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Author: [[Joseph Azize]] Full Title: Gurdjieff Category: #books Indeed, one of his pupils, Solange Claustres (1920–2015), opined that “Gurdjieff’s teaching is not a search for religiosity, but it can be a deepening of reason… . There is no question of ‘for’ or ‘against’ religion in this work.” The basic intention of Gurdjieff’s inner Work seems to be that through practice the individual will develop a “real I” that is awake, conscious, and in possession of a soul. For this reason Gurdjieff was wary of meditation, trance, and also (though he was a skilled hypnotist) hypnotism, all of which occluded consciousness. Part I Introductory Further, Gurdjieff had warned that “professional occultism,” by which he meant “spiritualists, healers and clairvoyants,” were “professional charlatans” and their activities were absolutely inimical to effective internal development.6 Gurdjieff therefore claimed to be speaking from a perspective that allowed him to judge the value of all religions, philosophies, and spiritual paths. a man could understand all the horror of the lives of ordinary people who are turning around in a circle of insignificant interests and insignificant aims … he would understand that there can be only one thing that is serious for him—to escape from the general law, to be free… . People who are not serious … are people who live by fantasies, chiefly by the fantasy that they are able to do something. 16 It was probably because Gurdjieff wanted to be understood by those who were “serious” in his sense of the word, and to discourage those who were not, that he adopted the strategy of mixing clarity and confusion. When we speak of “Transformed-contemplation,” we mean those exercises that are: Internal practices designed to shift the exercitant out of a habitual state, using attention and intention to coordinate and develop their three centers, i.e. their faculties of mind, feeling and sensory awareness (including awareness of the breath), and sometimes purporting to involve other faculties; in order to assimilate, transform and coat very fine substances in the exercitant’s body (what Gurdjieff calls “the sacred cosmic substances required for the coating of the highest-being-body, which sacred being-part of theirs … they call soul”).20

AI Summary

Gurdjieff-2 by Joseph Azize presents wisdom from the contemplative traditions.

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