Gurdjieff

Slender and balding, he had a craggy face that seemed to suggest the look of an oracle, and he cited the Russian Armenian mystic George Gurdjieff as a key influence, noting the spiritual teacher’s insistence on questioning everything.

He was influenced by George Gurdjieff, a mystic who believed that nothing was to be taken for granted, that everything needed questioning, and that collaboration with others was vital.

“And then like five months later, after forcing me to read the complete commentaries of Gurdjieff and all this metaphysical hoodoo, he gives me the building, like out of the blue.”

Gurdjieff, the exiled Korean composer Isang Yun — and to political events.

Like many New Age dabblers in the nineteen-seventies, he was drawn to the Fourth Way—a brand of mysticism established by George Gurdjieff in the early twentieth century.