Language, Understanding and Medicine
Introduction
A question may be asked: Why the branching out into issues of language in recent posts, and previously, when the main themes of this publication are said to be the examination of medicine, hypnotism and consciousness in Gurdjieff’s teaching? Well, on the one hand, one could say that everything to do with Gurdjieff’s legacy impinges on these three areas. On the other hand, language, especially alongside human mentation, seems to have been a particular “hobby” of Gurdjieff’s [1], and, as mentioned in the article, “A New Principle of Language,” he strikingly implies that understanding, or the lack of it, is dependent on our language [2]. In the last article, “Ideas and Understanding: The first remedy for abnormality,” and elsewhere, I have given my view that understanding is a kind of medicine, a harmonising factor for us.
This thought is continued in the posts listed below, which look at some of the inner confrontations that may underlie the development of such healing medicine of understanding:
Confrontations, contact and blending of functionings