Customer Reviews

Taking With the Left Hand: Enneagram Craze, People of the Bookmark, & The Mouravieff "Phenomenon"

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Let me start by saying I'm not involved with any 4th Way group or part of the Ennegram craze.

Mr. Patterson has dared to take on some of the spiritual cannibals that have stolen and distorted the teachings of G.I. Gurdjieff. Though this book is guaranteed to infuriate followers of Palmer, Ichazo, Burton's cultists, Amiss etc.

First he takes on the Ennegram popularizes like Ichazo, Naranjo and the voluminous Helen Palmer who dared to claim instruction by a noted 4th Way teacher and turned out to never have met the man. Patterson also exposes her as a shallow new-age type of thinker with a penchant for self-promotion through her own words.
She has no real lineage nor even formal instruction in the 4th way nor any real tradition for that matter. Of course the shadowy showman Ichazo(much like Castenada) is put in for good measure. He systematically goes about deconstructing Ichazo premises on the ennegram and his mythical and oft changing spiritual pedigree.

Patterson then goes after The Fellowship of Friends or people of the Bookmark(as known here in Calif - as his followers used to stuff burton's calling cards in 4th Way books.) A 4th way cult based on Burton's strong persona. Patterson show's Burton to be a posuer and con-artist without real instruction or lineage. Burton main claim to fame is his ability to milk money out of followers and make himself wealthy. F of F is also a considered a outright cult. Check out Steve Hassans web site for info.

Another target is Robin Amiss(...) and his long dead predecessor Boris Mouravieff who concocted the notion that Gurdjieff's teachings were fundamentally derived from Eastern Christianity. Amiss is shown to be a clever fabricator of facts in his book "A Different Christianity" and distorter of truths. Patterson does a fine job exposing Mouravieff motivations for doing what he did.

Amiss is taken to task in a systematic manner in which he compared G's teachings to Eastern Orthodox material. Replete with references he demolishes Amiss's claims. BTW all anyone needs to do is get a copy of O's "In Search of the Mircaluous" a copy of the Philokalia or Theophans works and compare them. You'l see that there is no place for a householder in serious myticism. It's for monks only. St. Theophan was a hermit and monk - hardly someone who understood the way of the householder.
Also there is no mention of 'self-observation' or 'self-remembering'. Anyone whose ever practiced the Jesus Prayer and done any sort of 'self-observation' knows they are not the same.
Amiss's hidden teachers are also shown to be fabrications without reality.

You'll also learn how Mouravieff played a in the split between Ouspensky and G. And how he conned O into delaying publication of "Tales of the Miraculous"

Overall a fine book demonstrating how self-taught self-promoters can [copy] teachings and convince people they have the real thing. So much so that their followers can longer know the real deal from the fake. If Patterson comes off shrill or a purist perhaps it's because so many people have stolen from G and peddled garbage under his name.

Overall a fine book on that belongs estoricist reader's bookshelf.

First, I hope you read Jim Luscombe's fine review - I can't improve on what he wrote. He didn't specifically mention the enneagram people, some of whom are innocently misled by the distortions and lies of Oscar Ichazo and his people. I have friends who were genuinely surprised when I revealed to them that the enneagram was never created specifically for the purpose of use with the psychology of types. There is obviously a great deal of damage done by the unscrupulous people behind these movements, and Patterson's book does a vital service by bringing this all out in the light. Many times I have referenced and recommended this book in situations where people were in the dark about one or more of these movements. I encourage you not only to read this book, but to promote it and to promote its cause.

Taking With the Left Hand

I almost didn't buy this book because, although I am interested in learning more about the esoteric teaching of the Fourth Way, I was not particularly interested in reading about the enneagram craze, Robert Burton (Fellowship of Friends) or Boris Mouravieff. I didn't know who Mouravieff was, I felt that Burton had already been effectively discredited and the exploitation of the enneagram was one more sad story about our greedy culture that I didn't want to read.

However, I am glad that I did read Taking With the Left Hand for a number of reasons. First, it confirmed and gave me a deeper understanding of some things that I already knew. In our society so many people want the quick lesson for transformation so that they can begin 'teaching' for either power or money or both. The greed and arrogance of some people mixes with the suggestibility of others for disastrous results.

Secondly, I am glad because through these three examples Patterson discusses the broader issues of esotericism. He shows how esoteric "ideas and practices are powerful in themselves, and when introduced into secular life they will necessarily be taken over by the ego and used for its own glorification and the domination of others." One important tenet that the enneagrammers have missed is that "through long and keen observation of his recurring individual manifestation" each person must come to his psychological fixation by himself. He cannot buy it at a one-day workshop.

Patterson also explains some important Fourth Way concepts - which was my main interest in reading this book. In his critique of Burton's book Self-Remembering, Patterson displays a deep understanding of the practice that can only come from receiving the teaching through a direct transmission from his own teacher. It is very obvious that Burton does not have that understanding because he never submitted himself to the discipline and training received through an authentic teacher.

The section on Mouravieff was filled with much information about the origin of the Fourth Way teaching.

So don't pass this book by - there is a lot more in it than you might think.

real rating 3 1/2 - for Burton students a 5!

I think Patterson has done the 4th way world both a great service and at the same time perpetuated a serius misunderstanding with this book. First the good:

Burton and his bogus 4th Way school have long been in need of a serious de-bunking. It was/is a sham school with undoubtedly a lot of serious students making the best of a bad situation [my brother in law was one for quite a few years] They have none of the movement or meditative practices handed down by any real 4th way groups and have substituted the real goods w/ watered down and poorly digested Ouspensky. And a playing card typology thrown in for good measure!

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As regards the Enneagram material. My first real experience w/ it was in an obscure 4th way school in St. Pete Fl. in the mid-80's.

The Teacher there had observed that our False Personality really only had 9 pairs of reactions. And that our type was better seen through the matrix of the law of 7 [real personality], the laws of 4 and 5 [being] and the Law of 3 [essence]. The typology successfully integrated Ayurvedic Doshas [ Law of 3], Western 4 Element, Chinese 5 Elements and Gurdjieff's 7 Centers.

It was an extremely creative and practical synthesis that is as equally verifiable as anything else in the world of 4th way Psychology. I mention all this only as a background for where the enneagram typologies go wrong, and that Patterson misses this much more [imo] crucial point.

The realtionships of the 9 types to the Centers/Stories is essentially 'off by one'.

The most glaring case is that point 8 [or the si note/ higher intellectual center] is seen as physical, not supramental. This distorts much of the underlying basis of the profile.

Several others points have to a lesser degree been divorced from their real manifestations in G's Centers. The Do note/Sex energy types depicted are replaced w/ a fuzzy mixture of attributions in point 9.

By failing to see the relationship to the centers the enneagram types are in some cases weakened, in others something of a mess.

Patterson is either unaware of all this or more concerned w/ the politics and lineages of Ichazo, Naranjo, Palmer and Co.

That being said several of the types are to my mind presented very accurately despite being divorced from their relationships to the centers and the essence types of Physical, Psychological and Supramental. And I am sure thousands of people have a much better understanding of themselves as a result. Again Patterson seems only to see negatives.

Which points to a curious division in the work. Those who want to keep the 'real teachings' 1/2 hidden, and those like Bennett who spent much their lives trying to spread the ideas publicaly and openly. If Gurdjieff schools w/ an accurate typology had published their information first, the enneagram material out there might be far less mixed in it's value.

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As regards the Amiss/Orthodox 4th way connection; I am convinced that Mouravieff understood neither Orthodoxy or the 4thway well.

Their are relationships and discords there and they are worthy of serious study. But while Amiss and Mouravieff are determined to whitewash anything that contradicts their theories. So what one gets from 'Gnosis' vols 1-3 is neither fish nor fowl.

Patterson on the other hand seems, for all his gift as a writer and historical journalist to have taken G's once mentioned line of The 4th way being "independent of all other traditions and hitherto unknown", as a real line of the gospel. I think that saying needs to be put in the context of who he was talking to [in Russia] at the time. Mostly a lot of people who had investigated Theosophy {A true mish-mash likely to lead anyone following it to a cul-de-sac of the lower astral and fully caught by one's own personality}. G. was exaggerating [as he was want to do] to draw a line in the sand for his pupils - between all they had studied before and what he was teaching. As he said later " not necessary when speaking to be exact, just indicate the essence".

Henri Tracol I think is on the right track to evaluating the 4th ways relationship to the Traditional paths saying: "I would like to get rid of this idea that G's teaching sets itself apart from, or in opposition to traditional teachings. In fact he refers to what he calls the 4th way and the 4th way exists in Christianity, in Hinduism, in Islam as well as any other traditional way, Taoist or other which has as its aim to awaken man to the conciousness of his real destiny." [from 'the taste for things which are true' p.93].

One reviewer noted here that: "Amiss is taken to task in a systematic manner in which he compared G's teachings to Eastern Orthodox material. Replete with references he demolishes Amiss's claims. BTW all anyone needs to do is get a copy of O's "In Search of the Mircaluous" a copy of the Philokalia or Theophans works and compare them. You'l see that there is no place for a householder in serious myticism. It's for monks only. St. Theophan was a hermit and monk - hardly someone who understood the way of the householder."

I beg to differ on several points, and while my treatment will take a bit to go through I believe it answers many of the fundamental points Patterson confuses. I use St. Theophan as my sole reference for Orthodoxy only becase as I hope to show he was a primary source for G's worldview. Essentially the framework from which everything would be built and modified from.

Firstly, before St. Theophan became a recluse he was a Bishop, and one intimately concerned w/ the prayer life of his flock [see his brilliant 'the path of prayer' written specifically for lay people]. He was far from a monastic in a cave w/ no clue as to how Orthodox spiritual practices were to be practiced by layman.

St. Theophan's "The Spiritual Life" [perhaps his most accessible and enduring original work] was written to a 16 year old girl who was simply a pious 'layperson'. Orthodox Christianity and the Prayer of the Heart are not for monastics only. This is nonsense. St. Theophan begins in his first letter with," We will not concern ourselves with abstractions or draw up plans or theories; instead our conversation will be on life's everyday occurrences." [Spiritual Life p. 35]

Of course that the deeper levels and teaching of Orthodox spiritual practices has flowered most obviously within monastic life is hardly suprising, much of G's teachings came from monastaries [Buddhist, Sufi, Orthodox Christian and Sarmoung] as well!

I am convinced G. himself read St. Theophan's Spiritual Life as a youth, [he states in his 'Bio' 'Meetings w/ Remarkable Men' something to the effect that he 'studied all the current scientific, religious and psychological books of his day. In Kars, going to a Russian Orthodox School, St. Theophan would have been the bestselling spiritual author around.

Just a few quotes from 'the Spiritual Life [and how to be attuned to it]' should, I think convince all but the most unconvincable that G. not only read St. Theophan but... took it very deeply to heart and became a cornerstone of his world view. And indeed a stepping stone to his burning question.

from p. 44

"Outwardly behave like everyone else, but inwardly guard your heaert from sympathy and attractions" this finds it's echo's in G's , "Outwardly it must be what is best for her and me...internally one should free from considering" [views from the real world]

Again St. Theophan:

Human Life is complex and multi-faceted It has physical, mental and spiritual aspects, Each aspects has it's powers, needs and modes and the exercise and satisfaction of them. But when only all of our powers are in motion and all of our are satisfied does a man live. But when only small number of his powers are in motion...this life is not life. [p. 38 ibid.]

This obviously echoes a cornerstone of the 4th way. Even down to calling one centered life 'not life'.

I wil give one last example of what I belive to be St. Theophans direct and profound impression on G. that I alluded to above.

on page 67 we read from the Recluse: 'For example we know what man is from observations of him, generalizations about him and conclusions we have made. Not being content with this we come up with the question, " What is the significance of man in the sum of creation?" In trying to discover this, one person decides man is the head and crown of creation...' sound familiar?

See again G. in Views p. 42. The parallels are beyond coincidence imo.

All this is to say, that what is unique to G. probably comes from the Sarmoung and his application of Hypnosis on many 'guinea pigs' curing them of their addictions in as a cover for his researches. The rest is more or less common esoteric currency of every tradition to be found from Greece to China. Organized in a unique way albeit, but other than the sacred laws and specific terminology it is a cut and paste job of a very high and special order.

St. Theophan does the same thing, but relying on Orthodox sources almost exclusively. Patterson misses almost all of this in his quest to debunk Amiss. Where Amiss and his teacher go astray is taking G's 'esoteric Chritianity' too seriously [in the same way Patterson has w/ the uniqueness of the 4th way].

The 4th way [unfortunately to my mind] parts company with Traditional Christianity on several points:

The end of the World. No 4th wayers seem willing to take much of the Book of Revelation seriously, all of the 'practicing' Orthodox Christians I have met do. Despite the ever more swiftly-descending octave humanity is in, and despite the many prophecies that have already been fulfilled. Anti-Christ is simply not on the 4th way radar.

G. accepts Islam as being divinely inspired. Orthodox see it as being satanically inspired. It is the only major tradition to come into being AFTER Christianity. G. was a sort of 'proto-ecumenist'.

Christ in the gospels specifically instituted baptism of 'every living creature'. This is understood as a ritual that restores the connection of our fallen spirit with the Holy Spirit.

This is hardly seen as essential in the 4th way.

Their are a few other major points, such as what happens to the soul after death, and some of G's students [Bennett in particualr] have gone some way to reconciling the discrepancies there.

In general though while the goals are similar, many of the techniques are similar, the main difference [as it is w/ all of the major traditions] is what the saints and teachers see in heaven and how they relate these differences to the world. This is where no amount of massaging and esoteric 'explanations' can hide the major differences. Either Islam or Christianity has a record of a bogus Archangel Gabriel fooling someone about Christ's divinity.

No Christian has seen Muhammed in Heaven, No Buddhist has seen Christ. They are it seems going to a different a 'heaven'. They are experiencing a different God, with often contradictory revelations.

Patterson again is focused on the intrigue between Ouspensky, Mouravieff and Amiss. And Amiss poor grasp of both Orthodoxy and the 4th way.

If this review seems excessively long, I can only agree, but hopefully it will be of some real use to someone and dispel a bit of the fog created around the relationship of the Enneagram and G. and far more importantly of Orthodox Christianity and Gurdjieff.

Taking with the Left Hand resonated for me because I was in a faux-Gurdjieff group for eleven years and Patterson's description of People of the Bookmark strongly reminded me of that experience.

There are many parallels. Burton was not in the line of transmission from Gurdjieff and he declared himself to be man number seven. My teacher, who was also self-taught, claimed that his understanding was beyond that of Lord Pentland, who had been appointed by Mr. Gurdjieff to lead the work in America. He made light of him and his groups at the Gurdjieff Institute.

Burton added a pagan twist to the Work by introducing gods that could supposedly pace his students though nine lifetimes of self-remembering. He also claimed that each person who enters the way would become immortal. My teacher added Freudian psychology as a way to reach the subconscious, which he said would make it easier for us to work on ourselves. I am thankful that he did not claim that we would all become immortal if we followed him.

I have read Burton's "Self-Remembering" and I found it such a hodge-podge, and so at odds with what I had understood from In Search of the Miraculous, that I removed the book from my house so that it would not be next to books by Gurdjieff, Ouspensky, Orage, Bennett and others whose work I respect. Patterson's analysis of what Gurdjieff and Ouspensky mean by self-remembering-and his comparisons to Burton's ideas-has been a truly helpful reminder for me.

Anyone interested in the teachings of G.I. Gurdjieff should read this book. The author documents three instances of the abuse and appropriation of the teachings of Gurdjieff. As one who got involved briefly with the Fellowship of Friends, there was much I learned; indeed I felt vindicated in my decision of many years ago to not stick around with that bunch. While the author gets slightly catty at times (as he himself stresses - this is essentially a negative work), it is a tale worth telling, and I am grateful the author took the trouble to write the book. Every claim he makes is well documented in a wonderful, annotated set of references. The Appendices alone are worth the price of the book. Read this book if you care about Gurdjieff.

I would highly recommend reading Taking with the Left Hand (TWLH) for anyone interested in the Gurdjieff Teaching. TWLH has filled a void in the field of Gurdjieff Studies-one that even the scholars didn't suspect existed. Mr. Patterson's book not only offers a great service to the serious Fourth Way seeker but it has created a niche for itself by addressing an area that few are qualified to approach. The more exposure and experience one has had to the ideas of the Fourth Way and the organizations which supposedly transmit this teaching, the greater the potential value of this book.

As a former member of Mr. Burton's faux Fourth Way group, I suddenly understood, while reading TWLH, why Mr. Gurdjieff felt the need to protect the teaching and only revealed the tenets of his teaching in periodic increments to selected students. Was not Mr. Gurdjieff's Beelzebub and his intentional difficult writing style an attempt to prevent the very phenomena which arose once his ideas fell into the public domain? Does not Mr. Gurdjieff use the phrase, "bury the bone?" Mr. Patterson's research and findings reveal the necessity and wisdom of Mr. Gurdjieff's methods.

Perhaps the scope of Mr. Patterson's book is too narrow. This book is only a starting point which identifies the problems of spiritual theft and the causes of deterioration of true teachings. Unresearched and untold are the numerous accounts of the once sincere and now disillusioned seekers whose fate it was to fall on unfertile soil. Yet Mr. Patterson's understanding of the teaching proves itself as he quotes Mr. Gurdjieff's position on the problem.

The very idea of esotericism, the idea of initiation reaches people in most cases through pseudo esoteric systems and schools, and if there were not these pseudo esoteric schools the vast majority of humanity would have no possibility whatever of hearing and learning of the existence of anything greater than life because the truth in its pure form would be inaccessible for them.

This is the kind of book which creates more questions. One might ask, what level of development or valuation for these ideas is necessary, before there is an awareness of the need and responsibility to maintain the purity of a teaching? Furthermore, the book encourages us to ask, why pseudo teachers of the Fourth Way failed to approach this subject themselves? Why they found no need to protect the teaching? Why they allowed themselves to mix Gurdjieff's Fourth Way with Philosophy, Mythology, and in Burton's case, Art.

The answer is all too clear and we have been forewarned by Gurdjieff himself. The knowledge and being of faux teachers is limited, superficial and they all too soon, run out of authentic material. Therefore, one might conclude, the illusion they perpetrate is maintained with the use of a kind of "Spiritual potpourri" out of which as Gurdjieff again warns us, "No Good will come from it."

What serious student of self-remembering and self-observation has not heard the voice of self-love and vanity which is all too eager to set oneself up as the teacher of the age? The ideas are very powerful and the suffering of life brings an ample supply of novice seekers with cash in hand.

In addition, after reading Mr. Patterson's TWLH there is the realization of how naïve we are when we set out on our spiritual quest. We lack discrimination. We have nothing with which compare our experience. With Mr. Paterson's book in hand, the reader may get a taste of the importance of studying with a teacher who is within the authentic line of the Fourth Way teaching. And, he may begin to understand why spiritual truths are by necessity esoteric.

Unfortunately we start this journey without map or guidebook. I would hope this book would prevent additional victims from falling into the hands if the ill prepared would be teachers.

Taking With The Left Hand, by William Patrick Patterson

During the late 1960's, a number people successfully presented themselves as teachers or "gurus" of the Gurdjieff "work." They themselves had not studied with Gurdjieff or anyone in the direct line of transmission of this teaching, but a number of newly published books had begun to appear and this material gave them an intellectual framework from which they could operate. Capitalizing on the vitality of Gurdjieff's teaching, and the new thirst for eastern spiritual ideas (but without having themselves received any proper training), these "faux" teachers propagated a faulty version of the teaching and stole some of its ideas to invent their own pseudo spiritual path. Unfortunately, they often developed a significant following of students, who mistakenly thought they were studying genuine material.

In Taking with the Left Hand, author William Patterson offers a detailed and clear account of these spiritual thefts and deceptions, focusing particularly on the misuse of the enneagram for explaining personality types, the "faux" teacher Robert Burton and the Fellowship of Friends, and the wholesale appropriation of Gurdjieff's teaching by one B. P. Mouravieff, who argued that it was the "esoteric" tradition of the Eastern Church.

The Enneagram, one of the principal symbols of the teaching and the "fundamental hieroglyph" of an ancient, universal language, was first introduced to the West by Gurdjieff in 1915, but was not widely known until after 1949 when P. D. Ouspensky's account of Gurdjieff's lectures, In Search of the Miraculous, was published. Among other things, the enneagram represents the action of certain laws which, Gurdjieff taught, govern the manifestations of real events in time. It can be understood only by someone trained in the practice of the Work, and only to the depth of the attention and effort he or she has made. In his Russian lectures, Gurdjieff used it to illustrate the transformation of different "foods" within the human body and their connection to spiritual development. After Ouspensky's book was published, the symbol was simplified and developed by Oscar Ichazo and Claudio Naranjo into a key for personality types, or "personality fixations" and their interactions. This naïve psychological application was quickly taken up and commercially exploited by Helen Palmer, and numerous others, whose books, tapes, and workshops became very fashionable in the eighties. None of these people ever acknowledged the origin of enneagram or tried to grapple with its deeper meaning.

While this was going on, Robert Burton was applying his entrepreneurial energies and his limited knowledge of the system in another way with even more commercial success. Taking his cue from his sometime teacher Alex Horn, a notorious untrained "faux-Gurdjieffian," he organized "Gurdjieff-Ouspensky Centres" in many large cities across America and Europe, offering a utopian vision of the work which was, in reality, a great pyramid scheme. Enormous amounts of money were taken from innocent seekers. One of his trademark devices was the use of bookmarks with contact numbers for potential students to call. His students would place these bookmarks in books on Gurdjieff and his
Work, sitting on the shelves of bookstores and libraries. This gave the impression that Burton's organization was somehow "official," legitimatized by the authors who often really were in the direct line of transmission from Gurdjieff.

Finally, the author examines the history of B. P. Mouravieff, an associate of Ouspensky, who actually helped him edit and translate his account of Gurdjieff's lectures in Moscow and Petrograd, In Search of the Miraculous. A Russian refugee living in Paris after the Russian revolution, he was often on Gurdjieff's periphery and showed much interest in the teaching. He attended some lectures and demonstrations, but he never studied with Gurdjieff, and he showed no understanding of the ideas. Yet at some point he became convinced that Gurdjieff had taken these ideas from Orthodox Christianity and in 1961 he published a three volume work called "Gnosis" to buttress this position. Here he took the ideas and teaching, as Ouspensky wrote about them, and presented them as the hidden esoteric tradition of the Eastern Orthodox Church. His opus never carried much weight. However, particularly among the Orthodox Christians, Patterson points out that if they had taken him seriously, they would have considered his work as heresy.

Mr. Patterson writes clearly and he convincingly demonstrates how these misappropriations and deceptions were performed. He provides copious notes and documents his arguments well. A student of Lord John Pentland, Patterson displays a depth of understanding rare in the literature of this tradition. This is a very unique and valuable account for anyone seriously interested in Gurdjieff.

Taking with the Left Hand describes three ways in which the teachings of G. I. Gurdjieff have been distorted and misused. Through a comparison between the words and actions of three different movements with the writings and teaching of Gurdjieff, Patterson shows clearly how the Fourth Way has not only been carelessly changed to suit the needs of its interpreters but even appropriated by false teachers. It is an important book for any person trying to find his way through the confusing and sometimes misleading world of self-transformation teachings.

"Taking with the Left Hand" is an important book on both the collective and individual levels. On the collective level it addresses three distortions of the Gurdjieff Work head on: the Ennegram Craze, People of the Bookmark, & the Mouravieff "Phenomenon." For serious students of the Gurdjieff Work there is the concern that misunderstandings and false ideas arise when the undiscerning seeker takes these misrepresentations to be the teaching that Gurdjieff brought. On the individual level William Patrick Patterson's book pointed out for me how easy it is for parts of oneself to be seduced by various temptations.

The Ennegram Craze illustrates what happens when an esoteric symbol, the ennegram, is taken out of context, leveled and poularized. Being told one's 'personality ennegram type' and thereby having a neatly described system that categorizes the person and the rest of their world leads only to imagination and a crystallization of a wrong foundation. When Richard Burton's book, "SelfRemembering" came out, I bought it not knowing that the author had taken ideas and mixed them with his own. After reading it, I realized that is was antithetical to the Work as I knew it. I was not really familiar with the work of Boris Mouravieff/Robin Amis until reading "Taking with the Left Hand." It may be comfortaing for some to attempt to connect the Gurdjieff Work with the early Christian church, but Mr. Patterson's point that the teaching Gurdjieff brought is completely self-supporting and not connected to other lines is one well worth pondering. This book helps to reveal and clarify many points concerning distortions of Gurdjieff's teaching which are important to understand. I recommend it highly.