Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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36 of 37 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
the acknowledged classic, April 17, 2001
By A Customer
At the very end of his life, Ouspensky seemed to repudiate "the System", as he understood it, although glassy-eyed disciples in that time and this try to rationalize that fact away. Perhaps he realized that any systematic approach to developing our consciousness is impossible, since if we are on a road with a known destination that destination can only be our own projection of what we imagine it to be. No matter. The ability of this man Ouspensky to think systematically was indeed his great strength, and it lent all his writing a clarity and throughness simply unmatched in all of twentieth century "occultism". Nowhere did he need it more than in this reporting of the early teachings of Gurdjieff, when that particular unique idiot was at the zenith of his own development. Ouspensky alone could have made these ideas, developed by others and brought to Europe in a nearly incoherent form by the rascal Gurdjieff, into something useful. While not quite on the level of Ouspensky's earlier books, this book stands as the greatest introduction to occultism in existence. This book is more important than any of the junk they peddle in the various humanities departments of any of our indoctrinal institutions; it is, along with Ouspensky's earlier works, even a contender for book of the century, at least among those who are familiar with the hidden literature of our species. For these books exist at the boundary line between the place where words are at their limit and the place Ouspensky may have finally reached, where words can never go. And rest assured that Ouspensky nevertheless communicates almost through osmosis some of these things much better than this abstruse little review can.
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75 of 84 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Single Best Book on the Gurdjieff Work, October 16, 2000
By A Customer
Having read just about everything written by or about Gurdjieff, Ouspensky, Collin, Orage, Nicoll, and countless disciples, spin-offs, Sufis, etc., etc., 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. The core of the "work" is a powerful methodology, but no more so than, say, vipassana, zen, dzogchen or other solid, meditation-based tradition. There is nothing about the fourth way that is any more "esoteric" than these other traditions (that's right, nothing). The biggest difference is that Gurdjieff left behind a legacy of fraudulent teachers and cults, whereas there are many Buddhist and other groups that are reliable. (Certainly, Buddhist and other groups, being made up of people, have their flaws, and there are things to be learned in some (not all!) Gurdjieff groups, decades of hard-won experience allows me to say that the Gurdjieff tradition is peculiar in attracting power-hungry charlatans who exploit the "rascal sage" idea to gather suckers around themselves.) Even groups that are not necessarily exploitative or fraudulent tend to attract people who like the idea of being "esoteric," to use a term Ouspensky liked, but which was far more appropriate eighty years ago than it is today. That is, they like to imagine they've contacted the "real" inner work--as opposed to those dupes who imagine any other traditions can lead to awakening. In other words, the ego-driven, cult mentality that turns useful information into its opposite.
Regardless, I strongly recommend In Search of the Miraculous. It's the single best book on Gurdjieff's work ever written. It's reasonably comprehensive on the important theories and methods. It's clear -- no Beelzebub's Talesian mumbo-jumbo. It includes enough of Ouspensky's personal comments and experiences to make an entertaining story, but it isn't a self-indulgent book about the author ("and then he said this to me, and then I said that to him.") I find Ouspensky's other works overly dry and intellectual, but this one is both fun and profound. (And if you happen to buy a copy that has a bookmark in it from a purported Gurdjieff "school" -- toss the bookmark. Trust me about that.)
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28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Life-transforming book, April 22, 1999
By A Customer
I discovered this amazing gem in a used book store and interestingly read it at the same time I read Kuhn's "Structure of Scientific Revolutions". I couldn't possibly heap too much praise on either of these books. Both are life-transforming for those of a scientific bent, and for others too. I opened Ouspensky at random and started reading about the distribution of knowledge among people. He cured me of untold anxiety concerning why so few people have a clue when he said that knowledge has power only to the extent it is concentrated in a few people, how the mass of humanity freely discards what little knowledge is allotted them, and particularly how at certain times humanity discards vast amounts of knowledge in favor of mass insanity. He was of course thinking of the Great War but the parallels to today are beyond scary as we face the potential of World War in the Balkans, at the same time that vast amounts of truth concerning for example the importance of nutrition in human disease is being discarded in favor of the "disease" of genetic determinism. This distribution of knowledge observation is both a depressing (since it's totally observably true) and an exhilerating discovery (I no longer feel personally responsible for illuminating anyone since I know the mass of humanity doesn't want knowledge, only answers; an immediate present need associated with their own pleasure principle gratification.)And that was just opening it at random! The stuff on the fourth way also was incredible, especially since I had been grappeling with that for some. Though I know that illumination may never come except for brief glimpses, I now know at least by using the fourth way (working on your body, mind, and faith simultaneously), I am on the only truly practical path to illumination.
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