THE CHRISTIAN TIBET

The December issue of NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC has an article on MT. ATHOS which is an ancient, inaccessible monastery in GREECE that can only be reached at this writing by boat. It is here that Gurdjieff is supposed to have visited at some time in his travels(he also is said to have gone to Crete and received a wound). The article mentions that this monastery has been there for at least a thousand years and allows no women to visit it and is resisting attempts to allow women to go there and it is interesting to read what the monks there have to actually say about this. ``These monks are familiar with the PHILOKALIA that Ouspensky mentions and supposedly practice what has been called, 'gazing at one's navel' which, of course, is a sort of code for centering on the navel center or a certain chakra,also known to yogis,etc. I will not delve into this practice but it also requires some things like prayers and breathing as well as concentration and attention/awareness,etc.