It all started with The Master Game, by Robert de Ropp, who threw out the first crumbs about the Work that kids in the 1960s picked up on. De Ropp was associated with Timothy Leary and other UC Berkeley professors who were beginning to experiment with mind-altering psychedelic drugs.
The scene in my book, Real People, is Jack’s family home in northern Jersey. I am visiting for the weekend from College, where we had met, returning a book:
I had Jack’s copy of The Master Game by Robert de Ropp and was flipping
through it. What I found in its pages was the idea that we could be
the masters of ourselves, that life was a game one could choose to play but
could not win by taking psychedelics. That this game wasn’t easy and that
one would need a teacher. What the book didn’t say was how to find one.
“So, what did you think of it?” Jack asked, gazing at the table.
“Yeah. Well, I thought the ideas were interesting,” I said, looking up
from the book. “Especially where de Ropp says you don’t need to do drugs to
play the Game. But now what?”
“Hang on.” Jack said as he disappeared into his room. He strolled back
out a minute later and handed me another paperback. “This is next,” he
said. “If you really want to know.”
The title of this one was, In Search of the Miraculous, by P. D. Ouspensky.
He sat back down and popped open the cellophane on a Twinkie.
The Master Appears
“Ouspensky was de Ropp’s teacher,” he said, putting the spongy cake
down on the table, his eyes serious. “And G. I. Gurdjieff was Ouspensky’s
teacher.”
“Who’s Gurdjieff ?” I asked, losing the thread in all the weird names.
Jack stood up and came over to the kitchen counter. He leaned over my
shoulder, looking at the blue and white cover on In Search of the Miraculous,
a more substantial read than The Master Game. He picked The Master Game
up from the counter where I’d placed it and sat back down thumbing through pages.
“Here,” he said, listen to this, “Self-observation leads to self-knowledge,
self-knowledge leads to self-mastery.”
I felt a thrill go through me. Yes, this was what de Ropp was
all about.
Replacing the book on the counter behind him, Jack pushed
back from the table, the metal legs of the chair scraping the linoleum.
He disappeared into his room and came back out holding a worn,
oversized hardback book with a brown cover, entitled
A New Model of the Universe.
“Ouspensky wrote this before he met Gurdjieff,” he said, holding
the book up to show me. “He was already exploring altered states and
working with dreams in Russia,” he explained, handing me the book. “He
experimented with drugs too, like de Ropp. He was a mathematician and
into metaphysics but much earlier, like in the early 1900s. Then he met
Gurdjieff.” Jack was speaking in earnest now.
The Master Appears
“Oh yeah,” I nodded, remembering de Ropp had said something about
the Gurdjieffian System.
Jack reached around and lifted In Search of the Miraculous from the counter
again. He held it in both hands, reverently. “And this,” he said, looking
very solemn, “tells how Ouspensky met his teacher Gurdjieff, who was way
ahead of him in all this stuff.”
I was totally caught up now, feeling invited into something like a
sacred trust.