1– Stephen Aronson:Preparation for the Third Line of Work: Threading the Needle Between Wiseacring and the Law of Hazard
2– John Amaral:Gurdjieff Exercises and The Three Brains
3– George Bennett: Being-Partkdolg-duty, Conscious Labor and Intentional Suffering
4– Keith Buzzell:Do-Re-Mi Of Food, Air And Impressions
5– James George:What Does Great Nature Now Require Of Us?
6– Dimitri Peretzi:Man is Third Force Blind
7– Elan Sicroff: Piano Recital of Gurdjieff/de Hartmann Music (Friday evening)
8 – Dorothy Usiskin: Egoism
9 – John Robert Colombo: Conference Banquet Speaker
10 – Elsa Denzey: Piano Recital of Gurdjieff/de Hartmann Music (Thursday evening)
Stephen Aronson
Preparation for the Third Line of Work: Threading the Needle Between Wiseacring and the Law of Hazard
When Mr. Gurdjieff passed away, his students were left with the responsibility to collect and transmit his system into the future. With the passing of that first generation, we, the ‘grandchildren’ of Gurdjieff, face the same task anew, but without clarity or consensus as to how to meet the challenge. If Beelzebub’s Tales does indeed contain “All and Everything”, then direction for this question must lie within its pages.
This paper proposes to explore what those clues might be, by examining the different methods and quality of ‘search’ described in the Tales and different levels of Being Reason we must each be responsible for, within ourselves, if we are to move towards this aim and avoid the tragedy of war and sectarianism.
Gurdjieff also says one error, made by followers of a religion, is that they “never take into account in which environment and for which case this or that was said and explained”. How then, can the Work be kept alive without succumbing to the distortion of wiseacring? Might the Law of Otherwise be a necessary condition to the appearance of a new creative impulse?
To be alive in the world, the Work must manifest through a living container. When “I AM”, the Work resonates within and from me. The Whole is more than can be known, but, as a representative of The Whole on Earth, I can strive to manifest from my highest level of Being Reason.
Biographical Notes
Stephen Aronson received a BS from Penn State University in 1965 and MA and PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Connecticut in 1970. He has been a practicing psychotherapist for nearly 40 years with a background spanning cognitive-behavioral, psychodynamic, inter-personal, gestalt and Jungian training. He was co-author of The Stress Management Workbook, Appleton-Century-Crofts, N.Y. 1980, one of the first publications on stress management. Life interests have included photography, science and baseball. He has been a student of the Gurdjieff work since 1982. Inner world interests are his passion for ‘The Work’ in all its forms and manifestations, but particularly the method of Gurdjieff since his first encounter in 1982.
John Amaral
Gurdjieff Exercises and The Three Brains
Several categories of exercises were given by Gurdjieff, including in The Tales. This paper suggests organizing them by their relation to the three functional brains as presented by Gurdjieff, with an occasional reference to Chinese Traditional Medicine. Individuals may find this approach useful as an organizing principle and practice tool.
Gurdjieff exercises impose extraordinary conditions that train increased consciousness and attentiveness. They involve the directing of attention, in logical sequence, to localizations of the body or aspects of the mind and may be practiced in isolation (‘atmosphereless space’) or with others (such as in ‘sittings’ or Movements).
The exercises have been traditionally passed along one-on-one or in small groups by experienced practitioners. They have appeared as transcriptions of gifts to individuals in groups during public meetings and in Gurdjieff’s writings, often deeply buried within metaphor. They have sometimes been so tightly held that people in groups may not know that Gurdjieff gave a great many or that they might be decrypted from his writing. Still others, while described plainly by him, appear to be so complex that they are seldom discussed and perhaps infrequently practiced.
I do not propose to teach exercises but to give some principles by which one may view those with which one becomes familiar. This may prove to be beneficial and to help expose for consideration possible exercises in The Tales.
References: “Possible Foundations of Inner Exercises” by Anthony Blake, Books by Keith Buzzell, et al.
Biographical Notes
John Amaral was born in Long Beach, California, raised by Catholic nuns, and trained in Electrical Engineering and Music. He has studied Gurdjieff with students of Mr. Nyland, Mrs. Staveley and Mrs. Popoff, and began to attend the A&E Conferences in 2003. “Perhaps the most useful aspect of the Conference for me has been that it has helped me to develop a more inclusive perspective about ways of Working. It has also opened for me new vistas of interesting inspiring contacts.”
George Bennett
Being-Partkdolg-duty, Conscious Labor and Intentional Suffering
The paper will begin by outlining the interpretation of Being-Partkdolg-duty – Conscious Labor and Intentional Suffering – given by JG Bennett in a talk at Sherborne House in April 1974 (and printed in a poorly-edited version in his anthology, Talks on Beelzebub’s Tales). Bennett’s main thesis is that Gurdjieff intended that Conscious Labor and Intentional Suffering involves ‘serving the future’ and he says that the descriptions of meritorious beings in Beelzebub’s Tales show that their merit lies in the fact that they were serving the future. This paper will examine evidence for this thesis in Beelzebub, (and in the life of Gurdjieff himself) and discuss the implications for ourselves. If Being-Partkdolg-duty involves serving the future, what does that mean for our own Work?
George was born in February 1951 and was brought up at JG Bennett’s research community at Coombe Springs. After taking a master’s degree in history and American politics he attended the third Basic Course at Sherborne House. After several years working as an international truck driver he became first a journalist and then ran his own business as a publisher. George qualified as an elementary school teacher in 2001 and currently works as a 4th-6th grade teacher at the Village School, set up by the Miller’s River Educational Co-operative in central Massachusetts.
George has been involved in organizing work seminars in England for the past ten years and for several years worked with groups in Germany. In the 1980s he spent time with George and Mary Cornelius in Cave Junction, Oregon and at Mrs. Staveley’s community at Two Rivers Farm near Portland, Oregon. He is currently working with a number of former students of JG Bennett to organize a nine-month practical course based on the ideas and practices developed by Gurdjieff and Bennett, starting in September 2006.
Biographical Notes
George was born in February 1951 and was brought up at JG Bennett’s research community at Coombe Springs. After taking a master’s degree in history and American politics he attended the third Basic Course at Sherborne House. After several years working as an international truck driver he became first a journalist and then ran his own business as a publisher. George qualified as an elementary school teacher in 2001 and currently works as a 4th-6th grade teacher at the Village School, set up by the Miller’s River Educational Co-operative in central Massachusetts.
George has been involved in organizing work seminars in England for the past ten years and for several years worked with groups in Germany. In the 1980s he spent time with George and Mary Cornelius in Cave Junction, Oregon and at Mrs. Staveley’s community at Two Rivers Farm near Portland, Oregon. He is currently working with a number of former students of JG Bennett to organize a nine-month practical course based on the ideas and practices developed by Gurdjieff and Bennett, starting in September 2009.
Keith Buzzell
Do-Re-Mi Of Food, Air And Impressions
“I will some time later explain to you in detail how the transformation of the substances of the second and third being-foods proceeds in beings, but meanwhile note only that these higher cosmic substances in beings are transformed according to exactly the same principles as the substances of the first being-food.” B.T. p790
“Inner growth, the growth of the inner bodies of man, the astral, the mental, and so on, is a material process completely analogous to the growth of the physical body.” ISM p180
The complete analogy spoken of in the prior quotation will be explored, with emphasis placed on the parallels that can be identified between the respective notes of the octave. The DO-RE-MI of the food octave results in the ‘elementals’, the basic molecules which are transformed into the architectural and functionally active components of the body. We will explore the similar processes which take place in the DO-RE-MI of the air (Kesdjan) and Impressions (Higher-being body) octaves, with emphasis on the passage from the world of mass-based substances to the world of non-mass substances (Gurdjieff’s ‘hydrogens’ 48 – 24 –12 –6). The analogies will then be discussed in the context of specific work methods and practices, with particular references drawn from Beelzebub’s Tales and In Search.
Biographical Notes
Dr. Buzzell is a 1960 graduate of the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine. He is presently a member or the staff of Northern Cumberland Memorial Hospital in Bridgton and of clinical Medicine in Beddeford. Dr. Buzzell speaks from a broad perspective deriving from his life as a musician, musicologist, author, teacher, researcher, and physician. He is presently in Family practice in Fryeburg where he also serves as Medical Director of Hospice of Western Maine. He met Irmis Popoff (N.Y. Foundation) in 1971 and formed groups under her supervision into the 1980’s. Dr. Buzzell met Annie Lou Staveley, founder of the Two Rivers Farm in Oregon, in 1988 and maintained a Work relationship with her up to her death. He continues group Work in Bridgton, ME.
James George
What Does Great Nature Now Require Of Us?
In our outer lives, global warming is without doubt the most serious issue of the 21st century. Can we reread Beelzebub’s Tales today looking for clues to a deeper understanding of Gurdjieff’s call to awaken, so that “the sacred-conscience still surviving in (our) subconsciousness might gradually pass into the functioning of (our) ordinary consciousness”? Ashiata Shiemash showed that it is possible to change human behavior in this way. “Only he will be called and will become a son of God who acquires in himself Conscience.” Now more than ever, we need to hear him and to adapt our technologies to serve Nature, not profit only.
Already in the first chapter, “The Arousing of Thought,” Gurdjieff refers to human beings, including himself, as “biped destroyers of Nature’s good.” Only if I begin to live my life not automatically but consciously, he tells me, can I hope to experience “impulses of self-satisfaction and self-cognizance in correctly and honorably fulfilling my duty to Great Nature.”
Many examples are given throughout the book of our unconscious human behavior that is causing Nature to “huff and puff” in her attempts to redress the damage we are causing in our sleepy unawareness. Little do we realize that in making use of great quantities of electricity for our egoistic satisfactions we are destroying two of the three components of one of the most basic substances in the universe, “the Omnipresent Okidanokh,” which some elders in the Work have equated with Consciousness. It has become indispensable for Nature that humanity stops behaving in ways that now appear to be making Earth unfit for most species of animals, including ourselves. If we cannot awaken ourselves from our self-centered dreams, Nature will have to wake us up with shocks of increasing severity – hurricanes, earthquakes, plagues – or even by eliminating our species, if we fail to understand our duty toward Nature. The awakening of a critical number of human beings thus becomes a cosmic imperative, for, according to Beelzebub, our aberrant behavior is affecting the normal evolution of three-centered beings on other planets of our solar system and causing a “cosmic stink.”
My latest book, The Little Green Book of Awakening, will be published by Station Hill Press early in 2009. I would like to show at the Toronto A & E Conference that the ideas in this book owe much more to Beelzebub’s Tales than is apparent in my text, and that Gurdjieff’s teaching is well matched to the challenge we now face. Global warming requires that we change our energy technologies and our environmental legislation and much of our wasteful way of living. But above all it requires that we awaken, that we change ourselves consciously, and that we ourselves become, as Gandhi put it, the change we wish to see in the world.
Biographical Notes
Born in Toronto, September 14, 1918. Educated at Upper Canada College and Trinity College, University of Toronto, Rhodes Scholar for Ontario, 1940. Littauer Fellowship to Harvard University, 1940.
Royal Canadian Naval Volunteer Reserve, Ordinary Seaman to Lt. Commander, 1940-45. Married Caroline Parfitt, 1942-1996; children Daniel, Graham (who died in 2003) and Caroline Randolph (Dolphi). Four surviving grand children. Married Barbara Brady Wright in San Francisco on January 1, 2005.
Served as Canadian Deputy Permanent Representative at the United Nations, New York, and on the UN Disarmament Commission, 1951-55; as Deputy Permanent Representative at NATO in Paris, 1957-60; as High Commissioner to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) 1960-64; as Minister at the Canadian Embassy in Paris, 1966-7; as High Commissioner to India and Ambassador to Nepal, 1967-72; and as Ambassador to Iran and the Gulf States, 1972-77.
Credited by the Commonwealth Secretary General, Arnold Smith, with helping to contain the conflict between India and Pakistan in 1971, when East Pakistan became Bangladesh. While in India, he initiated the movement of about 500 Tibetan refugees to Canada, and, from Iran, a smaller number of Kurds.
Since retiring in 1977, he co-founded the Threshold Foundation, was President of the Sadat Peace Foundation (1984-2000), was one of the founders of the Group of 78 (in Ottawa) and the Rain Forest Action Network (San Francisco); served as Chairman of the Harmonic Arts Society at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York, 1984-92; chaired the Asian Non-Governmental Organizations Conference on Tropical Forests in New Delhi in 1987; member of the Advisory Council of Mr. Gorbachev’s State of the World Forum 1998-2002.
While Director of the Threshold Foundation in London (1978-82), he played a leading role in getting the International Whaling Commission to adopt a moratorium on high seas whaling and to ban all whaling in the Indian Ocean and the Antarctic. Since these measures were taken, several species of whales that had been on the road to extinction are now recovering. He was also a founding member of the Palme Commission which reported to the United Nations General Assembly in 1982 on Security and Disarmament.
In 1991, after the Gulf War, he led the International Friends of the Earth scientific mission to assess environmental damage from the Kuwait oil fires, and afterwards he testified before Senate Committees in Washington, D.C., as well as in Ottawa and Europe. This unique mission awakened international public opinion to the extent of the danger so that 24 teams from many countries finally took part in putting out the fires in six months, instead of the five years estimated by the original four American teams engaged. Thus incalculable harm to the earth’s atmosphere was averted.
With the American astrophysicist, Adam Trombly, in 1989 he demonstrated a zero point energy generator at the United Nations, New York, and to the Senate Energy Committee in Washington, and since then has been working with Trombly (Project Earth) to develop an alternative source of power to replace fossil fuels before they irreparably pollute the planet. He has served as a Director of a Canadian company developing wind power resources in British Columbia. He has also been helping a new and benign technology to make the desalinization of seawater significantly more affordable.
From 2002 to 2007, he was President of the No Weapons in Space Campaign (NOWIS), a coalition of Canadian peace groups that successfully opposed Canadian participation in U.S. Missile Defense and also encouraged the government of Canada to initiate an international conference, on the model of the Land Mines Convention Conference, to sign a Space Preservation Treaty banning all weapons in space.
In 2007-8, he was a member of an expert panel established by the Association of Space Explorers (astronauts and cosmonauts) to advise the United Nations on how to decide what should be done to deflect an asteroid on a collision course to hit the earth.
In May, 2007, he was given an honourary Doctorate of Sacred Letters by Trinity College, University of Toronto.
Author: Asking for the Earth: Waking Up to the Spiritual / Ecological Crisis, 1995 Element Books, and 2002 Station Hill Press.
Achaemenid Orientations (1975) documents the discovery (that he and his wife had made) that the design of the great Persian temple and palace of Persepolis was determined by the summer and winter solstice sunrise and sunset orientations.
Book reviews and articles in Parabola, Sufi and Resurgence.
Subject of a one hour documentary film for Canadian TV, narrated by Patrick Watson, called St. Demetrius Rides a Red Horse: James George leaves India, 1975; and of a short documentary (James George: In the Spirit of Diplomacy) shown on September 24, 2005, by CBCTV.
Dimitri Peretzi
Man is Third Force Blind
Gurdjieff’s well known statement is generally accepted to be an aphorism about the way man functions in his “normal condition”, in his usual state of consciousness.
With the intent to investigate the nature of this “blindness” and relate Gurdjieff’s observation to the practice of the Work, this presentation will link the Third Force with concepts given in the “Tales”, by focusing on the ideas of “Holy-Reconciling”, of “Omnipresent Okidanokh”, of the law of “Aieioioua” and of “Djartklom”.
Who is «man» in Gurdjieff’s statement?” Is “Third Force Blindness” everyone’s shortcoming, a natural limitation of man’s ability to perceive the world, or is it a consequence of the abnormal conditions of his everyday life?
What does a man miss by been “blind” in practical terms? Does the Work truly have anything to do with it? Can there be freedom from this blindness? And what does this freedom consist of?
Can a man develop to the point of “seeing the Third Force”? Do men number 4, 5, 6 gradually become, as a direct result of his efforts, more and more aware of the presence and the action of the Third Force?
These are some of the questions and the issues around which the presentation revolves.
Biographical Notes
Mr. Peretzi is the president of the Gurdjieff Foundation of Greece. With reference to his personal contacts with eminent students of Gurdjieff, Lord Pentland, Madame de Salzmann, Dr. Welch and others, he has authored a number of books and articles that study the problem of consciousness, relating views from the esoteric traditions to those of of the contemporary philosophy of mind. Mr. Peretzi did graduate work in Philosophy, at Yale, where he received his Master of Architecture. Having settled in Athens since 1974, he established his own Construction and Prefabication Company.
Piano Recital of Gurdjieff/de Hartmann Music(Friday evening)
Elan Sicroff
Biographical Notes
Elan Sicroff received his musical training at the Juilliard School with Jeaneane Dowis, at the Oberlin Conservatory with John Perry, and with the musician-critic Jeremy Siepmann in England.
In 1972 he met J.G. Bennett, a major exponent of Gurdjieff’s teaching, at the International Academy for Continuous Education in Sherborne, Gloucestershire, England. He participated as a student on a 10-month “Basic Course” dedicated to providing tools for inner work to last a lifetime; and then stayed on as staff in the capacity of Music Director for two more years.
Through Mr. Bennett, Elan was introduced to Olga de Hartmann, widow of the composer Thomas de Hartmann, who had composed a large body of sacred music from the East with Gurdjieff between 1915 and 1929. Mme. de Hartmann invited him to perform at McGill University in Montreal in 1975, and she guided his musical interpretation until her death in 1979. During this period she facilitated a number of Elan’s recitals of her husband’s music, both the sacred music written in collaboration with Gurdjieff, and that written in the modern idiom.
From 1977-83 Elan lived at Claymont Court in West Virginia, a Fourth Way community set up by J.G. Bennett shortly before his death in 1974. Here Elan taught music and continued to promote the musical work of de Hartmann and Gurdjieff. In 1982 he made a tour of the United States and the Dominican Republic.
Elan’s performances have included two recitals at Carnegie Recital Hall, numerous appearances at New York’s Open Center, London’s Wigmore Hall, the Longy School in Boston, and at many University campuses across the country.
In 1987 Elan released a record and CD of the Gurdjieff/de Hartmann music entitled Journey to Inaccessible Places, produced by Robert Fripp. In 1995 he recorded a second CD, Sicroff Plays Gurdjieff.
Dorothy Usiskin
Egoism
For a talk that will be ten minutes long and somewhat comical. We are speaking of egos that are too big. The idea of this small talk, to be included in the All and Everything Proceedings for posterity in the Library of Congress, is that it will be food for our esteemed Mullah Nassr Eddin.
Mr. Beelzebub tells us that from the time when the said egoism had become completely inocculated in our presences, this particular being-property became the fundamental contributory factor in the gradual crystallization of the being-impulses of cunning, envy, hate, hypocrisy contempt, haughtiness, servility, slyness, ambition, double-facedness and so on and so forth.(1) Thanks to our abnormal education, the consequences formed in us exist under the names of egoism, partiality, vanity, self-love, and so on, and as our wise Mullah Nassr Eddin has said, the degree of our importance depends only on the number of our corns.(2)
But what is this? Can it be really so??!! A new thought??!!(3)
Mr. Beelzebub also informs us that the sensation of cognizing the inevitability of our own death as well as the death of everyone upon whom our eyes or attention rests, can destroy this egoism completely crystallized in us and which has swallowed up the whole of our essence.(4)
Since we need an ego to succeed, we must begin a new life by using the capacities we have to satisfy our personal egoism in a useful way.(5) And no more hokeypokey about it.(6) No more superwiseacring so that all that remains is information about its specific smell.(7)
Biographical Notes
Dorothy Usiskin is a graduate of the University of Michigan. Though only in the Work for eleven years, she does have a 24/7 teacher, Sy Ginsburg.
Felicitous References:
1 From ST 379
2 From ST 1059
3 From LIR 22
4 From BT 1183
5 From MRM 303
6 From BT l34
7 From BT 240
John Robert Colombo
Biographical Notes
John Robert Colombo is known across the country as “the Master Gatherer” for his compilations of Canadiana. He is also known as “the Canadian Bartlett” for his influential “quote books” devoted to the lore and literature of the country. He has been called “Canada’s Mister Mystery” for books devoted to paranormal Canadiana, notably his tome titled “Mysterious Canada.” Finally, an American critic dubbed him “a Superfan” for his work in constituting the field of Canadian fantastic literature, with his ground-breaking anthology of SF&F called “Other Canadas.” His most recent collection of essays on Canadiana and metaphysical subjects is interestingly titled “Whistle While You Work.” Finally, he is known as a poet, and his latest collection is titled “A Far Cry.” It includes many poems descriptive of what we might call “the cosmic sense.” In all, John Robert has written, compiled or published some 200 separate books — all are listed on his two websites. He is the recipient of the Harbourfront Literary Award, an honourary doctorate from York University, and membership in the Order of Canada. He is currently a Fellow, Northrop Frye Centre, Victoria College, University of Toronto. For his special interest in the literature of Bulgaria, he has received the Order of Cyril & Methodius (first class). For his collections of humour, he is an Esteemed Knight of Mark Twain. His occasional reviews and commentaries appear on Sophia Wellbeloved’s Lighthouse Editions website.
Piano Recital of Gurdjieff/de Hartmann Music(Thursday evening)
Elsa Denzey
Biographical Notes
Throughout her 50 years as a Movement’s pianist, Elsa Denzey has maintained the exercises and methods of working taught to her under the guidance of Louise and William Welch, Alfred Etievan, and Annette Herter, chosen protégée of Thomas de Hartmann. She accompanied classes for Jessmin Howarth working intensively on the Obligatories, and with Paul Reynard solidified her knowledge. She has been directing music study groups ever since. The “study” is not for performance as we usually understand it, but rather for the cultivation of a sensitivity to, or an understanding of, what each piece of music is saying or describing. As she plays the piano, following each note with attention and sensation, the texture and sense of the music begin to appear. This approach creates both a uniqueness to her expression and understanding of this music and at the same time allows the meaning of the piece to be revealed, often in an unexpected way. This brings about an unusual dichotomy in the listener, a simultaneous sense of a quality of sound both familiar and yet unknown. Mrs. Denzey has made the study of Gurdjieff’s music a lifelong endeavor.