Gurdjieff & Trungpa, Sarmoung Brother-Hoods

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Part 1 of 2

John Pentland, 1907–1984
by Gurdjieff International Review

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Lord Pentland (Henry John Sinclair) was a pupil of Ouspensky for many years during the 1930s and 1940s. He began to study intensely with Gurdjieff in 1948. Gurdjieff then appointed him to lead the Work in North America. He became president of the Gurdjieff Foundation when it was established in New York in 1953 and remained in that position until his death.

Lord Pentland

A brief sketch of John Pentland’s life and writings by J. Walter Driscoll. Pentland was a pupil of both P. D. and Mme. Ouspensky for many years during the 1930s and 1940s. He spent considerable time with Gurdjieff in 1949, after which he led the Gurdjieff Work in North America.

John Pentland, 1907–1984
by J. Walter Driscoll
Copyright © 1997 J. Walter Driscoll

Lord Pentland (Henry John Sinclair) was a pupil of both P.D. and Mme. Ouspensky for many years during the 1930s and 1940s. He spent considerable time in 1949, the last year of Gurdjieff's life, with him; then he led the Gurdjieff Work in North America. He described this period in Transmission: an interview with Lord Pentland in 1983:

When I met Gurdjieff I'd been quite a few years with Mr. Ouspensky and Mme. Ouspensky both attending talks and lectures and also living in Mme. Ouspensky's house, in their houses in England in the west of London and in New Jersey. And it was after Ouspensky died and I went out to India, and on the way back, actually, it became clear to me that even all those years with Ouspensky, I hadn't arrived at anything; I came to nothing. And it was then that through Mme. Ouspensky's introduction, I went to Paris and met Gurdjieff. I was with him in Paris and then I came to New York. And it was a short period, only about nine months, but a couple of months after that he died. And the way he left things, it made it perfectly easy for me to have to really enter into a position of responsibility as such. So it made it essentially easy for me to try to understand more deeply what he'd shown me.

With support from other senior students, Lord Pentland became president of the Gurdjieff Foundation when it was established in New York in 1953 and remained in that position until his death in 1984. He played a major role in bringing English editions of Gurdjieff's and Ouspensky's books to publication. He also collaborated in the founding of Gurdjieff societies in major urban areas across North America. Lord Pentland was president of the Gurdjieff Foundation of California from its inception in 1955.

As executive editor of Far West Editions between 1969 and 1984 he supervised and was a frequent but anonymous contributor to ten issues of Material for Thought, an occasional magazine of anonymously authored reviews, essays, interviews and poetry that is dedicated to "the inner search for one's self." In this capacity, he acted as editorial advisor to numerous authors and wrote forewords to some of their books published by Far West Editions. As founder of the Far West Institute, he was a pivotal force behind their biennial program of six public lectures in San Francisco between 1974 and 1984. These drew a wide range of gifted speakers, from many vocations and traditions, to penetrating dialogues on their search for meaning in the midst of contemporary materialism. Lord Pentland was a frequent contributor to these discussions.

Guidance Under Lord Pentland’s Direction

Working under Lord Pentland’s guidance for almost 30 years, Don Hoyt shares some of his experiences with Pentland, “not only in the context of group exchanges with him, but also in what can only be described as ‘teaching moments’.”

Guidance Under Lord Pentland’s Direction
by Don Hoyt

Within the various Gurdjieff Foundations here in America a number of us who worked directly under the guidance of Lord Pentland can recall vividly how the power of his unique insights into the teaching of Gurdjieff acted as a catalyst that opened up new avenues of questioning for us, of penetrating beneath and beyond the level of associative expectations, in a way that kindled—and sometimes ignited—a deepening awareness of our essence. This was brought home for me not only in the context of group exchanges with him, but also in what can only be described as “teaching moments,” in which, while in his presence, a word from him, an unexpected reminder, would produce in us a shock, shaking us out of the dream state in which we had become entrapped.


Lord Pentland, circa 1980

Lord Pentland was a true teacher in every sense of the word. There was an unmistakable impression of inner authority that emanated from his presence which spoke of a lifetime of payment, and which accounts in large part for the atmosphere that was generated in our meetings with him, an atmosphere charged with electricity. I’ve often pondered what it was that produced this effect, and I’ve come to realize that it may have been his complete indifference to any concern about what impression he might be making, or in expounding some idea for our edification. Yet another factor was at work. He was working—working with total attentiveness and presence that enabled his attention to be freely and wholly available, unencumbered by any inventory of “prior knowings.” One felt he was listening from a respectfulness for our work that had an action on us, of a demand, a demand to share in that quality of attentiveness with him, to the extent we were able.

A question arises from this—a question implicit within the state of our listening. Why was it that our attention repeatedly fell short of the potency, the inner force, required to maintain the sustained level of attentiveness to which he was calling us? In a message from him that was read aloud at the beginning of a Sunday of work, he addressed this very question. He began by drawing our attention to an unexpected factor in our general makeup, namely, that:

A part of my energy is detached from my present state. Whether I am trying to be quiet, or struggling with some unpleasant emotion, this part of my presence is unconcerned, detached from it all. I am oblivious of the fact that this free energy is part of me. I am only partly present. But when, through the work of a sustained attentive inner listening, I become aware of this detached energy, accepting the fact that I cannot even be sure I know to whom this unattached energy belongs or what it means—that this “unknowing” elicits a state of presence accompanied by a relaxation of the body, particularly in the neck and shoulders, and a sense of warmth in the solar plexus region. All the restlessness disappears as the free energy finds a place in the body where it can naturally relate to other inner energies.

This perspective was further brought home for us during one of Lord Pentland’s last formal exchanges, this one with the Cave Junction, Oregon group in August of 1983, six months before his death. He had been invited by George Cornelius, who had asked Lord Pentland if he would speak about what needs to be understood if we are to undergo the real work that Gurdjieff has opened up for us.

George Cornelius was a student of Gurdjieff in Paris, where Mr. Gurdjieff called him "The American."

George Cornelius also studied with P.D. Ouspensky, J.G. Bennett, Jane Heap and Rodney Collin.

Mrs. A.L. Staveley called Mr. Cornelius, "formidable" and "a strong meat -- not for everyone." She said that Mr. Cornelius worked with those who had no group and who found it difficult to work within a group.

George Cornelius said, "I teach discrimination" and drove away many who came to him. A friend of John Pentland and John Lester, George Cornelius was sent by many as a man, who kicked down doors, rode across boundaries and stepped on corns.

-- George Cornelius, by Gurdjieff Club

It was an occasion in which Lord Pentland began to articulate with extraordinary precision what can guide our work when we are prepared to move beyond the level of conceptual assumptions about what we regard as inner work. He began by introducing an altogether unfamiliar dimension of meaning to the word responsibility, a dimension that could be a guiding imperative to a real work. His words still vibrate with the same potency for me now as they did then.

I begin to understand what would be meant, if I were able to be present to it, by the idea of two levels of attention: one that reacts to what is going on mechanically and another attention that is in touch with the presence of myself in the moment. Real responsibility begins when I am present to both these levels at the same time—when I have an attention which is able to hear the call at the same time as it feels the movement of the unconscious parts of myself.

Now of course I’m speaking about something you’re all familiar with. It’s the question of real will. And I hope I can say that we’re all together in front of that question, yourself, and myself, and all of us. It’s a question we all share together. Nobody’s giving the answers. And that’s what a real human question is like.

The first step in responsibility, then, is separation—separation of the energies from the forms they take, separation of essence from personality. And for this process to go on calls for a certain quality of attention which I call non-directive skill. It’s only by developing this quality of attentive engagement that I begin to move towards real individuality.

On first hearing this idea of non-directive skill, it did not fully register. Time would be needed for it to gestate, to “cook” in us, to where it would become a living imperative for our work. In recognition of this, Lord Pentland made no further attempt to explain or define what was meant by this idea of non-directive engagement of the attention, as though trusting that this idea, like a seed, would germinate in us to eventually bear fruit within the context of our work, and instead, shifted the ground of our exchange to encompass another scale altogether, to that of the idea of octaves with their intervals.

You are all familiar with the idea, Gurdjieff’s idea, of the octave, as it develops sequentially in time. It’s very good to experience the law of octaves as a law not only behind the big crises, but behind every little detail of our lives, observing the energies that arise, that go out from me, and return. But we also need to begin to try to understand the law of octaves vertically, in which all the notes are there, all the levels are all there at the same moment within me, and what we wish for is to experience these levels and to observe the separation of their different energies—distinguishable one from the other—each of which has its own characteristic rate of vibration.

Yet even here, the sweep and resiliency of Lord Pentland’s mode of exchange opened us to a far wider horizon, in which the level of our work could be viewed in juxtaposition with the awesome scale of cosmological movement, the movement of the great Ray of Creation, which, as he pointed out, obeys the same laws as those that apply to the scale of our inner work.

We don’t understand the importance of our attitude. My attitude at any point is like the sunken part of the iceberg. I start out from the conscious affirmative part which is like the tip. I’m quite surprised—and unprepared—to meet resistance from this unconscious part. Yet my attitude is largely governed by this resistance. You have to see the resistance. You have to be more aware of the wish to not work—at the same time as you are holding the wish to work.

What was implicit for me in these words was the simultaneous awareness of both these forces—the force of affirmation and the force of denial. It is the simultaneous holding within our awareness of both these two forces which draws us into the presence of the third force—the all-embracing force of reconciliation.

This lawful factor within the context of our work was further illuminated at an impromptu informal gathering arranged with little forewarning by Lord Pentland during an intensive work period in 1983, four months before he died. He chose to dispense with any note-taking or recording of the meeting, yet his words still resonate strongly in my recollection. He began speaking almost immediately.

The association of wishing to be silent is seen when I close the eyes, that all too easily this becomes an automatic reflex that I do out of fear of the outside world. It is this fear that creates the aggression which creates the inner noise. But what we wish for is a listening that will be for the whole of the inner and outer life, all together—and somewhere between certain limits there will be a particular point where the whole of life is available, and at that point there will be a silence, and it will appear as part of a lawful process in which there is no violence, because I’m simply coming to a more and more sensitive state of attentive listening.

So here again we were brought in touch with a work that includes both sides at once.

A remarkable quality of Lord Pentland’s way of responding to a question or observation that he clearly could see was the fruit of a genuine inner place of work, is that he invariably honored the occasion by illuminating for that individual a level of meaning that opened them to a whole new scale of understanding—of the very question or observation they had brought. I vividly recall an instance of this which took place in the context of a group meeting where this occurred. This was the observation put to Lord Pentland.

A week ago during the reading of Beelzebub there was a part about all-embracingness. It touched me and I wanted to understand why. I tried to keep the question open during the day. Also it has been with me for a week, because I tried to understand why I felt this was missing in my work and why I didn’t feel it.

Lord Pentland’s response:

All-embracingness—it’s for that that the work to come to the work of sensation is given. We have to see first of all in moments and then for longer, that through the work to be aware of the sensation of the whole of my body, there can be moments when all the experiences are contained in myself—they don’t go outside myself.

I need to come back to the work of sensation because the container is coated in me through the transformation of my energies. And this transformation cannot take place at the level of my functioning—the forms that this energy takes. As long as I’m taken by that level, there can be no transformation. So I begin to discover through the work of sensation that I can be aware of energy and vibration before they have taken form. And this is the first step towards that transformation by which a container could exist for my inner life, which would give me the opportunity to study the appearance of the forces that act through these energies.

I’ve often reflected on what was Lord Pentland’s fundamental aim as a teacher—what was he after? One response to this is that his abiding intent, almost passion, was to arouse in us an awareness of the buffers—the built in forms of resistance—that distance us from the possibility of “hearing,” of being receptive to new impressions. Keenly aware of the dream state in which we live our lives, he knew all too well that any reference to “sleep” would elicit little more than a yawn, that it has become a cliché term at best. Yet at unexpected moments, he could touch our conscience by reminding us that what we are in fact asleep to is the reality of our being, asleep to levels of this being that are free of, and inaccessible to, the machinations of the personal self with its dreams of self-enhancement and self-ascendance.

The main point of any spiritual practice is to step out of ego's constant desire for a higher, more transcendental version of knowledge, religion, virtue, judgment, comfort, or whatever it is that the particular ego is seeking.

-- Chogyam Trungpa, From Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism

Yet there are those who have come to realize that the price of coming to a real work is disenchantment with all of that, and it is these whom Lord Pentland endeavored to reach.

Then we look further and further and further. We don't make a big point or an answer out of any one thing....

We go on deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper, until we reach the point where there is no answer. There is not even a question. Both question and answer die simultaneously at some point. They begin to rub each other too closely and they short-circuit each other in some way. At that point, we tend to give up hope of an answer, or of anything whatsoever, for that matter. We have no more hope, none whatsoever....

This hopelessness is the essence of crazy wisdom. It is hopeless, utterly hopeless. It is beyond hopelessness....

Without a sense of hopelessness, there is no way to give birth to sudden enlightenment. Only giving up our projects brings about the ultimate, definite, positive state of being, which is the realization that we are already enlightened beings here and now.

-- Crazy Wisdom, by Chogyam Trungpa

In 1955, Don Hoyt became a member of the Gurdjieff Foundation under the guidance of Lord Pentland. After Lord Pentland’s death in 1984, Don Hoyt served as President of the Gurdjieff Foundation of California until 1988.

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Part 2 of 2

Exchanges Within (Excerpts)

In these exchanges from group meetings, John Pentland responds to observations and questions from his pupils regarding their inner work and does so in ways that called them—and us—to a state of attention, to a state of vibrant attentiveness, of inner alignment and attunement, which, when we are sufficiently still inside, possesses a potency reminding us that the real inner work is a response to a higher and deeper calling.

Exchanges Within
Questions from Everyday Life selected from Gurdjieff Group Meetings with John Pentland in California, 1955–1984

The following selections are taken from Exchanges Within,1 which documents nearly 30 years of group meetings with John Pentland. “These exchanges do not necessarily lead to definite answers but, on the contrary, encourage deeper questioning and further experience. Through the intensity of his own search, Lord Pentland radiated the help necessary for group members again and again to discover and try to express where they actually are in the process of understanding and in the movement toward being.”2


John Pentland, circa 1980

Feeling that things are doing themselves, a moment of presence to myself . . .

Basic goodness as ground refers to our view of reality as primordially pure, fresh, and sacred. Our human being is originally wakeful, worthy, and genuine. We approach meditation without the idea of a fundamental mistake that we need to correct. We begin by simply feeling how we are feeling without evaluating ourselves, attempting to change, or stop our thoughts. This is total, aware accommodation.

-- Shambhala Guide Resource Manual: A Resource for Directors, Students, and Centre Administrators [Draft], 2014 , by Shambhala Office of Practice and Education

Question: I have tried to observe myself during the day doing housework, taking care of the children, different types of things. I ask myself, “Who is doing this now?” and sometimes I get to the point that I can see how helpless I am. I will be carrying a pan from the sink to the stove and when I ask “Who is this, doing this?” things start to happen in me. Really, it brings some feeling.

Lord Pentland: What does it bring?

Questioner: It is a feeling of—like a big discovery that it really is true that I am not really doing this thing. Things are doing themselves. But then I start daydreaming and forget that right away.

Lord Pentland: You should try to understand this feeling. Although it is very fleeting, you should try to understand it more. It comes very quickly and we do not see how quickly it is gone. And strangely, even though it has its side of exposing my weakness, my carelessness, even though it has this side of showing my weakness to myself, there is a great joy in it. It is something very real. It is a moment of presence to myself, a very short moment.

Questioner: Is there a feeling connected with that which could guide me in between these moments? Is there something more in that experience that I have missed?

Lord Pentland: It is new for you still, but maybe there is something more in it that you will have to understand, which guides you in these other times when you say that you forget.

Questioner: Yes, it just happens. I do not feel I have anything to do with it.

Lord Pentland: You feel you are getting something for nothing. This is an awkward position to be in. If you could connect it—how can I pay? There is something more you have to see in that. As far as it goes it is very good, it couldn’t be better. But it has to go further and that means you have to see more at the moment.

It always takes you by surprise; how could you not be so taken by surprise? How could you understand what it would mean, this presence, when it suddenly appears, that without it you are incomplete? How could you be ready for that to come? How could you feel that, when you are being so careless, so completely forgetting of the need for this presence? It is as if a child were completely neglectful of its parent, if a child did not recognize its dependence on its parent when the parent comes into the room.

That would be one thing to start from, to see again and again that I entirely forget the need for what you could broadly call help, to see how in fulfilling these ordinary demands I forget that they can never be fulfilled without help—what I mean is, the need of this presence in me when I go out to fulfill these little demands. It never occurs to you that they never can be finished without that; even quite small things get out of hand.

The idea of resistance . . .

Question: Would you speak about resistance? I seem to find resistance built in and I am powerless in the face of it. I have no control even in attempting to be quiet in order to follow or see where the resistance comes from. I see all the time that I am still caught in it. It is very difficult to work in the face of this.

Lord Pentland: Again we come to the point at the end of what you say. It is very difficult to work. Now, in a way this is my starting point. Work is a luxury. I do not mix it with the ordinary difficulties of life. If it is a luxury, if it is a work to be present to a life which is already full of difficulties, then I can expect this work to be especially difficult. I start from that.

What is the difficulty is almost always of my own making. Granted the difficulty of leading an ordinary life, when it is granted, I do not have very much wish for this luxury, for a soul or whatever you call it. The factory only just maintains itself. There is not much energy for work. So I have become accustomed to depend for the idea of work on what I call resistance. You follow what I mean?

The intriguing quote, "Luxury is experiencing reality" is another phrase Chögyam Trungpa used which goes to the heart of the drala principle.

-- The Drala Principle, by Bill Scheffel

Work for me begins where I am, in the problems of ordinary life. I divide this desire in resistance. I do not mean to say I see that exactly; I only experience something as work when there is something to work against. To me there is the verification that there is a work when there is a struggle. This is a misunderstanding, because my work is simply to be present in my life—for that there is no resistance.

The problem is to find something in myself, some energy, some presence that is not needed for the difficulties of life, which can be there at the moment. In a way everything is a resistance. In a way nothing is a resistance to that. In a way everything has to be related to that. If everything is felt as a resistance, I am not able to do that.

It all begins from this problem we have of needing an affirmation for a work effort. I have to try again and again. It used to be said, you remember, that the resistance is also me. I do not know if that helps. One has not much time to think about things like that. There is a sort of satisfaction I take in the experience of working against something, which makes that work very difficult and which creates the other difficulty—that sometimes it appears too much.

The more you think about it in terms of a force, the less you think about it in terms of positive and negative, the better. I see there is a struggle. I know that my possibility of coming to a question from that depends on whether the force can engage directly. The real awareness of living is so close to living that it is like the force appearing directly. It is very subtle.

When there is this sort of substantiation about this resistance and what can go against it, it is not so subtle. This makes for a work that is less useful. It also makes for a work that is very vulnerable to violence. When life comes to me violently because I am not living close enough, I am unable to make use of that. On the contrary, I react violently.

I need very much this naked confrontation with life. So you try. It cannot be done all at once, for we depend for the moment on this experience of resistance in order to feel I am back home again working. But you see we have to get beyond that because this dependency gets in our way. It gives us the feeling that, because of the resistance, we cannot work. We never come to the third force, but it is where I am. You understand better now?

Work for an acceptance of the body as an important part of my psyche . . .

Question: The study that was suggested last Saturday helped me to be in touch with my body an unusual amount of the time. By the end of the day, I could see that my thoughts get in the way of being more with myself, and there was a definite decrease in thoughts about people—what I thought they should do instead of what they were doing. Just what had to be was there. I learned something about that on Saturday by being there in a different way.

Lord Pentland: Suppose one could have a relationship with the sensation, involving a kind of acceptance of my body. We are alienated from our bodies. I don’t accept that this is my body. It is rather easy to accept that this is my body when there is a real inner experience and I feel this is just the outer covering. But these moments are rare when I am impartial to my body, can look at it in the mirror and feel this is just the outer covering. Normally I don’t quite accept what I see in the mirror as me, so I will never have a relationship with my body, will never be aware of the sensation as long as what I see in the mirror is rejected. So it is a very good thing when you feel frustrated or angry or something, instead of trying to quiet it, to go look at it in the mirror and see that it is not me that is doing all this.

Questioner: One of the things I am now trying to do . . .

Lord Pentland: As long as you don’t get lost in the doing. So one has to take one’s measure in relation to that. It is no use having an idea that more has to be done in this direction. One has to know one’s measure. One has to work at it within the measure that is available to me. It is no use picking exercises and giving myself tasks that are too difficult. I have got to do what is just a little too difficult for me.

A lady came to see me in New York, an artist. She had had some kind of experience in Central Park and she had been everywhere trying to understand it. She finally went to a priest. He said, “If you come to my retreat, I will help you to understand it.” She was completely a non-church person and said so to him. He said, “You have to learn humility.” She said to me, “You see the crazy things they tell you. I was saying I had seen growing things, the spectrum of colors and the man says ‘humility.’ My friends say that you understand something.”

So I said to her, “Start with sensation. You must try till you see me again to keep your face relaxed.” So after a month she came back and not perhaps without some help from the beauty parlor, but her face was very relaxed. She said this had been the most extraordinary reminder to her. She talked about that for awhile, and she stayed and went on talking, and I realized I was supposed to give her something else to try. I didn’t feel inclined to, because just that work on relaxation of one’s face is a marvelous reminder and four weeks isn’t long enough. But eventually I said to her, “Well, if you have done that exercise, I can only think of one other one. Make an absolute rule not to shout.” She gave me a sort of pitying look and she said, “I was brought up in such and such a way and I never shout.” Well, it was too late to go back by then so I said, “Anyway, that is the exercise for you.”

She was from a Fifth Avenue family. A few days later I was seeing the friend who had sent her to me and I said, “You know, I understand your friend up to a point, but I am not sure whether she is happy with me.” My friend said, “Oh, she is very happy with you. She left the office where you saw her, went out in the street and the first thing she did was yell for a taxi, and she heard it.”

This is the work on sensation, if you follow me. It is not sitting still, saying, “I must have contact with sensation.” It is a work all the time to have a relationship, that is to say an acceptance of the body as an important part of my psyche and to be aware of the way I make it pay for my idealism. I am all the time taking it out on the body to make it pay for these ideals I run after. So it is a work to make a place for the body, but a work that can’t be done fifteen minutes once a day, can it?

The experience of meditation is one way to share the culture of Shambhala. When we sit and the discursive mind settles, we synchronize mind and body, the heart softens, and the senses clarify—we feel and touch our own goodness. This is akin to getting a “feel” for living in enlightened society.

-- Shambhala Guide Resource Manual: A Resource for Directors, Students, and Centre Administrators [Draft], 2014, by Shambhala Office of Practice and Education

There is no sensation except in joining the head and the heart . . .

Question: I want to ask what does sensation mean. It’s difficult. We’re given exercises, ideas, direction. In a way, sensation is the bottom line. It seems so far away from some of these great ideas, but the grand structure implied in the books about the work and the vain way I aspire seem to be distant from sensation. How to find a practical relationship to sensation and the ideas on a scale bigger than life? I feel attracted to that way of looking at things: it’s wonderful, amazing, to think there might be correctly functioning higher centers in me, but how to find a practical relation between sensation and the ideas, relative to the scale of the ideas.

Lord Pentland: The point is, the head, which takes in ideas, and the feeling, which takes in scale, can never meet. Sensation is the relating element. How to feel what you think or to think what you feel is through sensation. We practice sensation in a way unrelated; for the head and feeling to meet is . . . only in the body. My head feels all over my body. With the sensation of the body, the head and feeling can come together, and that is the basis for so-called inner life. How to call feeling back. How to call the head back to meet with the feeling is only through sensation, where feeling and thought can come together.

Sakyong Mipham ... states: “In strengthening the global family, we will need to learn to communicate by learning to feel the heart.” The Shambhala Principle, p. 156-157.”

-- Shambhala Guide Resource Manual: A Resource for Directors, Students, and Centre Administrators [Draft], 2014, by Shambhala Office of Practice and Education

Questioner: It is difficult to sort out. I’m trying to understand before thinking, before categorizing things. What is the difference between emotion and impulse? Also the thought process located in the head is different. What seems to be asked for now is something more difficult to know.

Lord Pentland: How can you feel the scale of what you say? How to connect what you say with the importance, with the scale of it? Only through sensation. It’s very difficult. It is only possible by letting go of the thought. You don’t have a way to locate the work of sensation as something that can reconcile thoughts and feelings.

3. Fearless Space: The freedom and authentic presence of letting go.

-- Shambhala Guide Resource Manual: A Resource for Directors, Students, and Centre Administrators [Draft], 2014, by Shambhala Office of Practice and Education

Questioner: I want to believe what you’re saying.

Lord Pentland: So it will never be built, the bridge. Sensation is an extraordinary contrivance.

Questioner: It really works?

Lord Pentland: Yes. Your head and heart are separate anatomically. There is no circulation connecting them. That is what sensation can do. Like two different bodies. Sensation relates these two, even from the point of view of physical equipment. Sometimes this difference can cause illness. And many exercises have the virtue of relaxing this. It is not a work ever done, ever finished. Sensation may come through the words spoken, but there is no sensation except in joining the head and heart. Excuse me, I’m boring you now, but you see what I’m saying.

Mind/Heart: We feel whatever arises, letting our self be human, and be as we are. If the mind wanders into the past or future, we simply and gently notice this. Then we let go and return to the posture and the breathing in the present. There is no problem with thinking—that is part of being human. We include thoughts as part of the practice. We gently notice if the mind wanders and return to being as we are, again and again.

-- Shambhala Guide Resource Manual: A Resource for Directors, Students, and Centre Administrators [Draft], 2014, by Shambhala Office of Practice and Education

The sensation we can reach now is not enough . . .

Question: Assuming the head and heart are both sick, both going crazy, then when sensation appears, what is the value of bringing them together?

Lord Pentland: That’s like saying, “What’s the value of bringing fire and pan and a raw potato together when separately they are useless?” In fact their only real usefulness is in their being related. Thought goes out and in this annoying way returns, and that’s how it goes. Feeling is apt to go everywhere, except back on itself. So everything is related. So the body to be healthy does all these things to produce illness. To relate them means they come simultaneously together; to relate the attention of the head to the attention in the body is to take the wish in the head related to the resistance of the body. The feeling of the importance of my body as a sacred place of work begins to appear—my body including the head; we are not trying without the head.

Questioner: Sensation comes when I try to avoid unpleasant emotions. With a group of friends talking about movies, my toes felt cold but sensation of the rest of the body had disappeared and I did not hear anything until there came the awareness of a woman talking about her illness. Then I was just aware of breathing, listening, comprehension. I didn’t try to do anything. It was all done for me.

Lord Pentland: I think there are a number of things that are interesting in what you are saying. First, the way you felt that it has all been done for you. There are different levels of sensation. The sensation we can reach now is not enough, so we have to work towards having sensation of all parts at one time, to have relationship between the head and heart and body. We have to have that registering all at the same time, not successively. For that, it needs a better level, a better quality of sensation, the wish of sensation, not through doing it but through the work of awareness. The wish also comes about with this kind of sensation of the whole body. We talk endlessly about it but it is a physical body. But go out and try it; sensation is not only provided when we sit. Do physical things—scrub floors, and so forth. It is very interesting if done with attention. That means remembering I’m doing it plainly, just to get things clean. Practice it.

Questioner: I can’t face a feeling until I’ve classified it. I suppose I think I’ll recognize it even though I don’t know it’s there. I’m not sure I’m seeing the feeling at all.

Lord Pentland: That’s very good to start. One needs a completely different approach. One needs a different relationship to the body where these questions can be answered. You see there how the case for classification feels through awareness. The case for classification is presented according to whether or not it helps awareness. A devil says, “Instead of facing this inability to feelings, I’ll classify them.” It’s this indirect way of approach that leads to abstraction. It is very close to the point to classify so that I’ll be aware. This indirect approach is very striking in some of Ouspensky’s early books.

There can be consciousness without functions and functions without consciousness . . .

Question: I have a question deep inside. I don’t think it’s quite come to my consciousness yet, but I feel very much the need to ask it right now. Then maybe in asking, the question will come up.

Something in me knows that I’m not what I think I am and this something also knows more than I know. I see that I contain a being inside me and I really don’t know what it is. I feel it more strongly when there’s a gap in my day between two activities, and my attention is not yet focused on anything. At that moment when I look out at the world and meet myself, I feel nothing and I feel like I am nothing. And I really don’t know why I’m alive. I look for God and I find nothing and I can’t find meaning in that moment. Yet I don’t lose hope. I just realize that at that time I have nothing. Then when I look at the things around me—I look at the walls and the table and the chairs and my body—it feels like everything is only half true. Everything that I believed in throughout my life is only partially true and I don’t feel as much at home in my ordinary life. Yet I have nowhere to go.

Lord Pentland: You’ve heard the idea already that we have two parts—the consciousness and functions. Yes? And that there can be consciousness without functions and functions without consciousness. What you’ve just said is true. It’s not so common that one of us can experience this division in our lives. There are moments when I feel I am nothing—I have no consciousness, and these are mainly between periods of activity when there has been functioning but no memory whatever that there’s no consciousness.

So how to work in these moments? What does it mean “work?” Work is towards unity. How do you see the work of having an awareness of my nothing-consciousness while functioning? That means getting rid of or letting go, giving up, all the misunderstanding I have that I am someone, somebody, and the fear I have of giving up that I’m something—and at the same time functioning as a service, not with ambition, but as a service. Simply functioning and at the same time having the experience of nothing-consciousness. Yes?

There is also the very pithy talk that the Vidyadhara gave in London in January of 1986, in which he emphasizes the key point of meditating on nothing, although “nothing could mean something.” He then gives the instruction that you should pay equal attention to the out and inbreath. In the same way, we intend to keep the big view of meditating on nothing that could mean something, and to be flexible in our instruction.

-- Shambhala Guide Resource Manual: A Resource for Directors, Students, and Centre Administrators [Draft], 2014, by Shambhala Office of Practice and Education

Questioner: At that time I look for motivation.

Lord Pentland: The motivation is to be whole. Any other motivation is subjective, egoistic. You follow? Motivation comes from nothing because I have no consciousness. So the motivation is to have at least some consciousness or to keep this experience of nothing-consciousness while functioning. There is no other motivation. I wish to be whole because that is the next level. Working that way I can serve as if on the level that corresponds to my wholeness. The serving is by the functions and nothing-consciousness is the consciousness. The whole work is there. A good starting point. You understand what I said?

Questioner: Yes.

Lord Pentland: Gives you a direction, yes? In other words, the work begins from seeing, becoming aware, becoming conscious that I am nothing but my functioning, that time is going on, my life is going on and the only result is the result of my functioning. There is no inner growth. Information is being accumulated enabling me to function more efficiently, but compromises are being made all the time so that I don’t see that I’m nothing but my functioning. Seeing that creates a movement of the two towards each other, creates by itself the beginnings of a relationship between consciousness and functioning. Just seeing that starts a movement which could go on if I didn’t interfere with it all the time and let other people interfere with it all the time.

_______________

Note:

1 Exchanges Within: Questions from Everyday Life Selected from Gurdjieff Group Meetings with John Pentland in California 1955–1984, New York: Continuum, 1997. A new paperback by Tarcher/Penguin is scheduled for publication in the Fall of 2004.
2 Ibid., p. xxiii.

John Pentland was a pupil of P. D. Ouspensky and later G. I. Gurdjieff. After Gurdjieff’s death in 1949, Lord Pentland was instrumental in spreading Gurdjieff’s teaching throughout the United States. He was the President of the Gurdjieff Foundation of New York from its inception in 1953, and later established the Gurdjieff Foundation of California. He died in 1984.

P. D. Ouspensky by John Pentland

First published in The Encyclopedia of Religion edited by Mircea Eliade (1987) New York: Macmillan, Volume 11, pp. 143–144, Pentland’s sketch offers a succinct and original synopsis of Ouspensky’s contributions as an independent thinker and writer and as a leading exponent of Gurdjieff’s teaching.

P. D. Ouspensky (1878–1947)
by John Pentland



Petr Dem’ianovich Uspenskii; Russian author, thinker, and mystic.

Ouspensky’s Tertium Organum, written in 1911, was published in New York in 1922 and within a few years became a best-seller in America and made him a world-wide reputation. Intended to supplement the Organon of Aristotle and the Novum Organum of Francis Bacon, Tertium Organum is based on the author’s personal experiments in changing consciousness; it proposes a new level of thought about the fundamental questions of human existence and a way to liberate man’s thinking from it’s habitual patterns. A New Model of the Universe, a collection of essays published earlier in Russia, was published in London in 1930. But Ouspensky will be chiefly remembered for In Search of the Miraculous, published posthumously in 1949 and later in several foreign languages under the title Fragments of an Unknown Teaching. This work is by far the most lucid account yet available of the teaching of G. I. Gurdjieff, and it has been a principal cause of the growing influence of Gurdjieff’s ideas.

Ouspensky was born in Moscow and spent his childhood there. His mother was a painter. His father, who died early, had a good position as a railroad surveyor; he was fond of music, in which Ouspensky showed no interest. Of precocious intelligence, Ouspensky left school early with a decision not to take the academic degrees for which he was qualified and began to travel and write. Through his reading and journalistic work, first in Moscow and then, from 1909 on, in Saint Petersburg, he “knew everyone.” His early writings can be regarded as a final flowering of the great Russian literary tradition of the late nineteenth century. But, although influenced by such movements as the Theosophy of H. P. Blavatsky (whom he never met), he distrusted and disliked the “absurdities” of contemporary life and kept apart from the secret revolutionary politics with which almost all Russian intelligentsia of the period sympathized.

In 1915, returning to Russia from India to find that war had broken out in Europe, he gave lectures on his “search for the miraculous” and attracted large audiences in Saint Petersburg and Moscow. Among his listeners was Sof’ia Grigor’evna Maksimenko, who became his wife. They had no children.

In the same year, he was sought out by the pupils of Gurdjieff and reluctantly agreed to meet him. The meeting was a turning point in Ouspensky’s life. He recognized at once the value of the ideas that Gurdjieff had discovered in the East and that he himself had looked for in vain. “I realized,” he wrote, “that I had met with a completely new system of thought, surpassing all I knew before. This system threw a new light on psychology and explained what I could not understand before in esoteric ideas.” He began to collect people and to arrange meetings at which Gurdjieff developed his message, and from that moment the study and practice of these new ideas constituted Ouspensky’s principal aim.

In June 1917, after four months’ service in the army, from which he was honorably discharged on account of poor eyesight, the impending revolution caused Ouspensky to consider leaving Russia to continue his work in London. But he delayed his departure to spend nearly a year in difficult political conditions with Gurdjieff and a few of his pupils at Essentuki in the northern Caucasus.

As early as 1918, however, Ouspensky began to feel that a break with Gurdjieff was inevitable, that “he had to go”—to seek another teacher or to work independently. The break between the two men, teacher and pupil, each of whom had received much from the other, has never been satisfactorily explained. They met for the last time in Paris in 1930.

In 1919 Ouspensky and his family remained in very harsh conditions in the hands of the Bolsheviks in Essentuki (see Letters from Russia, 1978). He assembled some students there but in 1920, when Essentuki was freed by the White Army, moved to Constantinople. In August 1921 he was able to leave for London, and in November, with the help of Lady Rothermere, A. R. Orage, and other influential people, he started private meetings and lectures there. These continued until 1940, after the outbreak of World War II, when he moved his family to the United States and, with a few London pupils, began his lectures again in New York. Early in 1947 he returned to resume his work in London, where he died in October of the same year.

A characteristic of every one of Ouspensky’s meetings, which he attended until a few months before his death, was their remarkable intensity. He made demands for the utmost honesty not only on himself but on his pupils as well. His method was to invite “new people” to listen to five or six written lectures read aloud by one of the men close to him. (These lectures were published in 1950 as The Psychology of Man’s Possible Evolution.) Further understanding of the ideas had to be extracted from him directly by question and answer. Irrelevant questions were treated summarily. Simple rules, which to some appeared arbitrary, but which Ouspensky considered essential to self-training, were introduced—and explained at rare intervals. Pupils who wished further application of the training were invited to his country house in New Jersey, where practical work was organized by Madame Ouspensky. Transcripts of all the meetings are preserved in the P. D. Ouspensky Memorial Collection at the Yale University Library.

_______________

Bibliography

All of Ouspensky’s principal works are available in English, translated and/or edited by various hands and issued by various publishers in London and New York. Among them are:

• Letters from Russia ([1919] 1978),
• Tertium Organum: The Third Canon of Thought; A Key to the Enigmas of the World, 2nd ed., rev. ([1922] 1981),
• A New Model of the Universe: Principles of the Psychological Method in Its Application to Problems of Science, Religion and Art ([1930] 1971),
• Strange Life of Ivan Osokin (1947),
• In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching ([1949] 1965),
• The Psychology of Man’s Possible Evolution ([1950] 1973),
• Talks with a Devil (1972),
• Conscience: the Search for Truth (1979),
• A selection of transcripts of Ouspensky’s meetings with his pupils were published as: The Fourth Way: A Record of Talks and Answers to Questions Based on the Teachings of G. I. Gurdjieff, edited by J. G. Bennett and translated by Katya Petroff (1957).

Religion and Money

Shared publicly for the first time, this essay by Lord (John) Pentland records his reflections on the topic of money in relation to religion.

Religion and Money
by John Pentland

To reflect on the relationship of religion to money, there is no better starting-point than “to go beyond time.” In returning to the origin of the question, we may find a grain of truth and thus turn towards the remedy for an otherwise intractable problem. Countless volumes have appeared about the Church’s attitude to war and sex but very little has been written about money.


Lord Pentland

William Desmonde shows1 that in some ancient cultures money was used as a symbol to replace food in sacrificial communion rituals. Participation in the meal implied a bond of loyalty with other members of the group and signified also entering into a covenant with the deity. Each communicant received a particular portion of the sacrificial flesh corresponding to his standing in the community. When money of different denominations began to be used in place of the portions of food, the establishment of a contractual relationship between two individuals at first retained traces of the original bond of religious loyalty among participants in the same communion, with impersonal bargaining replacing the patriarchal redistribution of foods among the brotherhood.

In any case, there is good reason to suppose that money was originally a sacred device created by religious authority to facilitate the exchange of necessities in an expanding society. It was intended to be a means of recognizing that human beings have individual property rights and at the same time that no human being or family is self-sufficient. In support of this theory, René Guénon states2 that coins of the ancient Celts are covered with symbols taken from Druid doctrine, implying direct intervention of the Druid priests in the monetary system.

With the huge increase in world population and international trading, this original purpose of money for the individual—as so often the real significance of religion itself—has been eroded until today it is completely forgotten. From the economic point of view which prevails in the modern world, money has value almost exclusively on a material level. Both the smallest transactions and the largest, which are now carried out by bookkeepers without anything of intrinsic value “changing hands,” are more often done in a mood of impatience, irritation and negativity than as an expression of loyalty in individual human relationships. No longer a reminder of higher values, money has become such a social convenience that it is even a social necessity.…

[The complete text is available in the printed copy of this issue.]

______________

Notes:

1 William Desmonde, Magic, Myth, and Money: The Origin of Money in Religious Ritual, Free Press of Glencoe, 1962.
2 René Guénon, The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times, London: Luzac, 1953, pp. 133–134.

A Friend In Myself

“What I need is the ability to hear what comes to me alongside myself, as it were, rather than what comes to me either from above or below.”

A Friend In Myself
by John Pentland

Question: I feel this need to be trying things. Every day I have to be trying something and sometimes it seems helpful and at the same time it seems like I am trying to pry something open.

Lord Pentland: It seems to me the freedom which I need is not so much to be used up in trying things as in finding some sort of encouraging relationship with somebody else or something deeper in myself which will enable me, while trying these things, to remember why I am trying them. I am constantly trying things, but I forget what the grounds are for trying them, so if I come up with a result, it is not measured against anything. This trying comes from a kind of wish that wants life to be more stimulating, not a wish just to observe life as it goes by.

There are times when I want to make my life richer. Then I need a companion, a friend in myself who will help me remember how to contemplate this or how to try that. Without this companion I try this or that, but I get obstinate and I am going to try in the same way again. What I need is the ability to hear what comes to me alongside myself, as it were, rather than what comes to me either from above or below. It is not so much that I need to follow or be obedient or even to be pushed. I don’t have a strong enough will to carry out the instructions I do receive within myself; I know that I need to call somebody or get up early, but I don’t always do it. It seems I need a companion.

I am not so unsubtle as I make out. I do receive psychic messages. It’s because I have a very weak will that I regard myself as inferior. I don’t think the problem is quite so obvious as most of the textbooks make out.

So what kind of help do I need? I know that if I am on the highway and stalled it is very cozy if someone comes along and offers to push my car, but it is still better if they give me some gas and get me going on my own. It is not much use having a lot of people to work for you or agreeing to be helpful; we need something in the middle. There is something about our relationship in the group that needs to be both separate and enjoined. What we need is this ability to give my attention rather than to be actually joined. I have to come right in the middle. I need encouragement and I need a feeling that it is really true that if I don’t live today, I will miss a whole day.

This excerpt is from Exchanges Within: Questions from Everyday Life Selected from Gurdjieff Group Meetings with John Pentland in California 1955–1984, New York: Continuum, 1997, and is used here with the kind permission of Mary Rothenberg.

Until My Attention Is Divided, There Is No Work

“To be attentive, I have to free my attention. What a work that is. My attention clings to things. But work is a question of freeing my attention again and again from what it is sitting on and bringing it back to myself.”

Until My Attention Is Divided, There Is No Work
by John Pentland

Until my attention is divided, there is no work. As long as I’m in my ego, as long as I think just following one idea or applying one idea to myself is work, is practice, nothing can come. Now, very often, that is how I begin to work. And then at a certain point the attention divides ... at a certain point I feel a relaxation.

I begin to be aware of a current, a movement of relaxation. Now, do you suddenly switch to putting all your attention on the relaxation? That wouldn’t be consciousness. To be aware, partly the tension attracts my attention and partly I feel myself relaxing...

Then I can really say I’m between. It’s not a thought, not something of an image—the attention is divided. It’s so brief, it’s so insecure, I can hardly say that I experience it. Then I experience it again, maybe. Maybe another moment of relaxation, where partly the attention is taken by this current towards relaxation, towards going down in myself, but some of the attention remains behind on the tension. And so, again, for a moment I’m between...

Sometimes in movements you feel in between. You know something with the head a little bit and with the leg a little bit and somehow when both are going you feel insecure. You feel the attention divided. It’s the same thing...

One knows that this situation with the attention divided is quite a different situation than when the attention is distracted... When my attention is divided, there’s a sort of balance. And there’s a place in between, but it’s not a place that’s secure, that’s permanent.

To be attentive, I have to free my attention. What a work that is. My attention clings to things... But work is a question of freeing my attention again and again from what it is sitting on and bringing it back to myself.

What is that kind of attention which, through becoming connected with myself, has a sort of organic knowledge and knows better than my ordinary mind how to deal with these things? That’s what we mean by in search of the miraculous. We mean in search of this kind of attention... This kind of attention is my possibility, my right. And it knows much better than we do, than I do, in all sorts of ways.

These excerpts are from John Pentland’s book, Exchanges Within: Questions from Everyday Life, New York: Continuum, 1997, pp. 279–280, 328, 378.

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Lord Pentland is Dead at 76; Head of Gurdjieff Foundation
by Joseph B. Treaster
The New York Times
February 17, 1984

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Lord Pentland, a British businessman who served as president of the Gurdjieff Foundation in New York for 31 years, died Tuesday in New York Hospital. Lord Pentland lived in Manhattan and was 76 years old.

A tall, slender man with distinctive bushy eyebrows, Lord Pentland became a disciple of G. I. Gurdjieff, the Greek-Armenian philosopher and spiritual teacher, in Paris after World War II.

After Mr. Gurdjieff's death in 1949, Lord Pentland helped establish the Gurdjieff Foundation in New York to propagate the beliefs of Mr. Gurdjieff, who combined Eastern philosophy and practices with Western ways. Lord Pentland was president of the foundation until his death.

Under Lord Pentland's direction, three of Mr. Gurdjieff's books were translated into English and published here. One of them, ''Meetings with Remarkable Men,'' was made into a film directed by Peter Brook.

Founded Electric Corporation

Lord Pentland founded the American British Electric Corporation in 1954 and served as president until five years ago, when he retired. The company specialized in marketing British engineering services to American clients. He was born Henry John Sinclair in London, and was knighted in December 1924 on the death of his father, who had served as Governor General of the Indian state of Madras. Lord Pentland graduated from Cambridge University in 1929 and also studied at the University of Heidelberg.

In the 1930's Lord Pentland served as director of several British companies. He came to the United States in 1944 to serve on the Combined Production and Resources Board, a cooperative effort of the United States, France and England. He became a permanent resident of the United States in the early 1950's.

Lord Pentland is survived by his wife, the former Lucy Babington Smith; a daughter, Mary Rothenberg of New York, and one grandchild.

The funeral was held yesterday at the St. Vincent Ferrer Roman Catholic Church in Manhattan.

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Journals: Early Fifties, Early Sixties [EXCERPT]
by Allen Ginsberg

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Nov. 8--

Moved down from Haifa to Tel Aviv -- met poet Maty Meged at Cafe, all night wandering. An apartment of Ethel Broido a dream fades out this morn in room with Gurdjieff who's disappearing talking about farewell to Peter -- we both sentimentalize and agree Peter sure was the perfect Russian servant of love -- Gurdjieff behind a desk of the Commie Embassy, I in door saying goodbye and high -- I had that nite given Meged mushrooms #7.

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Warrior-King of Shambhala: Remembering Chogyam Trungpa [EXCERPT]
by Jeremy Hayward

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After his escape, Rinpoche spent two years in India during which time he was discovered by an English social worker, Freda Bedi, and with her co-founded a school for refugee tulkus, the Young Lama's Home School. While in India, determined to go to the West, he learned English so rapidly that he became useful as a translator for the Tibetan community. Rinpoche stayed for a few months with James George, who was at that time the Canadian High Commissioner to India and Nepal and who later became the leader of the Gurdjieff movement in Canada. At this time, Rinpoche was awarded a scholarship to study at Oxford University in England, but when he told George that he was going to England, George replied, "Rinpoche, you are too big for England; you are going to America!"...

During the 1968 visit to Bhutan, on his way through India, Rinpoche had re-visited his old friend James George. George reports that Rinpoche told him that "although he had never been there [Shambhala] he believed in its existence and could see it in his mirror whenever he went into deep meditation." George describes witnessing Rinpoche gazing into a small hand-mirror and describing in detail the Kingdom of Shambhala. As George says, "... There was Trungpa in our study describing what he saw as if he were looking out of the window."