The Gurdjieff teaching is not, and has never presented itself as a religion. It has no creed, no demand for faith in things unseen. It is strictly about what Gurdjieff called work on oneself: a search toward self-knowledge and presence to oneself and the world. But then, it speaks of a living cosmos in which we human beings have the obligation, insofar as possible, to “lighten the sorrows of His Endlessness.” There must be a link, then, between the personal epiphanies of life dedicated to work on oneself and large service. To be explored…
Dr. Lipsey has written extensively on Ananda Coomaraswamy, Thomas Merton, and Václav Havel. His 2013 biography of Dag Hammarskjöld has been extremely well received, and he is often invited to speak at UN meetings worldwide about the Hammarskjöld heritage. Lipsey is a contributor and director of the quarterly magazine Parabola, a member of the board of the Gurdjieff Society of Massachusetts, and a trustee of the Gurdjieff Foundation of New York.
Certain books were “banned in Boston” at least as far back as 1651, when one William Pynchon wrote a book criticizing Puritanism.