Mark Sedgwick
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780199977642
- eISBN:
- 9780190622701
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199977642.003.0011
- Subject:
- Religion, Islam
This chapter examines two interwar movements that link Theosophy and Western Sufism: the Traditionalism of René Guénon, and the teaching of George Gurdjieff. Although Guénon publicly rejected both ...
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This chapter examines two interwar movements that link Theosophy and Western Sufism: the Traditionalism of René Guénon, and the teaching of George Gurdjieff. Although Guénon publicly rejected both Theosophy and emanationism, he was still influenced by both, as well as by perennialism and anti-exotericism on the model of John Toland. The Gurdjieff teaching owes less than is thought to Sufism and much more than is though to Peter Ouspensky and, through him, to the psychology of William James. Ouspensky and Gurdjieff were early promoters of the transformation of emanationism from its original focus on the soul and the One to a focus on consciousness and the expansion of consciousness. To this end they used novel practices, including asceticism and “discomfiture.” The chapter also introduces the two men who would later apply Traditionalism and the Gurdjieff teaching to Western Sufism: Frithjof Schuon, and John G. Bennett .Less
This chapter examines two interwar movements that link Theosophy and Western Sufism: the Traditionalism of René Guénon, and the teaching of George Gurdjieff. Although Guénon publicly rejected both Theosophy and emanationism, he was still influenced by both, as well as by perennialism and anti-exotericism on the model of John Toland. The Gurdjieff teaching owes less than is thought to Sufism and much more than is though to Peter Ouspensky and, through him, to the psychology of William James. Ouspensky and Gurdjieff were early promoters of the transformation of emanationism from its original focus on the soul and the One to a focus on consciousness and the expansion of consciousness. To this end they used novel practices, including asceticism and “discomfiture.” The chapter also introduces the two men who would later apply Traditionalism and the Gurdjieff teaching to Western Sufism: Frithjof Schuon, and John G. Bennett .
Robert B. Jones and Margot Toomer Latimer (eds)
- Published in print:
- 1988
- Published Online:
- July 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780807842096
- eISBN:
- 9781469616421
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/9781469616414_Jones
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
This volume is a collected edition of poems by Jean Toomer, the enigmatic American writer, Gurdjieffian guru, and Quaker convert who is perhaps best known for his 1923 lyrical narrative Cane. The ...
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This volume is a collected edition of poems by Jean Toomer, the enigmatic American writer, Gurdjieffian guru, and Quaker convert who is perhaps best known for his 1923 lyrical narrative Cane. The fifty-five poems here chart an evolution of artistic consciousness. The book is divided into sections reflecting four distinct periods of creativity in Toomer's career. The Aesthetic period includes Imagist, symbolist, and other experimental pieces, such as “Five Vignettes,” while “Georgia Dusk” and the newly discovered poem “Tell Me” come from Toomer's Ancestral Consciousness period in the early 1920s. “The Blue Meridian” and other Objective Consciousness poems reveal the influence of idealist philosopher Georges Gurdjieff. Among the works of this period the book presents a group of local color poems picturing the landscape of the American Southwest, including “Imprint for Rio Grande.” “It Is Everywhere,” another newly discovered poem, celebrates America and democratic idealism. The Quaker religious philosophy of Toomer's final years is demonstrated in such Christian Existential works as “They Are Not Missed” and “To Gurdjieff Dying.” The introduction examines the major poems in this volume and serves as a guide through the stages of Toomer's evolution as an artist and thinker.Less
This volume is a collected edition of poems by Jean Toomer, the enigmatic American writer, Gurdjieffian guru, and Quaker convert who is perhaps best known for his 1923 lyrical narrative Cane. The fifty-five poems here chart an evolution of artistic consciousness. The book is divided into sections reflecting four distinct periods of creativity in Toomer's career. The Aesthetic period includes Imagist, symbolist, and other experimental pieces, such as “Five Vignettes,” while “Georgia Dusk” and the newly discovered poem “Tell Me” come from Toomer's Ancestral Consciousness period in the early 1920s. “The Blue Meridian” and other Objective Consciousness poems reveal the influence of idealist philosopher Georges Gurdjieff. Among the works of this period the book presents a group of local color poems picturing the landscape of the American Southwest, including “Imprint for Rio Grande.” “It Is Everywhere,” another newly discovered poem, celebrates America and democratic idealism. The Quaker religious philosophy of Toomer's final years is demonstrated in such Christian Existential works as “They Are Not Missed” and “To Gurdjieff Dying.” The introduction examines the major poems in this volume and serves as a guide through the stages of Toomer's evolution as an artist and thinker.
