Monday, December 21, 2009

Periodically Speaking

Gurdjieff is mentioned in a recent Psychology Today blog. I recall Jan's interest in that publication: he thought (I am suspecting here) of it as a means of checking the state of the larger mass of humanity. Certainly his interest did not reflect a concern for psychology itself, the vast majority of which is just dreamlike constructions, with no basis in scientific evidence.
And we are already in the blog in a bit of a morass, as we need to bend words to express for common consumption uncommon insights about man which are better described as anthropology: Man considered from the outside as part of a larger structure. So from the perspective of a visitor to this planet, Jan Cox would leaf through issues, in a manner which was not really reading. He remarked more than once that he could sum up a book simply by glancing at the preface. I would call this talent as reliant not upon imaginary facts, but the altitude of the knower. That last is my phrasing, not his. He asked me once to recommend his website to be listed in Harper's. He was always aware of the worth of his contribution to a world of knowledge, and despised waste of any kind. He never gave up the thought that people would hear something in his words and be attracted to learn more, from he who understood the limitations of any speech.
Of course----Gurdjieff died sixty years before the passing mention cited here....