What will happen if a follower of Gurdjieff comes across a Taoist Master?
What will happen if a follower of Gurdjieff comes across a Taoist Master?
The question is from Purna; a beautiful question, significant one.
What happens when a river comes falling, tumbling, down off a hillock upon strong rocks? If you look, you will think ’Those rocks are so hard, what can the river do, what can this waterfall do?’ But if you come after a few years, you will find those rocks are gone; they have become sand. The soft water has become victorious over hard rocks.
Lao Tzu calls it ’the watercourse way’, the way of the soft, the way of the feminine.
What happens when a man, a very strong man and a very fragile beautiful woman come across each other, what happens? The man looks like a rock and the woman looks like just a small rivulet, tumbling from a hillock... but whatsoever the appearances, the final victory is of the feminine; the woman wins over. She is soft, the man is hard, and the paradox is that the woman surrenders and through surrender she conquers; and the man never surrenders, but even never surrendering, one day the finds that he has been taken over, he has been possessed.
Even the strongest men, Napoleon or Alexander, are strong when they are outside: when they come home they are no more strong. Then their fragile wife is all strong. There is a strength in softness.
Tao is the way of the soft, the feminine way, the watercourse way. Gurdjieff s way is the way of the rock. If it happens that a Taoist and a follower of Gurdjieff meet, in the beginning you will say that the follower of Gurdjieff is winning, but finally, eventually. you will find that he has disappeared and the Taoist has won over. That has always been so. You cannot defeat the soft. Maybe, for the time being, you can have a certain victory, but you cannot really defeat the soft.
It is impossible to defeat the soft. The soft is so fragile, so ready to disappear... that’s why it cannot be FORCED to disappear.
Lao Tzu says ’Nobody can defeat me because I am already defeated. Nobody can defeat me because I don’t hanker for victory at all.’
How can you defeat him who has no desire to be victorious? The way of the hard, what Buddhists call VAJRAYANA, ’the way of the diamond’.... The diamond is the hardest thing in the world – that is exactly the right word for it, VAJRAYANA, ’the way of the diamond’. But even the diamond will have to give way to water.
It has always been so and it is good that it is so – that simply shows that God wins. The one who is humble, the one who is meek, wins. Says Jesus ’Blessed are the meek, for theirs is the kingdom of God.’
The Gurdjieffian way is the way of the will. It takes you to the last-but-one step. It takes you exactly to the last-but-one step. The final step has to be Taoist, because through the will you can come to a peak of your will, but then one has to surrender that peak of the will; it has to be surrendered.
The only difference between the path of surrender and the path of will is that on the path of surrender you surrender as the first step, on the path of will you surrender as the last step – that’s the only difference. What is required as the last step on the path of will is required as the first step on the path of surrender.
So those who are wise will choose the path of surrender because what is the point in struggling so hard for so long, and then finally relaxing, then finally dropping everything? What is the point? If you are incapable of relaxation, okay, then you go on the path of will; otherwise the path of surrender is simply the wisest way because it is the path of least resistance, in fact of non-resistance.
The question is significant and it is from Purna. She herself is a little rock-like, very hard. She is a woman, but very hard, very German – she is a German, very-willed. She could have moved on the Gurdjieffian path very easily. Here she is in wrong company, but she is relaxing... by and by she is understanding. Her struggle, fight, is going, her ego is dropping.
The soft will win over.
Just relax and allow me to melt it – it will disappear, it will become sand and will be gone. The water is already falling on you, Purna... just give way.
(OSHO - Tao: The Pathless Path, Vol 1)
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