An Introduction to the Gurdjieff International Review Greg Loy

Transcription

1 An Introduction to the Gurdjieff International Review Greg Loy I am here today to speak about the Gurdjieff International Review (GIR). Can I have a show of hands of those of you who know about it? Okay, a large percentage. In preparing this talk I happened to notice that it s been twenty years since the website was established. In that time there s been 21 major updates to the website, along with 21 printed issues. This is what the website looks like today, it s probably familiar to most of you. 207

2 ALL and Everything 2017 The Beginning I was asked to spend a little time on the history of the GIR, so I will begin there. I have been in the remote computer services business since 1972 which over time has come to be known as the Internet. One day in the mid-1990 s, I was sitting at my computer and noticed that there were some websites (they were called homepages at that time) popping up about Gurdjieff. But these websites were as those of you who remember those days of a dubious nature. Shortly thereafter, I was driving home through Mountain View, California, and I passed by Best.com, one of the very first ISP s (Internet Service Providers). So, on a whim I decided to stop and buy some domain names because this Internet thing just might spread more into the public consciousness. So I stopped, did a quick search to see if any domain names had been assigned using Gurdjieff s name, and after discovering that there were none, decided to buy the domain name gurdjieff.org for twenty dollars. I could have also bought gurdjieff.com but I didn t want to spend another twenty dollars. Then, the next day while at work I came to realize: Oh my God, now that I have this domain name, I better do something with it. So I spent a few days writing some general information about Gurdjieff and the first version of the website looked something like this. It was a very simple website. There is one page about Mr. Gurdjieff, a short page about some of his pupils, a description of some of the organizations that existed at the time, some information about his books, a little bit about the music, probably a total of pages max. 208

3 Gurdjieff International Review After a few months, I started to receive a lot of from people asking questions as if I was some sort of expert. And at the same time, this little venture was starting to take a lot of my spare time and it got to the point where I came to the conclusion that I had bitten off more than I could chew. So I contacted and met with a senior member of the Gurdjieff Foundation of California (in San Francisco) in order to let them know what I was doing and proposed that maybe they should be doing this. She told me that their organization wasn t in a position to do anything on the Internet at that time. There were just too many of their members who were very suspicious of the Internet. So I persevered. Six months or so later I was contacted by a fellow named Walter Driscoll and soon thereafter we met in the San Francisco bay area with a few others. Walter, in collaboration with the Gurdjieff Foundation of California, had written Gurdjieff, An Annotated Bibliography (1985). Walter was an expert on the writings of and about Gurdjieff. Shortly after this meeting we decided to work together on the website. Walter later had the idea of publishing printed issues to accompany the website, so we did that. Some of you might have seen them. Every time a major update is installed on the website, there is also a printed issue that contains the same material. There are many readers who have never seen these printed issues. Here is an example of a cover page: We received help and support from others in those early days. One of the first was Terry Winter Owens of the New York Foundation. There was also Dushka Howarth. These two and a few others encouraged us to continue and even donated material. However, the GIR was not well received by some parties, and we heard that some of our first issues were thrown into the trash. 209

4 ALL and Everything 2017 The Gurdjieff Foundations We published a few issues and things were proceeding quite well. But I still harbored the feeling that we or more specifically me were not the ones who should be doing this and in 1998 I managed to get the address of Michel de Salzmann. Walter and I wrote him a letter, telling him who we were and what we were doing and asking to meet with him. We didn t hear anything for many months. Then one day, I got a phone call and Michel was visiting the Bay Area and wanted to meet. So when that day arrived, Walter, my wife, June, and myself drove up to their property north of the Bay Area and we met with Michel and another dozen or so people. It was a very memorable meeting. The meeting began with some nice small talk, but it wasn t long before Paul Reynard looked at us and said: So, who are you to believe that you can represent the teachings of Gurdjieff on the Internet? And my response was: I don t think you understand why we re here. We re nobody when it comes to this question. We re here because you all should be doing this. A long discussion followed which included Michel, Paul, Jacob Needleman, Roger Lipsey, and the others about the website, the Internet, whether or not they should be doing anything about it, or not. At the end of the discussion, Michel turned to us and asked us to continue working with the website and said that they would help us. Michel then appointed right there on the spot four representatives from the Foundations to help us. Jacob Needleman for the West Coast, Roger Lipsey for the East coast, Chris Thompson for the UK and Basarab Nicolescu for Paris. And they would be our interfaces to help with any support. I remember walking out of that meeting across the parking lot thinking to myself Holy shit! I don t know anything about publishing, I m not a writer, and I don t know anything about editing. And now Michel de Salzmann has dropped this even greater responsibility onto our laps. Fortunately there was a lot of help. Walter taught me a lot about editing, my wife June was in the technical writing business so she helped a lot, and then the four individuals appointed by Michel were very proactive in their support and encouragement. It was Basarab Nicolescu who came up with the name, the Gurdjieff International Review. After publishing several issues on various themes, we then in 2002 published an issue on the Gurdjieff Movements. This was very controversial at the time. I think it was one of the first times that information about the Movements became available. This never would have been possible without the participation of the Foundations. Unfortunately, this was about the time that Walter Driscoll decided to depart from the GIR. Walter and I had differences regarding our relationship with the Foundations so he decided to break away and create his own website. His departure was a severe blow and that is when I started to work more with guest editors (more on that later). Still, much of the credit for the success of the GIR goes to Walter. There Have Been 21 Issues We have published 21 issues. There is not enough time to talk about all of them, so I will highlight four of my favorites. The first is an issue on the Gurdjieff / de Hartmann music. Larry Rosenthal contributed to this issue amongst others. The second is an issue which provides a general introduction to Gurdjieff and his teaching. It is a document that can be given to someone who knows nothing 210

5 Gurdjieff International Review about Gurdjieff. The third is an issue on the Movements. It is by far our most popular issue. This was the first issue where we began to work with guest editors. And the fourth is an issue on the theme of Attention. Issue Timeframe Theme 1. Vol. I (1) Fall Vol. I (2) Winter 1997/98 3. Vol. I (3) Spring 1998 A. R. Orage 4. Vol. I (4) Summer 1998 Le Prieuré 5. Vol. II (1) Fall 1998 The Gurdjieff Literature 6. Vol. II (2) Winter 1998/99 P. D. Ouspensky 7. Vol. II (3) Spring 1999 Historical Essays 8. Vol. II (4) Summer 1999 Gurdjieff / de Hartmann Music 9. Vol. III (1) Fall 1999 An Introduction to Gurdjieff 10. Vol. III (2) Spring 2000 Pupils of Gurdjieff 11. Vol. IV (1) Fall Vol. IV (2) Spring Vol. V (1) Spring 2002 A Teacher of Dancing 14. Vol. VI (1) Spring 2003 A Well-Prepared Tradition 15. Vol. VII (1) Fall 2003 The Movement of Transmission 16. Vol. VIII (1) Fall 2004 Pupil and Teacher 17. Vol. IX (1) Fall 2005 The Material Question 18. Vol. X (1) Spring 2007 The Work in Life 19. Vol. XI (1) Spring 2012 The Oral Tradition 20. Vol. XI (2) Summer 2012 Beelzebub s Tales 21. Vol. XII (1) Fall 2013 Attention Some Principles and Observations The primary purpose of the GIR is to provide a source of informed essays and commentary on the life, writings, and teachings of Mr. Gurdjieff. We strive to do so for both the general public, as well as for the Gurdjieff community. Here are some of the principles that we follow, and some observations that we have made: We insist that the material we publish be authentic. This includes tracking down and verifying, as best we can, the provenance of each item. There is a lot of material floating around about Gurdjieff which is simply not accurate and/or incorrectly attributed to him. We don t like typos so we proof material that has been typed a minimum of two times, and for material that has been scanned, a minimum of three times. We are all volunteers. All the work done on the publication is by volunteers with no compensation paid to anybody. We don t accept advertising. 211

6 ALL and Everything 2017 We are an independent organization. We are not affiliated with any one group. There is a strong relationship with the Gurdjieff Foundations but they have never tried to control how we operate or what we publish in any way. We encourage an atmosphere of reconciliation between the various Gurdjieff communities. Russian proverb: There is no offence which with time, will not blow over. We use Beelzebub s Tales as a background theme for most issues. When deciding what to publish, we ask ourselves the question, Does this material touch and feed my inner work? Each Gurdjieff organization has something quite unique that they embody about the Gurdjieff teaching, which the other groups could learn from. But no one organization has it all. We need each other going forward. We plan to continue our close relationship with the Foundations. I am often asked why. When Willie Sutton was asked why he robs banks, he said because that s where the money is. In other words, the Foundations have more authentic material than anywhere else. We respect copyrights. I probably spend 25 percent of my time pursuing copyright permissions and I have learned some things. One of them is to never underestimate the power of a handwritten letter. A handwritten letter works much better than an or a phone call. It demonstrates that you respect both the person and the material. For every new issue we begin with Gurdjieff s own writings. He is the first person to speak. It is better to not chase after material. When we begin work on a new issue, we generally start with just a theme and a guest editor, not much more than that. We then start to search for relevant material, but as we do so, material also just starts to appear the word gets out, people start sending us things. Sometimes it s almost as if the issue starts to jell on its own. It s a very interesting thing. We don t accept subscriptions. We used to accept subscriptions years ago but no longer do so because, as you probably all know, we don t have a regular publishing schedule anymore. It used to be that our printed issues came out first and then the website was updated to reflect what was in the printed issue. But because of the sometimes long time frames between new issues, we have started to publish new material on the website first under the What s New tab. We have learned that working with guest editors produces the best results. Our guest editors thus far have been Ellen Dooling Draper (Reynard), Don Hoyt, Jim Opie, Patty de Llosa, Mary Stein, and Jenny Koralek. The benefit to the reader is obvious, and I get to meet and learn from them. This is for me the most rewarding part of doing this publication. 212

7 Gurdjieff International Review Beelzebub Bookmark Syllabus On the GIR website under the section on Beelzebub s Tales there is a link to a page called Beelzebub Bookmark Syllabus. I want to spend a few minutes on this topic because I think it is very relevant to this Conference. In the early 1990 s, I had the good fortune to exchange a series of letters with Mrs. Staveley of Two Rivers Farm. She suggested once that I set up a Beelzebub study group in the Bay area and here is a letter from her offering some advice: October 27, 1992 Dear Greg, Starting a Beelzebub study group splendid. But one or two points. One is that hearing the Book read aloud is very important. Gurdjieff always had people reading it and there was never any discussion. You see, Gurdjieff wrote from one level and we listen from another much lower. If we begin to talk about his ideas from our level too soon, it turns into wiseacring. Your opinion, my opinion; I agree, you disagree; I speculate; I talk by association whatever it is, there is no space for the very real, very great ideas that Gurdjieff is conveying to us. We are so full of ourselves there is no room for anything else. Here we read 9 12 pages before each group meeting. Someone reads aloud. The group should read those pages to themselves at home in preparation for the meeting of course. Then there is a short silence in case anyone has a burning question. People are not encouraged to start guessing what is meant by the reading. If no questions, then the group meeting proceeds. Over the years real questions and insights will appear, but we need time to digest the book. As I have probably said before, Gurdjieff wrote direct to essence and bypasses our head brain which is the center of gravity for the personality. People do have insights from time to time from the beginning, but it s a rare occurrence. Hearing the Book, which is a Scripture, read aloud is a very different experience from reading it to oneself. One needs both. What I m trying to say is that it is better to listen than to talk about the reading most of the time. Now, if you have seasoned veterans of readings, it is a different story and one can study one chapter, such as Purgatory for a long time trying to understand the Law of Seven, really understand it. But wait until you ve gotten past thinking by association and understand what Gurdjieff means by active mentation. Anything I write to you is just a suggestion. No obligation to try it if it doesn t seem right in your situation. Ask me to explain what is not clear. All good wishes, Sincerely, Mrs. A. L. Staveley 1 1 Letter from Mrs. A.L. Staveley reproduced here by the kind permission of the Estate of A.L. Staveley. 213

8 ALL and Everything 2017 So at the beginning of the reading group, we took Mrs. Staveley s advice and started reading nine to twelve pages at the beginning of each meeting. We would pass the book around and read out loud the designated pages. This would then be followed by a discussion because everyone in the reading group had already read the book at least three times. We would then each read the next section sometime before the next meeting, just as Mrs. Staveley suggested. But by the time the reading group had completed the book, something changed that I want to share with you. A slightly different approach to the readings evolved which has proven to be very powerful. This can best be explained by studying the bookmark syllabus. The syllabus breaks the book into 81 weekly readings. To use the new approach, the weekly readings would proceed like this: 214

9 Gurdjieff International Review Read the first reading (pp. 3 19) to yourself. Attend Meeting (Week 1) where first reading is read aloud. During the following week, read the first reading again to yourself, followed by the second reading (pp ). Attend Meeting (Week 2) where second reading is read aloud. During the following week, read the second reading again to yourself, followed by the third reading (pp ). Attend Meeting (Week 3) where third reading is read aloud. During the following week, read the third reading again to yourself, followed by the fourth reading (pp ). And so on for all 81 weeks. The readings overlap one another from week to week, something like how a paintbrush works. The result is that the third reading penetrates deeply because one s mentation has been activated by the previous two readings of the same material all within a seven day period. This is slightly different interpretation of Gurdjieff s advice when he says: And only thirdly try and fathom the gist of my writings. (BT, p vi) So Just a Wee Bit More About the GIR As far as future plans for the GIR are concerned, I d like to add new material on some of Gurdjieff pupils, J. G. Bennett for example. I feel that we can have a lot more material about him and others. I would like to have a dedicated issue which focuses on the A&E Conference. There are many important papers that have been submitted over the years and I would like to help those get to a wider audience. We talked about this a few years ago and it hasn t come into fruition yet, but I haven t given up on it. Also, a small part of the website has been translated into other languages. I would like to do more. Suggestions are always welcome. The printed issues are still available, they are all in stock, but we re going to run out soon! (laughter). They are available from these book sellers: By The Way Books, Fields Books, Bennett Books and Gurdjieff Books and Music. Wholesale copies are also available for an order of ten copies or more you can contact me directly and, of course, you will have to pay for postage. Volunteers are welcome and tax deductible donations are welcome, we have been granted 501(c)(3) status. 215

10 ALL and Everything 2017 Moderator: Are there any questions? Questions and Answers Participant: I guess I must be one of those people you were speaking to who were older. I remember distinctly that when I was setting up the website for GH Records [formerly Triangle Editions] for the Gurdjieff/de Hartmann music, I was looking through the Internet, and, as you said, there was such extraordinary misinformation and bad stuff. Then I stumbled on your website and I just said, well, this must be done by someone with real intelligence, because everything that I read, everything that I saw there struck a chord, as you said. And, I really appreciated it at the time, and I told a lot of people about it, and it still shows up on libraries in many places. And the second thing I wanted to mention was that and it was quite extraordinary, I think we started setting up reading study groups for The Reality of Being before the book was published in New York. At the beginning we found the text so dense that we didn t get very far. Gradually, after a year or two, we found that by starting to read the text from the previous meeting we could then better understand the new text; people read during the week at home, worked with it. Come to the next meeting, hear it again, and then exchange. So you had an admonition not to exchange, but this was a way, I guess probably for more advanced people, but a way of exchanging on the work discovered from those texts. But it s really very similar to what you were speaking about because of the nature of it, the depth of it, and certainly with All and Everything the bone (and the dog) is buried very deeply, so I think it s amazing. Participant: I d just like to second what was said, that, ditto, your website stood out like a beacon of sanity in the early days, and these days. The interview with Alexander de Salzmann, material like that is there and is shared with anyone who wishes to just look for it. And the other thing for you to know is that copies of your publication are in the library of the London Society. And, I ll say that what we kept to with our Beelzebub s Tales studies is that there is a sense that one brings one s material to the reading and one resists bringing the reading down to one s own stuff, which is how we worked in our study groups with that material. Greg: Well, thank you. Most of the credit really goes to Michel de Salzmann, Roger Lipsey, Jacob Needleman, Paul Reynard, all the guest editors, our volunteers, and many others. They are the ones who made the difference. Participant: Yes. Respect. Moderator: Anybody else? Please join me in thanking Greg. ~ ~ ~ 216