"Gurdjieff Unveiled" by Seymour Ginsburg

I was very excited about this book, especially the first few chapters, which are probably the most straightforward explanation of some of the basic concepts of Gurdjieff's teaching.   Ginsburg sublimates much of Ouspenky's "In Search of the Miraculous" and extracts only the framework and practical exercises, while not including the humongous cosmology which boggles the mind at first reading.  The first few chapters are organized as weekly lessons for starting Gurdjieffian groups with weekly exercises, proposed discussions and other practical advice.

Problems appear in the second half of the book, the two major ones being the Theosophical bend and the obsessions with dreams.  The third problem, which raises its ugly head in the last few chapters, is Ginsburg explaining how the people in the Work are "special" and not like "ordinary" people, even goes so far to use the offensive word "moron."  Ego tripping is definitely a sign that the Work is not working.

Ginsburg seems to be a proud Theosophists, member and officer of the Theosophical Society, and often connects Gurdjieff's statements with those of Helena Blavatsky and Charles Leadbeatter (a known child molester, exiled from England because of his pedophilia).  He tries to justify his transgression by saying that Mr. G also read Blavatsky.  Yes he did, and he wrote that 90% of what Blavatsky was writing was pure fantasy and had no basis in reality.  He also made great fun of the Theosophists with their serious but worthless books and famously joked that Theosophists are only useful for their money.  It is true that many people in the Work have been Theosophists before, however they usually discarded that nonsense once they advanced.  Ginsburg goes so far as to connect Sinnet's "Mahatma Letters" with Gurdjieffian tradition, which is completely ludicrious, having those letters proven as fraud, and written by Blavatsky herself, already during her lifetime.

The dreaming and obsession with dream interpretation is another pointer that Ginsburg's is a devolving octave, not evolving.  Mr. Gurgjieff famously insisted many, many times, in no ambiguous words (which was a rarity for him) that dreams area garbage and a waste of time.  He claimed that it took him 20 years to learn how not to dream at all, and that should be the goal of every aspiring seeker.   Ginsburg makes weak connections with what Gurgjieff mentioned in passing to Margaret Anderson about dreams, but that is just one remark, even if it is true, as opposed to an entire body of work directing the reader to supress dreaming altogether.

The problem with Ginsburg mainly is that if you do the dream journals, dream groups, meditations, etc. etc. one pretty much ends up with a full life, full of activities that "seem" spiritual, but are actually just another product of the head-brain, invented to support an illusion of doing "something."  Gurdjieff's system main emphasis is on "shocks," that is insults, offenses, life dangers, humiliations, "rubbing against each other" and feeling the brunt of our animalistic mechanical egotistic natures.  With Ginsburg's advice everyone is sitting happily in a circle, imagining they are doing something and living in an imaginary dream world, none of which has any objective existence or value.