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On Love & Psychological Exercises: With Some Aphorisms & Other Essays
Contains two great works by Orage that are invaluable resources for students on the path of selfdevelopment. Students of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky will enjoy this special collection. On Love includes "Talks with Katherine Mansfield at Fontainebleau" and aphorisms given to Orage's pupils who were taught Gurdjieff's methods and system from 1924 to 1930. Psychological Exercises presents over 200 exercises to increase the flexibility and scope of the mind.
- GenresPsychology
121 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1974
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
August 6, 2011
Excelente libro que nos plantea una vision mas oriental del amor y la vida, a mi parecer mucho mas valida que la filosofia occidental
February 20, 2016
I am reading the essays on psychology in this book. He emphasizes the importance of divided attention and gives small exercises on how to develop it. But one probably needs a specific mind-set, a preparation, before reading the book.
January 23, 2008
A. R. Orage, On Love (Janus Press, 1974)
What a phenomenally bad little book this is. I picked it up not knowing who A. R. Orage was (it was horribly miscast in the "poetry" section at the CWRU book sale). I've done a bit of research since, and, well, had I known before, I'd have avoided this nonsense like the plague. Orage was the longtime editor of the magazine The New Age (and the term "new age" gets all of its most pejorative definitions from the stupidity of the magazine, originally), and it's pretty easy to tell from reading this.
The title essay, "On Love," is subtitled "freely adapted from the Tibetan," and I can honestly say that this being a translation is the only possible explanation for "On Love" being slightly more lucid than the rest of the essays contained herein. Every once in a while, Orage does manage to hit the nail on the head, and most of the time, he does so in this essay. (Thus it is not hard at all to believe it's a translation and not an original work.) This kept me at least interested enough to continue on to the rest of the book. My, was that a mistake. The three essays afterwards ("On Religion," "What Is the Soul?," and "Conversations with Katherine Mansfield") are all steeped in pseudo-religious double-talk (in the first, Orage posits his belief that behaviorism will be the bridge between science and religion. A bit of reflection for the modern reader will, one trusts, sufficiently serve to show how well THAT worked.), and it gets far, far worse in the last section, some pages of Orage's aphorisms. These are where the book truly reaches the heights of ignominy. One wonders if Orage actually understood the meaning of the word "aphorism." Certainly such passages as this don't fit the bill:
"A human being is one who works with three centres; he who works with two or one is sub-human."
Which may make sense to those who are versed in Gurdjieffian jargon, but for the rest of us makes no sense whatsoever. Pithy it may be, but understandable it is not. If I'm going to read aphorisms, I want aphorisms, not disconnected sentences that read like a spiritual version of the monthly magazine of the American Electrical Engineering Society.
So why, after all that, did I give this monstrosity a star and a half? Because Orage, who obviously was the six hundredth monkey on the six hundredth day now and then, manages a few coherent (and good) sentences in "On Love," and once in a great, great while comes up with an aphorism like "It is possible to have aesthetic emotions and not have human emotions." Now that is an aphorism. * ½
What a phenomenally bad little book this is. I picked it up not knowing who A. R. Orage was (it was horribly miscast in the "poetry" section at the CWRU book sale). I've done a bit of research since, and, well, had I known before, I'd have avoided this nonsense like the plague. Orage was the longtime editor of the magazine The New Age (and the term "new age" gets all of its most pejorative definitions from the stupidity of the magazine, originally), and it's pretty easy to tell from reading this.
The title essay, "On Love," is subtitled "freely adapted from the Tibetan," and I can honestly say that this being a translation is the only possible explanation for "On Love" being slightly more lucid than the rest of the essays contained herein. Every once in a while, Orage does manage to hit the nail on the head, and most of the time, he does so in this essay. (Thus it is not hard at all to believe it's a translation and not an original work.) This kept me at least interested enough to continue on to the rest of the book. My, was that a mistake. The three essays afterwards ("On Religion," "What Is the Soul?," and "Conversations with Katherine Mansfield") are all steeped in pseudo-religious double-talk (in the first, Orage posits his belief that behaviorism will be the bridge between science and religion. A bit of reflection for the modern reader will, one trusts, sufficiently serve to show how well THAT worked.), and it gets far, far worse in the last section, some pages of Orage's aphorisms. These are where the book truly reaches the heights of ignominy. One wonders if Orage actually understood the meaning of the word "aphorism." Certainly such passages as this don't fit the bill:
"A human being is one who works with three centres; he who works with two or one is sub-human."
Which may make sense to those who are versed in Gurdjieffian jargon, but for the rest of us makes no sense whatsoever. Pithy it may be, but understandable it is not. If I'm going to read aphorisms, I want aphorisms, not disconnected sentences that read like a spiritual version of the monthly magazine of the American Electrical Engineering Society.
So why, after all that, did I give this monstrosity a star and a half? Because Orage, who obviously was the six hundredth monkey on the six hundredth day now and then, manages a few coherent (and good) sentences in "On Love," and once in a great, great while comes up with an aphorism like "It is possible to have aesthetic emotions and not have human emotions." Now that is an aphorism. * ½
July 9, 2014
This book is a good read. Orage was an interesting figure, so that alone gives merit to spending time with his writing. I read the first half a long time ago, so it's a bit hazy, but all in all the ideas are related to Gurdjieff/Ouspensky self-awareness. Orage is a good writer and the ideas are easy to take in, but it is a fairly brief discussion if remembering yourself is a search you are taking. The middle section is a bunch if mental exercises I all but ignored, though I wonder if that might be the most relevant part for an aging brain like my own.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews