“Every human being is the mirror of the God he conceives,
and most are pocket mirrors.”
–Margaret Anderson, The Unknowable Gurdjieff
I’ve been reading a lot of books about Gurdjieff lately. Being that he is dead, it is safe from the comfort of my armchair to be fascinated by him and his work, and the shroud of secrecy and exclusivity that surrounded him. Of course if he were alive today, undoubtedly there would be some that would revere him as an enlightened mystic who could do no wrong, while others would denounce him as a manipulative cult leader.
Sai Baba
While some spiritual teachers, like India’s Sai Baba, for example, manage
to attract and accumulate followers by the millions, others, like Gurdjieff and the late Adi Da Samraj, went out of their way to make it nearly impossible for the merely curious to even get near them. Gurdjieff was notorious for at times being rude and outrageous in his behaviors as a way of scaring off those who were unable or uninterested in looking past surface appearances. (And in reverse, he once offered to pay a particular student to not leave, simply because this person’s continued presence was a constant source of conflict and upset to the rest of the group!)
Adi Da Samraj
Of those who pushed through such trials and ordeals and managed to enter his inner circle of students, many wrote memoirs of their experiences. The passage below about music comes from one such account by Margaret Anderson in her book, The Unknowable Gurdjieff. The selection isn’t explicitly about Gurdjieff, but reflects one of the phases she passed through whilst under his tutelage. And it is likely not unrelated to that fact that Gurdjieff was himself a musician and composer of sorts, and would often play his “sacred melodies” for his students on a small harmonium-type of instrument that featured a keyboard and bellows.
Beethoven manuscript
“I had always lived on music, I wanted to hear it always, I venerated music, I think I thought that love of music was a measure of the soul’s stature…My idea of what life should be was perfectly illustrated by those pictures of Beethoven playing to his friends, who sat listening with their heads bowed in their hands. I was always seeking the emotion which would allow me, compel me, to put my head in my hands. Life was never life to me unless my heart stood still.
” …Even today when I suddenly hear a phrase of great lyrical music, I hear myself thinking: life is music, can there be anything greater?
Chopin
…I listen as if listening would take me to some other sphere…Is it possible I am hearing anything so beautiful? Can anything so beautiful really have been written? What did Chopin feel when he wrote it?
” …I felt that all people who didn’t live in this state were without blessing and that they must be helped into it. I sometimes tried to decide which state –love (romantic love) or music — I could relinquish if allowed only one. For some reason I could never explain I always decided that I would have to give up love. Perhaps because one can arrange to have music continually; love isn’t always available, and it is so often unmusical.”
Comes down to that age-old question: You’re on a deserted island and you can take only one thing with you, your lover or your iPod. Which one do you choose?
This… OR … This ? 
That’s an easy one for me. My lover, if I had one, that is, but really my art supplies would be best
.
Definitely my lover, whose songs make my heart dance.
my husband..and can he bring the ipod?since we both can bring just one of the two choices
I’d take Chopin.
lover, because music gives you only one side of love. i need to explore into love.