Still Running Off at the Keyboard

GURDJIEFF FOUNDATIONS AND AGNT

A cached website (the original is no longer online) indicates that The Association for Global New Thought is a Gurdjieff Society. From the website:

The Gurdjieff Insitut France, The Gurdjieff Foundation, Usa and the Gurdjieff Society, London are organizations that were first established by Madame Jeanne de Salzmann after Gurdjieff's death in 1949 to carry out the teaching. The organizations have a worldwide net of contacts.
SITES TO VISIT

It's a long list of sites that prints out at 158 pages, so I'm going to copy and paste only a small portion of them here:

Glover, Cheryl - Provides ancient Kabbalistic wisdom, classes and forums to audiences bridging ancient Kabbalah mysticism with New Thought philosophies. Includes information about current classes, Cheryl's biography, a daily newsletter and related products.
The Association for Global New Thought - Promotes the global expansion of the New Thought movement. Learn more about the leaders of the movement, conference schedules, membership, and season for nonviolence.
Emma Curtis Hopkins College and Theological Seminary - A New Thought education center located in Clearwater, Florida. Offering onsite and distance learning courses.
(highlighting mine - ct)

It therefore would appear that Focolare is promoting a Gurdjieff Society, and facilitated their holding of a conference at Castle Gandolfo; and it would appear that conference did not have the disapproval of John Paul II.

Of influences on Gurdjieff, P. D. Ouspensky writes:

His childhood was passed on the frontier of Asia Minor in strange, very remote, almost biblical circumstances of life. Flocks of innumerable sheep. Wanderings from place to place. Coming into contact with various strange people. His imagination was particularly struck by the Yezidis, the "Devil Worshipers," who, from his earliest youth, had attracted his attention by their incomprehensible customs and strange dependence upon unknown laws. (IN SEARCH OF THE MIRACULOUS, p. 35-36)

In another passage Ouspensky explains more of Gurdjieff's philosophy:

This must be understood because often it is not understood. Sacrifice is necessary only while the process of crystalization is going on. When crystallization is achieved, renunciations, privations, and sacrifices are no longer necessary. Then a man may have everything he wants. There are no longer any laws for him, he is a law unto himself. (ibid. p. 33)

Citing Gurdjieff's words on the subject of church, Ouspensky writes:

Do you think people go to the theater or to church to pray or to see some new play? That is only for the sake of appearances. The principal thing, in the theater as well as in church, is that there will be a lot of women or a lot of men. This is the center of gravity of all gatherings. What do you think brings people to cafes, to restaurants, to various fetes? One thing only. Sex: It is the principal motive force... (ibid. p. 254)

On page 60 he refers to the "hypnotism of religion."

Speaking of the need for a new language, Ouspensky writes:

This new language contains hardly any new terms or new nomenclature, but it bases the construction of speech upon a new principle, namely, the principle of relativity; that is to say, it introduces relativity into all concepts and thus makes possible an accurate determination of the angle of thought--for what precisely ordinary language lacks are expressions of relativity. (ibid p. 70 - emphasis in the original)

The Synthesis Dialogues II also speak of a need for new language: "By 'Westernizing' or rendering in non-religious language some of the concepts..." Relativity is what Pope Benedict says we must overcome.