Book Reviews

Gurdjieff: Mysticism, Contemplation, and Exercises

JOSEPH AZIZE
New York: Oxford University Press, 2020. 326 pp., hardcover, $99.

Years ago, I wrote a letter to Colin Wilson, the prolific writer on the paranormal, to thank him for his book The Occult, purely because of the book’s section on G.I. Gurdjieff (1866?–1949). It offered a reasonably good general description of Gurdjieff’s teachings. I recognized notions that were part of my own viewpoint on life: that we are asleep when we think we are awake; that we are mostly mechanistic in our responses, having very little objective control over what we do; that we are so deeply identified with our series of trances that we’ve lost the fundamental meaning underpinning existence.

 Inspired, I searched for Gurdjieff, found his chief exponents, and learned a great deal more, which was of enormous benefit to me. I did take issue with one observation of Wilson’s—he claimed that Gurdjieff had failed to pass his teaching along, in any powerful way, to his pupils. The fallacy, oft repeated, is that Gurdjieff had no methodology to work with, only shocking ideas.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. Great exponents of the Gurdjieff Work, like Lord John Pentland, Michel Conge, Michel de Salzmann, Paul Reynard, William Segal, the late Jean-Claude Lubtchansky, and especially Jeanne de Salzmann, all attained to profound consciousness through the Gurdjieff Work. Many of their students grew into fine teachers of this merging of Eastern and Western esoteric teachings.

As for methodology, it is the core of Gurdjieff’s teaching. Gurdjieff did not say that we’re in the awful state of waking sleep hopelessly. He said that there is a way out: there is a praxis leading to real consciousness, inner freedom, higher being. Only it is hard and unsettling work.

Until recently, the methods were nearly all passed along orally, in person, by teachers of a Gurdjieff group. (Hence Wilson didn’t hear of them.) Speaking of them out of school was discouraged. This is a time-honored means to keep an esoteric school relatively pure. Certain methods were indicated in Gurdjieff’s unfinished work Life Is Real, Only Then, When I Am; certain others, such as the practice of intentional suffering (not as scary as it sounds), can be found in his gigantic allegory, All and Everything: Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson. Books by his followers, like Maurice Nicoll’s Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, provided samplings of his methods. The movie Meetings with Remarkable Men has a good presentation of the Gurdjieff Movements, a form of sacred dance with its own special music (based on traditional temple music and Middle Eastern folk music). The Movements offer a potent means of inner transformation through a challenging terpsichorean discipline.

 But in recent years two books have emerged to offer us in-depth entrée into some of the most esoteric methods Gurdjieff taught. The first of those books is The Reality of Being by Jeanne de Salzmann, which startled and dismayed certain hidebound Gurdjieffians with its crystalline exposition of Gurdjieff’s methods. The second has more recently come upon us, and it may be equally controversial: Joseph Azize’s thoughtful exegesis, Gurdjieff: Mysticism, Contemplation, and Exercises.

Azize’s volume is constructed in three segments: “Part I: Introductory”; “Part II: Gurdjieff’s Contemplative Exercises”; and “Part III: Exercises from Gurdjieff’s Pupils.”

The introductory section includes a sound biographical sketch of what is known of Gurdjieff’s life and the development of his institute in Fontainebleau, France, followed by a condensed but relatively inclusive summary of his cosmological, anthropological, and psychological ideas.

Part II delves into Gurdjieff’s contemplative exercises, involving subtle but deep inner work with attention and an array of energy forms. It also provides a good sense of the legendary Stop Exercise. Azize culls a sharp description from a 1924 transcription:

The pupil must at the word “Stop” . . . arrest all movement. The command can be given at anytime or anywhere. Whatever he may be doing, whether at work, repose, at meals, on the Institute premises or outside, he must instantly stop. The tension of his muscles must be maintained, his facial expression, his smile, his gaze, must remain fixed and in the same state as they were . . . The Institute’s method of preparation for the harmonious development of man, is to free him from automatism . . . The physical body being maintained in an unaccustomed position, the subtler bodies of emotion and thought can stretch into another shape.

Azize quotes Gurdjieff’s student Kenneth Walker on one of the fundamentals of Work exercises:

An exercise for sensing various parts of the body . . . a method by which I should become more aware of the energy I was originally throwing away. He suggested that I should draw an imaginary circle around myself, beyond which my attention and my energies should never be allowed to stray, so long as I was engaged in doing this exercise.

One of the keystones of Gurdjieff’s praxis is the harmonizing of the inner self through attention intentionally directed to the “three centers”—essentially, the mind, the feeling center (emotions), and the machinery of the body; these are all contemplated and objectively studied, and then united in a sphere of alert, benign attention. Azize’s book spells out various exercises to accomplish this. The aim is to activate all three centers at once so that they occupy our minds fully (mindfully) and use their distinct energy forms intelligently and with ever more refined vibrational attunement.

Gurdjieff taught that the soul can be developed into something lasting, something more independent and attuned with the Absolute, partly by means of “coating” it, little by little, through conscious breathing, drawing in a special food that is in air itself, which combines with the “food of impressions.” The food of impressions is harvested by means of his powerful method of self-observation. Exercises of this kind are found in several parts of Azize’s book.

Joseph Azize is a priest of the Maronite Catholic Church, so it’s no surprise that he relates much of Gurdjieff’s contemplative exercises to Christian esoteric practices. Gurdjieff did refer to his teaching once as “esoteric Christianity” and gave practices that he said were from the Orthodox monastic center at Mount Athos, Greece. Azize points out that Gurdjieff used mantras resembling the Orthodox Jesus Prayer, but with words relating to the Fourth Way, especially the “I Am” exercise, in which the phrase “I Am” is repeated and in a sense projected into the body and emotional center, along with other phrases which provide a particular nourishing resonance.

Part III contains some surprises: the strikingly esoteric Four Ideals exercise, for example, and the Color Spectrum exercise, which combines inner sensation with color visualization.

 George Adie, a teacher of the Fourth Way, apparently learned the Clear Impressions exercise from Gurdjieff. Azize offers it in detail, painstakingly describing a practice of dividing the attention and turning it to both the inner and the outer world in multiple levels of conscious presence.

Azize does a good job of showing us how Gurdjieff—who was always experimenting with new ways to convey what he’d discovered for himself—tried various techniques of exposition, his teaching evolving over the decades as he gradually revealed more and more.

Work with attention—which requires a firming up of will—is the consistent thread through these exercises. Directing attention within oneself is basal to esoteric work in many traditions, and it’s essential in the Gurdjieff Work. Reading Azize’s valuable, crisply written compilation, we soon realize that ordinary mindfulness efforts, while useful, are like a child’s wading pool. To really swim, you need to get into the deep end.

John Shirley

 John Shirley is the author of Gurdjieff: An Introduction to His Life and Ideas, and many novels including The Other End, Demons, and Stormland.

         

         

         

         

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The Yoga of Jesus: Teachings of Esoteric Christianity

MAURI LEHTOVIRTA, translated by Antti Savinainen; edited by Richard Smoley

PDF. Available for free download at https://teosofia.net/e-kirjat/TheYogaOfJesus.pdf. An audio version, recorded by Richard Smoley, is available for free download at: https://www.teosofia.net/audio/The_Yoga_of_Jesus/.

This inspiring volume is a reminder of the cultural and linguistic reach of Theosophy, to which English-speaking readers can sometimes be blind. Finnish author Lehtovirta draws heavily on Finnish Theosophist and Rosicrucian Pekka Ervast (1875–1934) as well as other Finnish writers and cultural references. I was delighted to be introduced to a side of the Theosophical family that I did not know and will certainly explore further. Lehtovirta helpfully includes a guide to writings from Ervast that are available in English translation (including The Divine Seed, published by Quest Books in 2010).  

Lehtovirta takes “yoga” in a broad sense, referring to practices that lead to spiritual integration and union. He carefully explores the teachings of Jesus from a practical yet esoteric standpoint. What would it mean for us to strive to understand and take up what was given to humanity through Jesus? Most of the book focuses on the Sermon on the Mount and the Lord’s Prayer as the core of the guidance on self-giving love from the Gospels. How do we enact these teachings, and what happens when we do?

In his preface, Lehtovirta says that Ervast “probably was the first one in the world to talk about the changes that take place in those who follow Jesus’s five commandments in their lives.” In this, he points to one of the most illuminating threads running through the text. Drawing on Ervast as well as his own insights, Lehtovirta shows how taking up the ethical path of Jesus opens higher spiritual potentials in the human being. For example, one who keeps one’s thoughts pure (such as following Jesus’ directive to avoid not only adultery but looking upon another with lust) will gradually come “to see others’ emotions—to see their energy bodies, that is, their auras.” When we are committed to speaking the truth, no matter what, we develop the ability to accurately perceive the talents, inclinations, and characteristics of other people. Furthermore, “extending love and doing good acts have profound psychic influences and consequences, allowing us to see God, the Heavenly Father.”

Much more detail on the developmental potentials in the path of Jesus can be found throughout the book. If Lehtovirta and Ervast are to be taken seriously, undertaking this yoga, this ethical life, following in the footsteps of Jesus, is the most powerful fuel for psychic and spiritual development. If one wants a balanced unfolding of the true nature of the human being and our greater capacities, there is no better way than through a life of self-giving love extended to all—or at least taking that as far as one can at the moment. Years ago, I recall Theosophical speaker Ed Abdill saying that if one cannot yet take on the loving of all people, one can always start with an animal or even a plant. We begin where we are, with what we can do, and the doing of what is possible allows for the unfolding of further capacity.

Lehtovirta takes Finnish Lutheranism to task for emphasizing grace and faith in a way that set aside the development of the moral life in the yoga of Jesus. One might have some sympathies for this point of view when one recalls that we all find ourselves in the place of St. Paul: “What I would, that I do not; but what I hate, that I do” (Romans 7:15). How do we navigate when we find our will seemingly bound and unable to do the good we know? How do we keep the yoga of Jesus from becoming a long and burdensome list of ethical imperatives rather than an invitation to loving freedom? Perhaps the key is Lehtovirta’s reminder that God always remains “in the depths of our hearts as a divine spark, a monad, an invisible sound of silence.” No matter where we are on the path, we are never separated from God, as we are held in existence at every moment by divine love. Knowing God’s ever present love, “we also understand that grace and mercy are essential features of karma.” When we fail in our strivings, even when there are karmic consequences to work out, we are always, first of all, met by mercy.

With gentleness and great clarity, Lehtovirta invites us into a path of transformation and service, following in the way opened to us in Jesus. Like the Master, he says to those drawn to this way, “Come and see.”

John Plummer

John Plummer is a member of the Theosophical Society. He lives in Nashville, Tennessee.

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Magic: A History: From Alchemy to Witchcraft from the Ice Age to the Present

CHRIS GOSDEN
New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2020. 512 pp., paper, $20.

Magic has a history. It encompasses all cultures and climates and was developing long before the emergence of anatomically modern humans some 200,000 years ago. It is a history with no beginning and no end in sight. Evidently, to be human means somehow to believe in or practice magic, or both.

In this ambitious work, one of the world’s leading archaeologists tells one of the most varied and fascinating stories imaginable. According to Gosden, magic is not a survival from the discredited past or a sideshow in what some would call an age of progress. It is a window into the mystery of human experience in all times and places—from paleolithic to postmodern, from south to north.

Gosden is well known among scholars of prehistory, including the handful who can read hieroglyphics. An Oxford professor long associated with Britain’s Pitt Rivers Museum, he has worked at some of the world’s most important archaeological sites and invested a career into the pre-Roman history of the British people. His research is especially notable for its attention to the tragic effects of modern colonization on ancient cultures. Though committed to the rigor of his discipline, Gosden comes across in his publications as a real person, with genuine respect for persons of past eras. He knows the classic literature of E.B. Tyler, E.E. Evans-Pritchard, and James Frazer, but patronizing armchair theory is part of the past he is willing to discard.

Still, there is hubris behind the humility, or at least remarkable confidence. No one writes a 40,000-year survey without some acquaintance with audacity. Throughout the text, Gosden takes on one of the most contested questions in cultural studies: the meaning and relevance of magic. In harmony with G.K. Chesterton’s notion of the democracy of the dead, he maintains that the majority of people who have lived on earth have professed and performed some form of magic. The evidence for this claim, he says, is stretched across six continents and buried beneath the modern world’s secular cities. Some of the evidence is on the bookcases and domestic altars of the residents of those cities. Gosden traces the long arc of magic’s storied past, but he also speaks in present and future tense. What is most important about his account is the recognition of magic’s normality. Magic is as human as cooking food, making love, counting days, and caring for the deceased. It may even be the source of some of those phenomena. 

The defining characteristics of magic, according to Gosden, are kinship and participation—feelings of connection with a universe that feels back and the exercise of agency in processes that foster alignment with (and alteration of) an interactive cosmos. He contrasts magic with other strands of a “triple helix” woven into the fabric of history. Religion orients life toward deities and sparks hierarchy and institution building. Science detaches people from nature and divorces morality from knowledge. Magic highlights the power within human personality, while eliminating any sense of human privilege. Contending with the paradigm that dismisses magic and religion as failed attempts to do what only science can do, Gosden acknowledges that all three elements are in a state of constant flux, with only blurry boundaries between them. He sees twenty-first-century science, liberated from Victorian pretense, as amenable to a new chapter in magic’s evolution.

Gosden’s marshalling of support for his argument is wizardry itself. Proceeding at a rate of a century a page, his ten-chapter narrative moves seamlessly from ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt to east Asia, the Eurasian steppe, prehistoric Europe, Africa, Australia, and the Americas—from the end of the Ice Age to today. The book’s generous images paint a panorama of one generation after another, “curating,” as he puts it, a direct relationship with a living universe: scarab rings from Egypt’s Twelfth Dynasty, plastered skulls from Jericho, monoliths in the middle of Asia’s vast prairie, onions stuck up the chimney of an English pub, mouse oracle bowls from Côte d’Ivoire, and the first known written use of “abracadabra.”  

When Gosden was face-to-face with a much older illustrated history of magic, on rock walls far below the surface of the French countryside, he said he felt a “shiver.” This is the reaction triggered by his stunning chronicle. Other histories penetrate deeper into lineages and treasures of forgotten libraries. Gosden’s is the saga of anonymous magic enacted by people who invented things like agriculture, architecture, gods, and beer. Thanks to his craft, we touch the “fine textures of past lives”—lives whose audacious genius may offer everyday wisdom for the newest age of global warming.

Peter A. Huff

Peter A. Huff, an academic administrator and professor of religious studies, is the author or editor of seven books, including the forthcoming Atheism and Agnosticism.

                                     

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The Spiritual Roots of the Tarot: The Cathar Code Hidden in the Cards

RUSSELL A. STURGESS
Rochester, Vt.: Inner Traditions, 2020. 368 pp., paper, $24.95.

“I have never given a tarot reading” is an unusual way to begin a study of the Tarot, but this is an unusual book. It is not one where you will learn about divination and how to do card readings. Instead it reveals a personal journey taken with the traditional Marseille Tarot, embedded in a complex study of its philosophy and history, with guidance on using the sequence of cards as a spiritual journey.

After a Christian upbringing, the author avoided all contact with Tarot until he tentatively began to study its imagery in the context of C.G. Jung’s symbolism. Then, in 1995, while shopping for Christmas presents for his children, he happened upon a set of traditional Marseille Tarot cards in a game store. “Unexpectedly,” he writes, “I felt a strong impression to buy them.” He tried to fight the urge as a transgression of his religious beliefs, but could not resist the purchase. From there, his interest escalated, culminating in his spending nearly a year in the Latina region of Italy, a country strongly associated with the origins of the Tarot. Here he experienced an awakening of the heart and “heard an inner voice that was more like a knowing than a hearing . . . ‘Welcome back. You have chosen to return to complete a work you began but never finished.’”

I would take seriously the findings of anyone who has experienced such a deep inner calling and crossed continents to study his subject with utter commitment. There is a ring of authenticity about the journey Sturgess has taken. His allegiance is with the core of Tarot, the traditional twenty-two “Triumphs” or trumps, which have wound their beguiling way through five or six hundred years of history into the highest and lowest levels of society. As they have for Sturgess, these Marseille images have fueled my own Tarot quest over a lifetime.

The author’s approach there differs from my own, as he relates the sequence of Tarot cards to Cathar philosophy, which he calls the “Cathar Code” and connects specifically with the Beatitudes: the words of Jesus spoken in the Sermon on the Mount, beginning with, “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” His interpretations of individual cards are also backed up by copious historical allusions and psychological reflections. For example, the Hanged Man is specifically related to becoming “poor in spirit,” on being “emptied out” like the Norse god Odin, a process that can be related both to the mystical Dark Night of the Soul and perhaps to modern depression as offering a gateway to a new state of being. The diverse associations gathered in to illustrate this card include the medieval theory of the four humours and the Festival of Fools, convincingly woven together to illuminate this image.

But to embed all this into a schema based on Cathar teachings is a challenge, given the wide range of interpretation of Cathar philosophies and the uncertainty about their place in Christianity as heretics or illuminati (depending on your viewpoint). For those readers not convinced by the idea of the Cathars as a source of wisdom, it may not matter here: Sturgess pays tribute to a higher vision, shows us a mystical path, and links his interpretations to some of the most profound teachings of Christianity. A system which can be a path to knowledge needs to be self-consistent, but it can draw on symbolism and myth without having to be historically accurate.

Another schema running within the Cathar Code is a definition of the Tarot sequence as a “pilgrimage of the soul,” where the Fool has to learn lessons according to progressive subsets of the cards. For instance, the first three cards in the deck—the Magician, High Priestess, and Empress—are said to represent the domain of childhood, whether physical or spiritual. Extricating the author’s intended number symbolism can be tricky on a straight read-through, however, and I think the book would have benefited from a clearer outline of his schema and a fuller explanation of the Cathar Code. It would also be handy to have a complete citation of the Beatitudes and to have quotations from the Bible in a recognized version. (Biblical passages seem to be paraphrased in the author’s own renderings.)

This is a book to come back to again and again. It has a richness to it and is a cornucopia of valuable insights. Whatever your take on the Tarot, your preferred deck, or your philosophical outlook, this book can enrich your understanding of these wonderfully vivid and enigmatic cards. Sturgess shares his insights and discoveries with great generosity, and his book will have a permanent place on my shelves.

Cherry Gilchrist

Cherry Gilchrist’s most recent article for Quest was “Channeling the Waters of Wisdom” in the fall 2020 issue.

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