Gurdjieff

by James H.M. Moore

Book Overview

In this first major biography of George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff, James Moore offers an entertaining and reliable introduction to one of the Western world's most remarkable and little-understood... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1852304502
• ISBN13: 9781852304508
• Release Date: January 1993
• Publisher: Element Books
• Length: 432 Pages
• Weight: 3.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.0" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

"UNDERSTAND" GURDJIEFF? NO, BUT THIS WILL DEFINITELY HELP

George I. Gurdjieff embraced his "mysterious" origins and background (told imaginiatively in his book Meetings With Remarkable Men), and established several "Fourth Way" (i.e., contrasted with the way of the fakir, the way of the monk, and the way of the yogi) schools that purported to teach his students to "wake up"; i.e., experience a complete transformation of themselves through "the Work." His most famous student was occultic/mystical writer Piotr D. Ouspensky, who famously wrote of his experiences at Gurdjieff's school in his book, In Search of the Miraculous (Harvest Book), but later broke with Gurdjieff, establishing his own band of disciples. Moore is quite candid in his 1991 book about the difficulty in "knowing" Gurdjieff; about the 1887-1911 period, for example, Moore writes, "Of Gurdjieff's history for the next twenty years or more we know everything and nothing." He produces some interesting insights into Gurdjieff, such as that "It is undeniable that Gurdjieff reverenced Christ." Moore covers in some detail the break between Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (observing that Ouspensky effected the "wholesale repudiation of Gurdjieff and the wholesale appropriation of his ideas"), as well as Gurdjieff's near-fatal automobile accident (Gurdjieff admittedly "drove like a wild man"). Gurdjieff also wrote music, of which quite a bit is available The Complete Piano Music of Georges I. Gurdjieff and Thomas de Hartmann (6 CD Boxed Set). Moore's book is highly interesting to those interested in the "Fourth Way" or other esoteric teachings, and is likely to remain the "standard" biography.

Warts and All

*Gurdjieffian Confessions: A Self Remembered James Moore Hove: Gurdjieff Studies Limited, 2005, 281 pp., h/b - ISBN 0 9549470 0 2 Reviewed by Holly Baggett -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Warts and All: the honest confessions of a Fourth Way seeker In this highly engaging memoir James Moore, biographer of George Gurdjieff (1866-1949), Greco-Armenian philosopher and gnostic teacher of the Fourth Way, shares an inside view of London Gurdjieff circles from mid-50s Britain to roughly 1980. Introduced to Gurdjieff by public library copies of Ouspensky's In Search of the Miraculous and Kenneth Walker's Venture with Ideas, Moore summons up the courage to write Walker a letter. An invitation to his first meeting ends with the door slammed unceremoniously in his face, but our young hero perseveres. Moore never really explains (if such a thing is possible in this type of memoir) what it is precisely about the Gurdjieffian universe that captures him so completely. It is clear, however, that the secret society aura makes for a dramatic contrast from his day-to-day drudgery as a civil servant in the Admiralty. Moore is an accomplished autodidact. There are philosophical conundrums for him - he longs to understand Gurdjieff within a larger cultural and historical context - where does he fit in with `Adorno, Buber, Eliot, Heidegger', et al., and he is fascinated by the possibilities of germane paths in a variety of religious and artistic traditions. Persuaded by his teachers not to entangle Gurdjieff's ideas with strands of modernism, Moore soldiers on. In fact, he sticks with it for fifty years in spite of suffering the absurd politics of huge and petty egos so often displayed by the spiritually advanced. Not that he lets them off the hook. Indeed, while Moore portrays himself as an earnest young man who respectfully defers to the Gurdjieffian hierarchy, the reader suspects his only genuine reverence is for his mentor Henriette Lannes, one of the few to escape his scathing characterisations. A small sampling of portraits includes `a poisoned gumdrop', `small grey squirrel with an attitude' and `looking like Shelley Winters on a bender.' We have firsthand accounts of Jane Heap, Pamela Travers, and J.G. Bennett, all legendary figures who met the master himself, but in Moore's hands fare no better in presentation than those lower on the esoteric food chain. This tone does not come off as mean spirited, however, and the reader can't help but smile, if only from the sheer cheekiness of it all. One unintended slice of humour is Moore's rendition of the pompous super-secret machinations to hide the preparations for Peter Brook's film adaptation of Gurdjieff's memoir Meetings with Remarkable Men, given the fact that the finished product embarrassed almost everyone involved. To their credit Moore and most of his contemporaries were brutally honest about the film -- Moore recalling that the script `s

A good presentation of the details of Gurdjieff's life

James Moore achieves with this book not only to givea many-sided picture of Gurdjieff, but also of his searchfor truth, the main ideas of what he taught and how heaccomplished it as a teacher.In addition you will find a detailed chronology of Gurdjieff'slife, clarifying notes on many subjects, full referencesto the sources of the book and a select bibliography.Mr. Moore's background in the Gurdjieff Work has givenhim direct contacts with many people who knew Gurdjieffor his teaching well. This has given him the possibilityto write of many things that can not be found in anyother books.I like the contents and the way he writes!

Actually it's a good book

I'll just say briefly that this book is the best biographic text of Gurdjieff available, and while it is a bit prolix it is not purple, as someone claimed. Actually I find it almost novelistically readable.

Scholarly and helpful objective history

Having read this twice through, and having read a fair amount of related material, I must say that this is worth the time spent. Without getting lost in the ideas, the author introduced enough of them to be provacative and helpful, while covering the history more throughly than I have seen elsewhere. The book is very well written with good photographs and a great annotation section at the end which is particularly helpful. For those who enjoy fourth way reading, this book has a special place by mining some of the work idea vein while serving primarliy as a means of placing it in history. Definitely gives a good feeling of what an unusual, powerful and challenging man Gurdjieff was.