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Virginia Jensen's avatar

So beautiful and well put. From the time I left the Fourth Way school I attended in the seventies, I have tried to keep my personal Work alive and vital. Continuing to work on yourself after leaving the cocoon of a school is not easy. School exercises and practices have little external third force to keep you from deceiving yourself.

In the seventies we had little recourse to the kind of scientific exploration and personal lived stories of others in the work. Now I can read any number of books by students of Gurdjieff and go on line for the latest science and philosophy that supports the Work. My school was a bit cultish and strongly Ouspensky based, but I have verified that what I got was the true teaching.

The first extension of the work for me was the writings of J. G Bennett, then Anthony Blake. I dipped into many others sources, autobiographies and other teachers, and even sought philosophers and scientists who might help verify the principles of the Work and expand my understanding. What a delight to discover that others have been following a similar trail, keeping the principles alive and even more relevant in today’s chaotic context.

Lately I have found any number of youtube videos, including your own, that express what I understand as the true work. Not only what Gurdjieff and his immediate students taught, but an exploration of those principles as they are viewed in the light of current science and new explorative thinking and feeling. In fact, many of the questions that arose for me fifty years ago are being answered by new researchers into the Work principles. I even come across scientists saying what might have come directly from the mouth of Gurdjieff himself.

How exciting this resurgence of interest feels. I do believe that what Gurdjieff brought was a prescient understanding of what humanity needed in order not to go crazy in the coming times. Thanks to you, and to all who help this understanding reach those who are currently seeking.

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Carl Grimsman's avatar

Greetings! Interesting to read your reply. Guessing maybe the school you attended was in UK, as you mention Ouspensky influence and Bennett. I, too, lived in a G community in the 70s, in upstate New York. And I echo your comment as to the difficulty continuing one's work after leaving. I was successful however!

Not sure I share your view as to a resurgence of the ideas now. I recently joked with an online video maker that I thought she may be the only Gurdjieff student worldwide under the age of 40! Such is my impression based on local events where I am as well as video channels on YouTube.

Thanks for sharing your perspective.

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Virginia Jensen's avatar

Happy to meet a fellow in the Work. I was in the Southwest U.S. I do hear of current groups, but have no personal experience with them. Some Youtube groups seem pretty authentic. And I keep in touch with a few of my old schoolmates. Check out Layman Pascal, who has a book on Gurdjieff for today. Also I very much like Iain McGilchrist, who often speaks Gurdjieff ideas without realizing it.

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Carl Grimsman's avatar

Ha! I'm in the U.S. Southwest now. And coincidentally I'm listening to The Fourth Way's interview with Layman Pascal at this moment. Quite impressive. I'll check out McGilchrist.

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Claudia Dommaschk's avatar

Thank you for your beautiful reflection. It brings to mind what Gestalt therapist Arnold Beisser called the paradoxical nature of change: that we change not by trying to be different, but by becoming more fully who we are. In cultivating a relationship with our inner call, what Peter Limberg described in his recent post as being “Pulled, Driven, Called,” we aren’t striving toward some distant ideal. We’re deepening into what is most real, most alive, and most true in the present moment. That, too, is a kind of symmetry within and without.

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herry de terry's avatar

I read Schrodinger's What Is Life recently and you might want to look up his concept of negentropy, which he later related with free energy, and at the end you get bonus Atman and Brahman. If i had a dime every time a physicist goes mystical I'd have quite a few dollars, but the more I look the more warranted it seems.

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