Issue #5 — June 2021

“A man can only attain knowledge with the help of those who possess it. This must be understood from the very beginning. One must learn from him who knows.”

Control and Influence

(Part 1)

A number of years ago I had surgery for which I agreed to a spinal, rather than a general, anesthetic. In the recovery room I lay on a bed looking at my legs. I had the strange feeling that I was alive, warm, supple from my waist up. Below… Read more…

The Inexactitudes of Science (Part 1)

The question we discuss is: How useful is contemporary science as a source of knowledge? There are good reasons to be cautious about its various theories and proclamations. So many reasons, in fact, that this is a two-part article. Let’s begin with the problem of suggestibility… Read more…

The Revision of The Tales (Part 3)

As we noted in the first posting in this series, this discussion of the revision of The Tales is not intended to be a critical take-down of the Gurdjieff Foundation’s publication of it. Mme de Salzmann ordered… Read more…

The Straying Camel

Tales of Bodhidharma

A bearded Indian monk, the third son of a South Indian Brahmin king, appeared one day at the Chinese port of Canton and made his way from there to  Nanking, near the mouth of the Yangtze River. He was responding to an invitation from China’s Emperor Wu of the Liang Dynasty. Whatever the monk’s nameRead more…