"George Gurdjieff used to tell a story:

"A magician deep in the mountains had many sheep, and to avoid servants and to avoid looking after the sheep and going in search of them every day when they were lost in the forest, he hypnotized all the sheep, and told each sheep different stories. He gave different minds to each sheep.

"To one he told, 'You are not a sheep, you are a man, so you need not be afraid that one day you will be killed, sacrificed, like other sheep – they are only sheep. So you need not be worried as far as returning home is concerned.' To some he said, 'You are a lion, not a sheep,' and to some, 'You are a tiger.' And since that day the magician was at ease: the sheep started behaving according to the mind that was given to them.

"He could kill a sheep – every day he used to kill sheep for his own food, his family's food – and the sheep who believed that they were lions or men or tigers would simply look and giggle, 'This is what happens to sheep.' But they were not afraid, not like in the old days.

"When he killed a sheep before, all the sheep were trembling, afraid, 'Tomorrow is going to be my day. How long can I live?' And that's why they used to escape in the forest – to avoid the magician. But now nobody was escaping. They were tigers, they were lionsall kinds of minds had been implanted in them.

"Your mind is not your mind – this is something basic to be remembered. Your mind is an implantation of the society in which you have accidentally been born. If you were born in a Christian home, but immediately transferred to a Mohammedan family and brought up by the Mohammedans, you would not have the same mind; you would have a totally different mind, that you cannot conceive of.

"Bertrand Russell, one of the geniuses of our times, tried hard to get rid of the Christian mind, not because it was Christian, but simply because it was given to him by others. He wanted his own fresh outlook about things."