Gurdjieff

Gurdjieff

Author: J. G. Bennett

Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform

Published: 2016-07

Total Pages: 342

ISBN-13: 9781533264596

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The most complete, comprehensive account of the life and work of George Ivanovich Gurdjieff, one of the greatest men of the 20th century, and the only one which attempts to describe his mission. Since Gurdjieff's death in 1949, countless books have been written describing an author's experience with him, in more or less personal detail. This is the first and only book written by an associate of Gurdjieff, presenting an overview of Gurdjieff's life, cultural background, studies, teachings, practices, cosmology, psychology and goals. The author encountered Gurdjieff first in Istanbul in 1920, saw him again in London and the Prieure, Fontainebleau, lost touch with him for 25 years and saw him again in Paris and New York in the last two years of his life. He devoted the last 25 years of his own life to researching and transmitting Gurdjieff's teachings. As the title suggests, the author identifies Gurdjieff's work as nothing less than the inauguration of a new epoch of human evolution, based upon a new understanding of the meaning of "Conscience"; a model based not upon the supremacy of the individual and humanity as a whole, but upon cooperation with both higher and lower powers. The twelve chapters and two appendices are written as a series of essays, which can be read either sequentially or separately. The second appendix gives an account of a cosmological system that is parallel to but entirely separate from the Ray of Creation described in detail in Ouspensky's "In Search of the Miraculous.""


Gurdjieff Reconsidered

Gurdjieff Reconsidered

Author: Roger Lipsey

Publisher: Shambhala Publications

Published: 2019-02-05

Total Pages: 382

ISBN-13: 1611804515

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From a master biographer and longtime Gurdjieff practitioner, a brilliant new exploration of the quintessential Western esoteric teacher of the twentieth-century. The Greek-Armenian teacher G.I. Gurdjieff was one of the most original and provocative spiritual teachers in the twentieth-century West. Whereas much work on Gurdjieff has been either fawning or blindly critical, acclaimed scholar and writer Roger Lipsey balances sympathic interest in Gurdjieff and his "Fourth Way" teachings with a historian's sense of context and a biographer's feel for personality and relationships. Using a wide-range of published and unpublished sources, Lipsey explores Gurdjieff's formative travels in Central Asia, his famed teaching institution in France, the development of the Gurdjieff Movements and music, and, above all, Gurdjieff's fascinating continuous evolution as a teacher. Published on the 70th anniversary of Gurdjieff's death, Gurdjieff Reconsidered delves deeply into Gurdjieff's writings and those of his most important students, including P. D. Ouspensky and Jeanne de Salzmann. Lipsey's comprehensive approach and unerring sense of the subject make this a must-read for anyone with a serious intention to explore Gurdjieff's life, teachings, and reputation.


Deconstructing Gurdjieff

Deconstructing Gurdjieff

Author: Tobias Churton

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2017-05-25

Total Pages: 467

ISBN-13: 1620556391

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Beyond Meetings with Remarkable Men into the truth behind the self-crafted mythology of Gurdjieff’s life • Reveals evidence that Gurdjieff was a secret Freemason, relying on hypnotism, psychic research and spiritualism • Explores the profound influence of the Yezidis, esoteric Christianity, and the “gnostics” of Islam, the Sufis, on Gurdjieff’s Fourth Way teachings and the “Work” • Uncovers the truth behind Gurdjieff’s relations with Aleister Crowley • Accurately dates Gurdjieff’s real activities, particularly his enigmatic early life In November 1949, architect Frank Lloyd Wright announced the death of “the greatest man in the world,” yet few knew who he was talking about. Enigmatic, misunderstood, declared a charlatan, and recently dubbed “the Rasputin who inspired Mary Poppins,” Gurdjieff’s life has become a legend. But who really was George Ivanovich Gurdjieff? Employing the latest research and discoveries, including previously unpublished reminiscences of the real man, Tobias Churton investigates the truth beneath the self-crafted mythology of Gurdjieff’s life recounted in Meetings with Remarkable Men. He examines his controversial birthdate, his father’s background, and his relationship with his private tutor Dean Borshch, revealing a perilous childhood in a Pontic Greek family, persecuted by Turks, forced to migrate to Georgia and Armenia, only to grow up amid more war, persecution, genocide, and revolt. Placing Gurdjieff in the true context of his times, Churton explores Gurdjieff’s roles in esoteric movements taking root in the Russian Empire and in epic imperial construction projects in the Kars Oblast, Transcaucasia, and central Asia. He reveals Gurdjieff’s sources for his transformative philosophy, his early interest in hypnosis, magic, Theosophy, and spiritualism, and the profound influence of the Yezidis and the Sufis, the “gnostics” of Islam, on Gurdjieff’s Fourth Way teachings and the “Work.” Churton also explores Gurdjieff’s ties to Freemasonry and his relationships with other spiritual teachers and philosophers of the age, such as Madame Blavatsky, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Aleister Crowley, dispelling the myth that Gurdjieff forcibly expelled the “Great Beast” from his Institute. Showing how Gurdjieff deliberately re-shaped elements of his life as parables of his system, Churton explains how he didn’t want people to follow his footsteps but to find their own, to wake up from the hypnosis that drives us blindly through life. Offering a vital understanding of the man who asked “How many of you are really alive?” the author reveals the continuing importance of Gurdjieff’s philosophy for the awakening of man.


Gurdjieff Reconsidered

Gurdjieff Reconsidered

Author: Roger Lipsey

Publisher: Shambhala Publications

Published: 2019-02-05

Total Pages: 382

ISBN-13: 0834842084

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From a master biographer and longtime Gurdjieff practitioner, a brilliant new exploration of the quintessential Western esoteric teacher of the twentieth-century. The Greek-Armenian teacher G.I. Gurdjieff was one of the most original and provocative spiritual teachers in the twentieth-century West. Whereas much work on Gurdjieff has been either fawning or blindly critical, acclaimed scholar and writer Roger Lipsey balances sympathic interest in Gurdjieff and his "Fourth Way" teachings with a historian's sense of context and a biographer's feel for personality and relationships. Using a wide-range of published and unpublished sources, Lipsey explores Gurdjieff's formative travels in Central Asia, his famed teaching institution in France, the development of the Gurdjieff Movements and music, and, above all, Gurdjieff's fascinating continuous evolution as a teacher. Published on the 70th anniversary of Gurdjieff's death, Gurdjieff Reconsidered delves deeply into Gurdjieff's writings and those of his most important students, including P. D. Ouspensky and Jeanne de Salzmann. Lipsey's comprehensive approach and unerring sense of the subject make this a must-read for anyone with a serious intention to explore Gurdjieff's life, teachings, and reputation.


Gurdjieff in the Light of Tradition

Gurdjieff in the Light of Tradition

Author: Whitall Perry

Publisher: Sophia Perennis

Published: 2005-03

Total Pages: 110

ISBN-13: 9781597310154

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Probably no figure of our time has excited at once more enthusiasm and controversy among serious intellectuals seeking spiritual guidance than Georgi Ivanovitch Gurdjieff. Accordingly, the editor of Studies in Comparative Religion engaged Whitall N. Perry, who as author of A Treasury of Traditional Wisdom is recognized for his impartiality, to devote a series of articles that would pierce through the obscurity and get to the real facts of the matter. This book is the result of that research. Whatever be the opinion of Gurdjieff gained by the reader, one thing certain is that he or she will come away with a far clearer understanding of the background, teaching, and phenomenon per se than has ever been accessible before. By far the best independent, critical evaluation of Gurdjieff I've come across. -Theodore Roszak, author of Where the Wasteland Ends, etc. A single book which examines the facts of [Gurdjieff's] background, his teachings, and his public faces is welcome and overdue. . . . The author incisively and colorfully presents as full and engrossing a view of the man as you could hope to read: the teachings, too, are clearly and thoughtfully explained, with ample references, and the whole book moves gracefully towards a balanced and intelligent conclusion. A 'must' for anyone interested in that extraordinary individual. -Prediction Mr. Perry may be congratulated on bringing the man, with all his foibles and eccentricities, his brilliance and darker depths, fully alive, and on making his a credible character. -World Faiths


Gurdjieff

Gurdjieff

Author: John Shirley

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2004-03-30

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 1440621217

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A dramatic and literate introduction to one of the twentieth century's most influential and intriguing spiritual teachers. Born in the shifting border between Turkey and Russia in 1866, G. I. Gurdjieff is a man who would continually straddle borders-between East and West, between man and something higher than man, between the ancient teachings of esoteric schools and the modern application of those ideas in contemporary life. In many respects-from the concept of group meetings to the mysterious workings of the enneagram to his critique of humanity as existing in a state of sleep-Gurdjieff pioneered the culture of spiritual search that has taken root in the West today. While many of Gurdjieff's students-including Frank Lloyd Wright, Katharine Mansfield, and P. D. Ouspensky-are well known, few understand this figure possessed of complex writings and sometimes confounding methods. In Gurdjieff: An Introduction to His Life and Ideas, the acclaimed novelist John Shirley-one of the founders of the cyberpunk genre-presents a lively, reliable explanation of how to approach the sage and his ideas. In accessible, dramatic prose Shirley retells that which we know of Gurdjieff's life; he surveys the teacher's methods and the lives of his key students; and he helps readers to enter the unparalleled originality of this remarkable teacher.