There was an evil magician. He lived deep in the mountains and
the forests, and he had thousands of sheep. But the problem was that the
sheep were afraid of the magician because every day the sheep were
seeing that one of them was being killed for his breakfast, another was
being killed for his lunch. So they ran away from the magician's ranch
and it was a difficult job to find them in the vast forest. Being a
magician, he used magic.
He hypnotized all the sheep and suggested to them first of all
that they were immortal and that no harm was being done to them when
they were skinned, that, on the contrary, it would be very good for them
and even pleasant; secondly he suggested that the magician was a good
master who loved his flock so much that he was ready to do anything in
the world for them; and in the third place he suggested to them that if
anything at all were going to happen to them it was not going to happen
just then, at any rate not that day, and therefore they had no need to
think about it.
He then told different sheep...to some, "You are a man, you need
not be afraid. It is only the sheep who are going to be killed and
eaten, not you. You are a man just like I am." Some other sheep were
told, "You are a lion -- only sheep are afraid. They escape, they are
cowards. You are a lion; you would prefer to die than to run away. You
don't belong to these sheep. So when they are killed it is not your
problem. They are meant to be killed, but you are the most loved of my
friends in this forest." In this way, he told every sheep different
stories, and from the second day, the sheep stopped running away from
the house.
They still saw other sheep being killed, butchered, but it was
not their concern. Somebody was a lion, somebody was a tiger, somebody
was a man, somebody was a magician and so forth. Nobody was a sheep
except the one who was being killed. This way, without keeping servants,
he managed thousands of sheep. They would go into the forest for their
food, for their water, and they would come back home, believing always
one thing: "It is some sheep who is going to be killed, not you. You
don't belong to the sheep. You are a lion -- respected, honored, a
friend of the great magician." The magician's problems were solved and
the sheep never ran away again.'
-Gurdjieff
