Let it flow

Dive into the magical world of flow arts manipulate objects, create illusions and learn new tricks with the super versatile Eshna Kutty from New Delhi. While she will teach you how to seamlessly dance with hula hoops, Yacobeh from Bengaluru will teach you to effortlessly spin poi through geometric and rhythmic patterns. At Attakkalari Centre for Movement Arts, Wilson Garden, from 7pm to 10pm, on December 18 & 19, (fee) `700 for single class and up, instamojo.com

Draw like a pro

Dance to heal Named after a contemporary mystic, Gurdjieff is a sacred dance, whose beautiful and charismatic movements are believed to create a magical feeling inside you. This dance session seeks to bring attention to neglected and subtle facets of your lives at the most fundamental levels of existence, and will make use of movement, contemplation and conversation. At Shoonya - Centre for Art and Somatic Practices, Lal Bagh Main Road, from 6.30pm, on December 18, (entry) `2,000 onwards

Picture perfect

Are you looking for some artistic inspiration to get you through the week? Then browse through some great works of photography by Reuben Kataria and Porus Kharghat that are on display at the Bon Voyage show. It also features a selection of artworks from Shaun Heffernan and Vijit Pillai.

WHERE: Floor L1, JW Marriott Hotel, Vittal Mallya Road, Shanthala Nagar, Ashok Nagar WHEN: 11 am onwards, on view till December 31 CALL: 8067189999

Make music

Singing or listening to music. Who doesnt like that? So take a musical break at this meetup called Music Jam. Bring your cheerful selves along with a musical instrument, that is, if you play one, and join the gathering to jam, make music and learn new tricks. Listeners are welcome to join. At Lahe Lahe, HAL 2nd Stage, Indiranagar, from 7.30pm, on December 18, (entry) `177 onwards, bookmyshow.com

Sing a song Belt out your favourite tunes and channel your inner karaoke superstar this evening. Whether your go-to is a power house pop number, a Hindi ballad or rock and roll classic, KJ Jonas got you covered. So clear your throat and sing and dance at the Karaoke night with a bunch of buddies.

WHERE: Hard Rock Cafe, St Marks Road WHEN: 8pm onwards, December 18 CALL: 41242222

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Plan Ahead

70 and going strong United Nations Childrens Fund, or UNICEF as it is better known, is celebrating its 70th anniversary in India. On this occasion, Grammy Award winner and celebrity advocate Ricky Kej will perform at a concert this week. Among his many hits, he will also perform a song that he has composed to mark this moment. The lyrics of the song, titled Wake up! For Every Child, has been crowdsourced from more than 40 child advocates across the country.

Kej needs no introduction. He is a Grammy Award winner, UNESCO Global Ambassador for Kindness and a renowned environmentalist, who has performed at prestigious venues in over 35 countries.

His past repertoire of work includes 16 studio albums released internationally, over 3,500 commercials and four feature films, including the natural history documentary Wild Karnataka narrated by Sir David Attenborough. During his long musical career, Kej has associated and collaborated with artists such as Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Peter Gabriel, Philip Lawrence (Bruno Mars), Roger Waters, Amitabh Bachchcan, Shankar Mahadevan, Rick Allen (Def Leppard), Patti Austin, Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, etc.

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Learn to spin a hula hoop or jam with fellow musicians at these sessions in Bengaluru - Bangalore Mirror

Phil Ross talks to author Zelda Rhiando, and learns some local history as well as the difference between pavements in Japan and pavements in Brixton.

Ive just spent the morning researching my Aunt Dorrie, who appears to have been a serial killer.

Dublin born Zelda Rhiando, author and founder of Brixton BookJam sits relaxed but upright. Her smile radiates as the magnitude of what she has just said settles in my mind.

She murdered six husbands, Zelda continues, Three in Ireland and three in the USA.

She has been trying to find out about Dorrie (Dorothy), her grandmothers aunt. But there are no family records, they were all destroyed in the Post Office, along with everyone elses. Shes referring to the 1916 Easter Rising against British rule when much of Dublin was destroyed.

Were having coffee in Cafe Tana on Brixton Hill, and although Zelda is sitting perfectly still her eyes and her words bubble with excitement and information. Much of what Ive pieced together comes from stories from my grandmother Kitty, and Dorries letters to her sister, she explains. I was moved around a lot as a small child but I was mostly brought up by Kitty, she says. My interest in literature and philosophy comes from her. She was a great storyteller and a great unpublished writer.

We lived in a six storey Georgian house in Merrion Square, which was a Knightsbridge-type place, it probably still is. Shes describing one of Dublins grandest garden squares, where the distinguished residents have included Barons, politicians, and writers. Number 39 was the site of the British Embassy until it was burned down by a 20,000 strong, angry mob protesting the Bloody Sunday shootings in 1972, the year before Zelda was born.

We lived hand to mouth, and I was often sent out to sell marmalade or freshly laid eggs to rich neighbours, she says with a twinkle in her eye. We would buy past-it oranges from the market, and make the marmalade in a bucket. My grandmother taught me that there was always something I could do to get by.

Her hands cup the warm coffee mug as I sit transfixed. We had loads of weird and eclectic tenants: fashion designers, a plastic surgeon, a yacht salesman, she says. And Kitty ran the Dublin branch of The Gurdjieff Society. Like the tip of an iceberg, Zeldas statement indicates an underlying mass of knowledge. This time shes talking about George Gurdjieff, the Armenian Greek philosopher, composer and mystic.

He taught that everything must be questioned and Nothing is to be believed until verified by direct experience. So I was sent several times a year to a spiritual commune in Yorkshire, she says.

Zelda whose mother married Guilford based racing driver and designer Max Rhiando, also spent a great deal of time traveling as an unaccompanied minor from Dublin to London. Later winning a scholarship to a girls school in Baker Street and eventually a place at Clare College, Cambridge.

Whilst at school, a teacher who had links with an Ashram arranged for her to visit India to teach English. It was here, at Full Moon Parties, that she first heard the Goa Sound the music which would draw her to Brixton. I would come every weekend to Goa Trance parties at The Fridge and Club 414, she starts to reminisce. It was the early 90s and we partied hard, but it led me to return to India and travel when I finished Uni. Mostly supporting myself by hair wrapping.

Perhaps its these early experiences, combining self-sufficiency, travel, learning and questioning, that account for the fearless research she undertakes for her writing. Or does it go a little deeper?

Fact-finding for her 2012 debut novel, found her narrowly escaping death after accidentally swimming with piranha fish, while living with headhunters in the Amazon basin. The initial idea for Caposcripti came to me in a dream when my grandmother was visiting me at my flat by The Telegraph in Brixton Hill. She laughs, Mushrooms might have been involved, it was 97-ish. I was doing a lot of raving.

Zelda pivots to allow three ladies to squeeze into the adjacent table. I also spent a lot of time playing pool with ex-convicts, she confides. The Telegraph was the closest pub to Brixton Prison, and the first place many would head to when they got released. Im a pretty good pool player.

Starting off faxing and making coffee in Cyberia, Londons first Internet Cafe, Rhiando would observe customers when they came in with clients to pitch their digital ideas. Gradually, she picked up enough jargon to eventually Jump in at the deep end.

I got my first digital job basically because I could spell better than the creative director. It was an exciting time in digital media, everything was new and everyone was learning. And each night she would slowly work on her book, until at last the first draft was complete.

We decide to leave Cafe Tana and walk up the hill. The story was written but I just couldnt imagine the Amazon. I knew I had to go there, she tells me. I thought who can I approach? So I wrote to the Peruvian Embassy, and the Governor sent me a letter of introduction that I could show people.

Returning to London, Rhiando realized that she had not only avoided the various jungle and mountain perils, but that she had also missed the worst of the dotcom crash. Working as a digital freelancer not only gave her the time and space to rewrite and restructure the book but, after 27 rejections from publishers, she now had the tools and knowledge to self publish.

It seems slightly counter intuitive that after such an arduous and often dangerous journey to complete Caposcripti, that she would have a fear of The whole book launch thing, talking to people, signing and stuff.

But thats exactly why Rhiando decided to set up the first Brixton BookJam, as a means to introduce her debut novel. And its been going ever since, she says slightly incredulously. Weve had about four hundred writers come, give readings and sell their books. We even had a Radio 4 crew come down to do a feature.

Our walk has brought us to Windmill Gardens. And as we sit enjoying the late September sun, Zelda explains how it was winning the Kidwell E-Book Award for Caposcripti and its 10,000 prize, that funded the research trip for her next novel Fukushima Dreams (2017), and took her to Japan.

In March 2011, the Worlds fourth most powerful earthquake ever recorded moved the Earths axis by 10cm. It triggered a series of tsunami waves, that in places reached 40m in height and speeds of 700km/hr, killing approximately 19,000 people. Subsequent damage to three of the Fukushima Power Plant reactors resulted in the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.

There was so much re-construction going on, she recalls, So it was really hard to find accommodation. There was a big exclusion zone around the reactor. Her beaming smile fades to a more sombre expression. I remember walking the streets in Koji, a grim place with cold rain, that Id looked up in an internet cafe. Id arrived by train on a Japanese Rail Pass. I was hand-to-mouthing it and it didnt quite work.

Apart from the language barrier to cross, there was also the spontaneity barrier, as she calls it. Only a year after the disaster it was a very difficult topic for people to discuss, she says. There was lots of Thorntons Tea. And smiles to smooth things over. But Rhiando persevered and in Kagashima for example, she befriended a Japanese guy who made things easier. He had lived in New York and spoke some English. We made a connection playing pool. She laughs. All that pool playing in The Telegraph came in handy, the smile has returned to her face.

The little park has filled with parents and small children so we decide to continue our walk. Agents and publishers were very nervous about the topic, she tells me. But it seems that the meticulous research paid off when a famous Japanese novelist wrote to her after reading Fukushima Dreams. They said they couldnt comment in public. But they were astonished that Japanese literature had birthed a new child overseas and they loved it. Zelda is beaming again.

As we meander up Lyham Road, I wonder how many novelists go to such lengths. What do you think you gained by going to Japan? I ask. The smells, the tastes, she responds immediately. The colours of the pavements, what people say in the morning. The small subtle cultural differences. The pavements? Its my turn to laugh. Tell me about the pavements.

Japanese pavements have a thin yellow brick line for blind people, she replies. And braille outside on the door frames. These are the kind of details you dont notice unless you visit a place. Its a fair point I concede, so how would you describe a Brixton pavement? I ask.

Relishing the challenge, Zelda pauses for the slightest instance that it takes to draw a breath and replies Brixton pavements are streaked with dirt and littered with fragments of chicken bones. Reeking of weed and piss.

We stop walking and we both laugh. Weve come to the part of Lyham Road where the looming walls and windows of Brixton Prison dominate the immediate neighbourhood.

We have found ourselves standing by a blue, spray painted, circular piece of graffiti on the brown bricks of the prison wall. Designed to look like one of Londons famous English Heritage blue plaques, the graffiti is headed Irish Heritage and it reads: Terence MacSwiney, Lord Mayor & MP, Died on hunger strike in HMP Brixton after 74 days, 25-10-1920.

Oh, theyve put this here, she is surprised. I havent seen this plaque before, she says. He was a writer and a poet, a very sensitive man.

He helped form the Celtic Literary Society, she tells me. And the Cork Dramatic Society, where he put on his plays.

MacSwiney also helped form the Irish Volunteers, and was elected to the first Dil as a Sinn Fin representative for Cork. Shortly before his arrest in 1920, he was elected Lord Mayor.

His death in Brixton Prison shocked the World, particularly in India where both Nehru and Gandhi were influenced by his style of revolution, blending cultural and political with military resistance.

Zelda and I stand respectfully by the plaque for a moment, and I wonder if my silence betrays my embarrassment. I feel ashamed at my lack of Irish history. I find myself saying, Why have I never heard of such an important person?

But how could you, she states. Hes not part of the narrative. Terrence MacSwiney doesnt fit the British version of Irish history.

We walk on, tight-lipped for a while. So, on the subject of Ireland, I say, in a clumsy attempt to resume the conversation. What about Aunt Dorrie and Dublin. Youre writing the book, yes?

Ill definitely write the book, but further down the line. She grins. A fact-finding trip might be necessary. Probably to California, where she killed her last three husbands. It needs a lot more research. Public records, land registries and stuff. From her letters, I think she owned a saloon there.

Of course, I remember, Nothing is to be believed until verified by direct experience.

The next Brixton BookJam is on Monday 2nd December at 8pm At The Hootananny, Brixton, 95 Effra Road, London SW2 1DF The closest tube station is Brixton (Victoria line) Buses 2, 3, 415, 432, 196

Authors reading extracts from their work will be: Gail Thibert, Be Atwell, Martin Millar, Garth Cartwright, Kevin Cummins, Chris Roberts, Eamon Summers and Zelda Rhiando, with more to be announced

If youd like to read or propose a reader please email: info@brixtonbookjam.com

[Zelda portraits by Svenja Block] [Other photos by Phil Ross]

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From Brixton to Japan and back: Zelda Rhiando and the Brixton Bookjam - BrixtonBuzz

Gurdjieff Ensemble (Photo Andranik Sahakyan)

Man lives his life in sleep, and in sleep he dies.G.I. Gurdjieff

At first blush, it may seem like an odd pairing: Gurdjieff and Komitas. The father of modern Armenian music, Komitas Vartabed the itinerant priest who recorded thousands of Armenian ballads before the onslaught of the Catastrophe and G. I. Gurdjieffthe mystical guru of experimental notation, part fakir and yogi, Buddha and charlatan, the man with the famously thick moustache and shaved head, inventor of a supposed Fourth Way. The son of a Pontic Greek father and an Armenian mother, Gurdjieff was born in cosmopolitan Gyumri in 1866. His writings were esoteric like those of his contemporaries such as the anthroposophists Anna Blavatsky and Rudolf Steiner, and they drew their inspiration from Christian, Hindi and Muslim traditions from the proverbial East and West. And while his music was itself minimalist and mystical, his personality was outsized: he was a great teacher but also prone to fits of rage. A description of his living quarters that I remember reading about in my late teens made a great impression on me, like some garish mixture of an opium den and a Middle Eastern bordello lined with oriental carpets. I remember looking around sheepishly at my freshman dorm room and thinking how sparse they seemed in comparison, how dreadfully boring!

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The Yerevan-based Gurdjieff Ensemble was founded in 2008 by music director Levon Eskenian in order to play Thomas de Hartmanns ethnographically authentic arrangements of the composers wonderfully esoteric music. In addition to Eskenian, other ensemble members include Davit Avagyan, Armen Ayvazyan, Norayr Gapoyan, Eduard Harutyunyan, Emmanuel Hovhannisyan, Mesrop Khalatyan, Avag Margaryan, Aramayis Nikoghosyan, Vladimir Papikyan and Meri Vardanyan. The group has won consistent praise in the music press; their first album Music of Georges I. Gurdjieff on ECM Records was awarded the prestigious Edison Award in the Netherlands. In the September 27 concert A Night to Honor Komitas at New Yorks Symphony Space, the Gurdjieff musicians, accompanied by Lusine Grigoryans gorgeously plangent piano soloswill perform a few of his works including The Spinners, Trinity, and Asian Songs and rhythms, Numbers 11 and 40, as well as Narekatsis lovely tenth century Havik and Tagh, both transcribed by Komitas.

150 Years of Komitas

As the program title indicates, the bulk of the evening will honor the lilting and beautifully sonorous works of Komitas Vartabed. Many of these pieces can be found on the Gurdjieff Ensembles second album Komitas (also on ECM Records), which explores the ties that bind Armenian sacred and secular music. Born Soghomon Soghomonian in 1869, Komitas was also an ethnomusicologist, choral conductor and teacher. He miraculously survived deportation, but he suffered greatly from the horrors that he witnessed during the Armenian Genocide. He was interned for the last 15 years of his life in a mental hospital in Paris. The songs that he collected in his youth describe simple lives of work, love and family life in Western Armenia before the dreadful events. It is no exaggeration to say that much of Armenian music history would have disappeared into the conflagration of the Medz Yeghern had it not been for Komitas painstaking work of transcription and interpretation.

More than Just Kanonikal

The Gurdjieff Ensemble will perform a full program of Komitas classics, including the popular Kele, Kele and Antsrevn egav (The Rain Arrived). Several dances from the Shushi region are also included (Shushi Unabli and Shushi Marali) as are Karouna and the lovely Msho shoror from the Mush region. Like Komitas before him, Eskenian is especially committed to keeping the original character and sound of these compositions alive, so the Gurdjieff Ensemble renditions are in a very real way a voyage back through time: I would like to emphasize that the program we are playing besides being musically pleasant to the ear is also historically informative, Eskenian explains. Take Msho Shoror, for example, a series of pieces that used to be played at pilgrimages to St. Karapet Monastery, one of the main Armenian pilgrimage sites before the Genocidethis is something that every Armenian should have the chance to hear at least once in their lives. To achieve this unique sound, the Gurdjieff ensemble plays over 16 instruments: some like the duduk, the oud and the dohl will be familiar to listeners knowledgeable in Armenian and Middle Eastern music. Then there are others still, which carry such wonderfully resonant names as the tmbuk and the pku. The least that can be said when listening to these delicately-rendered compositions is that whatever these Armenian-trained musicians are doing, it works!

Have a listen to the Gurdjieff Ensembles heavenly duduks, delectable kanons and a sound that is as rich as it is heartfeltthen rush to Symphony Space to experience it live. Komitas and Gurdjieff: music to be honored, music to be savored.

Christopher Atamian is a noted writer and creative producer of ItalianArmenian background and the grandson of Armenian Genocide survivors. He is an alumnus of Harvard University, Columbia Business School and USC FIlm School, a former Fulbright Scholar. Apart from creative endeavors and professional activities as a senior executive in leading media companies and consultancies (ABC, Ogilvy & Mather, J.P. Morgan), Atamian has concentrated on community activism. He is the former President and a current board member of AGLA New York and in 2004 founded Nor Alik, a non-profit cultural organization responsible for producing the First Armenian International Film Festival. Atamian also co-produced the OBIE Award-winning play Trouble in Paradise in 2006, directed by Elyse Singer, as well as several music videos and short films. Atamian was selected for the 2009 Venice Biennale on the basis of his video Sarafians Desire and received a 2015 Ellis Island Medal of Honor. He continues to contribute critical pieces to leading publications such as The New York Times Book Review and The Huffington Post, Scenes Media and The Weekly Standard, while working on other creative endeavors in film and theater.

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The Mystic and the Priest: The Gurdjieff Ensemble Performs Komitas - Armenian Weekly

The French windows onto the balcony have been left open. But since it is August in Paris, in a quiet neighborhood, there are none of the usual, urgent noises of urban street life, and when I look out the window from where Im sitting, all I can see is sky.

You know, Mr. Brook says, since Ive been living here I have this uncanny feeling, although what I normally think of as Paris is just a 15-minute drive from here, that Im in another country.

In a way, another country is always where Mr. Brook has aspired to be.

The London-born son of Russian-Jewish scientists from Latvia (his father patented a popular medicine called Brooklax), the young Peter dreamed of becoming foreign correspondent, to have the joy of being sent all over the world, month after month, to dangerous struggle spots anywhere just to say this world is not the little world of middle-class London.

As a student at Oxford University, he also thought he might become a painter, a composer, a pianist and, most particularly, a filmmaker. (He did indeed go on to make movies that include Lord of the Flies and Meetings with Remarkable Men, adapted from a book by Gurdjieff.)

And all the while, he says, he was tasting a bit of everything on offer in culture, in sex, in drugs (though he was blessed, he says, with a natural resistance to addiction) and in religion.

He had been confirmed as a member of the Church of England when he was 16. But this at once led me to think why why is this better than Islam? So I read that, and I read Buddhism. And that led me to India. But all of this was, again: Taste, test, question, and never reach a conclusion.

His supreme affinity, always, was for storytelling, he says. And in the theater, he found its most congenial, and universal, application. At 21, he directed an effervescent production of Shakespeares Loves Labours Lost at Stratford; at 23, he was named the producing director of the Royal Opera House; both his interpretations of Shakespeare and of sleek comedies (The Little Hut), costume dramas (Ring Round the Moon) and even musicals made him the toast of the West End.

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For Peter Brook, the Experimental Showman, Nothing Is Ever Finished - The New York Times

Degrees of Attention

We go through our day in varying degrees of attention. Most of our daily tasks call for minimal attention, such as dressing ourselves, eating or interacting with friends and family. Some tasks require more attention; such as reading a book, drafting an email or attending a job interview.

We can perform the first group of actions while simultaneously performing others: dress ourselves while speaking on the phone, eat while chatting with our friends or interact socially while sending and receiving text messages. However, we cannot perform tasks that require attention alongside other tasks without harming our performance. We cannot read a book while speaking on the phone, draft an email while chatting with our friends, or attend a job interview while texting. We function in varying degrees of attention.

Our attention is subject to our will. If we desire, we can perform any task more attentively.We can bring attention to dressing, sensing the fabric of our clothes,matching the colors of our shirt to our slacks and shoes,etc. We can dine intentionally, tasting each bite, each sip, etc. But we neednt be professionals in any field to verify that we can bring more or less attention to the simplest actions, and this demonstrates that: Our attention is subject to our will.

Dressing inattentively is effortless; dressing intentionally requires effort. Eating inattentively is effortless; tasting the food requires effort. Directing attention through will requires effort.This explains whyGurdjieff called his methods of self-development The Work.

Directing attention is not the end of the Work; it is a means by which, we become conscious. Few teachings make the distinction between consciousness and attention, and this is where the Fourth Way differs from most other systems. The Workis not only about being attentive; it is about being conscious, and consciousness is self-awareness. George Gurdjieff called this self-remembering. Peter Ouspensky called it divided attention. More recently, it has become popularly known as being present.

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New to this Work? Start Here - George Gurdjieff | Be Community

The Gurdjieff Work

Why am I here? What is the meaning and purpose of my life? Is there more to life than the life I am leading? You may find yourself asking such questions in a moment of quiet reflection, when you feel that something is missing in your life.

The search for a life of meaning was a quest that Gurdjieff,from a very young age, fully embraced and which was to define and shape the rest of his life.

In this quest, Gurdjieff was to discover that mankind is living a kind of deluded half-life in which we take the false for what is real. He was to discover that there is a real life full of meaning, beckoning, but elusive because of the way we have been taught to think from our earliest age that due to no fault of our own we have been conditioned to believe in a lie.

Gurdjieff also maintains that we are not who we think we are and that what we call "I/myself," is not really the case:

These are radical and shocking ideas that seem to fly in the face of the evidence that one lives ones life in a responsible way, awake and able to make conscious decisions.

Gurdjieff strenuously refutes this belief and goes so far as to maintain that it is in this state of sleep that we make all our decisions, develop relationships, innovate and invent, develop works of art, carry on our business. He insists that everything happens as a result of accidental associations and that we have no real conscious awareness of our self and what is taking place in our lives.

This is a hard pill to swallow and seriously challenges our incredulity. And this very questioning is what Gurdjieff intended. Gurdjieff insists that we must not take his word for anything, that we do not accept any of his ideas on face value and that we verify for ourselves in practice whether there is any validity and truth in what he is proposing:

Gurdjieff implored that we need to get to know our self, who we are and what we have become and that in this endeavour it is crucial to develop our capacity to see to observe frequently, clearly, objectively because in doing so a picture will eventually emerge of our true situation. This picture will not be somebody elses idea of what we are, but what Gurdjieff refers to as the terror of our situation.

When we awaken to this new reality, then and only then can we open to a new question, a question that has the power to transform our being.

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Quest The Gurdjieff Society

What has been confusing to many people is that until Gurdjieff introduced the teaching in Russia in 1912 it was not known. Since chronologically all teachings and religions appear before The Fourth Way, it is easily supposed that it is last. This perception, however, is quite linear. Though The Fourth Way does appear last, it is actually first. All esoteric and religious history is thus stood on its head.

We see the world, as Gurdjieff said many times, "topsy-turvy." Original does not mean newly invented, as it is often taken to mean. An original teaching is "of the origin," meaning that the teaching existed first, from the beginning, before other teachings that may derive from it.

In other words, The Fourth Way predates not only Christianity but the Egyptian, Judaic, Persian, Buddhist and Islamic religions.

Gurdjieff tells us that the earliest indications of the teaching of The Fourth Way lie in prehistoric Egyptan Egypt that existed before recorded history, which dates from 3000 B.C. "It will seem strange to many people," Gurdjieff said, "when I say that this prehistoric Egypt was Christian many thousands of years before the birth of Christ."

He said that the principles and ideas constituting true Christianity were known many thousands of years before the birth of Christ. In discovering these, he had "the blueprint," so to say, of the original Christianity.

As he said, "The Christian church, the Christian form of worship, was not invented by the fathers of the church. It was all taken in a ready-made form from Egypt, only not from the Egypt we know but from one which we do not know. This Egypt was in the same place as the other but it existed much earlier."

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Gurdjieff's Teaching of The Fourth Way is The Original Teaching

GEORGE IVANOVICH GURDJIEFF

George Ivanovich (G.I.) Gurdjieff was a spiritual leader who advocated for achieving a higher state of consciousness through what he called "The Work" which was internal work on oneself. Born in Russia in the late 19th century to parents of Greek and Armenian origin, Gurdjieff taught in Russia, Georgia, Turkey, France, and eventually the United States.

Gurdjieff taught that the way to experience "The Work," was actual physical labor. He emphasized strenuous labor combined with lectures, music, and sacred dance. His focus was to increase mindfulness and minimize daydreaming. Gurdjieff's choreography, called "Movements," was one method he used to help followers clear and focus their minds. The Movements were not intended for performance, but for spiritual contemplation. Practitioners would repeat movements over and over again until they were perfect and second-nature, allowing them to use the Movements as a form of meditation.

His followers included composer Thomas de Hartmann and his wife Olga, who became Gurdjieff's secretary; Jeanne de Salzmann (who founded the Gurdjieff Foundation in 1949); Alfred Orage (who would eventually supervise The Work in New York); P.D. Ouspensky (one of Gurdjieff's earliest followers) and many others. Among his early pupils was Jessmin Howarth, who became an expert on Gurdjieff's Movements and how they should be performed. Other Movement students included Alfred Etievan and Marthe de Gainernon.

JESSMIN HOWARTH

Jessmin Howarth began her career as a dancer in 1912 when she registered at the Institute of Dalcroze Eurythmics in Germany, which eventually led to a job with the Paris Opera in the early 1920s. In Paris, Howarth encountered Jeanne de Salzmann, who introduced her to Gurdjieff. She immediately began studying the Movements and assumed the task of teaching and preserving the Movements as they were created.

On a Movement Demonstration trip to New York in 1924, Howarth discovered she was pregnant with Gurdjieff's child. After giving birth to her daughter Dushka Howarth later that year, she moved to California and then London, returning to the United States at the start of World War II.

After Gurdjieff's death in 1949, Howarth set about compiling accurate Movement notations and recordings and supervised the training of Movement instructors, assistants, and pianists. She travelled to France to assist Jeanne de Salzmann with filming Movements for posterity. She was also a consultant on the 1979 film Meetings with Remarkable Men. She retired from teaching Movements at the Gurdjieff Foundation in 1978, but continued to lead Movement Seminars until her death in 1984.

DUSHKA HOWARTH

Dushka Howarth was raised in the United States and London by her mother and had little contact with Gurdjieff as a child, though she learned of his teachings and the Movements. In 1949, she traveled to Paris with five other young women to train with Gurdjieff in the Movements, and went on to lead Movement classes in London. Howarth also worked as a tour guide in Paris, followed by a career as a folk singer under the name "Dushka, the Jet-Set Gypsy."

In 1986, Jeanne de Salzmann's daughter Nathalie de Etievan (wife of Alfred Etievan) asked Howarth to return to teaching Movements and join her in South America to help supervise and establish Movement classes. Howarth went on to visit South America many times over the next ten years and conducted Movement seminars, trained teachers, and recruited new pupils.

GURDJIEFF HERITAGE SOCIETY

Dushka Howarth was a founding member of the Gurdjieff Heritage Society, which sought to preserve the Movements and Gurdjieff's teachings in their original form. To do this, members gathered original notes, photographs, music, and descriptions of Movements from around the world in order to compile definitive instructions for as many Movements as possible. The Society also lent resources and support to others undertaking Gurdjieff preservation projects, such as Gert-Jan Blom's preservation of Gurdjieff's harmonium recordings. As the artistic director of Netherland's Metropole Orchestra, Blom was also able to produce full orchestra recordings of Gurdjieff's music with assistance from the Society.

In 2009, the Gurdjieff Heritage Society published Dushka Howarth's book It's Up To Ourselves: A Mother, A Daughter, G.I. Gurdjieff, A Shared Memoir and Family Photo Album. Howarth researched the material for the book over a ten-year period and used her mother's essays, correspondence, photographs, and the accounts of others to piece together the story of Jessmin Howarth's life and her own experiences with Gurdjieff and his pupils. Dushka Howarth continued to work with the Gurdjieff Heritage Society until her death in 2010.

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archives.nypl.org -- Howarth Gurdjieff Archive

LOVE & COMPASSION FOR OTHERS The work of Gurdjieff is a bridge between a mans present state and a state in which he can remember and love. (Louise March)

Many of us have come to question the meaning of life in the face of the suffering, stress and uncertainty of todays world. Some may belooking for a path that will lead to happiness...to health...to a true expression of compassion towards others...to a clarity as to how one might meaningfully serve...

The teaching of Georges Ivanovich Gurdjieff, drawing on a body of knowledge that can be found in varied expression in all the great religious traditions, introduces an all-encompassing cosmology and psychology that may very well offer help to those trying to find their place in the overall scheme of things. Underlying Gurdjieff's writings, music and sacred dances (aka the Movements) is a practical approach through which we may discover the means to playing an active role in our own lives as well as in service to the lives of those around us

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Gurdjieff Foundation of Louisiana home

Gurdjieff said, You are nothing but the body, and when the body dies you will die. Only once in a while does a person survive one who has created soul in his life survives death not all. A Buddha survives; a Jesus survives, but not you! You will simply die, not even a trace will be left.

What was Gurdjieff trying to do? He was shocking you to the very roots; he was trying to take away all your consolations and foolish theories which go on helping you to postpone work upon yourself. Now, to tell people, You dont have any souls, you are just vegetables, just a cabbage or maybe a cauliflower a cauliflower is a cabbage with a college education but nothing more than that. He was really a master par excellence. He was taking the very earth away from underneath your feet. He was giving you such a shock that you had to think over the whole situation: are you going to remain a cabbage? He was creating a situation around you in which you would have to seek and search for the soul, because who wants to die?

And the idea that the soul is immortal has helped people to console themselves that they are not going to die, that death is just an appearance, just a long sleep, a restful sleep, and you will be born again. Gurdjieff says, All nonsense. This is all nonsense! Dead, you are dead forever unless you have created the soul.

Now see the difference: you have been told you are already a soul, and Gurdjieff changes it totally. He says, You are not already a soul, but only an opportunity. You can use it, you can miss it.

And I would like to tell you that Gurdjieff was just using a device. It is not true. Everybody is born with a soul. But what to do with people who have been using truths as consolations? A great master sometimes has to lie and only a great master has the right to lie just to pull you out of your sleep.

Osho,The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol. 2, Talk #2To continue reading,click here

Gurdjieff has been much criticized because he was a liar and the lying came from the Sufis; he was a Sufi. He was disciplined in Sufi monasteries and schools. And in the West, in fact, he introduced Sufism in this age in a totally new version. But then it was impossible for the ordinary Christian mind to understand him because truth is a value, and nobody can think that a master, an enlightened master, can lie.

Can you think of Jesus lying? And I know he lied but Christians cannot think about it: Jesus lying? No, he is the truest man. But then you dont know the question of knowledge is very, very dangerous. He lied about many things a master has to, if he wants to help. Otherwise, he can be a saint, but no help is possible from him. And without helping, a saint is already dead. If a saint cannot help, what is the use of his being here? There is no point in it. All that he can attain through life, he has attained. He is here to help.

Gurdjieff was very much criticized because the West couldnt understand, the ordinary Christian mind could not understand. So there are two versions about Gurdjieff in the West. One thinks that he was a very mischievous man not a sage at all, just a devil incarnate. Another is that he was the greatest saint the West has come to know in these past few centuries. Both are true, because he was just in the middle. He was a po personality. You cannot say yes, you cannot say no about him. You can say that he was a holy sinner, or a sinning saint. But you cannot divide, you cannot be so simple about him. The knowledge that he had was very complex.

Osho,Journey to the Heart, Talk #7To continue reading,click here

Gurdjieff says: Go on remembering the observer self-remembering. Buddha says: Forget the observer just watch the observed. If you have to choose between Buddha and Gurdjieff, I suggest choosing Buddha. There is a danger with Gurdjieff that you may become too self-conscious rather than becoming self-aware, you may become self-conscious, you may become an egoist. I have felt that in many Gurdjieff disciples, they have become very, very great egoists. Not that Gurdjieff was an egoist he was one of the rarest enlightened men of this age; but the method has a danger in it, it is very difficult to make a distinction between self-consciousness and self-remembering. It is so subtle it is almost impossible to make the distinction; for the ignorant masses it is almost always self-consciousness that will take possession of them; it will not be self-remembering.

The very word self is dangerous you become more and more settled in the idea of the self. And the idea of the self isolates you from existence.

Buddha says forget the self, because there is no self; the self is just in the grammar, in the language it is not anything existential. You just observe the content. By observing the content, the content starts disappearing. Once the content disappears, watch your anger and watching it, you will see it is disappearing once the anger has disappeared there is silence. There is no self, no observer, and nothing to be observed; there is silence. This silence is brought by Vipassana, Buddhas method of awareness.

Osho,This Very Body the Buddha, Talk #4To continue reading,click here

One old woman became very much impressed by Ouspensky, and then she went to see Gurdjieff. Within just a week she was back, and she told Ouspensky, I can feel that Gurdjieff is great, but I am not certain whether he is good or bad, whether he is evil, devilish, or a saint. I am not certain about that. He is great that much is certain. But he may be a great devil, or a great saint that is not certain. And Gurdjieff behaved in such a way that he would create this impression.

Alan Watts has written about Gurdjieff and has called him a rascal saint because sometimes he would behave like a rascal, but it was all acting and was done knowingly to avoid all those who would take unnecessary time and energy. It was done to send back those who could only work when they were certain. Only those would be allowed who could work even when they were not certain about the master, but who were certain about themselves.

And to surrender to a Gurdjieff will transform you more than surrendering to Ramana Maharshi, because Ramana Maharshi is so saintly, so simple, that surrender doesnt mean anything. You cannot do otherwise. He is so open just like a small child so pure, that surrender will happen. But that surrender is happening because of Ramana Maharshi, not because of you. It is nothing as far as you are concerned. If surrender happens with Gurdjieff, then it has happened because of you, because Gurdjieff is in no way going to support it. Rather, he will create all types of hindrances. If still you surrender, that transforms you. So there is no need to be absolutely sure about him and that is impossible but you have to be sure about yourself.

Osho,Vedanta: Seven Steps to Samadhi, Talk #5To continue reading,click here

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George Gurdjieff | OSHO Transform Yourself through the ...