I’m sitting on the steps of a friend’s house on a day no different than the rest and, after having taken a healthy (or should I say dangerous) dose of a forbidden substance , the mechanical nature of my life and the emptiness behind the phenomenal world began to appear before me. From the drama which unraveled before my very eyes (all whacked-out in la-la land), I could see how I had been living the life of a robot: always following orders, people telling me where to go and what to do, the clock setting my pace. When I awake, when I sleep, when I shower, when I eat and when I shit, how I look, how I walk, how I talk, how I live, and even how I…don’t live – all controlled by a gigantic robot, a machine – a monster. A monster that has consumed my life and my freedom, whose influence has transformed me (ever since I was a little kid) into another one of its robots.

I thought, "Boy, it’s a mess! (my life that is) What am I going to do now? I have to call Ricardo (my brother) and ask him to hypnotize me or something." Lame, I know, but for some strange and unexplainable reason I believed at the time that hypnosis was actually good for something.

Of course, at that time, I didn’t know anything about Gurdjieff, I had never read anything about Gurdjieff, and I had never heard about Gurdjieff in any way, shape or form. In fact, at that time, I would have never spent even one second listening to anybody talking about no guy named Gurdjieff. I would just not be interested one bit in Gurdjieff.

Lucky me, Ricardo had plans other than hypnotizing me. He showed me how to sit down and listen…how to look at my self, at where I was.

Next thing I knew, I was flying high with Gurdjieff! "Let’s go in search of the Maracas, my boy!" he screamed excitedly.

In a cabin flowing through an ocean filled with whales, dinosaurs, dragons and all sorts of other ordinary and mystical creatures – in the river of life! It was a trip like no other and one for which I cannot find words to describe – where I saw the beginning of life – my origin. It was the melting pot of all souls, where they merge into one just before they are ripped into billions and trillions of pieces, which are molded into biological bodies, again and again…

Next I found myself strapped to an examination table inside of a space ship. There, as electrical charges where being inflicted on me through my temples and as metallic probes and tools (much like a dentist’s tools) explored every inch of my body (inside and out), I suddenly felt his presence – it was Gurdjieff, the old man. He sat next to me and showed me some secrets that have to do with sound…

Then I sat in my blue Toyota, parked in a vista point off of Hwy-280, under the cloudy, dark sky of that cold night. Through the clouds up above I saw a white sparkle of light dancing and wobbling from side to side, as fluidly as a fly in the air (if not better). I thought: "That’s no star (although it did look just like a star in the sky), that’s no airplane (although it did look like a far away plane, they just don’t move like that) and that’s no comet either!" My full, undivided attention went to that magnificent white light up in the sky…

One of my last stops was at the edge of a mountain, where I begged for the miraculous. I begged for a way out of the ordinary world, for a place where there’s life. I asked to be made useful for something bigger than myself…

Now I live and work in San Francisco (the City!), where I write news articles, attend meetings and workshops, touch rocks and read for the dead…

People find it hard to believe that I, after working with a group that works with a school, that hosts a living teacher of the fourth way, for about two years, still haven’t read any books about Gurdjieff. They seem to be confused and surprised when I don’t seem to know much about him or what he did or said.

"So," I says to him, "Mr. Gurdjieff, did you ever find those Maracas you where searching for or what?"

With a hard, serious look he said to me: "Spanky, I’ve already told you: If you expect to even pretend to work with me, you have to read the books in the right order; there is a sequence to them, you know."

"Oh that…you’re, right, of course Mr. Gurdjieff. I will, I promise," I lied.

"And also," Gurdjieff added, "your so called ‘hard work’ is shit! You think you work hard? You think you work at all? Bah!"