Gurdjieff the spy?
I didn’t answer the query about Gurdjieff as a possible spy, or ‘intelligence agent’ would be better.
The link to the James Webb article is amusingly apt: Webb is one source for this suspicion, if not conclusion.
It may be time to go over the material again, and seek out the earlier posts here on the subject (and at Darwiniana).
Striclty speaking we should not jump to conclusions here, but my suspicions remain considerable, and it explains something about the Gurdjieff work.
Keep in mind that intelligence operations are often complex ‘need to know’ units that operate in isolation, and that we might not be justified in calling someone a spy just because he did something specialized in an intelligence op framework. A gang of vicious black ops specialists can manipulate idealistic sholars with a kind face, the manipulated none the wiser.
It is possible that Gurdjieff was a mixed case in that sense: the flavors of the Great Game in the nineteenth century involved a lot of issues and operations to do with Tibet, and more than possibly sufistic politics in the adjacency zone/sphere of influence of the Russian system/empire.
Someone like Gurdjieff might have been involved in some aspect of that, and in the process learned of things most seekers would never come upon.
So obviously the controllers in this game needed a lot of information, and possible desired information about political/esoteric issues in the confusions of disinformation still current to this day.
A figure like Gurdjieff with a spiritual bent and the talents of an intelligence operative could well have been spotted by controllers of the Russian game.
It would explain a lot of things if something like this were the case.
There is something queerly immoral and devious about the Gurdjieff work, to its ultimate failure and demise. That arises from the strange character of Gurdjieff, who acts like a closet Nietzschean with a Christian face/front.
That might simply be the rough edges that come from being an intelligence agent.
Anyway, we can attempt to review our work on this, and the thinking of Webb on the subject.
jim Buck said,
12.01.10 at 7:57 am ·
Who is (or was?) SK? And what are the grounds for his/your suspicion that Gurdjieff was a spy? (A friendly warning, though:
http://www.forteantimes.com/features/articles/264/the_damned_the_strange_death_of_james_webb.html
New Man, New Age, New Socialism 