In Search of the Miraculous: The Definitive Exploration of G. I. Gurdjieff's Mystical Thought and Universal View (Harvest Book)

Product Information

Few people are actually truly conscious, which is something like being fully aware of ourselves at all times, not being lulled into stupors by our lives. What Ann Hood finally discovered after the death of her father was the courage to accept what had come her way and an appreciation for the faith in miracles held by millions around the world.

Ouspensky painstakingly states these ideas while taking every opportunity to quote Gurdjieff’s dictum that the only way an individual can understand these cosmic laws is to observe them in himself, and this through the special forms of the work which are rapidly developing in the group of which Ouspensky is a member.I first read it more than 25 years ago, in college, and reread it recently and will be rereading it for years to come. Forse è colpa mia e sono troppo ignorante per capire questi insegnamenti, ma già il fatto che questo libro mi abbia fatto capire che è meglio non approfondire l'argomento, me lo fa apprezzare. 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.

and having been drawn by them into spending years in a Gurdjieff "school," and being familiar with the traditions on which the Gurdjieff approach was based, I take a lot of the "fourth way" material with a large grain of salt.I thought I would read about Hood's overcoming adversity and/or strengthening her faith through trial. Reading Medicine Quest begs the question from the concerned environmentalist and intelligent lay-person: once the biological treasures of the rain forest have been thorougly mined, and the knowledge of the medicine man completely tapped, what real committment will there be to saving and preserving endangered and undiscovered species and habitats? He learns some intriguing things but still ends up confused in the end, without the final answers he longed for.

Ho sempre sentito parlare di Gurdjieff e mi ero proposta di leggere prima o poi qualcosa su di lui e il suo insegnamento per cercare di capire come mai interessasse a tante persone. Plotkin highlights discoveries that are already producing stunning leads in the laboratory: painkillers from the skin of rainforest frogs, anticoagulants from leech saliva, and antitumor agents from snake venom. Her opinion piece in the Washington Post — “Age Makes the Miracles Easier to See” and her TED talk from a few years ago: “ 12 Truths…” both brought me to my knees. Parla spesso di leggi universali, di scuole antiche, ma non entra mai in dettagli con la scusa che chi non è pronto non potrebbe comunque capire.I had imagined this book would be a hard one to finish, but I actually raced through it and found it vastly interesting. It is thus par excellence Gurdjieff’s diagram of the organic unity of everything existing: the law of three forces, the law of seven, the processes of assimilating the three “foods,” the patterns governing the transmission of esoteric knowledge, and the structural dynamics of every living thing in nature, including the incomplete being, man, myself. Sometimes I agreed, sometimes disagreed, sometimes I learned something, sometimes I didn't understand at all, sometimes I felt angry, sometimes I tried to analyse it, then I skipped some pages, then there was something wise again, then when I understood I became frustrated, then I continued and tried to understand the enneagram, then I thought I did but I didn't, then I thought Ouspensky is just making stuff up, then I reminded myself that I don't have to understand everything but it's good that I got something valuable out of it.