When people met him in Russia, they described Gurdjieff has having a strange accent or that his conversation was difficult to understand.
Id had my hunches that Gurdjieff, one hundred years ago, must have learned some effective methods of conversational trance induction.
Here are observations by one our members, The Anticult, concerning a different teacher. TAC's insights and analyses, in my opinion, apply just as much to Gurdjieff and expose him as a skilled trance technician, and social manipulator.
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http://forum.culteducation.com/read.php?12,106027,page=1
Its not the hypnosis that is the problem, but the verbal and visual messages in the hypnosis sessions, and the Suggestions that are being implanted with repetition.
Will look into this more.
But read the Byron Katie thread right below this, it goes into great detail about how modern group hypnosis and suggestion work.
They can get away with doing this, as they can just tell the judge they are "just talking" or just "having a conversation".
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is absolutely using forms of modern "conversational hypnosis".
He is speaking in that strange cadence intentionally, as it puts people off-balance. Yes, it drives most people away, but he doesn't care, as he is only looking for his target market.
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He is also obviously using a piece of audio software to alter his voice, to slow down the speed, and lower the pitch a little. (he probably finds it very amusing, as it sounds a little like John Wayne).
He is clearly doing this to disguise his voice, as well as to attempt to induce Trance, by using weird voice patterning.
Also, various New Age channeling cults have used strange voices, going back to Seth.
Its a cheap trick, and this scammer Gary, is using technology for the same effect.
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He recorded this material on a TASCAM DR-1 audio recorder. [tascam.com]
And he has made over 100 recordings on this, as this is all saved a meta-data on the files.
He recorded it at a low kHz rate, which apparently results in some distortion and a slowing of the voice.
That can also easily be done with free software.
Whether he did that on purpose, or originally by accident, its meant to create an effect.
Here is descriptions of Gurdjieff's voice
The unknowable GurdjieffChez Gurdjieff, Paris June, 1948 In spite of all I had been told, ...
His low
voice and muffled Asiatic accent formed syllables that had no meaning to me, ...
books.google.com/books?isbn=071001015X
Gurdjieff: an introduction to his life and ideas...
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He came in without a trace of embarrassment, greeting the Prince in Turkish with an accent that was a strange mixture of cultured Os- nianli and some ... I discovered that Gurdjieff had the peculiar property of appearing to be
...
books.google.com/books?isbn=1585422878
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In her book "Undiscovered Country", Kathryn Hulme (a disciple of Gurdjieff) writes: "In the opening chapters when Ouspensky described his initial encounters and conversations with the master, it seemed as if I were hearing Gurdjieff talk again, minus his accent and abbreviated locutions..
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webcache.googleusercontent.com]
James Webb
"According to
Glimpses of Truth an early essay by several pupils whose writing was supervised by Gurdjieff--A night long conversation takes place between Gurdjieff and a visitor. "At the beginning of the talk" says Webb "Gurdjieff speaks haltingly, in poor Russian, often turning to A (the interpreter) for hte completion of a sentence or thought. But as the conversation becomes increasingly rarified, Gurdjieff is presented (in the essay) as relying on A less and less. According to
Glimpses "His speech flowed more freely and naturally, the necessary words seemed to come of themselves, and I could have sworn by the end of the converastion he was speaking the clearest, most unaccented Russian"..
Later, Webb notes, "The gradual perfection of Gurdjieff's Russian could mean one of several things, but it was a phenomenon also noticed by pupils who spoke French or English." (The Harmonious Circle, James Webb, 1980, page 89)
Earlier, Webb tells us clearly that Gurdjieff made a point of studying trance induction. On page 78 of The Harmonious Circle, Webb tells us "Like some of his European contemporaries, Freud and Jung among them, he was trying to use hypnosis to break through man's "normal waking consciousness" to the subconsious mind, "which ought in my opinion" Gurdjieff wrote, "to be the real human consciousness."
(Corboy note: The reader is invited to remember the disasters that took place in the 1960s and 1970s when strenuous efforts were made to liberate people's subconscious minds.)
Later, Webb tells us this, and he is working from Gurdjieff's own writings.
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"According to Beelzebub (Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson), (Gurdjieff) chose to adopt the disguise of a "healer" in order to further his psychological researches. He had observed that people spoke frankly only to doctors and priests, and he had no desire to restrict his liberty by impersonating a holy man. Although he joined the medical profession in a spirit of experiment, he aquired considerable skill at his new calling. In Chinese Turkestan, the chief disabilities that came within his province were opium addiction and the chewing of hashish. When in about 1910-11 he transferred his activities to Russian Turkestan, he concentrated on the equivalent Russian vice: addiction to vodka...Gurdjieff's skill as a hypnotist was to stand him in good stead when he was forced to earn money in the West and it was probably in Turkestan that he aquired his knowledge of the effect of drugs on human beings. His later use of alcohol is well known, and the nature and composition of opium remained one of his interests right up to the time when he was writing Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson."
Webb, The Harmonious Circle, pp 79-80.
There is an imbalance of power here--Gurdjieff is pretending to be a healer, so as to observe human beings, while impersonating a role meant to encourage human beings to disclose themselves without disguise to him.
This is a relationship based on manipulation and deceit. If anyone was healed of their addiction, they were fortunate, for it took place in the context of a relationship in which the patient was honest but the alleged healer was acting in disguise, merely to snoop and manipulate.
Open heartedness is not mutual here, for Gudjieff, unlike his trustful patients was hiding behind a role--and this was at the start of his career.
It looks as though he was very astute in his use of conversational trance induction and long before Milton Erickson.
It is worrisome in the extreme that if one puts enneagram and neurolinguistic programming into the same search, a multitude of citations churn up.
It is to be feared that Gurdjieff may have inspired the careers and aspirations of persons eager to become adept at trance induction and who didnt want to be bound by any sort of moral restraint.