Gurdjieff Movements Intensive in Çıralı, Turkey, 2019 Autumn

Part 1: Oct. 26 – Nov. 16, 2019

Part 2: Nov. 23 – Dec. 14 2019

The group will meet several hours a day for morning &

evening sessions. Participation in one of the two Parts

or for a shorter period is allowed subject to conditions.

The program is the development of local group initiative formed around Plavan N. Go from Japan since 2015. The study of the Movements is made alive with the practicing of corresponding exercises and the coverage of relevant themes, liberating consciousness from identification with objects and beliefs, provoking a search into questions around man and life, and developing insights into different manners in which we may relate with what we find inside and outside ourselves in dynamic encounters with reality. For more descriptions and videos, see homepage.

More information at:

gurdjieff.la.coocan.jp

Plavan N. Go and Atimoda After making his first contact with "official" Gurdjieff organizations

in 1989, Plavan involved himself in the reviving of the Gurdjieff

Movements at the Osho Commune (India) since 1990 and

exchanges between Osho and Gurdjieff circles that ensued. He

has been leading groups in Japan and abroad since 1997. He is

the Japanese translator of all writings and recorded talks of

Gurdjieff and the author of two books: one on the Movements

and another on the enneagram. With Atimoda, he has been

visiting Çıralı regularly since 2015.

For those who apply beforehand and be approved of full participation during

the entire or a half of the program, the group fee is 400/300 euros

respectively. For others, the participation fee is 20 euros per day. Meals are

not included. Expect 15 to 30 euros per night for hotel. Transportation

to/from the Antalya airport may be arranged. Early application is appreciated.

Please tell or write about yourself and your interest when you apply.

Selda Do?an: 05382329643 seridaindica@gmail.com

Serap Meric: 05422174114 sundanceserap@gmail.com

Gurdjieff, His Search and His Movements

A powerful attraction Gurdjieff has on some of

us comes from his status as a master of

duality, who, unlike many of us who are

passive sufferers of conflicts and

contradictions, is ready to expose himself to

the actions of opposing forces, and not only

comes out of it alive but seems to gain

something from it for the good of his own and

of others in spite of occasionally being forced

to accept heavy defeat and intense suffering.

“I love him who wills his down-going because

it is he who will go across.” (:1)

“Isn’t he dangerous?”

“He is dangerous. But he is good.” (*2)

(A presentation in 12slides) 1

*1: From Nietzsche “Thus Spake Zarathustra”

*2: From C. S. Lewis “The Lion, the Witch and the

Wardrobe”

His Movements represent the teaching of a man

who, while condemning the fate of those

who mechanically submit to the causes that

make them live, still finds sacredness in

forces that seek fulfillment through man

according to the principle of evolution that

manifest through processes of affirming.

denying and reconciling, the trust in which,

as Christians may say, constitutes the real

faith of man.

2

“Those sacred dances are considered one of the principal subjects of

study in all esoteric schools of the East . Their movements have a

double purpose: they express and contain a certain knowledge and

at the same time they serve as a method of attaining harmonious

state of being.”

(Gurdjieff “The Struggle of the Magicians”)

3

5

Gurdjieff: The chief cause of our weakness is our inability to apply our will to all three of our centers simultaneously.

Question: Can we apply our will to any of them?

Gurdjieff: Certainly.

The Movements are challenges to the limitedness of our perception rather than to our physical functions. Almost all of

us are in the habit of using only one of the three centers (head, feeling, or body) at one time without the participation

of others.

•This limitation intervenes into everything we do and characterizes the way we experience ourselves and look at the

world.

Actively responding to challenges from the Movements and seeing within the group how different persons may

respond to the same challenge differently, the learners may gradually begin to come out of their limitation and

experience the state of heightened consciousness supported by the awareness of two or more centers, the intensified

action of which Gurdjieff, called "remorse.”

Gurdjieff : "By itself a center has no consciousness . . . a certain combination of substances which merely possesses

a special capacity of recording. If I say something to it, it can later repeat it. It is completely mechanical, What then is

our consciousness, our memory, our critical faculty? It's very simple. It is when one center specially watches another.

Gurdjieff: Don’t discuss my ideas if you haven’t even learnt the First Obligatory exercise [illustrated above].

A movement reproduced under the direction of Madame de Salzmann Fourth-way approach to man as a three-centered being 4

Gurdjieff: There are moments when you become aware not only of what you

are doing but also of yourself doing it ... Call this self-remembering, if you like.

Question: Is it not easier when one is passive?

Gurdjieff: Yes, but useless. You must observe the machine while it is working.

(Q&A in London, 1922)

A movement reproduced under the direction of

Madame de Salzmann

Remember yourself . . .

in motion

5

The machine in motion transforms energy..

With enhanced awareness, impressions make contact with the

quintessence of air we breathe, changing its quality and filling up

presence with higher "hydrogens" that are normally missing in us.

The Movements can give a vivid experience of this often forgotten

aspect of self-remembering. To a certain degree, this experience is

sharable within a group and even transmittable to the audience.

Air

Impression

s

Food

Contact

Contact

Transforming the presence, changing the quality of air that we may share with others 6

Photo from a demonstration at the Osho Commune

What makes the river flow? What makes

the wind blow? Behind every movement,

there is am interplay between the

opposites: high and low, positive and

negative, attraction and repulsion, yes and

no, and so on.

Through actions of the Movements, we are

exposed to the question of what choices

we may make in relation to forces that act

on us, and we are measured by the very

choices we make.

Movement is the measure of truth,

as we might see in the case of lie detectors, and by its justness,

is comparable with the actions of a master, rightfully representing his

gage, his hands, his blows and his presence.

7

9

8

O his breath, his head, his gait; the terrible swiftness of the movement he executes with such perfection. O richness in spirit and immensity of the universe! His body! His day! All mourning and complaints disappear in intensified music.

O him and us! A pride that carries higher goodness than useless charity! O world! The clear song of new misfortunes he may bring!

Let us, on this winter night, as we wonder from cape to cape, from the tumultuous pole to the castle, from the crowd to the beach, from glance to glance, our strengths and feelings numb, learn to hail him and see him, and send him back, and under the tides and at the summit of snowy deserts, follow his gaze, his breath, his body, his day.

(From “Genie” by Arthur Rimbaud, abridged)

Recalling the presence of a master

Aa call for the new man

The Movements hold secrets about how the involutionary flow of creation from

above may change its direction into an evolutionary flow that spiritualizes the

universe and all created beings.

These secrets become most accessible when the Movements are practiced within a

group of people sharing the same aim, where the miracle of transforming the air or

creating a space filled with different vibrations may vividly be experienced.

Gurdjieff: “Group is the beginning of everything. Alone, one cannot do anything.”

Gurdjieff: “Only the Absolute can create from itself. Creation for us always has to be

of collective character.”

9 Significance of Group in Learning about Creativity for Man

10 Working together, creating a web and spreading “unrest” Excerpts from Gurdjieff's talks during group meetings in Paris:

It is really fortunate if two people living together can have the same wish, resonate with the same

idea, and can work together. Working with someone makes the work much more rewarding than

doing it alone. That can be with anyone. People live separately within their own selves. However, if

we share work in the way we just mentioned, the two inner worlds can be united.

When you are seated together do not spend your time internally like in life. Use this occasion to

do an exercise; suggest to yourself that this atmosphere about you, wakes up the desire to go

towards the aim for everybody here. This atmosphere is warming for an aspiring with all your

being towards a common aim. When you find yourselves together, suddenly, automatically it

produces this heating. You can have a reciprocal action on a whole city. Paris is big; but if you

begin it will become, little by little, possible that, if one movement is produced in a corner of this

atmosphere, it will start an unrest which will spread over all.

Demonstration of Movement 11 "Lord Have Mercy" at the Osho Commune,

a movement into which Gurdjieff incorporated the above-mentioned exercise of "forming a web"

11

Holy affirming,

Holy denying,

Holy reconciling,

Transubstantiate in me,

For my being.

(Gurdjieff)

Life itself told me this secret: "I am that which

must overcome itself again and again."

And my will, what crooked path it has to go:

whatever I create, however much I love it, I

must soon oppose it.

And my love, thus I will transcend it; thus will

my will have it.

(From Nietzsche "Thus Spake Zarathustra")

The Law of Three

Photo: a stormy day in Çıralı, Turkey

13

A normal being wishes to live forever. A normal man is one who not only has

actualized his inherited potentialities, but has freed himself from his subjectivity. We

are made in the image of God, and God's attribute is immortality. If God wishes to

live he has shared that wish with all of us. He also provided the means by which that

wish to live may exist forever.

Conscious labor consists of having an objective in life, as a LIFE aim, an Aim which

can be pursued the whole of your life. It does not depend on the vicissitudes of life. It

is the aim for which you took the trouble to be born. You are an immortal being if you

keep this aim. If you keep this aim through this life you will have an aim strong

enough to persist after this life, an aim big enough to persist through an immortal

experience.

G. Gurdjieff (unpublished)

As we develop sensitivity toward

what moves us through life, with

deeper understanding on its

causes and ends, the awareness of

how we may be freed by it may

begin to overpower the sense of

being enslaved by it, as we are it.

12

14

Links to Videos

Introduction to the Movements Movements from 2019

Springtime Intensive

Snapshots from classes Secret of Life, Law of Three