Letter shows confusion over Gurdjieff, teachings
Monte Heil in his letter “Christianity offers freedom and love” (Aug. 21, Daily Bee) called G.I. Gurdjieff’s teachings a cult. This demonstrates how little he knows about Gurdjieff’s teachings.
Those who investigate Gurdjieff’s teachings for themselves will discover just how wrong Monte’s negative criticism is.
“The philosophy and practice of G. I. Gurdjieff begins with a simple, but powerful idea: We think we are awake, when in fact we lack a single, unified consciousness. That is, we drift from thought to thought, activity to activity, often without self-awareness. To that extent, Gurdjieff taught, we are asleep, not fully awake. “The greatest barrier to consciousness is the belief that one is already conscious.” To the extent that our thoughts and moods can be altered by random events and daydreams, we are no longer fully self-determining: our free will is at best partial. The goal of self-development, from this perspective, is to become more awake, more self-aware, more self-determining and less mechanical.”
Some followers of Gurdjieff:
Architect Frank Lloyd Wright, whose step-daughter was a daughter of Gurdjieff; Keith Jarrett, who is a Grammy winning jazz and classical pianist; Kathryn Hulme, who was the author of The Nun’s Story; Peter Brook, who directed the film Meetings with Remarkable Men (from the Gurdjieff book of the same title) which played at the Panida Theater about 35 years ago.
The Gurdjieff movements at the end of the film are electrifying and most if not all who worked on the film, including Superman (1978) actor Terence Stamp, were students of Gurdjieff.
Over 40 years ago I learned that over 600 books had been written about Gurdjieff, mostly by his students.
I have read several of these books and Mr. Gurdjieff by Louis Pauwels had some negative criticism of Gurdjieff and despite that he also expressed his love for him.
Pauwels’ book describes a time when he visited Gurdjieff. As they were sitting across the room from each other Gurdjieff simply stared at Pauwels without saying a word. Pauwels was unable to move or speak until Gurdjieff ended his gaze. This scared the crap out of Pauwels. Unfortunately, Pauwels was unable to recognize the lesson Gurdjieff had offered.
Those who use the crutch of faith do so because of their fear of death, which is THE motivation for people’s religious beliefs.
Over the past few years three of my close friends (Gene, Dick and Dan), who were atheists and knowing they were dying, died with absolutely no fear.
The day before he died in the BGH, Dick’s last words to me were “all I want is oblivion”
It has been my experience that those with rigid religious beliefs have a greater fear of death than those who allow their spiritual beliefs to evolve.
If interested, I recommend In Search of the Miraculous by P.D. Ouspensky, which is about Gurdjieff’s teachings and can be downloaded as a PDF for free.
BTW Monte, I didn’t claim to have “special knowledge” that others don’t have. If that’s your perception of what I wrote, then you have a problem.
A Gurdjieff prayer: Holy Affirming, Holy Denying, Holy Reconciling, Transubstantiate in Me.
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Lee Santa is a Sandpoint resident.