Customer Reviews

The Work Life: Based on Teachings of G.I. Gurdjieff, P.D. Ouspensky, and Maurice Nicoll

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This book helped me find the work of Maurice Nicoll, who was Pogson's teacher. I had heard about Nicoll for 20 years, but it wasn't until I read this book that I was able to really get into Nicoll's books, which I now see as the top line of all the Work. Don't be mislead by people who put down Ouspensky and Nicoll in favor of mystifying Gurdjieff himself. If the Work is to be anything, it's not about a cult of Gurdjieff, it's about a system. Nicoll, a pupil and lifelong friend of Carl Jung, shows us the work in its finest form, and Pogson's book is very beautiful, complete with many fascinating photos of daily work activities.

Mrs. Pogson's voice and manner are very courteous and agreeable, and this book, a collection of transcriptions from her teaching sessions in England 50 years or so ago, is a good read if you can tolerate the informality and randomness that are bound to follow from a collection of this sort. It's not particularly exciting or to-the-point, but it is warm and human. Just as the way to grab a cat is not to run after it, but to sit down and pretend to ignore it, so is Mrs. Pogson's approach a useful introduction to self-remembering, levels of understanding, etc.