Now to say to a politician, to a president of a country or to a prime minister or to a king, “You have a very good facade,” is to invite trouble. And Gurdjieff lived his whole life in trouble. But there is no other way.

He also used to say, more than once…. Whenever some egoist would ask him, “Do you love me? Do you like me?” this was his answer: “For what you could be I have nothing but benevolence, but as you are I hate you – back to your grandmother!”

This is not diplomacy: this is creating enemies.

Jesus must have been a really great artist in creating enemies because he was only thirty-three when he was crucified, and there were only three years of work because he appeared at the age of thirty. Up to that time he was with the mystery schools, going around the world to Egypt, to India, and the possibility is even to Tibet and to Japan.

Hence the Bible has no record of his years of preparation; the record is very abrupt. Something about his childhood is said, very fragmentary. And only once is he mentioned: when he was twelve years of age and he started arguing with the priests in the temple – that’s all. Then there is a gap of eighteen years…nothing is mentioned.

Now a man like Jesus cannot just live an ordinary life for eighteen years and then suddenly explode into Christhood; that is not possible. These eighteen years he was moving with different masters, with different systems, getting initiated into different mystery schools, learning whatsoever was available, getting in tune with as many masters as possible.

He appears at the age of thirty and by the age of thirty-three he is crucified. In three years he really did a good job! He was quick! You cannot think that he was diplomatic; he was the most undiplomatic man ever. In fact, that’s the way the awakened people behave. What exactly is diplomacy?

“Daddy, what is diplomacy?” asked little Bill, just home from school.

“Well, son, it is like this,” replied his dad. “If I were to say to your mother, ‘Your face would stop a clock,’ that would be stupidity. But if I were to say, ‘When I look at you, time stands still,’ that is diplomacy!”

Yes, you would like me to be a little more diplomatic; that will save a lot of trouble. But that will save you also from truth, remember. Truth brings many troubles. It is bound to be so because people live in lies, and when you bring truth into the world, their lies, their lives rooted in lies, react. A great antagonism is bound to happen. And people as they are, in their unconsciousness, cannot live without lies.