Twice in a row, now, Toomer experiences one truth and then, immediately afterwards, its apparent opposite: rather, I think, he sees one pole of a matter, then the other pole, […]
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Category: Articles
Jean Toomer, “The Experience,” Part VII
Toomer develops his insight that the health of psyche and body are interrelated in a manner stimulated by his direct insight that “the entire ordinary self oppresses and deranges the […]
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Jean Toomer, “The Experience,” Part VI
Toomer’s relationship to his body now began to change. He had previously made observations such as how, looking around his apartment as if for the first time, he saw the […]
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Jean Toomer’s Essay, “The Experience,” Pt V
This third chapter, “Birth above the Body,” treats of the conception of a new understanding of his being, the body, and how our usual identification with the body keeps us […]
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In Practical Terms, What Is Self-Remembering? Pt III
Part I of this series is: http://www.josephazize.com/2023/08/11/in-practical-terms-what-is-self-remembering/ Gurdjieff said that the key to everything was to remain separate. I think this is what is behind Toomer’s experience that: [My life] was […]
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In Practical Terms, What Is Self-Remembering? Pt II
Part I of this series is: http://www.josephazize.com/2023/08/11/in-practical-terms-what-is-self-remembering/ I am going to jump from what was written there to a description of a state which we can fairly call “self-remembering.” It comes […]
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In Practical Terms, What Is Self-Remembering?
What is it like to be able to remember myself, in practical terms? Surely there can be no one comprehensive answer, as each “self” is unique (at least theoretically). But […]
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What Can it Be, to “Unite Beelzebub’s Tribe”?
I think that the further one advances along the Gurdjieff work, the more one feels the desirability of uniting Beelzebub’s tribesmen, so to speak. There are many questions, for example, […]
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Merston, “Claire,” and the Dangers of Prematurely Separating out the Astral and Physical Bodies
This follows a line begun in this post, albeit in a tangent: https://www.josephazize.com/2023/06/14/was-gurdjieff-spied-on/ In 1931, Ethel Merston began a stormy relationship with a 13-year-old girl known to us only as “Claire.” […]
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Idries Shah’s Attraction for the Wilfully Blind
The Moral: Idries Shah’s writing on St Francis of Assisi brought me to a fairly important understanding: his technique, I contend, was to write such utter balderdash that anyone who […]
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