Q. Can women work [at self-knowledge] as well as men?
The old "men are more intellectual, women more emotional" myth ?. At least Gurdjieff holds both aspects as important to an individual, that self-knowledge includes a balance between & fusion of the two, & that therefore, yes, women are equally able to "do the work".
This is from 1924, so bearing in mind the attitude implied by the questioner, G is relatively progressive, I guess ??♂️
“It means nothing if I say yes or no. If I say yes, you cannot verify it, if I say no, you are none the wiser. You have no business to believe me. I ask you to believe nothing that you cannot verify for yourself.”
“Every man comes into the world like a clean sheet of paper, and then the people and circumstances around him begin vying with each other to dirty this sheet and cover it with writing... Gradually the sheet is dirtied, and the dirtier with so-called “knowledge“ the sheet becomes, the cleverer the man is considered to be... And the dirty sheet itself, seeing that people consider its “dirt“ as merit, considers it valuable.”
I'm finally reading this book, purchased in 1984, for #TitlesAndTunes #TheWorldIsMyOyster
I've long been unable to decide whether Gurdjieff is a person of great wisdom or a cultish charlatan, though I suppose the two aren't necessarily mutually exclusive (or are they? 🤔).
Given his belief that most people lead lives of mechanistic “waking sleep“, that conventional wisdom and religious thought is illusory and superficial, and that true ⬇️
#TitlesAndTunes #TheWorldIsMyOyster
When Arkana started reissuing Gurdjieff's books in the early '80s, I knew his name thanks to Kate Bush's ?Them Heavy People? from her debut album, so on the off chance that I might one day sit next to Kate at a bus stop and need a topic of conversation, I read a few of his books, and of his pupil Ouspensky. Fascinating, but "Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson" was too oblique for me, and Kate never did get ⬇️
Views from the Real World: Early Talks of Gurdjieff | 
