Saturday, May 25, 2019

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #327 - 25MAY19

This week on the show, we speak by telephone with Robin Bloor, author of To Fathom The Gist: Approaches to the Writings of G.I. Gurdjieff and The Arch-Absurd. This conversation ranges from the writings of G. I. Gurdjieff, to how to approach their seemingly impenetrable nature, to the cosmology of the Gurdjieff tradition and how to translate such considerations into practical work on Self.

Mr. Bloor was born in Liverpool, England in the 1950s, studied Mathematics at Nottingham University, and eventually became a computer consultant. Aside from his consultancy work he has established a reputation as an international speaker on technology topics and as a writer by virtue of many magazine articles and technical publications. In April 1999 he published his first book, The Electronic B@zaar, which was about the dot com revolution. Much to his surprise it was a UK business best seller and was published a year later in the US, just as the dot com boom turned to bust. It received several accolades, being referred to as "a classic" by Publisher's Weekly in the US.

He has been involved in The Gurdjieff Work since 1982. In 1988 he met and became a pupil of Rina Hands, an accomplished Gurdjieff Movements teacher, and an inspirational group leader, who died in 1994. In recent years Mr. Bloor has turned his attention to writing about The Gurdjieff Work, and is widely regarded as an expert on Gurdjieff's writings. His series of books under the common title of To Fathom The Gist deal directly with the inner meaning of Gurdjieff's writings. They are gradually being rolled out year by year. Robin is also an attendee and participant in the All & Everything International Conference which takes place every year and focuses on Gurdjieff's writings.

Robin immigrated to the US in 2002, settling in Texas. In 2003 he was awarded an honorary Ph.D. in Computer Science by Wolverhampton University in the UK in recognition of 'Services to the IT Industry'. From 2004 to 2007 he participated in writing three Dummies books on technology: Service Oriented Architecture for Dummies, Service Management for Dummies and Cloud Computing for Dummies.

More information about Robin Bloor's work can be found at:

Austin Gurdjieff Society Website: austingurdjieffsociety.weebly.com,

To Fathom the Gist Website: www.tofathomthegist.com,

Robin Bloor's email address: robin.bloor @ gmail.com.


Saturday, May 11, 2019

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #326 - 11MAY19

This week on the show we converse in the studio with Ken McLeod , founder and director of UnfetteredMind.org, a website offering resources on practical Buddhism. Ken trained in the Tibetan Buddha-dharma, translated for his teacher Kalu Rinpoche, and has written books that translate and comment on Tibetan texts. His books include A Trackless Path, Reflections on Silver River, An Arrow to the Heart, and Wake Up To Your Life. Ken’s work focuses upon making the Buddha’s teachings relevant and accessible to western practitioners.


More information about Ken McLeod's work can be found at:

Saturday, May 4, 2019

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #325 - 04MAY19


This week on the show we converse by telephone with Roger Lipsey, a biographer, art historian, editor, and translator. Roger Lipsey earned both his MA (1966) and Ph.D. (1974) from New York University. His Ph.D. was in the history of art at the Institute of Fine Arts at NYU. Dr. Lipsey has served as the director of the Society for Myth and Tradition, the publisher of Parabola magazine. He is also the author of Coomaraswamy: His Life and Work; An Art of Our Own: The Spiritual in Twentieth-Century Art; Angelic Mistakes: The Art of Thomas Merton; Make Peace Before the Sun Goes Down: The Long Encounter of Thomas Merton and His Abbott, James Fox; and Hammarskjöld: A Life, which has been hailed as the definitive biography of Dag Hammarskjöld. For many decades, he has been a participant in the Gurdjieff teaching. His newly released Shambhala book, Gurdjieff Reconsidered - The Life, the Teachings, the Legacy is the subject of this episode's discussion.

More information about Roger Lipsey's work can be found at: