Arkady Rovner

Arkady Rovner graduated from the Philosophy Department of Moscow State University in 1965. He immigrated to the USA in 1974 and returned to Russia in 1994. In USA Arkady Rovner has been enrolled in the joint Doctoral Program of Columbia University and Union Theological Seminary and taught world religions and modern mysticism at New York University, State University of New York and New School for Social Research. After his return to Russia he taught as a full time professor at Russian Humanitarian State University in Moscow. Arkady Rovner has been known as a creator of a «merry science» of foolology. His course Fools of Many Lands at the New School for Social Research in New York in the 1990s has attracted a large audience. Among the «fools» whose whimsical wisdom was beyond the grasp of many of their contemporaries were Noah, Socrates, Pythagoras, Muhammad, Gurdjieff and the favorite character of the Oriental lore Hodja Nesreddin. In 2001 Arkady Rovner became a founder and curator of the Institute for Cultivation of Inner States (ICIS), Moscow, Russia (www.sostoyanie.ru). As it is stated in ICIS Review, «All major world religions and spiritual traditions are based on the idea of cultivation of inner states („sostoyanie“). Therefore the paramount goal of every human being is the cultivation of their inner state». Arkady Rovner is the author of sixteen books published in Russia and among them: The Third Culture (1998), Merry Madmen (1997, 2001), The School of Inner States (1999), Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (2001, 2006), and others. Also he is an editor and author of two Encyclopedias Mystics of the XX century and Encyclopedia of Symbols, Signs and Emblems and an editor of a series of works by the early Christian writers such as Origen, Clement of Alexandria, Nemesius of Emmesa, Ambrosius of Milan, and others. His last project is the International Gurdjieff Club with the web-side (www.gurdjieffclub. com) presently operating in three languages: English, Russian and German.