E. J. Gold

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Eugene Jeffrey (E.J.) Gold (born 1941) is an artist, author, musician, and self styled spiritual teacher who has long positioned himself as successor of Gurdjieff. An uncommon, even fantastic perspective and the offbeat sense of humor of a stand-up commedian pervade many of his materials and especially his personal presentations and 'workshops'.

From www.hei-art.com: "Gold's work often violates scale, at once denying dimension and perspective, by making use of color, form, texture, negative space, forced perspective, compressions, color field and figure-ground relationships. He typically explores the vertical dimension of time which contains the creative act itself and by orienting everything toward the viewer brings one into a relationship with it. His more important series include the Planar Contiguities, Odalisques, Expressionist Landscapes, Sanitarium, White House series, Faces of War, Moonbeam, Angels, Bardo Spaces, Boy with Unspecified Pet series, Monumentals, Lecture on Nothing, Bardo Guides, Haunted Corridors, Angels in the Corridors, and City in the Sky. His Corridor paintings with or without figures are among his most haunting and penetrating. They reach the viewer on deeper levels of being and cultivate a transcendental view. They are intimate portraits of mysterious beings, respectful of their magnificence and exaltation, often creating uneasiness because of the power of their gaze."

On the other hand, some find E.J. Gold's artwork migraine-inducing, and his writings "borrowed" from other sources. One can question his guilelessness, but he stands apart from the usual suspects in the guru pantheon of the sixties and seventies.

The only child of noted science fiction editor Horace Gold, E.J. Gold grew up in New York City and became familiar with many of the writers from science fiction's golden age.

In the sixties, Gold moved to the West Coast, where he worked as a musician, and a photographer for Tiger Beat Magazine. For a period, he dealt in eastern antiquities and was known as "Mother Beast" on Sunset Strip. Gold appeared on the Joe Pine TV show and garnered publicity for predicting the West Coast would be destroyed in an earthquake.

During the seventies, Gold wrote Autobiography of a Sufi, a wild memoir that delved into psychometry and the search for ancient wisdom. A publication of Gold's,"Secret Talks with Mr. G", purported to be the work of a group of followers of Gurdjieff, and contained several photographs of Gold posing as Gurdjieff. A common misconception is that it was taken off the market because a certain organization threatened litigation. In the mid-seventies, Gold ran an ad in the back pages of Rolling Stone for a cassette tape entitled, "How I Raised Myself from the Dead in 49 Days."

Living in Northern California for the past two decades, Gold rarely appears in public, spending his time teaching via computer games and performing.

[edit] Quotes

"All of life is a struggle against eternity."

"Almost anything can be used as a key, if used voluntarily and consciously. Provided you can find a lock."

"In the labyrinth, you'll notice -- if you notice anything at all -- that all books are the same book, and that they all say the same thing."

[edit] Major Publications

American Book of the Dead (ISBN 0-89556-051-8)
Human Biological Machine as a Transformational Apparatus (1985, ISBN 0-89556-046-1)
Life in the Labyrinth (1991, ISBN 0-89556-048-8)
Practical Work on Self (ISBN 0-89556-056-9)
Creation Story Verbatim