"He has been in the East. And he is right when he says that he has been sitting under many Zen masters, and he has brought Zen to Europe. He has brought only echoes. He has brought only a bird in the cage, not the bird with open wings in the sky. He has brought it very accurately – about his accuracy I have no doubt – and he has done his best to present Zen to people who have never known anything like it. But he himself does not know anything about it, as far as experience is concerned. As far as knowledge is concerned, he knows much; perhaps much more than the Zen masters he is talking about.

"If he had understood Zen he would have understood George Gurdjieff. If you have seen the full moon, you have seen all the full moons that have passed and all the full moons that will appear in the future. If he could not understand George Gurdjieff, naturally, seeing my picture and seeing you as my disciples he warned you that you were moving on a dangerous path. And if a man is afraid of moving into the path of aloneness, silence…. he may understand the word silence, but he has not tasted it. He has not looked into the eyes of George Gurdjieff.

"Durkheim may have introduced the word zen, but it is George Gurdjieff who introduced the East to the West, without even mentioning it, without even claiming it – because the very claim that, 'I have introduced Zen' comes from the ego. Gurdjieff never talked about Zen, and he was living Zen. Certainly he had his own individuality – of the same caliber as Bodhidharma, and as colorful and as unique. He was not a carbon copy of anybody else; he was himself – so much so that perhaps if Durkheim could not understand him it is understandable.

"For example, if you wanted to be initiated by Gurdjieff…. The initiation used to happen in the night after a long meal, dining, wining. Gurdjieff himself was a great cook, and he would cook food for his disciples. And he would go on forcing, 'Eat!' He would force alcohol, drugs on the disciples, and they were shouting, 'It is enough, we are going mad!' But unless you were really mad he was not going to listen."