Part I of this series is: http://www.josephazize.com/2023/08/11/in-practical-terms-what-is-self-remembering/ Gurdjieff said that the key to everything was to remain separate. I think this is what is behind Toomer’s experience that: [My life] was […]
Read moreCategory: Articles
In Practical Terms, What Is Self-Remembering? Pt II
Part I of this series is: http://www.josephazize.com/2023/08/11/in-practical-terms-what-is-self-remembering/ I am going to jump from what was written there to a description of a state which we can fairly call “self-remembering.” It comes […]
Read moreIn Practical Terms, What Is Self-Remembering?
What is it like to be able to remember myself, in practical terms? Surely there can be no one comprehensive answer, as each “self” is unique (at least theoretically). But […]
Read moreWhat Can it Be, to “Unite Beelzebub’s Tribe”?
I think that the further one advances along the Gurdjieff work, the more one feels the desirability of uniting Beelzebub’s tribesmen, so to speak. There are many questions, for example, […]
Read moreMerston, “Claire,” and the Dangers of Prematurely Separating out the Astral and Physical Bodies
This follows a line begun in this post, albeit in a tangent: https://www.josephazize.com/2023/06/14/was-gurdjieff-spied-on/ In 1931, Ethel Merston began a stormy relationship with a 13-year-old girl known to us only as “Claire.” […]
Read moreIdries Shah’s Attraction for the Wilfully Blind
The Moral: Idries Shah’s writing on St Francis of Assisi brought me to a fairly important understanding: his technique, I contend, was to write such utter balderdash that anyone who […]
Read moreWas Gurdjieff Spied On?
The moral: To my mind, one of the most powerful signs of Gurdjieff’s deep compassion was how he knowingly accepted as his “pupil” a woman who was spying on him, and […]
Read moreEmotional Disturbance
Why do we suffer emotional disturbance, and what can be done about it? Also, one might ask, what can be done with it, because it is a lawful phenomenon, and […]
Read moreGurdjieff’s Contemplative Exercises and his Movements
Movement implies the animation of a still point. When a still point is realised through Gurdjieff’s Aiëssirittoorassnian-contemplation, it is poised, it is disposed to receive animation from a higher influence, and […]
Read moreThe Second Assisting Exercise, Henriette Lannes
In Life Is Real Only Then, When “I Am,” Gurdjieff presented three exercises, the Soil Preparing and the First and Second Assisting Exercises. I have dealt with these in the book Gurdjieff: Mysticism, Contemplation, […]
Read more