Fall 2000 Issue, Vol. IV No. 1

Introduction: Working with Others

Anyone who wishes to engage in the practical study of Gurdjieff’s teaching is likely to find the task of finding guidance to be a challenging exercise in discrimination.

People Who Hunger and Thirst for Truth

Gurdjieff discusses the obstacles and deceptions faced by anyone in search of inner truth and spiritual guidance. First published in Views from the Real World: Early Talks of Gurdjieff, pp. 50–51, 56–58, New York: Dutton, London: Routledge & Kegan.

Excerpts from the Talks and Writings
of G. I. Gurdjieff

These excerpts on Art, Music and Movement were previously published as part of a program booklet issued for the “Ideas of Gurdjieff Conference” sponsored by the Far West Institute in San Rafael, California in November 1996 and are reproduced with their kind permission.

The Old Man and the Children of the Age

An unusual convergence of literary merit and heartfelt experience, these essays by Pierre Schaeffer were first published in the anthology Gurdjieff, edited by Louis Pauwels in 1954. These excerpts comprise a few jewels from a collection of articles that are often murky and misleading. Therein, Pauwels mixes his notions of the occult and politics to brew conspiracy theories. He casts Gurdjieff as “scandalous” and possibly (Pauwels is never sure) a Black Magician. The original French edition appeared in 1954 when it was virtually the only book available about Gurdjieff in that language. Pauwels later reconsidered and came to recognize that the Gurdjieff teaching was one of the most important and positive elements in his life.

Getting in Touch with Gurdjieff

First published in The New York Times Magazine, July 29, 1979, Margaret Croyden’s article provides a series of penetrating discussions about Gurdjieff with Jeanne de Salzmann, John Pentland, Michel de Salzmann, Henri Tracol and P. L. Travers.

A Conversation on
Meetings with Remarkable Men

A deeply considered conversation between Roy Finch, John Pentland, and Lawrence Morris on the book Meetings with Remarkable Men, three years after its English publication; first published in The Exacting Ear: The Story of Listener Sponsored Radio and an Anthology of Programs edited by Eleanor McKinney, New York: Random House, 1966.

The Holy War

René Daumal’s prose-poem that heralds a fiery call to inner warfare is translated by D. M. Dooling from “La Guerre Sainte,” in Daumal’s collection, Poésie Noire, Poésie Blanche.

Commentary on “The Holy War”

Kathleen Rosenblatt’s commentary provides an exquisite setting for Daumal’s fierce prose-poem, “The Holy War.”

For William Segal (1904–2000)

William Segal, a long time student of Gurdjieff, died on May 16th of this year. David Appelbaum’s compact, articulate eulogy celebrates the multi-faceted life of William Segal as a philosopher, business-man, artist and spiritual teacher.

Wm. Segal

William Segal illuminates an exceptional array of topics, especially self-transformation, in this interview with Daniel Hess which was first published in the Shambhala Sun, November–December 1992.

In Light of Meaning
An Interview with William Segal

In this 1995 interview, William Segal and David Appelbaum discuss uses of language and demonstrate that quality of attention and an inner presence are essential elements in the art of communication. First published in Parabola, Vol. XX, No. 3, New York, and is reprinted with their kind permission.

Christopher Fremantle (1906–1978)

This introduction to Christopher Fremantle by Lillian Firestone was first published in Fremantle’s posthumous On Attention: talks, essays and letters to his pupils. She describes Fremantle’s life and almost thirty years of work with pupils in America and Mexico.

Ouspensky

Christopher Fremantle—a former pupil of Peter Ouspensky—provides an informed synopsis of Ouspensky’s importance as a philosopher and exponent of Gurdjieff’s teaching.

A Theatre for Us

Orage adopts Gurdjieff’s metaphor of the human psyche as a thee-storied factory and proposes the idea of a three-storied stage set that would thus depict the basic facts of human psychology. First published in The Little Review, New York, Vol. X (2), Winter 1926.

Mr. Nyland and the Piano

Composer Terry Winter Owens describes what occurred when Willem Nyland asked her to go examine a Steinway grand piano that Timothy Leary had offered as a gift in the early 1960s.

About This Publication

This briefly is the state of things in the realm of self-knowledge: in order to do you must know; but to know you must find out how to know. We cannot find this out by ourselves.

G. I. Gurdjieff

You have to be two to make a poem. The one who speaks is the mother, the poem is the egg, and the one who listens is he who fertilizes the egg.

René Daumal

We all carry a question: Why am I living? In the substratum of everyone’s being we all come to it, have to confront it. Experiencing the swings between moments of happiness and misery, questions appear.

William Segal

For me there are no answers, only questions, and I am grateful that the questions go on and on. I don’t look for an answer, because I don’t think there is one. I'm very glad to be the bearer of a question.

P. L. Travers

As for putting him [Gurdjieff] on a pedestal, especially after his death, that is the most sinister trick that well-meaning Gurdjievians could possibly play on him. That is to show true disrespect.

Pierre Schaeffer

One of the most interesting things about the book [Meetings with Remarkable Men] is the passionate quality of this search—the fact that this man persists—keeps looking—keeps traveling, as it were. One has to regard it, I suppose, on that level, as a kind of a spiritual pilgrimage as well as a factual account.

Roy Finch

He [Christopher Fremantle] showed us in many practical ways that the possibility of inner development lay in a more unified attention. When the attention is concentrated in a special way … it connects our diverse selves to create a new state in which one may experience a meeting between one’s subjectivity and objective reality.

Lillian Firestone

Copyright © 2000
Gurdjieff Electronic Publishing

October 1, 2000