Gurdjieff Reconsidered

Jan. 31

I just finished reading Roger Lipsey’s new book, Gurdjieff Reconsidered, which I was fortunate enough to receive an advance copy of.

First of all, let me say that anyone interested in Gurdjieff and his ideas ought to buy and read this book. It's a deeply sensitive, intelligent, and cogent re-examination of the man and his teaching; along the way, one encounters more than a few very carefully selected gems.  It’s probably impossible to distill the essence of a teaching this vast; yet somehow, the book manages to come close enough to doing that. Perhaps I'm less than wholly objective here; Roger is a friend of mine. Yet I can’t think of anyone more qualified to undertake such a mission. 

The book speaks for itself. Go read it.

 One of the impressions I came away from this book with was how utterly impossible it is to convey exactly what the Gurdjieff work is for; how it works in a human being, what it produces. 

I’ve been writing about that in my diary here online for over 12 years; and yet I think it’s safe to say I’ve never written a single thing that can accurately express what takes place when one’s inner life — along with an awakened sensation and an awakened feeling— is transformed. Reading words, we’re invariably left with intellectual impressions of transformation — descriptions. In and of itself, this is not a bad thing. Yet if we don’t have impressions that are gained through the intelligence of sensation, and impressions that are gained through the intelligence of feeling, we don’t know what the whole point of Gurdjieff’s teaching was; and although you can read the words that say that here, only your own organism and its voluntary intelligences can embody this teaching in any active way. 

 The whole point of the impressions we take in is to deepen our experience of our life. Ultimately, it can indeed prepare a place for the master: not some external guru,  but the Lord — or, as Jeanne de Salzmann said, Le Seigneur.  

We have the possibility of becoming a dwelling-place for something very different than what we think we are in our ever-fertile and ever-febrile imaginations; and this is, without any doubt, the essence of esoteric Christianity.  

Wishing the best for you on this day,

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.