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chaosmavin's review against another edition
4.0
This is a very short book written by one of Gurjief’s pupils. It reads almost like a journal with Ouspensky delaying Gurjief words. It is merely a taste of what Ouspensky first experienced with Gurjief and how that taste began to transform him.
designwise's review against another edition
5.0
"Man is a machine..." I have read this book many times.
xolotlll's review against another edition
3.0
The first half of this book is very readable, straightforward, engaging and practical. Initially there were very few far-out claims, and I felt they were meant to be taken metaphorically. For instance, the idea that war is caused by the uncomfortable proximity of certain planets at certain times seems to be more an illustration of the way mass movements are the result of mechanical forces. But the book becomes more and more obtuse and really goes downhill after Ouspensky introduces this strange pretend chemistry that's way too precise and detailed to not be taken literally. It talks about 'hydrogens' and has the airs of an actual science, but is totally void of empirical justification. It's tedious and slightly embarrassing nonsense, and I don't see any value to it.
Repeated characterisations of people as machines are particularly poignant against the background of WWI and the October Revolution in Russia, but sometimes it's taken too far. There's occasionally this slightly distasteful sense that most of humankind are born dull and die dull, incapable of any sort of enlightenment or true consciousness. A quote: "[...] there are people who are definitely diseased, broken machines with whom nothing can be done. And such people are in the majority". Lovely, right? Also, it's somewhat suspicious that Ouspensky and Gurdjieff dedicate so much space to why you can't possibly attain freedom unless you become part of a group and obey a single leader unconditionally and unquestioningly.
This is inevitably Ouspensky's own interpretation of Gurdjieff's teachings, so although most of it is framed as direct quotation, I suspect he's included a lot of his own views just as Plato made Socrates a character in his own dialogues. Although this book was endorsed by Gurdjieff, it seems odd that the system insists on understanding being difficult to attain and then Ouspensky goes and puts large swathes of it in an easily digestible, 350-page novel. It stands in great contrast to Gurdjieff's own Beelzebub's Tales.
Having said all that, some of the ideas in this book are brilliant, like the concept of remembering oneself. Gurdjieff's talks about attaining true consciousness reminds me of David Foster Wallace's famous speech 'This is Water'. Some of the better ideas here also remind me of Steppenwolf. Like Hesse, Gurdjieff sees man as a plurality, and the singular 'I' as an illusion. There's also a deeply insightful discussion of the function of symbolism in art and esoteric systems near the end of the book. Ouspensky writes about how symbols are used as containers for meaning that can't be expressed through ordinary language. He also writes that approaching them with specific pre-conceived notions about their meaning in a real-world context only leads to a kind of confirmation bias and distorts or distracts from the essential meaning of the symbol.
Repeated characterisations of people as machines are particularly poignant against the background of WWI and the October Revolution in Russia, but sometimes it's taken too far. There's occasionally this slightly distasteful sense that most of humankind are born dull and die dull, incapable of any sort of enlightenment or true consciousness. A quote: "[...] there are people who are definitely diseased, broken machines with whom nothing can be done. And such people are in the majority". Lovely, right? Also, it's somewhat suspicious that Ouspensky and Gurdjieff dedicate so much space to why you can't possibly attain freedom unless you become part of a group and obey a single leader unconditionally and unquestioningly.
This is inevitably Ouspensky's own interpretation of Gurdjieff's teachings, so although most of it is framed as direct quotation, I suspect he's included a lot of his own views just as Plato made Socrates a character in his own dialogues. Although this book was endorsed by Gurdjieff, it seems odd that the system insists on understanding being difficult to attain and then Ouspensky goes and puts large swathes of it in an easily digestible, 350-page novel. It stands in great contrast to Gurdjieff's own Beelzebub's Tales.
Having said all that, some of the ideas in this book are brilliant, like the concept of remembering oneself. Gurdjieff's talks about attaining true consciousness reminds me of David Foster Wallace's famous speech 'This is Water'. Some of the better ideas here also remind me of Steppenwolf. Like Hesse, Gurdjieff sees man as a plurality, and the singular 'I' as an illusion. There's also a deeply insightful discussion of the function of symbolism in art and esoteric systems near the end of the book. Ouspensky writes about how symbols are used as containers for meaning that can't be expressed through ordinary language. He also writes that approaching them with specific pre-conceived notions about their meaning in a real-world context only leads to a kind of confirmation bias and distorts or distracts from the essential meaning of the symbol.
beautyistruth's review against another edition
5.0
This book is a good introduction to Gurdjieff's teachings, presented in a clear and understandable way by the author, who was a student of Gurdjieff himself from 1915 to 1924. Interspersed with this are some interesting personal observations of how Gurdjieff conducted his practice and any special effects of the teachings that the student Ouspensky experienced (which is very little). Ouspensky appears at first attractively somewhat on the side of scepticism rather than blind faith, and seems honest, dutifully focused on understanding and practicing the teachings. However, I get the feeling that he came to be under the spell of Gurdjieff and perhaps lacked much ability to step outside of the work to question the bigger picture and the personal motivations of the master, for I sense that there are omissions.
As for Gurdjieff's Fourth Way, while I have sympathy for the spiritual seeking of something further, not too unlike religion, the teachings are vague, fantastic, contradictory, beguiling, and unlikely to be any more positive than many 'unbelievers' or non-practitioners in practice. All in all, it seems likely to me that Gurdjieff was a charismatic charlatan, but this is an interesting look into an alternative worldview set with a backdrop of war and revolution.
As for Gurdjieff's Fourth Way, while I have sympathy for the spiritual seeking of something further, not too unlike religion, the teachings are vague, fantastic, contradictory, beguiling, and unlikely to be any more positive than many 'unbelievers' or non-practitioners in practice. All in all, it seems likely to me that Gurdjieff was a charismatic charlatan, but this is an interesting look into an alternative worldview set with a backdrop of war and revolution.
arilohr's review against another edition
5.0
Wow. I'm still sorting out all my thoughts but wow. This is the second Gurdjieff book I've read, and I'm just absolutely enthralled with these teachings. I wish I could write something more substantive but just wow.
virtualmima's review against another edition
1.75
If you take all of neoplatonism, Western occult mysticism, tarot, astrology, alchemy, pseudoscience, cliche "wisdom" we've all heard before, and Christianity, but instead of throwing it all in the trash where it belongs you mix it all together to feed to some random loony wandering the streets in the mid 20th century this is what you'll get. Though it claims to be influenced by Eastern thought this is strictly a product of Western superstition, and anything resembling the East is so heavily distorted through the Western lens that you may as well call it European. As with most quackery it loves to categorize things and place numbers on everything. Books like these attract the uneducated because they think it's esoteric and mystical, and it makes them feel like they're in on a secret that allows them to finally feel intellectually superior to everyone else just for being acquainted with it. They don't care anything about how true it is because of the personal value it brings to them. If you confront them on any of it they will get defensive because the truth threatens their self-image and social standing. They'll get even more dogmatic because of the humility and effort required to admit that they are wrong and have to start over from scratch.
Believing in falsehoods doesn't bother most people as long as it allows them to keep their social equilibrium. Only when such beliefs disrupt this social equilibrium as others begin to educate themselves will people change what they believe. Rarely does anyone believe in anything because they genuinely think that it is true. They construct their beliefs to fit the persona they want to impress upon others. If coming off as mysterious and unique serves someone well in living the life they want to live, they will be attracted to ideas and beliefs that seem "mystical" and "esoteric" to them, or better yet, to other people. People consciously choose what to believe and forget what they want to forget. Those who actually care about the truth don't really believe in anything, mostly they just disbelieve things. Remember that the next time you're in an argument with someone. It will never go anywhere because it is almost always a battle between the validity of your persona against theirs, not a battle for truth. There's no reason to fight fair in a situation like that.
There is value to the words of loonies, only in that their incorrect way of thinking can sometimes shine a light on something otherwise difficult to discover. Those who think properly often get stuck inside of the box and cannot consider what they have not encountered. It is a mistake for the educated only to pay attention to other educated people. Much is lost by not combing through these sorts of books for little morsels of truth camouflaged underneath chapters full of useless garbage. In general the top scientists and thinkers of the world should make a practice of thinking about everything incorrectly in addition to thinking correctly about things. You can't solve a puzzle by being fully lucid of every move you make. No subject is fully explored when you have only discovered all that is right about it. You also have to learn all that is wrong about it, and experiment with ways to solve your puzzles incorrectly. This allows you to illuminate other pathways to aid you in finishing the picture when you've reached a dead-end with your own proper logic. But if an uneducated person reads this they are in danger of allowing themselves to be corrupted by it by using it as a way to construct a world of false beliefs to distort their perception of themselves and the world in a way that makes them personally happy.
I've combed this book for ideas worth consideration. None of them were new to me but they could be new to you.
"A universal language is possible, only people will never invent it."
There could be truth in this statement and to an extent even what follows it, if you recognize how the statement applies to itself. The languages we do have, especially European languages, are insufficient in many ways, most especially when you want to express to someone an idea that they are not yet familiar with and do not have the internal logic structure necessary to understand it with. There are issues in both encoding and decoding of information communicated. People find themselves frequently in situations where they are arguing with someone else only to find out that they'd been in agreement all along. Or they use the same words as someone else only to realize that person is expressing something entirely different than they are. When bringing this up to the other person, they often find it difficult to understand why you might think you'd been misunderstanding each other all along. But most of the time when this happens people don't recognize it. The messy and complicated structure of language also allows people to rationalize contradictions in their own ideas, thoughts, feelings, and actions.
Think of language as a bureaucracy. In order to get through to someone more deeply than basic transactional communication, you have to navigate their mind as you would an insurance company. Bureaucrats don't want to change their system and even if they want to they don't know how to. Most people are that way about their own routines and functions as well. Even if you show them where they are wrong they'll mislead you into thinking they'll fix it and then forget all about it. If you want to change the system you have to put it into a state of dissonance, so that it cannot find its way back to that same order it once had. But if you don't act quickly and cleverly enough it will find its way back to something similar enough or something worse.
But in order to encode information for clear communication it's also necessary to be able to navigate the bureaucracy of your own mind. You too are unable to be fully lucid of all aspects of your mind at once. You can only see through one window at a time. You will forget important words, even simple words, that are essential for expressing your thoughts. As you have no control over the person you are talking to, you also have no say in whether or not they truly care to put effort into understanding you. Even when you command authority, intrigue, and attention to the point that everyone does try their best to understand you, you're still not likely to be understood by most if what you're saying is foreign enough to them. No amount of words will suffice if you are not fully lucid of all the possible misinterpretations that may occur, many of which may never occur to you. Your audience may nod in agreement, all of them agreeing on something different. You'll also have to repeat many things for emphasis because sometimes people will dose off for a moment and miss something essential to your point. Even in rooms full of highly intelligent individuals linguistic issues are frequently a problem. In addition to not finding the right word, not arranging your words perfectly, not bringing enough attention to some things, and forgetting the abstraction of the idea you are expressing that the words only exist to describe, there are dozens of other issues you can have in navigating your own mind that are cumbersome and near impossible to avoid in most contexts, mostly due to the sloppy and primitive structure of our languages.
If the ideal language were to be created by a group of extraordinarily intelligent linguists, psychologists, philosophers, sociologists, feminists, computer scientists, artists, and historians their language would be very different from any other language existing today. More information would be communicated with less words and less effort. If it is even possible to create a good language, very few people would actually make the effort of learning it. Scholars and hobbyists aside, the majority of people learn a new language out of necessity. Spreading the perfect language would be just as difficult as creating it. But that doesn't mean it's not worth a try. At the very least we could improve our own.
But this idea would be giving too much credit to the author of the book, who likely was only experiencing trouble in persuading others of his ideas, rather than having actual linguistic difficulty, and decided to blame the language instead of blaming his lack of comprehension of his own ideas. There may have been some of that too, but mostly within himself unnoticed, since his idea are so messy that one can guess that his mind is riddled with linguistic confusion that allows him to mislead himself with his own illogic.
There are other moments of genuine value here, such as the mention of consciousness of the "I" and remembering oneself, and how Western science avoids confronting subjectivity. You can find most of the valuable ideas here better described in other texts but it's not often emphasized and usually easy to miss. I don't think it's worth mentioning the majority of his incorrect, stupid ideas such as what he wrote about octaves and his superstitious obsession with the numbers three and seven. Western music theory is way inferior to music theory from other parts of the world like India anyway. Replace any of his numbers with infinity and you'll be a little closer to the truth.
His discussion of different states of consciousness, simplistic as it is, is also worth attention. But people will inevitably misinterpret it according to their own worldview, misidentifying themselves as someone who possesses both self-consciousness and objective consciousness when they have neither. With all these sleeping people nowadays accusing others of being sleeping people it's clear that no one has the self-awareness to know what state of consciousness they are at. When you're asleep you don't know that you're asleep until you wake up and see that your dreams didn't make any sense. The same goes for when you achieve self-consciousness or objective consciousness and look at your own previous state. But that feeling can happen at any time within your own dream as well. When you are dreaming and suddenly your dream takes a new turn, showing you that everything you previously perceived was a misinterpretation of something else, that doesn't mean you are not still asleep. You only reached a plot twist and your dream changed course, but you are still sleeping.
It's also worthy to note that we are limited to Ouspensky's naive interpretation of someone else's words. Especially since Gurdjieff's ideas on linguistics point to his inability to express himself to others and be understood. Perhaps what made him so aware of the fleeting nature of consciousness was in recognizing it in himself and how it impaired his ability to organize his own thoughts well enough to recognize the dogmas and contradictions that soil his own messy ideology. Stumbling upon this idea doesn't require a great deal of intelligence or self-awareness, as it is only the first step to either. It's as if he made it to that realization and instead of using it for himself he continued to use the machine-man logic to speculate about what a person would realize if they did make it past that first step. Much of the book is valuable but you need a strong, critical mind to filter out the junk. Chapter 9 is complete rubbish all the way through. Chapter 8 for the most part is quite good. In general his method is almost correct, even if his theories are usually false. I often get the feeling that he can visualize truths that he isn't capable of comprehending, so his verbal expressions of these truths become distorted through medieval nonsense. Don't take anything from the book too literally, he's obviously not well-rounded enough in his education to know how to express himself in a way that isn't misleading. In the end he becomes the very cult leader he criticizes.
Believing in falsehoods doesn't bother most people as long as it allows them to keep their social equilibrium. Only when such beliefs disrupt this social equilibrium as others begin to educate themselves will people change what they believe. Rarely does anyone believe in anything because they genuinely think that it is true. They construct their beliefs to fit the persona they want to impress upon others. If coming off as mysterious and unique serves someone well in living the life they want to live, they will be attracted to ideas and beliefs that seem "mystical" and "esoteric" to them, or better yet, to other people. People consciously choose what to believe and forget what they want to forget. Those who actually care about the truth don't really believe in anything, mostly they just disbelieve things. Remember that the next time you're in an argument with someone. It will never go anywhere because it is almost always a battle between the validity of your persona against theirs, not a battle for truth. There's no reason to fight fair in a situation like that.
There is value to the words of loonies, only in that their incorrect way of thinking can sometimes shine a light on something otherwise difficult to discover. Those who think properly often get stuck inside of the box and cannot consider what they have not encountered. It is a mistake for the educated only to pay attention to other educated people. Much is lost by not combing through these sorts of books for little morsels of truth camouflaged underneath chapters full of useless garbage. In general the top scientists and thinkers of the world should make a practice of thinking about everything incorrectly in addition to thinking correctly about things. You can't solve a puzzle by being fully lucid of every move you make. No subject is fully explored when you have only discovered all that is right about it. You also have to learn all that is wrong about it, and experiment with ways to solve your puzzles incorrectly. This allows you to illuminate other pathways to aid you in finishing the picture when you've reached a dead-end with your own proper logic. But if an uneducated person reads this they are in danger of allowing themselves to be corrupted by it by using it as a way to construct a world of false beliefs to distort their perception of themselves and the world in a way that makes them personally happy.
I've combed this book for ideas worth consideration. None of them were new to me but they could be new to you.
"A universal language is possible, only people will never invent it."
There could be truth in this statement and to an extent even what follows it, if you recognize how the statement applies to itself. The languages we do have, especially European languages, are insufficient in many ways, most especially when you want to express to someone an idea that they are not yet familiar with and do not have the internal logic structure necessary to understand it with. There are issues in both encoding and decoding of information communicated. People find themselves frequently in situations where they are arguing with someone else only to find out that they'd been in agreement all along. Or they use the same words as someone else only to realize that person is expressing something entirely different than they are. When bringing this up to the other person, they often find it difficult to understand why you might think you'd been misunderstanding each other all along. But most of the time when this happens people don't recognize it. The messy and complicated structure of language also allows people to rationalize contradictions in their own ideas, thoughts, feelings, and actions.
Think of language as a bureaucracy. In order to get through to someone more deeply than basic transactional communication, you have to navigate their mind as you would an insurance company. Bureaucrats don't want to change their system and even if they want to they don't know how to. Most people are that way about their own routines and functions as well. Even if you show them where they are wrong they'll mislead you into thinking they'll fix it and then forget all about it. If you want to change the system you have to put it into a state of dissonance, so that it cannot find its way back to that same order it once had. But if you don't act quickly and cleverly enough it will find its way back to something similar enough or something worse.
But in order to encode information for clear communication it's also necessary to be able to navigate the bureaucracy of your own mind. You too are unable to be fully lucid of all aspects of your mind at once. You can only see through one window at a time. You will forget important words, even simple words, that are essential for expressing your thoughts. As you have no control over the person you are talking to, you also have no say in whether or not they truly care to put effort into understanding you. Even when you command authority, intrigue, and attention to the point that everyone does try their best to understand you, you're still not likely to be understood by most if what you're saying is foreign enough to them. No amount of words will suffice if you are not fully lucid of all the possible misinterpretations that may occur, many of which may never occur to you. Your audience may nod in agreement, all of them agreeing on something different. You'll also have to repeat many things for emphasis because sometimes people will dose off for a moment and miss something essential to your point. Even in rooms full of highly intelligent individuals linguistic issues are frequently a problem. In addition to not finding the right word, not arranging your words perfectly, not bringing enough attention to some things, and forgetting the abstraction of the idea you are expressing that the words only exist to describe, there are dozens of other issues you can have in navigating your own mind that are cumbersome and near impossible to avoid in most contexts, mostly due to the sloppy and primitive structure of our languages.
If the ideal language were to be created by a group of extraordinarily intelligent linguists, psychologists, philosophers, sociologists, feminists, computer scientists, artists, and historians their language would be very different from any other language existing today. More information would be communicated with less words and less effort. If it is even possible to create a good language, very few people would actually make the effort of learning it. Scholars and hobbyists aside, the majority of people learn a new language out of necessity. Spreading the perfect language would be just as difficult as creating it. But that doesn't mean it's not worth a try. At the very least we could improve our own.
But this idea would be giving too much credit to the author of the book, who likely was only experiencing trouble in persuading others of his ideas, rather than having actual linguistic difficulty, and decided to blame the language instead of blaming his lack of comprehension of his own ideas. There may have been some of that too, but mostly within himself unnoticed, since his idea are so messy that one can guess that his mind is riddled with linguistic confusion that allows him to mislead himself with his own illogic.
There are other moments of genuine value here, such as the mention of consciousness of the "I" and remembering oneself, and how Western science avoids confronting subjectivity. You can find most of the valuable ideas here better described in other texts but it's not often emphasized and usually easy to miss. I don't think it's worth mentioning the majority of his incorrect, stupid ideas such as what he wrote about octaves and his superstitious obsession with the numbers three and seven. Western music theory is way inferior to music theory from other parts of the world like India anyway. Replace any of his numbers with infinity and you'll be a little closer to the truth.
His discussion of different states of consciousness, simplistic as it is, is also worth attention. But people will inevitably misinterpret it according to their own worldview, misidentifying themselves as someone who possesses both self-consciousness and objective consciousness when they have neither. With all these sleeping people nowadays accusing others of being sleeping people it's clear that no one has the self-awareness to know what state of consciousness they are at. When you're asleep you don't know that you're asleep until you wake up and see that your dreams didn't make any sense. The same goes for when you achieve self-consciousness or objective consciousness and look at your own previous state. But that feeling can happen at any time within your own dream as well. When you are dreaming and suddenly your dream takes a new turn, showing you that everything you previously perceived was a misinterpretation of something else, that doesn't mean you are not still asleep. You only reached a plot twist and your dream changed course, but you are still sleeping.
It's also worthy to note that we are limited to Ouspensky's naive interpretation of someone else's words. Especially since Gurdjieff's ideas on linguistics point to his inability to express himself to others and be understood. Perhaps what made him so aware of the fleeting nature of consciousness was in recognizing it in himself and how it impaired his ability to organize his own thoughts well enough to recognize the dogmas and contradictions that soil his own messy ideology. Stumbling upon this idea doesn't require a great deal of intelligence or self-awareness, as it is only the first step to either. It's as if he made it to that realization and instead of using it for himself he continued to use the machine-man logic to speculate about what a person would realize if they did make it past that first step. Much of the book is valuable but you need a strong, critical mind to filter out the junk. Chapter 9 is complete rubbish all the way through. Chapter 8 for the most part is quite good. In general his method is almost correct, even if his theories are usually false. I often get the feeling that he can visualize truths that he isn't capable of comprehending, so his verbal expressions of these truths become distorted through medieval nonsense. Don't take anything from the book too literally, he's obviously not well-rounded enough in his education to know how to express himself in a way that isn't misleading. In the end he becomes the very cult leader he criticizes.
shinymensch's review against another edition
1.0
This book either leaves one with the impression that it is a treasure to be read over and over or a book that you should just sell back. I am of the later. Ouspensky's recollections to me seem to be just as vague as he says his understanding is of Gurdjieff's teachings. I don't mean to demean the book, it was just not for me. I also think that you do not lay out pearl's for just anyone to walk by and pick up. You write a book like this for the public. The real treasure's if you have them, are reserved for your "inner" students.
jckl's review against another edition
more a book about a conman then anything else. couldn't get through it
2000ace's review against another edition
5.0
This book is a treasure trove for anyone wishing to know more about the Gurdjieff work. My copy of it is littered with underlined sentences, enneagrams, scribbled notes on will, being and function, and notes on octaves and self-observation. Is this an easy read? Easier than Gurdjieff, certainly, but so jam-packed with useful information, that it needs to be read over the course weeks, or even months. In these pages you will learn the way of the fakir, the monk, and the yogi, and, with a little luck, something about your own impermanent "I."
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