"Stairway to Subud" by Anthony Bright-Paul

"Stairway to Subud" is an auto-biography of Anthony Bright-Paul starting from his elementary education in Christian boarding schools, to living under J.G. Bennett in Coombe Springs and practicing Gurdjieff's system, to finally ending being "opened" in Subud and spending the rest of his life with this connection.  Although the book is primarily intended to describe the author's life in Subud, it contains probably the most detailed description of the life at Coombe Springs and the Bennett Gurdjieff group there, which consists of about 45% of the book.

The author describes the eventual stagnation under Bennett's leadership who himself did not know what to do next when Mohammed Subuh appeared from Indonesia through Hussein Rofe and became the new raison de vivre.  Although Bennett will eventually leave Subud as well, and embark on a series of findings of different gurus and teachings until his death, many other Gurdjieff students, like the author, will find in Subud what they always looked for.

The second half of the book explains some of the basic concepts of Subud like the Latihan Kejuwan, the spiritual exercise, the concepts of Jiwa and Nafsu, etc.  The spread of Subud outside the Gurdjieff circles until the Gurdjieffian roots became irrelevant, even a bother, is described in great detail, as well as some of the internal strife.  Towards the end the book becomes more autobiographical and describes mostly the author's life and meetings with old friends from Gurdjieff groups and early Subud groups.

The book is rich in many excerpts and voluminous quotations from other books on Subud and from the writings of Pak Subuh and J.G. Bennett.  It excels in presenting the daily atmosphere in Coombe Springs, of which this is the only detailed account, so it can be compared to the several accounts of the life at the Prieure under Gurdjieff himself. 

"Teachings of Gurdjieff - A Pupil's Journal" by C. S. Nott

CS Nott's book is well known for the wealth of information it provides, first-hand, that could not be otherwise found in other books when first published in 1961 by Penguin Arkana.  Nott's book is divided in three parts: the first part details his first stay at the Prieure at Fonteainbleu, the middle part is an extensive commentary on Gurdjieff's "Beelzebub's tales to his grandson" as gathered from Orage's talks in New York City and the third part, and the shortest, describes the second stay of Nott and his wife at the Prieure during which the author experiences a sort of "enlightenment" which takes him to the "next octave" as expressed in the Gurdjieffian Method.

Nott's book is deeply colored with Puritanic ethical and religious references, peppered with quotes (some page-length) from "The Pilgrim's Progress" and the main protagonist Christian.  This may turn off some readers who are not familiar with the Pilgrim/Puritan/Protestant worldview, but others might find the references clear and familiar.

Nott describes himself as a physical worker, not a man of books of of philosophical inclinations.  This makes his perspective unique from those of the other contemporary pupils, many of which went on to write books about their personal experiences after Mr. Gurdjieff's death.  Nott dug a large amount of trenches around La Prieure and had his final enlightenment there after a prolonged digging spell.  Mr. G. adapted his method to suit the capabilities and preferences of the student at hand, as the main principles are the same whether approached through the purely physical, the emotional or the intellectual aspects.

There are lots of advanced concepts like "pondering" being discussed and the book has probably more value as a personal record than a teaching textbook.

"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.

"Meetings with Remarkable Men" by G.I. Gurdjieff

This is the Second Series of the Gurdjieff writings, as he envisioned them.  According to the original plan, after the illusions were destroyed with the First Series (Beelzebub), the Second Series was supposed to point out to the right way to educate oneself and harmoniously develop in all directions to become a Normal Man.

The book is divided in multiple chapters, each dedicated to an allegorical story about an authority figure or a close friend and associate from Gurdjieff's life.  The last chapter is called "The Material Question" which is a separate essay on the various ways Gurdjieff earned money to support his pupils' needs, which also appears in other publications.

Each story, from Gurdjieff's own father, through Dean Borsh and Bogachevsky to Yelov and Profesor Skridlov, teaches a certain aspect of the Work, appropriate for a certain period and sequence.  All the names of the characters sound a bit like from the Russian fairy tales (many of which include three bearded sailors on the Seven Seas) and they probably are made up, like much of the material, which, although probably based on some real events and people, is actually meant to be a "Teaching Story" in the Sufi sense that Idries Shah popularized in the West.  Thus, this book is a manual for the sequence and quality of the work on oneself that a student of the Gurdjieff's System needs to follow.

In that spirit, and alike Beelzebub, there's very little to be said about the actual content.  It needs to be read and the sentences need to sink into the unconscious, where Mr.Gurdjieff intended them to go, as he saw the unconscious as the last possibility for salvation of Man Kind, and he called the unconscious - "the real conscious."

"Investing for dummies" by Eric Tyson

I wanted to read a foundational generalist book about investing, so that, after my MBA, I can check if there are some gaps still left that need further research and education.  Mr. Tyson's book is as general as it can get! I understood after the first chapter that the more appropriate book would have been "Stock Investing for Dummies" since Mr. Tyson's book covers real estate, small business and extensive tax shelter retirement strategies.  These are, of course, amazing, but I meant only investing in the stock market sense when starting my research.

Mr. Tyson is an investor of the old school.  He says that if one doesn't hold a stock at least 5-7 years before selling, then one is not doing investing, but trading, which Mr. Tyson equals with gambling.  Like most investors of the old school Mr. Tyson does not believe in day trading and technical analysis, but instead concentrates on sheltering as much money as possible in predominantly retirement vehicles and keeping solid investments (not stellar, but solid) for as long as possible, and having the long average of the market (which is always rising on a very long time scale) to bring profits, even though in the "golden" years of one's life.

Mr. Tyson's strategy is proven and the only one that can somewhat guarantee results, of course, for the most patient and most enduring among us.  Many would reject such advice and jump on the day trading wagon, which, if looked at a long enough time line, is really like gambling.  However, on short distances, the market can be beat.  But still, like a gambler, the really high rollers pride themselves on knowing when to enter and when to exit a position, precise timing being everything.  And it only takes one bad bed to erase all the good ones.

Ultimately Mr. Tyson's book is for the people with enough nervous strength and constant income to afford the luxury of being "armchair investors" where one allocates the investments, sets up a monthly transfer plan and just checks once or twice a year if some kind of re-balance is needed.  No following of the markets; no checking stock prices every 20 minutes, no fretting when the Dow drops, no euphoria when the Dow skyrockets, as the armchair investors knows that over the longest investment time period (40 years or so) they will be on the market, all the ups and downs will cancel each other and finally come down to a nice constant return of about 6-10%. 

"Susila Budhi Dharma (Subud) and its doctrines" by Chuzaimah Batubara

This is a master thesis from McGill University but published in PDF format.  Going around 200 pages the author gives a succinct and very detail-heavy presentation of the situation in Post-Independence Indonesia, especially on the Java island which forms the core of the country and the term "Javanese" is used to imply belonging nearing ethnicity.

Javanese nationalism was reflected in the rise of "Aliran Kebatinan" so called "Mystical Movements" that originated from the animistic and Hindu original beliefs, predating Islam.  The Islam that was spread in Indonesia was an eclectic mix of heterodox Islam and the local animistic and Hindu beliefs, with a very small part of the population sticking to strict, heterodox Islam and Shari'a. 

Among the literally dozens of movements originating in this period (1920-1940), Susila Budhi Dharma (SuBuD), founded by Javanese Mohammad Subuh in 1925 was the only one that gained significant international presence and exists in significant numbers today, members numbering over 10,000 in several dozen countries.

The author describes in detail the socio-ethnic conditioning that necessitated the rise of the Aliran Kebatinan movements with their emphasis on direct, experiential link with the Higher Power, instead of through books like Islam and Christianity.  Subud was influenced by the local animistic beliefs, by the Hindu-Vedic theology (Susila = Suzila in Sanskrit, Budhi = Bodhi and Dharma is the same) ,by Mystical Sufism (where the ideas of the "nafsu" was borrowed from) and orthodox Islam. 

The author analyzes the basic concepts in Subud; like the concept of God or a Higher Power, the concept of Man and the concept of spiritual development which is done through the practical exercise "Latihan Kejuiwan" which is "channeled" for each new initiate ("opened") and usually consists of a verbal, mental, emotional and physical element. 

The thesis is very informative, if overly detailed, and gives a good overview of the milieu in which Subud arose and explains why it contains the elements it has today. 

"The Harmonious Circle" by James Webb

"The Harmonious Circle" has a lengthy subtitle in which Gurdjieff, Ouspensky, Orage, Collin, Bennet and others are insinuated ("The Lives and Work of G. I. Gurdjieff, P.D. Ouspensky, and Their Followers").  James Webb, the very talented researcher who published "The Occult Establishment" some years before "The Harmonious Circle", has built a reputation of very thorough researcher, a man who can discover what others can't, a man who infiltrated even the tightest occult circles in order to get first-hand, otherwise unavailable, information.  He had access to typescript and handwritten documents that even today, 35 years later (the book was published in 1980) some of the documents Webb mentions have not seen publication.  Webb's tone throughout the book is a professional historian one, full of objectivity, however he does allow himself slight sarcasm and cynicism when describing some particularly hairy moments. Mr. Webb died by committing suicide some time after "The Harmonious Circle" was published.

Webb analyzes the people and teachings into great detail going into historical circumstances, fashions and fads of the times, Die Zeitgaist, and political implications of the power plays of the period.  For Webb, Gurdjieff is definitely "Ushe Narzunov" a Russian Tzarist "intelligence asset" (i.e. spy) who was one of the closest collaborators and a student of Lama Agwan Dordjieff, an influential Buddhist leader from the Russian Empire Buddhist Areas who was the personal tutor of the Dalai Lama.  Agwan Dordjieff was linked directly to the Russian Tzar who was engaged with the British Empire in "The Great Game" i.e. for domination of East Asia, especially Tibet (as all the rest was pretty much taken by then).  The British, with their Indian allies, were approaching Tibet from the south, while Russians, with their Buddhist and Muslim allies from the Russian Empire Buddhist Areas and Russian Turkestan (where Turkestan is referring not to today's former Soviet republic, but the huge area including Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and the Chinese Turkestan, currently known as Xinjiang) , were approaching the conquest of Tibet from the north.

Gurdjieff makes a big deal in "Beelzebub" of the British Tibet expedition of 1903 led by Lord Younghusband.  He even claims that a stray bullet from that expedition killed the last sage on this planet who knew the full ancient knowledge (of course, Gurdjieff was known for exaggerating for dramatic effect, just read his "Herald of the Coming Good" which can be seen as a non-intentional tragicomedy).  Gurdjieff himself was hit by stray bullets three times in his life, but he survived each incident (still died at age 81 of cirrhosis of the liver, brought on by excessive alcohol use).  Few other historical events are described by Gurdjieff with such excruciating detail and barely-suppressed volcanic (negative) emotion like the Younghusband expedition.  The facts fit perfectly.  In 1903 Gurdjieff/Narzunoff would have been in Tibet, working on Russian Tsarists interests, but after the Younghusband expedition, and especially after the ingenious Chinese manoeuvre to attack Tibet from the north, thus cutting off both Russian reinforcement and escape routes for the Dalai Lama to Russia.  

The Dalai Lama was forced to flee to the British in India, who made the main condition for their help the breaking of any and all ties with Russia whatsoever, and full denunciation of Russia, which the Dalai Lama, afraid for his life, promptly and fully did.   The British have won this round of the Great Game, but in a decade or so, it became irrelevant, and in a few decades the British lost their entire empire.  The real winners here were the Chinese, which although severely weakened by the western powers' meddling (this was decades before the Communist Revolution of 1949), have scored a decisive geopolitical victory by claiming almost all of Historic Tibet for themselves.  If the Dalai Lama succeeded in escaping to Russia at this time - we'd have much different political landscape in East Asia today, and Tibetan would have probably been written with the Cyrillic alphabet.

With the Russians expelled from Tibet, Agwan Dordjieff, Gurdjieff's tutor, moved back to St.Petersburg and was granted land and money by the Russian Tsar, where he founded a Tibetan Buddhist temple which he ruled, and in which he died in 1938.  Gurdjieff also went back to Russia and was presented to the Tsar Nicolas II for his services to the Russian Crown and after a few years wandering in Tashkent and Tbilisi he went back to Moscow where his cousin, the famous sculptor Mercurieff, started introducing him to his circle and from where the known history of Gurdjieff starts.

It is interesting to note that Mdme. de Hartmann had a key for a lock-box that Gurdjieff gave her for safekeeping because he said "I knew you'd never look inside" and eventually emptied the contents into a fireplace in the late 1930s, when he decided that his incognito travels are over.  In the box there were multiple passports from different countries and other official documents and letters of introduction, gathered and assigned to Gurdjieff by the Russian Tsarist intelligence, during the long decades he was an active spy.  Gurdjieff also loved to call himself "The Tiger of Turkestan" which fits with the life of Ushe Narzunoff spending almost a decade in that area, the Chinese Turkestan (Xinjiang), adjoining Tibet, which was going to be the stepping stone for the Russian conquest of Tibet ("first entire Turkestan, then Tibet" the Russian Tsar used to say).  

There is a photograph from this time of Ushe Narzunoff/Georgi Gurdjieff with his Chinese wife and their two sons, aged about 5 and 2.  Gurdjieff mentioned in talks several times that he was a "trader in Chinese Turkestan" (common cover for spies in all ages) and in Beelzebub the old devil speaks about his two sons with tenderness and longing, which might have been Gurdjieff's personal emotions.  He probably never got back to Chinese Turkestan because of all the wars interceding and the new political realities.  He might have heard that his elder son got married and had a son himself, Gurdjieff's first grandson.  That must have made Gurdjieff very proud, and sad at the same time, making Hassein, Beelzebub's grandson, the main character of the book besides the Old Devil.  One can only imagine how Gurdjieff's Chinese wife felt.  First she was promised a family life and future with a western merchant-husband, and then she was abandoned forever to raise their children by herself. Direct blood descendants of Gurdjieff might still exist in modern China today, although they probably call themselves "Pure Chinese" and are CCP members.

Webb seems to have a bit of a bias contra Gurdjieff and pro Ouspensky, although I am not sure why, both men had their positive and their negative sides/habits.  The rest of the book is less interesting since it depicts (in excruciating, mind-numbing detail) the lives of Ouspensky, Orage, Collin, Bennett, Nicoll, and few other "breakaway currents" in the Gurdjieff system and Work.  The most interesting parts of the book and Webb's research are the hidden stories about Mr. Gurdjieff while the stories of the followers (and I consider Ouspensky a follower, not a teacher or co-teacher) are full of pettiness, squabbles and delusions of grandeur.