Introduction to the Gurdjieff Work by Jacob Needleman

by Jacob Needleman

This e-book provides a summary of Gurdjieff's life and his teaching. It is the first book to publicly describe the actual practices of this spiritual tradition, and for the first time provides a means to contact authentic Gurdjieff groups around the world. The book provides a substantial resource pool of information for the reader wishing to pursue a further inquiry, including a reading list that separates the most useful books from those less so, as well as a list of the most important published music from the tradition. The author, Jacob Needleman, is a well known professor of philosophy and author of numerous books on philosophy, religion and spirituality.

Genres: Philosophy

Paperback

First published August 1, 2009

About the author

Jacob Needleman is Professor of Philosophy at San Francisco State University, former Visiting Professor at Duxx Graduate School of Business Leadership in Monterrey, Mexico, and former Director of the Center for the study of New Religions at The Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. He was educated in philosophy at Harvard, Yale and the University of Freiburg, Germany. He has also served as Research Associate at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, as a Research Fellow at Union Theological Seminary, as Adjunct Professor of Medical Ethics at the University of California Medical School and as guest Professor of Religious Studies at the Sorbonne, Paris (1992).

Reviews

[Lawrence · Rating 3 out of 5]

This tiny book of necessity barely scratches the surface of the subject of G. I. Gurdjieff and his spiritual teaching, which I originally became curious about through Antares' (author of Tanah Tujuh: Close Encounters with the Temuan Mythos) mythopoeia on the subject of Jorge Luis Borges' A Bao A Qu, and then later became reinvested in through the discovery that King Crimson guitarist Robert Fripp studied in the Gurdjieff lineage. The book describes Gurdjieff's teaching as miraculous and revelatory, but frustratingly, fails to describe what makes it so, especially what sets it apart from other, older teachings. Needleman describes Gurdjieff in some ways as a kind of Aldous Huxleyan perennialist, and in other ways as a complete spiritual revolutionary.

Regardless, Needleman seems to be clearly a believer in the Gurdjieff Work, and thus, I don't feel like I've gained any information from reading this book about the degree to which Gurdjieff may or may not have really been onto something (if that even has a definitive answer). But it's enough to keep up the mild flame of my intrigue, and in fact, Needleman's list of further reading (and listening!) at the end was, to me, the most enticing part of his book. Maybe it'll be enough to get me to finally take Meetings With Remarkable Men off my shelf, and see if Gurdjieff, through the medium of his own words, looks like the real deal!

[CrossTrees · Rating 3 out of 5]

Does exactly what it says, I've always been told to read The Fourth Way by Ouspensky and have always gotten overwhelmed by the book. Maybe after reading this I can tolerate the main sources of this tradition now.

On its own merit it's not an insanely insightful book, I came away understanding the general orientation of the Work and it introduces the life of Gurdjieff well with a very adequate bibliography in the back. What else could you want?

[Barry Paul Clark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love a tiny book that also gets me on a path towards the absence of self 🥰