Tobias Churton

Deconstructing Gurdjieff (eBook, ePUB)

Biography of a Spiritual Magician

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

Beyond Meetings with Remarkable Men into the truth behind the self-crafted mythology of Gurdjieff's life • Reveals evidence that Gurdjieff was a secret Freemason, relying on hypnotism, psychic research and spiritualism • Explores the profound influence of the Yezidis, esoteric Christianity, and the "gnostics" of Islam, the Sufis, on Gurdjieff's Fourth Way teachings and the "Work" • Uncovers the truth behind Gurdjieff's relations with Aleister Crowley • Accurately dates Gurdjieff's real activities, particularly his enigmatic early life In November 1949, architect Frank Lloyd Wright announced the death of "the greatest man in the world," yet few knew who he was talking about. Enigmatic, misunderstood, declared a charlatan, and recently dubbed "the Rasputin who inspired Mary Poppins," Gurdjieff's life has become a legend. But who really was George Ivanovich Gurdjieff? Employing the latest research and discoveries, including previously unpublished reminiscences of the real man, Tobias Churton investigates the truth beneath the self-crafted mythology of Gurdjieff's life recounted in Meetings with Remarkable Men. He examines his controversial birthdate, his father's background, and his relationship with his private tutor Dean Borshch, revealing a perilous childhood in a Pontic Greek family, persecuted by Turks, forced to migrate to Georgia and Armenia, only to grow up amid more war, persecution, genocide, and revolt. Placing Gurdjieff in the true context of his times, Churton explores Gurdjieff's roles in esoteric movements taking root in the Russian Empire and in epic imperial construction projects in the Kars Oblast, Transcaucasia, and central Asia. He reveals Gurdjieff's sources for his transformative philosophy, his early interest in hypnosis, magic, Theosophy, and spiritualism, and the profound influence of the Yezidis and the Sufis, the "gnostics" of Islam, on Gurdjieff's Fourth Way teachings and the "Work." Churton also explores Gurdjieff's ties to Freemasonry and his relationships with other spiritual teachers and philosophers of the age, such as Madame Blavatsky, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Aleister Crowley, dispelling the myth that Gurdjieff forcibly expelled the "Great Beast" from his Institute. Showing how Gurdjieff deliberately re-shaped elements of his life as parables of his system, Churton explains how he didn't want people to follow his footsteps but to find their own, to wake up from the hypnosis that drives us blindly through life. Offering a vital understanding of the man who asked "How many of you are really alive?" the author reveals the continuing importance of Gurdjieff's philosophy for the awakening of man.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Simon + Schuster LLC
• Seitenzahl: 368
• Erscheinungstermin: 25. Mai 2017
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781620556399
• Artikelnr.: 48497441

Autorenporträt

Tobias Churton is Britain's leading scholar of Western Esotericism, a world authority on Gnosticism, Hermeticism, and Rosicrucianism. He is a filmmaker and the founding editor of the magazine Freemasonry Today. An Honorary Fellow of Exeter University, where he is faculty lecturer in Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry, he holds a master's degree in Theology from Brasenose College, Oxford, and created the award-winning documentary series and accompanying book The Gnostics, as well as several other films on Christian doctrine, mysticism, and magical folklore. The author of many books, including Gnostic Philosophy, The Invisible History of the Rosicrucians, and Aleister Crowley: The Beast in Berlin, he lives in England.

Inhaltsangabe

Acknowledgments
Preface: Caveat Lector
ONE The Enigma Arrives
Meeting the Press
TWO Reviewing the Situation: A Birth
Archival Records
Cattle Plague
THREE War Baby: An Education in Kars
FOUR Dean Borshch and Other Enthusiasms
The Circle of the Yezidi
Bogachevsky and the Flying Chairs
FIVE The Spiritual Question
Miracles
Spiritualism and Hypnosis
SIX Mad about the Girl: Or How to Get to Tiflis in a Hurry
Fedeev and Blavatsky
Tiflis
SEVEN Books: Furniture of the Mind
The Tradition
The Brotherhood of the Rose-Cross
EIGHT In Search of Brotherhood
The Armenian Question Ani
NINE The Yezidis
The God of the Yezidis
Melek
Tawus
Yezidi Beliefs
Origins
TEN Do-It-Yourself Gurdjieff and Unaccountable Journeys Miscellaneous
Adventures
The Sufis
Back to Work with Gurdjieff
ELEVEN Traveling Tales and Bullets in the Leg
Soloviev and the Kushka Line
Toward the Sarmoung Monastery
TWELVE Two More Bullets
Trouble in Tibet
The Chiatura Tunnel
THIRTEEN Holy Mother Russia!
Papus in Russia
The Unique Work Brotherhood
FOURTEEN The Struggle of the Magicians
FIFTEEN Octave and Enneagram
From Seven to Eight
Nine in the Circle
SIXTEEN The International Alliance of Ideological Workers
Tbilisi
SEVENTEEN Stateless Person
Constantinople
John Godolphin Bennett, Prince Sabahaddin, and Gurdjieff
EIGHTEEN Doctrine: An Objectively Impartial Criticism of the Life of Man
NINETEEN The Beast 666 and the Black Devil
TWENTY The Long Ascent
Breaking with Old Friends
The War
TWENTY-ONE The Grave with No Name
Notes
Bibliography
Index