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.[1]

 

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Lord Pentland: “So it makes me ask myself, is it really part of my experience, quiet apart from the beautiful idea of it, that there is a higher energy which may come from the sun or the planets, which is higher, which has effects, which I would wish to collaborate with in me? Is there a higher power that has a wish which is accomplished in the heavens and whose wish I would wish to see accomplished in me? Because that wish cannot not be accomplished, in a way, whether it’s what I regard as acceptable or not. You understand, the whole thing goes back to the word God which is the same as the word for good. But we’re speaking of a higher power whose wishes are on the whole beneficent for me -on the whole. But we’re not equating them with my opinion as to what is good.

 

“So I’m asking myself, do I find it possible to experience, whether on a one-shot basis like a trapper catching prey or on a more continuous basis to which I, myself, have found the approach, do I find it possible to experience a current of higher energy which perfects me? And am I cooperating with what would be its effects on me, so that its wish should be accomplished in me as it is in the celestial regions? Excuse me, I just want to fill in one thing, the possibility of a fear of misunderstanding about that.

 

“Is it possible that this higher energy -if it’s experienced at all, is obviously a dangerous energy; in the sense that it’s higher it’s more powerful than I am; in the sense that it has a different quality nothing that I’ve accumulated in quantity can be set against it; it’s greater than I am -is it possible for me to relate directly to that energy, as it were on a one-to-one basis, without intermediary, without fear, in order that its wishes should be accomplished in me as well as up above? This is what we’re talking about as I understand it.[2] [my italics]

 

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…for more about John Pentland see:

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

 

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[1] https://www.gurdjieff.org/pentland.htm [accessed 05-03-2021]

[2] John Pentland, Exchanges Within: Questions from Everyday Life, Selected from Gurdjieff group meetings with him in California, 1955-1984 (New York: Penguin, 2004) pp. 222

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