06.22.07
Shah and Gurdjieff
Comment on I. Shah:
Actually, I forget where I read that, sorry. I am almost sure I read it somewhere. However, it was very early on, evidently, check the dates. How old was Idries Shah in the thirties, forties?
Maybe I have invoked an impossibility???
But there was a clear response to Gurdieff in Shah’s work (consider the phoney pseudonymous work, under the name Rafael Lefort).
Jayen said,
June 23, 2007 at 3:37 pm
I believe the book you are referring to, “The Teachers of Gurdjieff”, was written by Shah’s elder brother, Omar Ali-Shah – though it does not really make any difference, given that they were working together at the time.
Idries Shah was born in 1924, while Gurdjieff died in 1949; so a meeting is not impossible. I’ll make some further enquiries … but am doubtful. There was considerable resentment from Gurdjieffians over the fact that Shah reduced Gurdjieff to a proponent of sufism; any such meeting would have featured strongly in Gurdjieffians’ rebuttals, and I can recall no such mention.
That Gurdjieff drew on sufic sources can hardly be denied, however, given the specific references in his oeuvre to “Bogga Eddin” (a Russian transliteration of Bahauddin) and Nassr Eddin (Mulla Nasrudin).
Will let you know if I find out anything further.
Cheers J.
sillykitty said,
June 23, 2007 at 8:42 pm
what is that gossip about how j.g.bennett left his english countryside manorhouse and community (sheffield?) to shah?–in the hope that shah would continue the ‘work’ there–shah agreed–then promptly turned around and sold it for a huge profit. i don’t have my facts straight on this–but it went down something like that–leaves a hint that there was perhaps a personal relationship/history between gurdjieff and shah. don’t remember where i read this..maybe one of william patterson’s books.
somewhere it is written down.
Jayen said,
June 24, 2007 at 11:47 am
That is another one of those stories … a personal friend of mine went to see Bennett a few weeks after this sale of the property by Shah, and spoke to Bennett’s wife.
According to him, there was no ill-feeling whatsoever on the Bennetts’ part about the sale, just a comment that the property would have been far too small for Shah’s work, which had grown much faster than anticipated:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/caravansarai/message/10632
Dogberry said,
July 23, 2007 at 9:31 am
The Shah brothers (Idries and Omar) began recruiting disconsolate Gurdjieffians in Paris around 1960, some years before Idries targetted Bennett in England. One source for this period is Omar’s disciple Augy Hayter in his book Fictions and Factions. Omar remained in France, hence the discovery by ‘Rafael Lefort’ (aka Omar), after allegedly exhausting all Gurdjieffian trails, that the real deal was available (POA) a few miles from the narrator’s starting point in Paris. Hayter also has material on the split between the Shahs in the early ’70s, which he believes (as a good Gurdjieffian) was manufactured by them for the benefit of their followers. Their sister, Amina, is another sufi writer and folklorist. Ikbal Ali-Shah, the trio’s father, was closer in time to Gurdjieff, and an imaginative writer on sufi topics and general occultism. He prepared his offspring for their careers in his chosen areas.