Meetings with Remarkable Women

Betty Brown took me into the Gurdjieff work in the early 1980's under her own wing, and with specific personal conditions which I've strived to fulfill. I met her, of course, long after this photograph was taken; but her essence still speaks from it.

 She and her huband Henry guided a small group of individuals, among whom I count some of my closest friends, in the effort to discover our own work and our own inner Being. They never put themselves above us; and they always demanded of us that we work for ourselves so that we could know who we were, and not be beholden to another's work or vision.

Betty's emphasis was always that we must work for ourselves first— not because someone else tells us to, or we are under their influence, but because we must work for ourselves and understand how fundamentally important that is to real inner effort. Betty asked us to look past the organization that we were in, and into ourselves.

Into our beings and our lives — not into the form and its instructions.

Betty was about as ordinary as you can get as an American woman; but she was also completely extraordinary. While she was remarkably loving, she was also incredibly demanding — and unflaggingly loyal to the principles of inner effort.

 One of her favorite questions was, "What is the truth of this moment?"

—Lee van Laer, Sept. 2014

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