⥫ Gurdjieff Oskiano ⥭

Session 2: September 20th 2023 (@12.00pm CST)

Gurdjieff and Opium

A Narcotic Jig Saw Puzzle

Robert Posen

Gurdjieff mentions opium and alcohol many times in Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson, usually associating opium with Asiatic people and Alcohol with Western peoples. They are, of course, addictive and thus a curse, which he treated with hypnotism.

In The Tales he writes:

“The surplanetary flora-formation mentioned by me, named on your planet the plant Papaveroon, belongs to the class of Polormedekhtian-arisings and through it there evolves or involves what is called the ‘totality-of-the-results-of-the-transformation’ of all other cosmic ‘gravity-center-concentrations,’ which come into the atmosphere of this planet of yours through the common-cosmic process of what is called ‘ubiquitous-diffusion-of-the-radiations-of-all-kinds-of-cosmic-concentrations.’ (p825)

Gurdjieff claims that:

“… through the arisings of the third class, namely, the Polormedekhtian, there are transformed … all those active elements which primarily arise from the transformations of the substances of various cosmic concentrations belonging to other ‘Solar systems’ of our common Megalocosmos.

In this talk, Robert Posen discusses the whole topic of Opium, referring to multiple sources from Gurdjieff’s teaching and writings.