Later Years
Toward the end of his life, many colleagues and admirers asked Groddeck to form a society that would promote his ideas. To this request, he would laugh and reply:
Disciples like their master to stay put, whereas I should think anyone a fool who wanted me to say the same thing tomorrow as I said yesterday. If you really want to be my follower, look at life for yourself and tell the world honestly what you see.
In a talk called Who is it who knows there is no Ego? the zen philosopher Alan Watts said that when people came to Groddeck for analysis, he would give them massage, and when they came to him for massage, he would give them analysis. "He was a completely wonderful man because everybody felt calmed by him. They felt an atmosphere of implicit faith in nature and especially in your own inner nature. No matter what, there is a wisdom inside you which may seem absurd, but you have to trust it." Watts mentions that Hermann Graf Keyserling, the Lithuanian philosopher, said that nobody has ever reminded him more of Lao Tse than Groddeck.
Read more about this topic: Georg Groddeck
Famous quotes containing the word years:
“The child-rearing years are relatively short in our increased life span. It is hard for young women caught between diapers and formulas to believe, but there are years and years of freedom ahead. I regret my impatience to get on with my career. I wish I’d relaxed, allowed myself the luxury of watching the world through my little girl’s eyes.”
—Eda Le Shan (20th century)
“Anyone informed that the universe is expanding and contracting in pulsations of eighty billion years has a right to ask, “What’s in it for me?””
—Peter De Vries (b. 1910)