This archive includes approximately 2000 pages of material, contained in 50 PDFs. The collection includes writings, clippings, correspondence, photographs, meeting notes, and more. The three excerpts below provide a glimpse into one aspect of this extensive collection.
Excerpt No 1: New Year with G. by K. Hulme Jan 2 1936 (p.1 partial)
From the Kathryn Hulme Archive. To access the full Hulme Archive and many other collections, please become a Gurdjieff Heritage Society member.
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#2 January 2 193() New Year with Gurdjieff. I want to tell you about it just the way it happened, because seeing him made the day for me, and perhaps will make the year. Gloomy yesterday and rainy, I had no feeling it was the beginning of a New Year or the beginning of anything for that matter. Mi-chemin with every one of my problems, Yesterday was just Wednesday, no different from the previous day, Tuesday. I phoned Solita, she had to go to his house around 1 P.M. - but I said, Maybe if we tried to catch him in the Café de la Paix, I’d have a chance to see him too. Solita said, Yes, but I’ll need a half hour to dress etc. . . .then I haggled, But in a half hour perhaps he will have left the cafe (been leaving before noon these days) and we’ll have the trip for nothing. . . back and forth haggling and debating, no direction, no Action anywhere (in me, I mean) and finally hung up deciding not to go to the cafe. . . . . Then upstairs in my room, walking around aimless and indirect. Some of his chapters walked back and forth in my mind – remember the “gallery” chapters, people who were “turning points” in his life and how he travelled days and miles to find them? Prince Liubovedski, Skridloff, etc? Remember the 21 day ride through Turkestan, blindfolded, when he went to a monastery where he thought he might hear something? I thought of those chapters and suddenly the shocking shame of my attitude came over me – me, unwilling to take a bus ride to the Opera on mere chance that he would be in the cafe, unwilling to give up half an hour and 3 bus tickets on the CHANCE OF SEEING G - I was out of my work clothes in 3 minutes, 2 minutes later dressed and going out the door. It was just 11 when I walked in the cafe. He was sitting there, alone. I sat at a table near, waiting until he would see me. His eyes examining every person who came in the cafe found me quickly – Crocodile, he called – and I went over to his table – straight into the most beautiful smile I ever saw. I felt his mood, friendly, glad for company, and touched with a special kind of gentleness he has on holidays like Christmas and New Year – it was the Perfect Moment to find him alone, like the first time I found him alone after Jane left. . . and I was so surprised that at long last an impulse had been correct, I kept saying to myself, Well, Katie Hulme I beat your inertia that time, I put it over on you, Katie Hulme. . . .and felt near to tears – just for the emotion of having made Katie Hulme do a right thing at a proper moment. Tears of victory maybe.
Biographical note:
Kathryn Hulme (1900 – 1981) studied with G.I. Gurdjieff in a Work group known as the Rope, which also included Solita Solano, Alice Rohrer, Elizabeth Gordon, Jane Heap, Margaret Caroline Anderson and Louise Davidson. Notes from these meetings can be found in GURDJIEFF AND THE WOMEN OF THE ROPE: Notes of Meetings in Paris and New York
1935–1939 and 1948–1949, ISBN: 978-0-9559090-6-1, Book Studio, 2012.
Her own spiritual journey and experiences with Gurdjieff are described in her book The Undiscovered Country: A Spiritual Adventure, first published by Little, Brown & Co. (Boston USA/Toronto CA), 1967; and most recently published by Book Studio. UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY: A Spiritual Adventure, ISBN: 978-0-9559090-8-5, Book Studio, 2012.
Both titles can be found in multiple formats on Amazon through the Book Studio website: https://bookstudio.co.uk
Excerpt No 2: K. Hulme: Conversation with Gurdjieff 1937 (p48 of 256)
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Some part of our psychology bears the
same relation to us as the moon bears to
our psychical life.
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It is only when Wish becomes a Need that
it becomes the Magical Evocative.
You say, What do you want? Nothing.
You say, What do you need? Everything.
I don’t want food but I need it.
Wants are real only when they are needs,
they are imaginary when not.
We die because we don’t get all we need to
live.
Find out the needs of our lives and become
conscious of them.
“They lived happily everafter”. What do I
need to enable me to live happily everafter
and what is happily and what is everafter?
To “live happily everafter” – the discovery
and adoption of the means to arrive at
immortality.
Find out if the means exist, where found and
how to use them.
Few of us want what we need and few of us
need what we want.
What we want, the moon wants, what we need –
the sun needs. Memory belongs to the moon,
awareness to the sun.
The child in the womb sings “I remember who I am
– but the first breath, the first cry, means
“I have forgotten who I am.
And we keep on forgetting until we die.
Excerpt No 3: K. Hulme: Conversation with Gurdjieff 1937 (p24 of 257)
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3
Self-observation pumps up energy, uncovers
that “I”. The “I” is not defined by
intelligence, gifts, talents, etc.
It is simply what you are in yourself.
The body is the only vehicle, cart, vessel,
instrument, etc through and by which we
can find out.
Stripped of your 5 [personality] senses, what [are] you?
What manifestation could you give that
an astute psychologist could not
reduce to a bodily manifestation?
99% of our 70 years is spent
in sublimated animality (caring for
body, thinking of it, etc.)
Get the “I” out from the inside where it
is buried, to the outside. All miraculous
re-births in legend and history are just
this – the uncovering of the “I”.
Our first birth is passive.
Our second birth is active, conscious.
We are born out of our own bodies.
Self-observation gets at the “I”.
For this 2nd birth, we must first die to
our automatic selves, change values and
die to the old values.
Gurdjieff says in the cerebellum there is a
seed, a germ, which is a possibility of a
soul. He calls it the “representative of
God in the essence”.
“Fragments of a Faith Forgotten”
“Hermes Thrice Greater”
These ancient books show these ideas
are not new but have been with
man always (esoteric)
From the Kathryn Hulme Archive. To access the full Hulme Archive and many other collections, please become a Gurdjieff Heritage Society member.