Madeline Gold

posted this yesterday:

In honor of Lord Pentland's birthday today, I am reposting the Preface to my forthcoming book,
'Down From Above, Up From Below: Working with Lord Pentland and The Gurdjieff Ideas'
Working with Lord Pentland
I worked for Lord Pentland at American British Electric Company at Rockefeller Plaza in New
York City for three and one-half years in the early seventies. Lord Pentland was the president of
the Gurdjieff Foundation in New York and he had been appointed by George Gurdjieff to head
up his work in America. During the time I worked for him, he published The First Series, All and
Everything: Beelzebub’s Tales To His Grandson in paperback; Views From the Real World; and
the Third Series, Life Is Real Only Then When “I Am.” It was a profoundly prolific time, in
terms of the literary output as well as the many people who came to meet with Lord Pentland in
his office to seek the Work. We call the “Work” those methods put forth by Gurdjieff intended to
harmonize and develop our lower functions as well as bring us into contact with our higher
natures, our God particle, if you will, or cosmic consciousness.
Lord Pentland was eager for students who could absorb his teaching, which he had brought forth
in himself to remarkable levels of perception. Indeed, he taught all the time, whether by his own
presence – I myself saw that he had eyes all over his body – or through his words or actions. He
pleaded with me, “Use me. Use me.” And so I tried to come to work every day with my attention
directed toward him, as well as on myself, and also to the work at hand.
A good part of the discourse with Lord Pentland was about the miraculous, higher states of
consciousness, and life after death. But he was not only about higher states. He was a brilliant
psychologist, if not trained as one, who knew how to provide conditions and combine people for
seeing and development.
Self-remembering forms the cornerstone of both the psychological and cosmological teachings in
the Gurdjieff Work. Whether I see myself in an undeveloped essential part, or at the place where
the Higher descends in me, that is a point of self-remembering. If I fail to remember myself, I am
less likely to see or hear an aspect of the Higher or its intermediaries. And if, as Gurdjieff says in
an unpublished reading, a man or woman works consciously, conscious spirits will be sent to
guide him or her, it becomes imperative for me to remember myself if I seek help from Above.
A few years before he died in 1984, Lord Pentland invited me to meet with him in California,
where I was now living. He dictated some notes on a talk he was to give at Esalen on the Art of
Living. He asked for my comments and I gave him my impressions. Then he startled me by
asking, “Will you write about me after I die?” I was too stunned to reply first because, naively, I
refused to consider his death, but also because I did not then, nor did I for years, consider that I
could do justice to the man by writing about him. Shortly before he died, he encouraged me by
saying, “Take responsibility for what you know.” Then, a year after his death, all the things he
said came rolling out from my memory, as though released from a reel, such that I always carried
paper with me, ready to record impressions as they appeared. This went on for three months and
stopped as abruptly as it began. As I worked with this material for another fifteen years, I
realized that he put this task in me, and also that I had accepted it.
I understood John Pentland to be a man who struggled with all the things that made him mortal,
in addition to the pursuit of self-transformation. It is precisely this that made him an exquisite
human being. A tall ectomorph, at once severe and merciful, he suffered like the rest of us. As
far as I could determine, he had the best intentions in dealing with his students. He created
conditions in which we were forced to see ourselves, and often it was a bitter pill. He admitted to
his errors, at least to me.
In 1971, I had been living in California, and Lord Pentland asked me to visit him in New York. I
had begun the Work there in 1968 under the aegis of Christopher Fremantle, also a remarkable
man, an artist, gentle and kind. When I got to New York, Lord Pentland asked me to come to his
home on Independence Avenue in Riverdale at 6 a.m. and from there we will drive together to
Armonk, the Workhouse in upstate New York. He instructed me to take only buses and trains –
no taxis – which meant I would have to travel through Harlem and the Bronx in the dark, by
myself. I was a young woman and, at the time, quite small. I took on the task in spite of
considerable fear.
I got to Riverdale without incident, though I ran into some people on the train whose presence
concerned me. I stayed focused throughout on my intention. Then we are in Lord Pentland’s car,
a short distance from his house, and stopped at a stop sign, when a rough-looking street person
saw me light a cigarette and knocked at my window, asking for a smoke. I reached into my bag
to give him a cigarette. “Don’t give it to him,” Pentland said. I considered his comment, and
decided to give the man a cigarette. “Don’t give it to him,” Pentland said again. I decided I am
giving the man a cigarette no matter what Pentland says and, as I do so, he said, “OK, give it to
him.” I already know that blind obedience is not what is required.
Later that same day, I am sitting in a row at the rear, struggling to stay awake during the reading
that ends the day. Lord Pentland is reading. Suddenly, I come to with alertness. I know with
certainty that he is reading to me, even tough there are no outward signs. He is reading a talk of
Gurdjieff’s I had not heard before. And, here, I paraphrase, “People are always saying, how can
we help others? What can we do for them? We can give them what they need….If a man is
hungry, you give him food.” I know that my impulse to give a poor man a cigarette is not a great
act, but acting from my own understanding is something. Within a few days, Lord Pentland asks
me to work for him in his office in Rockefeller Plaza.
Even before I leave California for New York, Lord Pentland asks me to study shorthand. I am
not at all surprised, because I’d had a dream the year before that he asks me to move to New
York to type for him. He also, in that dream, gives me a blank book. I am beginning to think I
have some sort of destiny, or appointment, with him. I study shorthand for three weeks and tell
him that I have learned it. He seems pleasantly surprised. I never return to California and he asks
me to come and work for him at Rockefeller Plaza part-time.
In the office, three months later, he says to me: “So, Jane, you have been here for some time
now. What have you got to say for yourself?” I immediately understand that I need to come up
with something quickly, deliver an impression, in order to retain my place. Fortunately, I’d had a
moment of self-observation the day before that reverberated deeply in my being. I was also, at
the time working concurrently and part-time for a judge who had become irritated with me for
something I had done. I had felt his anger as a knife going through me. It was an extremely
painful and visceral sensation. I returned to my desk and put a question to myself: “What just
happened?” And the answer came back in a voice quite different than my own: “It is because you
have no self-respect.” I tell Lord Pentland my experience. He affirms that this is true and this
causes me additional pain. But I know that he can help me. He tells me that I can continue
working for him. Shortly thereafter, Julie Hanidis, his secretary of many years, quits, and he
hires me full time. She tells him that now that I have shown up, she can leave. He tells me that I
am the first secretary he has ever hired from within the Gurdjieff Foundation.
One day we are at the British Embassy in Washington, D.C., where I had helped him put
together a seminar on British cast iron and steel for the international subway business
community. This was one of the two British businesses he represented In New York City. He had
asked me to make name badges for all the participants. Then, standing in a circle among ten
businessmen at the end of the conference he looks at me and says in front of everyone (all of
whom, except for Dick Brower were not compatriots in the Gurdjieff Work), “Where is your
name badge?” I am forced to say, with internal shame, “I didn’t make one.” And he replies,
“You see who you forget to remember. You forget to remember yourself.”
I had not, of course, forgotten to make a name tag for myself, rather I had intentionally not done
so, thinking I was not important enough to warrant identification. Of whatever sense of self a
person may have reasonably developed in youth, due to the loving attention even unenlightened
parents might give a child during their upbringing, I had precious little. My sense of self had
been shredded, due to reasons better left for later. But what I did have, from the age of four, was
an awareness of God (more about the “God” later) central or intrinsic to a vast universe. This
accelerated into a search at the age of 17 when I became convinced there was a teaching in the
world that could help me to experience more of myself and of life than I was presently seeing
and experiencing.
And so, in the manner of the miraculous that operates in all our lives, I found the Gurdjieff
Work. Coming home late one evening I headed for the kitchen table, where I found directly in
front of me P. D. Ouspensky’s In Search of the Miraculous. I sat down and read it throughout the
night and into the morning, knowing that I would go anywhere in the world to find people
associated with it. The next morning I asked my brother and sister-in-law whether they had put
the book there. Neither he nor she had ever seen the book before nor had they been visited by
anyone the night before.
In the Work we say little about love, sensing that we are not fully capable of it. But I remember
Lord Pentland saying to me, “The wonderful thing about love is, you give it and give it and give
it, and there is always more to give.” And, “What is attention, if not love?” When I began this
journey, I could not foresee that one of its results would be an increase in the capacity to love.
One day he asked me while we were going up the escalator at Bloomingdale’s, “What is
conscious labor and intentional suffering?” I thought for a while (about fifteen seconds) and said,
“Going to work for you every day?” I was not trying to be funny. Working every day with him
was not exactly a walk in the park. He replied, “Almost, but not quite.” Over the years, I have
given this question much thought, as Gurdjieff indicates that practicing conscious labor and
intentional suffering is a great hope for us. It is critical to understand this, and I have verified that
the capacity to suffer myself, and enter into the sorrow or internal conflict rather than run away
from it, leads to the potentiality of contact with the Higher centers in me. And that sorrow and
joy are ultimately equally proportionate to one another.
He said to me about working together in the office, “Anything could happen to any of us at any
time.” At the time, I took this mean that the doors of perception could open unexpectedly. And
often they did. His being forced me to be present to myself, and it was not a pretty picture. I had,
as both of us knew, very little self-respect. I’d been subjected to various trauma in childhood,
and for this reason it was hard for me to receive his loving attention. But I loved him, and he
knew this. One day, he had an unexpected visit from Lise Etievant late in the day. While he was
in his office with her, I was seized with an impulse to wish for his being and pray, that is, wish
for his being. They were still in his office when I left for home. The next morning, early, Lord
Pentland phoned me. “Thank you,” he said, “Thank you for everything.” I knew that he had felt
my wish.
I am at the Workhouse in upstate New York. Madame de Salzmann (Gurdjieff’s main disciple
and head of the teaching worldwide after his death) is talking about the silence. I do not
understand, having been in the Work only a short time, and I think the silence she speaks of must
be for the older pupils. It is coffee break and I am sitting on the grass. All at once, I am plunged
into silence….and then a wave of the cacophony of the normal mind….and then again the deep
silence. I realize that the Work is precisely for me – it is not for an elite or priestly class. And
there are no intermediaries. I am beginning to develop self-respect. I am beginning to remember
myself.
Again, we have spent the day upstate at the Workhouse. My efforts to be present result in my
body being filled to the brim with energy. It is years before I can formulate that the methods we
practice bring to consciousness that which is dormant and suppressed. It brings what is dim into
the light of day. I am sitting on the edge of my bed, experiencing agitation. Suddenly I cannot
breathe. I think I am going to die. I imagine how sad everyone will be that I have died so young.
Won’t Lord Pentland be sad that he worked me so hard? I imagine my funeral and who will be
there. Then – all at once – I know I will be present at my own funeral. Death is a change of form,
but it is not the end. I know this with everything that is in me.
At work the next day, I tell Lord Pentland of my discovery. “Quite right,” he says. “Now that
you know life is just a question of doing time, how will you live your life?” After a pause, he
continues. “For myself I decided living my life in the Work was the best use of my time.” He
then said, “I bet you think I wanted this Work.” When I answered yes, he surprised me with his
response. “No! I went to one meeting, and then I wasn’t going back. Ouspensky sent people to
get me.” He said to them, “Go get Pentland.”
Then he asked me if I understood why I saw what I did, about death being an illusion. I said,
“No. I don’t.” He replied, “It’s because you took your thought to the end.” I understood
immediately then that to censor impressions impedes the natural development of thought, no
matter how undeveloped the thought may appear to be. That is why we are told to watch without
changing anything, to observe ourselves simply, without analysis, at least in the beginning. I
realized that if I had obeyed conventional thought, for example, believing that I shouldn’t have
self-pity, I would not have seen what I did. Since then I have understood that I might to follow a
thought to its conclusion. In that way, I extend the impression and give birth to it, and that to cut
it off in judgment is to abort its life and my own understanding.
Lord Pentland asks me to come to his apartment on 66th Street and read to him a lengthy Sufi
text about the seven kingdoms of Heaven. It states, among other things, that if you look at the
sun through your eyelashes at a certain time of day, you can see the kingdoms. After the reading,
he says I can ask him any one question. “Is it really true we live other lifetimes?” I ask. “I mean
to say,” he replies very strongly, “we live thousands and thousands of lifetimes.”
I am sitting (meditating) at the Foundation. I am sitting directly to the left of Lord Pentland. I am
working hard. Suddenly, my heart burns with heat, and I am all lit up, immersed in a very bright
light. My eyes, though closed, can take in everything in the room. Instantly, I see that Lord
Pentland is two. One is sitting in his suit next to me, the other is walking around the room. At the
end of the sitting, we proceed out and I ask if I might have a word with him. “It was very hot in
there,” I say. “Oh,” he says, “Do we need to adjust the temperature?” I say, “I’m not talking
about that.” He pauses, looks at me, and says, “First there is heat, then light.”
We are sitting in the library at the New York Foundation. He has steered me to read Mircea
Eliade and the study of symbolism. I am so young, I do not yet understand that there are
collective symbols in the human psyche that spring up in art and religion throughout time and
across cultures. He is talking to me about symbols, and then he says, a propos of nothing, “Study
the institutionalization of the Work.”
It is only years later, after his death, that I understand what he means by the institutionalization
of the Work. And I know now that Gurdjieff left his Work for all his grandchildren, and that
serious work can and will take place outside of the institutions, by bringing the Work into life,
not just for our personal salvation, but for the good of all.