I did a search, and could find nothing on the works of G.I.Gurdjieff, so I thought I’d ask if any Dopers were familiar with his system of beliefs. In my limited exploration of the man, I have never come across anyone who really had a bad word to say about him, and typing “critics of Gurdjieff” into Google isn’t very helpful. I think the nearest thing to a criticism I have heard of him, is the label of “charlatan”, and that sounds more like a personal criticism, than an intellectual one. I suppose if there is any debate to be had here - and I’ll be happy to see it moved to IMHO if it’s more suited there - is, was this man as important as a lot of intelligent people seem to think? So, G.I.Gurdjieff, one of the most important intellects of the last century, or not; there’s what I’d like to see debated by anyone with an opinion. I’m not saying I’ll be able to argue in his favour, I just want to hear if there are any objections to his works.
I’m familiar with the name, as I’ve seen it pop up quite a bit recently, but I have very little to offer in terms of debate.
I do know that he has something to do with the history of the Enneagream (which I’m finding to be a positively uncanny personality matrix/theory). I can’t say much about the spiritual aspects of the Enneagram, but psychologically speaking, there’s definitely something more than the Forer effect happening with it. http://www.enneagraminstitute.com/
Gurdjieff is discussed with high praise on occult oriented websites. I found this link recommended on one of those: Yahoo | Mail, Weather, Search, Politics, News, Finance, Sports & Videos
I would suppose that many of the criticisms that would be levelled against him would apply to any occult/New Age proponent, although even there he seems to have more “cred” than a lot of those that have come after him. I have no idea what specific criticisms might be applied to the man. I’ll be keeping an eye on this thread to see what more I can learn.
“Uncanny” as in “I can’t believe how much this explains,” or “uncanny” as in “I can’t believe anybody would buy this bullshit”?
Any chance of giving a one or two paragraph summary of what the Fourth Way is? One link is a video, the other seems somewhat Timecube-like.
Don’t know if that helps, Rhythmdvl?
The former, when it comes to the specific descriptions of the personality types I’ve looked into (mine and my wife’s). The latter when it comes to explanations of the history and theory behind the Enneagram model. It’s very weird.
Of course, the Enneagram is only tangentially related to the OP.
Rhythmdvl, I posted the geocities link without investigating it myself. Bad form for GD, I know, but a second-hand recommendation is all I have for info on Gurdjieff. I disavow any association with that site if it turns out to be ridiculous.
I’m a Type 4/Type 5 tie, with not an iota of Type 3 - it’s got me down to a ‘t’. 
A more detailed explanation of the Fourth Way, for those who want a quick link. Fourth Way - Wikipedia
The following video clips are based on the P.D.Ouspensky book of the same title, written about Gurdjieff and his studies.
From the very little I know about Gurdjieff, he was working toward a sort of westernized Sufism. Maybe that’s a totally erroneous characterization. shrugs
I’m wondering if he was trying to combine Eastern and Western beliefs into a new package, or just make the Eastern ones more palatable to the West?
That’s probably too oversimplified to be meaningful. Eastern and Western thought are not so monolithic that they can simply be combined. Each has their own conflicting dialectics within their aegis. A lot of the Eastern tinged occultism tends toward Sufism as far as I can tell. I think one problem we make with our modern sense of spiritualism, and this is common in New Age circles, is to take syncretism a little too far. Syncretism isn’t necessarily trying to reconcile everything about conflicting systems, but can take the form of reconciling SOME aspects of conflicting systems.
Past that I cannot comment too much on Gurdjieff as I have only read about him in the words of other authors, and not read his own work myself. But I think it is more complex than simply combining Eastern and Western ideas into a new package. We need to know more specifically which he was trying to repackage to make sense of it.
Hey! Weren’t you the one rather dubious recently when I suggested intelligence without consciousness may be possible?
As for The Fourth Way, I haven’t heard anything about it so far. I’ll have a look at the wiki article.
P.D.Ouspensky made that quote, not me.
You seemed to extrapolate enough meaning from it to extend the basic sentiment.
Yeah, I’m sorry, I messed up the quote tags.
And I thought your quoting meant that you were familiar with that school of thought.
Oh, go on, I’ll let you off then.
My familiarity amounts to having read “Meetings…”, and “In Search Of The Miraculous” by his ‘disciple’ Ouspensky, a long time ago. I remember at the time, being sucked into an almost religious mind-set by the latter, and feeling that I’d discovered my personal shamen, but eventually RL overtook my mini-obsession. It’s only recently I’ve revived my interest, and I just wanted to see if there was a Doper slant on the subject.
How does it compare, IYO, with the Myers-Briggs typology?
Take this thread to Cuba!
AFAIK, The Enneagram has not been studied for reliability and validity in the way that the MBTI has been (but then, I’m not particularly impressed with the claims of validity for the MBTI anyway).
There are similarities between the systems, although there is not a one-to-one correspondance (i.e. INTPs are not all the same Enngeagram type, but I think they tend to cluster around 4,5,6). There is also some (slight) overlap between the underlying theories of both systems, but where the MBTI uses Jung’s work as a springboard, the Enneagram incorporates Hornevian and other approaches.
Personally, while I found the MBTI to be useful to a point, the Enneagram’s descriptions of my type are, to me, far more precise and accurate.
One advantage that the Riso-Hudson approach has over other personality systems I’ve looked at is that it adds a vertical (levels of health) dimension to the horizontal (type categories) dimension.
Sure, I’m just saying that combining east and west generically is kind of meaningless as it requires one specifically deciding what from each they should bring in. I mean certainly Gurdjieff looked to the East, but I don’t think we’ve come to any conclusion about what that means more specifically. It’s an interesting thread you’ve started, I just don’t know more about Gurdjieff than I have already said.