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Mar. 28, 2006 A friend was curious about what I thought about George Gurdjieff, so to begin my inquiry I checked Sarlo's Guru Rating Service at http://www.globalserve.net/~sarlo/RatingsM.htm#gurdj and here is a quote about George Gurdjieff from Sarlo: ====================================================== George Gurdjieff M 1872?-1949 Gurdjieff "The Work is about making personality passive, a servant rather than a master." Gurdjieff investigated many spiritual practices deeply. His distillation remains offbeat and original. Difficult to get a consistent picture from the many schools established in his name. Tremendous influence but no enlightened successors, it seems. ====================================================== Wikipedia says about Gurdjieff, among other things, "Gurdjieff believed that man lives his life in a form of sleep, and that higher levels of consciousness are possible. In developing the inner possibility of becoming more aware of ourselves in our daily lives, one is shown a whole new way of living that can enrich our experience of life and acquaint us with our real selves. 'Know thyself' takes on a more concrete meaning. The ability to be 'present' more often (instead of being absent as we usually are in our lives), requires work on oneself over time, guided initially by a teacher trained in the practice of the teaching by those who in turn were taught directly by Gurdjieff or by one of his pupils." and "Gurdjieff taught that by making frequent efforts to activate their attention in small things, such as walking, speaking or sitting etc., people can gradually become more aware of themselves as living beings through the development of their attention instead of spending their lives asleep in dreams. To provide conditions in which attention can be exercised more intensively, Gurdjieff also taught "sacred dances" or "movements" (which are performed as part of a class) as an aid, and he left a body of music inspired by what he heard in visits to remote monasteries and other places, which was written for piano in a collaboration with one of his pupils, Thomas de Hartmann." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gurdjeff ====================================================== Here are some links for Gurdjieff if you want to check him out for yourself: Welcome to the Gurdjieff International Review http://www.gurdjieff.org/ Articles on various aspects on Gurdjieff and his teachings with links to other sites http://www.prahlad.org/gallery/george_gurdjieff.htm Erowid Character Vaults http://www.erowid.org/culture/characters/gurdjieff_george/gurdjieff_george.shtml ====================================================== Here is my "take" on Gurdjieff, and spinoffs from that: Georges Ivanovich Gurdjieff had great physical energy and great mental energy and he traveled far and wide and found many remarkable persons who taught him what they knew. The man assimilated practices and ideas from different cultures and created his own culture. Gurdjieff's followers were strong physically and mentally, and so they could keep up with their teacher and follow his example more or less. Many of Gurdjieff's followers branched out and started their own schools. As do I, Gurdjieff used music and dance movements in his work. In his own music and dance he was encouraged by the composer Thomas de Hartmann. Gurdjieff's cosmic schemes seem rather dubious to me. I would need a tutor to follow his thinking. He offers a great many ideas to digest. I suspect they are not basic, but Gurdjieff stimulated vigorous and strong people who were hungry for a teacher who had some new way that appealed to them. Of course there's nothing really new about the appeal of a very strong and vigorous man who is strong mentally as well as physically. That is the archetypal "leader," the "alpha male." It's more revolutionary to be drawn to study a person who is not so strong... a person like, for example, Friedrich Nietzsche. Perhaps because he didn't satisfy this instinctual archetypal longing in people, Nietzsche had very few followers during his lifetime. There is an ongoing search in naturally rebellious persons to find some "far-out" and titillating "revolutionary" "orthodoxy-shattering" revelation. Such a revelation includes the following of persons who seem to be inadequate. That is suggested by the old prophetic phrase "The stone the builders refused which is become the chief corner stone." Applying this metaphor, we look to the person who seems unworthy of serious regard to identify with "the Teacher" or "the Messiah." This idea of the "new teacher" as the "rejected stone" is an old Jewish myth. The "weak" incompetent man turns out to be the competent "strong" man. Recall how Nietzsche wrote so much about the "strong" man, the "Superman" or "Overman" as Nietzsche called him. Following this "messianic" rule we look at Sarlo's Guru Rating with a grain of salt. We can look at Sarlo's tables and glean information from them, but he has reviewed a huge number of teachers, and apparently he is judging them primarily on what he sees at their websites. But of course with respect to Gurdjieff he probably has studied a lot more. Gurdjieff is one of the most prominent modern popular "Fuerers" whose dream is to start a new culture (of course not necessarily the Third Reich) In the past a new culture was started by a big shot King or Queen who has lots of little shots or bishops, rooks, knights, and pawns. The multitudes of little guys depend upon their superior to tell them what to do. The revolution is away from this kind of social hierarchy. Gurdjieff made this point pretty well, and his followers broke off and started their own schools. The risk in this evolution is that after a few more generations there won't be much left of Gurdjieff's own ideas. In my opinion the intelligence required to be "spiritual" "intuitive" "psychic" or what-have-you complements the intelligence required to learn to follow instructions. Oftentimes children learn to follow instructions by being intimidated or awed by some big strong man or woman who has all the qualities of an archetypal leader (not a messiah). In my opinion the super-intuitive prophetic writers of the past sensed the inherent problem and they tried to verbalize this problem as best they could. It's easier to remember a picture of "the stone the builders refused which is become the chief stone of the corner" than it is to remember a long-winded essay like this one. This may be why the old prophetic image about the coming change is remembered even today. I would say that as a prophetic teacher Gurdjieff was on the right track, but he made things very complicated. Perhaps he wanted to make things complicated so that he wouldn't have many followers. It should be clear, however, that in the new culture of the "anti-fuehrer" the ancient idea of the "great leader" will be phased out and in every community and school there will be "anti-fuehrers" or "messiahs." These exemplars will help young people understand that it is fine to be healthy and strong in body and in mind, and it is fine to study lions and tigers and elephants but there are far more common smaller and weaker animals that need to be studied as well, but people who are still dominated by the ancestral archetype never even notice most of these creatures. And with human beings it is the same. For example, in any large community there are quite a few sequestered or shy children or physically weak children who truly have a great deal to offer that is different from what the socially prominent children offer. Furthermore, there are also different kinds of intelligence, such as those intelligences promoted by Dr. Howard Gardner of Harvard as "multiple intelligences." But still, today, people tend to follow the old archetypal type leader and just take an interest in the big (and often very noisy) intimidating animals. With respect to Nietzsche, Nietzsche did not focus on the messiah myth. Nietzsche himself was a weak man whose mind was strong in psychoticism, which is a personal trait of creative geniuses according to the prominent modern psychologist Hans Jurgen Eysenck. Today certain parts of Nietzsche’s work may be seen as prophetic, but even more prophetic are the ideas of messianic prophets of ages long past. One might not realize this, however, if one himself or herself is not a prophet. Of central importance to the creation of the new culture of "anti-fuehrers" is the study of what is transmitted directly by one super-intuitive teacher to a student who is open to direct transmission. Children are educated to have good memories and good verbal skills, but the direct transmission does not involve words. Furthermore, the direct transmission is achieved as both the master and the student give up the desire to dominate (the archetypal tension) and feel the new sensation in which the will to power is no longer felt. This sensation has been described by many writers. I don't know if Gurdjieff often felt it or used it with his students. I suspect he did because he was a very intuitive teacher. Franklin Jones described how his first intuitive teacher Swami Rudrananda used it, and Molly Jones described how she felt the transmission from Franklin Jones after he became the intuitive teacher Adi Da, and a witness to the intuitive teacher Gangaji's power wrote this: ===================================================== "Two weeks ago I didn't know what satsang or Gangaji was. But when I saw your tape and I looked into your eyes, the longing was fulfilled. I didn't see form, I saw my heart." http://gangaji.org/satsang/library/excerpts/darknt.asp ====================================================== You can also read the intuitive teacher Phil Servedio's "Breaking the Hymen of the Heart." at http://www.realization.org/page/namedoc0/serv_joa/joa_12.htm ====================================================== Combine the psychic potency of any intuitive teacher with the new consciousness of the messiah "stone the builders refused which is become the chief stone of the corner" and you get the new culture of anti-fuehrers and anti-fanatics. Hitch your wagon to a star. Keep your seat and there you are. To conclude, Wikipedia says, "Much has been written about Gurdjieff, and many anecdotes about his life have been recorded. At one time in his life he set up a workshop to mend anything. Customers would visit bringing with them something broken, they would leave the article with Gurdjieff, who would then find a way of fixing it - whatever it was. Gurdjieff fixed all kinds of things. If he did not know how to mend a particular item he would set about learning enough to repair it." Now in my opinion the movement to both sanity and safety that modern humanity needs is a global world repair in the old Jewish tradition of tikkun olam. This repair, of course, begins inside our own brains. This movement sounds both Gurdjieffian and messianic to me. To make the movement REALLY happen on college campuses and elsewhere will take a lot of attention-getting young ladies paying a lot of attention to small critters and odd male peers and less attention to the often noisy and muscle-bound men who are accustomed to lots of enviable feminine attention. Ahhhh yessss. The long-awaited PARADIGM SHIFT. ------------ About the author: John L. Waters is an amateur psychologist and independent researcher on self-healing, integration, and problem-solving. John has created art, music and songs, prose and poetry, and helped people solve a difficult problem. For more information, read: John's letters of recommendation: http://members.tripod.com/johnlwaters/recommendations about John's self-healing and integration: http://members.tripod.com/johnlwaters/index.html about John's independent research: http://www.humboldt.edu/~jlw47/index.html about John's seeking an agent or a publisher: http://www.writers.net/writers/39295 Email: blueguntwo@yahoo.com Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com. Please link to this article rather than copying and pasting it onto your site (which would be unauthorized and illegal). |
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