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.There are three separate programs to be inserted here ... above ... more on these three below ....
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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.
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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.
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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.
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       written Sunday morning March 10, 2002.
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.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.
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" 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.