James George was a former Canadian ambassador to India, Iran & the Gulf States, Nepal and Sri Lanka, with a long-standing record of service concerning environmental issues. A founder of the Threshold Foundation and president of the Sadat Peace Foundation, he led the international mission to Kuwait and the Persian Gulf to assess post-war environmental damage. He was conversant with the spiritual disciplines of Hinduism, Buddhism, Sufism, and Christianity, and was a close disciple of the late Madame de Salzmann.[1] Enclosed excerpt is from one of his books titled: Asking for the Earth: Waking Up to the Spiritual/Ecological Crisis. 

 

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“It is not my role nor my purpose here to describe the Work at these retreats (Work intensives); they are private and should remain so. But I cannot omit from this narrative an account of what was undoubtedly the most important moment of my life. …

 

“Let me tell this story as simply and honestly as I can, knowing how easily such an experience can be distorted by commentary or misunderstood by those who have not shared something comparable in their own lives. Those who have will already know that to say anything true about it is an almost impossible task; it does not translate into words. Energy is energy, and words are words. Yet to say nothing is also a lie and a betrayal. And to those who have not had such experiences and are firmly convinced that they never could, let me say: “don’t be so sure -it could happen to you, given the right conditions, if you do not block it by your own resistance -or expectations.” I now believe that the potential is in each one of us, just because we are alive and human.

 

“In the summer of 1976, I was once again at Michel’s (Michel de Salzmann) retreat. Towards the end, he had arranged for each participant in turn to sit alone for an hour, night and day, in a special meditation room hung with rugs, no windows, isolated from the outside on the quiet side of the complex almost built into the hill. On a small table in the centre of the room was a candle, the only source of light. Sitting on a cushion on the floor by the table, one could watch the candle or close one’s eyes to watch within. My turn to watch came at night, between two and three in the morning. When I entered the room and the person who had watched before me had silently retired, I was vividly aware of the charge that had been built up in the room by those who had gone before me during the previous thirty hours. My sleepiness vanished and I was strongly aware of my body, sitting erect, relaxed and alert. I followed an inner exercise for a time but then left it. My attention was moving back and forth between my body awareness and my passing thoughts, which seemed to come and go more slowly and with less attachment than usual, like clouds crossing the sky of the mind. Sometimes I could let them go altogether, only to find them back a minute or moment later.

 

“Suddenly, out of nowhere, I heard myself demanding in a loud voice, “GEORGE IVANOVITCH GURDJIEFF! COME HERE NOW! COME!” … Did I say that? My astonishment at my pretension was short-lived, for almost instantly I was overwhelmed by the most complete experience of light and energy that I have ever known, before or since. Beyond any orgasm, it touched all my centres at once, but it did not start at the base and move up the spine, kundalini-fashion. It seemed to enter me through the crown of the head and simultaneously possess my entire being. It was nor a face or a person, but a Presence. No words came into my mind, no thought seemed able to survive the intensity of energy that was there. Only an awareness that was not an awareness of something, that contained no question, because, for that moment, everything was understood.

 

“When thought returned, I could not say how long the experience had lasted because it was as if time had stopped forever; I was reborn a different being, yet the same individual. Not me, I. But in these after-thoughts about the experience, the actuality of it was lost and I was back with “me” again. I only knew that it had happened. . . 

 

“The door of the meditation room creaked open. My hour was up. Out in the cold night air, my mind was no longer turning, compounding questions for the stars and the halfmoon going down towards the black rim of the mountains.

 

“Years later I was rereading In Search of the Miraculous, Ouspensky’s extraordinary account of the teaching he received from Gurdjieff in Russia before and during the Revolution. On page 195 I found Gurdjieff explaining what had happened to me so long afterwards: 

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If we could connect the centers of our ordinary consciousness with the higher thinking center deliberately and at will, it would be of no use to us whatever in our present general state. In most cases where accidental contact with the higher thinking center takes place a man becomes unconscious. The mind refuses to take in the flood of thoughts, emotions, images, and ideas which suddenly burst into it. And instead of a vivid thought, or a vivid emotion, there results, on the contrary, a complete blank, a state of unconsciousness. The memory retains only the first moment when the flood rushed in on the mind and the last moment when the flood was receding and consciousness returned. But even these moments are so full of unusual shades and colors that there is nothing with which to compare them among the ordinary sensations of life. This is usually all that remains from so-called 'mystical' and 'ecstatic' experiences, which represent a temporary connection with a higher center. Only very seldom does it happen that a mind which has been better prepared succeeds in grasping and remembering something of what was felt and understood at the moment of ecstasy. But even in these cases the thinking, the moving, and the emotional centers remember and transmit everything in their own way, translate absolutely new and never previously experienced sensations into the language of usual everyday sensations, transmit in worldly three-dimensional forms things which pass completely beyond the limits of worldly measurements; in this way, of course, they entirely distort every trace of what remains in the memory of these unusual experiences. Our ordinary centers, in transmitting the impressions of the higher centers, may be compared to a blind man speaking of colors, or to a deaf man speaking of music.[2]

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Why, then, do I speak of these great moments of my life? Until now I have barely shared them with my own family, sensing that it was neither modest not wise. But lately I have come to feel that before I die, I have an obligation to overcome my own reticence and leave a record that could indicate a practical approach to seeing what I am now sure is in everyone. For it is upon this kind of seeing that the human transformation that the earth crisis calls for depends. It will not happen by imitation, by ambition, by grasping. We must each start from our own reality -in fact, from our own individual sense of what is lacking in our lives. Only the empty can be filled, only the hungry fed. That is where the wish to be comes from; and only from that non-egoistic wish can we ask in a way that allows us to receive.[3]

 

 

For a video interview with him at the age of 98 (2016):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8N7-bD63RoE

 

For a dialogue published in Parobola (2014):  

https://parabola.org/2014/10/31/to-let-the-light-in/

 

For the essay, ‘Gurdjieff Heralds the Awakening of Consciousness Now,’ by James George (2000): 

https://www.gurdjieff.org/george1.htm

 

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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_George_(diplomat)

[2] P.D. Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching (New York: Harcourt Inc., 2001 [1949]) pp.195

[3] James George, Asking for the Earth: Waking up to the Spiritual/Ecological Crises (Dorset: Element Books Limited, 1995) pp. 96-99

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