Rafael Lefort
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Rafael Lefort
''The Teachers of Gurdjieff'' is a book by Rafael Lefort that describes a journey to the Middle East and central Asia in search of the sources of G. I. Gurdjieff's teaching, and culminates in the author's own spiritual awakening, by meeting and "opening" to the teachings of the Naqshbandi Sufis. The author's search finally leads him to the Sarmoun monastery in Northern Afghanistan where Gurdjieff had been previously taught. The authors of the ''Handbook of Islamic Sects and Movements'', Muhammad Afzal Upal and Carole M. Cusack consider the book to be a product of the Sufi school associated with Idries Shah and his brother Omar Ali-Shah, and cast doubt on its authenticity. While Upal and Cusack speculate that the "polemic" writing style could be that of Omar Ali-Shah, British historian Mark Sedgwick believes that Rafael Lefort is "almost certainly a pseudonym for Idries Shah." Speaking at the First International Conference on Theosophical History held in London on 18–20 July 1986 ...
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United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland, and many smaller islands within the British Isles. Northern Ireland shares a land border with the Republic of Ireland; otherwise, the United Kingdom is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea, the English Channel, the Celtic Sea and the Irish Sea. The total area of the United Kingdom is , with an estimated 2020 population of more than 67 million people. The United Kingdom has evolved from a series of annexations, unions and separations of constituent countries over several hundred years. The Treaty of Union between the Kingdom of England (which included Wales, annexed in 1542) and the Kingdom of Scotland in 170 ...
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Brill Publishers
Brill Academic Publishers (known as E. J. Brill, Koninklijke Brill, Brill ()) is a Dutch international academic publisher founded in 1683 in Leiden, Netherlands. With offices in Leiden, Boston, Paderborn and Singapore, Brill today publishes 275 journals and around 1200 new books and reference works each year all of which are "subject to external, single or double-blind peer review." In addition, Brill provides of primary source materials online and on microform for researchers in the humanities and social sciences. Areas of publication Brill publishes in the following subject areas: * Humanities: :* African Studies :* American Studies :* Ancient Near East and Egypt Studies :* Archaeology, Art & Architecture :* Asian Studies (Hotei Publishing and Global Oriental imprints) :* Classical Studies :* Education :* Jewish Studies :* Literature and Cultural Studies (under the Brill-Rodopi imprint) :* Media Studies :* Middle East and Islamic Studies :* Philosophy :* Religious Studies ...
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Books About Spirituality
A book is a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images, typically composed of many pages (made of papyrus, parchment, vellum, or paper) bound together and protected by a cover. The technical term for this physical arrangement is '' codex'' (plural, ''codices''). In the history of hand-held physical supports for extended written compositions or records, the codex replaces its predecessor, the scroll. A single sheet in a codex is a leaf and each side of a leaf is a page. As an intellectual object, a book is prototypically a composition of such great length that it takes a considerable investment of time to compose and still considered as an investment of time to read. In a restricted sense, a book is a self-sufficient section or part of a longer composition, a usage reflecting that, in antiquity, long works had to be written on several scrolls and each scroll had to be identified by the book it contained. Each part of Aristotle's ''Physics'' is called a ...
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Philosophy Books
Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some sources claim the term was coined by Pythagoras ( BCE), although this theory is disputed by some. Philosophical methods include questioning, critical discussion, rational argument, and systematic presentation. in . Historically, ''philosophy'' encompassed all bodies of knowledge and a practitioner was known as a ''philosopher''."The English word "philosophy" is first attested to , meaning "knowledge, body of knowledge." "natural philosophy," which began as a discipline in ancient India and Ancient Greece, encompasses astronomy, medicine, and physics. For example, Newton's 1687 ''Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy'' later became classified as a book of physics. In the 19th century, the growth of modern University, researc ...
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Naqshbandi Order
The Naqshbandi ( fa, نقشبندی)), Neqshebendi ( ku, نه‌قشه‌به‌ندی), and Nakşibendi (in Turkish) is a major Sunni order of Sufism. Its name is derived from Baha-ud-Din Naqshband Bukhari. Naqshbandi masters trace their lineage to the Islamic prophet Muhammad through Abu Bakr, the first Caliph of Sunni Islam and Ali, the fourth Caliph of Sunni Islam. It is because of this dual lineage through Ali and Abu Bakr through the 6th Imam Jafar al Sadiq that the order is also known as the "convergence of the two oceans" or "Sufi Order of Jafar al Sadiq". History The Naqshbandi order owes many insights to Yusuf Hamdani and Abdul Khaliq Gajadwani in the 12th century, the latter of whom is regarded as the organizer of the practices and is responsible for placing stress upon the purely silent ''invocation''. It was later associated with Baha-ud-Din Naqshband Bukhari in the 14th century, hence the name of the order. The name can be interpreted as "engraver (of t ...
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Fourth Way
The Fourth Way is an approach to self-development developed by George Gurdjieff over years of travel in the East (c. 1890 – 1912). It combines and harmonizes what he saw as three established traditional "ways" or "schools": those of the body, the emotions, and the mind, or of fakirs, monks and yogis, respectively. Students often refer to the Fourth Way as "The Work", "Work on oneself", or "The System". The exact origins of some of Gurdjieff's teachings are unknown, but various sources have been suggested. The term "Fourth Way" was further used by his student P. D. Ouspensky in his lectures and writings. After Ouspensky's death, his students published a book entitled ''The Fourth Way'' based on his lectures. According to this system, the three traditional schools, or ways, "are permanent forms which have survived throughout history mostly unchanged, and are based on religion. Where schools of yogis, monks or fakirs exist, they are barely distinguishable from religious schools. ...
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Portuguese Language
Portuguese ( or, in full, ) is a western Romance language of the Indo-European language family, originating in the Iberian Peninsula of Europe. It is an official language of Portugal, Brazil, Cape Verde, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau and São Tomé and Príncipe, while having co-official language status in East Timor, Equatorial Guinea, and Macau. A Portuguese-speaking person or nation is referred to as " Lusophone" (). As the result of expansion during colonial times, a cultural presence of Portuguese speakers is also found around the world. Portuguese is part of the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several dialects of Vulgar Latin in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia and the County of Portugal, and has kept some Celtic phonology in its lexicon. With approximately 250 million native speakers and 24 million L2 (second language) speakers, Portuguese has approximately 274 million total speakers. It is usually listed as the sixth-most spoken language, the third-most sp ...
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Spanish Language
Spanish ( or , Castilian) is a Romance languages, Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from colloquial Latin spoken on the Iberian peninsula. Today, it is a world language, global language with more than 500 million native speakers, mainly in the Americas and Spain. Spanish is the official language of List of countries where Spanish is an official language, 20 countries. It is the world's list of languages by number of native speakers, second-most spoken native language after Mandarin Chinese; the world's list of languages by total number of speakers, fourth-most spoken language overall after English language, English, Mandarin Chinese, and Hindustani language, Hindustani (Hindi-Urdu); and the world's most widely spoken Romance languages, Romance language. The largest population of native speakers is in Mexico. Spanish is part of the Iberian Romance languages, Ibero-Romance group of languages, which evolved from several dialects of Vulgar Latin in I ...
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Robert Ornstein
Robert Evan Ornstein (August 21, 1942 – December 20, 2018) The web page gives the birth year as 1942. was an American psychologist, researcher and author. He taught at the Langley Porter Neuropsychiatric Institute, based at the University of California Medical Center in San Francisco, and was professor at Stanford University and founder and chairman of the Institute for the Study of Human Knowledge (ISHK). Life Early life and education Robert Evan Ornstein was born in 1942 in Brooklyn, New York, USA, and grew up in the city. He was twice high school math champion in a city-wide contest, and "wavered between physics and poetry before compromising on psychology" at the City University of New York's Queens College. In 1964 he was awarded a bachelor's degree in psychology at Queens College, and went on to gain a PhD at Stanford University, California in 1968. His doctoral thesis was ''On the Experience of Time''. Career Ornstein was involved in reconciling the scientific unders ...
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Victor Gollancz Ltd
Victor Gollancz Ltd () was a major British book publishing house of the twentieth century and continues to publish science fiction and fantasy titles as an imprint of Orion Publishing Group. Gollancz was founded in 1927 by Victor Gollancz, and specialised in the publication of high-quality literature, nonfiction, and popular fiction, including crime, detective, mystery, thriller, and science fiction. Upon Gollancz's death in 1967, ownership passed to his daughter, Livia, who in 1989 sold it to Houghton Mifflin. Three years later in October 1992, Houghton Mifflin sold Gollancz to the publishing house Cassell & Co. Cassell and its parent company Orion Publishing Group were acquired by Hachette in 1996, and in December 1998 the merged Orion/Cassell group turned Gollancz into its science fiction/fantasy imprint. Origins as a political house Gollancz was left-inclined in politics and a supporter of socialist movements. This is reflected in some of the call for the books he publis ...
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James Moore (Cornish Author)
James Harry Manson Moore (16 December 1929 – 11 May 2017) was a Cornish author. He was a fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society and a leading authority on G. I. Gurdjieff. Life and career Moore was born in Saltash, Cornwall in December 1929. He was a leading authority on G. I. Gurdjieff, becoming active in practical and thematic Gurdjieff studies from 1956, after studying with Kenneth Walker and later with Henriette H. Lannes ("Madame Lannes") as his Gurdjieffian teacher and mentor between October 1957 and December 1978. His first major study, ''Gurdjieff and Mansfield'' (1980), examined the lives of Gurdjieff and the short story writer Katherine Mansfield. Moore's book challenged the persistent belief that Gurdjieff was somehow responsible when Mansfield, who arrived at Gurdjieff's institute in France suffering from terminal tuberculosis, died within a few months while still his guest. From 1981 to 1994, Moore was responsible for gathering and leading new students in the Gurdj ...
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Mark Sedgwick
Mark J. Sedgwick (born 20 July 1960) is a British historian specialising in the study of traditionalism, Islam, Sufi mysticism, and terrorism. He is Professor of Arab and Islamic Studies at Aarhus University in Denmark and chair of the Nordic Society for Middle Eastern Studies. He was formerly secretary of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism. Life and career Early life and education Sedgwick was born in London, England. He was educated in England at Harrow School, where he first became interested in history, and Worcester College, Oxford. He did his PhD in Norway at the University of Bergen under the supervision of Professor Séan O'Fahey. Encounter with Sufism and Traditionalism While living in Cairo in 1990, Sedgwick encountered Sufis from both the Naqshbandiyya tariqa and the Traditionalist Maryamiyya. However, he did not join either group. He started research on Traditionalism in 1996. Career Sedgwick first taught history at the American Universit ...
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