Alfred Richard Orage (1873-1934), whom G. B. Shaw declared the most brilliant editor of the past century, suddenly laid down his pencil in 1922 and sold his famous journal The New Age to work with the mystic G. Gurdjieff in France. Orage hoped that with Gurdjieff's help, he could come to a more fundamental understanding of the human species. For Orage, modern man had come to the end of his tether, and without the development of new faculties, he was convinced that the problems that pile up in front of mankind would not be solvable, and even the very will to live must decline. Gurdjieff claimed to have found a way to develop new and higher faculties, and to have been trained in the necessary methods and knowledge which had its sources in the hidden wisdom of the East. Orage worked intensively for more than a year with Gurdjieff in his Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man, and it seems that he had found what he was seeking. Gurdjieff, on the other hand, found in Orage someone whom he considered a brother in spirit. A spirit that was defined by Orage some years before as: ." . . displaying itself in disinterested interest in things; in things, that is to say, of no personal advantage, but only of general, public or universal importance." When Gurdjieff expanded his activities into the New World, it was only consequent that Orage became his emissary there. Orage arrived in New York in December 1923 to expound Gurdjieff's ideas, and until 1931, was talking to a growing group of interested people. This book contains the notes of many of these talks. We are grateful to the notetakers and their prudence to leave their papers to the universities of Yale, Berkeley and Leeds, who guaranteed the survival of these papers in their archives. Without all this combined effort, they would otherwise be scattered all over the world, largely unknown and "upon the verge of being irrecoverably lost" as C. Daly King once wrote. Along with Orage's Commentary on "Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson," this edition completes the record of Orage's meetings, talks and lectures on Gurdjieff's teaching. Illustrated with 130 line drawings and 37 photographs

"This is the first analysis of all of Gurdjieff's published internal exercises, together with those taught by his students, George and Helen Adie. It includes a fresh biographical study of Gurdjieff, with ground-breaking observations on his relationships with P.D. Ouspensky and A.R. Orage (especially, why he wanted to collaborate with them, and why that broke down). It shows that Gurdjieff was, fundamentally, a mystic, and that his contemplation-like methods were probably drawn from Mt Athos and its hesychast tradition. It shows the continuity in Gurdjieff's teaching, but also development and change. His original contribution to Western Esotericism lay in his use of tasks, disciplines, and contemplation-like exercises to bring his pupils to a sense of their own presence which could, to some extent, be maintained in daily life in the social domain, and not only in the secluded conditions typical of meditation. It contends that he had initially intended not to use contemplation-like exercises, as he perceived dangers to be associated with these monastic methods, and the religious tradition to be in tension with the secular guise in which he first couched his teaching. As Gurdjieff adapted the teaching he had found in Eastern monasteries to Western urban and post-religious culture, he found it necessary to introduce contemplation. His development of the methods is demonstrated, and the importance of the three exercises in the Third Series, Life Is Real only then, when 'I Am', is shown, together with their almost certain borrowing from the exercises of the Philokalia. G.I. Gurdjieff P.D. Ouspensky A.R. Orage George Adie Mysticism Meditation Contemplation Fourth Way Hesychasm Western Esotericism"--

Offers information and stories about Gurdjieff, setting him within the cultural and social contexts of America between 1924 and 1935.

"He outlines his attempts to establish the Institute in the United States at Olgivanna and Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin East in Wisconsin, Mabel Luhan's ranch in Taos, New Mexico, Marjorie Content and Jean Toomer's Mill House in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, and New York City where his emissary, A. R. Orage, had formed a well-organized and faithful body of followers of Gurdjieff's ideas since 1924. This biography stands apart from other biographical writings about Gurdjieff by emphasizing his relations with the many children for whom he played a fatherly role in the Caucasus, Fontainebleau, and New York City. It includes as well a review of Gurdjieff's misunderstood relations with the women who bore his children. In effect, this scan of his life covers virtually every significant aspect of his extraordinary life and brings to light photographs which have not been available to readers"--Back cover.

This edited volume provides an in-depth exploration into the influential work of Wade Hands, examining the changing relationship between methodology and the history of economics in connection with contemporary developments in economics. The papers in this volume fall into four parts, each devoted to an important theme in Wade Hands’ work. The first part explores the influence and scope of Reflection without Rules, capturing the rich debate that the book generated about what guides methodological and philosophical thinking in economics. The second part examines Hands’ research on Paul Samuelson’s economics and the methodological dimensions of Samuelson’s thinking. Part three looks to Hands’ long-standing interest in the philosophical foundations of pragmatist thinking. The final part addresses his more recent research in the methodological import of the emergence of behavioural economics. Together, the contributors show how Hands’ insights in complexity theory, identity, and stratification are key to understanding a reconfigured economic methodology. They also reveal how his willingness to draw from multiple academic disciplines gives us a platform for interrogating mainstream economics and provides the basis for a humane yet scientific alternative. This unique volume will be essential reading for advanced students and researchers across social economics, history of economic thought, economic methodology, political economy, and philosophy of social science.

This book is an attempt to explore various aspects of the enneagram, the symbol that G. I. Gurdjieff introduced to the modern world, and which he stated represented a complete description of the laws governing the universe. Because of the importance he attached to it, it has long intrigued followers of his teaching, and others, yet the understanding of its meanings remains very incomplete. In particular, how it relates to modern mathematical and scientific descriptions of the laws governing the universe has largely been unexplored. This book tries to find connections between these two approaches to the truth, while also recognizing and exploring the differences between knowledge based on symbols and that based on scientific theories and mathematical formulae.

Far too ignorant of the histories of the rest of the world, being aware of only the accomplishments of Greece, Rome and Europe, Westerners have been made to believe that their societies represent the most superior examples of civilization. However, the Western value system stems from a misconception that, as in nature, human society too is evolving. The idea derives from the hidden influence of secret societies, who followed the belief in spiritual evolution of the Kabbalah, which taught that history would attain its fulfillment when man would become God, and make his own laws. Therefore, the infamous Illuminati gave its name to the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, which claimed that human progress must abandon "superstition," meaning Christianity, in favor of "reason." Thus the Illuminati succeeded in bringing about the French and American revolutions, which instituted the separation of Church and State, and from that point forward, the Western values of Humanism, seen to include secularism, human rights, democracy and capitalism, have been celebrated as the culmination of centuries of human intellectual evolution. This is the basis of the propaganda which has been used to foster a Clash of Civilizations, where the Islamic world is presented as stubbornly adhering to the anachronistic idea of "theocracy." Where once the spread of Christianity and civilizing the world were used as pretexts for colonization, today a new White Man's Burden makes use of human rights and democracy to justify imperial aggression. However, because, after centuries of decline, the Islamic world is incapable of mobilizing a defense, the Western powers, as part of their age-old strategy of Divide and Conquer, have fostered the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, to both serve as agent-provocateurs and to malign the image of Islam. These sects, known to scholars as Revivalists, opposed the traditions of classical Islamic scholarship in order to create the opportunity to rewrite the laws of the religion to better serve their sponsors. Thus were created the Wahhabi and Salafi sects of Islam, from which were derived the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been in the service of the West ever since. But, the story of the development of these Islamic sects involves the bizarre doctrines and hidden networks of occult secret societies, being based on a Rosicrucian myth of Egyptian Freemasonry, which see the Muslim radicals as inheritors of an ancient mystery tradition of the Middle East which was passed on to the Knights Templar during the Crusades, thus forming the foundation of the legends of the Holy Grail. These beliefs would not only form the cause for the association of Western intelligence agencies with Islamic fundamentalists, but would fundamentally shape much of twentieth century history.

This title provides a glimpse into the nature of the thought of two influential men and the origins of the spiritual path they taught. Known as esoteric teachers, Gurdjieff especially, is well-known in the West to those who follow the occult tradition.

During the mid 1930s in Paris, the spiritual teacher George Gurdjieff drew together four women - Solita Solano, Kathryn Hulme, Alice Rohrer, and Elizabeth Gordon - into a special, mutually supporting work group calling itself 'The Rope' to develop their full human potential.