26. The Englishman accepts and loans him his can of shaving cream.
The moment he’s about to get under the covers, however, he
hears his traveling companion ask with complete self-assurance:
“Sir, could you please loan me a shirt? I forgot to bring my
pajamas.”
Irritated, the Englishman hands the insolent traveler a shirt,
precipitating yet another petition:
“Could you also lend me your toothbrush? I forgot mine.”
“Everything, except my toothbrush!” thunders the angry
Englishman. “You will never use my toothbrush!”
“There’s no need to get angry. I haven’t asked you for the
Moon,” the Jew explains, a bit upset.
The night goes by without another word between the two men.
The next day they arrive in Vienna. The Jew’s wife meets him at
the station.
“How was your trip?” she asks.
“The trip was fine, but I had the misfortune to travel with an
anti-Semite.”
Sometimes we find ourselves overly demanding. We want the other person
to give us everything and the more they give us, the more we ask of them.
We make overwhelming demands. When the other person tires and stops
giving, we think they’re selfish.
In my book of panic fables I tell a story that my mother lived through
in Chile. In those days, my parents were socialists. They wanted to help
people.
One day, a young alcoholic knocked on the door of my folks’ house. My
mother dressed him from head to toe. The young man left and immediately
went out and sold his new clothes. Later, completely drunk and dressed like
a vagabond, he showed up at my parents’ house again. My mother said,
“When we begin something, we have to see it through to the end.” She
dressed the boy again, but the next morning he came back inebriated and

27. dressed like a beggar. My mother was not disheartened. For a third time she
bought him new clothes, but had no more success than the previous times.
The young man came back drunk. She told him, “Enough! Get out of here,
you don’t deserve to be helped!” The young man was furious that he didn’t
receive a new set of clothes and threw a rock through the window of my
parents’ shop to avenge himself.
When we begin to give, there comes a moment when we need to say,
“Enough! I’ve given you enough! I’m not going to give you my toothbrush!”
“Wicked master! You have to see it through. You have to give everything!”
Our black cat died. She had a blood disease that caused her to become
weaker by the day. Finally, one night she just died in my wife’s arms.
Afterwards, we noticed the fleas abandoning the corpse. It turned out to be
such a quantity of fleas that we had to bomb the entire house with
insecticide to get rid of them.
It didn’t matter that the fleas had lived on the cat. They ate of her
blood and left the body once it was used up. When the master stopped
giving, they immediately went someplace else.
Watching their desertion was a great lesson for me. Instead of sucking
her blood without offering any form of compensation, the fleas should have
helped the cat maintain her health. They should have taken care of her,
given her something to help her overcome the illness in order to be able to
live a lot longer on her.
I’m not against humanity, but I observe that, just like the fleas, we
tend to take everything without giving anything in return.
Abraham’s Agony.
Abraham is on his deathbed. His entire family is there to
accompany him in his final moment. The dying man opens an
eye and asks in a trembling voice:
“Is Joseph here?”
“Yes, I’m here father.”

28. “And my dear wife?”
“I’m right here,” replies his wife.
“And my brother is here too?”
“Right here,” says his brother.
“And my daughter and youngest son?”
“We’re all here,” reply the kids.
“Everyone’s here, right?”
“Yes, we’re all here.”
“Then, in the name of God!” exclaims Abraham summoning all
his strength, “if everyone is here, who’s watching the store?”
Undoubtedly there must be something sacred about this story, because it’s
told on the streets of Jerusalem.
I interpret it by supposing that the members of Abraham’s family
symbolize my different parts, all present at the moment I make the great
mutation of my ego toward my indeterminate Self, my undefined Self… at
the moment I’m dying to myself. During the lapse that I effect this
enormous mutation, if all my parts are worried about the ego that’s being
transformed, who’s taking care of the work? Why abandon the work because
of emotional, intellectual, economic, or other types of concerns? I insist that
the work must go on constantly! That’s what Abraham is saying.
This same message is found in the legends of Buddha. When Buddha
was meditating, he cut off his eyelids to keep his eyes open and threw them
to the ground. A plant grew out of the spot where his eyelids fell.
We also find the idea of the person who never sleeps in the description
of the lion kept in the bestiaries of the Middle Ages. In those days, when
science was of little importance, one of the great qualities attributed to the
lion was that he never closed his eyes. It was said that the lion was eternally
present, with his eyes wide open.
That’s constant attention to the job at hand.

29. Let It Be Known…
One day the plant manager of a factory puts up signs in all the
offices that read the following message: “Don’t put off for
tomorrow what you can do today.”
Immediately the secretaries rush to his office to demand a raise, the
workers go on strike to protest working conditions, and the cashiers make
off with all the money in their registers.
This story perfectly shows how things have different meanings for
everybody. We confirm things without realizing that our confirmations could
have a completely different meaning for those who hear us.
Let’s begin with the principle that you shouldn’t put off for tomorrow
what you can do today. We want there to be a consensus on the matter, but
unexpectedly we find that someone else interprets that sentence in a
completely different way.
Likewise, I find people that cling to their principles, thinking that they
represent reality. The result: they project them on their surroundings and
clash with everyone else, perhaps because others don’t have the same
principles, or because they have a different interpretation of those principles.
There are men who think their wives have left them, although the
truth is that it was they who, without realizing it, drove them away.
The Ten-Franc Coin.
A mother impatiently awaits her son Abraham. The boy has to
leave for school in a half hour. Finally, he comes home.
“Why are you late?” the mother asks. “Did the Rabbi’s Hebrew
class run a little longer than usual?”
“No, that’s not it. I was delayed in the street,” Abraham replies.
“Why?”

30. “Because a woman lost a ten-franc coin.”
“Ah! You were late because you helped her look for her coin?
What a good boy you are.”
“No, not at all,” Abraham clarifies. “I couldn’t move for a half
hour because I was standing on the coin, so I had to wait for her
to tire of looking for it and leave.”
Basically, this boy has done exactly the same as the hunchback who hunted
cicadas in The true classic of the empty void, by Liu Tseou, a contemporary
of Lao-Tse. Here’s the story of the hunchback:
“How can you catch so many cicadas?” someone asks him. “Most
people can’t even catch a single one of them.”
“I used to be a juggler, and I worked with four or five balls,” he
replied. “Then, I kept the balls in equilibrium. Eventually, I
abandoned the balls and left for the country, where I remained
perfectly still, without even moving a millimeter. One day the
cicadas came and thought I was a tree. At that point, I just had
to close my hand to catch them.”
I have a ten-franc coin under my shoe. Ten is also a figure of unity… which
makes me find this story, in spite of everything, religious in nature. Still, at
their foundations all Jewish stories are religious.
This story isn’t about a theft, rather about complete concentration. I
put my foot on this unity and I don’t move. Come what may, I am here,
present. All my attention and all my being are here. I conceal my position,
but I’m conscious, totally centered on myself. Without ceding or getting
discouraged, I remain in place. My attention is complete. Then, I quickly
take my unity.
The other day someone told me, “It’s strange, but basically I realized I
need to distract myself a lot, because I can’t concentrate on myself.”

31. I consider this joke to be the typical example of total concentration on
myself, on my internal wealth.
Twin Sisters.
In his wife’s absence, a man has her twin sister over to his
house. At that very moment, his wife enters unexpectedly and
finds them in bed together. Furious, she screams, “Pig! I can’t
imagine what you find sexy in such an ugly woman!”
Our viewpoint is subjective. We do not perceive reality exactly as it presents
itself… Our perception is affected by our emotions leaving us to maneuver
about the world by subjective value judgments.
When I was preparing The Sacred Mountain, I locked myself up in a
house 24 hours a day for seven months with the actors from the film. We
barely got four hours of sleep each night, since we were constantly working
the rest of the time. Fridays were “objective days.” We couldn’t say anything
subjective; for example, “Yum. This spinach is good” or “I’m thirsty” or “I’m
hot.” Instead, we would say, “water,” “answer the phone.” Obviously, “ok”
and “good morning” were out of the question.
Furthermore, whenever someone would say something subjective, a
big bell was rung. On Fridays, the bell never stopped ringing. Finally, we
came to realize that ninety-nine percent of our ideas about the world were
subjective.
You can try the experiment at home; but living an “objective day” isn’t
the easiest thing in the world to do. You’ll surprise yourself when you
corroborate with the fact that we perpetually make all kinds of value
judgments about everything.
We live in these value judgments and in a world that, in general, has
nothing objective. The joke at hand is an excellent reminder of this fact.
Smile, please!

32. In a chemical factory, a worker in the tear gas section appears
before his boss weeping profusely.
“I can’t go on like this any longer! You have to give me a raise,”
suggests the crying employee.
“I can’t give you a raise, but I do want to see you smile… From
tomorrow on, you’re changing sections and will be working with
laughing gas,” replies the boss.
This joke is similar to an ancient Hindu story:
The monkeys in a zoo go on strike, considering themselves to be
poorly fed. They’re given four nuts in the morning and three in
the afternoon. Someone quickly resolves the situation telling
them, “from now on, you’ll be given three nuts in the morning
and four in the afternoon.”
The monkeys are quite satisfied with the new arrangement.
Occasionally, we think we’ve found a miraculous solution to our life’s
problems, but the truth is we’re fooling ourselves. The new solution brings
us to the exact same situation as before, but under a different appearance.
The problem hasn’t been solved at all. The only thing that’s been resolved is
a certain form. In other words, we’re happy for no valid reason whatsoever.
In a book about Lacan, Cent-trente-deux bons mots avec Lacan, I
found the story of a man who felt content because he thought he was cured,
whereas Lacan considered him to be ill precisely because he thought he was
cured:
“Doctor, I’m fully aware of my psychosis,” says the patient.
“Ah, evidently you are a happy man,” notes Lacan.

33. Later, once the patient leaves his office, the psychoanalyst says
to himself, “There’s a happy man. He seems cured. In my
opinion, that’s the most dangerous part.”
I apply this story to the man who works in the tear gas section and is
transferred to laughing gas: “I’ve suffered a lot in my life, but now, that’s
over! Today, I laugh and am very enthusiastic… But the problem’s still there.
I haven’t worked it out at all. The only thing I’ve changed is my attitude,
from negative to positive, but what good does that do? The wound is still
there.”
As long as the wounds from childhood don’t learn to laugh at
themselves, nothing has been fixed. The wound must convert itself into a
laughing mouth. But if it’s you who’s laughing whereas your wound
continues to bleed, you’re lying to yourself.
Can you spare me some money, please?
Jacob runs into Abraham in the street.
“My friend, do you have a little money you can lend me?” solicits
Jacob.
“No, I don’t have any on me,” responds Abraham.
“And in your shop? Do you have any money there?” insists
Jacob.
“No. I just closed and deposited the money in the bank.”
“And at your house?” adds Jacob desperately.
“At my house everything is fine, thank you.”
This story has a lesson that’s quite Zen. You are not obligated to reply on
the same wavelength as the person you’re speaking with.

34. By your own effort, you can reach a certain elevated level. When you
find yourself running into people from your past, it doesn’t take you long to
realize that they have remained at a stage that no longer corresponds to
your own, but to which they want you to assimilate. They ask you questions
as a function of their own level and you fall into the trap. You reply to them
on their own terms, and at that moment, they’ve got you.
When they interrogate you, you’re under no obligation to reply at all.
You can evade the question by asking yourself as a form of answer, or by
changing level or meaning.
“And at your house, do you have any money?” the other asks you.
“At my house, everything is fine, thank you,” is your reply.
By this answer, you change the subject and the other doesn’t get you.
Why let someone else, anybody else, corral us into the trap of their
projection?
In the end, who catches you in the trap? The others present it to you,
they tempt you, but you’re the one who jumps into the trap with both feet…
or who doesn’t! You pay dearly for a little bit of human warmth.
Unless you yourself remain a perpetual trap trying to trap others, to
bleed them dry or to crush them…
The Sex of Flies.
An elderly woman goes into a pet shop to buy two blackbirds.
“I’d like two blackbirds please, a male and a female,” the woman
explains to the salesman. “But before I buy them, I’d like to
know how to tell them apart.”
“That’s easy, ma’am,” replies the salesman, “you simply buy two
flies, a male and a female. The bird that eats the female is your
male and the one that eats the male would be the female.”
“You’re absolutely right, it is easy! I’ll take the two blackbirds.
Then I’ll go look for the two flies.”

35. The elderly woman leaves the pet shop with the pair of
blackbirds, but returns ten minutes later.
“I’ve got a little problem!” suggests the dismayed woman to the
salesman.
“What’s that?”
“I can’t tell the sex of flies.”
“I see. And what would you like for me to do about it? I can’t tell
them apart either. Go ask a fly salesperson.”
This woman buys the two blackbirds like a disciple in search of the truth.
We seek the truth by directing ourselves toward someone. They tell
us: “You want to know how to tell the male from the female? I’ve got the
answer!”
But it just so happens that they don’t know the truth at all. They tell
us to go ask someone else.
And so from truth to truth, we relive our infantile experience, when we
tried to verify the truth about sexuality. The only masturbation material at
hand was a dictionary. There we looked up “sex” and they send us to
“ovum.” Then we look up “ovum” and they send us to “sperm.” We look up
“sperm” and they send us who knows where. In this manner, we feverishly
cover the whole dictionary in one day without ever finding out about what it
was we wanted to know.
In the domain of knowledge, the same holds true. We’re sent to some
master or guru, but always left thirsty for realization.
The Neighbor’s Wallpaper.
A young married couple moves into a new apartment. Since the
couple wants to redo the dining room wallpaper, they go to see a
neighbor, who has a dining room the same size as theirs.
“Neighbor, we want to change the wallpaper in our dining room,
just as you have. How many rolls of wallpaper did you buy?”

36. “Seven,” replies the neighbor kindly.
Based on this information, the young newlyweds buy expensive
rolls of top quality wallpaper and begin to redress their walls.
Upon finishing the fourth roll, the dining room is completely
papered. Furious for having uselessly spent a fortune, they go
back to see their neighbor.
“We followed your advice about the wallpaper, but we can’t
understand why we’re left with three rolls of paper!”
“That happened to you, too?” answers the neighbor, surprised.
We humans are not all identical. Another person’s experience is not our own.
His experience has certain virtues and defects for us.
Prior to giving a conference, I was approached by somebody who
wanted to talk to me.
“I don’t have any time right now,” I said.
“Ok. But next time I come you can tell me what I need to do.”
“No, I can’t tell you what you should do,” I explained. “I can’t advise
you because the solution to your problem has to come from you yourself. My
solution is mine. The trick is to avoid being lazy! If I can take the time
necessary to contemplate the solution to a problem, you can do so as well.”
The young couple should measure their walls before buying paper.
Why ask the neighbor? Why ask him about his experience? Obviously they
should ask him. His answer can be enriching, but at the same time we need
to carry out our own act, to take our own measures. His word isn’t enough.
And this is true not because the other wants to or can lie to us, rather
because we are the other.
A pregnant woman asks her mother, “Mom, how will my delivery go?”
“When you open your legs, be careful not to raise them too much.
Also, you don’t want to over-contract, but I did contract my abdomen and
everything went ok. Just do exactly the same as I did, and everything will be
fine.”
The daughter makes the same movements and they don’t work for her
at all. It’s a catastrophe. What the mother did has absolutely no bearing on

37. what the daughter must do. We need to understand that nobody, except we
ourselves, can know how to bring our own child into this world. You can’t ask
for advice!
We can, of course, try to learn about the experience of someone else:
“How did it go for you?”
“For me it went a certain way.”
Still, it’s impossible to say, “since it went that way for me, it will be the
same for you.”
A young woman gave birth to a daughter in the seventh month of her
pregnancy. She asked me why. I replied: “Ask your mother.” That’s what
she did and her mother answered: “You were born prematurely, in the
seventh month.” This mother transmitted her vital experience to her
daughter, as though it were dogma. The daughter received the dogma and
reproduces her mother’s life. There’s no difference; it’s an attack against life.
We need to be very careful in order to avoid working as others,
especially our parents and, even worse, our friends and anybody else. We
need to build our own experiences.
That’s the lesson I get out of this joke. It’s about a good piece of
advice that should not be taken at face value as a result of mere laziness.
“Given that my brother acts in a certain way, I do the same: I imitate
him. You must understand that I imitate him because he’s the preferred
child and I want to be loved as much as he.”
We need to be conscious of why we imitate and why we want to be like
the other.
Six Very Long Days.
A company’s personnel manager calls Sanchez’ old boss:
“Can you tell me exactly how long Mr. Sanchez worked for you?”
“Yes, he worked exactly six days.”
“What? Sanchez just now came to see me and told me he was
with you for two years!”

38. “That’s right, but you asked me exactly how long he worked for
me.”
I apply this to myself. If I had truly worked the entire time I’ve given myself,
I’d be able to levitate by now. I’d be ten feet off the floor, legs crossed, full
of joy, emitting luminous rays and saying: “Don’t worry about a thing; don’t
be anguished; give me your anguish and I’ll give you happiness. Give me
your money and I’ll give you security; possess nothing; when you have
nothing, you’re secure. There you have the truth; give me your being,
because I am being.
To arrive at this point, I’d have needed to work on it my entire life.
In reality, if I had wished to become what I truly wanted, I’d have
needed to work on it my entire life. But I was lazy… incredibly lazy. As a
result of my laziness I didn’t develop myself as much as I’d have liked.
I advise young people who wish for something to apply themselves
immediately, because we have the unfortunate tendency to waste a lot of
time and fool ourselves. We tell ourselves: “I’m working” when the truth is
we’re not. “I’m meditating” when the truth is we don’t meditate, but rather
think about everything under the sun. “I’m doing this or that” but the truth
is we’re not doing anything. We don’t do anything we want!
Here’s a little piece of advice: think about what you want to do and do
it immediately. Right now, put your future in the present!
“Some day I’ll start saving and investing.”
“Don’t do it some day; do it immediately!”
“I’m going to go to the movies…”
“Do it now!”
“I’m going to get married…”
“Do it right away!”
“I’m going to get my emotional life together…”
“Right now! Do things right now!”
The Tamer Tamed.

39. One guinea pig says to another, “I’ve got the doctor tamed.
Every time I press this button, he gives me a piece of cheese.”
Sometimes we fool ourselves. We think we’ve got a situation under control
when in reality, we’re completely controlled by it.
One For All and All For One.
A sultan spends the night in his harem of three hundred women.
As he observes a dancer and listens to his favorite music, he
whispers in the ear of the closest concubine: “Your hair is the
moon over the desert. Your eyes are stars. Your hips are an
oasis. Your lips are a spring of fresh water in the dunes. Pass
these words on to the woman next to you!”
The sultan thinks it’s sufficient to court one woman in order to seduce them
all. Although he saves himself a lot of effort, he errs by not seeing the
difference between one woman and another.
We make the same huge mistakes by thinking what we say to one
person can be extended to another two, four, fifty, or sixty. The message we
transmit to one person isn’t the same as that which we transmit to another.
It’s always different.
Gurdjieff, the celebrated master who taught around 1915, had two
disciples, Luc Dietrich and René Daumal, two great French writers. Daumal
had tuberculosis. Gurdjieff advised him to make love once a year, and
Dietrich to make love to a different woman every day. In those days, AIDS
didn’t exist. For an entire year, poor Daumal was going mad with anguish,
whereas poor Dietrich had to go to great lengths every day to find a new
woman to bring home. He couldn’t go on. Each of them lived tortured lives.
It didn’t matter that each had received a different command.
What the teacher says to one person isn’t necessarily valid for another.
We need to realize that each person is different, that words are
different, that voice inflections are different. For example, in theater, a bad
actor always uses the same tone, the same rhythm, and the same
inflections, regardless of who he’s speaking to. A good actor, on the other
hand, plays with all these elements. He adapts each dialogue to the other,
whether it be to reply in the same manner (loud when the other speaks
loudly, soft when the other speaks softly), or in contrasting fashion.

40. In the course of a conversation, the other can be aggressive and you
can, too. Or the other is aggressive and you receive them gently, evasively
or with indifference. To each one of his propositions there correspond
thousands of possible responses, so the choice of response is always made
as a function of the proposition.
In those terrible families where the members have their voices limited
to one tone, one rhythm, and one timber, it’s frightening! Whether laughing
or crying, screaming or whispering, they never pronounce a single word
louder or faster than another. They always use the same rhythm, with no
spirit of adaptation. They oblige everyone to adapt themselves to them.
They’re tedious professionals. When they arrive, everyone must adapt
themselves to their rhythm, their deafness, their narrow mind. They’re
deplorable.
To be born in such a home is the equivalent of suffering in hell,
because you won’t be heard. You feel neither understood nor loved.
One of the first things we should do every day is see the person we
have by our side, listen to them and adapt ourselves immediately to them.
This poor sultan is far from that. I’d bet all his women are frigid. If he
uses the same system for all of them, there can’t be pleasure in his harem.
Elephant Sandwich.
A trucker stops at a border crossing.
“Anything to declare?” asks the Customs Agent.
“Absolutely nothing,” replies the trucker.
“And this?” asks the Customs Agent upon opening the trailer and
seeing an elephant squeezed in between two slices of bread
joined together by a rope.
“What’s the world coming to, if we can’t even put what we want
in our sandwiches?” replies the trucker in disbelief.
It would seem that for the trucker, the elephant is merely a garnish for his
sandwich. He sees nothing wrong with his conduct.

41. This joke reminds me of those people who always consider themselves
to be innocent. They feel they have the right to do whatever they want, such
as putting an elephant in their sandwich. They have a certain blindness that
makes them fool themselves. They downplay what’s bad in themselves,
thinking it inoffensive and blameless.
This is the case, for instance, of a friend who once asked me:
“Why is my wife leaving me after twelve years of marriage? Why is she
taking the kids and why has she stopped loving me? It’s unbearable.”
“Did you ever think that maybe your marriage is unbearable for her as
well?” I replied. “Your wife is telling the boy she’s lived with for twelve
years: ‘I don’t love you, and I’m leaving with the kids.’ She’s also faced with
a difficult situation.”
In this case, is the man really all that innocent? Doesn’t he have an
elephant in his sandwich? In the end, he needs to put himself in his wife’s
place and comprehend her suffering if he wants to resolve the matter. What
has he done to her? Why is she reacting this way? Before thinking of
himself, he should ask himself what’s the real problem she’s facing right
now? These questions don’t have the goal of fixing everything, rather that of
truly understanding and comprehending.
Otherwise, he’s undoubtedly playing the role of the innocent victim.
He’s obviously at least partially responsible for the drama. In any drama, the
responsibility is split between all the various actors. This man is fifty percent
responsible for the fact that his wife doesn’t love him anymore. For what
he’s done to her, he’s also fifty percent responsible for being absent so
frequently.
The proof is that one of the man’s friends advised him to spend all of
his afternoons at home. He followed that advise and his wife immediately
became sick. She couldn’t bear it. She complained of his absence, then fell ill
when she had him there at home.
How long are we going to keep playing innocent, rationalizing what
happens to us by shifting the responsibility to the other? We relax. We
rationalize. We play down our role. We think it’s no big deal. Why, then,
should it be such a big deal for the other? We see the ham sandwich in the
eye of the other, but not the elephant sandwich in our own.
The Lion’s Fleas.

42. A lady visits a lion show. The lion tamer, seeing she’s getting a
little too close to the cages, suggests she be more prudent.
“Be careful, ma’am!”
“Why? Are your lions really all that dangerous?”
“No, but they have fleas.”
When we try to help those around us by giving them useful advice, we
become a model that others want to imitate. If we do so with sincerity,
speaking to the other and helping them is appropriate. The problem arises
when those who want to listen to us and imitate us, by doing so, no longer
go their own way. Lacan’s way is Lacan’s way, and Coluche’s way is
Coluche’s way. They are the lions.
When we deal directly with the experts, we run no risk at all, because
they’re not dangerous. Their students, however, are. The danger lies in
poorly applied theories.
Gurdjieff was a lion. Perhaps many of his students were fleas. When
we study with someone, we need to know in which category that person
belongs. Let’s go directly to the lion! That’s what I always do. I go directly to
see the person who lives what they teach. I look for living contact. We often
tend to look for fleas in the long line of “kind organizers” of university
knowledge, which is not the fruit of experience.
This joke reminds me that the fleas are usually much more dangerous
than the beast; we should be wary of them!
An Appreciated Disappearance.
“Good day, sir,” says a little man to the police officer at the
station, “I came here yesterday to report the disappearance of
my mother-in-law and implore you to find her.”
“Yes, I remember.”
“Well, don’t bother looking for her!”
“Why? Did your mother-in-law return?”
“No, but I’ve thought the matter over since then.”

43. Upon careful reflection, this man is satisfied with the disappearance of his
mother-in-law. We suffer a lot when we lose certain things. Nevertheless, if
we think about it a little, we should realize that everything we lose gives us
an opportunity to make progress.
I suffered tremendously when my first wife left me after ten years
together. Looking back, today I realize that if she hadn’t left, I wouldn’t have
gone anywhere in life. Her departure was exactly what God had to send me.
That which I lived tragically at the time should have been the greatest
celebration of my life. Later, my ex-wife became an alcoholic. She had very
marked self-destructive tendencies that didn’t go with my life at all. I would
have ended up killing myself or landing who knows where, because back
then I was much weaker than I am today. That was the way God wanted it.
And it’s for this very reason I often say that certain losses are, in reality,
blessings.
A friend of mine lost an eye. If he accepts this limitation, the loss can
become a blessing for him. After his operation, we went out together and I
noticed he had become profound, that much of his prior superficiality had
broken off.
Before he called himself my disciple, but from one day to the next he
truly became my teacher. We were talking with an old rabbi and, at a certain
moment in the conversation, I said I’d give five years of my life to know
Hebrew. The rabbi explained many things in the course of the conversation,
playing with words I would have liked to comprehend. My friend reproached
me, however, saying: “Never say you’re disposed to give up years of your
life for anything! Life is the most precious thing we have, and instead of
making such negative declarations, you should abandon other activities for
those five years and commit yourself entirely to learning Hebrew. Life is not
to be given away; it should be used for what we want to achieve; don’t
complain, act!”
Sometimes we need to lose a part of ourselves, as the result of serious
illness; other times we even need to suffer the death of a loved one to finally
find ourselves.
As the Buddhists say, everything that occurs is an opportunity to find
yourself. Absolutely everything. If you love someone and they say, “no” to
you, it’s an opportunity; if they say, “yes” to you, it’s also an opportunity.
Why Not Me?

44. A passing motorist grazes a pedestrian with his car. The latter
runs after the former and, at the first red light, grabs him.
“You are a shameless pig!” says the man to the driver. “If you
had even a trace of manners, you’d have stopped to apologize
and check the harm you caused me. Then you’d have taken me
to your house in your car and offered me a glass of port wine to
help me recover. Finally, you would not have left me without
first giving me at least a hundred dollars for my suffering.”
“You must be dreaming!” exclaims the driver. “Maybe some
other motorist behaved this way with you?”
“No, not with me. But yesterday someone did with my sister!”
This joke is particularly poignant for me, since I always wanted to be my
sister.
She was the favorite of the family. She had everything: dresses, a
grand piano, friends, poetry… She lived the good life. As for me, I had
nothing. I wasn’t wanted; she was. She was beautiful, whereas I was Cyrano
with the big nose. She had; I had nothing.
I’ve realized that, just like me, many human beings were not the
center of attention in their families.
Perhaps Mom was affectionate with her father, so then Grandpa was
the center of attention. Or Dad had been crushed by his own father whom
he’d admired and this Grandpa monopolized all the attention, or maybe it
was the Great Grandpa, given that he was of nobility or a multi-millionaire or
something, or my sister or my brother…
At any rate, since I’m not the center of attention, I see myself
obligated to always want to be in the other’s place and live their life. I’m
never satisfied with what I have. I don’t know my own true nature. I don’t
know who I am. I constantly need company. I become frightened when I’m
alone, since I’m empty. I’m nobody.
Perhaps I’ll remain married for ten years, simply to have someone at
my side… someone whose maintenance costs me dearly, who eats more
than I do… I’d be better off getting a dog to resolve the problem…
In other instances, for fear of solitude, we have children and we
transmit our emptiness to them. Or we surround ourselves with friends to fill

45. our time and, when he have no friends, we create an illness to fill our lives,
or we devote ourselves to some activity that has nothing to do with us.
I once met a man who didn’t know what to do with his life.
Psychologically, he wasn’t exactly in equilibrium. At last, he discovered… he
wanted to be a therapist.
“I’ve found my way,” he once blurted out to me, in monotone. “I want
to cure others, because I understand people. The story is always the same:
we repeat what we lived in infancy; that’s it. If your mother didn’t want you,
you’re going to look for a woman with whom you’ll live out the exact same
situation. It’s elementary.
“With that tone and that rhythm, you’ll never cure anybody!” I replied.
“You don’t listen to anybody; all you want is to be a therapist because you
have a theory!”
The Horn.
A motorist goes to see his mechanic.
“I’d like you to change my horn. It should be about four or five
times louder.”
“Why do you want such a loud horn?” asks the employee.
“Because I don’t have any brakes.”
Instead of correcting the central problem, people seek solutions to other
things that have nothing at all to do with the problem. That’s how we act
most of the time. We don’t get at the heart of our difficulties to resolve them
directly.
Put Yourself in My Place.
An ambulance arrives on the scene of an accident where a small
convertible sports car has just crashed into a tree. Unlike his
passenger, the driver had fastened his seatbelt. Now, he’s alive
whereas the woman riding with him is lying thirty feet from the
car with her skull crushed.
“Very good, young man, you’re safe and sound because you
fastened your seatbelt,” the paramedic congratulates him. “You
should be happy!”

46. “Happy?” responds the driver. “How can you say that? You’re
just not in my place. Go see what that woman has in her hand
and you’ll see I have absolutely no reason whatsoever to be
happy!”
This reminds me of how we so often tell someone how everything is going
just fine in their lives and they should rejoice and be satisfied. Nevertheless,
instead of agreeing, the person will reply: “Sure, that may seem great to
you, but you don’t know how I feel.”
As long as we’re not in the other’s place, we can never truly know how
they feel. What seems marvelous to us may be catastrophic for them.
So long as we don’t dance with the other, we’ll never know what they
feel when they dance. To really know the other, we need to penetrate them,
to put ourselves in their situation.
Today a childhood friend and I went to eat in a restaurant. As soon as
we sat down, he took out a cigarette.
“I hope it’s ok to smoke here,” he commented. “Is smoking allowed
here? Sure it is: there are ashtrays on the tables.”
“Instead of worrying so much about the house rules, you should be
more concerned with what the other customers think,” I replied.
“There’s no problem. Our table is far enough from them,” he said
serenely, taking a look around.
“Look! Let’s get something straight here. Even though we haven’t seen
each other in many years, I still exist, and I can’t stand cigarette smoke.”
“But that doesn’t count with you! We’re buddies!”
“Oh yeah? So that means buddies don’t exist?”
“Of course they do!”
In fact, he never stopped talking about himself all afternoon. We
hadn’t seen each other in more than twenty years and he never once asked
what had become of me…
This just goes to show that it would be a good idea to put ourselves in
the other’s place.

47. Extreme Thirst.
After a prolonged, exhausting three-hour battle, the whole
family is finally seated in place in their car and leaves on
vacation. After barely ten minutes on the road, Fredrick, the six-
year-old, blurts out: “Dad, I’m thirsty.”
During the ensuing hour, the child carries on his painful cries.
Fed up, the father stops at a restaurant.
“Ok, what do you want to drink?” asks the father of his son.
“Lemonade? Soda? A cold glass of milk?”
“Instead of that, could we get some candy?” replies the child.
We never know what we want. We take off with the intention of doing one
thing in life and, when we have the opportunity to bring it to fruition, we
want something else… something better. We’re never satisfied with what
we’ve got.
The Golden Dream.
Two friends meet after not seeing each other for several years.
“So, did you finally marry that filmmaker you were dating the
last time I saw you?” asks the first.
“Yes,” replies the second.
“And the Mercedes he promised you as a wedding gift?”
“He delivered as promised; hold on a second while I call her.
She’s over there playing in the sandbox. Mercedes, come here;
there’s someone I want you to meet.”
She got her Mercedes. Although unexpected, her situation doesn’t seem too
bad to her; she’s married and has a daughter. A child is a treasure.
Life puts us in our place. We start off with grand ideals, and then little
by little our existence goes on cutting back our aspirations. We don’t possess
the mechanical Mercedes we had hoped for, but we have a living Mercedes:
smaller, less ostentatious, but much more real. I undoubtedly prefer the
small Mercedes to the big Mercedes.

48. An Exemplary Model.
“You don’t even have an ounce of willpower,” says a woman to
her husband. “Your friend John quit smoking the same day he
resolved to do so. With you, that’s out of the question!”
“What? No will power? We’ll see about that! From now on, I’ll
sleep someplace else and nothing will make me change my
mind!”
The husband then goes out and buys a couch for his office and,
for the next three weeks he locks himself in every night.
Later, his wife knocks on his office door.
“What do you want?” asks the husband.
“I wanted to tell you… your friend John… has started smoking
again.”
We cite an example as a reference point, but then after a while the person
changes and our reference point shifts.
Many people say: “You need to act a certain way, because everybody
says so.” But who is this “everybody” that “says so?” When, where, and why
have they said so? Go to the source. Verify your information with precision.
That’s a process we should never overlook, since we so often come to
conclusions starting with unfounded information or premises.
Sometimes, one of the members of a couple judges and reaches
conclusions without listening to or asking the opinion of the other. Check
your information! When you judge someone, tell them, “this is what I think
of you. Give me your opinion, before I reach my conclusion and react as a
result of it.”
I once met a very jealous boy. He met wonderful women who adored
him, but he didn’t trust them, and therefore always ended up leaving them.
He lost five companions this way. He could neither believe in them nor love
them, but he was convinced that the blame lay with them.
Learn to Cook!

49. “Dear,” begins a bankrupt businessman, “I’ve got a great idea
that will save us a lot of money: learn to cook so we can get rid
of the chef!”
“What? I’ve got an even better idea!” replies the wife. “Learn to
make love and we can fire the chauffeur!”
This joke reminds me that when we criticize our partner, without fail they
will criticize us as well. In love, if the other doesn’t satisfy us, we can be
absolutely certain that we ourselves fail to satisfy them. Not even the
smallest criticism has a place in true love. If it appears, it becomes mutual.
Thus, if we scorn our spouse on certain grounds, they will scorn us on some
other grounds. It’s impossible for us to be a prince or princess and the other
a frog or toad. To think so is a delusion. A couple is an association of two
individual accomplices.
Conversely, the best way to know if the other loves us is to ask
ourselves if we love them. Reciprocity works this way, too. The other will
undoubtedly demonstrate that they treat us exactly the same way as we
treat them.
There are some extremely narcissistic beings that imagine their
partner isn’t aware of their true feelings. They feel they’re the only ones with
the authority to criticize, that their partner is incapable, and that maybe
some day they will rise to their level.
I need to recognize that she probably doesn’t know how to cook, but
also that I don’t know how to make love. That’s why the relationship isn’t
working and the true motive for which she hasn’t become a good cook. On
the other hand, I’m sure she can make a great sandwich for the chauffeur…
divine snacks! It’s the hormone that manufactures all these relationships.
When it circulates poorly, there’s no harmony and everything goes sour.
Some people tell me, “I can’t form a couple. Nobody loves me.
Solitude pesters me endlessly. I can’t solve this problem. Nevertheless, I
long to resolve it.”
What these people are really saying is: “I don’t love anybody. Solitude
is quite convenient for me. I’m not interested in anybody else. They’re all
rogues. Everybody just wants to take advantage of me, use me, and make
me suffer. I’m not interested in anybody. No one can offer me enough.”

50. And that’s why we live in solitude and can’t find anybody. Once we’re
ready for the other and prepared to love them, they will appear. The loved
one will come knocking on our door.
When I made the movie The Mole, I needed one man without legs and
another without arms. I’d found the latter, but not the former. I confidently
declared: “This week he’ll come knocking at my door.” The following week,
the legless man showed up. When I opened the door, I didn’t notice
anything in particular, since the individual was standing up at a normal
height.
“I’m the man you’re looking for!” he said.
“How’s that? You don’t seem to be missing your legs,” I commented.
“They’re false. The real ones were cut off. I’m a taxi driver. When I
lost my legs, my wife and kids left me. I was left alone. After that, my only
options were to break down or to take the initiative. I chose the latter: I
didn’t allow myself to give up. I got prosthetic legs and worked hard in
physical therapy. Today, I live alone and drive a taxi, and I’m here to work
on this movie.”
The armless man, on the other hand, was a person surrounded with
affection. He was a mariachi singer. He had ten kids and everybody
appreciated him.
During the filming, the two men couldn’t get along. They couldn’t
stand one another and insulted each other all the time. They couldn’t work
together.
This anecdote confirms that when we’re capable of loving, the loved
being will come knocking at our door. It’s all about vibrations. Likewise,
regardless of where we are, when we’re ready to teach, the students will
come knocking at our door.
When I presented my movie Holy Blood at the Festival of Cannes,
people asked me why I hadn’t made any films in over eight years. I
answered, “I did as Bodhidharma. I didn’t look for disciples. He sat in front
of a wall and waited many years for one to show up. In my case, I didn’t
look for a producer; I sat calmly at home and waited for one to come to me.
After eight years, one did.”
When I was making The Sacred Mountain, the producer took off with
four hundred thousand dollars. He left to buy a hotel in Israel. Since I was

51. left penniless, the filming had to come to a halt. A friend of mine, Bob
Taicher, asked me where I’d get the money to finish the movie. I answered,
“I’ll ask God to send me four hundred thousand dollars wrapped in
newspaper.”
And that’s just what I did. I didn’t move, rather just waited for the
miracle to occur. Six weeks later Bob showed up. He was very excited and
carried a package wrapped in newspaper. He gave me the package, which
was filled with bills. He said: “My father is the biggest shoe salesman in the
United States and I’ve decided to invest some money in your movie. I
believe in you.”
He gave me the sum in question so that the film could exist. The
miracle came true.
The Golden Thorn.
A multimillionaire, while enjoying a bowl of fish chowder in a
restaurant, gets a bone caught in his throat. Without a doubt he
would have choked to death had it not been for the nimble
fingers of a surgeon seated at the table next to him who fished
the mortal bone out for him. When he regained his composure,
the multimillionaire asked his savior:
“How much do I owe you?”
“I'd be more than happy if you gave me a tenth of the sum you
were willing to give me one second before I saved you.”
Some people go to the doctor when they get sick, but once they’re healed,
they don’t even bother to go and thank the person who treated them. The
same happens to people who undergo therapy. Once they mature, they
abandon their sessions, cut off all contact with the therapist and never
return.
When we’re in trouble, we’d give anything to get out of the situation,
but once we manage to get out of it, we don’t bother to offer anything at all
to those who helped us.
Then there are even those people who don’t offer anything, even while
they’re in the worst of difficulties. I once knew an impotent man who had
consulted all the doctors in Paris without any luck whatsoever. Nobody could
cure him. One day he came to see me and begged me to help him by
reading the tarot for him. I understood his problem when I asked him:

52. “How much are you willing to pay for me to cure you of your
impotence? Name the price of your cure.”
“Two hundred dollars,” he replied, after turning green and thinking
about it for a moment.
“If you’re only willing to pay two hundred dollars, it’s because you
don’t value your sexuality very much,” I explained. “As long as you fail to
reconsider the matter, you’ll never solve your problem.”
Christ explains this very clearly when he runs into a wealthy man who
wants to follow him. He tells the wealthy man: “Give me everything you
have and then you can follow me.”
We don’t really carry things out until the moment when we’re ready to
give everything to see them through. If we hang on to even the smallest
possession, we lose it all.
Miracle Cure.
“Your husband’s health has weakened considerably,” says the
doctor to the sick man’s wife. “I’m going to write a prescription
for a disgusting tasting drug that you must administer to him
four times a day.”
“Until when, doctor?”
“Until the moment when your husband has enough strength to
take the bottle, dash it to the ground, and squash it under foot.”
This joke reminds me of certain treatments of Pachita, a Mexican sorceress
with whom I worked for several years. She healed everybody by means of
cures that were often unbelievable.
One day, for instance, a man went to see her because he was
beginning to go bald, and that caused him a great deal of depression.
Baldness bothered him so much that he no longer wanted to live.
“Heal me, or I’ll kill myself! Make my hair come back!” begged the
man.
Pachita was a great faith healer. She operated on livers, adjusted
spinal columns, and did all kinds of things as amazing as those carried out
by the Filipinos.

53. “I’ve got an infallible cure that will free you of your problem in no time
at all,” she calmly replied.
All present were hanging on her words, curious to learn of this miracle
cure because, for us, Pachita was a sort of goddess.
“All you have to do is mix a kilo of rat excrement with a liter of your
own urine and a little olive oil. Mix this up into a paste to be applied to your
head,” added Pachita.
Happy, the man effusively thanked her and left, determined to apply
the treatment without the slightest delay. Once outside, he realized the
difficulty of the treatment. He had no idea how to get a hold of a kilo of rat
poop. He looked all over with no luck. Finally, someone suggested, he go to
a laboratory and buy a kilo of white lab rats’ excrement. He followed the
advice and mixed up the paste… Shortly thereafter, he returned to see
Pachita, no longer depressed, but still balding.
“Did you follow my treatment?” asked the woman.
“I didn’t need to. I realized that going bald isn’t so bad,” answered the
man.
In fact, the treatment was so repugnant he preferred not to try it. It
turned him pensive.
I applied this principle to some friends who wanted to have a third
child but couldn’t conceive. I advised them to carry out a certain
psychomagical act extremely complex in nature, thinking all along, “this is
going to annoy them so much that, to escape the situation, she will become
pregnant before they even finish the act.”
One means of finding ourselves is to put ourselves in very difficult
situations.
The Smashed Watch.
Sarfana goes into the jeweler’s with a distraught look on her
face. She shows the jeweler her watch, which is in terrible
condition.
“Can you repair it?” she inquires.

54. “Unfortunately, I don’t think so, ma’am. What happened to your
watch?” replies the jeweler thoughtfully.
“Well, I made the big mistake of letting it fall off in the street
and a bus ran over it.”
“I think the big mistake you made was to go and pick it up.”
I dedicate this joke to the savage psychoanalysts of the world, and to those
who read the tarot with a desire to help people, above which they really wish
to become the new Christ or the new Virgin Mary.
We can help the world, or, better yet, someone, as long as that person
hasn’t surpassed the limit beyond which we can do nothing for them. In that
case, it’s the ego that wants to help. There are individuals who find
themselves in conditions as sad as that of Sarfana’s watch. The bus ran over
them. When a person has taken three hundred doses of LSD, they’re not
coming back to reality, even if they went to Jung himself for treatment.
Their brain has already exploded. The damage is irreversible.
Certain people are living dead. They’re smashed watches. It’s nothing
more than vanity to want to help someone who can’t be helped with
situations that have become impossible for them. So then, who’s to say that
someone’s situation has become impossible?
I’ve become aware that certain psychoanalysts want to regulate the
profession, to eliminate abuse. They affirm that occasionally, some
colleagues will treat a patient for up to four years. For a five- to fifteen-
minute session, they charge as much as fifty dollars. They make a fortune,
well aware that they can’t cure the patient with psychoanalysis, since the the
patient is psychotic.
As a result of a spinal chord lesion, a certain man ended up with an
atrophied hand. I watched a guru perform a thousand mental exercises to
return the man the use of his hand. The truth of the matter is that he
couldn’t cure him because the damage was irreversible.
I also noticed how Pachita proceeded with irreversible lesions. A young
ballerina went to see her after having been in an automobile accident that
left her with a limp. This is a true story. Pachita treated her. She added a
piece of bone to lengthen the ballerina’s leg. When the young woman arrived
in New York, she called me, since I had been the one who suggested she see
Pachita. “I’m back, and good as new,” she told me. I went to see her; she
no longer walked with a limp… she walked on the ball of her foot.

55. In fact, Pachita cured her on a mental level. Her leg was still short.
Pachita was a genius; she made the woman adapt her gait, and that gave
her back her hope.
In the end, when she limped, her way of walking didn’t apply to her,
since she was perfectly capable of using the ball of her foot. Was she truly
cured? From a certain point of view, yes; Pachita knew how to find the
solution that would help this young lady.
The Sugar and the Guru.
A mother visits a guru to ask him to speak with her son to get
him to quit eating sugar. The guru listens to the woman’s
petition and suggests she come back the following week. She
does. At that moment, the guru turns to the boy and says:
“Young man, stop eating sugar!”
Surprised at the brevity of the intervention, the woman asks the
guru, “We had to wait a week for that? You could have said the
same thing the first time we were here.”
“I made you wait a week because a week ago, I still ate sugar.”
When we seek advice, our choice of advisor requires rigorous attention.
During the course of a conference I briefly explained about
psychomagic and one of those in attendance began to prescribe acts as I
did. The results were predictably catastrophic. After the incident, I decided
to write a book about the matter, in order for the discipline to be properly
understood. It’s impossible to practice it if we’re not profoundly integrated in
it.
I’ve heard of a psychoanalyst who sleeps with his patients, who’s
emotionally imbalanced… makes me wonder about the value of his therapy…
Wholesale Pricing.
Jacob goes to his doctor, who tells him: “bring me a flask of
urine for testing.”
He comes back the next day with a three-liter bottle completely
full of urine.

56. The doctor pays no attention to the quantity of urine in the
bottle and orders the tests from the laboratory. Later, he
concludes, “Sir, your urine is perfectly fine, you have nothing to
worry about.”
As he’s leaving the doctor’s office, Jacob runs to the nearest
payphone and calls his wife to report the results: “The doctor
says the urine is perfectly fine. So I’m fine, you’re fine, the kids
are fine, and grandma, too.”
Jacob had the doctor analyze his whole family all together in one fell swoop.
Some time ago, I dreamed that a teacher was giving me a
philosophical examination. He demanded, “Summarize, in four words,
everything you’ve learned up to now!”
I emitted the following four words: “permanent impermanence;
nothing individual.”
In Jacob’s case, “nothing individual” means that if the family is in good
health, then so is Jacob. But suppose the doctor had said, “You’re sick.”
Then Jacob would have told his wife, “We’re all sick.”
Illness is collective, not individual. I have a little anecdote that
illustrates this point:
A young woman with a daughter told me of the great difficulty the girl
was having doing her necessities. A doctor examined the girl and found no
signs of hemorrhoids. The woman came to me for advice. I asked the girl’s
age. Seventeen months. Did she still use diapers all the time? Yes. My
unconscious dictated the way to go: the girl needed to be freed of her
diapers. I insisted, despite the young mother’s surprise and lack of
comprehension. “It doesn’t matter that your daughter does her necessities
anywhere,” I told her. “That’s just an inconvenience you need to deal with
for a few days.”
The following week, the young mother came to thank me for my
advice, which she had followed to the letter. From the first day, the girl had
done her necessities… twelve times! The problem was solved. From that
moment on, the girl began to ask her mother to spend more time with her.
The young mother came back to see me and told me about it. When I asked
her, the mother told me the girl was born prematurely, in the seventh
month. I told her that the girl’s reaction was totally normal, that the girl

57. needed a closer relationship with her mother, and therefore she should carry
her around on her back, like the Indians.
She went out and bought a backpack to carry the girl around with her,
but her daughter didn’t accept it. So I exposed her: “Evidently, your
daughter’s not stupid. She doesn’t want to be packed in a backpack. She
wants direct contact.”
I had forgotten to tell her to keep the girl in contact with her naked
skin. I corrected the omission. It’s also interesting to note that I needed to
insist on three separate occasions that the mother directly reach out to her
daughter.
Later, the girl got better, but the story doesn’t end there. The young
mother discovered she had problems with her daughter.
“The fact that your daughter has come into the world in the seventh
month has to do with you,” I explained. “She was born early; you brought
her into the world before her time. There’s a certain rejection on your part.”
“But what did I reject?”
“Ask your own mother!”
“My mother???” she asked me, stupefied.
“Yes, your mother! What was her problem with her own children?”
The woman confided to me that her mother hadn’t wanted her. The
rejection was explicit.
If my mother is against children, my children will be sick. If my mother
is against children, it’s because my grandma began the story. Sickness is
collective, a family matter. You need to dig deep into the matter, like
Sherlock Holmes would.
Conjugal Misfortune.
During the glory years of communism in the Soviet Union, a
worker arrives at the factory panting and confides in a co-
worker:
“This morning something strange happened to me. I left home
and, five minutes later, I realized I’d forgotten my lunch. I

58. turned around and guess what I found when I got back home?
My wife was in bed with the secretary of our neighborhood
communist cell!”
“And?”
“I was lucky: he didn’t see me! Otherwise, he’d have hit me with
five years’ hard labor for espionage.”
Given my South American temperament, I’d have hoped that upon finding
his wife in bed with someone else, the worker would have become offended
and beaten the secretary… In fact, the same situations are lived out
distinctly and provoke different reactions depending on where they occur.
When we’re exposed to or told about an event, it’s a good idea to
always ask where the event took place, the era, the date, the geographic
spot, in which civilization, under which political regime. If we’re not told
where, when, and who, we can’t talk intelligently about the matter nor truly
understand it, because the bases are too vague. On the other hand, one of
our great errors in judgment rises from the fact that we don’t know how to
deal with these notions systematically.
Nowadays, some15- or 16-year-old Arab women refuse to marry a
man who has been chosen for them if they don’t want to. This ancient
practice still occurs in Europe as well. If I chose a spouse for my daughter or
son, I’m good for at least one black eye… which confirms that things are
lived differently depending upon where and in which civilization they occur.
Prenuptial Tests.
The chief of an African tribe has a beautiful daughter. A man falls
madly in love with her and asks her father for her hand in
marriage.
“If you want to marry my daughter, you need to prove your
worthiness by passing three tests,” declares the chief.
“What are they?” asks the man impatiently.
“There’s a lion in the cage over there. You need to enter the
cage, fight with the lion, and strangle him to death. If you do
that, you’ll find a gorilla in the second cage; you don’t need to
kill him, rather since he has a terrible toothache, you’ll need to
pull the bad tooth that’s making him suffer.”

59. “And the third test?” asks the yearning lover.
“In the third cage you’ll find a frigid Englishwoman. You must
enter the cage and give her an orgasm.”
The man rushes over to the first cage. Outside, a lot noise of
combat and strange violence is heard. After a few minutes, the
boy waveringly exits the cage carrying a lion in his arms.
Without wasting a minute, he goes to the second cage to meet
the gorilla. The combat becomes very violent until the moment
when the gorilla is heard howling with pleasure.
“And now,” asks the young man, abandoning the second cage,
“where’s the Englishwoman whose tooth I need to pull?”
This joke was told by Bagwan in India. Sometimes we don’t pay enough
attention to the facts surrounding a problem we need to solve, causing us to
make mistakes.
For example, for many years, the definitions of the various tarot cards
have remained petrified. It’s said that The Devil carries a sword in his left
hand and that, by holding it, the hand cuts itself off. It’s also said he has
breasts and male sex organs. Many things are confirmed even though we
really haven’t paid much attention to the details. It’s as if we pulled a
healthy tooth from the frigid Englishwoman and gave the gorilla an orgasm.
If we observe the tarot card closely, we’ll see that The Devil isn’t
carrying a sword. The object in his hand has a line in the middle; in one
extreme, we can see a line that runs one way whereas in the other the line
is shorter and seems to close. You could say the object is a compass.
On the other hand, when we look at this character’s sex organs, we
don’t find a phallus at all. It looks more like some sort of spider. We could
say that it’s the male sex organ, but it can also be said that it’s some sort of
image of a terrifying female sex organ.
We can’t really confirm anything about the arcane. To read someone’s
cards, we need to recall the meaning of the arcane. Then the cards can be
interpreted according to what’s suitable to the situation.
The same holds true when I come in contact with someone. I could
behave according to what I had been told about the person beforehand, or I
could establish my contact directly based upon what I perceive of that
person.

60. If I opt for the second choice, I’ll observe the person from head to toe.
I’ll try to perceive them in their entirety and from there, I’ll create my own
image of that person. Then we’ll be able to truly communicate with each
other, without letting ourselves be mutually impressed by our titles or our
business cards.