When Gurdjieff's father died

[Gimpy]

So, gee, there's a shock - Osho made something up out of whole cloth. I knew it didn't sound right, just couldn't bring to mind immediately why.

Gift wrapping common sense with jingle bells is how guys like osho make a few bucks, osit. If it works to cool a few jets, fine. I can't get past the silliness on this one.

Some of these memes, like the recent one mistakenly attributed to Morgan Freeman, I don't mind passing around.

 

[anart]

So, gee, there's a shock - Osho made something up out of whole cloth. I knew it didn't sound right, just couldn't bring to mind immediately why.

Gift wrapping common sense with jingle bells is how guys like osho make a few bucks, osit. If it works to cool a few jets, fine. I can't get past the silliness on this one.

Some of these memes, like the recent one mistakenly attributed to Morgan Freeman, I don't mind passing around.

Yeah, I'm not a big fan of passing around things that just aren't true. Our reality is filled with little twists away from the truth - that bugs me - but that's just me.

 

[Approaching Infinity]

Gurdjieff's father died in 1918 when the Turks invaded. He chose to stay at his home and not flee with the rest of his family and was murdered there. Details are in Paul Taylor's biography.

 

[Joe]

I was going to respond here to the comments with some thoughts, but I think I'll wait 24hrs and see what I think then.

 

[Kisito]

The history has to be a metaphor enters G and his father where maybe it's passed to it shortly before its death. When G was a young man he assaulted his friend because he saw with the girl that he loved. He waited 24 seconds. Thus if this story existed G was to be older.
I waited more than 24 h before answering because let's sleep on it :)

 

[Graalsword]

Refraining from an out-of-anger immediate reaction makes sense. However, the example of being beaten is a little exaggerated. In real life you may have to defend yourself in order to avoid being killed.

That is what I think too. It is ok refraining from the angry reaction, but it is also benefit to take some action to respond to the specific situation as needed.

 

[Gwenllian]

Refraining from an out-of-anger immediate reaction makes sense. However, the example of being beaten is a little exaggerated. In real life you may have to defend yourself in order to avoid being killed.

That is what I think too. It is ok refraining from the angry reaction, but it is also benefit to take some action to respond to the specific situation as needed.

Thanks for this. At first I thought it made sense not to act, just because I assumed that this account had to be factual, because Perceval posted it.
But I do think that there are situations when we have to act. The example of Gertrudes comes to mind, who defended herself bravely when she had to deal with a burglar for the second time (it was the same one I believe?).

That said, it is pretty good advice to wait 24 hours, when we are emotional and not aware of it. :D I wish I had waited that long the other day. Someone irritated me and I waited a couple of hours, before I wrote back an e-mail to her. And I could even say to myself that I was angry, which calmed me down almost immediately. I checked my e-mail three times or so. Still, two days later I came to the conclusion that it would have been best if I had not said anything at all. Or had kept it very brief. It would also have been more externally considerate, OSIT.
I do have a temperamental 'I' that often gets in the way, so personally I think that I should wait for at least 48 hours, before I do anything. ;)

 

[Nook]

Nuke pointed out to me that Ouspensky wrote that he met G's father, so in that case there seems to be historical inaccuracy in this.

I saw this story on FB and wasn't sure what to make of it. I first thought maybe it's possible G just came up with the story to make a point and if he says it was his dying father, it would've had a bigger impact on his students. Then Foxx agreed with the possibility and added that it's Osho after all, so the whole thing might be just made up...

I was also thinking could this be a twisted version of how G's grandmother died as he describes in the preface to Beelzebub's Tales? She seems to have passed away when G was around that age.

She made him promise (I'm paraphrasing) to "Either do nothing or do something no one else does" and to never act like other people, fwiw.

 

[Mal7]

Osho (aka Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh) has other writings on Gurdjieff in his book "Books I Have Loved" (Rajneeshpuram, Oregon: Rajneesh Foundation International, 1985).

"Books I Have Loved" is a listing of 168 recommended books, with a few short sentences, or a few long paragraphs, about each.

[Actually the list is not entirely all "recommended books", one of the books on the list is Marx' "Das Kapital", a work Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh recommends not reading: "There is nothing good in it. It is the exploitation of a great dream. Karl Marx was only a dreamer, not an economist, not at all - just a dreamer; a poet, but a poet of third rate quality [. . .] It is a calamity, but I still mention the book - not that you should read it, but so that you do not. Understand what I have said. Do not read it. You are already in a mess. Enough of it. No need for Das Kapital." (pp. 171-172)]

The full list of the 168 books, numbered according to the 16 chapters, is here:

_http://mind-101.blogspot.co.nz/2010/02/osho-books-i-have-loved.html

The full text of "Books I Have Loved" is available online too, e.g. here:

_http://www.messagefrommasters.com/Beloved_Osho_Books/Personal_Notes/Books_I_Have_Loved.pdf

9 of the 168 books relate to Gurdjieff:

Chapter 2, Number 9: All and Everything by George Gurdjieff

Chapter 2, Number 10: In Search of the Miraculous by P. D. Ouspensky

Chapter 3, Number 2: Tertium Organum by P. D. Ouspensky

Chapter 8, Number 2: A New Model of the Universe by P. D. Ouspensky

Chapter 10, Number 6: Commentaries by Maurice Nicoll

Chapter 10, Number 7: Our Life with Gurdjieff by Thomas de Hartmann & Olga de Hartmann

Chapter 10, Number 9: The Future Psychology of Man by P. D. Ouspensky

Chapter 12, Number 5: Meetings with Remarkable Men by George Gurdjieff

Chapter 16, Number 1: Long Pilgrimage: The Life and Teaching of Sri Govindananda Bharati, known as the ShivaPuri Baba by John G. Bennet

 

[Kisito]

[Actually the list is not entirely all "recommended books", one of the books on the list is Marx' "Das Kapital", a work Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh recommends not reading: "There is nothing good in it. It is the exploitation of a great dream. Karl Marx was only a dreamer, not an economist, not at all - just a dreamer; a poet, but a poet of third rate quality [. . .] It is a calamity, but I still mention the book - not that you should read it, but so that you do not. Understand what I have said. Do not read it. You are already in a mess. Enough of it. No need for Das Kapital." (pp. 171-172)]

Hello Mal7, for me all the great men and all the great women, are poets, they have a dimension beyond their sphere of activity and are not just specialists. They have a wider vision. In Eulogy to Socrates, the philosopher thought that the poets were the most intelligent. We can say that Homère was just a poet. And Laura and E. Velikovky knows very well that many truths are in this "poetry".Nowadays it seems that we underestimate the level of the poetry. This because of the school which obliges us to study specialities which are often empty of substance. The poetry is the truth of the soul, the modern world tends to denigrate it. The poetry receives a lot of symbols and the truths.

 

[Nancy2feathers]

I`m glad to have read this thread. I feel the advice G`s father gave him about waiting 24hrs to respond is really good advice in a lot of cases. I think once I sleep on it and adrenalin calms down, I`m able to see things more clearly. Even writing details down when they happen helps me to take a better look at the situation before responding. I`m learning everything isn`t black and white. It`s an on going process though. G`s teachings are invaluable and they have helped me see things in a brighter light. It`s really beneficial to share here on the Forum. That has helped me to work through my divorce.

 

[Mal7]

Hi Kisoto,

In fairness to Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, in case I have quoted him too selectively, I don't think he was denigrating poets and poetry.
About Marx, I think he was saying, to paraphrase "Marx thought he was a great economist, but he was just a bad poet."
Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh did also include a number of works of poets in his list of "Books I Have Loved":
Rabindranath Tagore's Gitanjali, Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet, Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat, Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, and some others.

 

[Mal7]

Hi Nancy,
About the story of G's fathers advice, it would seem to be apocryphal, i.e. Osho was not letting the facts get in the way of telling a good story. (See above posts about when G's father actually died.)

Maybe still good advice though - c.f. Castaneda's books.

 

[mada85]

So, gee, there's a shock - Osho made something up out of whole cloth.

Very droll . . . and very true. It's definitely from Osho.

Our reality is filled with little twists away from the truth - that bugs me - but that's just me.

Yeah, there's something about this story that I find hard to put a precise finger on but I know there's a twist in there. Like a tiny lie disguised by enormous bows and ribbons and fairy dust.

Osho was rather fond of making up stories about Gurdjieff. He often describes G as one of the greatest masters who ever lived, and then proceeds to subtly denigrate G in some way. Osho was a strict vegetarian so maybe his grip on reality was skewed, unlike G who ate meat 'with all the fat'.

And this thing about letting someone beat you while you are just a 'spectator' really seems off to me. Osho is saying that you should just let people do with you as they will and respond 24 hours later??!!! Jeez! What about the natural self-protection from predators that one is entitled to? All of nature's creatures protect themselves, but humans on a spiritual path shouldn't?

I think the denigration of Gurdjieff in this piece lies in the way Osho appears to praise the way G (allegedly) let himself be beaten, lied to, insulted and so on - all as a path to spiritual development. Whereas any normal person would react strongly to those behaviours directed against them.

And this following quote is a kind of hypnotic closer to the tale, intended to leave the listener (or reader) thinking that all that has gone before is something positive.

So after twenty-four hours everything settled down and a clarity was there. And with that clarity and the watchfulness of the moment, Gurdjieff changed into one of the most unique beings of this age.

And this was the basic foundation of the whole crystallization of his being.

I was an Osho follower for a while in the 1980s. I wrote a post about some of my impressions and the things I saw during that time which can be found here.

 

[Palinurus]

I was an Osho follower for a while in the 1980s. I wrote a post about some of my impressions and the things I saw during that time which can be found here.

Sorry Endymion, your link is faulty. It is a self referencing link to this actual page we're now on