My Story - 1962-2003
Elsner, Reijo
How it started
The
accident, the coincidence, whatever, was bound to happen some time or another.
After all I had read a lot of philosophical, psychological and religious books
by 1962, when I was 20 years old.
When I was in the compulsory Finnish
military training for lower officer ranks in Oulu, the Northern part of Finland,
while having a chat with my friend Simo Näyhä, he said that I should read Colin
Wilson's The Outsider, which was newly translated into Finnish. I bet Simo has
no idea what kind of changes in my life he had got himself tangled
with!
Thanks to Colin Wilson's list of published books I soon had ordered
and got the first book by Gurdjieff himself. This resulted in further studies of
the literature and some interesting experiences that have kept me going on (and
still do).
Somehow Gurdjieff's Meetings with Remarkable Men has some life
of its own and I have no doubt he put it there on purpose. One sunny Sunday
morning I was heading back home after I had stayed with a friend. I had Meetings
tucked under my arm and felt very good. The leafy maple and chestnut trees
formed a natural tunnel for my walk to the bus station a few hundred meters
away. The sun was shining through the leaves and I felt better and
better.
I arrived at the station where my bus was waiting. Some people
were walking across the open square that did only have a small number of
vehicles standing. Looking at these people made me shiver. They moved, all
separate from their surroundings, but each as if pulled by a force, almost like
being at the end of a rope, but at the same time somehow managing to use their
own movement to go to the predestined direction.
I could not understand
why they paid no attention to me and felt that I was somehow in contact with
each of them separately. One woman nearly collided with me as I seemed to be in
her programmed route.
I got to the bus and asked a woman standing by the
door if this is the Helsinki bus. Her answer and the way it came out of her was
simply too much. She did not look at me, but somehow avoided all contact. The
words that came out of her mouth sounded to me more like a grasshoppers
mechanical sound than what I normally heard when being spoken to.
I
panicked and quickly entered the bus, found a seat overlooking the
station
square and witnessed the same scene of people being pulled in all in
their different directions totally separate and with no contact with each other
or their surroundings.
The effect of all this was that I was filled with
the energy to know more and lead me to translate the book into Finnish. (This
was never published as it got lost in connection with my uncle's drowning
accident - but at least I had made my version!)
In the Gurdjieff
literature that I have had access to this kind of experiences, two of them, are
described by C. Daly King in his book The states of human consciousness. His
experiences happened after prolonged practice of trying to remember himself
(under the guidance of A.R. Orage). Both of them also took place when waiting
for some transport on some platform.
The books I read were by P.D.
Ouspensky, Kenneth Walker, Maurice Nicoll and Stanley Nott. Mr. Nott was still
alive, had followed Gurdjieff most of his life and he was writing about
it.
I started correspondence with Stanley Nott in 1964 and had the
pleasure to be in contact with him until his death in 1978. The correspondence
resulted in the inevitable question: 'How can I join
the Work ?'. Mr. Nott
answered: 'If you come to London I can put you in touch with one of the
groups'.
I travelled to London with the aim of finding a job. Having
settled in the Russell Hotel in the late afternoon I headed straight to Adam
Nott, the first person, with his wife Rosemary, I met 'live' in connection with
the Work. Adam made a lasting impression on me.
This meeting led to many
other meetings, all in just seven days, with Stanley Nott, Mrs. Rose Mary Nott,
David Black, Wendy Harries, Marjorie Gibson (then Bradley), Paddy Maffet, John
Brooke and the man who helped me most to find a job and who became my contact
person in the Work until his death in 1993, Malcolm Gibson.
What I got
from all that help was the feeling that I was amongst friends and the
determination that I will not go back home without a job - and it
worked!
I moved to London next year, 1967, in the Autumn with my family
(wife and two children). David Black met us at the station on arrival. Malcolm
gave us his flat in Elsham Road to live in. I was joining the Work.
I was
one in a group of a dozen beginners, many of us married and attending the
meetings with their wife or husband, who went to Mr. Sam Copley in Hampstead
once a week. Sometimes in his absence we met at Mr. Magnus Wechslers house near
Holland Park. Both of these group leaders knew what they were doing. My contact
with John Anthony West dates back to this time; John was one of the members of
the group at the time. Sam Copley had as his background a long relationship with
Mr. Maurice Nicoll and his approach to leading a group was termed 'gentle'. Some
ten years ago he wrote about his time with Nicoll in his short book 'The
Vertical Man'.
I was lucky and could start at the movements after a
few months (it took many considerable time to join them). Mrs. Rose Mary Nott
run the class and although my expectations were sky high I was not disappointed.
My view is that the movements give you the taste of what 'work' is all about:
you simply need to work to follow the instructions! But you also 'receive'
immediately.
The Gurdjieff Society has a place outside London, where all
kinds of different physical activities take place. Most of my time was used in
different maintenance and repair teams, carpentry and gardening. Many of the
people I worked with are now leading Gurdjieff groups. On the mental side there
were readings from Beelzebub and frequent visits of Madames de Saltzmann and
Lannes, Monsieur Henri Tracol, Basil Tilly and others: on these occasions we
were allowed to put forth questions. This was not an easy task as there were
often appr. 100 people present.
I recall one particular meeting with
Madame de Saltzmann; in fact I will never forget it. She made a fairly long
speech and referred to 'the great possibilities we all have and how we can not
even imagine what they are'. Whatever the reason, this prompted a loud laugh
from me and suddenly 'I' was the centre of attention of those 100 people. She
looked at me, but did not say anything. Everybody was silent. I had expressed
myself! I could just as well have farted!
The job I had managed to get
was that of a bookkeeper in a Travel Agency and it was fairly clear that I would
have to do better than that to have what we needed for the growing family. In
three months, with the help of the contacts in the Work, I had a new job and in
another three months I advanced from a bookkeeper to Sales Manager for wholesale
marketing of Nordic menswear in a big scale. I managed this time without the
help of my friends.
In four years we moved house four times, had two more
children, attended groups, movements and working weekends, I travelled
frequently to Finland to the menswear factory and we were able to have a social
life meeting people connected with the Gurdjieff Work. My family went to Finland
for three months every Summer and I could meet Stanley Nott and Malcolm Gibson
often at their respective cottages and visit other friends too. In 1971 we
decided that our children need to be put through the Finnish education system
and we started planning to move back in the course of the Summer.
Through
the seventies and eighties I managed to maintain an almost unbroken contact with
the UK in that I was involved with either selling things from the UK to Finland
or vice versa.
This meant that I could meet Malcolm Gibson fairly often and
sometimes some of the members of Sam Copley's group and other people I had got
to know in the Work. Malcolm was always very direct and sober in the way he
spoke and more than once I felt like I had received a good beating during our
meeting. I felt flattered when he called me 'The Finnish Intellectual', but I
can now see what he meant and I am not so proud of it to-day!
Although
Malcolm always maintained that he could take no responsibility for my guidance I
did receive from our meetings a great amount of material with which I could work
further.
In the early eighties I met Eivor, who introduced me to Tony
Blake. Soon after they became husband and wife. Tony was in Finland on one of
his 'missions' for J.G. Bennett's organization at the time and searching for his
own way, which he now has established in the duVersity.
I felt that Tony was
in touch with the active approach to the Work and I received plenty of
inspiration to go on. I am glad for his support for my efforts in connection
with the Gurdjieff Internet Guide; he has become one of the moderators for the
Forums, which will be activated when there is a need for it.
In 1979 I
contacted Lizelle Reymond in Geneva. Her book To Live Within
Miss Reymond was writing another book. She lent me the
manuscript and I read it over the two nights I stayed in the hotel. Miss Reymond
not only had no problem in following Yoga and Gurdjieff, but she was also
teaching Tai-Chi! Our meeting and her book under work made it quite clear that
in her view Yoga as she knew it and Gurdjieff's teaching were complimentary to
each other. There was no contradiction. She said that Gurdjieff people often
have a fairly narrow view and do not take in any other ideas.
Lizelle Reymond
had no doubt that one of the sources of Gurdjieff's teaching is the Samkhya
philosophy that Yoga is based on. There are similarities in the law of three and
the three gunas and much of the cosmology of Samkhya resembles Gurdjieff's
presentation of the world (apart from the similarities on the psychological
side, which are even more obvious).
I got to know that Lizelle Reymond passed
away in the early nineties. The book she was working on when we met has
apparently not been completed. When I read what she had written I made notes of
some of the sayings, mainly by Sri Anirvan. There is a short presentation made
from my notes in the article 'Thoughts
on the Origins'.
Malcolm Gibson passed away in 1993. By this time I
had remarried and moved to Denmark (where my wife comes from). As Malcolm put
it: 'you are not sitting between two stools, but many stools'. I am still in the
process of finding the stool to sit on. In August 2003 I started the Gurdjieff
Internet Guide. It just might be that I am in the process of finding my
stool!
Comments
greetings
Hello Reijo Elsner,
Just a note to say,
again, I appreciate your efforts. I think I sent you a note once before.
A composer, singer and meditation teacher, I was a pupil of Lord
Pentland in the US and Michel de Salzmann in France, over a 20-year period. I
did the singing in the Meetings film that "made the valley vibrate". There's a
conversation published in the current Stopinder.
I come to Denmark a
lot, and co-ordinate a week-long music and meditation retreat every summer--this
year from July 26-31. Some Danish friends, harmonix.dk, organize it for
me--especially Benedicte Sales. We go to a marvelous seaside church on a cliff
at Steyns, near Kohe/Stroby about an hour south of Copenhagen. It's a special
week and Realization-quality experiences, if one may say, have taken place for a
number of us.
Well, enough for now--life and work goes on...
All
best wishes,
David Hykes
www.harmonicworld.com
David Hykes,
France
davidhykes1@hotmail.com
added 2003-03-28
Good to meet you here David!
Dear David,
I found your
site some time ago and find what you are doing with music and singing very
exciting. The link to your site is under the 'Other Links' in the address
http://www.gurdjieff-internet.com/links/musicandtherapies.html. I have just
realized that some of your recordings are available at the Amazon and I will put
them on shortly.
I read the conversation in Stopinder and can recommend it
for others as well. After your comment I visited also the site of Bénédicte
Sales and informed her about your comment and the GIG site.
It would be great
to meet you when you are in Copenhagen. I will keep in contact to see if it can
be arranged.
Best regards,
Reijo
Reijo Elsner,
Denmark
reijo@elsners.com
added 2003-03-28
The
Cricket Phenomenon
I came across your essay and was interested in your
report about the Woman at the Bus Station:
In 1975 I was in a living
room filled with people chattering away. As I watched them talk I experienced a
sensation like I was being pushed backwards. Their voices began to fall on a
different space inside, and as I watch everyone chattering away, the words
started to sound like crickets chirping. I sat and witnessed them energetically
chirping sounds to one another like insects! I was alarmed at this new
perception, but not freaked out. Of course, I was perplexed and knew not what to
make of it. I was seeing in an alternate way. As if I was taking in the
surroundings as they really were. And the internal pushing back action was more
like an instinctive defensive reaction than an intentional one. Not to be
repeated on command. Although, I sense a doorway through the practice of Self
Observation, there is another hand in this.
Warmest regards,
David
Aston-Reese, USA
David Aston-Reese, United States
dastonreese@hvc.rr.com
added 2003-12-21