Archive for July 2011
Joseph Azize Reviews: THE REALITY OF BEING
Jeanne de Salzmann
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Review of The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff,
Jeanne de Salzmann, Shambhala, Boston & London, 2010
(293 pp, plus biographical note, list of de Salzmann founded Gurdjieff Centres, and index) Reviewer’s note, the book has been edited with a foreword by an anonymous team.
I have been pondering for two months: should I write a review of this book or not? The sublimity of some of this writing makes the idea reviewing it seem presumptuous, disrespectful and distasteful. At its best, this volume represents a unique spiritual literature, and bears ample evidence of the note-maker’s achievement, authority and stature. Reading in its pages for even five minutes, new vistas open, lines of study are confirmed and extended, and I receive fresh direction and hope. And yet I have questions, and even some misgivings, especially about the presentation of the material as an account of Gurdjieff’s Fourth Way rather than as de Salzmann’s own Gurdjieff-influenced teaching, the decision to publish exercises, the descriptions of what I might call “higher states” (with the possibility of inviting self-delusion), and whether many people will understand anything much from the book who did not previously know de Salzmann or have not had firsthand experience in her groups.
But I decided to write when the question occurred to me: what would Jeanne De Salzmann wish for? Adulation? I cannot rush into rapture over the volume, if only because it has helped me. To fall now into gushing blandishments of the type Gurdjieff satirised in Meetings With Remarkable Men would be a betrayal. I feel a certain duty to try and impartially review this book exactly because, at first blush, it seems to defy all review.
Other of Gurdjieff’s pupils have written comparable material, the unpublished “black notebook” which Jane Heap kept comes to mind. There is some material from George Adie which is of this genre, but I have never released it, and have no intention of doing so, given my reluctance to publish exercises and descriptions of higher states because these might invite self-delusion. Some of Bill Segal’s material is of this genre, but I don’t think it can be compared with Reality of Being for power, depth or scope. So this is a unique work.
Whether those who did not know de Salzmann or her pupils can benefit from this volume is another question altogether. My guess is that those people may perhaps sense that there is something significant here, but will find it too opaque for them. It badly needs a full introduction and glossary.
Finally, before plunging this review, I must thank Dr Sophia Wellbeloved, who helped me see certain matters I had been colour-blind to. Sophia experienced de Salzmann at first hand, and her impartial but warm personal assessment merged, as it were, with the force of these writings, in which I have been immersed, to produce quite an impact on me.
The major problem, and it is a significant one, is the packaging. The issue would not arise had the book been presented, packaged and titled accurately, for example, as The Reality of Being: The “Vigilant Meditation” of Jeanne de Salzmann. The misstatement that this volume is a representation of the “Fourth Way of Gurdjieff”, which is a way in life, distorts any reading of the contents, because many of the statements here are meaningful or true only within the context of what de Salzmann calls “the work in the quiet” (48) and “vigilance and meditation” (58). This practice was developed by de Salzmann from Eastern models, as Bill Segal states in one memoir. Further, the book as edited moves backwards and forwards between “work in life”, and “work in the quiet” in a manner which is not always clear. It might be a personal development of the Fourth Way, or even a portion of it, but then, why the clunky subtitle The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff?
De Salzmann did not see this book into the press: she wrote notes which, to judge by the sample on p. 293 were like journals written up after a period spent in “vigilant meditation”. The anonymous editors of this volume have, after her death, marshalled some of these notes of her contemplative experience, and added some other “recorded statements”, (whatever form these may have taken, xviii). As the foreword states, she was: “… constantly reflecting on the reality of being and writing down her thoughts in her notebook,” (xvi). She also wrote ideas for meetings with her students. These two sets of notebooks were kept “like diaries”, (xvi), and were understood by the editors to be the “book” she referred to when she said that she was writing “a book on how to be in life, on the path to take in order to live on two levels. It will show how to find a balance …”, (xvi). At her death, the careful state of these notebooks were taken by “those closest to her” to be “a clear sign” that she had intended the material in them to “help complete Gurdjieff’s writing on a true vision of reality …”, (xvi). The editors can only mean that this book is her effort to “complete” the Third Series.
The impression of continuity with Gurdjieff, and that this is the “Third and a half series”, is strengthened by the editors’ disclosure ay p. xvi that: “She often echoed, and sometimes repeated, his (i.e. Gurdjieff’s) exact words”, e.g. the exercise on pp.196-7 of this book is also given in the Third Series. But then the editors announce two pages later that: “No attempt has been made to identify isolated excerpts taken by her from Gurdjieff or other writers”, (xviii).
Why not? I could understand if they had made an attempt but cautioned that they may not have been able to identify all such excerpts. But to make no effort? Did they feel they had no duty to Gurdjieff, de Salzmann or anyone else not to pass off one person’s work as another’s? I feel sure de Salzmann would never have agreed. A staggering number of references to Gurdjieff in the text have inexplicably been omitted from the index. Very strange.
When we turn to the index under “Gurdjieff”, we find the following entry and page references or “locators” (the technical term for the page references provided in an index):
Gurdjieff, George Ivanovitch, 1-5, 295-7
It appears as if these are the only references to Gurdjieff in the volume. In fact, his name is also given at 22, 24, 64, 73, 100, 108, 120, 122, 133, 137, 172, 180, 181, 182, 183, 189, 196, 199, 235, 237, 280, 284, 286 and 292. Why omit so many locators from the index? The only argument I can see, which would not involve disrespect to Gurdjieff, is to say that the whole of the contents were so indebted to him that reference was pointless.
However, to argue thus is to miss the decisive point, as Aristotle said. It is an error for an index to omit proper names important to its readers, or to pass over occurrences of that name which go beyond mere mentions. Gurdjieff could hardly be more important to this book, yet the index has overlooked 22 or more references. Indexing is not easy: The Society of Indexers holds conferences and offers tutoring on indexing. Its web-site (www.indexers.org.au) includes this wisdom: “A good index can be much more than a guide to the contents of a book. It can often give a far clearer glimpse of its spirit than the blurb-writers or critics are able to do.” Quite so.
So, despite the often sublime contents, this book is something of an odd job. There are 140 entries. Each is of a fairly consistent length of between one and a half to two pages Presumably each piece was written on the one day (except where it was later supplemented by the mysterious “recorded statements”). Each of the 140 entries has a title, but no date, and they’re numbered 1 through to 140. The titles are written in Roman, e.g. “A nostalgia for Being” and ‘Only with a stable Presence”. These are arranged in 36 titled sections (32 sections have 4 entries, and 4 sections have but 3). The sections are unnumbered, and have italicised titles like: “To Remember Oneself” and “A Pure Energy”. Without exception, there are three sections to a chapter. The chapters are numbered in Roman numerals, and are titled “OPENING TO PRESENCE”, “TO BE CENTERED”, and so on.
The cover illustration is of a landscape beneath the night sky. In the lower heavens is an enneagram. On the earth, we see someone wearing what seems to be a bright red scarf. But it is a strange scarf: it looks as if a small inverted ziggurat has attached itself to someone’s back. Is it meant to represent the descending energies which de Salzmann writes of? Despite the Gurdjieff packaging, to put it that way, there is a photograph of the diarist, but none of Gurdjieff. Neither is an attempt made to relate her ideas to those of other people: yet this context could have helped people understand the significance of her writing. For example, she answers Hume’s enigma that one never finds a “self” (In A Treatise of Human Nature, Hume discussed the question of personal identity, and argued that we assume that we have a “self”, but in fact there is no evidence at all for this). Explaining this somewhere would make the volume more accessible for the very many people who are acquainted with Hume, but not Gurdjieff.
That is the contents. To speak of aims, the book is pretty clearly “missionary”. It is meant to attract people to the de Salzmann groups (hence p.301 with its list of centres, and its reference to the Reality of Being website, to meet the anticipated demand).
My intuition is that the actual motive to publish this quality hardback was not only to give those who knew her a substantial memento, but also to reach that elusive audience of seekers, and to establish an independent basis for de Salzmann’s reputation as a spiritual authority. Together with the previous Foundation-sponsored or inspired Gurdjieff: Essays and Reflections, Heart Without Measure, Without Benefit of Clergy, The Forgotten Language of Children, Tchekhovitch’s Gurdjieff: A Master in Life, and the volume of Parobola articles Ravindra edited, a bookshelf is being built up. In these books, Gurdjieff orthodoxy passes solely through de Salzmann, and other major figures such as Bennett, Ouspensky and Jane Heap barely exist, if at all. It is as if the Foundation has embarked on a publishing offensive.
Before each of the twelve parts of the volume, the editors have placed a page with some one-liners, presumably chosen for their punchy impact. The very first maxim on the very first of these pages, p.8, reads: “the child wants to have, the adult wants to be.” How could anyone write anything so glib and pat, I wondered to myself? If anything, it struck me, the exact opposite is true. But then I read the quotation in context on p.10: “We need to see our childishness in relation to the life force, always wishing to have more. The child wants to have, the adult wants to be. The constant desire for ‘having’ creates fear and a need to be reassured.” In other words, de Salzmann was explicitly speaking about the childish aspect of ourselves, not children in general. To place that sentence as a disembodied quote on a splash page was to invite misinterpretation.
De Salzmann wished to carry on and develop what Gurdjieff had brought, and yet, as Conge is reported to have said, it seemed as if Gurdjieff left something uncompleted in his work (noted in Ricardo Guillon, Record of a Search). It seems to me that most of Gurdjieff’s pupils supplemented his methods and ideas with methods and ideas from mystical traditions. My own view is that Gurdjieff’s heritage is equivalent to medicine: there is no reason why Christians, for example, should not use medicine, not matter who the doctor is, and the Gurdjieff system is one of psychological medicine.
Gurdjieff did not bequeath to de Salzmann an organization. She had to work indefatigably just to build up the Institute and to maintain its main branches in but three other cities: London, New York and Caracas. Then, through those “second level suns”, she could have an influence on other groups, and would travel to other places such as San Francisco. It was as if she had cardinals in Paris who would travel, especially to London and New York, where the councils were made up archbishops. Most of these then travelled to other places within their archdioceses. Gurdjieff had been the personal centre of his pupils. De Salzmann set up an institution which could effectively take over after the charismatic leader had gone, serving as a sort of school where guides and mentors might come and go, but the institution would survive and develop a sort of corporate personality. She had to position herself at the centre, and placed the emphasis of those aspects of the teaching she had mastered, that is, the groups and movements. Those parts where she was not quite so confident, especially the ideas and the books such as Beelzebub, she downplayed in comparison. For example, she early introduced a rule that there were to be no discussions of Beelzebub in the groups.
De Salzmann felt, it seems to me, that she needed her own special area to cement her authority. This is, I think, why she devised new means of “work” (where one speaks “from the present” after a “sitting”), and, of course, the sittings (or “quiet work”). If she was to base her authority, at least in part, on these, they had to be considered an essential component of the groups’ efforts, so she removed the competition: she stopped systematically teaching the Gurdjieff preparation and exercises. She also forbade the movements to be taught in their entirety: from a certain point in time, one only learnt parts of movements. It was said that this was to stop people like the Rajneeshis stealing them. But I do not think that that was all. I am not saying that that was not a factor, but I do not think it was determinative, because by ceasing to teach all of a movement, she ceased to teach them in the way Gurdjieff had intended. Her method of allowing only a few trusted instructors to have the entire movement from beginning to end was like thwarting an anticipated vandalism by committing it yourself.
Apart from the Gurdjieff omissions, there is another matter about the index I must raise. The problem with the entry for “tempo” is that there is none. There is a reference for “rhythm”, but there should also be one for “tempo”. At 192, De Salzmann uses “rhythm” and “tempo” as being equivalent terms. Relevant locators for “tempo” and instances where equivalents are used include 124, 139, 147 (“rhythmic order”), 182 (“the rhythms of all the functions”), 188, 192, 195, 209, 265 (“rhythm”), 272 and 273. This concept was important to de Salzmann. The understanding of tempo is linked to the understanding of the entire person in who these tempos operate. Interestingly, the English translation of Beelzebub, in the version Gurdjieff authorised, always uses the word “tempo”. Irrespective of what de Salzmann wrote in French, “they leave the general rhythm” is a mediocre translation: better to say “they fall out of” or even “they depart from” the general rhythm. But the point is in the meaning.
What Gurdjieff means is this: just as the different centres have their own individual tempos, so too, can one speak, as Gurdjieff does, of an “aggregate tempo” of our “common presence”. He says that one tempo (or, I think, limited range of tempos), is related to essence, and another much wider range of tempos supports the emergence of personality, and the other larger range supports the domination of personality. This is not the place to go into it in detail, but the tempos of Gregorian chant correspond to the tempo of essence. If one understands what one is doing, then one can change one’s aggregate tempo and thus come closer to essence. It is, therefore, a matter of the greatest practical importance.
Another obvious matter I have barely alluded to is that the struggle with negative emotion is not set out here along Gurdjieff’s method of what I might call ‘active mentation”, which is really a three-centred confrontation. De Salzmann’s method is more to seek a state where one does not feel negative emotion. That is something, but I don’t think it is enough.
There is so much more I could say, for example, her comments on “tonus” anticipate what I came to about “pitch”. But this suffices for now. This is primarily a de Salzmann book and only secondly in the Gurdjeiff line. Much of the material is of the first significance for those seeking a finer consciousness which stands behind and above our other functions.
JOSEPH AZIZE has published in ancient history, law and Gurdjieff studies. His first book The Phoenician Solar Theology treated ancient Phoenician religion as possessing a spiritual depth comparative with Neoplatonism, to which it contributed through Iamblichos. The second book, “Gilgamesh and the World of Assyria”, was jointly edited with Noel Weeks. It includes his article arguing that the Carthaginians did not practice child sacrifice.
The third book, ‘George Mountford Adie: A Gurdjieff Pupil in Australia’ represents his attempt to present his teacher (a direct pupil of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky) to an international audience.The fourth book, edited and written with Peter El Khouri and Ed Finnane, is a new edition of Britts Civil Precedents. He recommends it to anyone planning to bring proceedings in an Australian court of law.
“Maronites” is pp.279-282 of “The Encyclopedia of Religion in Australia” published by Cambridge University Press and edited by James Jupp.
John Lennon: Part 19: “How?” and “Borrowed Time”
THE JOSEPH AZIZE PAGE
Joseph.Azize@gmail.com
John Lennon: Essence and Reality
Part 19: “How?” and “Borrowed Time”
This blog is subtitled “Essence and Reality”, because Lennon’s artistic work embodies a movement towards truth. The quest for truth about himself (essence) and about the world (reality) bewitched him with a sort of wondering enchantment. Of course, these two poles of reality, essence and reality, are part of a triad. We shall discuss the third term in this triad in the next blog, when we consider “Strawberry Fields Forever”. But for now, we’ll see how both development and continuity are visible over the course of the ten years which separated “How?” (1970) from “Borrowed Time” (1980). Simply put, the continuity between these two gems is in Lennon’s search for real values, a search which was guided by a goal that he could feel but not articulate. In “How?” from the Imagine album, he sings:
How can I go forward when I don’t know which way I’m facing?
How can I go forward when I don’t know which way to turn?
How can I go forward into something I’m not sure of? Oh no. Oh no.
We feel the questioning in Lennon’s voice, the melody line and the arrangement. A person with no English whatsoever could sense from the sound alone that this is a song of searching. There is also a subtle irony here: although Lennon sings about going forward, the tune is gently but firmly descending. The emphasis, slight but all the more poignant for that, is on the first word: “how?” The question is elegantly but firmly put. The gentleness of the music suggests what the a sensitive reading of the lyrics confirms: that Lennon is not doubting that it is possible to go forward. No, Lennon is asking how it is possible to go forward when he does not know which way that is. Implicitly, he realises that he can go backwards, but does not wish to. The first verse does not disclose what his desired direction is, but only that he aches because he does not know. His suffering comes from his unsureness. The second verse takes the querying even deeper:
How can I have feeling when I don’t know if it’s a feeling?
How can I feel something if I just don’t know how to feel?
How can I have feelings when my feelings have always been denied? Oh no.
Even more than with the first verse, there is a quiet urgency about the music. The drum both marks time and treads time: it’s suggestive of a clock telling that time is passing but all the while nothing is happening. In the third line, the words “feelings” is accented and a little anguished. But we now know, at least, that he wants not just intellectual realisation and certainty but the sense of “sureness” which comes with feeling (and, we might add, specifically of the feeling of oneself as living here and now). And Lennon knows something else, too, he knows what he does not know, he knows what he lacks. This is the key which Socrates found: that it is wisdom of realising whereof we are ignorant. As Gurdjieff said:
… most sleeping people will say that they have an aim and that they are going somewhere. The realisation of the fact that he has no aim and that he is not going anywhere is the first sign of the approaching awakening of a man or of awakening becoming really possible for him. Awakening begins when a man realises that he is going nowhere and does not know where to go. (In Search of the Miraculous, 158).
The other impressive aspect here is that Lennon realises that he confuses his feelings with ideas. We all do, and we get especially confused over ideas of what we should or should not be feeling. The result is that as we perceive our emotions, an internal and intellectual judge appears and may rebuke or praise ourselves for the emotion. This happens time and time again, and becomes automatic. When our internalised voice is critical of our emotions, especially those which are pleasurable, it often induces a sort of paralysis. Emotion is an impulse, but this judge is another impulse which condemns the first one or otherwise denies it. So it is that two internal antagonistic forces stand in electric opposition, while something very small but also very real is stricken with a sort of fear or horror. The song continues:
You know, life can be long, and you’ve got to be so strong.
And the world is so tough, sometimes I feel I’ve had enough.
The music heralds a change in mood. It is not exactly that it becomes gentler: the song already exemplifies the union of gentleness and strength which can only come from compassion. It is more that Lennon pauses for a moment in his search to consider his position, and how far he has yet to go along a difficult road. That is, at this point, the song’s centre of focus shifts from deep inside. Lennon opens his eyes and heart, and looks around. This larger perspective reappears in the next verse:
How can I give love when I don’t know what it is I’m giving?
How can I give love when I just don’t know how to give?
How can I give love when love is something I ain’t ever had? Oh no.
Again, there is not any doubt except that there is such a reality as love, or that he wants to feel it and to share it. But, he states, he has never felt love, and does not know how to share that or anything else of himself, for that matter. Could this really be true? It depends, I think, on which one means by love. Here, the love he feels in its absence is something which fills the spaces between people. When he comes to the reprise again, Lennon makes an artistically perfect swerve:
You know, life can be long, and you’ve got to be so strong
And the world she is tough, sometimes I feel I’ve had enough.
There is an almost transcendent poignancy in the way that Lennon sings “And the world, she is tough.” It isn’t whinging, it isn’t even complaining. It is objective, sympathetic and supportive all at once. When I think of the song, it’s usually this phrase which first comes to mind. Lennon then repeats the first verse, and the song is done. It has a clean, clear finish. No fade out, just a long closing chord which ends the piece on an upwards note.
“How?” is, to my mind, one of Lennon’s greatest “primal” songs. Arthur Janov, author of the Primal Scream, told Lennon that a resolution of our suffering is possible by experiencing one’s own pain, and releasing it in a cathartic scream. It was a version of “getting it out of your system”. Lennon had been pursuing, among other things, the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s Transcendental Meditation, and left wing political causes. But he had become disillusioned with the Maharishi, and had even turned to hard drugs. Someone sent him a copy of Janov’s book, and this turned his attention, once more, to internal factors as being decisive in our situation.
Lennon had always had an intuition that the prime arena for our struggles is inside. This surfaced in early in his career, for example, in 1963’s “There’s a Place”(see part 7 of this series) and 1968’s “Revolution”, where he sings:
You say you’ll change the constitution … we want to change your head.
You tell me it’s the institution … you better free your mind instead.
This being Lennon’s basic position, Janov’s thesis met a receptive audience. The idea that all that was needed was medical therapy must also have been appealing. Lennon and Ono entered into treatment with Janov. However after a relatively short but intense period, they left. Lennon had become sceptical of Janov as a person, and came to feel that Janov was exploiting their celebrity, which was probably quite true. However, my reading is that they had benefitted from Janov’s therapy as much as they ever would. And having taken what they could, Lennon went off in his individual way, as was his wont. As often happens, however, we often can’t move on until there has been some sort of personal falling out (and we even engineer such quarrels, more or less unconsciously, when it’s time to go).
Janov’s psychiatric approach worked to a certain extent, but not, I think, because his thesis was correct. In fact, I think it’s wrong. To the extent that it does work, I suspect that it’s because it brings consciousness to our situation. The John Lennon / Plastic Ono Band album captures Lennon’s raw awareness of his situation after the Janov experience (see postings 5, 8 and 15). It is not enough, however, simply to know that I have a problem, as the self-pity on some of those tracks, such as “Isolation” would suggest. Yet, if I know my suffering deeply enough, an implicit intelligence in me (the higher part of the brains or centres, to use Gurdjieff’s terms) will often deal with the issue. That is, generally, we only think in terms of backing one of two sides: we either refuse to continue in denial and to feel guilty, or else we suppress the original emotion which the censor in us condemns. But the higher parts of our intellectual and emotional brains tacitly understand that there is no future in this conflict, and slowly, or even sometimes suddenly, our attitude changes under this new influence. How did Lennon change? This is revealed, to some extent, in the posthumously released “Borrowed Time”. Recorded in 1980, it was not released until 1984 on the Milk and Honey album.
When I was younger, ha-ha.
Living confusion and deep despair.
When I was younger, a-ha.
Living illusion of freedom and power.
When I was younger, a-ha.
Full of ideals and broken dreams, my friends.
When I was younger, a-ha.
Everything simple, but not so clear.
Living on borrowed time without a thought for tomorrow.
Now I am older, a-huh.
The more that I see, the less that I know for sure.
Now I am older, a-ha.
The future is brighter and now is the hour.
Living on borrowed time without a thought for tomorrow.
Illusions, ideals, and broken dreams. The bouncy reggae influence in the music belies the rawness of the confession. Yet, it all works. That Lennon used reggae here is not surprising given not only Lennon’s love of the genre, but also that the title words apparently were suggested to Lennon by a Bob Marley song. The music is not Lennon’s greatest achievement, but it serves the lyrics, and nicely supports the positive message, and the message beneath the words is that time, the time of our lives, is valuable. The music adds to the sagely impartiality of the lyrics. There then follows the last verse and refrain, and Lennon’s comic remarks in the fade out:
Good to be older, a-huh.
Would not exchange a single day or a year.
Good to be older, a-ha.
Less complication and everything clear.
Living on borrowed time without a thought for tomorrow.
Oh yes, it all seemed so bloody easy then.
You know, like what to wear, very serious like.
How am I going to get rid of the pimples?
Does she really love me?
And all that crap!
But now I don’t bother about that shit no more,
I know she loves me!
All I got to bother about is standing up.
I don’t wish to lose sight of what is really critical in this song, and that is the affirmation that our lives are truly valuable. Some things are good, and our time is one of them, so let’s not waste it by thoughtlessness. “Now is the hour! Use it!”, this philosopher is saying. Lennon’s sense of paradox is as sharp as ever: he says that when he was young it seemed that everything was simple, and that it was more complicated. How can this be? When we’re young, we’re cocksure, that makes our outlook on the world both pretentious and simplistic. But we don’t know how to get the hundreds of things we want, and that produces clashing waves of complexity. Now that Lennon is older, he sees more clearly. Seeing more clearly, he knows that he has been prone to over-dramatise matters, a very common failing. We all of us lose perspective at some point or other, hence the line, “what to wear, very serious like”. Also, the simplicity of youth is, to an extent, the result of the illusions, ideals and dreams. When I am totally identified with an ideal or a fantasy everything seems straightforward. Too straightforward, Lennon is saying now. Remove the distorting effect of that over-simplification, and shades of grey start to appear.
Another paradox is that at, one and the same time, Lennon can sing “now is the hour”, and yet he is aware that he was deficient in not giving a thought to tomorrow. Only to the extent that I am present now, can I see what my situation is, and anticipate the needs of myself and of those around me. Again, the artistic touch is far more satisfying and makes the point more sharply than the didactic approach. Another benefit of Lennon’s ironies is that they leave something to the listener. Yoko Ono was always trying to have the audience involved in the art. The idea was good, but I don’t think the intellectual approach to it worked. Lennon shared in her interest, but did it more traditionally and more effectively. Lennon gives you something to tease out for yourself.
And, of course, another factor in his new life is the happiness Lennon has found in family life with Yoko and Sean (see parts 3, 4 and 12). He can now relax in the love he has found, instead of torturing himself with insecurities and doubts. With this, then, we have a clear and engaging picture of how far he had come in only ten years. Lennon had, at this point of his life, engaged in radical questioning of himself, his aims and his values. This song shows the public a man, wiser and older, who has found in his life a basis to meet whatever challenges may lie ahead of him. So, despite my regard for Gary Tillery’s book, I cannot agree that Lennon was a cynical idealist. However disappointed he may have been, he always believed with an intestinal fervour that there was a way forward and that his time did mean something.
Lennon’s career was extraordinary in that, in a very short period, he experienced so much so intensely, but was always groping, even with eyes shut, for what he truly was. Just when he seemed to have been lost himself, to have drowned in narcotics, or left-wing politics, or avant-garde art, Lennon came out on the other side. It’s also telling that, so far as I can see, Lennon was never addicted to probably the most prevalent drug in the modern world: materialism. David Kherdian once said something which I could paraphrase as follows: if a person is not totally identified with success in their field, then that very success can teach them the important lesson that success is not everything. What really counts is was we make for ourselves inside.
Joseph.Azize@gmail.com
JOSEPH AZIZE has published in ancient history, law and Gurdjieff studies. His first book The Phoenician Solar Theology treated ancient Phoenician religion as possessing a spiritual depth comparative with Neoplatonism, to which it contributed through Iamblichos. The second book, “Gilgamesh and the World of Assyria”, was jointly edited with Noel Weeks. It includes his article arguing that the Carthaginians did not practice child sacrifice.
The third book, ‘George Mountford Adie: A Gurdjieff Pupil in Australia’ represents his attempt to present his teacher (a direct pupil of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky) to an international audience.The fourth book, edited and written with Peter El Khouri and Ed Finnane, is a new edition of Britts Civil Precedents. He recommends it to anyone planning to bring proceedings in an Australian court of law.
“Maronites” is pp.279-282 of “The Encyclopedia of Religion in Australia” published by Cambridge University Press and edited by James Jupp.
