THE 13 thINTERNATIONAL HUMANITIES CONFERENCE
ALL & EVERYTHING 2008, IN RETROSPECT
WEDNESDAY evening, March 12
through SUNDAY noon, March 16, 2008.
The 13th International Humanities Conference – All & Everything 2008 convened on March 12, 2008 in Bognor Regis, UK. The conference was attended by forty one delegates travelling from Canada, Belgium, Israel, Greece, Netherlands, Norway, Estonia, United Kingdom and United States.
From the Conference’s inception, it’s members have worked toward making this “gathering of the Companions of the Book” to become more and more just that – a gathering of people from all over the world who come together for the purpose of “fathoming the gist” of Gurdjieff’s writings, of sharing our insights and experiences, our questions, and our efforts to understand and grow into becoming remarkable men and women.
This conference was remarkable because it was the first conference in which none of the original founders were present. This represents a represents a critical step in the conference’s evolution – can it move into the future and still maintain it’s original status of remaining an independent forum for the discussion of Gurdjieff’s literary legacy.
Six papers were presented. Abstracts of the papers are located on the Abstracts 2008 page. Four Seminars were also conducted in which were discussed various issues and questions relating the the books and ideas of |Gurdjieff. Seminar included: Chapter 23 of Beelzebub’s Tales, Fourth Personal Sojourn of Beelzebub’s to the Planet Earth; Chapter 24 of Beelzebub’s Tales, Beelzebub’s Fifth Flight to the Planet Earth; Chapter 4 of Meetings with Remarkable Men, Father Evlissi; and a special Seminar on Being Partkdolg Duty.
The availability of the Proceedings Of All & Everything 2007 was announced. Also announced was the publication of revised editions of past Proceedings from 1996, 2000, 2004, 2005. These new editions are now available from Amazon.com .
At the final “Where do we go from here”session, the Conference delegates decided by consensus that there should be another Conference in 2009. Many suggestions were put forward as to where it could be located. Suggested locations included England, Norway, Iceland, USA and Canada. In order to fully evaluate the facilities and costs associated with several locations, it was decided to defer a decision until a detailed proposals could be submitted.