Brian ScottCEO & Life Coach, ASI · Quantum Success Transformation Guide

The Magician And The Sheep - Are You The Sheep?

12 Jul 2026 · 3 min

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2:51

In this narrated monologue, the speaker retells an ancient G. I. Gurdjieff parable about a cruel, wealthy magician who owns a massive flock of sheep. To prevent the sheep from escaping when he intends to harvest their skins, the magician hypnotizes them, whispering three comforting lies: that they are immortal, that he is a loving master, and that any danger will come only far in the future. He then tells each sheep they are not sheep but lions, eagles, men, or even magicians like himself. The sheep, convinced of their greatness, cease to run and await their fate. The story, brought from Central Asian mountains to wartime Russia by Gurdjieff and recorded by a skeptical mathematician, ends with Gurdjieff declaring that the tale describes the listener’s life: humanity is collectively hypnotized, sleeping with eyes open, and only a few have ever found the secret map to awaken. The narrative serves as a philosophical allegory about self‑deception, authority, and the possibility of spiritual awakening.

Chapters

A long time ago, in a land of dust and silence, there lived a magician who was very rich and very cruel. He owned a great flock of sheep, thousands of them scattered across the hills, and every one of those sheep was worth money to him because the magician wanted their flesh and their skins. There was a problem. The sheep kept running away. They wandered toward the forest, they slipped into the ravines, and worst of all, When the moment came for the magician to take what he wanted from them, they fled. Because somewhere deep inside, the sheep sensed the truth. They sensed that this man saw them as meat. A wise master would have built a fence. He would have hired shepherds. But the magician was greedy, and fence costs money, and shepherds want to be paid. So the magician found a different solution. A darker one. He hypnotized them. He looked into their eyes and he whispered 3 things. First, he told them they were immortal. He told them that being skinned would bring them no harm at all, that it would feel pleasant, that it would even be good for them. Second, he told them he was a kind and loving master, a master who adored his flock so deeply that he would give them anything in the world. And third, he told them that even if something were coming for them, it would arrive on some other day, far away, never today. So there was no reason to think about it, no reason to worry, no reason to run. And then he did the cruelest thing of all. He told them they were no longer sheep. To some, he whispered, you are a lion. To others, you are an eagle. To a few, you are a man. And to the proudest among them, He leaned close and said, you are a magician, just like me. After that, the running stopped. The sheep grazed quietly on the hills, calm, content, certain of their own greatness, and they waited peacefully for the day the magician would come to collect their skins. This story is very old. A teacher named George Gurdjieff carried it out of the mountains of Central Asia and into the drawing rooms of wartime Russia, where a brilliant and skeptical mathematician wrote it down. And when the mathematician finished writing it, Gurdjieff looked at him and said the words that have haunted seekers for hundreds of years: this tale describes your life. You are the sheep. This is one of the most dangerous ideas ever smuggled out of the hidden schools of the East— the idea that the entire human race is asleep, hypnotized, dreaming with its eyes open. And that only a few people across the centuries found the secret map for waking up.