To: Rick Julian who wrote (24908 ) 9/14/1998 11:35:00 PM From: E Read Replies (2) | Respond to
Hate to do this to you, Rick, I hope it's not dirty pool; but I'm going to do some more typing here, and it's a description of just a few of Ouspensky's outlandish beliefs, as outlined by James Webb in his book The Harmonious Circle, The Lives and Work of G.I Gurdjieff, P.D. Ouspensky, and Their Followers , which my hubby happens to have in his library, and which I remembered browsing some time back. Webb is discussing the book to which you referred, The New Model :The New Model he describes the universe as a "Great Laboratory." He believed devoutly in the inheritance of acquired characteristics and argued that certain forms of life had been created solely to develop a particular characteristic which was needed for the creation of the culminating life form-- man. Man was the prize exhibit in the laboratory, for he was nature's attempt to manufacture a self-evolving creature. Ouspensky followed a bizarre but common occult theory that animals are degenerated men--perhaps failed experiments. Humans afflicted by infra-sex were symptoms of race-degeneration; and among these Ouspensky included both the sex-obsessed and the sexually "abnormal" of any description.... "the most brilliant periods of history" occurred by accident when the social order approached the caste system yet still allowing some flexibility [like] "the beginning of the 20th century in Russia."...This is really an adaptation of his early presentiment that he belonged to "a new race of men."
