The Tao of Heraclitus: we are one
INTO THE SAME RIVERS WE STEP AND DO NOT STEP.

YOU CANNOT STEP TWICE IN THE SAME RIVER.

EVERYTHING FLOWS AND NOTHING ABIDES.
EVERYTHING GIVES WAY AND NOTHING STAYS FIXED.

COOL THINGS BECOME WARM, THE WARM GROWS COOL.
THE MOIST DRIES, THE PARCHED BECOMES MOIST.

IT IS BY DISEASE THAT HEALTH IS PLEASANT;
BY EVIL THAT GOOD IS PLEASANT,
BY HUNGER, SATIETY; BY WEARINESS, REST.

More and more difficult Heraclitus becomes. We can even agree, reluctantly, that okay, without illness there will be no health -- but then he says it is by evil that good is pleasant, by the Devil that God is pleasant, by the sinners that saints are so beautiful. If sinners disappear, the saints disappear. And if there is really a saint, he is bound to be a sinner also. There are only two possibilities to do this. One is that I become a saint and you become a sinner. This is what religions have done. Just a division of labor -- you do the work of the sinner and I do the work of a saint. But in a better world, in a more logos-oriented world -- not logical -- is it good to force somebody else to be a sinner and force myself to be a saint? Is it good to be a saint at somebody else's cost? No, it is not. Then in a better world the saint will be the sinner also. Of course, he will sin in a very saintly way, that's right -- but this becomes more and more difficult. Then he will be like Gurdjieff: a sinner and saint both.
Gurdjieff is a turning-point in the history of human consciousness. After Gurdjieff, the concept of saint should be completely different; it can never be the same, the old. Gurdjieff stands at a crisis point from where a new saint is to arise. That's why Gurdjieff was very much misunderstood -- because the concepts were that a saint should be a saint, and he was both.... It was difficult to understand: "How can a man be both? Either you are a saint or you are a sinner." So, many types of rumors go around about Gurdjieff. Some think that he was the most devilish person possible, a devil's agent. And some think he was the greatest sage ever born. He was both, and both types of rumor are true, but both are wrong also. Followers think that he was a sage and they try to hide the sinner part because they also cannot comprehend how he could be both. So they simply say that that is a rumor, that these are people who don't understand who are talking. And then there are people who are against him. They cannot believe in his sage part because, they say, "How can such a sinner be a sage? Impossible! Both cannot exist in one man." And this is the whole point, that they both exist in one man.
You can do only one thing: you can suppress one and pretend the other. You can suppress one in the unconscious and the other you can bring to the surface, but then your saint will be skindeep and your sinner will be very, very deep in the roots. Or you can do just the opposite: you can bring the sinner to the skin and suppress the saint -- the criminals are doing that. The one possibility is that I suppress my sinner, but that sinner will affect somebody somewhere, because we are one.