about concerning subudjieff?

i don't endorse this, but here's from Bennett's Concerning Subud, published when Bennett was introduced to Subud and for a while championed it, before finding it somewhat lacking. It is from Chapter 2, "A Personal Approach," from undiscoveredworldspress.com/concerningsubud

1. Gurdjieff

In the present chapter, I shall give an account of the experiences that led me by the end of 1955 to expect that in the near future an important event connected with the New Epoch was to occur in England, and that this event would be heralded by the arrival from the East of a man endowed with special powers.

The story begins with my return to Gurdjieff in July 1948, after twenty-five years of separation. At our first meeting, he asked me to read three times the Ashiata Shiemash chapters of All and Everything—then still in manuscript form—adding that these were most important for me. Later, he returned to them often in conversation, and from his explanations it was clear that he regarded the awakening of Conscience in the soul of man as the only hope of achieving the 'Harmonious Development of Man' which was and is the aim of his system.

Here it is necessary to add a few remarks upon Gurdjieff himself. He was a real teacher—that is, one who brought an original lesson that he himself had learned from some higher source. Gurdjieff was no mere syncretist who weaves, more or less skillfully, into a single thread, strands taken from many older traditions. It is true that nine-tenths of what he taught could be traced to known sources—Greek Orthodox monasticism, Sufi mysticism, the Kabbalistic cosmology, neo-platonism, the Areopagite, Pythagorean and Egyptian numerology, Buddhist and Lamaist psychology—to name only a few of the best known—and that his psychological exercises, including his remarkable rhythmic movements and ritual dances, were mostly of Moslem Dervish and Central Asiatic origin. But, when all that is derived from the past has been accounted for, there remains in Gurdjieff's system a residue of authentic innovation, not so much a specific doctrine as a new point of view that breaks with the past and sees beyond the disputes that have divided the religions of the world for the past thousand years. Gurdjieff points the way to the New Epoch, even though he himself may not have been permitted to enter the promised land.

Who and what Gurdjieff himself was, has always been an enigma. Those who were closest to him were the most certain that they had never understood him. I myself met him for the first time in 1920 at Kuru Tcheshme, the palace of Prince Sabaheddin of Turkey on the Bosphorus. Later I spent a short time at his Institute at Fontainebleau in France. I saw much of him at the end of his life, and was with him for the last time a few days before he died. I have read his unpublished
autobiographies—for there are more than one—and I have heard stories of his early life from members of his family, and of the period before 1920 from friends who had known him since the early years of this century. Each person gives a different account of him. He is already a legendary figure—the hero or villain of fantastic stories connected with the Dalai Lama, Stalin, the Emperor Nicholas II, Hitler and George Bernard Shaw. Some say he was admitted to a hidden brotherhood in Central Asia, whose secrets he stole in order to set himself up as a teacher in the West. I am sure that all such tales are wide of the mark. The mystery of Gurdjieff was much deeper than sham occultism or political intrigue. He made upon me the impression of an exile from another world who must always be a stranger in any company. There is undoubtedly much autobiography in Beelzebub's Tales to his Grandson, and when asked outright if Beelzebub was a portrait of himself, Gurdjieff often hinted at an affirmative reply.

I am not concerned here to make an assessment of Gurdjieff or his teaching, but only to suggest that he must have foreseen the coming of Subud and even drew in Ashiata Shiemash a picture of the messenger who was to come in our time. [*cf. All and Everything, pp. 347-90. Gurdjieff explained that these chapters are prophetic and that Ashiata Shiemash the Prophet of Conscience was still to come.] Apart from the predictions made in his writings, Gurdjieff in the last months of his life referred many times to his own imminent departure from this world and to the coming of another who would complete the work that he had started. He even said once that the one who was to come "is already preparing himself a long way from here" (i.e. from Paris). At another time, in 1949, he gave a clear indication that his pupils should seek for links with the islands of the Malay Archipelago. I must say that I did not at the time believe that Gurdjieff was soon to die or that the coming of the promised Teacher would occur in my own lifetime.

It will, therefore, be understood that after Gurdjieff's death in 1949, many of his followers [*cf. Kenneth Walker's Venture with Ideas, the last pages [which I happen to have with me today, go figure - the reference is following G's death Walker and A., are discussing how G's stories deliver the essentials and nothing more and A. stated "'if G had meant us to try to get into touch with those from whome he obtained his knowledge, after his death, he would have left us more explicit instructions than are to be found in his book. As he has given us nothing on which we can act, we must conclude that he did not intend this.' 'Then you feel as I do," [Walker] said, 'that the whole thing is finished.' A. nodded his head, hesitated and then added, but in so low a voice that I had difficulty in hearing him, 'Unless, of course, some move is made by them.'"] awaited the coming of another teacher who would take up the work that Gurdjieff had left unfinished.

2. Alice Bailey and the Arcane School

...

i feel so suggestible - how can one help but believe what someone says? especially someone who is so senior to one's self. in ISOTM someone asks how to recognize a false school, and G. says that's not possible and a waste of time anyway. still, for Bennett to pretty much accommodate Gurdjieff and Bailey and Blavatsky and the Tibetan Masters in just a few breaths seems suspect - at least since I've come across some Maitreya'ey conspiracy notions some months ago.

but to keep focus on my point here - people were on the outlook for some successor or furtherance of Gurdjieff's teaching. Mme de Salzmann provides in the preface to Views From the Real World (p. viii):

Before he died, Mr. Gurdjieff sent for me to tell me how he saw the state of affairs and to give me certain instructions: “Publish as and when you are sure that the time has come, Publish the First and Second Series. But first of all, the essential thing is to prepare a nucleus of people capable of responding to the demand which will appear. “So long as there is no responsible nucleus, the action of the ideas will not go beyond a certain threshold. That will take time . . . a lot of time, even. …”

.