January 31, 2006 – 12:24 am
I’ve alluded rather obliquely in some of my posts to various schools of inner development, without going into a lot of detail. I’d like to begin to talk about one such system with which I have had various levels of contact all of my life. The ideas in question are those brought to the West by the Greek/Armenian teacher G.I. Gurdjieff.
February 5, 2024 – 11:12 pm
Bill Vallicella, the Maverick Philosopher, has just posted an excellent essay at Substack on why he is inclined toward theism. Longtime readers of this blog will know that this is a topic I’ve been wrestling with for ages, so I’m always glad to find essays like this latest offering from Bill. Bill asks: why are […]
The always-thoughtful Richard Fernandez posted the following thread recently on Twitter: The catastrophic loss of institutional trust has made it imperative for the establishment to roll out virtual reality, not through goggles and special chairs, but by manipulating the entire information environment so that we live inside a lie. One way to detect that you […]
February 6, 2022 – 12:12 am
Readers who have been coming around here for a while will know that in recent years I have felt the need to re-examine all that I once believed about scientism, philosophical materialism, and the existence of God. It began as a grudging acceptance, even as an unbeliever myself, that atheism and secularism might have a […]
March 25, 2020 – 11:09 pm
As a person with a long career in the music biz, I am often asked who I think is interesting, and worth giving a listen (keeping in mind that there is a lot of interesting music out there that most people simply wouldn’t “get”). I often mention King Crimson, because Fripp and company have maintained […]
Around the Outer Cape in the off-season I’m reminded of how many people here are capable of subduing, commanding, and profitably plying the proximate physical world, and how stark the contrast is with the cosmopolitan, soft-handed symbol-manipulators who spend their time and money here in the summer. A great many of the people who live […]
February 15, 2015 – 11:37 pm
Every January or February (depending on when I remember to do it) I present a sampling of the search keyphrases that brought visitors to this site during the previous year. Here’s the 2014 selection. This year’s winner was the mysterious phrase “lwica lwica”, which occurred 318 times. You may also notice some perennial favorites. compelling […]
October 27, 2014 – 1:29 pm
Last week at Maverick Philosopher, Bill V. put up a post comparing the introvert with the extrovert: The extrovert is like a mirror: being nothing in himself, he is only what he reflects. A caricature, no doubt, but useful in delineation of an ideal type. This is why the extrovert needs others. Without them, he […]
April 14, 2014 – 11:16 pm
It’s just spring here in Wellfleet, and suddenly there are daffodils everywhere. I love daffodils; they seem perfect to me. They sing of warm spring sunlight, and cool clear air, and dark fertile soil, and of beauty unvanquished. I’ve always thought that daffodils are pure joy. I’ve written in these pages, from time to time, […]
A story that’s making the rounds today concerns trending changes in the way people read. Here’s the lede, from today’s Washington Post: Claire Handscombe has a commitment problem online. Like a lot of Web surfers, she clicks on links posted on social networks, reads a few sentences, looks for exciting words, and then grows restless, […]
Blessed is he who hath a soul, Blessed is he who hath none, Woe and sorrow to him who hath it in conception. – Gurdjieff
It was a sad day today: the lovely Nina and I drove to Philadelphia to attend a memorial service for the twenty-eight-year-old son of some dear friends. The young man, who died suddenly and unexpectedly, had made a very deep and very positive impression on a great many people’s lives, and hundreds were in attendance. […]
January 1, 2014 – 11:27 pm
Once again, here’s our New Year’s selection of some of the search-engine keyphrases that have brought visitors our way in the past year: dark enlightenment mola mola compelling natural force washington monument syndrome freedom go to hell what is a moral fact he’s no fun he fell right over hirsutative nipples brooklyn outwash moraine fools […]
March 29, 2013 – 11:11 pm
Lawrence Auster has died. There are things I would like to say about him, his influence on my own thinking, and the grace with which he faced his final ordeal, but I must say them later. He was a brilliant and difficult man. For now, go and read Laura Wood’s entry at VFR. See also […]
Here’s yet another interesting item from Edge.org, this time an interview with a young psychologist named Adam Alter, whom I hadn’t heard of before now. The article’s accompanying biographical note says this about him: ADAM ALTER is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at Stern School of Business, NYU. He is the author of Drunk Tank […]
January 1, 2013 – 5:30 pm
In keeping with our ancient tradition, here’s this year’s selection from the searchphrases that brought readers to our doorstep in 2012: man in chicken suit flying on hang glider lwica lwica race map the boy who cried sheep thats a moray freedom go to hell ice tricks darkie toothpaste pelicans eating other birds no bikini […]
August 7, 2012 – 11:31 pm
“Such is the nature of man, that for your first gift — he prostrates himself; for your second — kisses your hand; for the third — fawns; for the fourth — just nods his head once; for the fifth — becomes too familiar; for the sixth — insults you; and for the seventh — sues […]
One thing connects to another in unexpected ways. Last Friday I had lunch with a well-known conservative blogger. We didn’t meet to talk about politics, though: I had noticed, in some of this writer’s posts, references to the “Fourth Way” teachings of G.I. Gurdjieff and his pupil, P.D. Ouspensky — and having both a personal […]
February 10, 2012 – 11:26 pm
Our friend Kevin Kim has written a meaty response to Bill Vallicella’s latest remarks on Dennettian theoskepsis. (The study of religion is Kevin’s academic specialty; and in passing I’ll recommend his book Water From a Skull for those with an interest in the field of comparative religion.) A quibble: in this post Kevin discusses Bill’s […]
January 12, 2012 – 4:17 pm
In Beelzebub’s Tales to his Grandson, the magnum opus of the extraordinary Greek/Armenian mystic G.I. Gurdjieff, the central character, Beelzebub refers to the unfortunate inhabitants of Earth — us — as “three-brained beings”. This is in alignment with Gurdjieff’s division of the human organism into three parts: the intellectual center, emotional center, and ‘moving’ or […]
A conversation with my father on the subject of the Armenian mystic Gurdjieff has led me to a re-reading of Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra, which apparently G. had recommended to his study groups. (My father was a member of Gurdjieff’s London group after the war until G.’s death in 1949, and in fact went to […]
Sam Harris has been addressing the question of free will in a series of short posts (we’ve already commented on the first two, here and very briefly here). Dr. Harris is forthrightly skeptical that free will, as popularly conceived, exists. He seemed concerned, in the first of his posts, to make some sort of case […]
November 30, 2010 – 12:35 am
Have you read Julian Jaynes’s provocative 1977 book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind? In it the author, a Princeton psychologist, argued that human self-consciousness — the real McCoy, the “I am, and I am aware that I am” reflective consciousness that is, for us, the essence of being human, […]
November 12, 2010 – 3:42 pm
The importance of mindfulness — the mastery of one’s attention, and the practiced ability to maintain conscious awareness of our subjective experience in the present moment — is a major principle of Buddhism, Sufism, the Gurdjieff work, and, I suspect, just about every esoteric system of inner development. (I’ve mentioned it before, for example here […]
April 12, 2010 – 10:06 pm
A correspondent (and occasional commenter) and I have been exchanging emails over the past few days about the mystery of consciousness — a topic that used to occupy a fair amount of space around here, but which has been bumped off the page lately by political rants and screeds. My friend and I make fundamentally […]
December 8, 2009 – 12:45 am
It is a common view that consciousness has something to to with the degree of integration of different areas of the brain. The idea is not only a modern scientific notion: it is also a tenet of various esoteric schools (for example that of G.I. Gurdjieff; see here and here) that higher degrees of consciousness […]
January 20, 2009 – 11:02 pm
After I posted this morning’s item, I watched the inauguration, along with the rest of the world. It is unquestionably a promising and historic moment, and I am not immune to President Obama’s charismatic appeal myself — but I have to say, at the risk of being a cranky old grouch, that I found the […]
August 23, 2008 – 5:51 pm
We’ve had a demanding schedule today: lolling and body-surfing at White Crest Beach, then the daily swim at Great Pond — and still to come this evening, our friend Larry Horowitz’s latest opening at the Cove Gallery, followed by dinner at Winslow’s Tavern. But a free moment having presented itself, I’ll take this opportunity to […]
January 5, 2008 – 10:34 pm
As each new year begins I enjoy looking back at all the search keyphrases that have brought readers by for a visit in the previous twelve months. According to my server’s statistics-gathering software, there were 1379 of them in 2007 (although, annoyingly, it only explicitly displays the first thousand). As usual, it’s an odd assortment, […]
November 27, 2007 – 1:18 am
It is difficult for a thoughtful person to get into his fifties without a persistent and lurking awareness of our mortal brevity. At this point in life even those who have been fortunate enough to have been spared frequent doses of calamity have lost a good friend or a family member, and by the half-century […]
August 17, 2007 – 12:07 am
Yale’s David Gelernter, the well-known computer scientist, has written an article in Technology Review on the problems that bedevil AI research. He has some interesting things to say — not only about AI, but also about consciousness itself — and it’s well worth your while to read it.
“Ask yourself: are you free? Many are inclined to answer ‘yes’, if they are relatively secure in a material sense and do not have t worry about the morrow, if they depend on no one for their livelihood or in the choice of their conditions of life. But is this freedom? Is it only a question of external conditions?
October 3, 2006 – 11:07 pm
The technological infrastructure here at waka waka waka is provided by an outstanding hosting service called BlueHost. Among the many excellent services they provide for the absurdly low fee of $6.95 a month is a versatile website-statistics package. It occurred to me earlier this evening that it might be amusing, in lieu of coughing up yet another grim and controversial entry about the accelerating decline of civilization, to look over some of the search-engine phrases that have brought visitors here over the past year.
I’ve finished reading George Beke’s book Digging Up the Dog: The Greek Roots of Gurdjieff’s Esoteric Ideas, and must recommend it again, not only for those who are curious about Gurdjieff’s teaching, but also for those who wish a deeper understanding of Christian symbolism. Many familiar Christian ideas – the Trinity, the Twelve Stations of the Cross, even the word Alleluia – represent much older knowledge and traditions that found their way to us by way of the Greeks. Gurdjieff, who sometimes described his teachings as “esoteric Christianity”, once said, when asked about the connection between ancient Greece and the modern Church:
Everything Christian came from old Greek, then they spoil. All, all, comes from Greek.
My friend George Beke, a tireless and erudite scholar of esoteric teachings, has just sent me a copy of his new book Digging Up the Dog: The Greek Roots of Gurdjieff’s Esoteric Ideas. In this slim volume George shares with us the fruits of his decades of research into the occult legacy of the Pythagoreans and Plato – which are often considered by modern Western thinkers to be merely mathematical and philosophical teachings – and their relation to the complex system for inner development brought forth a century ago by Gurdjieff. I look forward to reading it and commenting on it here. You can order a copy of your own – I can promise you that if you are curious about such things you will not be disappointed – here.
My friend George Beke, in an online discussion of the Gospel of Judas, quotes G.I. Gurdjieff’s book Beelzebub’s Tales to his Grandson. The book takes place on the spaceship Karnak where the horned Beelzebub, returning much older and wiser to his home planet after millennia of exile in our solar system for his youthful transgressions, is telling his grandson Hassein about the strange beings who dwell on the planet Earth.
February 22, 2006 – 6:43 pm
The practice of inner work begins with an attempt to observe ourselves. As I have discussed in earlier posts (here and here), it is very difficult for us to notice the edges of our conscious awareness. The more it ebbs, the less we realize it. Most of the time, we do not remember ourselves.