I’m looking to find people interested in the teachings of G.I. Gurdjieff, with the aim of getting together a group of people in Taiwan who want to work. I am in touch with the original Gurdjieff groups continued by Me. de Salzmann after the death of Mr Gurdjieff, and I’m hoping that once we get a group together we can have senior people over from abroad on a regular basis.
Hooray! Until now, all we’ve had was the Fellowship of Friends, and occasional movements classes taught by Osho people.
I would also be interested in establishing a Gurdjieff study group in Taipei.
In one of those ironic coincidences, I decided to google for info on Gurdjieff groups in Taipei, I found this gurdjieff-movements.co.uk/workshops.html whichs is a retreat starting today.
There’s also this sacreddancer.samasati.org website, but it seems to be down (probably on a retreat?)
I’ve had some contact with groups before, I even got the opportunity to meet Peggy in person (charming lady), but never actually participated in any of their activities. I wonder if there’s any other activities that I could join.
Cheers
J
The groups active in Taiwan so far are either Burton or Osho followers, and not of the original lineage of groups that were established under direct instructions of Gurdjieff.
Contact with the original groups can be made at iagf.org/
If you want to know all about the Fellowship of Friends (Burton’s group), click here, and read the zillion comments: animamrecro.wordpress.com/2006/0 … llectuals/
Executive summary: Burton demands 10 % of his followers’ income, plus (gay) sexual favors, where applicable.
The samasati.org group organizes annual Gurdjieff Movements workshops by an Israeli Osho follower, Jivan Sunder. U-Theater (the faux-Zen drummers) apparently took lessons from him. Sunder explains how the Gurdjieff Movements came to be practiced by Osho people:
[quote]“Osho saw the movie ‘Meetings with Remarkable Men’ and, as far as I heard, he did not like the movie much but liked the 10 minutes of the Movements at the end. He apparently said, “We should do them here.” He gave the project to Amiyo and Yogendra, I believe. As they knew very little, they wrote to many Gurdjieff groups asking for assistance but they got mostly negative replies. Amiyo learned the movements just from watching the movie over and over again.
“Many might not know that ‘Meetings with Remarkable Men’ was filmed with the blessings of the Gurdjieff Foundation, directed by Peter Brook, himself a member of the Gurdjieff Foundation, with Jeanne de Salzmann as a consultant. So the dances were authentic, shortened versions of the movements, but accurately done. The people doing the parts were actors but the people doing the movements were Gurdjieff pupils. So that was all we had in the beginning.
“After about 2 years, in 1991, some ex-Gurdjieff people came to the commune and they gave us some notes and showed us various postures, but they were very incomplete. But shortly afterwards there was a breakthrough! We got that film which you saw the other night. It was secretly filmed in a Japanese movie theatre at a convention of the Gurdjieff Foundation. When I first saw it I was enthralled! At that time I was leading the intensive together with Sangati and so it was our turn to sit in front of the video player, watching, rewinding, watching…until we had understood the movements. And then we taught them.”[/quote]
(From oshonews.com/2011/01/gurdjie … ents-jivan )
If you don’t know what Gurdjieff movements are, see here:
(a) From the finale of Peter Brooke’s movie, Meetings with Remarkable Men: youtube.com/watch?v=qftYyjV9 … re=related
(b) Old, grainy bootleg tape of de Salzmann and her students: youtube.com/watch?v=GQfSHoEzJS4
(c) As practiced by the Taiwan group: youtube.com/watch?v=YDl6haH72f4
Now what would motivate people to seek Gurdjieff activities apart from the worldwide Gurdjieff Foundations, the groups Gurdjieff himself founded? Part of the answer probably has to do with accessibility, but another part has to do with the cultic nature of these societies (by which I mean they are cliquish, jargon-filled, ideologically charged, and often, dominated by certain personalities, or by personality conflicts). While many participants speak highly of their experiences–Jacob Needleman springs to mind–others describe themselves as in “recovery” from same:
(From a Christian counter-cult site, forum.rickross.com/read.php?6,27083,65427 )
Of course the Osho people have also been described as a cult, but the atmosphere is completely different (and much freer). So how important is “lineage”? Do the Gurdjieff Foundations succeed in transmitting anything of value, or have Gurdjieff’s insights dissipated with the passage of time (assuming he was not simply a con artist)? Between the Gurdjieff Foundations and the Fellowship of Friends, should we speak of differences of degree or kind? Of what does human fulfillment consist (if such a question can be reduced to a single answer), and how may it be attained? How should spiritual groups be organized, and what price may they legitimately demand? Questions that arise…
‘Never judge by the tales of others.’
I bet doing one of those Whirling Dervish-like dances can really put your mind in another state.
Did this group get started? If it has I would be interested.
It started, but has since been dormant because of people moving away, etc. If you want we can stay in touch via line (ID: fwrousseau) or email to see if we can get it going again some time.
What does/did your group do?