Review Early Talks Audiobook

I have now been able to listen to the entirety of Anthony Blake’s reading of Gurdjieff’s Early Talks. There are parts to which I have listened more than once, sometimes more than twice. I think that this audiobook is almost essential for serious students of Gurdjieff as it provides a unique opportunity to hear someone reading this material “from the inside,” as it were. I do not say this because Anthony Blake is a friend of mine, but because in my experience it was so.

At the outset, I think that his timing and expression (the weight he gives to each word and his internation), is practically perfect. However, there is no space between each chapter, and that is a shame. Even five seconds would help one to better register that the reading has finished and a new one is about to commence. However, one of the best uses of this recording may be to listen to an individual chapter at a time. I was listening to it for continuous periods of up to thirty minutes.

I will also add that Anthony’s reading of “The Actor” (pp.379-380) is a particularly fine rendition. As one might expect with so long book, the quality of the recording does vary from time to time, and so it is apparent that the chapters were recorded on different occasions.

I have already mentioned in previous reviews my philosophy, as it were, of audiobooks, and will not repeat those remarks here. But I did realise once more that this type of material is communicated with a special quality when it is heard. I do not say that it should only be listened to and never read. I think that both avenues are valuable. However, it does strike me that to hear it read is to allow the narrator to convey a reconciling force, so that I am not hearing it with my own accustomed internal intonation. When I listen to audiobooks, there is not infrequently something arising in me which wants to argue with the reader. Possibly because of the respect I have for this material, that is relatively absent when I am listening to this reading. That enables me to receive the perspective which Anthony brings, and not that which just goes on inside my head. This had the result that I not infrequently realised certain things were in the book which I had never noticed before; and when I went back and asked myself how it could be but I have missed them, the only possible answer was that whenever I had read them silently to myself, my own thoughts and attitudes had been mixed with the text. Listening to someone reading without those thoughts blended into the text, I was able to receive it for the first time.

For me, the most powerful example of this was the chapter “Liberation leads to Liberation.” This is one of the chapters which is also in Views from the Real World. But, and this is a big “but,” until I heard Anthony reading it, I had never perceived the final paragraph of the piece. It was only when I realised the strangeness of it, that I said to myself: “I don’t remember that!” Then, when I went to Views from the Real World, I saw that it had been omitted from that volume. That is a tragedy because Gurdjieff gives a practical task in that paragraph which is of substantial value. Incidentally, that task ties in with the saying in this volume, again absent from Views from the Real World, namely: “Dwelling on wounded feelings prevents “life” entering.” [p. 424] I also now appreciate, for the first time, something at least of the importance of this section from “Liberation …”: “Self-love indicates and proves that a given man is a particle of heaven. Self-love is “I.” “I” is God. Therefore it is desirable to have self-love.” [p.242]

This also ties in with some of the additional sayings and together they form an indispensable supplement to the Gurdjieff teaching which without this side could appear too ascetic, too stern.

Also, it was listening to this reading that suddenly the meaning of what is said about magnetism came through to me. This has to do with formation of higher being bodies and also explains the purpose and method of many of the contemplated exercises. However, I shall not go into that here as it really belongs in a group setting.

Once more, highly recommended.