http://www.spice-work.com/being.html    >>>>>>>      more along these lines:  please click here.

                                              .
  Paul's prospectus for Northeon Forest.
 .
" Man has been given a new organ :    Being. "
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Paul Henry Beidler, Northeon Forest, Northeon Mountain, eastern Pennsylvania,  1990.
. .

" A teacher's task is not to convey knowledge, but to set up situations
in which students cannot help but learn something.  Teachers exist
not to tell stuudents what they themselves know, but to find ways
to share with students the pure fun of discovery; the sense that
learning is only slightly less exciting than falling in love.
No teacher can claim anything like success in any of this;
a few of us, however, can be proud that we have not failed
with every student. "
.
.
Not a bad paragraph, eh?  Taken from the entry of Paul's son
Who's Who in America, page 221.
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It is Monday, July 17, 2000, and I am inserting as paragraph or two here in my writing as something from yesterdays doings at the Spice House appears to be relevant to attempting to explain Paul Beidler
and his life ( as I knew it anyway ).  When we say " ideas of an advanced state " or " ideas of an
advanced nature " or " ideas of a higher nature " what do we mean here?  Do you think there are ideas
like this?  Ideas there waiting for " us " to catch up .... that might be clearer to us, say, 2000 years from now?  Well, I think that's what Paul's life was about ... he locked into this search for advanced ideas at an early age ... he attempted to surround himself, in a sense, with the finest, highest teachers who might help him to understand advanced ideas.  Mr. Gurdjieff, Lu Kwan U ( Charles Luk ), Mme. Ouspensky, Rodny Collin in Mexico City, Frank Lloyd Wright,  Le Corbusier in Paris .... he went to these people &
found a way to be accepted by them for a certain period of time .... so as to learn from them about
advanced ideas.  And he spent 25 years in Asia studying advanced ideas in the form of very old ideas
which were mostly secreted ... only shared with certain special individuals.  I recall him going to a large globe in his home there in the foothills of the mountains ... Valle D'Oro,  just outside Tucson ...
moving it to Mongolia in the Gobi dessert ... and telling Ruth & I how Gurdjieff had told him about a
certain nearly hidden group in the Gobi dessert that he, Gurdjieff, believed had a certain comprehension of " advanced ideas " and that if in his lifetime he was able to get to this group of men & women he should do it if at all possible ... and he told Ruth & I that in fact he had made contact ...
yes, sort of like saying that one had made " contact " as with an alien life form in an advanced stage ...
and that he maintained a connection, delicate as it was though, to this day with them & what they had
to share.  At the age of 17, Paul had gone with his archaeology class from the University of Pennsylvania into the mountains of Iraq & Turkey to study the Kurds; their ancient ways.
After two weeks the class went back to America, but Paul decided not to go; rather to stay on
& study more seriously with a certain group there in northern Iraq.  He was allowed to study there under the
Sheikh Adi for a full year.  This group was not Muslim in the usual sense, but rather was a centuries old
spiritual order dating back before Islam.  Insert picture here of the temple where Paul studied;
was allowed to be a more serious advanced student. This included some relationship with the Yezedi; some
  being part of the Yezedi: studying with them from the inside out. ...
.... and when he met Gurdjieff later in Paris, he found Gurdjieff happened to be intensely interested
in the Yezedi, especially how the " faith in the Imman " was nourished; kept alive. Paul said to us that
at this time Gurdjieff was dissolusioned with the people around him and was, in a sense, depressed.
Paul. had gone to Paris to study architecture with the well known Le Corbusier, the Swiss
architect who worked in Paris.at this time ( 1921 )

in( this was when he was accepted as an architectural student by the famous Le Corbusier ) Gurdjieff
was extremely interested in what young Paul Henry Beidler had learned in his period in the mountains
of Turkistan about ... yes, again, advanced ideas.
.
As he became older he did not set himself up as a teacher of advanced ideas .... he learned as much as
he could about methods to " open the subject up for study " .... it was these methods that he attempted
to develop with his intelligence, and being, and I can tell you that the use of that  word in this
conjunction is  appropriate & accurate  ... but then he made a concentrated effort to surround himself with the most talented, the most intelligent, younger people he could gather.
And he had the credentials to obtain them.  They knew it and he knew it.  Paul was a very astute
bargainer ... especially for the highest prizes ... the very highest prizes.
.
So at the end of his life, just as at the beginning, he had a group of individuals whom he looked to so as to learn from ... to gain perhaps  a little more ... of an understanding of advanced ideas as might be allowed him .... by the very people who others considered students ... but he really had hand picked them in order actually to learn from them through anananda ... the Universal  process of exchange.
.
So he had it coming to him at the start of his life .... and he had it coming to him at the end of his life.
.
.
.bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb.  now back to my writing from 3 months ago.....
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Ruth & I searched; looked, for two years for a teacher.  One who might help push us upwards a bit.
We met an Indian artist in Albuquerque, New Mexico at a bookshop there and had tea.
Graham Dodd.  He told us
of the man he was studying with; a quite remarkable man.  He had lots of credentials; lots.  His
name was Paul Henry Beidler, and he had been with Gurdjieff in Paris in 1923 when he was a
student of the well known Le Corbusier, the architect ( United Nations building ).  This was 1983.
.
Mr. Beidler accepted Ruth & I as students.  I was 51; Ruth was 45; Paul was 78.  The Spice House
was twenty-five years old at the time; the kids were grown now; ready to move out on their
own into their individual spice efforts.  Our role with our kids would change now.  It was important,
Ruth & I felt, for us to attempt a further development of ourselves.  It wasn't that we would not have
a role within our family now, but rather that role would be of a different nature than before.
.
He passed away in 1998 at 92, the same age as Olgivanna Wright lived to.  She was also there with
the young Paul Beidler with Gurdjieff  & the Fontainbleu  forest philosophers in Paris in 1923.
( I recall Paul telling us that he had been with Olgivanna together for a bit when she had just
turned 91 ... he was 83 then .... they looked at each & laughed; where life had taken them now ).
.
When I look back on the fourteen years that we knew this exceptional, yes , remarkable man, I
think often of the main thrust of his teaching.
.
He had two gigantic themes ... and others also; important ones too ... but he kept coming back to
these two twin teachings:
.
" Conscious labor and intentional suffering.  The two giant pillars of the Work. "  Paul Beidler.
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How to endure.  How to really honestly look inside yourself  to see where you are in need of repair;
to see where the weak parts are that will cause you not to be able to do what you were sent here to do.
.
How to begin to establish within yourself the sensitivity required to be able to see what the Earth
really is; and what your responsibility is towards the Earth in a much grander sense; way, than
most imagine.  This went into the sublime  creative things that the Earth requires of us due to our different, seemingly higher nature;  our potential as new patterns blended with spirituality.
.
He said to Ruth & I one day " Make something unique for the universal design ".
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The small beautiful prose like writing about the Earth by Pliny from the first century gives just a little taste; flavor, of Paul's way of looking at the Earth; seeing what the Earth is; what the Earth is about.
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" It is certainly the case that a soil which has a taste of perfume will be the best soil.
If we need an explanation as to what is the nature of this odour from such soil,
it is that which often occurs even when the ground is not being turned up, just towards
sunset, at the place where the ends of rainbows have come down to Earth,
and when the soil has been drenched with rain followng a long period of drought.
The Earth then sends out that divine breath of hers, of quite incomparable
sweetness, which she has conceived from the sun. "
.
Pliny, 23-79 A.D.  Natural History, Book XVII.

click below please to see a little about the font used here, Frank Lloyd Wright's " Eaglefeather "
.http://www.spice-work.com/eaglefeather.1932.html

If you look at the reference of June 1 in our Daily Spice Journal, you'll see where Ruth saw a
rainbow that day.  When we met Paul , for an entire year we saw rainbows; Ruth & I, many of them.
.
The last time we were to see him, in January of 1997, as we left his home in the foothills of the
Valley of Gold ... Valle D'Oro ... just outside Tucson in the foothills of the mountains there ...
we saw a beautiful double rainbow immediately upon leaving him & his Asian wife Udon.
It lasted for some hours as we traveled from Tucson to Phoenix and then on to Sedona.
.
 One day in September 1984 we received an envelope from him.  In it was a hand written poem.
It was sent to all his other pupils too, Darwin Tichenor of Madison, Myron Kowalski who stayed
there at Northeon Forest, and the others too.
.
It was dated Sept. 14.  This happens to be Ruth's birthday.  As the next few years passed, each
time we took his poem out to read it, I said to Ruth, " You know Honey, you should really try to write
Paul a poem in return.  Isn't that what his teaching is about?  He plays beautiful music, and then
 we try to play beautiful music back? "   She did write a poem back.  His is first ...  then hers:
.
.
I rejoice in the rain and the rainbow, the sun, the stars
and the holy breath that is the wind;
.
I rejoice in the sight and sound of birds, the song in the
voices of women and in the smile of friends;
.
I rejoice in the earned sweat of the body, the upturned
faces of flowers and in the peek of the shy racoon;
.
I rejoice in the scent of grasses, the feel of watered earth,
the thousand perfumes of flowers and fruit;
.
I rejoice in the peace that comes from prayers, the joy
in children's voices and the whisper in the shade of trees;
.
I rejoice in the lust of the body  and the yield of a
lusty response and in the grain that makes bread;
.
I rejoice that the moon must wane in its time and that
after the darkness comes the new moon - glorious.
.
o o o o o o o
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I rejoice that no one can abide upon the earth
so long as to grow weary of its riches.
.
Sept. 14, 1984
.
.
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                                                                   9-14-91
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I rejoice in the darkness of the storm,
and the colors of the rainbow.
.
I rejoice in the sharp angle of the arm
in motion and the gentle curve of
the cheek at rest.
.
I rejoice in the glow of approval
and the heat of anger.
.
I rejoice in the discipline of training
and the freedom of play.
.
I rejoice in the structure of learning
and the openess of understanding.
.
I rejoice in the energy of the day,
and the serenity of the night.
.
I rejoice in unqualified love and
earned friendship.
.
.
bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb
.

.
About the rainbow in the picture here .... we had just left Paul's house in Valle D'Oro in the foothills just outside Tucson .... it was to be the last time we would see this man alive .... he was a man in the
true sense of it.  I recall one time on a Sunday morning there at Northeon Mountain in eastern Pennsylvania, we were all gathered inside the mill .... he was getting ready to start talking about his new program, but he asked if there were any questions about the program we were leaving.  I don't know why but I asked him " What is it to be a man? " He bristled at the question ... shot back " Who asked that question? " I sort of dissolved, even hiding  a little behind the lady in front of me ( we were
all sitting on cushion rolls tucked in underneath our butts; in the way that those who meditate sit ) ... did I say " me " or maybe I just didn't say anything.  But he did talk at the question ... he said in a
contemptuous way that we wern't interested here in becoming " men " or becoming " women " ... but
we  were interested in the development of being.  The rainbow occured in January of 1997.  Paul died
in August of 1998 I think.  We talked on the telephone a number of times between when we saw him
last, and when he died.  I have those conversations on tape so he still advises me; keeps me pointed
in the right direction.  He did love Gurdjieff ... but he said to me that when you do what you will do with this, it can't be just a Gurdjieff school.  That was the way he did it too.  It wasn't just a Gurdjieff
school.  Written Saturday, July 29, 2000.
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.
.
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It was November of 1983.  Ruth & I had been allowed special scholar priviledges at
Sterling Hall at Yale University to look at, examine, study, the rare book collection
of Gurdjieff's student Ouspensky.  All his original manuscripts were written in
cyrillic; Russian. Tight  single line spacing.  There were 35 white bankers style chipboard
boxes filled with his writings.  My Mother Anna, and my Father William, had lived in
Kiev in southern Russia at the same time as Ouspensky had lived there.
...
It was still November, and we drove from New Haven to New York City.  We went to see
 Lord Pentland in his suite at 790 Madison Ave.  The traffic was terrible; the parking
non existent.  Ruth took the wheel ... I hopped out of the car & went into the office
building there by myself while she circled around the block a few times.  As I
understood it, Lord Pentland ran an African Safari program, along with his friend &
associate Dick Brower.  On his deathbed in Paris,, Gurdjieff had looked around the room; looked
at those around him, and said " Lord Pentland take North & South America ".
I did talk with Dick Brower that day, but not Lord Pentland.  Later, when we were back
at the Spice House in Milwaukee on Old World Third Street, Lord Pentland phoned us.
Billy & I were working together, just the two of us, mixing spices in the Lobby Store, and
he talked with both of us ... in fact he talked with Billy more than with me.  But I did tell him
the work was alive & well here in Milwaukee; these ideas about struggling to get to higher
ground.  He told me I should try to talk with a man, a brillliant man, he said, named James
-------.  Just a month later Lord Pentland was dead.  Gone at 84 suddenly in his sleep I think.
...
It was the last day of Novemer 1984.  We phoned back to the Spice House & talked with Billy
that we might be just a day or two longer.  Early Friday morning we first met Paul; Mr. Beidler.
The three of us talked for two hours there in front of his fire place in his house.  His property was
of Revolutionary vintage; large grounds; a few acres; a cluster of different houses, a stream that ran
through the center of it with a large red wood & field stone late 1700's grain mill; it was a classic early
American grain mill structure.  It was called " the mill " now; altho some of the men & women there
still called it the Temple, from the time when Paul had leased the property to a Japanese Zen group.
Paul had studied in Asia for some twenty five years; very old ideas; very old ways to attempt to cut
through to see ourselves.  He had been a monk at the Temple of Hui Neng in south China, & also
had studied religious systems in Japan.  The first book he asked us to read was the Diamonnd Sutra of Hui Neng, but very soon after he insisted we stopped reading books ... allowing only two or three.
It was ourselves we were to study; it was ourselves we were to read.  The location was a small, flat, yet strangely powerful little mountain in eastern Pennsylvania.  Northeon mountain. He seemed to like to make the connection between what he was attempting here and that the Indians considered it special.  We tried to explain to him what we did in life; what we thought was important to teach our
children; to share with our children.  He seemed to like the fact that I was Eastern Orthodox; that
my Mother & Father had come from south Russia;  that my Mother had lived through the
Russian revolution. That I had lived with  five different families as I grew up in Milwaukee.           From that initial talking together he accepted Ruth & I as his pupils.
...
 The last spices we shared with Paul & Udon.  Ginger tea.  The next day Udon's Thai basil soup.
A little here about the beauty & intensity of spice flavors coming from the inside of us to the taste buds; how does this occur; when does this occur?  Yes, when we are in the presence of something
extraordinary.  But there seem to be two taste & flavor circuits acting here; one is that the ginger
taste is in the mouth physically, yes, one can always concentrate on this more or less; but then there is
this other circuit that is activated only on special occassions; in special places; with special people.
This secondary circuit is what we want to study with our newer Spice House apprentices.  What can
we call this double system?  Should we even call it anything?  One of Paul's strong beliefs was that
" names tend to conceal things ", yes, his exact words.  So often in the store I have a hard time
getting the customer to taste something ... they repeatedly say  the name of the spice or the her & they most often stop there.  They go from an idea in the brain to saying the word, and back again,
without ever taking " the actual thing " in.  So maybe we should not give this " twin mountain taste "
a name.  Ask Ruth about what she thinks about this.
But the ginger tea was like this; very close to this.  I had brought the ginger roots; China #l grade;
nice light peeled dried larger hands of ginger; I happened to have them in my pocket.  When  Paul started discussing them there as he sat in his chair just to my left ....
I stood up & got them out of my pocket.  Showed them to Paul.  He motioned for Udon to make tea
with them.  She brought out her large wooden mortar & pestle.  She was a beautiful Thai lady; woman
with a classic face & with good hands; a  woman's hands but very powerfully constucted & there was
not only a lot of intelligence in her hands, but also a certain special kind of intelligence.  She had come
from a higher family in Thailand; a family with considerable status; Paul was 65 and Udon was just
23 when they married.  They had three children.  This was Paul's second family.  The quote from
" Who's Who " is from a son from the first family.  They had three children ... all beautiful Eurasian
children,& each was very intelligent.  The son Penh recently graduated from M.I.T. in Boston;
Cambridge.  Paul told me that possibly the older daughter was interested in
drama.  But back to Udon & the pounding of the ginger roots ... she squatted there in the front room
of their home on the expensive carpeting ... but really on a much smaller carpet which their son Penh had brought back recently from a visit to India as a gift to his parents.
It  was a good thing to watch this higher lady do the squatting &
pounding just as good women do in villages everywhere on the Earth.  A wholesome thing to watch
this. She pounded  the ginger roots into a bruised crushed form, so as to open the fibres & release the
hidden oils that are trapped within the fibres .. by this very old method of women from Asia
 .... she then went to get boiling water from the kitchen, and came & poured
a little into each of our cups, and it sat there steeping while the very sunny room became silent with
just the four of us there ... no one talked while the ginger tea steeped ... perhaps for ten or twelve minutes ... there was just  this  vibrant silence ..... I will always remember it
 as it was so filling; so ginger sweet.  The birds sang outside the window, and it was very very good.
The four of us in this good splendid silence while the crushed ginger roots steeped in the cups.
...
Paul; Mr. Beidler, is mentioned in three books that I know of, maybe a fourth.  In Frank Lloyd Wrights  Letters to Apprentices book; in the book by his good friend John Bennet Witness, in the
chapter North Persia.  Paul could speak Aramic, he was an engineer working on the Aswan Dam at
this time, I think ( but he didn't share this with me, I assumed it ), the two of them were able to speak
with some very old Dervishes in a back area of Persia.  Paul actually did the speaking & listening, then he translated back to John Bennet.  Mr. Bennett was a copious note taker, something Paul chided
him on, and Paul always chuckled when he talked of Bennett .. that he missed half of the conversation ... because he was taking notes so much.  But how much we owe Mr. Bennett for putting his life down
on paper in book form, and Paul respected John Bennet very much personally.  The third book Paul
is mentioned in is a small classic by the Zen master Lu Kwan U, who wrote with the English name of Charles Luk.  Secrets of Chinese Mediation in which Paul is mentioned in the introduction, along with
Huston Smith, the well known professor of Theology at M.I.T., later at Berkely U. Of Calif. .. they
were both students of Lu Kwan U ..... this was about 1960 I think ... Lu Kwan U would take his
pupils up into the cliffs surrounding Hong Kong ... " Bill, have you ever been to Hong Kong? "
he asked me " No, Paul ", well I guess it was beautiful up high in the cliffs.  Paul shared with me
his ideas about elevation in architecture to produce higher effects ... but up there on top of the cliffs
Lu Kwan U would  pull a  ginger root out of his pocket and cut it  into small pieces with his small
knife, then hand a little  piece to each of them to meditate on.  If you have a chance to obtain the
video series done by Bill Moyers with Huston Smith, this would be a good thing to watch.  Channel 10
here in Milwaukee ran it ... it is titled something like The Ways of Spirituality and it has Huston Smith
conversing on the Earth's great Spiritualities.  To show Paul as he really was is my goal here in
this writing.  He was such an elegant and powerful man, most often silent, he had an uncanny sense
of judgement, often unorthodox, and he was of a higher order, there is no doubt, but very shrewd.
 He had really good eyes.  The way they shifted quickly to look at you, then dart away; they were very perceptive eyes but also very kind eyes.  I recall when Helen H. left his study to go more in the direction of the Quakers and the Amish, this was
after some 15 years years with him ... she said how fortunate she was to have been allowed to sit at his
feet.  Quite a statement & everyone who had been with him knew exactly what she meant.  Helen was a very intelligent older lady who was his trusted aide.  But if you might see Huston Smith in the Bill Moyers video you'll see some of Paul's teaching manner ... the crispness of
diction; the straight pure posture of one who knows what he's doing; knows his purpose; the little
bit of puritan nature; and very very quick, bright,  intellligent.
...
The tasting; meditating on the ginger root is something we should discuss more; and in more detail.
...
" Was Tatiana fond of you? "  I asked Paul.  It was a Sunday early afternoon about 1.  Paul & I &
Ruth & Darwin sat on the  rug together; the gathering was just over; it was 6 hours, from 7 am til 1.
We were discussing that Ruth had talked with Tatiana Nagro, the grandaughter of Ouspensky.  We
were at Northeon Forest which Paul & Udon owned, just outside of Easton, Pennsylvania.
Paul smiled ... said something  like " Well, I don't know if she was fond of me, but she knew I was there. "  We were talking about the Gurdjieff School that Ouspensky ran in Mendham, New Jersey.
It was a lovely piece of quite expensive property called Franklin Farms.  The very wealthy original
Wisconsinite from Janesville, Mabel Dodge Luhan, had, as I understand it, actually donated this
valuable piece of property to the Ouspenskys to set up a school along the Gurdjieff lines of study.
It attracted some of the finest minds; people, of that time along the East coast.  This was in the '40's.
Paul had been part of this Gurdjieff school for some years.  He told me that he spent every weekend
there for 7 years. I think he was an architect in New York City at the time.  ( Paul is mentioned
briefly in Frank Lloyd Wright's book Letters to Apprentices.  He was taken on by FLW as a 28 year
old teacher's assisstant to FLW when the Taliesin School of Organic Architecture was started by
Frank & Olgivanna Wright at Taliesin near Madison in 1932.  Gurdjieff stayed there for a period in
1934, and Paul shared    some stories about this with Ruth & I. Gurdjieff & Olgivanna & Paul went to a movie house in Madison one time ...  ... Gurdjieff loved movies.  Paul was 28 at the time; most of the
25 or so young students were about 18 or so ). When Ruth & I visited Franklin Farms the first time,
we had difficulty finding it, so we stopped in at the Mendham Village Hall.  There were pictures of the
Rockefellers lining the stairs as they were; had been, trustees of Mendham.  It was not hard to find,
but it wasn't called Franklin Farms anymore; now it was called Chartwell Manor; a school for young
boys, and not a cheap school either.  We were allowed in to talk with the current owners; a couple,
who treated us civily and showed us around the grounds; around the inside of the house.  The estate
had at one time been the residence of the Governor of New Jersey.  National Geographic Magazine had a nice color photograph of the gardens there in a 1939 issue.
.
Madame Ouspensky ran Franklin Farms pretty much, as I understand it.  Mr. Ouspensky stayed in
New York City much of the time, with his group of pupils.  Paul had been a student of Madame
Ouspensky, and he was very clear about this.  I don't think he was too fond of Mr. Ouspensky.
Paul was good friends with C.S. Nott, who also spent some time there at Franklin Farms..
.
It was the first time Ruth & I had been inside of a governor's residence .... and the next   time this would  happen was really the surprise of suprises for Ruth & I ... as it would be    when our son, who
at the time we first visited Mendham was just 18 or 19, later would himself buy the Governor of
Wisconsin's former residence on N. Menomonee River Parkway here in Wauwatosa, entirely with
the amazing fortune he had accumulated in just a few short years in the spice trade.  Billy & Ruth & I
shared a vanilla cordial we had just blended  using calvados as the liquor base to which we added our
special formula  of different vanilla beans ... when he first bought the property; when it was still
empty.
But the reason I am writting about Mendham & Franklin Farms & Paul being a Gurdjieff/Ouspensky
student there for seven years .... is that also there with Paul was a couple, the Kadloubouskys.  One
of the reasons Paul accepted Ruth & I as his pupils, in my opinion, was that I was Eastern Orthodox.
The entire Gurdjieff approach was one of a certain serious spiritual piousness, along with a frank, incissive, analytical, examination of ones " workings " for a long period; over a long period.
The Eastern Orthodox religion has an aspect of humbling earnestness; honestness, that was a part
of what Paul's teaching was all about too.  On our shelf as the Spice House is the group of books
called the Philokalia.  Five volumes of collected writtings of the early church Fathers from the
first to the twelfth centuries.  These are wonderful reference works for anyone interested in the study
of the mind; or the study of how we are; how we really are.  Gurdjieff constantly said that we all are
upside down.  Everywhere else in the Universe he said men were all right side up ... but on Earth
upside down.  I guess that is the starting point if you want to get into this study of seeing why most
relationships fall apart; disintigrate.  the default setting is automatically set to have all relationships
come apart; we have to start from that premise.  Probably.  .
.
It was the Kadlouddouskys that translated Gurdjieff's writtings, pretty much, according to Paul.  He
would chide Ruth & I & the others often about " believing " what the written books of Gurdjieff
contained, as it wasn't Gurdjieff speaking ... it was the Kadloubowskys.  But yet when he asked to see
our worn copy of All & Everything it was a thing to see the respect his hands showed in holding it; &
how warm & good we feel that he held our copy in his hands ... and that once he passed his old copy
to Ruth & I to hold ... he wanted us to touch, hold, his very well read copy.
.
One time in the l940's, Ouspenssky asked the Kadloubowskys if they might start the translattion
into English of the massive old collection of Eastern Orthodox writtings; letters, known as the
Philokalia in Eastern Europe.  Russia, Serbia, etc. This was undertaken by them, that is they started
the long process of the tranlation .... what came out of it was the first book " Writings from the Philokalia " a short book, which it was felt, serve as an introduction to those interested of what this
writing was about, and that lots more was still to come.
bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb
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 p. 1210, All & Everything.  Principles of Self-Observation.
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We sat at Paul's dining room table.  Ruth & I & Paul.  Udon was not there this time; she was out
shopping.  This was at thier home in the foothills just outside Tucson.  They lived in an area called
Valle D'Oro ... the valley of gold.  Ruth & I had arrived in Tucson about 9 the previous evening.  We went directly to Paul's house, but no one was home. I left our calling card ... some spices attached to his mailbox.  We phoned the next morning from our motel there in Tucson, and he said we could come over as soon as we'd like .. I think we got there shortly after noon ... he was glad to see us.
.
About reading " from the author " .... about Edgar Tafel phoning while we were at the dining room table.
.
                      to be continued ......                                                           in through the basement window ...

Saturday afternoon, Nov. 28, 1987.  " First you have to see that value of it. "
.
I was quietly sitting on the steps in the mill. We were inside the old grain mill used in the Revolutionar
Colonial period.  There was a large thick oriental rug covering most of the floor, which was wooden
planks in good condition.  There was a pot bellied stove near the front door. Dan was playing the piano, I think it was Bach.  A member of the Canadian group had just come in & now sat meditating
on the carpet.  Dan was a skilled classical musician, but he was currently baking bread in a local bakery in Easton.  His father was a general in the army.  Paul encouraged him to continue on with his
classical music career, but Dan was drawn to the vitality of baking bread ... with its rewards of doing
something which is of very practical use to others. The music was changing my feelings & mellowing
me inside.  Then Darwin came in & said that he had just seen Paul & that if I wanted to see Paul he
was not busy now.  Darwin was a practicing pyschologist in Madison.  We had driven here together in
his car from Wisconsin and had arrived last night for the gathering, which would include Northeon
Forest members, mostly from the U. S. & Canada, but also some from Switzerland & Venezuela.
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I went from the mill to Paul's house; he had his family with him.  I saw Udon with a small child.
The parcel of land that Northeon Forest was on was quite extensive with a number of other buildings;
homes; in addition to the mill, which was a large three storey structure.  Paul & his family were
staying for the long week-end in the carriage house.  They had flown in from Arizona two days
earlier.  Paul invited me in.  I sat down and we exchanged pleasantries.  I could hear his voice was
hoarse now from talking so much with the others, one by one.  He looked tired.  I think he was 82 years old at this time.  I was 59.
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I asked him if I could read him a poem.  He seemed surprised, but said sure.  So I read David's poem
about the stars to him.  It was the first one after Brother Jeremy's introduction in the David Kherdian
book The Farm.  I read it well; perhaps because the music from Dan's playing had put me where I
ought to be to read something like this.  I had read it while the music was playing in preparation.
Paul was touched with the poem ... you could see it in his eyes.  His eyes & his whole face became
softer.  He asked about the book.  I said it was a bunch of peoms about a farm ... sort of like
Northeon Forest ... that existed peprhaps ten years ago.  I said if he'd like to read it and take it, I
could maybe get it back the next time I saw him in April ( April was when the next gathering was to
occur ).  He looked at the book with a nice look, and it appeared he was interested in it; even anxious
to read it.  We exchanged a few more words; he said I'd have to do most of the talking as his voice was nearly gone.  I said about the only thing I'd like to bring up is that next year Ruth and I have to
figure out some way of making more time for the work activities..  Not alot more time; not so much
that we are asking too much and therefore are sure to fail ... but might we compress things l0% so as to
allow room for more of the Work influence to come into our lives.
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Paul said " First you have to see the value of it. Then it becomes easier. "  He also said rather than
cut something out - you don't - bur rather you fit in the Work material.  You don't cut the other stuff down - but rather fit it in.  He remakred that he talks about this subject in his next program under the
idea of " the disease of  tomorrow "... always putting things off until the next day.
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I then arose so as to make it a short visit because it was the correct thing to do as he was  tired.
As I got up from my chair I   touched his hands ... placed my left hand on  top of his folded hands
and touched him and said it was good to talk with him; to see him. As I walked to the door, saying
that Darwin was waiting for me as he wanted to go into town to get something to eat, Paul rose and
followed me to the door saying that they too were going into town by set something to eat shortly.
He had been moved by the poetry reading and my touching him was was actually giving Darwin and
I the option of going into town with him to eat.  This was very rare, as Paul nearly always kept a
clear distance in a social way from everyone.  He was a very strong family man and kept to his
family mostly at these gatherings, except of course for all the individual sessions and the many
group activities he supervised.  He was very strong on understatement; time after time you could
see how he would purposly extend things ... draw them out ... so as never never to put this precious
effort that was going on into any type of strain.  This included his personal relationships with each of
his students.  He asked very little; in fact nothing, except to see that the student was earnest.
.

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Mr. Gurdjieff died in Paris Oct. 29, 1949.
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In the last part of his powerful & penetrating All & Everthing; in the chapter From the Author, Gurdjieff speaks of  how difficult it is to see things as they really are ...  more than that even .. to see things, like especially our own behavior, as it really is. So that now we might have remorse.  Remorse.
  Remorse for the pitiful way we've treated others.  It is very difficult to comprehend this, but remorse appears to be a quality with magnificent aspects; features, and it seems to be required for some purpose.  Yes, perception has a destiny, as Emerson wrote, but remorse has a divine destiny.  One way to be allowed  a bit of it is to imagine one's own death.
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My Mother was dying.  Cardamom.  Haneef & my Mother's hand shelled green Mysore cardamom pods.  Dark inner cardamom seeds with such a quality only taken on when  earnestly, carefully, done by a dying woman.  Haneef knew what was there & he always asked for the cardamom seeds that my Mother had done.  Haneef & Malik invite Ruth, Billy, & I to come and meet the grand Hazrat from Sikh, the golden city in the Punjab.  The Imman.  The preparation of the ginger powder for the Hazrat.
The offering to the Hazrat of the gift of the ginger powder.  The beautiful reading about ginger & its
special qualities ... about the development of courage; more even, courage with vision, as written in the Holy book of this special group of men & woman as written originally by the Hazrat's Grandfather.
A wonderful tale of the higher nature of spices, in this case of the spice ginger.
" A pinch of ginger every day to keep the Heart warm " I say to the Hazrat; the Imman. " Don't we both need this special taste to help us do what we are both meant to do? " I continue.  " Might you
please take a pinch, a taste with me?  ......... you & I together? "
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My Mother has been gone for some four years now.  It is early 1984.  We have a guest coming to pay
a special visit at the Spice House.  Our guest arrives & we go into the back of the store, actually in
the area way in back where we do our spice grinding.  Darwin Tichenor is our guest and he has a
special mission.  Billy is there, Ruth is there too, and myself..
.
I bring out the handsome looking green capsules.  The cardamom has been saved in a way where time
was stopped.  It is the same lot of cardamom that my Mother worked on some four years before.
I spread out the green pods and the four of us start shucking the cardamom.  We make strong coffee
with some of the first cadamom seeds we've released ... we've added them into the coffee that we now
share together.  Ruth is called out to the front to help wait on spice customers so that now it is just
Darwin & Billy & myself.  I see how much alike they are, Darwin and Billy, both unusually intelligent.
It is fast going, both with the cardamom shelling & with the conversation.  There seems to be an
energy coming out of the cardamom that is coming into the three of us as we work & talk.
Cardamom is a member of the ginger family.  But a very special member.
.
A month later we received this letter from Paul; Mr. Beidler, in which he talks of how one might
prepare cardamom.  He is a gofted architect; and he talks of the men who worked on the Gothic
cathedrals of the middle ages in Europe, and he talks about how builders of the finest, highest
calling go about their task .....
.

 As this goes on we hope to illuminate the relationship of all this with spices ... with what spices are.
.
A short footnote here about cardamom which illustrates the depth; the surprising depth, that spices were
said to have in the old spice cultures.  About cardamom and the heart ... there is the idea in India that
we are constructed, wired if we can say it that way, in a pretty firm fashion.  So that if one desires to
change, it really is not possible.  As someone said to me " We are hard wired ".  Yes.  But we can
attempt to create this parallel something alongside of this hard wired circut.  Can we attempt that?
but the idea about cardamom in India is that cardamom can softem; dissolve to a certain extent; the
very intelligent construction that has been created that holds us to a pattern from which it is difficult to emerge.
This idea is referred to in a good spice book, altho a book of fiction; " Mistress of Spices " by talented
young Indian writer to lives & teaches writing in California.
So maybe there is a chance to change ourselves if, only if, we can soften that hard wired iron mistress we are in.
.
So the question begins to slowly emerge from the confusion; exactly what is it that
we want to discover together  here at the Spice House?  Yes, together, we want to discover
it together.  And is it involved in more than ourselves?  And does discovery
automatically change us?  And what is it about spices that is so mystically attractive?
Why do spices draw some of us to them?  What is this all about?
And what is it about meaning that seems to be a key to understanding what spices are?
That in order to understand spices we should attempt to understand a little about meaning?
And what is it about the hierarchy of things here on Earth that also hold a key to spices?
Things appear to go from dull & coarse on up to a vibrating luminosity & fine.
And spices seem to be this top layer ... appear to be vibrating with a unique luminosity.
How might we go about studying this?
.
.
.
.
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 Paul's hand written programs follow in a second section of this writting.
He made it a point to hand write these, then take them to a Alpha Graphics shop in Tucson,
and run off what he required for his students.  He made it a point with me; impressed on me,
the attempt to keep something of a personal nature in the transmission by doing it this way.
He didn't have them " turned into machine printing ".

Here at the Spice House, we asked our grown children who were working with us at the time,
to please take a colored pen and trace each word; each sentence; do the entire page
in their hand over Paul's hand, so that they might pick up just a little something direct from
this remarkable man.  If you are going to make a copy of Paul's programs, one of more,
might we ask you please to do the same thing?  I recall Pam using a red ball point pen for
the April 12 program, and it happened that that day  was her birthday.
.
Click here please to go to Paul's hand written programs.

.

.
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There are three separate programs to be inserted here ... above ... more on these three below ....
.
the very first program was read to us over tea in a small restaurant just across the street from the
University of New Mexico campus in March of 1983 by a talented man who was a part Indian
artist ... he was operating a book store there near the campus ... a man named Graham Dodd.
He was working with Paul as a student at that time, altho later he dropped away I believe.  He
brought out the program there in the booth ... it was Ruth and I with him ... the three of us.  This was
the very first contact with the method that Paul, Mr. Beidler, used to teach the Gurdjieff ideas from.
Mr. Beidler had such good credentials to do this.  He was accepted by Gurdjieff himself in Paris
in 1923 as a personal pupil; he became good friends with C.S. Nott and John Bennett, altho
Ollgivanna ( later to become Olgivanna Frank Lloyd Wright ) was there also with Gurdjieff in
Paris in 1923, I don't recall if Paul said much about her being there with him then, but later in
1932 he was taken on by Frank Lloyd Wright to be a architectural teachers assisstant with
the first group of pupils in Frank Lloyd Wright's new Taliesin School of Organic Architecture
there at Spring Green just outside of Madison, Wisconsin.  Gurdjieff showed up there
unexpectedly in early 1934, stayed for a few months, cooked for the studuents while there.
Paul spent every weekend for 7 years at the Gurdjieff Work Franklin Farms in Mendam
New Jersey during WW II and shortly afterwards.  He studied with Mme. Ouspensky at that
time, Mr. Ouspensky pretty much ran groups in New York City at that time.  Was Dione
Lucas part of Mr. Ouspensky's New York City study groups there; then?  Or was she
more directly with Gurdjieff from her London, Paris days?
When Ouspensky died in 1947, his main student, Rodney Collin of England, left Mendham
to start a Work study group in Mexico City.  Paul followed Rodny Collin there and worked
in that setting for a period.  After Gurdjieff died in 1949, and the follower studuents talked out
a plan of action .... " I remember telling Paul that if Ruth and I surround ourselves with good
people; exceptional people, then possibly the combination of all of us might be a way of
attempting to keep something of a very high exceptional nature alive ... one or two of us
were not up to it ... but a group of us might be able to do a little something to keep these
ideas alive.  Paul said that was pretty much what the talk was about after Gurdjieff's death
with the Gurdjieff students in the New York City area.  They all decided to establish the
Gurdjieff Foundation there in New York City at that time.  Paul was asked to serve on the
original board of directors.  Which he did.  But in a couple of years he pulled way.  Paul was
an original ( I remember him saying that about C.S. Nott ) ... and altho he became disenchanted
with the direction the Gurdjieff Foundation seemed to be taking with their heavy money
aspect and especially with the investing in New York City real estate with the $ 5,000 or so
asked of each of the new people coming in ( is this correct?  that figure? ) ... it was probably
as much that his nature was one of a stallion that was not going to stay for long under
another's leadership or rule.  And he was a talented talented man with an intellect that was
at once apparent to everyone that came in contact with him.
.
So we sat there for an hour while Graham read that program to Ruth & I there in the
restaurant there by the University of New Mexico campus directly underneath the
Maya huge art work accross the street.  It was the program that dealt with the
12 joint illumination exercise ... an exercise which made one wake up for a minute to
become conscious of the fact that we exist in a body of some complexity which is an
autonomous ongoing production .... we reside there, but hardly every think about it.
Is this not so?  It is an excellent exercise.  Years later I wrote to Graham and asked
him if he might send me a copy of that very first program that he read to Ruth and I.
He sent me the original that he held in his hand that day.  I will bring it out from our
papers and post it here as time permits.
.
The third program to be posted here is the one from October 1986 that I copied from the
wall in the Mill when Ruth and I were there by ourselves waiting for Paul to finish with
another student before seeing us.  this one is written out in my hand.  Paul was extremely
conservative about releasing individual copies of his programs.  The saying " One has to earn it. "
Boy, Gosh, for sure that was Paul.  When I first thought about posting his hand written
programs to the web here .... I was not so sure that it was the correct thing to do.
He told me shortly before he died that he would never put his material on the web.
But I don't think he quite understood the web.  He was brilliant, yes, but too old to comprehend
its legimate connection to a higher search of this nature.  I recall his stressing to Ruth and I
that we had to extend ourselves to make it known that we are attempting to keep these higher
ideas alive .... so that those who are searching also ... might find a source.  He said this
pretty strongly as it was a definite and specific responsibility for older people like Ruth & myself.
After posting the first couple of programs, I do have a sense that what I am doing is proper.
.
       written Sunday morning March 10, 2002.
............................................................................................................
.Thursday evening Jan. 11, 2002.  While it is in my head, the sense of it all, what Ruth & I
were attempting some years ago back in 1982, 1983, when we went searching for someone
of a higher stature who might help the two of us in developing ourselves more .... the Spice House
was already twenty-five years old at that time ... Ruth & I knew that our grown kids were ready
to " fly ", as they say, and that our role would change.  Our role in relation to the whole.  We
were looking to make a qualitative change in ourselves .... hoping that it we were able to become
more, in a sense, that the gravitational pull of this, within the very stong connections that exist
(usually unacknowledged) of family members to each other, would also help our kids be pulled in
an upward way also.  I hope I am putting this in a proper way.  Yes, that is what we were looking to do,
to become more, richer, in a qualitative way.  & how lucky we were that Mr. Beidler accepted us as
his personal students for some nine years.  If you are reading the above programs that he wrote out
in his hand .... took to the Alpha Kinko like shops in Tucson & had them duplicated & sent them out
to his groups, his students .... you are starting to see; to feel; what a powerful man he was; how his
intellect was very high indeed.  The highest of any man I have met in my lifetime.  He was profound.
And he was an original.  He creates a sentence in his writings above ... about our role ... about our
mission here on Earth.  It is to make; create; develop; enlarge; a ray of being so that the Universe,
which he writes is asking for this specific thing from us, might be helped to fulfull its destiny.  We
are obligated to attempt this.  I recall his telling Ruth & I that a man; a woman; is born with a
thinbleful of this precious rare substance called being, and that this might be enlarged into a tea cup full.
" BEING, which we seek ways to savor and to nourish. "  There it is; that enigmatic secret to it all ...
that as we savor it, then we are also nourished by it ... and perhaps we might make it just a little
larger in our lifetime.  Self-remembering..  The process of savoring it; getting every taste from it;
getting every speck of that sublime certain form of energy which it the secret to it all.
So we all have to study what is meant by Being, and
we all have to study what is meant by Self-remembering.
.
" I pray thee love, remember. "  William Shakespeare.
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Please click here to go to the introduction chapter of our Daily Spice Journal.