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carapace

"Neurospeak" by Robert Masters

A psychoactive book, science-based (YMMV).

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/897536.Neurospeak

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Gurdjieff's "Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson"

Impossible to categorize, incredibly challenging. Gurdjieff was a genius on the level of Leonardo da Vinci, but where Leonardo studied the outer world, Gurdjieff studied the inner world. This three-volume tome is his effort to encode and transmit his particular school of thought.

Gurdjieff has had a deep and obscure influence on Western culture. For example, in the Monty Python's Flying Circus movie "The Meaning of Life" an abridged description of his philosophy is given in the boardroom scene about the meaning of life, right before Terry Jones asks, "What was that about hats?"

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Gurdjieff the cult leader / charlatan? Who used to paint birds in yellow to sell them as canaries? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Gurdjieff

I agree he is brilliant but at the same level as the founder of the Scientology or other cult leaders who became awfully rich

Talking about a good book to read on cults / religion :

https://infidels.org/library/historical/unknown/three_impost...

IMHO it doesn't matter much who the author of a book was and what other things did he do if you can extract useful information from the book. What if Charles Ponzi himself would have personally invented a (real) cure for cancer or something before he died? Would we dismiss it just because he was a professional charlatan? I believe we would rather rest it to actually find out whether it works or doesn't.

> What if Charles Ponzi himself would have personally invented a (real) cure for cancer or something before he died?

This is a pretty strained argument. The much more likely scenario would have been Ponzi claiming that he had invented a cure for cancer and, given his history of gross fraudulent behaviour, would rightfully be ignored as a sensational claim being made by a known huckster.

It seems to me that ignoring the claim would be irrational unless checking it is not extremely hard. The fact a claim is made by a known huckster affects our perception but says nothing about whether it is true or false. Outside purely theoretical exercises in logic, there are no liars who are guaranteed to lie in every single claim they make.

He wasn't a cult leader nor did he become rich (his fortunes waxed and waned) despite being able to fleece people apparently at will.

The fake canary caper is assumed to be autobiographical, as is the brazen theft of the "IP" of the plaster statue-maker, but the time he almost initiated an orgy and then shook everyone down for donations was reported by a (sympathetic!) eye-witness. It's not included in "Beelzebub's Tales" at any rate.

You don't think L. Ron Hubbard is brilliant do you? I mean "Battlefield Earth" is pretty good (the book not the movie.) To me, comparing Hubbard to Gurdjieff is like comparing Nicholas Taleb to Isaac Newton.

I've read a portion of Gurdjieff's "Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson" and found it boring. Perhaps it would get interesting if I read more.

But now I'm reading "the fourth way" by Peter Ouspensky, the most famous (if we don't count Joseph Stalin) of his students and find it awesome. Very rational, explaining everything in an exciting, easy to grok way. It feels like a book I would recommend to everyone.

Beelzebub's Tales was intentionally boring for the first 50 pages in order to scare people off. Gurdjieff famously wanted only the first 50 pages pre-cut (this was during the period when new books would have their pages stuck together & the reader would use a book-knife to separate them) in order to encourage people who were turned off by the beginning to return it. He did a lot of stuff to try to weed out insufficiently dedicated people.

BT is very challenging, allegorical and for a very select group.

In less time, I'd bet on Ouspensky's Tertium Organum or Fourth Way (or both in that order). Ousp. is more pragmatic/Western, and "self-remembering" can be a valuable exercise anywhere/when.

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