The Herald of Coming Good
by G Gurdjieff
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Book Summary Information
Author: G GurdjieffEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-08-26
ISBN: 0955909031
Number of pages: 108
Publisher: Book Studio
Book Reviews of The Herald of Coming Good
Book Review: The true story about Gurdjieff's 'objective' viewpoint
Summary: 5 Stars
Gurdjieff couldn't write a straightforward sentence. The longest sentence in the HOCG is more than two pages long. In my opinion he's in the same class of 'man' as C. G. Jungs second personality but a tad below William Blake, Emanuel Swedenborg and P.D. Ouspensky/Rodney Collin/Maurice Nicoll. He doen't write in readable language and makes the excuse that it's only through extended efforts at self obervation that it's possible to 'remember one's self'.
I love this book but I'd read a lot of the previous authors before it fell at my feet one day, so it made sense, a whole lot of sense to me, only then. It's a book that I believe produces an effect if you do what hs suggests, read it three times. I recorded it so I could listen to it and I believe Gurdjieffs' real inner life is what this book is about.
If anyone gets past the first page, which begins with a couple of coincidences, it's obvious he has a lot of hubris. What makes me feel that he was still looking for something and not found it himself, is that he couldn't use ordinary language, the opposite of Ouspensky. He often stated 'facts' that could be elaborated and clarified but he didn't fill in the details to force 'effort' on the reader. It's like trying to talk about forests without describing what's in a forest, trees, dirt, animals, bugs, plants of all kinds and ever changing circumstances.
He says that 'Man's suggestability is the biggest problem' and that's what this and most of everything written by Gurdjieff made explicit (to me anyway). We do not experience the same 'time' all the time and we have different 'eyes' within. That's not too hard to put into words.
It doesn't seem impossible that a man with his intellect and experiences couldn't devote a chapter to the problem of how easily associations are formed, how difficult fixed and rigidly held associations are to dislodge. And how a person's 'main feature' is visible to everyone but 'him'; suggestability doesn't apply there.
Swedenborg either was on the same 'wave length' as Gurdjieff or they were related in some other way, even though a couple of centuries separated them. He wrote that 'man's ruling love' is hidden behind every act and thought in a man's life. The 'main feature' and the 'ruling love' are probably different names for the same inner core where the 'real life' is originating. When an idea is to be kept moving along in time, there seems to be an plan. Seems likely to me.
I'd recommend reading Rodney Collin's Theory of Eternal Life before HOCG. And I'd continue to recommend Laura de Witt's William Blake and the Tree of Life. William Blake was awake, fully awake in his time and he recognized 'Newton's folly' right away, not a couple of centuries later. He also gave many clues about perception and the 'sweet science of Qabala' and the role it plays in man's life. Gurdjieff seems to have learned a lot about symbolism but didn't write about it.
It doesn't seem to me Gurdjieff wrote enough about language, symbolism and ancient codes but that's just what I think. The fact that so much new information (mathematics, quantum physics, new geometries, psychiatric ideas) was entering the 'common presences' of so many others at the same time seems to have required 7 decades for 'us' to begin to talk about what he wrote about in 1932. Language and how words effect 'us' is very much an issue in our 'now'. The Internet had to happen probably.
I think it's one of the valuable texts that everyone should own, with certain requirements that it be a fragment not the whole document about the 4th way. The way of the ordinary life.
It's not that he's digressing or evasive, he tries to put everything (that he wants to disclose) into context. Sometimes that reveals a lot about what he's really doing: selecting individuals to study, and he doesn't reveal what exactly it is he's studying, nor does he describe exactly what is period of 'unnatural for him' life. It's ironical that Gurdjieff sits on both sides of the 4th way. And that's where objective truth may be require not only self remembering and self observation but also learning to 'read' the kind of books Jung what they believed was meant to be kept secret or difficult to discern. I believe Christianity, real Christianity is what Gurjieff tried to reveal, that we do have a life that means something to our Creator, and it's our duty to discover it.
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