Gurdjieff Reconsidered
The Life, the Teachings, the Legacy
-
- $18.99
-
- $18.99
Publisher Description
From a master biographer and longtime Gurdjieff practitioner, a brilliant new exploration of the quintessential Western esoteric teacher of the twentieth-century.
The Greek-Armenian teacher G.I. Gurdjieff was one of the most original and provocative spiritual teachers in the twentieth-century West. Whereas much work on Gurdjieff has been either fawning or blindly critical, acclaimed scholar and writer Roger Lipsey balances sympathic interest in Gurdjieff and his "Fourth Way" teachings with a historian's sense of context and a biographer's feel for personality and relationships. Using a wide-range of published and unpublished sources, Lipsey explores Gurdjieff's formative travels in Central Asia, his famed teaching institution in France, the development of the Gurdjieff Movements and music, and, above all, Gurdjieff's fascinating continuous evolution as a teacher.
Published on the 70th anniversary of Gurdjieff's death, Gurdjieff Reconsidered delves deeply into Gurdjieff's writings and those of his most important students, including P. D. Ouspensky and Jeanne de Salzmann. Lipsey's comprehensive approach and unerring sense of the subject make this a must-read for anyone with a serious intention to explore Gurdjieff's life, teachings, and reputation.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Lipsey (Hammarskj ld: A Life), an art historian and translator, fails to coherently articulate to the lay reader the philosophy of mystic and spiritual teacher Gurdjieff (1877 1949) in this poorly conceived book. Lipsey concedes that his oblique approach is deliberate, noting that "as a reader, you won't have missed the fact that I have not much concerned myself with expounding' the teaching." Though he explains that this choice is premised on his conviction that "the teaching is evident in every reported exchange, every incident in these pages," not many will be able (or willing) to make those inferences into Gurdjieff's thinking. Lipsey approaches Gurdjieff's ideas and claims that a higher state of consciousness was attainable by way of close readings of his writings and journals, going so far as to analyze a journal entry on making salad. When Lipsey does directly address his subject's philosophy, his glib formulations create more confusion, as when he notes the aphorism "every stick has two ends" explains "nearly everything." Lipsey is even admittedly ambivalent about whether Gurjieff's teachings should "remain secret" to a general audience. This ambivalence results in an odd presentation that leaves a tantalizing spiritualist's teachings frustratingly obscure. Readers curious about why Gurdjieff continues to attract such a passionate following would be better served by studying Gurdjieff's own works.
