"Gurdjieff's teaching is austere and demanding, just as life is, and to Shirley, this rings true."

Joseph Azize reviews John Shirley's Gurdjieff: An Introduction to His Life and Ideas

(Jeremy P. Tarcher, 2004), paperback 224 pages ISBN: 1585422878. Page numbers are given in square brackets [ n.]

It is pleasing to see a new book on Gurdjieff: the quality of Gurdjieff's ideas deserves, and can well support, a vigorous and abundant literature. But these ideas are too little known, and are infrequently treated as accurately as one would desire. Too often, many sincere persons who are seeking a philosophy which is at once elevated and realistic, form a mistaken view of Gurdjieff's legacy, and look elsewhere. It is a strong recommendation of this book that Gurdjieff's ideas emerge as being profound, and as emphatically requiring to be practiced in order to fulfil their virtue (using "virtue" in the sense of "power or operative influence"). In what is, to my mind, perhaps the best passage in the book, Shirley observes that if one seeks the truth, one cannot demand that it come with "comforting trappings". The truth of the world must square with our experience of the world, and life is "red of tooth and claw". Gurdjieff's teaching is austere and demanding, just as life is, and to Shirley, this rings true [272-273]. Shirley's entire project is, perhaps, to indicate how Gurdjieff's ideas correspond to the truth of life, and meet the deepest human needs.

Because Shirley attempts to state the ideas in a manner which brings out their application to the life of the student, he is breaking new ground. Therefore, although there is little new information in this book, it will be of use both to those with previous acquaintance with Gurdjieff's ideas, as well as to those without - and these latter are clearly its target audience. Shirley distinguishes his book from those which have gone before: in contrast with P.D. Ouspensky's In Search of the Miraculous, his effort is only introductory, and may whet the appetite for further study [3]. Jean Vaysse's Toward Awakening is recommended, but is seen as "dry" and more limited in its treatment of Gurdjieff's ideas [281]. Shirley has not provided a "do-it-yourself manual", and he is aware of the inherent limitations of books about the inner world [7-9], but he quickens the written word by relating it to contemporary life, without revealing details of the methods employed by the Gurdjieff Foundation and like entities [7]. He is prudent to impose this restraint upon himself, as the practice is in many respects individual. Gurdjieff societies make great use of groups, but this is because the method is simultaneously common and individual. To a significant extent, Shirley succeeds in this difficult task: one does not have the sense that the reader has been cheated of vital data, much less teased with the allure of "secrets for the initiate".

To take but four examples of Shirley's vivid exposition of concepts: first, he sketches, by reference to his own experience in his yard, something of what it means, in Gurdjieff's terms, to come to oneself while "sleepwalking", to start to "inhabit the body" [23-24]. Shirley describes being immersed in daydreams, desires and anxieties: "a kind of shifting, nauseating wallpaper for my perceptual tunnel", and then - by reason of past efforts to "recollect" himself - coming out of this, to surface in a world of colour, air, sound, light, and the feelings of his own body. This cameo is all the more effective for its simplicity. A second example is the vignette of a woman constantly driven to "berate her husband and belittle her children", but who comes to see this, and to struggle with it [131-135]. Shirley masterfully relates this to the practice of the division of attention, which helps his "venomous lady" to see these manifestations, become aware of the stimuli which evoke them, and thus free herself from these vicious flaws. She does not suppress the unpleasantness, but rather, she is no longer passive before it. Shirley weaves more advanced ideas such as "buffers" and "transmutation of substances" into this parable, using elementary, readable prose.

Thirdly, grappling with the more daunting of Gurdjieff's ideas, Shirley illuminates aspects of the law of three by reference to the everyday world [148-150]. I am not sure that all of his examples are equally felicitous, but he braids into these pages formulations from both In Search of the Miraculous and Gurdjieff's Beelzebub's Tales to his Grandson. As an introduction, his exposition is admirable. Fourthly, Shirley quotes an unnamed source for a clear application of the ray of creation to tearing down a fence [155-157]. There is no pose of having comprehensively explained that high teaching, but we are offered an approach which is rooted in a straightforward activity. With that example, one can seek for applications of the ray of creation in one's own immediate life.

So what is this volume? In many respects, it is not a biography, or even a combined account of a person's life and ideas. It is these things, but it also belongs to the genre of the protreptic, and thus falls within a long line of works such as Iamblichos' On the Pythagorean Life. It opens addressed to the general public [1], and closes with the words: "... Gurdjieff's message is one of real hope - it resonates authentically, partly because it comes from someone capable of authentic, conscious hope. It is not the usual hope, the hope of an automatic response to anxiety. It is hope of consciousness. And consciousness is our only hope." [275] "Protreptic" is but a word, yet it is a fair word for this book.

At the outset, Shirley tells us that discussing Gurdjieff calls for a sort of "soundness" [7]. The following reference to a tsunami does not clarify this. "Soundness" often means "free from defect", and Shirley tells us that he researched this book [277]. He aims to provide "at least a respectable accuracy" [3], and this is as it should be. But why does he place "soundness" in italics? To emphasize this is inconsequential, when from what I can see, the word here means "quality". The "requirements" for discussing Gurdjieff surely depend upon the context in which he is discussed, including the purpose for which one discusses him and his ideas. There will be few if any requirements in casual discussions. But I would have thought that to write a new introduction for the general public, one would demand of oneself something fresh: perhaps some original ideas, or an interesting approach: and for the reasons I have given above, Shirley admirably meets such a criterion. Perhaps, too, one "requires" a clear style, and again, Shirley possesses this, even if on a few minor occasions he does not employ it, as I shall observe below. It also calls for balance and at least adequate scholarship, and it is here that the need for a second edition becomes more apparent, as Shirley could easily make a few amendments to the text to improve it in these fundamental respects.

Prudence

In my view, the single most unsatisfactory point in this book is its imprudence. Take, for example, the speculation about the young Gurdjieff's possible "experimenting" with "more errant women" in Tiflis [68], and the anecdote from De Val [218] These are pointless and prurient. How do we know what Gurdjieff did in Tiflis? If, as Shirley seems to imply, an active sex life into old age is proof that one is "a conductor for powerful energies", then Gurdjieff was but one of countless elderly men. If this reference to "powerful energies" is, as it appears to me to be, included only to justify the De Val story, then it is improper. The one man who could say whether De Val's account is accurate, and who could answer queries about how he discharged his responsibilities to his natural children [218], died without making any public statements. To speculate about and deal with a person's private life when that person did not and no longer can correct misperceptions, is unfair. I am not suggesting that Gurdjieff was more than human: he was human. My point is that precisely because he was an ordinary man, his private life is entitled to the same circumspection that is afforded the ordinary person who has not made their private life a public issue.

Then, when did Gurdjieff ever "jeer" at homosexuality [257]? To jeer is to scoff, to mock, and to taunt. Shirley observes that some of Gurdjieff's pupils were lesbians, and writes: "Again, Consciousness triumphs over dogma" [257]. Which dogma? And what is the conflict in Gurdjieff between "Consciousness" (Shirley's capital C) and "dogma"? This is an important point if one wishes to speak to a contemporary intelligent audience, as Shirley does. Shirley does not give his source, but I suspect it is Moore's Gurdjieff: The Anatomy of a Myth (1991), for, in relation to the same lesbians, Moore cites Peters on Gurdjieff's attitude to homosexuality, and writes of: "theory and practice once more at loggerheads" (pp.259-260). Moore's procedure is to take a passage from p.257 of Miraculous which refers to "normal sex" and ask whether Gurdjieff meant that homosexuality is not "normal sex". Moore then quotes Peters on Gurdjieff's opinion of homosexuality, and then treats it as established that Gurdjieff did in fact mean that homosexuality is not "normal sex". The two prongs of this argument strike on either side, missing the target.

This is anything but "sound", and indicates excessive reliance on Moore. In not one published written word does Gurdjieff himself criticize homosexuality as opposed to the modern attitude to sex in general. The reference to "middle sex" at pp.1110-1111 of Beelzebub (where some take "middle sex" to mean "homosexual") clearly refers not to sexual orientation but to one's possibilities for harmonious development: and the list of four identifying features simply does not include homosexuality. Bennett's direct testimony on Gurdjieff and homosexuals evidences quite a different attitude: Sex, 29-30.

My teacher, the late George Adie, who knew both Ouspensky and Gurdjieff, said, in respect of this very passage from Miraculous, that Gurdjieff told him that what is "normal" in sex for one person may not be "normal" for another. Indeed, Adie went on to remark that Gurdjieff would often say different things to different people, partly in order to stimulate a person to come to their own individual opinion. Sometimes he subtly spurred people to stand up for their principles. This is why Peters' general assertion is not conclusive. Given that Peters himself had a gay side, it could well be that Gurdjieff's comments to Peters were not meant to be taken as moral absolutes (Patterson wrote an article in Telos which mentions this side, and someone who had known Peters told me much the same thing). This entire idea of Gurdjieff's "dogma", which seems to be an echo of Moore's phrase of "theory and practice", is untrue to Gurdjieff, who tried to awaken in people conscience, not fixed "morality" as a guide for conduct.

Perhaps, however, this interest in Gurdjieff's sex life is a way of balancing out some odd notions of Gurdjieff which Shirley expresses. At one point we are told that "it was almost as if War itself was afraid of him, trying to kill him" [106]. I have typified this book as a protreptic, and even hyperbole can be tolerated in that genre, but this seems excessive. Overstatement can be counter-productive.

Shirley seeks to reach a wide audience, to explain, and to persuade. And yet, he has not written a protreptic for Gurdjieff and his ideas and methods, simpliciter. Shirley favours the Gurdjieff Foundation, which he describes as "the primary school that Gurdjieff inaugurated" [6]. Here one must hesitate. If "inaugurated" means "to formally install into office", then Gurdjieff did not inaugurate the Foundation. Shirley's specific leaning also appears in the list of dedicatees, in the "bibliographical suggestions" [277-285], in the special praise of Jeanne de Salzmann [268-270], and in his description of two groups, those of Nyland and A.L. Staveley, as "better spinoff groups" [7]. Shirley is entitled to dedicate the book to whomsoever he pleases, and de Salzmann's efforts were beyond praise. Yet, a reviewer must note that this is Shirley's perspective.

I should also remark upon what I see as a perceived inaccuracy: in no real sense was Staveley's group a "spinoff" from the Foundation, and certainly not in the sense of the Nyland groups. The difference is that while Nyland helped Pentland found and run the Foundation before resigning, Staveley was never in any of its groups, never lived in New York, and thus was never in a position to spin off from it (I learned this from Michael Smyth, who was with her for almost all of her teaching life, and regularly accompanied her to Foundation premises across the USA). As Kherdian makes clear in On a Spaceship with Beelzebub, (1991), Staveley was independent of the Foundation, but shared a commonality of aim, which, to her, overrode the differences referred to in that book.

Shirley's partiality leads him to write that he knows of "exactly one" really well-informed Gurdjieff web site [6]. The site he mentions, Loy's, is excellent: undoubtedly my favourite for articles about Gurdjieff and his tradition (I should disclose that it has published two of my articles and is considering a third). While I hold that opinion, I wonder at the standards by which some of the other sites are not also "really" well informed (meaning, perhaps, that the site hosts good information). I will mention but two: Reijo's Gurdjieff Internet Guide and Driscoll's (Reijo has recently posted my review of two books and I have had friendly correspondence with Driscoll who accepted my two articles when he was at Loy's site). Patterson, who also has published one of my articles, maintains a site which exists, perhaps chiefly but not exclusively, as a point of sale for his journal, books and DVDs. Shirley cites Patterson's Ladies of the Rope (on four pages, according to the index), refers several times to a special edition of Patterson's journal when it was known as Telos [e.g. 215-216], and places Patterson's Voices in the Dark in the bibliography [282]. In the premises, I doubt it is fair to exclude Patterson's site from this band of one.

This is the difficulty with protreptic: its practitioners face a temptation to go too far. If not temperate, protreptic invites a reply, and its tone is crucial to how it can withstand return fire. The loftier the tone, the lower the exhortation appears if undone. To airily dismiss all other sites: "exactly one", is unnecessary. Why not simply say "I consider Loy's site to be the best", and leave it at that? Shirley should know that today people can and, certainly will, find other web sites within seconds. They will see that other sites offer a good deal of information: even, in some cases, previously unpublished material from Gurdjieff. They will find and read works like Rawlinson's The Book of Enlightened Masters: Western Teachers in Eastern Traditions, (1997 and see Jeanne de Salzmann depicted as representing much the largest and most influential of the different "lineages" from Gurdjieff, but also that the total picture is much broader than anything Shirley presents. They will read sometimes savage critiques such as Washington's Madame Blavatsky's Baboon (1993) and Perry's Gurdjieff in the Light of Tradition (1978). They may well wonder whether Shirley did not address their criticisms because he could not. Washington relishes describing the differences which arose between Gurdjieff's pupils (esp. pp.368-372 and 397-398).

This all seems to me to be imprudent. If Shirley's book is a protreptic, it is no apologia, and yet, I think the two are wedded together in the modern age, especially when we are writing of a controversial figure such as Gurdjieff. I hope that Shirley's book sees a second edition, and I offer these comments, and those to follow, as ideas which may be worth considering for it.

Footnotes, References and Scholarship

Shirley does not explain his attitude to footnotes and references. Generally, he provides neither, but authoritatively addresses the reader. Opening at random to page 15, I find a quotation from St Paul, some conclusions from the Book of Job, and some assertions about the Gnostics, and not one reference. It would have been easy to have added them, while to omit them is odd, given Shirley's stated criterion of "soundness". Gurdjieff urged people to use their critical intellects, but Shirley here asks his reader to accept his word. If Shirley thought footnotes might be off-putting to his intended readership, he could have left the text unencumbered, but placed notes at the back of the book, referenced by the page to which they refer and a phrase to identify the precise portion of text supported. That way, the references are available for those who want them, and can be skipped by those who do not: Moore and Patterson have employed a similar method.

However, it strikes me as whimsical that when Shirley does provide a footnote, he merely refers to the entire volume: e.g. footnotes which read: "In Search of the Miraculous" [147] or "Voices in the Dark by William Patrick Patterson" [82]. If it is worthwhile citing the book, then it is worthwhile citing the page. This attitude is perhaps related to the authoritative tone I have referred to above. If Shirley's say so is good enough, regular footnotes are not needed, and when they are employed, they do not have to be comprehensive. Some of Shirley's surmises are couched surprisingly confidently. Thus, Shirley states that it is "probable" that Gurdjieff learnt the "mystic" prayer of the Orthodox from Dean Borsh [53]. What grounds does anyone possess to speculate? Similarly, Shirley extrapolates an enormous amount from the shooting range incident spoken of in Meetings With Remarkable Men [56]. He also tells us the true meaning of animal sacrifice and ritual offering [104].

I am doubtful about Shirley's constant ("incessant" may be a better word) references to various religions and art forms. Even to say that the term "self-remembering" is used with a range of meanings, he stops to draw a parallel with the word "dharma" [26]. I suppose that he wishes to make a connection with contemporary concerns and other traditions. The references to modern drama and film [36-39] doubtless owe something to his own experience in film: but Shirley's conclusion is that these film-makers "on some level ... seem to confirm some of Gurdjieff's ideas", and he refers to a supposed emerging "perceptual consensus" [39]. So has Shirley submitted Gurdjieff to a jury of film-makers? And what about those instances where these persons do not agree? What of the vast majority of film-makers who would hardly concur with any of Gurdjieff's central ideas?

To those who know practically nothing of Gnosticism, Shirley's frequent references to it will add nothing, but to those who do, they will display his shortcomings: Shirley is not a scholar of ancient religion. But before coming to this, perhaps my main query about all this cross-referencing is whether it does not place Gurdjieff in a false context and thus present him in a company which is not properly his. As Gurdjieff told Ouspensky, different schools may use similar methods but understand them differently: "A similarity of methods or even of ideas proves nothing" (Miraculous p.8).

Do these references to other religions illuminate Gurdjieff's ideas or do they perhaps obscure them with an ethereal but deceptive penumbra of familiarity? Why would anyone study Gurdjieff if so many of his ideas can be found in Buddhism, Gnosticism, and even across the road in a cinema? What is so special about the ideas if they can all be rephrased in terms of other religions?

The Gnostics seem to be a sort of byword for "esoteric" wisdom with Shirley [15-16] and he refers several times, approvingly, to the Gospel of Thomas, which he refers to as "Gnostic" [16]. I had initially drafted a lengthy section on this, but in the end, have decided to simply point out that while the Gnostics enjoy the romantic aura of being "rebels", scholars cannot even agree upon a satisfactory definition of "Gnosticism". Plotinos, someone whose ideas do actually bear some faint parallels to Gurdjieff's, launched a scathing attack upon them. In the text now known as Ennead II.9 "Against the Gnostics", Plotinos offers a critique of, amongst other matters, their hatred of the world (II.9.5). World-rejection of the Gnostic variety is a sentiment with no place in Gurdjieff's ideas.

In respect of the Gospel of Thomas, I shall only refer the reader to April De Conick, Seek to See Him: Ascent and Vision Mysticism in the Gospel of Thomas, E.J. Brill, Leiden, 1996, esp. chapter 1. Not every document found at Nag Hammadi was "gnostic": e.g. a fragment of Plato was found there. While it might be correct to say that Thomas was the Gospel-type document most favoured by gnostics, it departs significantly from Gnosticism in several vital respects. I find nothing attractive in the gnostics, and to call Thomas "gnostic" without more ado, is now seen to be simplistic (De Conick provides a brief overview of Thomas studies).

The gratuitous reference to Pythagoras [158] is puzzling. Apart from the fact that I do not know which Pythagorean ideas he is referring to, does Shirley appreciate how little is actually known of Pythagoras himself? Before referring to, but not citing, Mether, [107] it would have been prudent to at least look at "Syriac esoteric Christianity" and Bar-Daisan. Shirley is completely out of his depth here. I do not believe he has actually read Bar-Daisan. Had he done so, he could never have written what he does. Why is the Sarmoung monastery described as Syriac-Christian [108]? Coming from a Syriac Christian background myself, I find this uncomfortable: our tradition is treated like an exotic curiosity - respect would have imported an attempt at accuracy.

Mouravieff [107] is, in my view, a parasite on the Gurdjieff tradition. I am surprised that Shirley has space to mention him, unless of course, he were to unmask him (which Patterson, to his credit, did in Taking with the Left Hand). The stated comparison with John 6:27 [95] is empty. Once more, a cross-reference is too easily at hand.

One last word in this section: I am concerned about the cheapening of the word "esoteric". Consider what Gurdjieff says about the words "esoteric", "mesoteric" and "exoteric" at Miraculous pp.310-311. According to him, these are far from us. We are still in the "outer circle" and these words properly pertain to the inner circle.

Meetings with Remarkable Men

It is unwise to use Meetings to reconstruct the details of Gurdjieff's life. While Shirley is aware of this, he fancies that he can be sure of the accuracy of certain passages there, for they will have the "ring of historicity ... the flavour of truth" [56]. To my mind, these stories all the have ring of truth, because as allegories they resonate in a way which carries conviction. I would say the same of Gilgamesh or the Golden Ass. But this is no warrant to assert their historical accuracy. Once more, it strikes me as imprudent to proceed as if we are so discriminating that we can discern when Gurdjieff is being absolutely accurate, or when his details display a "real historical personage" or "verisimilitude" [77 and 89] - and why the ponderous "personage" as opposed to "person"? Shirley's notion of "decoding the truth" [95] can seem rather inconsequential, as in the instance of the "vulture valley" story [97].

In the case of the "artillery duel" between rivals in "love" [56], I disagree with Shirley. To me it has the "ring" of ahistoricity. Beyond my sense that it is a tall tale, Gurdjieff's brother Dmitri told the story that they were so poor that he and his brother could not date on the same evening as they only had one pair of shoes between them (Webb, The Harmonious Circle, p.27). One cannot be dogmatic, but had the duel by cannon really occurred, I would have expected Dmitri or some other member of the family to have mentioned it before the shoes. In respect of his "decoding" of Pogossian and Yelov in Meetings [68-69], I suggest to Shirley that he has bleached these otherwise vivid characters into one-dimensional cut-outs.

Then, what are the references to a "missing prototeaching" [65 and 69]? If one reads what Gurdjieff himself wrote, one will see that Gurdjieff only ever states that: (1) certain of the ideas he expresses are ancient ideas, and (2) there were ancient teachings. I am unaware of any passage where he states that he reconstructed a lost "prototeaching". Puzzled by Shirley's confidence at [106-107], I revised Meetings, and I simply cannot find "support" for the "other school of thought". For reasons I shall not delve into now, I suspect that the notion stems from the Russian years when Gurdjieff was giving many of his expositions a "Theosophical tinge" and Ouspensky perhaps took the tinge too literally.

Finally, referring to two items found outside of Meetings, I am doubtful of Shirley's attempts to interpret the "symbolism" of the de Hartmann anecdote about Gurdjieff finding dolmens [195], and to see Zeinab as the reconciling force [199].

Miscellaneous Points

A recent review of Shirley's book by Paul Taylor has been made available to me, but I do not know whether it has been published, or if so, where. Prof. Taylor there alerts Shirley to several apparent errors of fact. I shall not repeat these here. However, there are some other miscellaneous matters to mention.

• It is simply not "certain" that acquaintance with Gurdjieff and his philosophy is like being hit by an "icy shower" [3]. I wish it were so, but different people have different reactions to Gurdjieff: I only wonder whether Shirley has read Gurdjieff's many critics.
• Shirley's use of adjectives is sometimes too liberal. He states that Gurdjieff "blithely" informed Ouspensky that "people are asleep when they think they're awake" [20]. The basic sense of "blithely" is "cheerfully". How do we know that Gurdjieff was speaking blithely? I cannot see anything intrinsically blithe in such a teaching: quite the opposite. The same applies for Gurdjieff "exulted" [104]. This is a very strong word to use.
• What is the "gathering darkness" [9]?
• It is simplistic to identify the "higher intellectual centre" with the nous of the Hermetica [147]. In fact, I showed this passage, without comment, to one of the translators of the edition of the Hermetica which Shirley employs, and their immediate reply was: "Dangerous".
• · Shirley states that "moments of seeing ourselves as we are", are referred to in the "Gurdjieff lexicon" as "impressions" [28]. So far as I am aware, "impressions" is not a term of art in the Gurdjieff tradition. In that tradition, one can speak of an "impression" of myself, but equally, one can speak of "impressions" of anything one perceives. And Gurdjieff himself uses the word in just this sense of perception: Beelzebub, pp.486-487 and as reported In Search of the Miraculous, pp.188-189.
• It is a big thing when essence becomes active: I have an uneasiness about how Shirley speaks of what an "essence self" or "essential self" would feel or prompt [33].
• Do we "see the sleep" as Shirley writes [34], or the manifestations of sleep? How can sleep itself be seen? Surely we awaken and read the signs, so to speak. Gurdjieff told Ouspensky of eight signs of sleep, the "octave of sleep", and Ouspensky taught George Adie. The octave is (in no order): identification, considering, daydreaming, imagination, unnecessary talking, lying, formatory thinking and negative emotion.
• What is Shirley's ground for saying that it is "unlikely" that Gurdjieff's father originated his ideas on the soul? [57]. I think it every bit as likely as Shirley's own thesis: and I note that he does not identify the other "sages", which leaves me rather sceptical that they did have comparable notions of the soul. In respect of Maimonides, the position is complex. I am not a Maimonides scholar, but the little I know would relate his ideas on immortality (not "the soul" per se) to the acquisition of what we might call "divine knowledge", and to his idiosyncratic view of the resurrection of the dead (which was the thirteenth of his famous 13 principles of the faith). Nothing comparable to this cluster of ideas is attested of Gurdjieff's father.
• I would like to know where Gurdjieff describes the "real world" as being "austere" [63]. I suspect that this is a Shirleyism.
• Gurdjieff did recommend that Beelzebub be read three times, but not "each time more deeply" [247]. Gurdjieff's advice is to read the book in three different manners, and these appear to make an increasing demand on the attention: a very different thing.
• The next matter is minor, but it falls within the conventional task of a reviewer to check the index, and this index is uneven: one book is indexed solely under its author's name, i.e. Conge A Study of the Ideas [294] which is not listed under either A or S. Another is found solely under its title, i.e. (A) New Model of the Universe [298], which is not listed under "Ouspensky". But Daddy Gurdjieff: A Few Unedited Memories is listed under both [294 under D and at 300 under "Val, Nicholas de"]. With the last example, at p.294 the index refers us only to p.211, while at p.300 to the left of "Val, Nicholas de" we find pp.218 and 234, and on the next line, indented, to the left of Daddy Gurdjieff: A Few Unedited Memories we are steered to pp.145 and 211. I can find no reference to de Val or his book on p.145, and his book is mentioned, although not by title, at pp.218 and 234. Further, Webb and his book The Harmonious Circle are mentioned at p.88, but are not in the index, and I think that this book is sufficiently important for Shirley's comments on it to be indexed. One more spot check: Thomas Keating is mentioned at p.275 but is not indexed. If the "Tuskegee syphilis experiments" are worthy of a place in the index [300], so too is Father Keating.
• So far as I know, it was not Gurdjieff [109] but Ouspensky who wrote the "book" the "Struggle of the Magicians" (Miraculous pp.382-383).
• Why try and explain what "confrontation" is [103]? Shirley reconfigures this concept so as to make it unrecognizable. I see no point in saying what the being-Obligolnian strivings "mean" [245-247]. I doubt that Shirley is entirely correct, but my chief concern is that these gratuitous observations may rob the reader of the chance to make this material their own. Likewise, "Iraniranumange" is said to be "reciprocal feeding" [248]. It is related, but is it really the same concept? See the entries for this term and for "Trogoautoegocrat", Guide and Index to Gurdjieff's All and Everything, 1973, 320 and 630-633. Why should anyone say what these neologisms "mean"? It is enough to try and indicate something of their significance and leave it to the reader to make their own personal acquaintance with them and the book - an acquaintance which may change over time if it is not fixed by a confident assertion that "this" means "that".
• What does the age at which some of Gurdjieff's pupils die [125], demonstrate? Lord Pentland and many others did not live to a great old age.
• Gurdjieff did recommend parts of Miraculous in the stated terms [216], but not the book as a whole. Once more, there is too uncritical a reliance on Moore [264]. Had Shirley read Webb more closely, he would have seen that Webb actually engages with nature of Miraculous in a way which is simply beyond Moore, who whatever his strengths, does not consistently evaluate his sources. Louise March and Bennett have left records of other matters said by Gurdjieff, which are too often ignored: see my collection of these and my assessment of the credibility of Ouspensky in my article in All & Everything 2003.
• Shirley states that "toward the end of his life he ate too much" [218]. The late Helen Adie told me that she watched Gurdjieff closely, and he in fact ate very little, although the amount of food before him offered a different impression.
• Doesn't Beelzebub also stretch the attention [244]?
• The bibliography is odd in some ways: if there is space for some of these books (and I would rather not single out any of the puzzling entries), then there must be space for Orage's On Love & Psychological Exercises, Popoff's Gurdjieff: His Work, On Myself, With Others ..., and Kherdian's Seeds of Light (to my sensibility, Gurdjieff related poetry so good that it can stand on its own). I would also mention Hogrogian's Tiger of Turkestan, the only Gurdjieff related children's book I know, and an excellent one. Shirley's cosmological appendices should refer to the important and recent work by Will Mesa and Keith Buzzell in the journal Stopinder and sections IV and VII of All & Everything 2003. I think that these two persons have achieved some very important insights, observing ideas in plain view which others have missed.

In conclusion, Shirley has assumed a serious responsibility in writing a protreptic for the Gurdjieff ideas. This is a worthwhile endeavour, and he has adopted a new approach. But the book is marred - although not fatally - by a lack of scholarship and, related to this, a certain imprudence. I might suggest that it behoves Shirley to do justice to the call he makes, and revise the book.

Joseph Azize