/lit/ - Literature

>>18827504
First, I recommend "In Search of the Miraculous" by his student P.D. Ouspensky. If you're going to continue after that, you'd have to go the whole hog. In Gurdjieff's words, "If you're going to go on a spree, then go the whole hog, including postage."

Then Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson, by Gurdjieff himself, and listen to the advice he gives in the preface if you REALLY want to learn from him. Gurdjieff basically was an oddball who wanted to change people in a very specific way. He put so much effort into it all, but very few people got the transmission! He realized that he was going to die before he could fully train any of his students to be as qualified to transmit what he wanted to transmit to the West, so he put all his effort into this literature which was designed to act as a "guru" or "teacher" for the devoted student masochistic enough to put themselves through it. BTTHG is one of the strangest books ever written, but anyone who actually is devoted enough to read it and not just drop it will be permanently changed, in my opinion. You'll think this is insane but here's his preface anyway:

According to the numerous deductions and conclusions resulting from my
research concerning the profit contemporary people can obtain from new
impressions coming from what they read or hear, and also according to the
thought of one of the sayings of popular wisdom I have just remembered,
handed down to our days from very ancient times,
"Any prayer may be heard and granted by the Higher Powers only if it is
uttered thrice:
First—for the welfare or the peace of the souls of one's parents,
Second—for the welfare of one's neighbor, And only third—for oneself
personally," I find it necessary on the first page of this book, now ready for
publication, to give the following advice "Read each of my written
expositions thrice First—at least as you have already become mechanized to
read all your contemporary books and newspapers,
Second—as if you were reading aloud to another person, And only third—try
to fathom the gist of my writings Only then will you be able to count upon
forming your own impartial judgment, proper to yourself alone, on my
writings And only then can my hope be actualized that according to your
understanding you will obtain the specific benefit for yourself which I
anticipate, and which I wish for you with all my being.

Gurdjieff was a fascinating man who worked as a hypnotist, a psychologist, learned from many religious traditions as I said, and claimed he (and others he traveled with as a young man in his Indiana-Jones-style quests to find the real truth behind all religions) had re-discovered, essentially, as much as he humanly could about an esoteric tradition of self-development behind various religious traditions, which had been dispersed, piecemeal, into these different religious traditions. (cont.)