B1206 <=> B1208 [BTG XLVIII From the Author, p. 1207]

“You go to the phone and the girl connects you with the wrong number.

“You ring again, and get the same number. Some man informs you that you are bothering him, you tell him it is not your fault, and what with one word and another, you learn to your surprise that you are a scoundrel and an idiot and that if you ring him up again . . . then . . .

“A rug slipping under your feet provokes a storm of indignation, and you should hear the tone of voice in which you rebuke the servant who is handing you a letter.

“The letter is from a man you esteem and whose good opinion you value highly.

“The contents of the letter are so flattering to you, that as you read, your irritation gradually passes and changes to the ‘pleasant embarrassment’ of a man listening to a eulogy of himself. You finish reading the letter in the happiest of moods.

“I could continue this picture of your day – you free man!

“Perhaps you think I am overdrawing?

“No, it is a photographically exact snapshot from nature.”

While speaking of the will of man and of the various aspects of its supposedly self-initiated manifestations, which for contemporary what are called “enquiring minds” – but according our reasoning, “naive minds” – are matters for wiseacring and self-adulation, it will do no harm to quote what was said by Mr. Gurdjieff in another “conversational lecture,” because the totality of what he then said may well throw light on the illusoriness of that will which every man supposedly has.

Mr. Gurdjieff said: