Gurdjieffian Perspectives On Peat(ing)?

[Acarpous]

Has Peat ever discussed Gurdjieff? I can’t imagine RP would consider Gurdjieff’s system of human development (The Work) to be a valid guide for dietary advice or daily practice, but the two do share a remarkably similar range of interests and topics of discussion (the limitations imposed by the language and culture, the importance of nutrition, and a general interest in improving individual well-being, etc). I would imagine someone as well read as Peat would at least be aware of the Gurdjieffian Work, and Gurdjieff does discuss health issues such as cancer. That being said, Gurdjieff was far more skeptical and conservative…


“… it is essential to remember that no arbitrary attempts to regulate food in the literal sense of the word, or breathing can lead to the desired end unless one knows exactly what one is doing and why, and what kind of result it will give. “ - PD Ouspensky quoting Gurdijeff, In Search of the Miraculous (pg 299)


'If you harm yourself with your way of chewing food, you harm yourself a thousand times more by the practice of this breathing. All the exercises in breathing which are given in books and taught in contemporary esoteric schools can do nothing but harm. Breathing, as every sane thinking man should understand, is also a process of feeding, but on another sort of food. Air, just like our ordinary food, entering the body and being digested there, disintegrates into its component parts, which form new combinations with each other as well as with the corresponding elements of certain substances which are already present. In this way those indispensable new substances are produced which are continuously being consumed in the various unceasing life processes in the organism of man.

….


“I repeat, our organism is a very complicated apparatus. It has many organs with processes of different tempos and with different needs. You must either change everything or nothing. Otherwise, instead of good you might do harm. 'Numerous illnesses arise just from this artificial breathing. In many cases it leads to enlargement of the heart, constriction of the windpipe, or damage to the stomach, liver, kidneys or nerves. 'It very rarely happens that anyone who practices artificial breathing does not harm himself irreparably, and this rare case occurs only if he stops in time. Whoever does it for a long time invariably has deplorable results. 'If you know every small screw, every little pin of your machine, only then can you know what you must do. But if you just know a little and experiment, you risk a great deal, because the machine is very complicated. There are many tiny screws which might easily be broken by a strong shock and which cannot afterwards be bought in any shop. 'Therefore—since you have asked me for it—my advice to you is: stop your breathing exercises.” - Gurdjieff, Meetings with Remarkable Men (pg. 189,191)



That being said, I don’t imagine Gurdjieff would necessarily be against giving hope to cancer patients or depressed people, but much of his advice (which was decidedly esoteric) seemed to be interested in maximizing individual potential, albeit from a "spiritual" perspective. From a personal perspective, I do feel moderately better after taking more of Peat's advice for the past ~1 year, though at my low points I do feel as dis-adapted and alienated from my life as I ever have.


Thoughts?

 

[Acarpous]

Has Peat ever discussed Gurdjieff? I can’t imagine RP would consider Gurdjieff’s system of human development (The Work) to be a valid guide for dietary advice or daily practice, but the two do share a remarkably similar range of interests and topics of discussion (the limitations imposed by the language and culture, the importance of nutrition, and a general interest in improving individual well-being, etc). I would imagine someone as well read as Peat would at least be aware of the Gurdjieffian Work, and Gurdjieff does discuss health issues such as cancer. That being said, Gurdjieff was far more skeptical and conservative…


“… it is essential to remember that no arbitrary attempts to regulate food in the literal sense of the word, or breathing can lead to the desired end unless one knows exactly what one is doing and why, and what kind of result it will give. “ - PD Ouspensky quoting Gurdijeff, In Search of the Miraculous (pg 299)


'If you harm yourself with your way of chewing food, you harm yourself a thousand times more by the practice of this breathing. All the exercises in breathing which are given in books and taught in contemporary esoteric schools can do nothing but harm. Breathing, as every sane thinking man should understand, is also a process of feeding, but on another sort of food. Air, just like our ordinary food, entering the body and being digested there, disintegrates into its component parts, which form new combinations with each other as well as with the corresponding elements of certain substances which are already present. In this way those indispensable new substances are produced which are continuously being consumed in the various unceasing life processes in the organism of man.

….


“I repeat, our organism is a very complicated apparatus. It has many organs with processes of different tempos and with different needs. You must either change everything or nothing. Otherwise, instead of good you might do harm. 'Numerous illnesses arise just from this artificial breathing. In many cases it leads to enlargement of the heart, constriction of the windpipe, or damage to the stomach, liver, kidneys or nerves. 'It very rarely happens that anyone who practices artificial breathing does not harm himself irreparably, and this rare case occurs only if he stops in time. Whoever does it for a long time invariably has deplorable results. 'If you know every small screw, every little pin of your machine, only then can you know what you must do. But if you just know a little and experiment, you risk a great deal, because the machine is very complicated. There are many tiny screws which might easily be broken by a strong shock and which cannot afterwards be bought in any shop. 'Therefore—since you have asked me for it—my advice to you is: stop your breathing exercises.” - Gurdjieff, Meetings with Remarkable Men (pg. 189,191)



That being said, I don’t imagine Gurdjieff would necessarily be against giving hope to cancer patients or depressed people, but much of his advice (which was decidedly esoteric) seemed to be interested in maximizing individual potential, albeit from a "spiritual" perspective. From a personal perspective, I do feel moderately better after taking more of Peat's advice for the past ~1 year, though at my low points I do feel as dis-adapted and alienated from my life as I ever have.


Thoughts?

Also it is worth noting that his system was oriented around "spiritual" development, and Gurdjieff is clear that it is not for everyone, so his advice may be limited to those who are more stable (psychologically, socially, etc) than people who are likely to be reading and experimenting with Peat's work.

 

[Hugh Johnson]

The human body is not a machine. It is an intelligent, self organizing living system and it can be positively influenced with rather simple interventions.

 

[mosaic01]

The thing that those two 'systems of thought' share is the remarkable level of objectivity and thurst for the truth. Gurdjieff's ideas would not fit into our present day society, they are too dark and too specific for the 20th century russia, and too ominous to be of benefit to people today. The modern schools descending from Gurdjieffs's ideas are basically dead. But it is true that some of the most powerful people of our time were heavily influenced by gnostic thought, sufism and Gurdjieff's writings. Steve Jobs for example listed him as one of his inspirations.

The main assertion of Gurdjieff is the realization that man needs to work hard to achieve a higher way of life. According to him, societies are degenerating and hope exists only for individuals.

When I read him a few years ago, the most fascinating thing to me in regards to our collective future was his notion to Ouspensky that one time in the future a big opportunity might arise for mankind. But he said he couldn't talk about details. Thinking about The Fourth Turning by Neil Howe, this opportunity might arise with the birth of a new counter-culture Awakening, which according to the Strauss-Howe Generational Theory will start somewhere in the late 2040s.

Ray Peat is one of those elders who carries across some of the lost knowledge from before the two world wars into the newer generations. The 60s showed an uprising, i.e. people started to bring a new kind of thought in to the 20th century world, where a society would start forming naturally around the individual, and not suppress it's essence, but in the contrary stimulating it's potential. This kind of thought was suppressed with the first and especially second world war (the late 19th early 20th century saw a movement similar to the hippie culture, few people know this).

All of these movements are cyclic, as is everything in the universe. Ever-expanding and constricting.

Our Generation will be the one attacked by this Awakening, i.e. our ideas of the world and political power will be attacked. But a few of us are already casting the seeds in forming some of the ideas that one day might start growing into real movements. I think this present day era for above average intelligent and empathic (i.e. awake) people is defined by a sense of depression because they realize that positive systems of thought, like Ray Peat tried to establish, will not resonate with larger society, i.e. the corrupt systems (health care, politics, etc.) continue having a degenerative influence on mankind.

Only a time of materialist prosperity will make the formation of a new kind of thought possible (i.e. an environment of low stress and abundance favors positive growth and abandoning old ideas), and this is in line with the Generational theory, similar to the golden years at the start of the 19th century, or the baby boomers.

Then later I read about Ray Peat who said something like: The only way to stop the degenerating cycle of our society would be a movement that focuses on the expansion of human potential, maybe with a focus on individual health, because people can relate to health and know the importance of health. But I am not seeing a movement like that on the horizon yet.

 

[Acarpous]

The human body is not a machine. It is an intelligent, self organizing living system and it can be positively influenced with rather simple interventions.

I don't think someone as sophisticated as Gurdjieff would not use the machine metaphor literally. Rather, the fact that our organisms are chemical systems, and those systems behave in accordance to processes that are automatic and lawful, in conjunction with the limitations imposed by the culture and language in effect create human organisms that are effectively mechanical.

 

[lollipop]

The human body is not a machine. It is an intelligent, self organizing living system and it can be positively influenced with rather simple interventions.

True and highlighting that “living system” means open system that is in a continuous dynamic symbiotic relationship with its environment, always adapting if not prevented, and often scaffolding itself into a higher order of functioning.

 

[Hugh Johnson]

I don't think someone as sophisticated as Gurdjieff would not use the machine metaphor literally. Rather, the fact that our organisms are chemical systems, and those systems behave in accordance to processes that are automatic and lawful, in conjunction with the limitations imposed by the culture and language in effect create human organisms that are effectively mechanical.

'If you know every small screw, every little pin of your machine, only then can you know what you must do. But if you just know a little and experiment, you risk a great deal, because the machine is very complicated. There are many tiny screws which might easily be broken by a strong shock and which cannot afterwards be bought in any shop. 'Therefore—since you have asked me for it—my advice to you is: stop your breathing exercises.”

 

[burtlancast]

When one learns about Gurdjieff's life, the comparisons with new age charlatans, selling empty air, brainwashing their naive followers, stealing from them and sexually abusing them cannot be denied.


"At one point, for example, Gurdjieff formed something called the "International Idealistic Society" and required his students not only to join it, but to give up all their possessions to it."

"His principal biographer called him "a fraud, a liar, a cheat, a scoundrel"

"some critics assert he was a charlatan with a large ego and a constant need for self-glorification"

"Gurdjieff's former students who have criticized him argue that, despite his seeming total lack of pretension to any kind of "guru holiness," in many anecdotes his behavior displays the unsavory and impure character of a man who was a cynical manipulator of his followers"

"Colin Wilson writes about "Gurdjieff's reputation for seducing his female students. (In Providence, Rhode Island, in 1960, a man was pointed out to me as one of Gurdjieff's illegitimate children. The professor who told me this also assured me that Gurdjieff had left many children around America)"

"Although no evidence or documents have certified anyone as a child of Gurdjieff, the following seven people are believed to be his children:[37]

• Cynthie Sophia "Dushka" Howarth (1924–2010); her mother was dancer Jessmin Howarth.[38][39][40] She went on to found the Gurdjieff Heritage Foundation.[40]
• Sergei Chaverdian; his mother was Lily Galumnian Chaverdian.[41]
• Andrei, born to a mother known only as Georgii.[41]
• Eve Taylor (born 1928); the mother was one of his followers, American socialite Edith Annesley Taylor.[37]
• Nikolai Stjernvall (1919–2010), whose mother was Elizaveta Grigorievna, wife of Leonid Robertovich de Stjernvall.[42]
• Michel de Salzmann (1923–2001), whose mother was Jeanne Allemand de Salzmann; he later became head of the Gurdjieff Foundation.[43]
• Svetlana Hinzenberg, daughter of Olga (Olgivanna) Ivanovna Hinzenberg and a future stepdaughter of architect Frank Lloyd Wright.[44][45] "

"According to Fritz Peters, Gurdjieff was in New York from November 1925 to the spring of 1926, when he succeeded in raising over $100,000.[31] He was to make six or seven trips to the US, where he alienated a number of people with his brash and impudent demands for money. "

"According to Rom Landau, a journalist in the 1930s, Achmed Abdullah told him at the beginning of the 20th century that Gurdjieff was a Russian secret agent in Tibet who went by the name of "Hambro Akuan Dorzhieff" (i.e. Agvan Dorjiev), a tutor to the Dalai Lama"

 

[Travis]

I wasn't going to say it, but I had also gotten that impression from Gudjieff. I heard about him first when hearing an Alan Watts lecture, and then did some reading. It seems as though he never had to work a day in his life, and just devoted his effort towards finding more and more esoteric ways of manipulating people. But that's not to say that he hadn't gained some valuable experience by doing so, and some people may like reading his book.

It's not like being a weapons-grade ****head automatically excludes a person from having interesting insights; there might be something to it.. . . .

But I did hear some terrible stories, one on how he made a student dig holes all day just to fill them back in. It was really painful to read about. After that, and another horror story, I stopped reading about Gudjieff.

 

[Acarpous]

When one learns about Gurdjieff's life, the comparisons with new age charlatans, selling empty air, brainwashing their naive followers, stealing from them and sexually abusing them cannot be denied.

It's not like being a weapons-grade ****head automatically excludes a person from having interesting insights; there might be something to it.. . . .

But I did hear some terrible stories, one on how he made a student dig holes all day just to fill them back in. It was really painful to read about. After that, and another horror story, I stopped reading about Gudjieff.

I don't know about Gurdjieff's biography, though what I have gleaned from reading a couple of his books and the work of his followers, he is sufficiently correct for me to be interested (speaking as a rigorously hypnotized, systematically sex-starved, ADD zombie).

 

[TheDrumGuy]

There is a connection between the paranormal and tricksters, and in fact the paranormal itself seems to be a trickster phenomenon (see The Trickster and the Paranormal). So I wouldn't necessarily use that to write Gurdjieff off.