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Abstract
The Method
Idries Shah describes a Sufi method of understanding in his commentary on the Legend of Dh’ul Nun, the Egyptian he rendered as the Pointing Finger. Instead of trying to get where the finger (of the God) is pointing one waits to see where its shadow falls. The ‘shadow’ is how the story is reflected in the student’s understanding – that is where he has to dig. Shah implies that there is no absolute answer one can find. The pointing, or in this case, a book is to provide a stimulus and material for us to work with. I cannot report on what Gurdjieff means but I can discuss what is evoked in me. Another metaphor is given in the practical idea that to create a well one should dig where the earth is damp!
Magical Machines
It is a plausible idea that Gurdjieff’s weird and wonderful apparatuses are not magical machines which violate physical laws but operations in the psyche. Their very absurdity assures us of this. I am minded of Steiner’s descriptions of the ‘next world’ in which, for example, a short line is not the smallest but the largest distance between two points. In Gurdjieff’s classic ‘the Sun neither lights nor heats’ his aim may be to draw attention to the special meaning of atmosphere, a term that plays a significant role in his psycho-cosmology. This is an interpretation I prefer rather than resorting to treating the text as a cryptic crossword clue.
Short biographical note
Anthony Blake b. 1939 was a pupil of John Bennett and compiled and edited several books based on his lectures, as well as works of his own such as ‘The Intelligent Enneagram’ and ‘A Gymnasium of Beliefs in Higher Intelligence’. His academic background is in physics and the history of science. He was one time student of David Bohm and has practised Bohmian dialogue over many years. At present he is Director of Research for the DuVersity, a non-profit organisation exploring methods of communicating fourth way ideas.