Quest Magazine

By Roger Lipsey
Shambhala Publications

Surely there’s a great deal of ground covered in Roger Lipsey’s formidable new tome on the spiritual master Gurdjieff that has been well tracked over before. Yet the word reconsidered is well applied here. Armed with new information, only recently available, and many years deep involvement in the Gurdjieff Work, Lipsey has done some lapidary reconsidering, cutting more deeply, clarifying, and divulging buried gems in the mass of stories about G.I. Gurdjieff. It can’t have been easy, as there was so much to assimilate, to parse; so much to challenge objectivity. Gurdjieff’s metaphysical ontology, his powerful teachings about escaping the slavery of sleep, his redefinition of the human condition, his startling methods for liberation from our mechanical responses to the world, was counterbalanced by his colorful, enigmatic style, the historical uncertainties of his life, and his tendency to attract negative press.

Gurdjieff Reconsidered… offers us nine bulging chapters comprised of hefty paragraphs, which, despite a certain denseness of data, are entertainingly written. Perhaps the book’s considerable scope and depth will appeal mostly to fervid Gurdjieffians, but then again Lipsey frequently opens hidden doors between Gurdjieff and other traditions. Theosophists will be interested to learn, here, that Gurdjieff read most of Madame Blavatsky when young, and even tried, unsuccessfully, to confirm some of her claims in his quite arduous travels. Lipsey tells us that Australian scholar Joanna Petsche has initiated a detailed study of parallels between Gurdjieff’s ideas and Theosophy—the parallels are many, especially in Gurdjieff’s cosmology. Some of this is probably due to Blavatsky and Gurdjieff both having gathered input from the same esoteric traditions, including Christian mysticism, Neoplatonism, Plotinus, Tibetan Buddhism, esoteric Hinduism, and quite possibly the Hermetica of Hermes Trismegistus. But when prominent student of the work Louise March asked Gurdjieff about Madame Blavatsky, he said she “was almost right.” Coming from Gurdjieff, that is a big admission.

Gurdjieff’s memoir, Meetings with Remarkable Men, tells of his early travels with the Seekers of Truth, a group which sought for an underlying esoteric revelation, a primal teaching, that would decrypt the secret of life. A sort of backroom controversy in Gurdjieff studies has been the question of his claim in Meetings… of having traveled extensively in Tibet. Did he or didn’t he? No record is found of his having been there—however, as westerners weren’t encouraged to visit Tibet seekers had to travel to its sacred places in disguise, and under false names. And Lipsey offers the indirect evidence of well-informed inferences: Gurdjieff’s knowledge of Tibetan cookery, the particulars of Tibetan tea, the extreme conditions of life in the Pamir mountains. He had bullet scars, visible in the sauna, that fit the accounts of woundings by stray bullets in his memoir, including one he received in Tibet. In his gigantic parable, Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson, in which he tucked bits of real history, Gurdjieff’s description of massacres carried out by British soldiers under Younghusband concurs with historical fact. Lipsey quotes his casual descriptions to a group of students in Paris, elucidating his travails in Tibet, including arresting details:

He tells how he used to have to butter his whole body, then cover with rubber underdrawers (made in Germany), then over all about six inches of thickness of fur garments—and even then he was cold in Tibet—only part of body have satisfaction was face under hood, warmed by breath. Such cold you never can imagine. Also such smell after many week!

Such an account has the redolence of reality. His “Movements”, an intricately choreographed series of dances (which were also exercises in developing inner harmony and consciousness), were partly drawn from temple dances and a sort of dance/yoga he’d seen in esoteric monasteries, and they too are recognizably connected to real traditions. All this is very reassuring to Gurdjieffians troubled by accusations of falsity--accusations coming from those who, as Ouspensky said, awarded Gurdjieff “his fair share of slander”. Some of the confusion arises from Gurdjieff’s tendency to try to create “legominisms”—works of art that symbolically express sacred truths. Art has its fanciful side, and Gurdjieff’s tendency to insert parables as part of his autobiography can make researchers frown.

Lipsey quotes a student in Paris, Alice Rohrer, who asked Gurdjieff if some of the more colorful imagery in Meetings with Remarkable Men was just fable. Gurdjieff replied that the book was true; “only ten per cent fantasy”. Thus he “owned” his tendency to weave fable and factuality.

 Gurdjieff Reconsidered offers us more detail than we had before on Gurdjieff’s wife, Julia Osipovna; he gifts us new anecdotes about the famous Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man at Le Prieure, and he renders new spins on the already familiar stories. Lipsey’s chapter on Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson offers acute observations and fresh insight on that gargantuan work.

Toward the end of the book, with gratifying honesty, Lipsey recounts the turbulent 1930s, as Gurdjieff—having suffered a brutally injurious car accident, and the loss of his institute headquarters—struggles for steady progress toward the long-term goals he’d set for his work. The chapter is called Lux in Tenebris…light in darkness.

In the latterly chapters Lipsey explores Gurdjieff’s poignant years in Paris during World War II; he tells us of Gurdjieff’s final years, a tired, secretly ill elderly man working feverishly to finish revising his magnum opus, Beelzebub’s Tales… and his final, highly arduous work on his Movements, continuing to within days of his death. These are the efforts of a man who deeply believes in his life’s work.

In a chapter called Derision, Lipsey takes on Gurdjieff’s detractors, demonstrating that for the most part that these outside observers hadn’t a clue as to what Gurdjieff’s teaching was really about. Most of them seem inspired by a single book authored by Louis Pauwels in 1954. Pauwels’ malicious misinterpretations of Gurdjieff’s methods set in motion a concatenation of misunderstandings which duly echoed through the untutored proclamations of later detractors—for example, the much-repeated canard that Gurdjieff failed to sufficiently illuminate his students; that none of them became conscious. Anyone who has seriously investigated the life of his greatest student and the woman he set to carry on his work, Jeanne de Salzmann, knows that isn’t true. Numerous other spiritual powerhouses emerged from his school: Henry Tracol, Lord Pentland, Louise March, Paul Reynard, Michel de Salzmann, to name just a few; certainly Pyotr Ouspensky, A.R. Orage and John Bennett were profoundly altered. The Fourth Way vibrance passed on by such people brought us such luminaries as James George and Jacob Needleman.

Of course, you’ll find failings in Gurdjieff’s comportment, as you will in examining any man’s life. Great men and great women are still just men and women, and that goes for beloved spiritual teachers. Gurdjieff sometimes drank too much, and he produced children with the wives of some of his followers. Alan Watts had a drinking problem and a tendency to irresponsible relations with women, and so did Chogyam Trungpa; I could name many other potent spiritual teachers who stumbled on the steep path up Mount Analogue, and fell into the pit of their own vanity, or slid into the quicksand of self-indulgence. Gurdjieff seems to have had a somewhat erratic connection with the higher conscience that he extolled, but he at last settled down to the deadly serious business of transmitting his own dharma, and that transmission has had vast repercussions.

John Shirley

John Shirley is the author of Gurdjieff: An Introduction to His Life and Ideas and numerous novels, including Doyle fter Death and the forthcoming Stormland.

CYRUS RYAN
Alresford, Hampshire, U.K.: Axis Mundi, 2018. 219 pp., paper, $23.95.

What is an esoteric group? Often it consists of a collection of people sitting around and discussing a standard text like The Secret Doctrine. This can be a useful activity—at the worst it is harmless—but one wonders if esoteric groups have greater possibilities than this..

Cyrus Ryan’s Living on the Inner Edge provides a welcome perspective on this question. The book is about some esoteric practitioners who gathered initially at the TS lodge in Toronto. They began to pursue group work under a man named only as RN, whom the author first encountered as “a short, round oriental gentleman in a sports jacket and tie.” Ryan and a small collection of other students pursued work under RN’s direction for over thirty years until his death in 2011. Its sources were diverse: “Our Work follows the Sanatana Dharma, Ageless Wisdom, or the Esoteric Traditions that have existed for ages, only trimmed down and made applicable for the Western world. Along with the teachings of the Master D.K. as presented by Alice A. Bailey, we studied different schools of Hinduism and Buddhism, plus Kabala, Sufism, Western traditions and the teachings of Gurdjieff as given out and explained primarily through the writings of P.D. Ouspensky and Maurice Nicole [sic].”

The group had higher contacts as well: “We were contacted by one of the Masters to see what would happen to a group of Western aspirants subjected to various spiritual energies and events. We were contacted by one of the Masters in 1978. It was not at all as we would have imagined. . . . The Master didn’t magically send letters through space as they did with H.P. Blavatsky, nor did the Master appear and dictate lessons as in the case of Alice A. Bailey. . . . The contact was very short without any explanation. The Master gave  us a ‘word of power,’ a mantra with a particular tune, rhythm, and focus. . . . This word of power was like a seed and in time, through trial and error, grew into a tree of knowledge.”

RN focused on the Fourth Way approach of Gurdjieff, because it takes place in and through ordinary life, without retreat or isolation. Nevertheless, Gurdjieff’s teaching is skimpy on love and compassion, so the group turned to other teachings as well. Ryan says, “Our group was a blend of Theosophical knowledge and Vajrayana Tibetan Buddhism.” The book features a number of esoteric diagrams which show the influence of Gurdjieff, the Kabbalah, yoga, and Buddhism.

Ryan’s account, both accessible and fascinating, takes us through the group’s adventures, including inner practices (“Our chanting was creating a ‘cone of fire’ which not only protected the group, but also allowed for the downpour of energy from the higher planes”); journeys to India and Tibet; and the dynamics of relations among the members. Ryan discusses “elemental” attachments to the sexual center by describing the relationship of one member, Samantha, to another, Frank. “They went out for some time and Samantha was definitely ready to settle down and hope for marriage. Frank . . . had an elemental in his 5th [sex] center. He liked to keep women hanging, he couldn’t make a commitment. RN gave him a special discipline so he could truly face the force of the center, learn to observe the thoughts and feelings it created and then counter it. But it was very powerful and one night we found him rolling on the floor yelling like he was in pain, but it was the elemental force causing this. This elemental, as all elementals, didn’t want to be made visible. Once it was seen, then the process of detaching from it and overcoming it was possible.”

As this suggests, the work was often laborious and painful. Finally, though, “by early 2000, the group had become very tight and close knit in an occult sense. Each individual knew what they had to do, both for themselves as aspiring souls and for the group. Each group member knew every other group member in an Essence intimacy, the beginning of true brotherhood, disciple relating to disciple. The Work became more esoteric and intense in discipline, to the point that we really couldn’t discuss what we were doing with outsiders, even other spiritual people.”

I myself don’t know any of the participants, so my only knowledge of this group comes from this book. Nevertheless, it has an authentic ring to it. It resembles certain esoteric groups that I have known: small; eclectic; led by one teacher who was, however, not a guru; willing to take knowledge where they could find it; and indifferent to publicity. I believe that groups of this sort represent the best possibility for spiritual development today.

This book also fills a real gap in esoteric literature, which has tended to pass over group work. Indeed the only other book I would recommend in this area is School of the Soul (originally published as School of Kabbalah) by the British Kabbalist Z’ev ben Shimon Halevi. But Halevi’s work is a manual for practice: it does not describe the history of any particular group. Living on the Inner Edge is a fascinating, persuasive, and inspiring account of how collection of spiritual seekers have tried to lift themselves up by one another’s bootstraps.

Richard Smoley

Printed in the  Spring 2021  issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Van Gorp, Andrew, "The Study of Our Home" Quest 109:2, pg 10-11

By Andrew Van Gorp

There is no such thing as separateness.
—H.P. Blavatsky

Who is to say what small actions led to the burgeoning environmental movement we see today? After all, long before Rachel Carson walked onto the dewy grass of this cosmic plane, H.P. Blavatsky observed that nothing in this reality is disconnected from any other aspect of it. Her writings ring out along with those of John Muir in his sentiment that “when we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.” The ripples of our actions in time here on this beautiful planet can never be truly measured.

In fact, the ripples of one local Theosophist are still sloshing across time. With one simple statement, he changed my life forever: “You should start a garden here,” said Chris Bolger, IT guy extraordinaire. So we did!

Since 2015, our nonprofit, Sustain DuPage, has been building a sacred relationship with the Theosophical Society in America and the land they safeguard in Wheaton, Illinois. It began when the TSA graciously opened 600 square feet for our nonprofit to grow fresh produce communally. The partnership has since grown to include ecological forest healing, traditional skillcraft, community cooking classes, a sacred altar (“ofrenda”) to honor the Ancestors during the autumnal equinox, an urbanite keyhole herb bed, a permaculture fruit tree guild, a sun scallop bed, chinampa-style hydroscaping, a community composting station, vertical farming arbors, a market stand, a hand-dug detention pond, a willow coppice, and a performance art stage. 

The garden that was once a lawn is now in its fifth growing season and is fourteen times the size of the original few beds. There are many intentions woven into the design and operations of the garden. One is to demonstrate the ancient practice of communal land protection. The garden models various mediums for the growing of food in USDA Growing Zone 5b, but visitors would tell you they can sense that something much greater is occurring in the space. In the garden, we are showing our community members how to be in right relationship with the ecosystem of our bioregion, as we were once shown. We are engaging in powerful moments of spiritual healing for our community members, who are daily strewn against the rocks of contemporary life, yearning for the positive spiritual posture that can only be earned through the decolonization of our daily transactions with the world economy. 

Growing food without petrochemicals is a pursuit of integrity and moral uprightness. Faced with catastrophic climate change, the people in our world today, all of us, are complicit in a system that is blasting megatons of carbon into the atmosphere. Our garden is a space where we can gently discuss with community members the meaning of true ecoliberation: that no human society can find true liberation without a concurring liberation of the ecosystem. We hold it true that humanity is a part of the ecosystem. 

It is such a beautiful gift to watch all of these souls, incarnated into primate bodies, reexplore one of the most ancient and most human of traditions: agriculture. It is gratifying to see folks reach their hands into bowls to instinctively feel the satisfying tactility of seeds—to watch the memories held in our blood sing out as we drop them in the Earth  and smile; as we plant into her, we are planted into. As below, so above. It may be true that we live in a mostly cold and unforgiving universe, but I will carry the acts of love I’ve experienced in this garden with me as treasured gifts for as long as my soul endures, and perhaps beyond.

 Folks entering the garden in search of the labyrinth often linger to ask us a few questions: What is this place? Are we allowed to be here on this land? Who owns the land? We joyfully respond with information about the Theosophical Society of America, explaining the unique status of private land made public. We brag about our little equivalent of the library of Alexandria, with literature from every world religion and spiritual belief: a gem of interfaith study available to our local community! We explain that the grounds are open to be walked upon as long as the sun is up and as long as each footstep resounds with respect for this place. 

Many ask us if the yurt on the premises is used for sweat lodges, and we explain that it is used to thaw little Prairie School students in the coldest days of winter. They chuckle at that. So do we. It’s magical to watch how the distance from road noise and the soft kiss of green on our eyes allows for our people’s shoulders to release a little tension, for bellies to release laughter. 

We invite all TS members to visit with us during the growing season and perhaps pick up a few skills for the raising of food, fiber, dye, and medicine. Our nonprofit is incredibly grateful for the relationships we are building here. We look forward to our many fruit-(grain-veggie-tuber-and-nut)-ful years to come in this place!

Andrew Ruggiero Van Gorp, a lifelong DuPager, is a queer community organizer who sparked the creation of Sustain DuPage in DuPage County, Illinois, in 2013. As a Theosophical Society member, Andrew is most drawn to the Theosophical pillar of service as a standing meditation.

Printed in the  Spring 2021  issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Hebert, Barbara, "Esoteric Ecology" Quest 109:2, pg 8-9

By Barbara Hebert
National President

Ecology is the theme of this issue of Quest. When I think of ecology, my mind goes immediately to the environment. From there, it goes quickly to the impending ecological disaster that humanity has created. All of us are aware of this, and many are doing what they can to mitigate the damage to our great mother, the earth.

The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines ecology as the branch of science that focuses on “the interrelationship of organisms and their environments” and “the totality or pattern of relations between organisms and their environment.”

It is relatively simple to gather information about ecology in the familiar sense. However, it is not necessarily easy to learn about the hidden components of ecology. From our studies, we know that there is more to our environment than simply its visible aspects. I believe that there is not only a physical ecology, which we can see, but also a hidden or unseen ecology, which we may term esoteric ecology. It involves our relationships with others and our environment in imperceptible ways. I am specifically referring to the astral light and the reciprocal interactions we have with it.

Like other living things, the earth has something comparable to the etheric double of the human being. Using a term coined by the nineteenth-century French occultist Éliphas Lévi, H.P. Blavatsky refers to it as the astral light. According to Theosophy.wiki, the astral light is not a universal principle; rather, it is a lower form of akasha that belongs to our world. HPB writes, “There is one great difference between the Astral Light and the Akâsa [akasha] which must be remembered. The latter is eternal, the former periodic” (Blavatsky, Collected Writings, 10:360–61). This Viewpoint is not intended to be an in-depth discussion of either the astral light or akasha, the primordial substance that permeates the universe. It is intended to share perspectives about esoteric ecology and how our relationships with one another and the world in which we live physically can impact us metaphysically. (See Theosophy.wiki for further discussion of the astral light and akasha.)

The Ageless Wisdom teaches that all that happens on the earth is recorded in the astral light. The thoughts, feelings, and actions of humans are inscribed in this medium and frequently pollute it. The astral light then reflects what it has received back to the earth and its inhabitants. As HPB writes in the Theosophical Glossary, the astral light “gives out nothing but what it has received; that it is the great terrestrial crucible, in which the vile emanations of the earth (moral and physical) upon which the Astral Light is fed, are all converted into their subtlest essence, and radiated back intensified, thus becoming epidemics—moral, psychic and physical.” HPB also writes:

As the Esoteric Philosophy teaches us, the Astral Light is simply the dregs of Akâsa or the Universal Ideation in its metaphysical sense. Though invisible, it is yet, so to speak, the phosphorescent radiation of the latter, and is the medium between it and man’s thought-faculties. It is these which pollute the Astral Light, and make it what it is—the storehouse of all human and especially psychic iniquities. In its primordial genesis, the astral light as a radiation is quite pure, though the lower it descends approaching our terrestrial sphere, the more it differentiates, and becomes as a result impure in its very constitution. But man helps considerably in this pollution, and gives it back its essence far worse than when he received it. (Collected Writings, 10:251)

Given the Theosophical teachings regarding the astral light and its role in both receiving and emanating all of the occurrences on earth, our discussion about esoteric ecology must include some thoughts regarding the interrelationship between ourselves and this unseen component of our earthly environment. 

In her talk “Mastering the Cycles of Existence,” given at the 145th Theosophical Society International Convention (held in December 2020), Elena Dovalsantos said, “With us in the midst of a global pandemic, one might surmise that an accumulation, or a great accumulation, of human iniquities in the astral light have now returned as global karma.” Dovalsantos then referred to the many thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that must have been recorded in the astral light, including divisiveness, wars, greed, cruelty to our fellow humans and to animals, the destruction of our environment, and so on.

Just as human beings are responsible for the pollution of our planet, we are responsible for the pollution of the astral light. Furthermore, like the pollution of the physical planet, the pollution of the astral light seems to be causing dire consequences. Clearly what we are seeing is what humanity has fed into the astral light, and it is being “radiated back intensified.”

While this discussion of the astral light and its relationship to the extraordinary happenings in our world today may be interesting to contemplate, how can it be helpful to us?

Have you ever wondered about the timing of your birth? That is, why were you born at this particular time in history? The teachings of the Ageless Wisdom may provide us with some answers. As we read in the Theosophical texts, each lifetime is a part of our spiritual pilgrimage, providing an opportunity to learn and grow from our experiences. May I suggest that in this incarnation, we are being called upon not only to learn and grow, but to put our beliefs into action. 

We are being faced with a spiritual test. Are we really willing to work for the Light? Can we put our beliefs into action? Most Theosophists spend a great deal of time studying and discussing abstract concepts about the universe and our place in it. How often do we take action based on those Theosophical teachings?

On January 6, 2021, the Capitol of the United States was attacked while Congress was in session. Many of us watched the proceedings with shock and horror. Many of us no doubt experienced feelings of anger, frustration, and disgust, possibly even fear and sadness. Questions loomed about the safety of the people in the Capitol, about the sanctity of the democratic process, and even the future of democracy in the United States. It might even be fair to say that many were shaken to their core by the day’s happenings. 

We know from our studies that thoughts are things that have the power to impact others. Many of us, at least initially, probably radiated fear, anger, and similar emotions into the world, thus exacerbating the situation in a powerful but unseen way. How long did it take to realize what we were doing and change direction to send out thoughts for peace and unity? 

As children, my siblings and I would play in a circular water-filled metal trough during the hot days of the Louisiana summer. We would all swim in the same direction and create a strong flow; then we would reverse course and try to swim against the current in the opposite direction. That is how I felt when I changed course from sending out thoughts of anger and fear to sending out thoughts of peace and unity. I felt as if I was going against the current, and it was uncomfortable. However, as more people began to call for peace and unity, the current seemed to change, and it became easier. 

Going against the current, whether in water or in the world, is never easy. But our task as Theosophists is not easy. Many of us are called to the bodhisattva path, the path of selflessness, the path of liberating humanity from its suffering. Walking this path means that our primary goal is to help humanity. It may mean going against the current—whatever that happens to be—in order to do so. It means learning to remain calm in the storm and refusing to add to the confusion and chaos that already exists. It means balancing fear and negativity with peace and light. It means seeing all beings, regardless of their behavior, as extensions of ourselves, knowing that we are all aspects of the One Unity that is the ground of being. 

When we focus on such thoughts, we are helping humanity. We are putting the Ageless Wisdom into practice. Perhaps we were born at this very time in history so that we can bring light to the world in our own unique way, based on our beliefs and our studies. There is a reason each of us is here now. What is it? What role will each of us play in helping to liberate humanity?