Summary & Study Guide Meetings with Remarkable Men by G. I. Gurdjieff
Contents:
This ultimately becomes a sham and is self-destructive. However, shams are a regular part of doing business the usual ways, as Gurdjieff has practiced in his businesses. Piotr Karpenko and Gurdjieff are rivals for a young girl's attention while they are still boys. They end up risking their lives over her in a live practice artillery bombardment.
Meetings with Remarkable Men - Chapter 1, Introduction Summary & Analysis
Afterwards they become fast friends and vow never to do such a foolish thing again. The lesson they learn is that oftentimes competition is silly and not worth the fight. Only friendship has value over the long haul. Karpenko dies from gunshot wounds while on an expedition with Gurdjieff, which shows how quickly life can be snuffed out. Professor Skridlov dedicates his life to seeking out ancient artifacts, whether or not the seeking brings any wisdom or truth. Upon meeting Gurdjieff and going on a particular expedition with him, the Professor discovers the deep meanings of life from a priest in a monastery.
Both Skridlov and Gurdjieff's lives change during this time, taking on the depths that bring tears to Skridlov's eyes every time he sees the magnificence of creation, such as on a mountain top. Where Gurdjieff had sought this revelation all his life, Skridlov stumbles upon it. Both ways lead to the same place.
At the end of the book, Gurdjieff explains how he makes money to keep the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man going. His students put this chapter together ten years after his death.
Meetings with Remarkable Men Summary & Study Guide
It reveals the details of how the Institute got started, how it expanded, and much of what Gurdjieff thinks regarding business, the modern world, and also the rude American who posed the initial question that sparked the long dissertation. Read more from the Study Guide. Browse all BookRags Study Guides. Get Meetings with Remarkable Men from Amazon. View the Study Pack. View the Lesson Plans. Chapter 2, My Father. Chapter 3, My First Tutor.
X or Captain Pogossian. Chapter 6, Abram Yelov. Chapter 7, Prince Yuri Lubovedsky. Chapter 8, Ekim Bey. Chapter 9, Piotr Karpenko. Chapter 10, Professor Skridlov. Chapter 11, The Material Question. This section contains words approx. View a FREE sample. More summaries and resources for teaching or studying Meetings with Remarkable Men. Meetings with Remarkable Men from BookRags. Now for the detailed part! Despite his birthplace and residence in Portland, Oregon, he has become a recognized authority on Persian tribal rugs and the origin of tribal rug motifs — both of which sound like demanding undertakings!
The latter title has been translated into French, Italian, and German. Staveley was a direct student of Gurdjieff in Paris during his last years and also an associate of Jean Heap in London. Briggs is credited with being of material help at a critical point in the production of this major motion picture through his extensive contacts in the fields of film-making and finance.
Briggs made his reputation in television production in the United Kingdom. He is credited as producer or director of over sixty-five television productions, largely episodes of popular mystery series. Briggs reminds me of Fletcher Markle, the distinguished Canadian television personality, who was once married to the actress Mercedes McCambridge. Unlike Briggs, Markle had no special interest in spiritual psychology.
Briggs had a background in the Work that took root in London in the s where and when he met Jane Heap. There are thirty-eight of these and they cover a range of interests. What is it, precisely, that does not happen automatically, but requires my intentional efforts? Doing depends on intentionality. Intentionality depends on sincerity. It depends on the presence of I. It seems Briggs with his industry contacts had a hand in ensuring the flow of funds from Lord Pentland, President of the Gurdjieff Foundation, to the production crew, no simple matter.
History has a habit of repeating itself. One night over dinner in the city of Mazar-i-Sharif, in northern Afghanistan, Opie raised the subject of miracles. Briggs described them in terms of the two rivers or streams. Highly unusual experiences which seem to be miracles may involve merely, if one dares use that word, a lawful and transitory merging of the two streams at a particular point or event.
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To the carrot the appearance of the gardener is miraculous; to the gardener the appearance of the carrot is mundane. Points of view and levels of being are relevant to miracles. This novel illustration brought to mind P. The discussions between Opie and Briggs reverberate with references to be found in the canon of the Work. Another caveat is based on the effectiveness of effort when based on full knowledge and complete understanding, and its ineffectiveness when based on faulty knowledge and limited understanding.
How misguided are those politicians and other public figures who wish to impress others with their certainty. These thoughts lead to a discussion of the differences noted by Madame de Salzmann between the servant and the slave. When we shirk our own burdens, we increase the loads that need to be carried by other people; when we shoulder our own, we lighten their burdens. Briggs states that we should not be overawed by the immensity of the known universe because it is matched by the unknown worlds within man. Within us are many potential levels, many possible hierarchies.
The universe is not altogether an outer arrangement. Briggs has a bent for vivid imagery. He then traced the subsequent history of this impulse and how, over the years, it would metamorphose into its opposite. But inside the buildings, decade by decade, the teaching descends to a level that is all-too-human.
In fact, each of the chapters is quite expressive of the modulated expression of genuine insights. Gurdjieff do not make a film based on this appealing title — Meetings with Remarkable Men — someone else will surely do so. We would then have to live with the consequences. Later the ideas begin to live in you, and you have real questions. Now, your interest is superficial. But in time, perhaps it grows. The subject of money is broached. Money is the blood of society.
Everything is touched by money, every relationship. No part of life is without this connection, and it brings reality to your life. When money is needed it is no longer just … idea. Madame gives it a spin: Seeing the pattern of your life helps very much. If you work with a talent, it develops. Later you can teach what you have learned to someone else who stands where you stand now. Then, perhaps, you will go on to something else. Here Briggs talked about the plan, subsequently abandoned, to cast some Work personalities as leading characters in the film.
Apparently Henri Tracol was to play Father Giovanni. We saw that what each of these people had was their own.
What they possessed, while genuine, was not what was needed. Also, none of these senior people in the Work could take directions! Madame de Salzmann met with the leaders of the various groups and the influx of new followers and attempted to create a single approach. Madame de Salzmann listened more than she spoke, and, like Mr.
Gurdjieff, became a still point in the center of activity. Her efforts with previously existing groups, with new centers, and with hundreds of individual members, helped clarify more advanced approaches to inner work. At the outset, an impartial view of our manifestations may elude us.
G. I. Gurdjieff (January 13, ? - October 29, ) explains that this book is a continuation of an earlier work, Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson, and also a. Meetings with Remarkable Men by G. I. Gurdjieff - Chapter 1, Introduction summary and analysis.
We have not yet learned to take the necessary step back to hear our own voices, to sense habitual bodily postures, or to experience repetitive emotional and mental patterns more immediately and viscerally. Others see much of this in us, but we do not. Yet, little by little, we begin to learn. Seeing without judging, with impartial interest, is a feature of consciousness and the stream of intentionality. But when there is real work to be done, this automatic part is silent. Will is called for, something intentional. A quite different part of the mind needs to appear.
It is to learn, little by little, to relate to it with greater awareness.
Some books may be described in a relatively straight-forward fashion. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Madame de Salzmann listened more than she spoke, and, like Mr. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Autobiographical in nature, Gurdjieff started working on the Russian manuscript in , revising it several times over the coming years.
For Jane Heap, it was never too late. We begin from precisely where we are. We come into awareness now, rather than waiting for a better moment, or the arising of more positive attitudes. Looking back at lost opportunities with regret rarely helps us. The moment to begin is now. He prefers or defers seemingly like an automaton, assuming one identity after another.
Readers will find the experiences that he describes appropriate to their own everyday lives. What to do about this situation? Peers-without-quotation-marks can keep a person honest. Gurdjieff could see into the dark corners of all of us because he saw into all the dark corners in himself. Here I felt the discussion was skating on thin ice, for Ouspensky had gone into much more detail, distinguishing, as he did, between the tramp and the lunatic. The former could not hold any single thought for any appreciable time while the latter could not entertain any thought but the one that currently obsessed him.
However, Briggs does quote Gurdjieff: Students of the work will find the next two chapters to be of special interest — the chapter on Jane Heap of biographical and bibliographic interest, the chapter on Jean de Salzmann relevant to ongoing discussions of the drift or the direction taken by the Work since the s. Gurdjieff did not instruct Madame to continue everything in fixed and dogmatic ways.
Her task was to sustain the clarity and expand the influence of the teaching, while helping relatively small numbers to experience a deepening inner engagement. Aside from exercises for beginning levels, such as you and I have discussed, Mr. Gurdjieff introduced approaches to silent work to a few people who had been with him for many years, and to others he considered prepared for this work. First among these was Madame de Salzmann.
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As Briggs expresses it, Asian teachings were making inroads in the West. She never resisted speaking with teachers of established traditions, even traveling to meet them in their own institutions and behaving externally not as a teacher, but as a student. But the course of her work had been set long before, by Mr. Quite enjoyable are occasional references to Mrs. Staveley and the chapter devoted to the scalawag Fritz Peters.
Briggs quoted Jane Heap on the latter personality: Willem Nyland is also discussed. As Briggs had little first-hand knowledge of Nyland, the point is not pursued. Later chapters refer to E. A chapter is devoted to the so-called Fellowship of Friends led by Robert Burton. The bookmarks handsomely produced; I own a couple list telephone numbers of local groups.
Briggs is surprisingly long-suffering and philosophical about these leaders and their groups: The discussion is brief but Briggs quotes a suggestive insight from his own teacher Jane Heap: There was also what might be called the changing nature of the Work, or at least the change in direction or emphasis initiated by the Paris centre. Briggs takes a long-range view of the effects of time and tide. Such changes or interchanges require greater efforts at cohesion. This can only be done by exchange — by sharing — by watching — by remembering — in true openness.
Relaxed and free and clear in our heads and hearts. What we do now we must do together and not alone. We are too weak to go it alone. Then there is the almost elegiac sense that for efforts to take effect people must work together.
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This is expressed most clearly in one of the last letter that Pentland addressed to Opie: The book is very readable, very agreeable. John Robert Colombo, a Toronto-based author and anthologist, is mainly known for his work in the field of Canadiana. But he has a long-standing interest in mysteries and the paranormal. He is an occasional reviewers of books about the Work for this blogsite.
He taught pupils the acquisition of will, use of symbolism, inter-relationship of macrocosmos to microcosmos and a manipulation of cosmic laws so as to form a set of new bodies of ever finer materiality and longevity. It shows the centrality of hypnotism to his teaching about consciousness and how hypnotic techniques function in his texts and oral teachings. Gurdjieff used the imagery of black and white magic and reflects the roles of both black and white magician, using alcohol, drugs and intense pressures to entangle pupils usually for short periods of time.
Lastly we will look at how the teaching has become institutionalised, necessitating omissions and redefinitions of both Gurdjieff and the Work. Gurdjieff is not an easy man to define, and we are not going to attempt to impose a fixed definition of him here. What we are going to look at is:.