Beelzebub’s Tales to his Grandson

I was struck by Jack’s mention of Ouspensky and Gurdjieff (in Sunday’s call), since it was these writers who helped me to become open to Buddhism and TSK.  Gurdjieff promised three series of writing: the first to destroy his reader’s illusions that they are already conscious; the third to provide a true understanding to the minds thus prepared.  “Beelzebub’s Tales” did an admirable job of making me doubt that I really knew anything, but I never found anything in Gurdjieff’s writing to provide a better way of living the life I was still stuck in.  After I started reading Tarthang Tulku’s writings I felt that I had finally encountered the kind of truth that Gurdjief had promiced.  I wonder if that was all along his intention: to create greater openness to the wisdom tradiions still alive in our world.  And where does TSK fit into this perspective?  I find that TSK simultaneously presents the evidence that we are unconscious, together with the insights, motivations, and guidance needed to give us possibilities for waking up.  In this week’s reading I especially appreciate how the much malligned ‘past’ is being invited back into the family of Time.  Carrier of our conditioning, source of our unconscious projections of substance onto the wholeness of space, the past can also be a vital partner in the wholeness of time.  Ah, the prodigal son returns, finally able to accept a more modest place (instead of always placing himself in the center of every experrience). –Michael