/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.11603330]

Has anyone else been strangely touched to the core by Gurdjieff’s works and ideas?

[Anonymous No.11603342]

>The story of when Crowley met Gurdjieff can be found in James Webb’s comprehensive book, The Harmonious Circle
>Crowley arrived for a whole weekend and spent the time like any other visitor to the Prieure; being shown the grounds and the activities in progress, listening to Gurdjieff’s music and his oracular conversation. Apart from some circumspection, Gurdjieff treated him like any other guest until the evening of his departure. After dinner on Sunday night, Gurdjieff led the way out of the dining room with Crowley, followed by the body of pupils who had also been at the meal. Crowley made his way toward the door and turned to take his leave of Gurdjieff, who by this time was some way up the stairs to the second floor. “Mister, you go?” Gurdjieff inquired. Crowley assented. “You have been guest?” – a fact which the visitor could hardly deny. “Now you go, you are no longer guest?” Crowley – no doubt wondering whether his host had lost his grip on reality and was wandering in a semantic wilderness – humored his mood by indicating that he was on his way back to Paris. But Gurdjieff, having made the point that he was not violating the canons of hospitality, changed on the instant into the embodiment of righteous anger. “You filthy,” he stormed, “you dirty inside! Never again you set foot in my house!” From his vantage point on the stairs, he worked himself up into a rage which quite transfixed his watching pupils. Crowley was stigmatized as the sewer of creation was taken apart and trodden into the mire. Finally, he was banished in the style of East Lynne by a Gurdjieff in fine histrionic form. Whitefaced and shaking, the Great Beast crept back to Paris with his tail between his legs.

Why Gurdijeff got mad?

[Anonymous No.11603354]

Yeah Gurdjieff is one of the voices that still lingers from the 20th century's esoteric syntheses I think, not so much by any direct influence but as a figure people always rediscover and return to. Definitely interesting but also important to be extremely careful about because the Gurdjieffians were like almost all of these esoterics definitely a cult.

I always wish I could bottle the experience of your first time really interacting with a "60s vintage esotericist" and realizing they aren't some kind of mystical traveller from a bygone era but likely an acid head with a glazed-over look because they joined one spooky little prayer group after another in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, until society came to regard them as invisible by way of elderliness and they just become "that spaced out guy at the bookstore who is weirdly well read but also clearly not all there upstairs"

It's sad because maybe there are bits of truth in many of these little cults and cultlets, but for every drop of truth there is a lake of credulous hippies and johnny come latelies to the hippie movement who either blew their mind out on drugs chasing enlightenment or already had mental problems to begin with. Many of them are prime material for being manipulated, very credulous, very easily bowled over by a sense of "community," very quickly addicted to the feeling of being part of a special group of disciples who have a special handle on truth. It acts as a channel for all their good tendencies, like genuine social activism, concern for the overproliferation of technology and frivolous disenchanted lifestyles, desire for authentic religiosity and religious mystery, etc., but in channeling those impulses into a cult it destroys or nullifies them.

[Anonymous No.11603609]

>>11603342
Thanks so much for this post anon. I wiki'd Aleister Crowly and I can safely say he is one of the most disgusting humans I've ever read about. Seems like a good warning about getting too far into occultism or letting go of your general sense of morality. I wonder how many of our generation will go down his path and die in the same type of wretchedness

[Anonymous No.11604405]

>>11603342
>Why Gurdijeff got mad?

greek armenians are subject to chronic, random rage attacks. it's genetic.

[Anonymous No.11604425]

>>11604405
why?

[Anonymous No.11604466]

>>11603342
Gurdjief got mad because Crowley was a horrible person. However the rules of hospitality kept Gurdjief from verbally abusing someone who was his guest so as soon as Crowley was leaving Gurdjief was allowed to say what he really thought of Crowley

[Anonymous No.11604473]

>>11603342
He saw the evil in his soul.

[Anonymous No.11605766]

i think gurdjieff was a fraud, an interesting fraud, but still a fraud. i actually respect crowley more, but i don't particularly take either seriously

[Anonymous No.11605853]

>>11605766
How do you think he was a fraud?

[Anonymous No.11605888]

>>11603609
As someone who owns a copy of Book 4, regardless of what you can say about the morality of his character, he was an insightful fellow. Plus, he's really not as bad as people think he is, most of his reputation is bluster and stuff he hyped up himself that the masses ate up.

[Anonymous No.11606005]

>>11603342
>“You have been guest?” – a fact which the visitor could hardly deny. “Now you go, you are no longer guest?”
>“You filthy,” he stormed, “you dirty inside! Never again you set foot in my house!”
wtf was Gurdjieff retarded?
why does he talk like a four year old?

[Anonymous No.11606042]

Yes, he touched my pee pee too. He said to remember myself while sticking a finger in my ass and masturbate furiously.

[Anonymous No.11606062]

>>11606005
It was not his first language. He actually spoke like 6 to 8 languages conversationally and 2-3 fluently I think, the opposite of retarded if anything

[Anonymous No.11606828]

>>11606042
Lol

[Anonymous No.11607880]

>>11603342
This is not a true story. Look into it,
G did meet Crowley once, but it was a short meeting.

[Anonymous No.11608872]

>>11604425
why what? why was Gurdjieff a Greek Armenian? you'd have to ask his father. why is chronic rage inherited? you'd have to ask his father.

[Anonymous No.11608877]

>>11605853
did any of his consciousness-raising schemes lead anywhere? has anyone ever become enlightened, or even slightly smarter, after doing that dance routine he came up with?

no.

[Anonymous No.11608884]

>>11608877
this, look at his prominent students. all mediocre. ouspensky eneded his life in despair and depression. the contemporary gurdjieff organization is just boomer mindfulness meditation with gurdjieffian jargon on top

[Anonymous No.11609035]

where one should start with him?

[Anonymous No.11609159]

>>11603354
good post, anon

[Anonymous No.11610103]

>>11609035
Book of the New Sun

[Anonymous No.11610218]

>>11608877
>>11608884
Rene Daumal, Fritz Peters, Jean Toomer, Katherine Mansfield, Jeanne de Salzmann, Maurice Nicoll, JG Bennett, AR Orage, and more are students who claimed exactly this — that they benefitted tremendously from his teachings.

Ouspensky is supposed to have converted deeply in character on his deathbed.

True, there’s no reason to venerate the modern Gurdjieff organization. He didn’t really appoint a successor or valid tradition of oral initiation, it seems.

[Anonymous No.11611130]

Bump for interest

I’m really curious if others besides me have been insane enough to, say, actually have read through all of Beelzebub’s Tales.

[Anonymous No.11611371]

>>11610218

oh right, a bunch of literal whos shilling for their cult are a trustworthy source of evidence

[Anonymous No.11611441]

>>11611371
You don’t have an argument, you just said that it outwardly looks like none of students learned to levitate, reverse time, overcome illness, and take over the world, ergo his teaching was worthless. “all mediocre”, “didn’t end up anywhere” — yes, because you’ve studied their lives deeply and can tell from the lack of outward bombastic signs of success that interiorly their consciousness was not significantly changed for the better.

[Anonymous No.11611464]

>>11609035
Ouspensky’s In Search of the Miraculous, and/or his The Fourth Way (I like ISOTM because it gives the actual story of Ouspensky’s experience meeting and studying under Gurdjieff, this whole experience itself being an integral part of Gurdjieff’s teaching; however, reading both of them won’t hurt, he explains some things in The Fourth Way which he doesn’t in ISOTM and vice versa). Then, if you have the patience and guts for it, you can possibly start with Gurdjieff’s Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson, thenceforward moving to the other two books of his trilogy (Meetings With Remarkable Men, and Life is real only then, when “I am”).

[Anonymous No.11611561]

>>11611441

good thing you have direct access to their mental states, so you can tell for a fact that they became (((enlightened))). it always amazes me how you cultist wackos are willing to resort to all sorts of mental gymnastics to defend your particular con-artist of choice.

[Anonymous No.11611750]

>>11611561
This conversation is useless. I’ve studied the lives and works of many of these people, their own statements are that they received benefits from the teaching. I’m not a cultist because I haven’t joined any modern Gurdjieff group, I don’t trust them much since Gurdjieff didn’t seem to leave behind a valid lineage. Gurdjieff only fascinates me so much and commands my respect because his articulation of wisdom came from a place of genuine understanding, not just scholarly intellectual study, and is a call to self-transformation. In this respect, he’s one of the much more valid modern “gurus”. He genuinely studied under and learned from Sufi dervishes in the Middle East, Tibetan Buddhist monasteries, and other interesting out-of-the-way places throughout Central Asia.

When I talk about my appreciation for Gurdjieff, it’s not necessarily for the man himself, it’s not to venerate and justify his every action. The respect is for the ideas he represented and system he formulated, containing insights to be found in both Western and Eastern systems, insights greater and more important than the man himself. If this doesn’t dispel your automatically formed judgment that I am a “cultist”, I don’t know what else to say.

[Anonymous No.11611977]

>>11603342
He was autistic.

[Anonymous No.11613108]

Bump

I’m surprised in all this thread there’s been no mention at all of Gurdjieff’s ideas

[Anonymous No.11613115]

Bump

I’m surprised in all this thread there’s been no mention at all of Gurdjieff’s ideas. No discussion of his contention that man does not remember himself and observe himself as he lives and is thus mechanical and soulless unless they develop such a self-remembering consciousness? No discussions of the way his doctrines fit with aspects of Sufism, Neoplatonism, Buddhism and more?

[Anonymous No.11613267]

I prefer the story of Crowley having sex with a woman in one room while calling out his chess moves to his opponent in the next room over.

[Anonymous No.11613304]

He was a tall-tale telling former rug merchant, but honestly, out of all the modern "gurus" him and Krishamurti seem the most down to earth and personable.

Most of them are more in the mode of Crowley or Hubbard. Narcissistic people users.

[Anonymous No.11613689]

>>11613304
I wonder why are so many so dismissive of Gurdjieff? Few have articulated and embodied a wisdom tradition in modern times to the extent he did.