At the following link we read Fr. Robinson's below words: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2474173646

"My book was written to popularize the thesis of this book [The Road of Science and the Ways to God] by Fr Jaki."

Information on Fr. Jaki's book is seen here: https://www.giffordlectures.org/books/road-science-and-ways-god


The Road of Science and the Ways to God
Lecture: 
The Road of Science and the Ways to God



Chicago, IL

University of Chicago Press

1978

ISBN: 
978-0226391441


Summary

Part I: Twice Twenty Centuries

Lecture 1: Pattern in Blind Alleys
Introduces the lecturer’s aim: to show that ‘the road of science, both historically and philosophically, is a logical access to the ways to God’ (4). The ways are Aquinas’ five proofs of God, or more broadly, natural theology. Lectures 1-10 cover pre-20th-century foundations, dead-ends and developments in science. Attacks on the traditional proofs have been myopic about epistemological issues, and this myopia would destroy science itself if rigorously applied. This is because the proofs are ‘the embodiment of reflections on what is the ultimate in intelligibility and being’ (5), and science begins from the same reflections. Previous historiographies of science, indebted to variations of Enlightenment rationalism and deistic anti-supernaturalism, have failed to understand that ‘from Copernicus to Newton it was not deism but Christian theism that served as a principal factor helping the scientific enterprise reach self-sustaining maturity’ (11). Despite long periods of economic and political stability, science failed to rise in any other culture for religious and metaphysical reasons: a ubiquitous belief in the divinity of the heavens and the eternal recurrence of all. These produced an epistemology filled with inconsistency that destroyed belief in humanity’s power to discover the laws of the cosmos. In contrast, medieval theism offered the only successful venue for the birth and rise of science, providing foundational themes necessary to that success: an intelligible cosmos, created, not divine; therefore contingent; and time as linear. These themes are entirely indebted to distinct theological tenets.

Lecture 2: A Lesson in Greek
Science began but eventually withered in ancient Greece. Their insight was that mechanistic physics, concerned only with the configuration and succession of events, is not an argument against purpose, since discovering the mechanics is itself a most purposeful enterprise. Their failure was that their desire to save purpose for humanity and the world overrode their study of actual phenomena. Where phenomena are not studied for themselves without a priori precommitments to what must be found, one may be blind to what is actually there. The Greek focus on human intellect turned their science into philosophy, bypassing empirical research into nature and blinding them to ‘deeper patterns of intelligibility’, effectively killing nascent science.

Lecture 3: Steps to God as Stepping-Stones to Science
The worldview of the Middle Ages included key Christian beliefs in the personal, transcendent God, and the created, orderly and contingent cosmos. These were shared as cultural convictions, not just intellectual fashion. Competing worldviews did not recognize nature’s creaturely and contingent status. Aquinas corrected Aristotle with three principles: ‘the existence of the transcendent God, the creation out of nothing and the freedom of man rooted in the immortality of the soul’ (39). The cosmos’s contingency points to a transcendent source and eliminates the usefulness of a priori discourse, while its rationality makes it open to rational and empirical investigation, though only in a posteriori fashion. These beliefs were indispensable to the progress of science out of infancy in the 17th century. There were many Renaissance dead-ends for science – Ockham’s nominalism, astrology, magic, cabbala, Bruno’s pantheistic cyclic cosmos, Plato, Aristotle, and even Archimedes. In contrast, the rise of science from the genius of Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo was rooted in very distinctly Christian foundations.

Lecture 4: Empirical Scouting
The empiricist movement of the early 17th century, including Bacon and Hobbes, failed to inspire maturing science. Rejecting metaphysics from natural science, it noted a connection between knowledge and the world of the senses, but failed to provide a sound scientific method, or to show that science could indeed be divorced from metaphysics. Regarding the world as noncontingent and necessary decapitates cosmology, since not only is the cosmos a nonnecessary inference from the empirical data, but empiricism disallowed framing theories about any such potentially entire entity as the cosmos.

Lecture 5: Rationalist Road Charting
Descartes’ rationalism used a priori reasoning based on human self-knowledge, supposedly invalidating a posteriori proof. But under such subjectivism, natural theology withered, and so too did the advance of science. Without the linking of sense and rationality, science, world, God and soul all appeared to be illusory according to Cartesian logic. This generated the scepticism of Hume, but no progress in physical science. Likewise, Spinoza’s pantheism, Malebranche, Berkeley and his categorical denial of an external world and the pure materialism of Diderot were all abortive to science.

Lecture 6: Instinctive Middle
Natural theology and progress in science were intimately related in the 17th century, having a shared epistemological basis. This is especially evident in Isaac Newton, who took a middle road between Bacon’s undirected empiricism and Descartes’ a priori theorizing, inspiring ordinary science for two centuries. He believed the existence of a coherent and noncontingent Being, ‘whose essence is existence itself’ (89), explained the world’s coherence and contingency. Science could only progress with this view of the world. It was to be understood by experimental investigation, rather than by a priori theories, but understood nevertheless. Clarke, Leibniz and Locke rejected this middle road in favor of nominalist empiricism and gave nothing new to science.

Lecture 7: Bricks without Mortar
Hume allowed only sensory impressions to build ‘truth’ in his system. His writings about science badly misrepresent Copernicus and Galileo as cursory empiricists. In fact, they were willing to follow with their minds a direction contrary to their senses and believed the cosmos’s rationality was a reflection of the Creator’s rationality, and so accessible to his highest creation, the human mind. This link to natural theology led Hume to insist there was no mind, only distinct thoughts strung together in the appearance of consciousness, with no intrinsic connection of sensations to either mind or the objective world. Such a mystifying and unintelligible vision of the cosmos is an attack on both the ways to God and the possibility of science.

Lecture 8: Arch without Keystone
Kant insisted a priori philosophy could be used to discover the nature of the cosmos, advocating an infinite cyclic universe. His efforts at science in terms of his Critique of Pure Reason are a failure, leaving the seeker of truth trapped in his own mind, since it was impossible to know things in themselves. His keystone uniting the mind with the phenomena is a priori subjective mental assumptions and imagination. He aimed to destroy natural theology, but did not touch its heart in the cosmological argument: nonnecessary beings imply a necessary Being. His principle that the Creator must ‘bring into existence all conceivable possibilities’ destroys ‘the possibility of a logically consistent cosmology,’ and renders both God and cosmos unintelligible (120). The lesson: rejecting the ways to God also prevents travel on the road of science.

Lecture 9: The Illusions of Idealism
Examines 19th-century philosophical idealism in Fichte, Hegel, Nietzsche and the Marxists. Many advocated the eternal return, and all rejected the ‘empirical given of nature’, including empirical evidence of God, using variations of Kant’s subjectivist arch or keystone of knowledge. Such idealism, wherein the subjective trumped the objective and the connection between the two was broken, was inimical to science. Where knowledge is regarded as complete in structure in a priori fashion, a posteriori science is unlikely. These related illusions about the world, humanity and God would have ended the progress of science if followed: without contingency, no science is logically possible.

Lecture 10: The Price of Positivism
The philosophy of positivism in Comte, J. S. Mill and Ernst Mach was an epistemological failure for science. The positivists rejected metaphysics and the idea that there is anything objective in the relations of cause and effect. These assumptions destroy the basic motivation to do physical science. Science is only possible where there is ‘unrestricted consistency’ – which Mill’s empiricist positivism saw as an epistemological impossibility. Historical accounts of science produced by the positivists ignore the contribution of medieval natural theology.

Part II: The Twentieth Century

Lecture 11: The Quantum of Science
Part II begins with an analysis of Max Planck, the father of quantum theory, who was committed to belief in the ‘absolute embedded somehow in the physical’ (167). His efforts to match theoretical physics with observation eventually led to his breakthrough to quantum theory. He saw pure reflection on the laws of nature as helpful, but also that science only truly advanced where the cosmos was regarded as objective and its laws as unchangeable, ‘independent of the scientist’s culture and habitat’ (175). He noted the religious and intellectual convictions of science’s early giants. Planck’s contribution, the h of quantum physics, points to nature’s unity, contingency and its source beyond.

Lecture 12: The Quantity of the Universe
Einstein had metaphysical faith in objective reality. He rejected positivism and embraced metaphysics as necessary, since the goal of science was to discover both how nature worked and why it was the way it was and not otherwise. The triumph of modern cosmology showed that our notion of the universe as a totality of all interacting material entities was valid. This is a death’s-blow to Kant’s claim that universals are not valid knowledge, and it reopens the supposedly discredited subject of natural theology. Although claiming no religion, Einstein repeatedly marveled at both the god-like quality of a brilliantly ordered universe and the miracle of human intellect that made understanding possible (192).

Lecture 13: The Horns of Complementarity
Examines inconsistencies in the ‘Copenhagen school of epistemology’, the semi-philosophical interpretation of quantum theory followed by Niels Bohr and others. Claiming that objective knowledge of reality is impossible because observation influences phenomena, they believed their methods were sufficient to explain the phenomena as an accident of sense experiment without actually describing reality itself. Yet the concurrence of their mathematical models with nature is itself a marvel to be explained. By rejecting a common-sense grasp of reality, their epistemology fails at the ontological level.

Lecture 14: The Ravages of Reductionism
The logical positivism of the Vienna Circle inspired by Mach, including that of Schlick and Neurath, was rooted in a superficial understanding of the connection between epistemology and the type of knowledge available in the ‘exact sciences’. Its failure in such soft sciences as psychology is evident in its inability to address the questions of freedom and dignity. Metaphysics is rejected as meaningless as a basic assumption, not as a result of their work. This systematic exclusion of metaphysics also means the exclusion of science. For example, without the deeply metaphysical assumption that nature obeys mathematical simplicity, science and modern cosmology are stranded.

Lecture 15: Paradigms or Paradigm
Koyré and Kuhn cast psychology and sociology in the role of metaphysics in their histories of science. Koyré saw scientific revolutionaries as ‘sudden mutations of intellect’ (233), suggesting that science creates patterns, but does not follow any grand overall pattern. Kuhn’s Structures of Scientific Revolutions usefully describes science’s advance in terms of paradigm shift, but reduces that advance to political and sociological processes and ultimately to irrationality, ignoring the thought and genius of the contributing scientists. His theory cannot explain the growing correspondence of scientific paradigms to physical reality or the unparalleled consensus of scientific knowledge in the past four centuries. The assumptions science must make about reality to progress require that an honest history include epistemology and metaphysics.

Lecture 16: The Reach of the Mind
Feats of the mind are basic to the history of scientific discovery. Histories that neglect this mental aspect or credit it to pure empiricism or reduce it to sociology are inadequate. The greatest scientists from Copernicus to Einstein were none of them pure empiricists. They believed in two propositions as essential truths: there is an objective truth embodied in the universe; and our minds are able to grasp that truth ‘ever more comprehensively’. Metaphysical questions remain unavoidable, but the tendency has been to avoid the highest metaphysical answer. Without an implicit reference to the underlying divine cause, science must rest upon the ‘paradoxical experience of the unintelligibility of intelligibility’ (259).

Lecture 17: Cosmic Singularity
Modern science begins with cosmology: a consistent discourse about the whole universe. The post-Newtonian science of the Enlightenment followed a false vision of a closed eternal cosmos until the 20th century, avoiding the cosmological question. Since cosmology has become the basis of modern legitimate science, that question reemerges as central. The contingencies of the cosmos, from the big bang singularity on, demand explanation, but an explanation is not self-contained within physics. The logical anchoring for a science of contingent singularity requires a rationale pointing beyond the cosmos. It is therefore illogical to espouse science while rejecting fundamental questions about the world that have only metaphysical answers.

Lecture 18: Pointers of Purpose
This chapter examines the question of purpose in the contingencies of nature. The contingent and fragile existence of life in the cosmos is a problem for the pure materialists who reject belief in purpose. From the beginning the scientific quest for understanding is purposeful in the fullest sense. The precise boundary conditions necessary for the actual unfolding of the cosmos and the processes of life are evidence of contingency, a feature central to Aquinas’ arguments. Efforts to isolate life from other aspects of nature are bad science, since the basic boundary conditions of the cosmos are the necessary prerequisite of life. Nature’s uniqueness and contingency are difficult to explain without reference to God.

Lecture 19: The Ethos of Science
Science entails a resolute ethical break ‘with subjectivist, irrational world views and the acceptance of the consistency of nature and the consistent exercise’ of human freedom, an ethic science did not create. Inspired by evolutionary and pragmatic philosophy, Marxism, National Socialism and capitalism have all victimized persons. Difficult for the materialistic naturalist to defend, freedom of thought and conscience is usually defended by religious, not scientific, organizations. Cultural relativism is unable to honestly accommodate the scientific ethos of love of truth. It cannot explain why one culture gave birth to science, or why when science is introduced into other cultures it is not science but those cultures that are faced with the problem of major adjustment.

Lecture 20: Teaching by Examples
Christian theism has provided an indispensable light for the rise and success of science. Western anti-Christian sentiment has led to the despising of natural theology and metaphysics, but only by wilfully ignoring the history of science and the unanswered questions left by mechanistic naturalism. Natural theology was at the heart of successful scientific epistemology during ‘its first phase of maturity . . . from Galileo to Kelvin’. Those who rejected the connection between the proofs and scientific epistemology, such as Hume, Kant, Hegel, Comte and Mach, all failed to produce decent science themselves. Only Planck and Einstein, with their conviction of the world’s coherence and singularity, were able to take science out of its Newtonian ‘inland sea’ to the ‘wide ocean’ of modern physics (322).

‘Real science is the science of a contingent universe’ (324). That this only makes sense within Christian theism is a key truth to pass on to each generation. The actual history of science is ‘vibrant with metaphysics’. But its teaching in the modern secular state increasingly strips away this essential element and leaves only the bare skeleton behind, a tool of half-truth for the agnostic and atheist agenda. When such an intentional avoidance of ultimate questions is pushed as a core academic and scientific ideal, the future will not be science’s improvement, but its death. True inspiration for the advancement of science is only possible “from unreserved commitment to the very same inner logic which gives life to theism as well as to science” (331). Our chief cultural task is to transmit to the next generation ‘the tie binding the road of science to the ways to God’ (331).
Contributor(s)

• Christopher L. Fisher

In the context of this thread the following are worth taking a look at:

http://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-x/en/encyclicals/docuмents/hf_p-x_enc_19070908_pascendi-dominici-gregis.html
PASCENDI DOMINICI GREGIS





http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius10/p10lamen.htm

Lamentabili Sane

This question was submitted to Fr. Robinson today via https://www.quora.com/profile/Paul-Robinson-410 : "Would you be willing to accept a public debate on geocentrism with Robert Sungenis, a devout and long time Catholic apologist who is widely recognized to be the world's most preeminent geocentrist?"

The one and only priest (a Maronite) giving an open public endorsement (quite superficial though it may be) of Fr. Robinson's book on Fr. Robinson's website (https://therealistguide.com/endorsements) has his own website which has some rather unusual stuff on it.
Fr. Joseph Azize
A sound philosopher, able to move with confidence from Plato to quantum, Fr Paul Robinson here explains, in clear terms, with illustrative examples to facilitate effective understanding, why and how it is that we can attain to knowledge, find truth, and grasp reality. With this volume, the student will be able to safely navigate through the busy halls of philosophy, seeing where and how errors arise, and how to vindicate the truth.

Fr. Joseph Azize, Ph.D (University of Sydney), Honorary Associate, Dept of Studies in Religion, University of Sydney; Adjunct Assoc. Prof. University of Notre Dame, Australia.
*****************************************************************************************************************
Fr. Joseph Azize's website: http://www.josephazize.com/category/adie/

****************************************************************************************************************
Here is a photo and description of Fr. Azize found at https://www.connorcourtpublishing.com.au/Joseph-Azize_bymfg_54-0-1.html
Joseph Azize

Joseph Azize (Fr Yuhanna Azize) is a Maronite Catholic priest serving at Our Lady of Lebanon Co-Cathedral, hαɾɾιs Park, and is research officer at the Chancery (the bishop’s office). He has authored or co-authored another eight books and many academic articles, especially on religious topics. He is an honorary associate in Studies in Religion at the University of Sydney, and an adjunct Associate Professor in Theology and Ancient History at Notre Dame University, Australia.
********************************************************************************************************************

The same Fr. Azize who Fr. Robinson has featured on his website is the author of a book about the deceased singer John Lennon.  The following description of Fr. Azize can be seen on the Amazon webpage showing this book.  Also included is the following description of the book.

John Lennon: Harmony Out of Pain
by (Author)



John Lennon: Harmony Out of Pain was written for people who both love enough of John Lennon's music to care about its maker, and also feel that there is something deep at work within themselves, that there is something sublime to be learned about ourselves and the world. While many books have been written about Lennon, this is the first time someone has looked at Lennon from the inside.

As Joseph Azize works through the various themes in the book, he arrives at an objective look at an extremely complicated man. As John Lennon found his way towards being a Normal Man certainly one who has had an impact on the entire world and extraordinary in that manner inside he struggled like anyone else with his demons and angels and fought the good fight, just as Jacob wrestled all through the night ending up with a broken hip and a promise. John Lennon also ended up scarred and wounded, but whole.

While there are many books about John Lennon which are really just jingoism and gossip the dish and the dirt this book is about John Lennon in the light of the Gurdjieff Work. Although Lennon was probably not a student of G.I. Gurdjieff or his ideas, the course of his life until his untimely death is ripe with material for pondering his state of being during those times.

Those readers who do not know anything about the Fourth Way Gurdjieff s path in life will be amply rewarded by reading this book, and those who take a serious interest in Mr. Lennon s work will also be amply rewarded by sharing the insights of the author who truly has a genuine and heartfelt love for Lennon s music.
********************

About the Author
Joseph Azize is a priest in Sydney, Australia. He is active in spiritual direction, especially contemplation and vocational askesis, while also working as an academic and writer of church music. His life was transformed when he met and studied under George and Helen Adie, who had been personal pupils of G.I. Gurdjieff, and embodied the path of mysticism in daily life. Fr. Azize s other books include: How to Spot a Fraud, The Phoenician Solar Theology: An Investigation Into the Phoenician Opinion of the Sun Found in Julian's Hymn to King Helios, and George Adie: A Gurdjieff Pupil in Australia.
************************************************************************************
If you are wondering who in the world G.I. Gurdjieff is please take a look at the Wikipedia article on him.  It is quite telling!
 

The one and only priest (a Maronite) giving an open public endorsement (quite superficial though it may be) of Fr. Robinson's book on Fr. Robinson's website (https://therealistguide.com/endorsements) has his own website which has some rather unusual stuff on it.
Fr. Joseph Azize
A sound philosopher, able to move with confidence from Plato to quantum, Fr Paul Robinson here explains, in clear terms, with illustrative examples to facilitate effective understanding, why and how it is that we can attain to knowledge, find truth, and grasp reality. With this volume, the student will be able to safely navigate through the busy halls of philosophy, seeing where and how errors arise, and how to vindicate the truth.

Fr. Joseph Azize, Ph.D (University of Sydney), Honorary Associate, Dept of Studies in Religion, University of Sydney; Adjunct Assoc. Prof. University of Notre Dame, Australia.
*****************************************************************************************************************
Fr. Joseph Azize's website: http://www.josephazize.com/category/adie/

****************************************************************************************************************
Here is a photo and description of Fr. Azize found at https://www.connorcourtpublishing.com.au/Joseph-Azize_bymfg_54-0-1.html
Joseph Azize

Joseph Azize (Fr Yuhanna Azize) is a Maronite Catholic priest serving at Our Lady of Lebanon Co-Cathedral, hαɾɾιs Park, and is research officer at the Chancery (the bishop’s office). He has authored or co-authored another eight books and many academic articles, especially on religious topics. He is an honorary associate in Studies in Religion at the University of Sydney, and an adjunct Associate Professor in Theology and Ancient History at Notre Dame University, Australia.
********************************************************************************************************************

The same Fr. Azize who Fr. Robinson has featured on his website is the author of a book about the deceased singer John Lennon.  The following description of Fr. Azize can be seen on the Amazon webpage showing this book.  Also included is the following description of the book.

John Lennon: Harmony Out of Pain
by (Author)



John Lennon: Harmony Out of Pain was written for people who both love enough of John Lennon's music to care about its maker, and also feel that there is something deep at work within themselves, that there is something sublime to be learned about ourselves and the world. While many books have been written about Lennon, this is the first time someone has looked at Lennon from the inside.

As Joseph Azize works through the various themes in the book, he arrives at an objective look at an extremely complicated man. As John Lennon found his way towards being a Normal Man certainly one who has had an impact on the entire world and extraordinary in that manner inside he struggled like anyone else with his demons and angels and fought the good fight, just as Jacob wrestled all through the night ending up with a broken hip and a promise. John Lennon also ended up scarred and wounded, but whole.

While there are many books about John Lennon which are really just jingoism and gossip the dish and the dirt this book is about John Lennon in the light of the Gurdjieff Work. Although Lennon was probably not a student of G.I. Gurdjieff or his ideas, the course of his life until his untimely death is ripe with material for pondering his state of being during those times.

Those readers who do not know anything about the Fourth Way Gurdjieff s path in life will be amply rewarded by reading this book, and those who take a serious interest in Mr. Lennon s work will also be amply rewarded by sharing the insights of the author who truly has a genuine and heartfelt love for Lennon s music.
********************

About the Author
Joseph Azize is a priest in Sydney, Australia. He is active in spiritual direction, especially contemplation and vocational askesis, while also working as an academic and writer of church music. His life was transformed when he met and studied under George and Helen Adie, who had been personal pupils of G.I. Gurdjieff, and embodied the path of mysticism in daily life. Fr. Azize s other books include: How to Spot a Fraud, The Phoenician Solar Theology: An Investigation Into the Phoenician Opinion of the Sun Found in Julian's Hymn to King Helios, and George Adie: A Gurdjieff Pupil in Australia.
************************************************************************************
If you are wondering who in the world G.I. Gurdjieff is please take a look at the Wikipedia article on him.  It is quite telling!
 

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Your hyperlinks are all messed up.
You have to leave a SPACE before and after any Internet address or else the system doesn't know what you're trying to write.
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leave a space before ---> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Gurdjieff <--- leave a space after
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As for the Wiki article --- this section is worth noting:
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Responses[edit]
Louis Pauwels, among others,^[73] criticizes Gurdjieff for his insistence on considering people as "asleep" in a state closely resembling "hypnotic sleep". Gurdjieff said, even specifically at times, that a pious, good, and moral person was no more "spiritually developed" than any other person; they are all equally "asleep".^[74]
Henry Miller approved of Gurdjieff, not considering himself holy but, after writing a brief introduction to Fritz Peters' book Boyhood with Gurdjieff, Miller wrote that people are not meant to lead a "harmonious life" as Gurdjieff claimed in naming his institute.^[75]
Critics note that Gurdjieff gives no value to most of the elements that compose the life of an average person. According to Gurdjieff, everything an average person possesses, accomplishes, does, and feels is completely accidental and without any initiative. A common everyday ordinary person is born a machine and dies a machine without any chance of being anything else.^[76] This belief seems to run counter to the ʝʊdɛօ-Christian tradition that man is a living soul. Gurdjieff believed that the possession of a soul (a state of psychological unity which he equated with being "awake") was a "luxury" that a disciple could attain only by the most painstaking work of over a long period of time. The majority—in whom the true meaning of the gospel failed to take root^[77]—went the "broad way" that "led to destruction."^[78]
In Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson (see bibliography), Gurdjieff expresses his reverence for the founders of the mainstream religions of East and West and his contempt (by and large) for what successive generations of believers have made of those religious teachings. His discussions of "orthodoxhydooraki" and "heterodoxhydooraki"—orthodox fools and heterodox fools, from the Russian word durak (fool)—position him as a critic of religious distortion and, in turn, as a target for criticism from some within those traditions. Gurdjieff has been interpreted by some, Ouspensky among others, to have had a total disregard for the value of mainstream religion, philanthropic work and the value of doing right or wrong in general.^[79]
Gurdjieff's former students who have criticized him argue that, despite his seeming total lack of pretension to any kind of "guru holiness," in many anecdotes his behavior displays the unsavory and impure character of a man who was a cynical manipulator of his followers.^[80] Gurdjieff's own pupils wrestled to understand him. For example, in a written exchange between Luc Dietrich and Henri Tracol dating to 1943: "L.D.: How do you know that Gurdjieff wishes you well? H.T.: I feel sometimes how little I interest him—and how strongly he takes an interest in me. By that I measure the strength of an intentional feeling."^[81]
Louis Pauwels wrote Monsieur Gurdjieff (first edition published in Paris, France in 1954 by Editions du Seuil).^[82] In an interview, Pauwels said of the Gurdjieff work: "... After two years of exercises which both enlightened and burned me, I found myself in a hospital bed with a thrombosed central vein in my left eye and weighing ninety-nine pounds... Horrible anguish and abysses opened up for me. But it was my fault."^[83]
Pauwels claimed that Karl Haushofer, the father of geopolitics whose protegee was Deputy Reich Führer Rudolf Hess, was one of the real "seekers after truth" described by Gurdjieff. According to Rom Landau, a journalist in the 1930s, Achmed Abdullah told him at the beginning of the 20th century that Gurdjieff was a Russian secret agent in Tibet who went by the name of "Hambro Akuan Dorzhieff" (i.e. Agvan Dorjiev), a tutor to the Dalai Lama.^[84] However, the actual Dorzhieff went to live in the Buddhist temple erected in St. Petersburg and after the revolution was imprisoned by Stalin. James Webb conjectured that Gurdjieff might have been Dorzhieff's assistant Ushe Narzunoff (i.e. Ovshe Norzunov).^[85]
Colin Wilson writes about "Gurdjieff's reputation for seducing his female students. (In Providence, Rhode Island, in 1960, a man was pointed out to me as one of Gurdjieff's illegitimate children. The professor who told me this also assured me that Gurdjieff had left many children around America)."^[86]
In The Oragean Version, C. Daly King surmised that the problem that Gurdjieff had with Orage's teachings was that the "Oragean Version," Orage himself, was not emotional enough in Gurdjieff's estimation and had not enough "incredulity" and faith. King wrote that Gurdjieff did not state it as clearly and specifically as this, but was quick to add that to him, nothing Gurdjieff said was specific or clear.^{[citation needed]}
According to Osho, the Gurdjieff system is incomplete, drawing from Dervish sources inimical to Kundalini. Some Sufi orders, such as the Naqshbandi, draw from and are amenable to Kundalini.^[87]

Sorry, about that Neil.  They worked for me at first, but now I see some are messed up.  The good news is that all the info I provided is legitimate and I have done the leg work so anyone can check the material out with the info I have provided.  If there is still some specific linked info that you can not get to after a few minutes of an Internet search please let me know and I will try again.  In any event, I hope the main point I was getting at has not been lost.  This one priest who Fr. Robinson has chosen to highlight as having endorsed his book is certainly a bit unusual to say the least!

Oh -- and thanks for your helpful advice!

.
You're welcome.
This Gurdjieff character looks like a NewAge guru about 50 years before it became a movement. 
The allusion to John Lennon is not out of place. 
It all boils down to Modernism, where reality is in the mind. Subjectivism is at the root of all these weird rabbit holes, like BoR Francis, etc.

In an amazing act of strong and courageous public admonishment Fr. Gerard Rusak of the SSPX has leveled a blistering critique of the recently published book, The Realist Guide to Religion and Science by fellow SSPX Priest Fr. Paul Robinson.  It was actually published this month as a review on the SSPX website wherein the book is being advertised.  Here is the link: https://angeluspress.org/products/the-realist-guide-to-religion-and-science    Once there simply click on Read 14 reviews to see the actual review which I have pasted below.

Failure to consider all the evidence
Father Gerard Rusak, FSSPX, Nov 2018

While Father Robinson excels on philosophical points in the first six chapters of his book (1 star), he accepts the unproven hypotheses of the Big Bang (with its long ages needed for evolution) and he rashly embraces heliocentrism. Meanwhile, he brushes aside those who do not agree with him using insufficient arguments (see below). His interpretation of the Bible is more in accord with a liberal interpretation of Vatican II's Dei Verbum #11 rather than with the traditional teaching of the Church on the inerrant nature of Holy Scripture. This allows him to pick and choose among facts related in the book of Genesis and elsewhere in the Bible. He also ignores the longstanding the decrees of the Church against Galileo and the unanimous teaching of the Fathers of the Church these same questions. On these last issues, his insufficient arguments have been completely refuted by a book by Robert Sungenis: "Scientific Heresies and Their Effect on the Church" (564 pages).

I thank the Angelus Press in advance for posting this review and request them to add to their list of books the above book of Robert Sungenis so that both sides of the question may be heard. Or should they not wish to do so, to withdraw Father Robinson's book from sale from this their website.
I may add that I know other SSPX priests and faithful like myself who are shocked at the publication of this book for at least some if not all, of the above reasons.