Two Books by James (Jim) Opie
When I had read James Opie’s recent, Between Two Worlds: My Fifty Years in the Gurdjieff Work, I went back to my review of his Approaching Inner Work, a very worthy little book. It seems to me that my pithy review is also pertinent to the new volume. So that there is no doubt, Between Two Worlds is a valuable, maybe a very valuable book, and well-written. But first, the review of the earlier one:
James Opie, Approaching Inner Work: Michael Currer-Briggs and the Gurdjieff Teaching. Opie’s notes were checked by Briggs himself before his death, and Briggs, a pupil of Gurdjieff and Jane Heap, was clearly a man of some wisdom. The practicality of what Briggs had to say is striking. For me, the highlights are the story concerning his relations with his brother at pp.45-47; then the chapter on justifying and explaining (pp.59-62), what is said about self-criticism and self-respect at 75-76, and about certainty at 83-84. Opie has taken care to write clearly. This little tribute to Briggs shows the value of just doing a job without any show or fanfare, but doing it well. Opie can be proud of this volume.
There is just one further point to note: Opie clearly disliked the “separation” (let us put it that way) between the Foundation and people like Bennett and Staveley. He does not mention this in a polemical way: his attitude merely sets the backdrop for Briggs’ impartial comments. I have no criticism of him for that, but his remarks made me start thinking: why was there ever this “us and them” mentality? Why was it ever thought that Gurdjieff’s pupils should all be in one institution or society? It is not decisive, but after Gurdjieff’s Institute folded, he could have, but did not ever re-instigate it. I could develop my opinion at further length, but it is sufficient for this review to restate the question: why did these “separations” loom so large in the generations after Gurdjieff’s death?
James Opie, Between Two Worlds: My Fifty Years in the Gurdjieff Work, Monkfish, 2026. There seems to have been something good and vigorous about Mrs Staveley that could get into people’s blood; although the arising of esteem and devotion in a pupil lawfully evokes the opposite in reaction. David Kherdian’s Spaceship revealed the almost obsessive nature of his relationship with her, and to a lesser extent, so too does Opie’s excellent autobiography. It is, I believe, lawful. I doubt that a balanced assessment, and beyond that, being-love for any teacher can arise unless the initial attraction has been tested by a reaction against. And then the realisation that I may not have understood the teacher the way I thought had, may enter as the reconciling force. I suspect that Opie is ripe to come to a being-love of the teacher with whom he studied for fourteen years. He was not with her for all that time because he liked her rocking horse.
Mrs Staveley, in the brief time I knew her (I only spent three weeks with her in 1996, the year of her death) expressed to me three main thoughts, as well as answering, with wisdom and simplicity, a question about certain experiences. The first was that she did not want her pupils to think of themselves, but for themselves. The second was Gurdjieff’s teaching on conscience. The third, only briefly mentioned—perhaps because I had already came to the same conclusion—was that certain people had effectively abandoned central aspects of Gurdjieff’s legacy (his ideas and methods). Opie’s book leaves these unstated, although it may arguably allude to the third. Far more than even this was her being: in her presence, I had certain new and remarkable experiences. At the evening meal for the 13th, she sat me opposite her. I have no doubt at all that her presence was saturated with so many higher hydrogens that she was a veritable walking bank of them, from which one could withdraw; and also that she could see something which was invisible to our eyes.
I say that, because I may be deceiving myself, but I think I see signs of conscience—perhaps her favourite ideal—in Between Two Worlds in the way Opie narrates without judgment his early years, especially concerning the knife his grandfather gave him, and other moments. Conscience just sees, with neither condemnation nor sentimental flattery. In so far as this book exhibits conscience, it may be that it marks him as a true pupil of this worthy woman.
Jim Opie’s story provides a lot of scope for polemics, but he has not really taken up cudgels, at least not with malice. That is to his credit. Still, over the last few years I have at last begun to try to put into practice Mr Adie’s advice to me: “Do not talk about other people unless you have a good reason.” I understand “good” to mean both “sound” and “in accordance with conscience.” Where I have violated that rule, and I know I have, I repent in the sense of metanoia, as explained by Nicoll: I am trying to change my mind and to repair the past.Heaven only knows what I would have written were I in Opie’s shoes, but looking at it from here, there are a few things I would have left out. Some things, I feel, are too personal, too confidential to be published: especially where the people concerned have left this world and cannot tell their side of the story.
There are not so many autobiographies by people who were pupils of Gurdjieff’s personal pupils: that is, second-generation students. Opie’s fascinating autobiography is, I would say, the best of the crop so far. To an extent, everyone who narrates how they left a teacher will make of it an apologia pro vita sua. The least impressive effort of this genre, which I have read, is W.P. Patterson’s. I have mixed feelings about Kherdian’s book, but it was least credible in its self-defence of his leaving Mrs Staveley.
To close this review of Between Two Worlds, Opie’s internal efforts with his former wife Bernadette, utilising Gurdjieff’s methods and the Jesus Prayer, are riveting. Opie’s encounters with non-Gurdjieff-related characters like “Oldie” and the carpet dealers of Afghanistan and Iran are unforgettable. I usually say a lot more about the contents of the book, but it is sufficient to say that it is indeed fascinating. I think what I wanted to say about Opie’s relation with his teacher was more important. I would, otherwise, reiterate what I wrote about Jim’s Approaching Inner Work: too much energy was invested in the “separations” between pupils of Gurdjieff; and they loom too large in this book. In the end, what counts is the experience of “I AM,” the feeling of I. The return to the source.
P.S. The morning after I posted this, and was engaged with the morning preparation, I recalled the advice Mrs Staveley had given me, which I avert to above. That reminded me how Mrs Staveley, more than anyone else, was responsible for Gurdjieff’s authentic exercises not being lost. The only contemplative exercises she had ever had came from Gurdjieff either directly from his lips, or indirectly through Jane Heap, until the shock of the innovations of the 1960s. Unable to accept them, and rightly so, neither could her previous reception of those who introduced the innovations be the same. I am fairly confident that that is the deep reason for the differences between senior Work figures which Jim Opie has noted; and so the differences were not only lawful but necessary to save Gurdjieff’s authentic inheritance. If that were all she had done, we would have cause to be eternally grateful to her; and it would prove that for all her faults she could think for herself – I see in this also a further proof that she had a mental body (further to what I experienced when I met her). But she did more: she saved us Beelzebub’s Tales. I have already written about this in Postscripts. It is futile to argue she was wrong in either of these significant matters. Really, there was no one like her.