Of the Life Aligned

Book excerpt: Frank Sinclair, author of Without Benefit of Clergy: Some Personal Footnotes to the Gurdjieff Teaching, has written a searching sequel to his earlier account of a life devoted to the exploration of the perennial wisdom. Drawn as a young man to the Greek-Armenian esotericist G.I. Gurdjieff's ideas about the Great Knowledge and mdash;"the powerful ancient stream of true knowledge of being" and mdash;Sinclair has spent half a century in this vocation. the present book recounts his ponderings on the "unfolding reality" of the perennialist vision following a near-fatal brush with the "outer darkness" and the passing of his wife of almost 50 years. in the process, he delves into the timeless mysteries of life and death.