Awhile back this was considered to be one of THE books to read about mysticism. I have not read it in quite a long time so I'm not sure how it holds up, but at the time I recall being tremendously impressed. This was one of the first books I read that encouraged me to look beyond the surface of things. The set/setting in which we meet people can have so much influence on us, and it's often not until much later that we realize that that meeting has transformed our lives. And yes, many of us do spend way too much of our lives "asleep." Gurdjieff encourages us to wake up. ( )

I read this book many years ago, and was absolutely captivated by the book. I read it again after I bought it on the Kindle, and was a bit less captivated by the book. The section that I liked the most, was the one about his father. The four commandments of his father captured the crux of what we should all be about, as people. The next section that I liked, was the one about his teacher.

The rest of the sections are fantastic tales in themselves, and are very well told. This is why I give the book a four star rating. The writing style is much more accessible than the way that he wrote about Beelzebub's tales, and this is something that I like. I think that he made Beelzebub a bit too complex, that he made it complex for the sake of complexity.

I cannot say that I learned much from the book, barring the section on his father and teacher. But, the book is a joyous ride indeed. It is the story of a life fully lived. ( )

After a lengthy ("Gurdjeffian") Introduction, the author introduces "My Father" as the first of the remarkable men. He was "widely known" in the Transcaucasian Asia Minor as an "ashokh": This name is given those bards who composed, recited or sang and told all sorts of stories. Although for the most part illiterate, they knew innumerable and lengthy narratives and sang various melodies all from memory or instant improvisation. [32]

Gurdjieff notes the Gilgamesh epic discovered among this inventory, with its pre-Biblical flood. [33-36] He introduces and describes "kastousilia", the procedure of inventing questions and answers with logical plausibility but fanciful basis. "Where is God"? He is in Kamish. "What is he doing there?" He is making double latters so that on the tops of the tall pines he can fasten happiness, so that whole nations might ascend and reach it. [38]

As for his father's business acumen -- "every business that my father carried on...always went wrong." There was a tendency in his nature: "an instinctive aversion to deriving personal advantage for himself from the naivete and bad luck of others". [47]

Great intro to Gurdjieff ( )

dodgy-narrator, nonfiction, psychology, philosophy
Read in January, 1980

Gurdjieff vs Rasputin

"...Rom Landau was one of the first to compare Gurdjieff to Rasputin. Describing a meeting with Gurdjieff, he explains: 'I had been specially careful not to look at Gurdjieff and not to allow him to look into my eyes...'"

Time magazine once described Gurdjieff as "a remarkable blend of P.T. Barnum, Rasputin, Freud, Groucho Marx and everybody's grandfather." ( )

Terza edizione 1984