Gurdjieff And Hypnosis

This book explores the life and ideas of the enigmatic twentieth century philosopher, mystic, and teacher of esoteric dances George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff, performing a hermeneutic textual analysis of all his writings to illuminate the place of hypnosis in his teaching. Foreword by J. Walter Driscoll.

This unique book offers clear definitions of Gurdjieff's teaching terms, placing him within the political, geographic and cultural context of his time. Entries look at diverse aspects of his Work, including: * possible sources in religious, Theosophical, occult, esoteric and literary traditions * the integral relationships between different aspects of the teaching * its internal contradictions and subversive aspects * the derivation of Gurdjieff's cosmological laws and Ennegram * the passive form of "New Work" teaching introduced by Jeanne de Salzmann.

"This is the first analysis of all of Gurdjieff's published internal exercises, together with those taught by his students, George and Helen Adie. It includes a fresh biographical study of Gurdjieff, with ground-breaking observations on his relationships with P.D. Ouspensky and A.R. Orage (especially, why he wanted to collaborate with them, and why that broke down). It shows that Gurdjieff was, fundamentally, a mystic, and that his contemplation-like methods were probably drawn from Mt Athos and its hesychast tradition. It shows the continuity in Gurdjieff's teaching, but also development and change. His original contribution to Western Esotericism lay in his use of tasks, disciplines, and contemplation-like exercises to bring his pupils to a sense of their own presence which could, to some extent, be maintained in daily life in the social domain, and not only in the secluded conditions typical of meditation. It contends that he had initially intended not to use contemplation-like exercises, as he perceived dangers to be associated with these monastic methods, and the religious tradition to be in tension with the secular guise in which he first couched his teaching. As Gurdjieff adapted the teaching he had found in Eastern monasteries to Western urban and post-religious culture, he found it necessary to introduce contemplation. His development of the methods is demonstrated, and the importance of the three exercises in the Third Series, Life Is Real only then, when 'I Am', is shown, together with their almost certain borrowing from the exercises of the Philokalia. G.I. Gurdjieff P.D. Ouspensky A.R. Orage George Adie Mysticism Meditation Contemplation Fourth Way Hesychasm Western Esotericism"--

Beyond Meetings with Remarkable Men into the truth behind the self-crafted mythology of Gurdjieff’s life • Reveals evidence that Gurdjieff was a secret Freemason, relying on hypnotism, psychic research and spiritualism • Explores the profound influence of the Yezidis, esoteric Christianity, and the “gnostics” of Islam, the Sufis, on Gurdjieff’s Fourth Way teachings and the “Work” • Uncovers the truth behind Gurdjieff’s relations with Aleister Crowley • Accurately dates Gurdjieff’s real activities, particularly his enigmatic early life In November 1949, architect Frank Lloyd Wright announced the death of “the greatest man in the world,” yet few knew who he was talking about. Enigmatic, misunderstood, declared a charlatan, and recently dubbed “the Rasputin who inspired Mary Poppins,” Gurdjieff’s life has become a legend. But who really was George Ivanovich Gurdjieff? Employing the latest research and discoveries, including previously unpublished reminiscences of the real man, Tobias Churton investigates the truth beneath the self-crafted mythology of Gurdjieff’s life recounted in Meetings with Remarkable Men. He examines his controversial birthdate, his father’s background, and his relationship with his private tutor Dean Borshch, revealing a perilous childhood in a Pontic Greek family, persecuted by Turks, forced to migrate to Georgia and Armenia, only to grow up amid more war, persecution, genocide, and revolt. Placing Gurdjieff in the true context of his times, Churton explores Gurdjieff’s roles in esoteric movements taking root in the Russian Empire and in epic imperial construction projects in the Kars Oblast, Transcaucasia, and central Asia. He reveals Gurdjieff’s sources for his transformative philosophy, his early interest in hypnosis, magic, Theosophy, and spiritualism, and the profound influence of the Yezidis and the Sufis, the “gnostics” of Islam, on Gurdjieff’s Fourth Way teachings and the “Work.” Churton also explores Gurdjieff’s ties to Freemasonry and his relationships with other spiritual teachers and philosophers of the age, such as Madame Blavatsky, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Aleister Crowley, dispelling the myth that Gurdjieff forcibly expelled the “Great Beast” from his Institute. Showing how Gurdjieff deliberately re-shaped elements of his life as parables of his system, Churton explains how he didn’t want people to follow his footsteps but to find their own, to wake up from the hypnosis that drives us blindly through life. Offering a vital understanding of the man who asked “How many of you are really alive?” the author reveals the continuing importance of Gurdjieff’s philosophy for the awakening of man.

Making No Compromise is the first book-length account of the lives and editorial careers of Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap, the women who founded the avant-garde journal the Little Review in Chicago in 1914. Born in the nineteenth-century Midwest, Anderson and Heap grew up to be iconoclastic rebels, living openly as lesbians, and advocating causes from anarchy to feminism and free love. Their lives and work shattered cultural, social, and sexual norms. As their paths crisscrossed Chicago, New York, Paris, and Europe; two World Wars; and a parade of the most celebrated artists of their time, they transformed themselves and their journal into major forces for shifting perspectives on literature and art. Imagism, Dada, surrealism, and Machine Age aesthetics were among the radical trends the Little Review promoted and introduced to US audiences. Anderson and Heap published the early work of the "men of 1914"—Ezra Pound, James Joyce, William Butler Yeats, and T. S. Eliot—and promoted women writers such as Djuna Barnes, May Sinclair, Dorothy Richardson, Mina Loy, Mary Butts, and the inimitable Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven. In the mid-1920s Anderson and Heap became adherents of George I. Gurdjieff, a Russian mystic, and in 1929 ceased publication of the Little Review. Holly A. Baggett examines the roles of radical politics, sexuality, modernism, and spirituality and suggests that Anderson and Heap's interest in esoteric questions was evident from the early days of the Little Review. Making No Compromise tells the story of two women who played an important role in shaping modernism.

Omar Khayyam’s Secret: Hermeneutics of the Robaiyat in Quantum Sociological Imagination is a twelve-book series of which this book is the third volume, subtitled Khayyami Astronomy: How Omar Khayyam’s Newly Discovered True Birth Date Horoscope Reveals the Origins of His Pen Name and Independently Confirms His Authorship of the Robaiyat. Each book is independently readable, although it will be best understood as a part of the whole series. In the overall series, the transdisciplinary sociologist Mohammad H. Tamdgidi shares the results of his decades-long research on Omar Khayyam, the enigmatic 11th/12th centuries Persian Muslim sage, philosopher, astronomer, mathematician, physician, writer, and poet from Neyshabour, Iran, whose life and works still remain behind a veil of deep mystery. Tamdgidi’s purpose has been to find definitive answers to the many puzzles still surrounding Khayyam, especially regarding the existence, nature, and purpose of the Robaiyat in his life and works. To explore the questions posed, he advances a new hermeneutic method of textual analysis, informed by what he calls the quantum sociological imagination, to gather and study all the attributed philosophical, religious, scientific, and literary writings of Khayyam. Omar Khayyam’s true birth date horoscope, as newly discovered in this series, is comprised of a dazzling number of Air Triplicities sharing a vertex on a Sun-Mercury Cazimi point on the same Ascendant degree 18 of Gemini. Among other features, his Venus, Sextile with Moon, also plays a lifelong, secretively creative role to intentionally balance his chart. These features would not have escaped the attention of Omar Khayyam, a master astronomer and expert in matters astrological, no matter how much he embraced, doubted, or rejected astrological interpretations. In this third book of the series, conducting an in-depth hermeneutic analysis of Khayyam’s horoscope, Tamdgidi reports having discovered the origins of Khayyam’s pen name in his horoscope. The long-held myth that “Khayyam” was a parental name, even if true, in no way takes away from the new finding; it only adds to its intrigue. Tamdgidi’s hermeneutic analysis of Khayyam’s horoscope in intersection with extant Khayyami Robaiyat also leads him to discover an entirely neglected signature quatrain that he proves could not be from anyone but Khayyam, one that provides a reliably independent confirmation of his authorship of the Robaiyat. He also shows how another neglected quatrain reporting its poet to have aged to a hundred is from Khayyam. This means all the extant Khayyami quatrains are now in need of hermeneutic reevaluation. Tamdgidi’s further study of a sample of fifty Khayyami Robaiyat leads him to conclude that their poet definitively intended the poems to remain in veil, that they were considered to be a collection of interrelated quatrains and not sporadic separate quatrains written marginally in pastime, that they were meant to offer a life’s intellectual journey as in a “book of life,” that the poems’ critically nuanced engagement with astrology was not incidental but essential throughout the collection, and that, judging from the signature quatrain discovered, 1000 quatrains were intended to comprise the collection. Oddly it appears that, after all, “The Khayyam who stitched his tents of wisdom” was a trope that had its origins in Omar Khayyam’s horoscope heavens. CONTENTS About OKCIR—i Published to Date in the Series—ii About this Book—iv About the Author—viii Notes on Transliteration—xvii Acknowledgments—xix Preface to Book 3: Recap from Prior Books of the Series—1 Introduction to Book 3: The Hermeneutic Significance of Omar Khayyam’s Newly Discovered True Birth Date Horoscope—21 CHAPTER I—Was Omar Khayyam’s Birth Horoscope Intended Just to Offer a Birth Date or Was It an Astrological Bread Crumb?—31 CHAPTER II—Considering Both the Stated and the Silent Features of Omar Khayyam’s True Birth Date Horoscope—53 CHAPTER III—Features of Omar Khayyam’s Horoscope as a Whole Based on Astrological House and Other Definitions Traditionally Held in His Own Time—89 CHAPTER IV— Hermeneutically Interpreting Omar Khayyam’s Horoscope as a Whole: Discovering the Origins of His Pen Name—131 CHAPTER V—Discovering the Signature Robai of Omar Khayyam, Leading to An Independent and Final Confirmation of His Authorship of the Robaiyat—177 CHAPTER VI—The Case of A Second Signature Robai of Omar Khayyam, Reporting Its Author to Have Turned A Centenarian—215 CHAPTER VII—Tentatively Intersecting the Findings with a Few More Khayyami Quatrains—251 CHAPTER VIII— Khayyami Astronomy and the ‘Khayyami Code’: Hermeneutically Understanding Omar Khayyam’s Attitude Toward Astrology and His Own Horoscope—297 Conclusion to Book 3: Summary of Findings—317 Appendix: Transliteration System and Book 3 Glossary—337 Book 3 Cumulative Glossary of Transliterations—350 Book 3 References—357 Book 3 Index—361