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Correspondence from Charles Stansfeld Jones to Albert H. Handel
1 November 1949.
Dear Brother Handel,
It is really very kind of you to send me In Search of the Miraculous. Perhaps you wanted to do just that; but in any event the book arrived safely last Saturday. I have spent the week-end reading about one third of it, and today looked up and reviewed some of our recent correspondence so as to get my mind working again along the lines in question. Now I want to drop you a few lines of thanks and comment.
When I received your letter of September 1st with enclosure The Forest Philosophers, I read the article with interest. Through a friend in town I was soon afterwards able to borrow a copy of Mairet's biography of Orage [Alfred Orage] from which I read the two chapters dealing with events at Fontainebleau and New York. These side readings gave me a much clearer view of some of the references made in your letters. I have not obtained the other books you mention, and know of no other which deal with the subject except for the brief reference in God by Middleton Murry when he tells Katherine Mansfield's visit to G. [George Gurdjieff] and of her death. The article Forest Philosophers must have been written on account of muddled reports appearing in the press at the time.
Reading the above served to build up the picture of how you found yourself emplaced in the movement in New York when you were attending the O. classes during my visit to you there, and also makes clear your references to break down of movement after O.'s death and your renewed association of more recent times when you actually contacted G.'s movement and the two groups were combined. But it also served to stress another point. It does seem to me that group working is of the essence of these methods, and on that account, because you have been able to contact such a group, this Way may be of much more value to you than it now likely to me. More so, perhaps, since I do not think it now likely that I shall get to N.Y. doe some time to come, even if G. paid another visit there—as you suggested he intended to do.
Anyway, now that I have the Ouspensky book and have read a part of it, I can make at least some slight comments in this letter and shall doubtless have more to say after not alone reading but digesting the remainder.
First I might say that from the index it does not appear that O. has much if anything to say about the 'movements' which seem to form such an important part of the system. (Details may of course be there in the body of the book not yet read.)
Another point of special interest is mentioned by O., but only once, on pages 50 and 51. This has to do with G.'s "sly man". This point seems to me of extreme importance. Of course I am in no position to judge another in any way. But I can ask your opinion on what I feel may be the case. Ouspensky, although he reports well what G. had to say on this point (in the last paragraph pf page 49, on page 50, and first three paragraphs of page 51), was not himself one of the "sly men" and so probably missed the essential point of the whole of G.'s teaching entirely? I put this in the form of a question for your consideration. In view of all you know of the matter from your more extensive connections and studies, would you think this a fair inference on my part? If so, of course it makes a great difference to the value of all the extensive ramifications which, in that case, rather than being the development of a system, represent the wanderings in search of the one simple and proper means to individual satisfaction and the end of such wanderings. That would also make all the "movements" etc. merely G.'s means of trying to suggest to the student the possibility that there is such a single and simple means, if only he could just "find it" for himself.
I am stressing the above because from your correspondence you seem convinced that great effort is necessary; a lot of hard work in order to get the three aspects of the nature to work together and thus produce evidence of the fourth aspect. This, on the other hand, may be quite an illusion. The secret of the sly man may be just this, that however he learned this secret, once he stumbled upon it he found, quite unexpectedly, that IT did the trick for him without anything but the merest minimum of effort. The actual use of the method brought his three aspects of being immediately into right proportion and thereafter he could, at will, consider any problem from that new and complete point of view. He may have found, too, that every time he used the method he got something QUITE NEW and interesting, so that he only had to turn to it and become refreshed in all parts of his nature. True, he might then want to share his good fortune with others—but there immediately might lie a great difficulty; making sure that if others had it they would appreciate it as he himself did, or—turn again quickly and rend him.
You see, if G. had something of that sort in mind it might account for a good deal. He must have had something in mind or he would never had made the remarks hw did to O. But that does not say that O. got the point—ever in his lifetime.
Why don't you try and tackle G. about it if he comes to N.Y. shortly?
That's enough for a start. Thanks again for the book.
Yours as ever with affection
Achad.
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