Sound of Number, Taste of...

NEW DVD ON THE FOURTH WAY

     William Patrick Patterson, a leading exponent of the Fourth Way, the ancient, sacred, seminal teaching of self-development, explores:  Images of God, Bioplasmic machines, Science of Being, Egyptian Mysteries, Nature's trick, the many selves, Self-Love's duality, Owning, Futurizing, Historicizing, Ray of Creation, States of Consciousness, Key practices, Embodiment, Direct impressions, Inner space, Self-knowledge and Being, Levels of Understanding, and Using ordinary life to come to real life.

Mr. Patterson is the direct and longtime pupil of John Pentland, the remarkable man Mr. Gurdjieff chose to lead the Work in America. He has led Fourth Way groups and seminars for many years. He is the author of seven books on The Fourth Way.

http://www.gurdjieff-legacy.org/

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Locked-In syndrome - The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Based on Jean-Dominique Bauby's memoir of life after a debiliting stroke, this film by Julian Schnabel shows how he awoke from a  coma finding that he was almost completely paralyzed except for his left eye.  Working with a speach therapist he begins communicating with people by blinking his left eye, indicating each letter. Bauby had been editor of the French fashion magazine Elle. He had a deal to write a book before his accident so he decides he will still write a book. The story of writing the book is mixed with recollections of his life up until his stroke. One of the most poignant moments in the film is when Bauby recollects shaving his father who is confined to his own apartment because he is too frail to use the stairs. In another scene, the father, played by Max Von Sydow, weeps when he realizes during a phone call to the hospital, that Bauby can't answer back. Bauby finished his book and died of pneumonia ten days after it was published. He is played in the movie by Mathieu Amalric and the movie was filmed, in part, at the hospital where Bauby stayed after his stroke.

Army of Shadows/Gurdjieff in Paris

Jean-Pierre Melville's film about the French Resistance made in 1969 was finally released in the United States in 2006. The film is adapted from Joseph Kessel's book of the same name and is an account of the author's experience in the French resistance; it was published in London in 1943 as a fictionalized work of reportage. Melville himself was supposedly connected with the French resistance but there is no doubt he fought with the Free French in North Africa. When the film initialy came out it was ignored during the heyday of the French New Wave. Characters and storys in the film were based on real people and incidents that actually took place in the French resistance.

                                                                                                What was Gurdjieff doing during the German occupation of Paris? For a detailed description see William Patrick Patterson's book Voices in the Dark. It includes transcripts of meetings between Gurdjieff and his students, the influence of the pseudo-occult on the German order and the voices speaking of citizens, soldiers, political figures and intellectuals. Gurdjieff had stayed with his pupils in France instead of going to America during the occupation. What would it be like to live in the uncertainty of not knowing if your friends were informers, of not knowing if you would have food to eat and realizing that France, the country with the largest standing army at the time, had been easily overun by the Germans?

...Silence

German filmmaker Phillip Groning wrote the Carthusian monks in 1984 about making a documentary. Sixteen years later they responded and gave permission for him to come and film. He lived with them for 6 months, filming only with natural light, following them with their daily chores and practices.  No narration, no score, just movement in space and time. The result, his movie Into Great Silence.

The Saltmen of Tibet

Filmaker Ulrik Koch was denied permission to film in Tibet but she went anyway in search of the Saltmen.  Initially she had contradictory information that the Saltmen really existed, if they did, no one knew where to find them.  When she finally located them she said that the "reality confronting her far exceeded those dreams" she had about them.  The young woman singing in the film is reciting the poems from the pre-Buddhist hero, King Gesar of Ling. Her name is Yumen and she prepares herself before singing by going into a trance; the verses she sings from would fill 37 volumes of books.

The film opens with a nomad riding on horseback, a mountain surrounded by clouds reaching for Heaven and a singer blessing the annual journey of the saltmen to the ancient lakes of northern Tibet.The trip begins with stunning images of treeless plateaus few people have ever seen. The landscapes and mountains are filled with beautiful gradient shades of blues, greens and beiges. There are rules to follow, preparations are made, horses are tested in races, Yaks are contributed by members of the community. This is a Sacred journey. The story is told without narrative; but everywhere the silence speaks, in the landscape, in the singing, in the eyes of the nomads and their families, in the attention placed on every detail of their journey. All in all, a stunningly beautiful meditaion.