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The idiotplayers podcast is a caravanserai of conversations with important thinkers, be-ers and doers. The idiotplayers podcast aims to explore art, creativity and expression. If there is an elephant standing in the dark, as the Sufi story goes, we want to do more than grope and theorize. We invite conversations with people who aim from the heart to make practical, the far-reaching.
Biography
Trevor Stewart is a former Zen practitioner and current participant at the Two Rivers Farm in Aurora, Oregon. He has spent the last 7 years since encountering Gurdjieff’s magnum opus at the age of 18 “tunneling” Beelzebub’s Tales. At first it was the result of inherent curiosity, later, it was solely due to its author’s hypnotic influence, and finally, it was a personal attempt to save its otherwise rarified and “impenetrable” message from becoming part of the dusty purgatorial corners of the lower bookshelf of a former Fourth Way “fanatic.” The personal key was an entirely new approach produced in light of new and ongoing research and development in “Beelzebub Studies” that aims to bring this major and important work into a range of application more or less useful for sincere modern seekers in various fields of study and investigation in and even out of the “Work”. A long-time and therefore culpable student of books by and about Gurdjieff, Trevor humbly takes full credit or full blame, as the case may be, for the “sacrilegious” and hopefully “Hasnamussian” views and opinions he presents, developed solely by him through much work and sincere questioning with Beelzebub’s Tales. He appreciates feedback and can be contacted at ClearSkySolidEarth@Hotmail.com.
The Paper
Trevor’s paper: A perspective on Chapter 12: The First “Growl”
Topics
The challenge of writing about rich ideas; Young people in the Work; Mohammad Tamdgidi: Gurdjieff and Hypnosis A Hermeneutic Study; Suggestibility; Social Programming; Being anathematized; The process of reading the Tales; The “fear” of thinking about the Tales and the supposed “subconscious” reward of simply reading it; Word Yoga; A reading of Chapter 12: The First “Growl”; The surface level of the chapter; Some inexactitudes in the chapter; Correlations with Gurdjieff as the contemporary Gospel writer; Recurring motifs in the Tales; A certain type of awareness that arises from reading the book; The force of attention; A many-sided totality.
Trevor speaks of G transmitting his understanding indirectly. It seems right to me. There is a language of three centered intelligence that the First Series, the Movements, the Sittings and the general Work principles shows us. They all show us this, and it seems to me that people get lost imagining there is some exact science that takes an unbelievable effort to decipher. Well, how can an indirect transmission also be exact in that way? I like Trevor’s approach, and I agree there is an indirect transmission that G did. Once this understanding is actually transmitted though, there is then an exact Way that the person with the transmitted understanding can follow. It’s not difficult to decipher either! It’s a simple as can be.