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September/October 2006 Living Now
Review: In Search of P.D. Ouspensky

In Search of P.D. Ouspensky: The Genius in the Shadow of Gurdjieff
Gary Lachman

Quest Books, 2004, $24.95

P.D. Ouspensky could easily be ranked as one of the five greatest writers on spiritual and transcendent concepts of the Twentieth Century, but his contentious relationship with charismatic philosopher G.I. Gurdjieff overshadowed Ouspensky’s brilliance.

Gary Lachman’s In Search of P.D. Ouspensky reevaluates the controversial partnership of these two highly evolved spiritual teachers. The book revisits their collaboration from a new perspective, highlighting Ouspensky’s valuable contributions to spiritual and philosophical thought. Lachman offers new insight into a troubled pas de deux that commentators on Gurdjieff’s methods have been trying to sort out for decades, often to the detriment of Ouspensky’s reputation.

There is no doubt that Gurdjieff had a profound influence on modern society through his philosophical synthesis of Eastern, Western, Christian, ancient Egyptian and Sufi mystical teachings. Frank Lloyd Wright was one of many to publicly praise the profound significance of Gurdjieff’s spiritual teachings. Many other artists and thinkers of similar stature chose to remain silent, believing that a certain degree of secrecy is needed for the teachings to remain effective.

Although Gurdjieff’s method is not completely original (his Law of the Three can be traced to the Hindu concept of the three gunas—sattva, rajas and tamas), no one has been able to determine the exact source of Gurdjieff’s extraordinary psychic and spiritual powers, let alone his teachings. Gurdjieff’s students were taught to question everything in his teachings. Yet, often he would tell them they must accept much on faith until they could come into their own larger understanding of the truth he was leading them toward.

The lesser known Ouspensky had made a small but brilliant career as a successful writer on the spiritual trends flowing rapidly between Russia, Asia and Europe. With sharp and penetrating insight, he delved into a wide range of methods, including anthroposophy, Buddhism, theosophy and yoga. This insight came from a life of travel and study, not a university education. He had his own followers, a core group of the St. Petersburg intelligentsia that attended his lectures long before he committed himself completely to the advancement of Gurdjieff’s teachings.

Lachman makes it clear that Ouspensky was carefully selected for his ability to generate interest in Gurdjieff’s teachings—a role he faithfully played even after they were no longer on speaking terms. Ouspensky became a promoter of Gurdjieff, but with his own spiritual and philosophical insights, Ouspensky had the ability to match Gurdjieff’s brilliance and challenge him at his deepest levels. When the final public break came between them, it most likely was as profoundly upsetting for Gurdjieff as it was for Ouspensky.

The Ouspensky/Gurdjieff drama was set against the backdrop of the Russian Revolution. Gurdjieff deliberately immersed himself in the dramatic extremes of political conflicts in order to deepen his understanding of humankind. Such dedication led him to be shot three times, one a near fatal wound. He traveled with his newly formed St. Petersburg group to the Black Sea coast. Journeys without Ouspensky were made over torturous mountain ranges, in the darkest night and often while evading gunfire. Before rejoining them, Ouspensky had his own harrowing exposure to the madness of the revolution at a train station where several people were shot on the whim of the soldiers. Ouspensky also endured the confiscation of his entire library in St. Petersburg. Though there were real dangers to avoid, Gurdjieff would heighten the drama of situations to “awaken” his students.

When their falling out occurred, Ouspensky and Gurdjieff confronted each other in psychic battle during a teaching session. Gurdjieff used his occult abilities and Ouspensky was able to read Gurdjieff’s thoughts and receive his “teaching” without uttering a word.

Throughout their collaboration, Gurdjieff seemed to have true knowledge while Ouspensky was seen as a dilettante and writer about such knowledge. While there is truth to this evaluation, it omits the central problem in Gurdjieff’s relationship with his students: Gurdjieff had attained knowledge of a transcendent world nested within our everyday world, but his corrupt uses of occult and psychic powers had perhaps made him a dilettante in the depth of his own teachings.

Ouspensky was quick to find the flaws in a method that he first had hoped would help him to achieve spiritual transcendence. In Search of P.D. Ouspensky is a fascinating spiritual detective story and teaches valuable lessons on how to discern the truth in the teachings of contemporary masters.

–Phil Jefferson

March/April 2005 Conscious Media
In Review

The Mayan Calendar and The Transformation of Consciousness
by Carl Johan Calleman, Ph.D. with Introduction by Jose Argüelles
2004, Inner Traditions International, $18.00.

This most recent offering by Carl Johan Calleman is outstanding for both its quality of presentation and for the depth of its content. The book shows the connection between cosmic evolution and actual human history. It allows one to explore the cosmic, mysterious and predictive aspects of the Mayan Calendar, revealing it to be a spiritual device that describes the evolution of human consciousness from ancient times into the future.
Our Gregorian calendar distorts world time, inserting five extra days that don’t belong to a year in any natural way, and closes us off from the power of the infinite. The Mayan Calendar, on the other hand, illuminates a science of time that explains why time not only seems to be speeding up in the modern world but actually is getting faster. Each of the great civilizations has had a unique approach to mathematics and the creation of its own calendar, but Carl Calleman’s advocacy for the superior position of this calendar is most persuasive. He reaches out to the beginning student of Mayan calendars without in anyway dumbing down the explanations of predictive and magical reckoning of Time that are this calendar’s main feature.
He states, “If we are to embrace a world view in which consciousness is more important than matter, we too need to base our timekeeping on the nonphysical, invisible reality rather than on the physical. To grasp the distinction between the 360- and 365-day periods is a first and decisive step toward retrieving the ancient prophetic science of time.”
The sacred knowledge to be found in the solar, lunar, Venusian and planetary cycles is as essential to understanding our lives and destinies as it was for the Mayan, Aztec and Toltec civilizations. Calleman takes through the complexity of the Mayan calendar and shows how it works based on the Mayan understanding of the synchronicity of universal magic with human magic powers. He brings in hard scientific data as a way of more clearly defining this magic in modern terms. His writing is an invitation to go on a journey of conscious discovery, but also a journey of trust in spiritual forces beyond our normal powers of apprehension.
Carl Calleman explains how the end of the Mayan calendar is not the end of the world, but a path toward enlightenment. The gateway to future history is to be found in looking back to the Mayan masters and their calendar of transformation.
— Phil Jefferson

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Like the sensuous pleasure of really good chocolate melting on the tongue, Nia infuses the pleasure zones of the body, stimulating a healing of the chakras through intense activation of the Chi in each center. It’s all done by just plain bouncing across the dance floor having barefoot fun.

Debbie and Carlos Rosas are the inventors of this crossbred funky fusion of martial arts, aerobics, yoga, modern dance and other movement methods. They have done everything possible to get the work out of workout, inviting their students to enter a deep state of playful physical pleasure. From the moment a Nia student sets foot in their beautifully decorated dance studio, till the time they leave with a cup of green tea and smiling body and face, they are moved in every way possible by their instructor to dance, have fun and workout.

It is one of the most demanding workouts available today and can be done on your choice of movement levels one, two, or three on any exercise. The levels are basically just more creative and more difficult amplifications of the same movements so you can pump up the volume on any exercise at any time.

That is what makes the method so much fun and so accessible; you are creating all the time, not following a tight, rigid method or teacher. You are creating from the inside out. Liberation of the body is the goal and liberation is fun. Liberation is breathing. Liberation is following your feet across the floor spinning with the other dancers to inspiring contemporary pop music.

Such ease of style in a dance/exercise method was not created by its inventors, Debbie and Carlos Rosas, without a great deal of study, commitment and body reeducation. It was a long path of retraining to get to the natural workout that is now the Nia Technique-an acronym for Neuromuscular Integrative Action. Nia should not to be confused with non-impact aerobics, also an outgrowth of Carlos and Debbie’s influence on the fitness movement, for Nia integrates body systems and body performance in ways that other methods just don’t.

The Nia Technique was born from the uncertainty and struggle of what was ironically an outwardly successful career for Debbie and Carlos. At the top of their game and leaders in their field as aerobic teachers running several successful exercise centers in the San Francisco area, they began to question what they were doing as the intensity and rigidity of the aerobic workouts that they and others were promoting in the 80s seemed to cause injury after injury.

They began a total renovation of their own movement styles through deep exploration of many seemingly disparate methods. This enabled them to formulate a dance workout method that was the polar opposite of what they had been teaching before. The more they integrated elements of tai chi, yoga and modern dance, the more fun it became for them to teach and for their students to workout.

They developed movement principles based on flow, rhythm and a natural awakening of the body’s energy centers. It was a fresh approach in the competitive fitness world of “feel the burn”, building muscle and pushing for high endurance levels.

Anyone who enjoys the sweet pleasures of moving to a beat can do Nia. There is no competition, no right or wrong (but there is better), no master teacher to heed and no goal except the liberation of the body. That liberation comes through building a deep emotional connection to the body through the movements.

The how and why of Nia is beautifully delineated in a new book called The Nia Technique that has just been released by Broadway Books and has gone through its first printing in a little less than a week.

The book begins with some compelling case studies of Nia students who have healed major physical and neurological problems through their Nia practice. At the close of the introductory chapter the reader is led through the first of many exercise sets, the thirteen joint exercises, to get them out of their chair and moving.

Chapter One lays out some Nia fundamentals such as: the joy of movement is fitness, that “fitness must address the human being, not just the body”, that “movement must be conscious, not habitual”, and that the Nia practitioner should use his or her body the way it was designed to be used- to heal the mind, emotions and spirit.

In the chapter on the body’s way, Carlos and Debbie bring out some principles of movement and stability that we have known all of our lives in our body but have never been taught correctly. If we move inefficiently with stress in our everyday lives it is probably for two reasons: we have been imitating the incorrect movement patterns of other people and have never given ourselves permission to move to the natural flow of the body’s way.

In an exuberant and practical style they give first person voices to the feet (The Voice of the Feet), the Lower Leg, the Knee, the Thigh. These help the beginner to visualize what each body part is designed by nature to do and wants to do when freed by the mind to do it.

The book then moves from the body’s way to your body’s way, going through the theory of how to bring the intensity of small movements in individual parts of the body to a global healing of all parts of the body. This concept is easily understood as small is big or less is more.

Their five stages of self-healing, as inspired by Stanley Kelman’s book Emotional Anatomy, are more subtle and need an open mind and a mind willing to be taught by imagery to be fully understood. These stages are embryonic, creeping, crawling, standing, and walking. To just be aware of the hips, its voice and mechanics, is the goal of the embryonic stage. Learning whether the hip joint needs to be strengthened or relaxed, and then acting upon that knowledge in healthier movement patterns is the essence of the creeping stage. The crawling stage involves explorations of pushing the ranges of motion from the hip with squatting, rising and falling movements and finding ways to change the direction of your feet to make movements in the thighbone with the hip joint more effective. The standing stage is a stage of foundation, after the exploration of the first three stages the Nia dancer is able to play with the confidence of balance and push the limits of risk in each movement. The goal is reached at the walking stage. You can move freely; any kind of squatting, rising or falling is achieved with ease, and all these joints and muscles are strengthened. This is what leads you closer to your own body’s way.

The Rosas outline three stages of practice: learn the move (there are fifty-two key moves), move the move and energize the move. The role of sensation in the method also brings great subtlety to the practice; those five types of sensing being sensing for strength, sensing for flexibility, sensing for mobility, sensing for agility and sensing for stability. After a few more tips for starting, the writers urge their readers to get out in their kitchen, or patio or dance studio and start going through the moves (preferably to music that makes your feet want to cha-cha-cha). The photo pages feature students and instructors from the strong Nia community at Carlos and Debbie’s home base studio in Portland, Oregon. All of the fun and energy of taking a class with Carlos or Debbie can be seen in the sheer force of light energy coming from their bodies in the photographs.

The final chapter in the book gets to the heart of the technique’s purpose and is called simply, Dancing Through Life, which is the true goal, not just toning or working out. If you are immune to the beauty of aesthetic ideas such as The Dancing Through Life Triad, presented in this chapter, then Nia is probably not for you. But if you are receptive to Nia you might find that learning to live Life As Art, Dancing Through Life and practicing Living Meditation can be just as delicious as really good chocolate.

The Nia Technique by Debbie Rosas & Carlos Rosas is published by Broadway Books, 2004, $17.95.
Visit their website for the location of a NIA studio near you: www.nia-nia.com.

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