Gurdjieff and the Women of ‘The Rope’ (1997)
gurdjieff.org
Gurdjieff and the Women of ‘The Rope’ (1997)
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Re: Gurdjieff and the Women of ‘The Rope’ (1997)
#2Alan Watts on Gurdjieff:
"Gurdjieff was a magnificent old rascal, who lived a joyous life, and most of his disciples live extremely restricted, rigid, and serious lives -- because the object of Gurdjieff's method was to weed out those who understood from those who do not, and those who understood went away and those who did not understand remained.
"Gurdjieff laid a trap for people who think that the purpose of life is power, that is to say, to control everything, and he beguiled them with the idea that they were all asleep and not fully in control of their own processes and their own organisms, and he assigned them the impossible task of being the Lord God Jehova each for one's self. He set them to doing this with great rigor and he added to this the discipline of dances in which you could exercise every limb working on a different rhythm to give yourself the illusion of omnipotence. But if you persevered in these exercises hard enough, you would discover they were all nonsense, at which point you would have attained Gurdjieff's stage of illumination."
Re: Gurdjieff and the Women of ‘The Rope’ (1997)
#3Alan Watts on Gurdjieff: "Gurdjieff was a magnificent old rascal, who lived a joyous life, and most of his disciples live extremely restricted, rigid, and serious lives -- because the object of Gurdjieff's method was to weed out those who understood from those who do not, and those who understood went away and those who did not understand remained. "Gurdjieff laid a trap for people who think that the purpose of life…
So, like Zen for people with control issues.
Re: Gurdjieff and the Women of ‘The Rope’ (1997)
#4You ever see the OA on netflix?
Re: Gurdjieff and the Women of ‘The Rope’ (1997)
#5Alan Watts on Gurdjieff: "Gurdjieff was a magnificent old rascal, who lived a joyous life, and most of his disciples live extremely restricted, rigid, and serious lives -- because the object of Gurdjieff's method was to weed out those who understood from those who do not, and those who understood went away and those who did not understand remained. "Gurdjieff laid a trap for people who think that the purpose of life…
One must consider that Alan Watts himself was a magnificent old rascal. He made no pretense about it and described himself as a "philosophical entertainer". When you verify his teachings (either by experience or by going to the source) you find a lot of deliberate bending. His interpretation of the Tao Te Ching is deeply idiosyncratic, for example. Though I suspect there's some degree of truth in his opinion of Gurdjieff, I wouldn't take his word for it.
Re: Gurdjieff and the Women of ‘The Rope’ (1997)
#6There's a fun interview I ran across recently with Gary Lachman (a.k.a. Gary Valentine, early bass player for Blondie!) who knows a ton about this stuff. Though he's strongly biased in favour of Ouspensky against Gurdjieff. Pretty entertaining though, for anyone who likes esoterica about esoterica.
Re: Gurdjieff and the Women of ‘The Rope’ (1997)
#7An interesting review of a 2012 book with the same title as this article: http://www.josephazize.com/2016/04/01/gurdjieff-and-the-wome...
Re: Gurdjieff and the Women of ‘The Rope’ (1997)
#8An interesting review of a 2012 book with the same title as this article: http://www.josephazize.com/2016/04/01/gurdjieff-and-the-wome...
That book appears to be the personal notes of Solita Solano, which are mentioned in the article. This bit is hilarious:
Gurdjieff has given them some “special liquor chocolates”, and Jane Heap, thinking to flatter Gurdjieff, says to him: “Every day in your house is Christmas.” Gurdjieff replies with this remarkable repartee: “Excuse! Twice a day in my house is Christmas. Look, Mees Gordon, she wish belittle me!”
Re: Gurdjieff and the Women of ‘The Rope’ (1997)
#9From Wikipedia's article on Gurdjieff:
>> Gurdjieff taught that most humans do not possess a unified consciousness and thus live their lives in a state of hypnotic "waking sleep", but that it is possible to awaken to a higher state of consciousness and achieve full human potential. Gurdjieff described a method attempting to do so, calling the discipline "The Work"[5] (connoting "work on oneself") or "the Method".[6] According to his principles and instructions,[7] Gurdjieff's method for awakening one's consciousness unites the methods of the fakir, monk and yogi, and thus he referred to it as the "Fourth Way".[8]
So, a typical charlatan selling spiritual enlightenment.
Re: Gurdjieff and the Women of ‘The Rope’ (1997)
#10Alan Watts on Gurdjieff: "Gurdjieff was a magnificent old rascal, who lived a joyous life, and most of his disciples live extremely restricted, rigid, and serious lives -- because the object of Gurdjieff's method was to weed out those who understood from those who do not, and those who understood went away and those who did not understand remained. "Gurdjieff laid a trap for people who think that the purpose of life…
As someone who had much more to do with Gurdjieff followers when growing up than is healthy or happy, this is a very refreshing perspective on his followers at least, and absolutely hits the nail on the head as far as my experiences go!
Also, if you read his works they are not top shelf philosophy by any means. They are more an organized compilation of thoughts he came across than a true original opus. I have no idea how anybody took it seriously, beyond the observation that humans do many irrational things.