George Ivanovich Gurdjieff (13 January 1866 – 29 October 1949), usually called Gurdjieff, was a Greek- Armenian guru and writer. He was an influential spiritual teacher of the first half of the 20th century. He was influenced by Sufi, Zen and Yogamystics he met on his early travels.
Gurdjieff taught that most people live their entire lives in a state of hypnotic "waking sleep":
"Speaking frankly... contemporary man as we know him is nothing more than merely a clockwork mechanism, though of a very complex construction".
"A modern man lives in sleep, in sleep he is born and in sleep he dies".p66