The Teachers of Gurdjieff [Paperback]

Rafael Lefort (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1998

When The Teachers of Gurdjieff was first published some 25 years ago, it made a very considerable stir. George Gurdjieff was one of the most famous mystics before the war, a teaching master who had many fashionable and influential pupils. He had a striking appearance and manner of teaching, one that was to prove influential. The meaning of his teaching and the sources of it were a puzzle. How did he come by his knowledge? What was to become of it? These were questions that engaged many seekers.

Yet, with the rapidly changing focus of our era in all things, not least spiritual, this is in some real part a book of another time. From the time of Gurdjieff's operations to the early '70s, many in the West were discovering, for the first time, the older religious and spiritual traditions of the East. After his death, Gurdjieff's followers were running groups in "the fourth way"; travelers set out to India, Tibet, Japan, Turkey and other parts east to find their Buddhists, Tibetan Buddhists, Sonoran Shamen, and the rest. Schools began, seekers sought and found, sought again, found again.

Today, everything is available and exposed on the table, and anybody can connect with any technique at any time. And the possibilities are endless, highly intellectual, highly emotional, highly sensual. How many different forms of yoga, zen philosophy are there, and is a lifetime enough to find a proper combination, or is the answer closer at home.

This book offers, among the adventures of the search and the souks of Baghdad and Aleppo, striking and timeless advice to those interested in finding spirituality. Its appeal is far beyond that of one seeker in one era, but offers us information, today, on how to evaluate different forms of teaching, how to study, and even some tantalizing information on the role of Jesus.

Editorial Reviews

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

You are scrabbling about in the sand, attracted by pieces of mica to knit together and make a window, not realising that the sand itself is capable of being transformed into the purest glass.--From The Teachers of Gurdjieff

Copyright © 1966, 1998. Rafael Lefort. All rights reserved.

Product Details

• Paperback: 173 pages
• Publisher: Malor Books; 2nd ed edition (November 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1883536162
• ISBN-13: 978-1883536169
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.6 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #654,229 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Book, very beneficial!, September 26, 2003

By 

Jackson Stanford (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Teachers of Gurdjieff (Paperback)

This is a very good book for those people who are interested in the teachings of Gurdjieff. It is a story about a young man from Paris who is studying in a Gurdjieff group. After being in the group and realizing that he is making little progress and that some of the group's main principles contradict much of what Gurdjieff himself taught, he becomes disillusioned. Selling everything he decides to travel to the Middle East in order to find the men who taught Gurdjieff. After interchanges with fellow pupils and teachers of Gurdjieff (some very old) he begins to realize that what Gurdjieff learned was transmitted to him by certain people, in a certain form, at a certain time and for a specific purpose. He learns that the same thing Gurdjieff learned cannot be transmitted to him in the same way because he is a different man, in a different time and from a different culture. As his search continues he realizes that what he began searching for is not necessarily what he needs and what he needs is not necessarily what he wants.

A very interesting, funny and illuminating book for the reader who can set aside his assumptions about Gurdjieff.

For those who do care, Gurdjieff did study in Sufi orders. However, this book is not as specific in giving all of the details about when, where, what and with whom that Gurdjieff studied, but there are plenty of other facts in other books that do tell. For instance, all of the following longstanding Sufi physical and mental exercises were employed by Gurdjieff: the Sufi Quiff or "stop" exercise(see In Search of the Miraculous by PD Ouspensky & see The Sufis by Idries Shah or Among the Dervishes by OM Burke), the heart to heart method of teaching or "the talk of angels" -- a form of instruction where the teacher's voice speaks inside the disciple's chest (see In Search of... and Shah's "Dermis Probe"), eastern hypnosis combined with a breathing exercise used to cure physical illnesses ---Gurdjieff used this to cure cancer, alcoholism and smoking, this technique came from the prophet, is referenced in the Koran and has been used by Sufi doctors since (see In Search of the Miraculous by PD Ouspenksy and The World of the Sufis edited by Idries Shah), the enneagram or nine angle figure is a symbol that has been used in the Sarmoun Brotherhood and by Sufis of all orders for a very long time (see In Search of the Miraculous, Gurdjieff's Meetings with Remarkable Men, Idries Shah's Commanding Self and OM Burke's Among the Dervishes), the wisdoms of the Sufi teaching master Mullah Nasrudin are used repeatedly by Gurdjieff in his opus Beelzebub's Tales To His Grandson (see Beelzebub's and Idries Shah's the Adventures of Mullah Nasrudin '3 books of tales'), the teaching that man is asleep and a machine is a very eastern, particularly Sufi concept to be found in almost all Sufi books in one form or another (see In Search of the Miraculous by PD Ouspensky and Hakim Sanai's The Walled Garden of Truth and Idries Shah's "The Sufis", chapter 1 entitled "The Islanders") and The Fourth Way is what the Naqshbandiyya order of dervishes, founded around the memory of Bahuddin Naqshband, has been called for a long time....Gurdjieff was a member of this order. in addition to these, there are many other facts that point to Gurdjieff employing Sufic techniques.

This book will give you some facts about Gurdjieff, but it is by no means all true and to be taken literally. The Sufis make no claims on Gurdjieff as some people believe. They even go so far as to say that Gurdjieff's pupils did not progress because he had not learned the Sufi dictum "time, place and certain people" before he began to teach (see Idries Shah in The Way of the Sufi). Nevertheless, his life and this book are very interesting from the standpoint that HE did progress as hopefully we all can.

pick it up!

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Dishonest, March 14, 2005

By 

Steve - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Teachers of Gurdjieff (Hardcover)

Written by Omar Shah, Idris Shah's brother, this book has nothing to do with Gurdjieff. The intention was to "collect" lost sheep after J.G. Bennett gave Coombe Springs to Idris Shah. So the basic message of this book is: Gurdjieff is dead, long lives sufism. Which basically is a kind of advertisement. The question arising: Advertising for what? Who is in need for advertisment? Or is this spiritual competition? Some claim, that Gurdjieff was a member of a certain sufi order, and this sufi order is now represented by I. Shah. This is nonsense. And it throws a strange shadow onto whoever is in need to spread rumors of this kind.

The title of this book is a lie. Kind of conning instead of cunning.

24 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Welcome Signpost, July 1, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Teachers of Gurdjieff (Paperback)

This book is obviously a fable and uses the same allegorical format that Gurdjieff employed in his works. The pseudonym Rafael Lefort, an anagram for "A REAL EFFORT", is quite obvious and further points clearly to this.

Those who dismiss fables and their message because "fables aren't true" miss the point entirely. Readers, disappointed by not finding information and factual data on Gurdjieff's teachers in this book, are prevented from benefiting from the book's central message. Likewise, "4th way" followers, attached to their system, feel threatened by the author's basic asserion -- that the teaching of Gurdjieff was limited and had at best temporary value for real development.

I read this book more than 25 years ago at a time when I was immersed in the books of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky. Unlike some reviewers' protests, the book, which never mentions Idries Shah, did not point me in that direciton whatsoever (I didn't discover that author until years later), so hardly a comercial for the man. The average reader wouldn't get this at all, and it is but the usual sort of claim perpetuated in 4th Way circles, despite Shah's practice of rejecting most applicants (including many Gurdjieffians). However, what this book did provide me at the time was a sensibility or counterbalance in assessing the Gurdjieff legacy. The tale simply reminds seekers to look elsewhere.

In addition, the book is peppered with surprising observations -- from the underlying enneagon design of Baghdad to the analysis of such terms as "kundabuffer"-- which made the reading lively. Other insights and perspectives offered were part of the book's corrective impact, and I took the one-dimensional flavor of the book's characters and conversations as serving this overall function. Certainly, I wouldn't expect this or any work to "uncover" the missing "facts" of Gurdjieff's life and training when Gurdjieff himself avoided disclosing that and went out of his way to obscure many details. Yet some of his followers persist in trying to correlate dates or comb through biographies for inaccuracies, none of which is ultimately useful unless one is in the museum business.

Whether or not Shah (or someone connected to him) wrote this needn't concern everybody not obsessed with conspiracy theories. I would recommend this book for those who can absorb a different perspective and who may welcome the reassurance that an intact Teaching survives and is accessible to those who can "empty the glass."