The Herald of Coming Good
About This Book
The Herald of Coming Good is Gurdjieff's first published work in the traditional sense — a slim booklet written in Paris in 1933, just before the publication of the first chapters of Beelzebub's Tales, in which he attempts to explain in relatively direct (though still idiosyncratic) language the purposes behind his writing and the nature of the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man he had founded. The book is unique in Gurdjieff's corpus because of its relatively transparent intention — its apparent desire to reach a wider audience and to prepare that audience for the more demanding material of the major trilogy that was about to appear.
The book is also significant as an autobiographical document: Gurdjieff describes aspects of his own journey of discovery, his years of intensive searching for the ancient wisdom, and his eventual decision to begin transmitting what he had found to Western students. He also provides some of his most direct statements about the specific work he understood himself to be doing — not the founding of a religion or the promotion of a philosophy but the transmission of a method for developing the genuine consciousness that he believed was latent in every human being but was rarely, if ever, spontaneously developed without deliberate effort.
What You'll Learn
• Understand why Gurdjieff chose to write this preliminary text: what audiences he was attempting to reach, what misunderstandings of his work he was attempting to address, and why he believed a more direct statement of his purposes was necessary before the allegorical complexity of Beelzebub's Tales could be received as intended
• Grasp the autobiographical content: the specific aspects of Gurdjieff's personal history and spiritual search that he discloses in this text — more directly than anywhere else — and what these disclosures reveal about the character and depth of his search for ancient wisdom
• Recognise the description of the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man: what Gurdjieff says about its purpose, its methods, and its intended audience — and how this description compares with the later accounts of students like P.D. Ouspensky and Katharine Mansfield who lived and worked there
• Learn Gurdjieff's most direct statement about his core understanding: what he says, in this relatively unguarded text, about the specific nature of human possibility, the specific obstacle to its realisation, and the specific kind of work he was offering as a means for overcoming that obstacle
• Appreciate The Herald in its historical context: how its publication in 1933 was received by the Gurdjieff circle, why Gurdjieff subsequently withdrew it from circulation, and what its availability now (despite that withdrawal) contributes to understanding the development of the Gurdjieff Work
Reader Reviews
No reviews yet. Be the first to share your thoughts on this book.
