The way I interpret your comment, is that Gurdjieff’s work involves practices associated with developing and strengthening one’s self and consciousness. From this description at least, it’s not obvious to me that no-self practices and Gurdjieff’s teaching would necessarily be in conflict. Rather their relationship sounds more like the relationship between different Buddhist yanas:
“Yana” means “vehicle.” A yana takes you from one place to another, spiritually. Which yana you should use depends on where you are and where you want to go. A submarine is a good way to get from shore to the bottom of the ocean. It is a bad way to get from Denver to Chicago. An airplane would be better. You can use an airplane to get to the bottom of the ocean, but I don’t recommend it.
In the same way, yanas are incompatible. They are all valid, but you can only use one at a time. Each yana has a few fundamental principles, which are entirely different.
When you read a Buddhist book or web page, or hear a Buddhist talk, it is critical to know which yana is acting as the framework of the discussion. A statement based on the principles of one yana often appears false or nonsensical if you try to understand it using the principles of another yana. This leads to serious confusion, or even yana shock. [...]
The Buddhist perspective is that the contradictory statements of the various yanas are not a problem, because they are methods, not ultimate truths.
Likewise, it might very well be that deconstructing the self and strengthening and constructing a stronger self are in some sense opposite processes, so that you cannot do both at the same time. But that doesn’t mean that you couldn’t interleave them, or first do one and then use that as a base for doing the other better.
For the sake of analogy, suppose that I’m interested in building an engine to a car. Problem is, I don’t know anything about car engines. So I start out by acquiring existing engines, taking them apart, and seeing how they work. After I have done that, I am in a better position to build an engine of my own.
I feel like self-related practices are similar. If I don’t understand how my self works and how it is constructed, then that will limit my ability to change it. But if I first take it apart, examine how it works, release existing constraints, etc., then I am in a much better position to afterwards reconstruct it and create a stronger self in its place.
Certainly my experience has been that there have been many aspects of myself which I have taken to be fixed—I’ve thought that “this is what I’m like and must be”. Later on I’ve done practices which made me realize that I don’t have to be that way. In this respect, it feels like noticing those aspects of me which are not self, help me better choose what is my true self—because I am no longer constrained by contingent factors that I took to be essential.
While I am not terribly familiar with Buddhist tantra, David Chapman’s writings about it give me the impression that the relationship between no-self practices and tantric practices has a similar relationship, with no-self -type practices being considered a prerequisite for tantric ones. First you do practices aimed at understanding the ways in which the self is constructed; then when you understand this, you are liberated from an overly narrow view of what you need to be, and can more flexibly reshape yourself and your relation to others.
The way I interpret your comment, is that Gurdjieff’s work involves practices associated with developing and strengthening one’s self and consciousness. From this description at least, it’s not obvious to me that no-self practices and Gurdjieff’s teaching would necessarily be in conflict. Rather their relationship sounds more like the relationship between different Buddhist yanas:
Likewise, it might very well be that deconstructing the self and strengthening and constructing a stronger self are in some sense opposite processes, so that you cannot do both at the same time. But that doesn’t mean that you couldn’t interleave them, or first do one and then use that as a base for doing the other better.
For the sake of analogy, suppose that I’m interested in building an engine to a car. Problem is, I don’t know anything about car engines. So I start out by acquiring existing engines, taking them apart, and seeing how they work. After I have done that, I am in a better position to build an engine of my own.
I feel like self-related practices are similar. If I don’t understand how my self works and how it is constructed, then that will limit my ability to change it. But if I first take it apart, examine how it works, release existing constraints, etc., then I am in a much better position to afterwards reconstruct it and create a stronger self in its place.
Certainly my experience has been that there have been many aspects of myself which I have taken to be fixed—I’ve thought that “this is what I’m like and must be”. Later on I’ve done practices which made me realize that I don’t have to be that way. In this respect, it feels like noticing those aspects of me which are not self, help me better choose what is my true self—because I am no longer constrained by contingent factors that I took to be essential.
While I am not terribly familiar with Buddhist tantra, David Chapman’s writings about it give me the impression that the relationship between no-self practices and tantric practices has a similar relationship, with no-self -type practices being considered a prerequisite for tantric ones. First you do practices aimed at understanding the ways in which the self is constructed; then when you understand this, you are liberated from an overly narrow view of what you need to be, and can more flexibly reshape yourself and your relation to others.