GENIUS FORUMS

maestro wrote:Hey broken where are these transcripts available. Is there any book you know.

This is just a link to an Amazon.com search for "Gurdjief."

The transcripts of his lectures are all by various pupils as I recall. Ouspensky is a good place to start. All and Everything and Beelzebub's Tales are by Gurdjieff himself, but you should read about his work first or else they can seem incomprehensible at times. This was deliberate, but you need to read the other stuff for a good understanding as to why G. communicated this way.

I haven't read anything about G. or O. in many years, but some newer editions of the older works are now available. The Fourth Way is where I started.

maestro wrote:Hey broken where are these transcripts available. Is there any book you know.

This may even be more helpful, maestro. It is a list of books by and about Gurdjieff by someone who has read them all and who rates and describes them. Looks very useful!

I find amazon to be 100% reliable and I have ordered from them for years. Order several more books than you need - you can keep the ones you like and return the rest at little cost.

Sue Hindmarsh wrote:brokenhead wrote:

If he was going to throw his life away on a drug, he at least could have picked heroin.

This is the key point - people aren’t throwing their lives away on drugs, they’re using them to create a life for themselves. The drug/s (whatever it may be: love, cigarettes, music, etc) forms the boundaries which give a person their existence. The drug is who they are.

Once again, your one-faceted understanding keeps you from comprehending the truth, Sue.

People do not seek love, or start smoking, or listen to new music to form boundaries, but to expand or break through the ones they have, which they perceive to be too confining.

I was being facetious with my post. Why am I not surprised that fact when right over your head? I guarantee you the young guy in this video clip would not have gotten started with mainlining narcotics if he had known where it would take him. The point is, he is throwing his life away - or rather, he already has. He just did not know it at the time. He thought it couldn't happen to him.

People who get involved with drugs believe they are powerful. They believe life owes them more and that drugs are a way to get it. Most of the people in rehab for anything other than just alcohol are young. If they are older, it usually is not their first time. Even the younger ones are recidivists: if rehab helps you get clean for any substantial period of time, it becomes one more thing you get addicted to. You think "I beat it once, I can do it again." The older you are, the more apt you are to having a clearer picture of which of you is getting beat, you or the drug abuse.

Maybe this is what you are saying, Sue. But I am telling you, you are incorrect in saying the drug is who they are. They are quite separate. One is the winner and the other is the loser. Knowing this is and that it is inescapable is what makes it Hell.

The drug does not give them their existence. It takes it away.

Carl G wrote:I hear allusion to nonsense by some on this forum, and yet I do not know to what this refers. Must be to those ideas which do not fit the Eastern concept of Enlightenment, or strike the Western mind as unbelievable. I run into closed-minded prejudice all day long in the real world. What a drag to see so much of it here as well. But, to each his own. Carry on with the dry logic. It's so... practical.

I have to say I agree with this, Carl. If the "nonsense" being alluded to includes the ideas and work of Gurdjieff and his colleagues like Ouspensky, it can only be the result of close-mindedness, of an anal-retentive intellectuality. Verification of the concepts and precepts was always emphasized: "Don't just believe me, test it for yourself!"

maestro wrote:I think I have located O and G at a particularly opportune time, whilst I have a very precise power of internal observation fully functioning. The most interesting part of their work is the description of mental workings, which I can so easily verify and appreciate. However they may be troublesome for somebody fresh on the path, as they emphasize the absolute need for a school, and that one cannot break habits through own efforts (which I can see is not true). Plus there is a lot of nonsense mixed with the good stuff which might confuse a newbie or cause him to dismiss them as frauds.

You are quite right, maestro, and you are doing the mental work that O. and G. taught. Verification, as I note above, is key.

Put things into historical context. There were no books of G.'s teachings around and there was no TV with the Public TV series Meetings With Remarkable Men. There was no Internet and even no radio at first. G. was quite correct in saying that having an instructor to keep your inner progress in front of you is important, or else, it, too, becomes subconscious over time. It is good to have this in your subconscious - an automatic rationality that can separate the wheat from the chaffe - but you have to keep buiding it in your consciousness in order to feed the subconscious component and keep it active down there, much like a daemon in Unix or a service in MS NT, something purposeful and beneficial running in the background. An instructor ensures this.

The concept of what constitutes a "school" has to be updated. Without a doubt I have benefited from the "Fourth Way," although I didn't have a teacher. What I had was some friends who were interested in G. and and I had books by and about him. We studied and talked informally. It has been 25 years since that time, and O. and G. are always at my fingertips. Maybe I would have progressed faster with a school situation, it is hard to say, since I did not have that situation. I have no doubt that a teacher/student relationship is beneficial, but it is not necessary if you are ruthless and aggressive in your self-examination.

G. also had a practical motive for his saying that a school is an absolute need. He needed the funds his students paid him to live on. You will even see him crticizing them for complaining that they have to pay to become enlightened. I found this to be quite funny. It's the same everywhere: what organized effort to uplift consciousness does not pass around a basket? As I heard a black Baptist preacher scream: "Put yo' hand in yo' pocket!"

brokenhead wrote:

Carl G wrote:I hear allusion to nonsense by some on this forum, and yet I do not know to what this refers. Must be to those ideas which do not fit the Eastern concept of Enlightenment, or strike the Western mind as unbelievable. I run into closed-minded prejudice all day long in the real world. What a drag to see so much of it here as well. But, to each his own. Carry on with the dry logic. It's so... practical.

I have to say I agree with this, Carl. If the "nonsense" being alluded to includes the ideas and work of Gurdjieff and his colleagues like Ouspensky, it can only be the result of close-mindedness, of an anal-retentive intellectuality.

How do you or Carl deal with his moon theory?

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There are several ways. One understanding of it is that he who does not consciously serve higher purpose is fated to be merely food for the organic mill of Nature. I know you, David, believe everyone serves the biological (causal?) needs of Nature anyway and that this is all one can do ever, but Gurdjieff believed man had potential for more.

For the record, I was in a school years ago, and studied under a teacher who studied with Gurdjieff. This person taught very much in the style of Gurdjieff (many teachers did not and do not). A memorable experience.

But where is the moon in this interpretation.

BTW there is a mysterious allusion to the moon in the Bhagvada Gita,

Those who know the Supreme Brahman attain that Supreme by passing away in the world during the influence of the fiery god, in the light, at an auspicious moment of the day, during the the fortnight of the waxing moon, or during the six months when the sun travels in the north.
The mystic who passes away from this world during the smoke, the night, the fortnight of the waning moon, or the six months when the sun passes o the south reaches the moon planet but again comes back.

I think G mentioned about being reborn on the moon, where life totally sucks even more than earth.

REM - Man on the Moon
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bs4pTCqhTfY)

Couldn't resist :-)

Carl wrote:

Gurdjieff believed man had potential for more

You've got me interested Carl, what "potential" has man got that is greater than living according to the Truth?

maestro wrote:

Sue: The world is full of liars and tricksters. They’re the mums and dads, the husbands and wives, the priests and gurus, the scientists and the religious. They constantly lie and trick themselves into believing that they’re living moral lives. And their lies are so numerous, they believe them to be 'truths'.

Gurdjieff adding more "stuff and nonsense" into people's lives is totally immoral.

My guess is you haven't read much Gurdjieff, Sue, and that you also haven't read that much about him and his organizations.

I’ve read my fill.

His goal was to get people to recognize and reject "stuff and nonsense."

To what end?

There was a great deal of dry humour and wit in his lectures and writings.

Yes, I can see that from this quote I found of his:

A man can only attain knowledge with the help of those who possess it. This must be understood from the very beginning. One must learn from him who knows.

If you knew anything about Gurdjieff's school, you would know his chief goal was to get his students to verify things for themselves, to think. A good many of his pupils were well-to-do women who had a lot of free time, disposable cash, and not a useful thought in their bourgeois heads. Transcripts of his lectures are full of his calling these people stupid and weak, telling them to shut up and stop asking foolish questions, and all sorts of other delightful things. He made no secret of saying he needed them for their money so he could keep his teaching movement going.

Yes, “delightful things” - if you are a masochist, bored, or lazy.

There was a reason behind everything he said, whether Sue Hinmarsh gets it or not.

I’d reckon that most of his followers were very aware of the “reasons behind everything he said”, but didn’t really care what he said or did to them. As long as he fed their egos what they wanted; that's all most people want.

Sue Hindmarsh wrote:maestro wrote:

His goal was to get people to recognize and reject "stuff and nonsense."

To what end?

To help them develop good bullshit detectors, if you will. To foster the ability to think.

There was a great deal of dry humour and wit in his lectures and writings.

Yes, I can see that from this quote I found of his:

A man can only attain knowledge with the help of those who possess it. This must be understood from the very beginning. One must learn from him who knows.

You find that funny? QRS has a list of those who came before and inspired them with words of wisdom, in effect leading the way. How is this different?

If you knew anything about Gurdjieff's school, you would know his chief goal was to get his students to verify things for themselves, to think. A good many of his pupils were well-to-do women who had a lot of free time, disposable cash, and not a useful thought in their bourgeois heads. Transcripts of his lectures are full of his calling these people stupid and weak, telling them to shut up and stop asking foolish questions, and all sorts of other delightful things. He made no secret of saying he needed them for their money so he could keep his teaching movement going.

Yes, “delightful things” - if you are a masochist, bored, or lazy.

I take it you are unaware of the value of shock in helping someone see something clearly, like hitting them over the head with a stick at an opportune moment in order to break through their sleep or ego or ignorance. And, do you not understand the concept of intentional suffering?

There was a reason behind everything he said, whether Sue Hindmarsh gets it or not.

I’d reckon that most of his followers were very aware of the “reasons behind everything he said”, but didn’t really care what he said or did to them. As long as he fed their egos what they wanted; that's all most people want.

Yes, you have read your fill of Gurdjieff, and it is evidently very little, or you would know that most of the time he did exactly the opposite of feeding people's egos.

Sue Hindmarsh wrote:Carl wrote:

Gurdjieff believed man had potential for more

You've got me interested Carl, what "potential" has man got that is greater than living according to the Truth?

Well, this is a large subject, and all I can do now is point to the answer from several directions.

First, it has to do with the idea of developing a soul, which is connected to the concept of the crystallized "I AM." This is something which may be able even to transcend death.

Second, it has to do with evolution of man, or more precisely the evolution of the individual or self. In Gurdjieff's view their are 7 levels of man. Man numbers 1 through 3 are mechanical men. Each is centered on the physical, emotional, or mental center. Man number 4 has gained some consciousness and will, that is, freedom from the purely mechanical existence.

Third, there is a cosmology in the Gurdjieff teaching which states that man has the potential for service and use by and for higher purpose, that is, the purpose of forces and entities greater than himself, such as the world of men, the Earth, the solar system, and so forth. This originates from an esoteric teaching apparently ancient.

I think Gurdjieff got most of his fantastic ideas from Gnosticism. True knowledge confined to a few pockets who secretly try to subvert, powerful forces interested in keeping man asleep.
In fact the movie Matrix heavily influenced by Gnosticism, had the same theme: Humans kept in a dreamworld, by powerful mechanical forces, who use them as batteries. True knowledge of the world known by few who scatter hints around the world attempting to wake up the few who can.

Carl and Maestro,

You both find inspiration in Gurdjieff's work more than I. That isn’t necessarily something negative; it does highlight the difference between us, but that difference can perhaps be explained through Gurdjieff’s work.

I wrote of having read my “full” of Gurdjieff – which you understood as a negative response. It is in fact a very positive response, and one that Gurdjieff himself would have applauded if he were being consistent with his own teachings. My scepticism of both him as a spiritual teacher, and the usefulness and purity of his work aligns with his central theme that each person must “awaken” from their habitual processes, thereby beginning, and focussing on, as you put it Carl, the evolution of the individual or self. And that evolution would not, and could not be limited to a single person, or that person’s ideas. Gurdjieff’s work was to kick started people, not to drag them around tired to him, or to his ideas.

I agree with that, Sue. I remember something he wrote saying, in effect, his job was to get you to the point where you didn't need him anymore. Some might argue they don't need him to begin with, but for a man who said, basically, that a school is necessary, it is a significant disclaimer.

Carl,

You asked why I found this quote of Gurdjieff’s “funny”:

A man can only attain knowledge with the help of those who possess it. This must be understood from the very beginning. One must learn from him who knows.

My answer is that it's funny because it just doesn’t make any sense. It's not funny in the roll-around-on-the-floor belly-laughing way. I find it humorous because of its absurdity. It is like those children’s books where the bodies are mismatched with the heads. You read the quote and you know immediately there is something wrong with what it is saying. You can't help but question how you judge with certainty whether or not a person “knows” unless you yourself already also know. And then, if you already know, why would you need to learn the same thing again.

Carl: QRS has a list of those who came before and inspired them with words of wisdom, in effect leading the way. How is this different?

People find inspiration in many things; it just depends on what they’re looking for. Just the other day I came across this quote by Joseph Conrad:

A man that is born falls into a dream like a man who falls into the sea.

It is inspiring in as much as it helps focus my mind on the question of the existence of life and death. Gurdjieff’s quote is too flawed to be of use to me, but there are a few others of his that are okay. Hey, even Paris Hilton has said things that have helped inspire my own thinking on a subject – though I’ve now forgotten what she said - which may well be a good thing!

Gurdjieff wrote:

A man can only attain knowledge with the help of those who possess it. This must be understood from the very beginning. One must learn from him who knows.

There is an obvious flaw to this quote. Apart from the fact that it is the kind of thing a guru says in order to cement his importance in his follower's minds, it overlooks that there was a point in the past when the very first person of knowledge/wisdom arose without the help of a teacher.

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David Quinn wrote:Gurdjieff wrote:

A man can only attain knowledge with the help of those who possess it. This must be understood from the very beginning. One must learn from him who knows.

There is an obvious flaw to this quote. Apart from the fact that it is the kind of thing a guru says in order to cement his importance in his follower's minds, it overlooks that there was a point in the past when the very first person of knowledge/wisdom arose without the help of a teacher.

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The quru issue can be overlooked in this case as a frivolous aside. The second point does not necessarily indicate a flaw, except possibly in a strictly logical sense. There are scenarios where this logic would not enter the equation. For example if something was commonly known long ago, and somehow fell out of common knowledge, then only those few who had the information now would be able to pass it on. The original source of the knowledge may not be readily accessible to the average individual today. It may have "arisen" at a different time in minds more developed or tuned to that information. It may have been imparted by sources off-planet, for instance.

Sue Hindmarsh wrote: You can't help but question how you judge with certainty whether or not a person “knows” unless you yourself already also know. And then, if you already know, why would you need to learn the same thing again.

If you have a good observation faculty, you can apply the test of matching observations to theories. For example to know the truth of what Newton is saying is true or not, you can test it out and check whether the theory fits the observation. Thus you need not know the theory is true in advance, but can still check it. Developing good models is in general harder than making a good observational module, thus his quote has a certain truth to it. It may take one ages to formulate the theory themselves, time which they can save, by simply sifting through theories with a good observational device.

Sue wrote:

You read the quote and you know immediately there is something wrong with what it is saying. You can't help but question how you judge with certainty whether or not a person “knows” unless you yourself already also know. And then, if you already know, why would you need to learn the same thing again.

I'm not sure I follow. If someone tells you something you didn't know, you can test it, and if it works you adopt it as fact. The certainty comes afterwards, not before.

DQ wrote:There is an obvious flaw to this quote. Apart from the fact that it is the kind of thing a guru says in order to cement his importance in his follower's minds, it overlooks that there was a point in the past when the very first person of knowledge/wisdom arose without the help of a teacher.

There have always been teachers. It is foolish to believe otherwise. At times the star pupil outshines his or her teacher, but that in no way diminishes the role of those teachers lost to history. You are forgetting your C&E.

brokenhead wrote:

DQ wrote:There is an obvious flaw to this quote. Apart from the fact that it is the kind of thing a guru says in order to cement his importance in his follower's minds, it overlooks that there was a point in the past when the very first person of knowledge/wisdom arose without the help of a teacher.

There have always been teachers. It is foolish to believe otherwise. At times the star pupil outshines his or her teacher, but that in no way diminishes the role of those teachers lost to history. You are forgetting your C&E.

What about the first person in history to become a teacher? How did he succeed without a teacher?

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Carl G wrote:

David Quinn wrote:Gurdjieff wrote:

A man can only attain knowledge with the help of those who possess it. This must be understood from the very beginning. One must learn from him who knows.

There is an obvious flaw to this quote. Apart from the fact that it is the kind of thing a guru says in order to cement his importance in his follower's minds, it overlooks that there was a point in the past when the very first person of knowledge/wisdom arose without the help of a teacher.

The quru issue can be overlooked in this case as a frivolous aside. The second point does not necessarily indicate a flaw, except possibly in a strictly logical sense. There are scenarios where this logic would not enter the equation. For example if something was commonly known long ago, and somehow fell out of common knowledge, then only those few who had the information now would be able to pass it on. The original source of the knowledge may not be readily accessible to the average individual today. It may have "arisen" at a different time in minds more developed or tuned to that information. It may have been imparted by sources off-planet, for instance.

In all of your scenarios above, there is still a first person or being who must have arrived at this knowledge himself, without the help of a teacher - which immediately contradicts Gurdjieff's saying.

We can't simply dismiss this as a "strictly logical" dilemmna. It is a massive hole in his thinking.

But as you allude to, he may have been directing these words merely to the dunces that were attracted to him, in which case he should have said something like, "You, my friends, are so backward that you don't have a hope in hell of understanding this stuff by yourselves. You will need my help." If that was the case, then he shouldn't have couched it in absolustist terms to mean everyone, everywhere.

People with clear minds don't make those sorts of mistakes.

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What about the first person in history to become a teacher? How did he succeed without a teacher?

What are you talking about? The first person in history to become a teacher was then taught by someone from pre-history.

You are using your logic, or your philosophy, or whatever you call it, instead of thinking. People teach each other and always have. Whoever you are talking about was born at one point - born knowing nothing.

You're making a point that doesn't exist.

in which case he should have said something like, "You, my friends, are so backward that you don't have a hope in hell of understanding this stuff by yourselves. You will need my help."

He did couch it in those terms.