The Taklamakan

The Taklamakan From A Satellite In Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson, on page 228 we read: “I and Ahoon then passed through indeed very unusual places, unusual even for the general nature of this peculiar planet, certain parts of which, by the way, only became...

The “I AM’ Exercise

The “I AM” From Life Is Real Only Then, When ‘I Am’ Chapter: The Fifth Talk You must here know that on the Earth, in almost all epochs, the persons who deserved to become genuine The initiates belonging to the first category were those who...

Gurdjieff’s Dogs

Dogs Running Free In Chapter I of The Tales, we encounter the story about Karapet of Tiflis and the dog catcher. This is clearly an allegory, but one that may be difficult for the reader to understand unless he is familiar with what the word “dog” symbolized to...

The Dog Catchers of Tiflis

Gurdjieff’s Tiflis Dog Catcher In The Tales, in respect of dog-catching, we read: “The duty of this barber-surgeon friend of mine consisted in going at a certain time through the town accompanied by an assistant with a specially constructed carriage and seizing...

The Many Arcs of The Tales

Interweaving Highways The Tales embodies multiple interweaving themes and arcs. In  factual books there is usually a single linear theme. In fictional work there can be several interweaving themes with a sub-plot here and there, but it is rare to have more than three...

The Tales of Automatic Thought

The Domain of Automatic Thought The Siren Song of Automatized Thought The Tales is not a comforting read. It was written “to-corrode-without-mercy-all-the-rubbish-accumulated-during-the-ages-in-human-mentation”. Among the many observations Gurdjieff...