Issue #44 August, 2025
“Impressions are more important than edible food.”
~Gurdjieff
Dear ALL
In the English-German Tales Study group that currently meets each week (on Tuesdays)Â we have noticed that the English and German version of the Tales are not identical, which is what we expected to discover when we began that study group. The minor differences we discover sometimes are simply a demonstration that words ‘equivalent words’ in different languages are never entirely equivalent. On some occasions, the word choice Gurdjieff makes is surprising.
It puts me in mind of page 15 of The Tales – incidentally, a page that readers often drift past without noticing the truly important knowledge it contains – where Gurdjieff points out the difference between mentation by form and mentation by thought. The reality is that people’s normal thinking is entirely mechanical and inherently biased towards the environment and culture in which they were raised. Because of this, to understand another language, beyond being able to use it for practical purposes, is genuinely a challenge.
However, in my view it is necessary, in the Work, to overcome this difficulty. On thinking about this we have decided to translate all the books we publish into German, and later on, into Spanish, and perhaps other languages. We hope to learn from this.
RB
The Penguin Huddle Question
In the icy expanse of Antarctica, a vibrant mosaic of life plays out against the stark white backdrop. Here, beset by the wicked polar winds, a colony of emperor penguins, dignified by their sleek black-and-white outfits, gathers together to face the biting cold. They form a living, breathing fortress, a “huddle” that is both a physical shield and a testament to their incredible cooperative spirit.
The Disease of Tomorrow
“…the personal observations and investigations I later specially made, regarding this said strange impulse present in them, clearly showed me that in truth the factors for engendering this abnormal impulse in their presences are most maleficent for them themselves. “Thanks to this abnormal hope of theirs a very. singular and most strange disease, with a property of evolving, arose and exists among them there even until now—a disease called there ‘tomorrow.’
Empty Yourself
Empty yourself of everything.
Let the mind become still.
The ten thousand things rise and fall
while the Self watches their’return.
They grow and flourish
and then return to the source.
Returning to the source is stillness,
which is the way of nature.
The way of nature is unchanging.
Knowing constancy is insight.
Read more…
The Irresistible Force, The Movable Object
Modern science is derided by Gurdjieff throughout The Tales. He refers unsympathetically to “sorry scieptists,” “scientists of new formation,” “contemporary terrestrial ‘sorry scientists. ” ‘scientists of ‘new format, “the ‘evil wiseacrings’ of their contemporary ‘scientists,'” etc. Writing about the Germans, he notes that “the contemporary ‘scientists’ of that community, firstly, for the most part only fantasy, and, secondly, like the beings of ancient Greece, do not prepare anything good …