/lit/ - Literature

Anyone turned off by my posts — just know the books are far better. “In Search of the Miraculous” is especially worth reading. He isn’t “New Age syncretism.” I’m just focusing on the parallels between Gurdjieff’s teachings and other religions because it’s interesting. If you read G. himself or the account his disciples gave of him, it’s far better than anything I wrote in this thread, and he’s not always bringing up whatever religious tradition he can just for the sake of it. Just did this for fun. Kind of a shitty thread looking back on it. I did it in such a way precisely because too many people are really brainy about all this, in my opinion. I wanted to focus on the character of Gurdjieff and interesting anecdotes about him as much as I did his “teaching,” because his teaching can’t be separated from he himself. Guenon is just some brainy sheltered priss. Gurdjieff actually had an interesting life and taught through his being and the way he behaved towards students and exercises he gave to them, not just through brainy discourses and writings. Fritz Peters’s “Boyhood with Gurdjieff” is also good.

Henry Miller loved him, but never met him. Some interesting quotes he made on Gurdjieff

https://mastergurdjieff.blogspot.com/2017/02/henry-millers-quotes-on-gurdjieff.html?m=1

To begin with, Gurdjieff was a thoroughly enigmatic figure. He was a living example of that Greek word, Enantiodromos, meaning the process by which a thing changes into its opposite. He could be tender, fierce, strict, indulgent, wise, clownish, utterly serious and a farceur all at one time.

Gurdjieff was a perpetual surprise. However, young as he was, and with no preparation for the ordeal, Fritz Peters, the boy, was astute enough to know that he was in the hands of a most unusual human being, a man who has been called a Master, a Guru, a Teacher, everything but a Saint.

Much has been written about the scandalous behavior of Gurdjieff. And it is true that he seemed to care little for conventional behavior. In a sense, he was like a cross between the Gnostics of old and the latter day Dadaists. Certainly, of him the Latin saying "nothing human is beneath me" was true. He was human to the core. At times he reached sublime heights.

It delivers over to us one of the most enigmatic and controversial figures of our time, one unfortunately too little known by present day man. I have read the book several times myself and each time with renewed interest. In a way of speaking I regard it as something on a par with Alice in Wonderland, a real treasure of our literature.
"Gurdjieff was one of the most mysterious figures of the twentieth century. His writing was incomprehensible to me, yet I feel I know him intimately because of a delectable book titled, Boyhood With Gurdjieff by Fritz Peters."
"Political leaders are never leaders. For leaders we have to look to the Awakeners! Lao Tse, Buddha, Socrates, Jesus, Milarepa, Gurdjieff, Krishnamurti."

give me your honest opinion about him and his work lit.