Why remarkable men rarely meet

All rights reserved. Toggle navigation. Sign Up. Sign In. Get Meetings with Remarkable Men from Amazon. View the Study Pack. View the Lesson Plans. Plot Summary. Chapter 1, Introduction. Chapter 2, My Father. Chapter 3, My First Tutor. Chapter 4, Bogachevsy. Chapter 5, Mr. X or Captain Pogossian. Chapter 6, Abram Yelov. Chapter 7, Prince Yuri Lubovedsky. Chapter 8, Ekim Bey.

Chapter 9, Piotr Karpenko. Chapter 10, Professor Skridlov. Chapter 11, The Material Question. Free Quiz. Topics for Discussion. This Study Guide consists of approximately 38 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Meetings with Remarkable Men.

Print Word PDF. This section contains words approx. Themes Style Quotes. What I saw—was it not precisely what I had spent long months of sleepless nights thinking about! It was a map of what is called 'pre-sand Egypt'.

I must add, by the way, that in my opinion this custom is not without its use. My special observations have shown me that the new-born children of other races suffer from a skin rash in the places where one usually applies some kind of powder to prevent inflammation, but with rare exceptions Armenian children, born in the same regions, do not suffer from this rash, although they have all the other children's diseases.

This fact I ascribe to the custom of salting. I, who then spoke eighteen languages, felt a green-horn in comparison with him. Before I knew a single word of any European language, he already spoke almost all of them so perfectly that it was hard to tell that the language he was speaking was not his own.

I had several long conversations with this old man. In the last one he advised me to go to his monastery and stay there for a time. He added that if I wished to go there, he would be willing to help me, and would find the necessary guides, on condition that I would take a solemn oath never to tell anyone where the monastery was situated. Throughout the whole our journey, we strictly and conscientiously kept our oath not to look and not to try and find out where we were going and through what places we were passing.

When we halted for the night, and occasionally by day when we ate in some secluded place, our bashliks were removed. But while on the way we were only twice permitted to uncover our eyes. The first time was on the eighth day, when we were about to cross a swinging bridge which one could neither cross on horseback nor walk over two abreast, but only in single file, and this it was impossible to do with eyes covered.

On the way we changed horses and asses several times, and sometimes went on foot. More than once we had to swim rivers and cross mountains, and by our sensations of heat and cold it was evident that we sometimes descended into deep valleys or climbed very high.

At last, when at the end of the twelfth day our eyes were uncovered, we found ourselves in a narrow gorge through which flowed a small stream whose banks were covered with a rich vegetation. As we came nearer we were able to make out something like a fortress such as one finds on a smaller scale on the banks of the Amu Darya or the Pyandzh.

The buildings were encircled by a high unbroken wall. He appointed as our guide one of the oldest monks, an aged man who looked like an icon and was said by the other brethren to be two hundred and seventy-five years old. He was humming some march and swinging his stick.

Suddenly, as if from nowhere, a dog appeared, then another, and another, and still another—in all about fifteen sheep-dogs, who began barking at us. Pogossian imprudently flung a stone at them and they immediately sprang at us. They were Kurd sheep-dogs, very vicious, and in another moment they would have torn us to pieces if I had not instinctively pulled Pogossian down and made him sit beside me on the road.

Just because we sat down the dogs stopped barking and springing at us; surrounding us, they also sat down. Some time passed before we came to ourselves; and when we were able to take stock of the situation we burst out laughing. As long as we remained sitting the dogs also sat, peacably and still, and when we threw them bread from our knapsacks, they ate it with great pleasure, some of them even wagging their tails in gratitude. But when, reassured by their friendliness, we tried to stand up, then, 'Oh no, you don't'!

When we again tried to get up, the dogs showed themselves so viciously hostile that we did not risk trying a third time. In this situation we remained sitting for about three hours. I did not know how much longer we would have had to sit there if a young Kurd girl had not chanced to appear in the distance with an ass, gathering keesiak in the fields. Making various signs to her, we finally managed to attract her attention, and when she came closer and saw what the trouble was, she went off to fetch the shepherds to whom the dogs belonged, who were not far away behind a hill.

The shepherds came and called off the dogs, but only when they were at some distance did we risk standing up; and all the time they were moving away the rascals kept an eye on us. Gurdjieff is a monolith peering up in these odd times; an anachronism and a relief. This book shows a person how to live: fill your life with adventure and discovery; or die trying. What a sweeping story. And what is fiction and what fact of this autobiography of his life he wrote; of times among his group the Seekers of Truth going out into the Gobi Desert and Luxor, Transval and Rome?

I highly recommend it as the easiest and most fun of all his writings. Jim Puskas. Author 1 book 71 followers. I realize that almost no one reading this will agree with me. Nevertheless, I feel compelled to have my say. Acquiescing to what is written in the book and what others have said about it would simply be dishonesty on my part. As for his mutterings about style, beauty of expression, verse and the uselessness of grammar?

He offers an anecdote claiming the inadequacy of language, simply because there are not always exactly equivalent words! Any competent translator would laugh at this. Journalism is the victim, not the perpetrator. How he manages to transform that clan into a Christian brotherhood led by Orthodox priests??

And on it goes. I searched at length for something of substance, an insight, some spark of wisdom or at least common sense to make reading it worthwhile. It was a difficult search. Faith is conscience, the foundation of which is laid in childhood. If a man changes his religion, he loses his conscience, and conscience is the most valuable thing in a man. I respect his conscience, and since his conscience is sustained by his faith and his faith by his religion, therefore I respect his religion; and for me it would be a great sin if I should begin to judge his religion or to disillusion him about it, and thus destroy his conscience which can only be acquired in childhood.

We used to meet at the Society for Psychical Research when I was acting secretary. Crowley in Masonic regalia, and Gurdjieff's important student A. When initially researching this encounter of the Magi I was unclear as to when it took place, with some sources mentioning , others , but I soon realized that both dates were significant. In Paris Major Pinder met Gurdjieff with news that was, none of it, particularly good. A gaggle of undesirable voyeurs had visited the Prieure, including D.

The front gate of The Prieure. Of the Beast's visit, Moore wrote, "How Crowley gained entree is a mystery Gurdjieff was in America from January to June of that year. Of his impressions of Gurdjieff and his work, Crowley had this to say in his diary, following his meeting with Pinder:.

Gurdjieff, their prophet, seems a tip-top man. Heard more sense and insight than I've done for years. Pinder dines at 7.

Later, a really wonderful evening with Pinder. Gurdjieff clearly a very advanced adept. Childish and morally valueless. These remarks of Crowley are interesting and also amusing in their own right. However Gurdjieff approached the matter differently. His views were more classically Eastern, similar to Taoist or Yogic models where sex energy is regarded as a powerful force to be carefully regulated and conserved. Crowley was also not averse to strict training methods, including harsh self-administered punishments for mental laziness, so his criticism here seems questionable.

As mentioned above, at the time of this meeting with Pinder, Crowley was already in his decline whereas Gurdjieff, despite being several years older, was near about at the peak of his powers.

His finances were depleted and he had little support. Gurdjieff, however, was energized by a lively spiritual ashram that he was deeply engaged in running, had a supportive following, and had just set sail along with thirty-five dedicated students to America to give his first public demonstrations of his sacred dances in major urban centers like New York City, Boston, and Philadelphia a series of events that proved to be quite successful.

He spent several weeks recuperating and when he emerged from his healing something in him had changed. He dismissed many of his students and began to focus more on his writing projects. It was exactly two years later, in the summer of , when Crowley met with Stanley Nott as recounted above and made his second visit to the Prieure.

His reasons for returning are unclear but it is significant that he returned at all. Crowley had missed Gurdjieff during his visit, the latter being in America at the time, but in July of , the two Magi met. Of this second visit, Gurdjieff's biographer James Moore wrote,. Scuttling between Paris and Tunis to shake off his creditors and find new ones, Crowley closed in on the Prieure from his Fontainebleau hotel, Au Cadran Bleu.

How he actually gained entree is a mystery; 'Gurdjieffians' who previously met him Orage, Pinder, and Stanley Nott would never have sponsored him Gurdjieff, P. Ouspensky, and Their Followers :. Apart from some circumspection, Gurdjieff treated him like any other guest until the evening of his departure. After dinner on Sunday night, Gurdjieff led the way out of the dining room with Crowley, followed by the body of the pupils who had also been at the meal.

Crowley made his way toward the door and turned to take his leave of Gurdjieff, who by this time was some way up the stairs to the second floor. Crowley assented. But Gurdjieff, having made the point that he was not violating the canons of hospitality, changed on the instant into the embodiment of righteous anger. Never again you set foot in my house!

Crowley was stigmatized as the sewer of creation was taken apart and trodden into the mire. Finally, he was banished in the style of East Lynne by a Gurdjieff in fine histrionic form. White faced and shaking, the Great Beast crept back to Paris with his tail between his legs. This account by Webb was published in and cites no sources. Lawrence Sutin questions whether such an event took place:. If this brutal banishment did occur, then it is remarkable that Crowley, who harbored animus toward so many rival teachers, never did so toward Gurdjieff.

Therion and Beelzebub: Wizards of the West. Although Crowley is silent on this matter, he did make disparaging remarks about Gurdjieff's famous pupil P. Ouspensky, calling him a "verbose, ignorant quack" in The Book of Thoth. Of course, Crowley kept diaries throughout his whole life, but it cannot be guaranteed that everything he wrote survived.

He was a volatile man in general. This account from J. His entire body would shake, his face would grow purple, and a stream of vituperation would pour out. It cannot be said that the anger was uncontrollable, for Gurdjieff could turn it off in a moment—but it was unquestionably real.

That, of course, will not work in all cases. At any rate it should also be noted that between and Gurdjieff had gone through many taxing events—his car crash in the summer of , followed by the death of his mother in the summer of , and the difficult death of his young wife Julia Ostrowska in June of he had tried hard to cure her of her cancer. Gurdjieff's wife Julia Ostrowska, and James Webb. At the time of writing his book Webb was dealing with an encounter that took place over fifty years before; one wonders who his source was.

Of James Webb himself a few interesting things can be noted: he was educated at the same place Crowley was Trinity College of Cambridge , was only thirty-four years old when he published his The Harmonious Circle , and he committed suicide that same year he had struggled with mental health issues.

He titled his first book The Flight from Reason later reprinted as The Occult Underground , in which he argued that much of the esoteric revival of the late 19 th and early 20 th century was based on a revolt against insignificance, a need to re-assert the primacy of Man that had been dealt a serious blow by the scientific method.

He made many contacts in the worldwide Gurdjieff community and became deeply involved in the matter of his subject. That said, he remained fundamentally an outsider, an investigative journalist—not one who was actually doing the inner work. It is difficult to conclude much about his account of the meeting of the Magi. However, Webb was unquestionably a sincere researcher. I suspect that he actually did hear a story with some basis in reality that had been passed down, but one that after fifty years had suffered the usual distortion.

The Historian must separate hard historical fact from evidence of another sort. Individuals 'in the Work' are often unreliable sources of historical information Finally, an even more outlandish version complete with the requisite distorted Crowley legend of the famous meeting was recorded by Fritz Peters:.

In his turn, Mr. Also, Mr. Crowley departed with the impression that Gurdjieff was either a a fake, or b an inferior black magician. Fritz Peters at the Prieure in around the time Crowley and Gurdjieff met, with Gurdjieff's student, the operatic soprano and actress Georgette LeBlanc.

Peters is primarily known for his book Boyhood with Gurdjieff , which describes five years he spent with Gurdjieff at the Prieure from to Peters was born in , so these years encompassed his boyhood period of age eleven to sixteen.