The Christian masters of the Middle Ages understood this matter better, perhaps, than anyone since in the western world. Speaking in a language we no longer fully (or in many cases even partially) understand, they described the necessary state as an awareness of sin.

This word used to mean something quite different than it does today and, once again, one could write an entire book about it. (The word is not derived from action or attachment in the outer world but applies in its esoteric sense exclusively to inner contradictions.) Gurdjieff, through his understanding of remorse of conscience and intentional suffering, more properly represents the question in front of us than any philosophy, whether theoretical or practical, of obliteration. Viewed from this perspective, liberation philosophies and doctrines of obliteration of Self are a cop-out.

A decent analogy of mankinds position in regard to the question of bliss is one of a parent owning a candy store. With the trusting parent in absentia, the child is left in charge of the sweets; but instead of respectfully guarding the wares, he or she begins to eat the sweets, not realizing that as tantalizing as they are, they are not meant for them.

There are fairy tales about such things, such as Hansel and Gretel and the gingerbread house. In that case we see that Hansel and Gretel very nearly become food for the house of bliss, rather than the other way around. It is their very unawareness, their naivet itself (the obliteration), that presents the danger. Lost and unconscious, they stumble across inner treasures; not knowing their right place or value, they enter the house (fully identify with its nature.) Tellingly, in this case, the ginger in the house is a spice from the east. The fairy tale may thusat its root, pun intended represent an esoteric warning against various naive forms of eastern liberation philosophy.

We can see the inherent danger in adopting philosophies or practices of oblivion; the annihilation (the making-into-nothingness) of the ego is not an answer. The ego exists to offer the opportunity to suffer it; extinguishment removes the source of conflict from which true suffering arises. Again, the metaphysical laws and reasonings behind this are complex; but the fact itself is rather simple. One doesnt need to know how all the gears work to know that the hands of the clock show us the time.

This leads me to the second question on the table in my discourse, which is the value of wordlessness. It follows on the philosophy of obliteration, since obliteration dovetails quite neatly into the evaporation of awareness, rationality, and everything they representincluding the words to describe them.

Its quite true that there is a place beyond words available to consciousness. As I have pointed out many times before, however, it is not just the metaphysically endowed (higher) states of awareness without words which we seek to encounter. There are awarenesses without words right next to us, so proximate in consciousness that we routinely take them for granted and ignore them; and these are the places (minds) without words that actually matter in the cultivation of our inner metaphysics, in the balancing of the centers Gurdjieff described as necessary in order to usefully receive higher states.

These two wordless minds are the intelligence of the body (sensation) and the intelligence of emotion (feeling.) Both are fully functioning fractions of our summary intelligence, ignored and suborned by the intellect in its prosecution of our rational (i.e., calculated) agendas. Yet these two wordless intelligences lie within our purview, not in some imaginary realm of better purity.

I would like you, for a moment, to imagine an idealized world without words in which all of the denizens never speak a single word to one another. I think we can agree that this world describes the world not of mankind, but of animals; and even they have languages, so perhaps we do not reach low enough down the scale when we say that. The point, i think, is that everything that human beings are, enlightened or otherwise, depends on the language we so eagerly banish when we try to speak about higher states of Being.

Without languagewithout words there is no art, no culture, no architecture, tradition, science, or society. Humanity as we know it ceases to exista welcome development, perhaps, for the proponents of oblivion, but clearly insufficient as either a condition, cause or objective of human existence. So these philosophies of oblivion, experiential or otherwise, are essentially inhuman.

They contradict the tradition of God as a person, of mankind as a microcosmic expression of God, and the entire nature of existence itself as it manifests in the juxtaposition of God and man. They are, in other words, so apophatic that they do away not only with the signs of man and God, but with man and God itself. The idea, once examined with intensity, is so profoundly and essentially stupid it would not be worth examining, but for the blithely unexamined Very Important Sounding things said in its name.

We are thinking creatures; it is part of our nature, and we deny it at our peril. God is, as well, a thinking nature-above-creation, a pre-existing thought before thinking. Our spiritual development does not, in other words, excuse us from thinking in an invitation to infinite realms of divine and nihilistic thoughtlessness; it requires an intensification of attention and thought, which is precisely what Gurdjieff brought, over and over again, to his pupilsand in his metaphysics and mythology. There are no realms of inattentive bliss mapped out in Beelzebubs cosmos; even purgatory (which would seem to be the most likely candidate) is a place of contemplation intensified to the level of the intolerable. Gurdjieffs famous aphorism, If you have not by nature a critical mind your staying here is useless, sums it all up; but all his aphorisms are directed at an intensification of intelligence that requires words.

Pretending that we can do without them is a form of rank sophistry; and yet one hears such talk quite often.

Yes; there are wordless places; yes, perhaps from time to time we touch them (or, more properly, they touch us.) Yet this is of no use in the enterprise of relationship, which demands that we do much more than just senseor just feelor just think. There is thought without thought; there is thought within thought; and there are parts that think without words, yet express in their own language nonetheless.

We should stop acting surprised about this. It is not the territory we stake out; it is the life we inhabit.

Let us stop speaking about the silence. Let us speak as we speak; and be silent as we may be silent; but in either case, let us be as we be, not as declarative shades of oblivion or wordlessness would have us be.Hosanna.

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Zen, Yoga, Gurdjieff- perspectives on inner work

In each new age, the previous age persists, and within the previous age impulses from the ages preceding it. The series may reach back a very long way, but at a certain point continuity with the past is lost. Our memory as a species, our sense of vision and of guiding purpose, is weak, and indeed, grows weaker with each decade. In the nineteenth century, the memory of the medieval world was present in a way that it is not today. In the twentieth century the memory of the Renaissance still persists in our habits and our way of life, but the memory of the classical world and ofclassicism has nearly faded.

In the mid nineteenth century there were, in Asia Minor, strands of memory running back deep into the history of our family of civilisations, to Babylon and Chaldea. They were preserved over such vast spans of time because they were of value, and they were preserved by the work of school. George Gurdjieff connected with this thread, and with the knowledge he found, he opened up the fourth way. Not the centripetal force of ever increasing knowledge and ever more sophisticated technique, but a knowledge of basic things. The knowledge of the conditions of mans connection to a higher level of creation. What could be of greater significance for us, and what has been more clearly disregarded in the politics and polity of our age? Out of this knowledge, out of this connection to historical memory came the vision of The Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man.

Man, as he is, does not have the wherewithal to bridge this interval; his collective memory is little more than the prime years of his life. The politics, policies, and programmes of the various national governments are reactive, in the sense that they represent responses to short-term issues. Ideologies, such as Liberalism, Socialism, Fascism, and Communism, have a longer life because they develop out of the fundamental social issues of a period, and are driven by those issues until the opposition or polarity is exhausted. They are not an expression of mans cumulative best understanding of what is possible for him, individually or collectively. Religion is not innocent of this charge. The meaning of direction of a religion changes from one generation to the next. Christianity today would be almost unrecognisable to a Christian in the first century AD. What continuity there is, is given by problems and issues that are continuous. The organisations which serve as the carriers of religious beliefs are driven by rivalry, by the struggle for power and position, by material interests of one kind or another.

No one would have seen this more clearly than Gurdjieff. The Caucasus was a collection of populations displaced and relocated by war. It was a place of hardship, emotional and instinctive. It was also a place that offered a view of some of the greatest traditions in human civilisation and culture (beginning with the very bardic songs of Gurdjieffs father). The contrast was extreme.

Gurdjieffs epic literary workBeelzebubs Talesgives the background, the atmosphere, the fundamental orientation and the picture of the universe that informs the Fourth Way in our time. It is the world view which supports the efforts required to awaken.The implications of Beelzebubs Tales is that humanity needs individuals to awaken, and, as a medium of life, it needs to be maintained at a level that can generate such individuals. Civilisation can do this. Society cannot. This outlines the relation between schools and civilisations in the course of history. Higher influences are responsible for civilisation. Without civilisationwith society onlythey cannot replicate themselves, and since they have an interest in replicating themselves, they sustain civilization.

Homo Sapiens is unaware of this process. It was Mr. Gurdjieffs teaching that homo sapiens itself is a part of organic life. This relationship to organic life involves contradiction, the contradiction of higher and lower levels coexisting. For the higher level can only exist through sustained effort and in an atmosphere of tension, while the lower level exists naturally and of itself.

Mankind, in this respect, has two histories: the evolution of its body and the evolution of its soul. The former is recorded and imparted in great detail: the development of religions, the lineages of rulers and monarchs, the successions and revolutions of governments and so forth. But the history of mankinds soul, the long body of its wisdom, never goes into the books. And yet, that history has existed just like the other, side by side with the other, and at critical moments, has overlapped with the other.

Those overlapping moments are times of exceptional opportunity. They represent an interval in the sequence of civilization. They call for a return to the original spark, a connection to the level from which the greater project was initiateda dialogue with the cosmos above the cosmos of man. Those individuals who find themselves caught in such big events are given to experience glimpses beyond the normal spectrum of human experience. They are invited to dedicate their lifes labors to a cause much larger than themselves; they are invited to board and support the Great Ark ofAncient Wisdom.

There are periods in the life of humanity, which generally coincide with the beginning of the fall of cultures and civilizations, when the masses irretrievably lose their reason and begin to destroy everything that has been created by centuries and millenniums of culture. Such periods of mass madness, often coinciding with geological cataclysms, climatic changes, and similar phenomena of a planetary character, release a very great quantity of the matter of knowledge. This, in its turn, necessitates the work of collecting this matter of knowledge which would otherwise be lost. Thus the work of collecting scattered matter of knowledge frequently coincides with the beginning of the destruction and fall of cultures and civilizations. From In Search of the Miraculous (p.45)

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Ancient Wisdom | Gurdjieff Becoming Conscious

Gurdjieffs Institute

Gurdjieff transitions from searching to teaching just after the time spent with the Sarmoung Brotherhood in the Hindu Kush Mountains of Northern Afghanistan. In 1912, Gurdjieff leaves Tashkent for Moscow where he begins to recruit candidates for the Institute.He experiments with different forms and emphases, to find the necessary cell of people and theappropriateform of expression. Much of this period is recorded in In Search of the Miraculousby Peter Ouspensky.

Gurdjieff establishes groups in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. As the Russian Revolution breaks out, he is forced back down into the Caucasuswith an inner circle of students.During this period, he forms the core of his Russian disciples: Sophia Gregiorovitch, the De Hartmans, Dr. Stjernval and the De Salzmanns.In Moscow, Gurdjieff meets Peter Ouspensky, a scholar, traveller and journalist with an established reputation in the field of esotericism. Gurdjieff naturally hopes to use Ouspenskys influence in order to expand his own, and Ouspensky, in turn, realizes that Gurdjieff is in possession of the very esoteric knowledge that he himself had been long searching for.

Social order begins to collapse in Russia. In 1917, Gurdjieff works intensively with a small group of people, in Essentuki, Tuapse, Sochi, Alexandropol, Rostov-on-the-Don, Ekterinodar, and Tiflis. Gurdjieffs experimental spirit causes difficulties for Ouspensky, who feels that, while he had formerly been able to gain much from Gurdjieff, he is now losing his grip on his teaching. The character of the future Institute is probably coming into being, as well as Ouspenskys refusal to be part of it.

In the meantime, the white armies of Denikin are beaten back. The unsympathetic Bolsheviks and the Anarchists of Stenko take possession of most of Russia. Mr. Gurdjieff decides to relocate in Constantinople. Ouspensky goes north to reconnect with the members in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. Gurdjieff takes the others on an incredible journey across the CaucasusMountains to Constantinople. And then in Constantinople, he finally opens The Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man.

Nevertheless, after a determined attempt, the decision is made to relocate in Europe. Peter Ouspensky moves to London, where he has journalistic connections. George Gurdjieff travels first to Berlin, then London, then Paris, and finally settles in Fontainbleau just south of Paris.

It is here that the western disciples of Gurdjieff come from 1921 to 1923.Gurdjieff, a native of south central Asia, is amongst people of a totally different tradition and world view, people whose culture bore the imprint of the Italian Renaissance.The Europeans respond enthusiasticallyfar more actively than the Asiansbut without the sense of the starting point in the work and lacking a firm foundation. It proves a dangerous combination. Gurdjieff continues to rapidly experiment and a passionate, unforgettable drama develops, but the cracks begin to emerge.

Aware of this, Ouspensky dissociates himself from Gurdjieffs work and continues independently in London.Gurdjieff is involved in a severe car accident that forces him to close the Institute. His physical health will never fully recover. What he cannot achieve in practice he now vows to achieve in theory: to leave mankind with a written legacy of what he has understood, and with enough of a circle of students to carry that legacy forward into the future. In Beelzebubs Tales he encodes the material of the early stages of creation and of the true role and place of humanity in the project of the Absolute.

Beelzebubs Tales, Gurdjieffs magnum opus, speaks of time and the struggle against entropy and dispersion. The Absolute created a macrocosm to neutralise entropy by generating consciousness out of worlds created in time. He accepted the limitation of the Sacred Heropass. The book speaks of transformation and the function of the Holy Planet Purgatory. It places the micro-cosmos man in the context of the macro-cosmos by painting a large scale picture of the Work: Self remembering is sacred not only for man, but for a whole ascending ray of creation dependent on generating new life.

The book itself is written in a style deliberately difficult to follow. Gurdjieff admittedly buries the bones of his message deep, far from the reach of most readers.In retrospect, the value ofBeelzebubs Talesis arguable. Gurdjieffs close disciples naturally deem it as their Bible, but seventy-five years after its publication, the book falls short of leaving the imprint its author had predicted.

In 1935, Gurdjieff moves to an apartment in Paris on Rue des Colonels Reynard, where the last stage of his teaching is to follow. He comes to realize that he is not the vehicle for the new order as he originally anticipated. He focuses on his followers, that they might carry his message on to the next generation. He carefully sees the completion of his literary works, and warns his students that, despite his intentions, he will be forced to leave them in a fine mess.

Afterdisassociatingwith Gurdjieff, Ouspensky establishes a small group of students in London. He keeps an eye on his Teacher in Fontainbleau, receiving occasional news by students who maintain contact with both parties. Ouspensky has given up trying to work directly with Gurdjieff, but he does not want to compete with any further effort that Mr. Gurdjieff might make to continue or develop the Institute.

Ouspensky knows thatGurdjieffhas the essential knowledge, and that what he needs is a connection with the ultimate source of that knowledge. He does not take this ultimate source to be human beings, but a higher influence (or human beings only inasmuch as they represent this higher influence). He tries to achieve this re-connection to the source, not by seeking out the Sarmoung, but by bringing the work of his group to the highest level possible, hoping that would attract the source.

Ouspensky transforms the aim for realising the specific project of the Institute possibly given from the Sarmoung Brotherhood to the aim of connecting mankind to the purposes of higher influences through the creation of a conscious school. It may be that higher influences were alligned with the Sarmoung and that they worked through the Sarmoung and Mr.Gurdjiefftogether, but Ouspensky states his aim in a very pure way and connects it very directly to his commitment to his own group.

Gurdjieffs Institute does not regenerate, but the shoot put out to America lives at least partly because of the efforts and ability of Orage. A group develops in New York, which, after the War and the death of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, will join with the Gurdjieff Foundation. Orage serves as an important agent for this shoot, but is openly confounded by Gurdjieff, perhaps due to a failure on both sides. As Ouspensky later says, Orage forgot (left out) a lot. At the same time, Gurdjieff, who still had hopes for him, made it impossible for him to understand.

Ouspensky meanwhile, sees Europe crumbling into another period of chaos. He witnesses the rise of Fascism and Communism. He sees the loss of the western order of civilisations in the last generation and predicts the inevitable war. He has known the golden moment of Gurdjieffs vision, the presentation of the whole plan of the work.After seven years of watching and of working in London with 40 or 50 chosen people, Ouspensky choses to expand his work.

His student John Bennett asks him What about your relation to Mr. Gurdjieff as your teacher?

I waited for all these years (before expanding the work in London) because I wanted to see what Mr.Gurdjieffwould do. His work has not given the results he hoped for. I am still as certain as ever that there is a Great Source from which our System has come. Mr. Gurdjieff must have had a contact with that Source, but I do not believe that it was a complete contact. Something is missing, and he has not been able to find it. If we cannot find it through him, then our only hope is to have a direct contact with the Source Our only hope is that the Source will seek us out. That is why I am giving these lectures in London.

Ouspensky saw that what was missing was not more hidden wisdom, not further journeys to the east, not new techniques but commitment, compassion, and direct assistance from the Source from the unified understanding that exists in the cosmos above the cosmos of man.Ouspensky now seeks to re-establish the link to higher school. He visits New York, and returns to London a changed man, according to his student Rodney Collin. Collin later narrates the last chapter of Ouspenskys life as miraculous; that he had become what he had taught for so long. Furthermore, the student senses a hint of that higher school his teacher was seeking out: a presence as much greater than Ouspensky as Ouspensky was greater than us.

Yet the flame goes out in London. There is no successor in London or in Paris only sincere retainers of the tradition.Both Gurdjieff and Ouspensky lived through the first world war and the Bolshevik Revolution. They saw the onset of the depression and the rise of Fascism in Europe. The had both considered that higher influences might be launching an ark for the preservation of the seed elements of civilisation. Bothrealized, by the time they died that their role was not this. And yet their roles do feed into something else.

Early one morning, shortly before his death, Ouspensky suddenly said: One must do everything one can and then just cry to He did not finish, just made one big gesture upwards. Rodney Collin, Theory of Conscious Harmony p.53.

Rodney Collin picks up Ouspenskys aim and refines it by adding the dimension of school. He connects this to the idea of a civilisation. On March 27, 1950 Rodney Collin writes to one of his students:

In light of a certain big achievement, big plan, one has to disappear. Ones personal self, with which one lives nearly the whole time, is too small to have any relation to that. So it has to disappear, if one is to understand. The more it disappears, the more can be understood. This may be very painful for a time. Later, it is quite the reverse; and it is the return, the interference of the personal self which becomes painful, and its absence happiness.

Peter Ouspensky has been, for Rodney Collin, the living example of this particularly in the last months of his life.Ouspenskys teaching, therefore, remains alive in Rodney Collin, who migrates to Mexico to begin again, and once again attempts the experiment in which his two great predecessors failed. Collin hopes that Mexico would be the beginning of the new civilisational order. Like his teacher, he strives to connect with the Hidden Hierarchy, the inner circle of mankind. Like Ouspensky, he sees them as outside of time and space.

But in the end, Rodney Collin reverts to embrace an existing form, joining the Catholic Church. He dies shortly thereafter, falling off the bell tower of a church in Cuzco, Peru. He leaves a rich legacy of teaching experience and understanding in his books; The Theory of Eternal Life, the Theory of Celestial Influence, and (posthumously) The Theory of Conscious Harmony.

There are certainly more shoots that spring from the Gurdjieff trunk, but these exceed the scope of this site. Suffice it to say that the above brief historical overview outlines the progression of the Greater Ark of Ancient Wisdom. This Ark is twofold: a physical form of a vessel and metaphysical contents. Gurdjieff and his successors seemingly failed in creating the former, yet they were successful in conveying the contents to a new age.

These contents inevitably live on, for they originate from beyond time and space. That source, to which Gurdjieff tapped in the end of the 19th century and which he brought westwards, was never subject to time. It hasnt aged since, nor is it any older that its manifestation in any previous age. That spark is the true legacy of George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff.

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Gurdjieff Teaching | Gurdjieff Becoming Conscious

I find it disheartening that, in certain circles, Aleister Crowley is considered a man of the Right. While he is undoubtedly an interesting character, and was not without some intelligence, he strikes me as an immoral degenerate who was committed to the total destruction of the Western tradition. The most generous interpretation would be a Nietzschean one, in which he was perhaps attempting to push what was already falling. But the fact is, his influence has been almost wholly negative. By their fruits ye shall know them is still the best way to judge a spiritual teacher, and one neednt be a Christian to recognize the utility and practicality of that formula. The fruits of a spiritual teacher are, among other things, his disciples, and I am not aware of any Crowleyites that give their master a good name.

The best story about Aleister Crowley, in my opinion, comes to us from the disciples of G.I. Gurdjieff. No stranger to controversy himself (see Whitall Perrys Gurdjieff in the Light of Tradition for a critical appraisal) Gurdjieff nonetheless seems to have fared better than Crowley in terms of the legacy he has left behind.

The story of when Crowley met Gurdjieff can be found in James Webbs comprehensive book, The Harmonious Circle:

Crowley knew the town of Fontainebleau well in 1924 he had spent a tormented period there in an attempt to cure himself of heroin addiction. The Great Beast was a familiar figure in Paris expatriate circles, and [C.S.] Nott met him in the capital while himself staying at the Prieure. Crowleys interest was aroused either by a general occult curiosity or by Gurdjieffs reputation as a specialist in curing drug addiction; and he soon afterward turned up at Fontainebleau, where was the object of some amazement. To one of the inmates, the Wickedest Man in the World seemed overfed and inoffensive with the exception of his almost colorless eyes, the antipodes to Gurdjieffs heavy gaze. The published accounts of Crowley at the Prieure speak only of a brief visit and a vaguely sinister impression. Nott records that Crowley spoke to one of the children present about his son whom he was teaching to be a devil. Gurdjieff got and spoke to the boy, who thereupon took no further notice of Crowley. But the magicians visit was extensive, and his confrontation with Gurdjieff of a more epic nature.

Crowley arrived for a whole weekend and spent the time like any other visitor to the Prieure; being shown the grounds and the activities in progress, listening to Gurdjieffs music and his oracular conversation. Apart from some circumspection, Gurdjieff treated him like any other guest until the evening of his departure. After dinner on Sunday night, Gurdjieff led the way out of the dining room with Crowley, followed by the body of pupils who had also been at the meal. Crowley made his way toward the door and turned to take his leave of Gurdjieff, who by this time was some way up the stairs to the second floor. Mister, you go? Gurdjieff inquired. Crowley assented. You have been guest? a fact which the visitor could hardly deny. Now you go, you are no longer guest? Crowley no doubt wondering whether his host had lost his grip on reality and was wandering in a semantic wilderness humored his mood by indicating that he was on his way back to Paris. But Gurdjieff, having made the point that he was not violating the canons of hospitality, changed on the instant into the embodiment of righteous anger. You filthy, he stormed, you dirty inside! Never again you set foot in my house! From his vantage point on the stairs, he worked himself up into a rage which quite transfixed his watching pupils. Crowley was stigmatized as the sewer of creation was taken apart and trodden into the mire. Finally, he was banished in the style of East Lynne by a Gurdjieff in fine histrionic form. Whitefaced and shaking, the Great Beast crept back to Paris with his tail between his legs.

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When Crowley Met Gurdjieff | Martin Aurelio

Much has been written of Gurdjieffs relationship with his chief pupils, but his relationship with Fritz Peters is rarely, if ever, mentioned. And yet, it is unique. Only 11 years old when he first met Gurdjieff in 1924, just a month before Gurdjieffs car crash, Fritz Peters was quickly drawn into the life of the Prieur. In the months following the accident, the young boy acted as Gurdjieffs chair-carrier, following him everywhere, watching out for his safety. Later, Freets, as Gurdjieff called him, was enlisted as Gurdjieffs personal servant, delivering messages, doing errands, cleaning his room. And soon, every Tuesday morning the young Fritzwho, when Gurdjieff first asked what he wanted most to know, had answered: I want to know everythingwas receiving private lessons from Gurdjieff.

At such a young and impressionable age to be taken under the wing of a master like Gurdjieff is a blessing as great as it is unique. But it can be a kind of curse, as well, if not taken rightly. One learns only by consciously living ones errors and Peters later life shows how harrowing a journey that can be. Leaving the Prieur in October 1929, Fritz Peters, then 15 years old, was immediately thrown into a turbulent adult world where he found himself totally alone, blamed and victimized, fighting for his very survival. Developed and shaped by his Prieur training, Fritz Peters walked his lifes path, always the outsider, the rebel, the malcontent. He would become a member of the Chicago and New York groups, but, though the teaching and Gurdjieff were in his blood, he never found his place in the Work. His days with Gurdjieff at the Prieur were over. Neither the Chicago nor New York groups were serious enough for him. Too much reverence for Gurdjieff. Too many members he saw as phony. His experience at the Prieur was undeniably special, but as Gurdjieff warnedEvery stick has two ends. But Peters never saw the other end of the Prieur stick. Though keenly observant and detesting any sign of falseness, he didnt see that he had allowed his early experience to make him too special, too separate. He became, as it was expressed one day in 1945 at 6 rue des Colonels Renarda colossal egotist.

Gurdjieffs Successor That 32-year-old Fritz Peters, standing amidst a group of wartime French pupils in Gurdjieffs apartment that autumn day, could for even a moment have believed it when 73-year-old Gurdjieff pointed to him as his successor.Well, to the assembled pupils, who regularly had to pass Nazi checkpoints to get to meetings at Gurdjieffs apartment, it was yet another vivid proof of Peters overweening self-love.

That Gurdjieffs act had evoked, as well, a trace of will-to-power and envy in those who had not grown up at the Prieur, or enjoyed as intimate a relationship with Gurdjieff, was perhaps neither recognized nor appreciated. And certainly the later life of Fritz Peters, filled as it was with seizures of anger, jealousy, rejection, vengeance, nervous breakdowns1 and alcoholism, would do nothing to mitigate the sweeping indictment of him on that day in postwar Paris. It would forever brand Peters as a nullity, a fool, no one to take seriously. The one group of people, then, that might have understood Fritz Peters all but disowned him. Though he was to later write Boyhood with Gurdjieff and Gurdjieff Remembered, two books that are without rival in portraying the heart and soul of Gurdjieff in the last period of his life, Fritz Peters remains maligned and marginalized, his relationship with Gurdjieff never seriously considered.

Meeting such a monumental father-figure so early in life took nearly a lifetime for Peters to digest. For years Peters struggled with Gurdjieffs identity and his own relationship to Gurdjieff and to the teaching. In his last book, Balanced Man, Peters recounts how as late as 1960, 46 years after he first met Gurdjieff, I was still laboring under the impression that I was specialthe real son of a Messiah. In an emotional sense, I was Gurdjieffs son. I loved him more than anyone I had ever known. But times changeI no longer feel like anyones son. As Gurdjieff foresaw, Peters would not lead a happy life. He had a broken marriage, alcoholism, homosexuality, and relationships that inevitably turned contentious.

Troublemaker. Thats how Fritz Peters was commonly seen. And not simply a troublemaker but a born troublemaker, according to Gurdjieff. Like Rachmilevitch, a lawyer and member of the St. Petersburg group and later a Prieur resident, Peters had the inborn knack of setting peoples teeth on edge, bringing up the animal in them. Although Gurdjieff said that we should thank anyone who gives us the opportunity to see ourselvesto see a little I or two in us, yesbut to see the animal-I? Who wants that? Ouspensky didnt want it. Nor Orage. Certainly not Bennett.

The similarity between the young boy and Rachmilevitch was seen at once by Gurdjieff. You remember, how I tell you that you make trouble? Gurdjieff said. This true, but you only child. Rachmilevitch grown man and not mischievous, like you, but have such personality that he constantly cause friction whatever he do, wherever he live. He not make serious trouble, but he make friction on surface of life, all the time. He cannot help thishe too old to change now. I know no one person like him, no person who just by existence, without conscious effort, produce friction in all people around him. Like the caring father that Peters never hadhis father having deserted the family when he was only 18 months of ageGurdjieff was using the figure of Rachmilevitch to show Peters what he would become if he continued to act as he did. All children are naturally mischievous at times, but if Fritz allowed this characteristic, this I, to grow and become fixed in personality, if he did not work to control it, in adulthood it would control him.

Conscious Troublemaking To be a troublemaker is, in itself, nothing bad, Gurdjieff told him. Troublemakers, in fact, play an important role in life. What you not understand, Gurdjieff said, is that not everyone can be troublemaker, like you. This important in lifeis ingredient, like yeast for making bread. Without trouble, conflict, life become dead. People live in status quo, live only by habit, automatically, and without conscience.

Gurdjieff confided that he, too, was a troublemaker. The difference between them was that he played the role consciously, molding it to circumstances; creating conditions and friction in the service of awakening people to what keeps them asleep. This stepping on toes is a Divine principle2 when consciously directed, when not born of the mechanical reaction to make others suffer; make them pay for trespasses, injustices, psychic wounds. To be able to call up a role in oneself and play it, that is one thing; to be controlled by it, quite another.

Of trespasses, injustices and psychic wounds, Fritz Peters life would be filled to the brim. After his father divorced his mother, Lois, she married an Englishman, a Chicago lawyer, who was far from fatherly. His early life was marred by physical calamitiesdisasters he called them and rightly so. His older brother Tom, for example, stuck a crochet hook in his right eye, which permanently blinded Fritz in that eye. His grandmother put him in the bathtub and then went to answer the telephone. He turned on the hot water and could not turn it off. As his grandmother was deaf,3 it wasnt until his screams were heard by a neighbor that he, now partly parboiled, was rescued.

When he was nine years old, Fritzs mother was hospitalized with a nervous breakdown that lasted about a year. It was then that his mothers sister Margaret Anderson and her companion Jane Heap took on the responsibility of caring for Fritz4 and his older brother, Tom. That was in 1923. In June 1924 Fritz and his brother were brought by Anderson and Heap to the Prieur. Upon meeting Gurdjieff the 11-year-old was asked, among other things, what he wanted to know.

I want to know everything, Fritz replied.

You cannot know everything, Gurdjieff told him. Everything about what?

Everything about man. In English I think it is called psychology or maybe philosophy.

Gurdjieff sighed and after a short silence answered: You can stay. But your answer makes life difficult for me. I am the only one who teaches what you ask. You make more work for me.

This exchange, like so many others, gives an indication of Peters quality of mind and mental maturity.

A Piece of Unwanted Luggage

In October of that year Fritz and his brother left the Prieur to return to New York. There, the boys mother, their real father and Jane Heap became involved in an emotional struggle for their allegiance. Fritz and his brother were shunted back and forth so much that Fritz began to feel even more alone than I had beforelike a piece of unwanted luggage for which storage space was needed.

It seems Jane won and, as Margaret had stayed on in Europe with her new friend, the actress and singer Georgette Leblanc, the primary care for the boys devolved to her. Of his relationship with Jane, Fritz said that it was highly volatile and explosive. There was, at times, a great deal of emotion, of love, between us, but the very emotionality of the relationship frightened me. More and more I tended to shut out everything that was outside of myself. People, for me, were something I had to exist with, had to bear. As much as possible, I lived alone, day-dreaming in my own world, longing for a time when I could escape from the complex, and often totally incomprehensible, world around me. I wanted to grow up and be aloneaway from all of them. With characteristic insight and frankness, he says of these early years: Obstinate and independent because of my feeling of aloneness, I was usually in trouble, frequently punished. He said that Jane once went so far as to hit him with a board with nails in it because he refused to do as he was told. Even so, Jane eventually came to the idea that she and Margaret5 should adopt the boys. And so they did. I am not at all sure that I understand why Margaret and Jane took on this responsibility. It was a strange form of planned parenthood for two women neither of whom, it seemed to me, would have wished for children of their own, and a mixed blessing from any point of view.6

Fritz and his brother returned to the Prieur in the spring of 1925. When Gurdjieff saw him he put his hand on the boys head, and Fritz looked up at his fierce mustaches, the broad, open smile underneath the shining, bald head. Like some large, warm animal, he pulled me to his side, squeezing me affectionately with his arm and hand, and saying Soyou come back? In the middle of that summer, reminding Fritz of his desire to know everything, Gurdjieff began giving him private lessons. Every Tuesday morning at 10 oclock sharp Peters was to go the second floor of the chteau, the Ritz, as it was called, and report to Gurdjieffs room.

The lessons and all of his ensuing experiences at the Prieur with its adult population are well-documented in Peters book Boyhood With Gurdjieff. The unusual maturity, clarity, and will of Peters is demonstrated many times in the book, but one incident in particular is striking. Gurdjieff was having the lawns of the Prieur resown and had all the pupils out on the lawns. But Gurdjieff had them working so close together that planting new seed was a useless activity since it was immediately trampled underfoot. Days passed. No one said a thing. Finally Rachmilevitch, thick with rage, confronted Gurdjieff. He told him the work was insane and stalked off. It was the first time Gurdjieff had ever been publicly defied.

Rachmilevitch & the Apple Tree An hour passed and Rachmilevitch did not return. Peters was sent to find him and bring him back. Peters protested, saying he didnt know where he had gone. Trust your instincts, Gurdjieff told him. It was then that Peters demonstrated, though he didnt know it, a lesson Gurdjieff had been teaching him. Not knowing where Rachmilevitch had gone, he put himself in the Russians place, experiencing empathy with him. A hunch came as to where he might be and Peters set off towards the woods beyond the main, formal gardens. He said, It seemed to me that he could only have gone to one of the distant vegetable gardensa walk of at least a mile, and I headed for the furthest one, at the very end of the property. There, he found the 60-year-old sitting up in an apple tree.

He wouldnt go back to the chteau, Rachmilevitch insisted. What to do? How could Fritz Peters argue with a man who was not only five times his age, but a lawyer7 as well? So he did the only thing possible and he did it with all his will. Said Peters: I did not know of any argumentsI could not think of any good reasonswith which to persuade him to come back, so I said that I would wait there as long as he did; that I could not return without him. Finally, after a long silence, Rachmilevitch dropped out of the apple tree and returned to the chteau with him. (To be continued)

Notes

First printed in The Gurdjieff Journal.

William Patrick Patterson is the author of seven books on The Fourth Way, the latest of which is Spiritual Survival in a Radically Changing World-Time.

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Gurdjieff & Fritz Peters, Part I The Gurdjieff Journal

During the 1920s and '30s, George Gurdjieff accumulated followers who were interested in his methods for attaining a higher level of consciousness.

G.I. Gurdjieff was born circa 1866 in Alexandropol (present-day Armenia). In 1922, after settling in France, he reopened his Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man. There, he taught students to reintegrate their spiritual nature with their daily modern lives. Gurdjieff's followers included writers P.L. Travers and Katherine Mansfield. He died in Neuilly, France (near Paris) in 1949.

George Ivanovich Gurdjieff, generally referred to as G.I. Gurdjieff, was born in Alexandropol, in the Armenian region of the Russia Empire (present-day Armenia). His birth date is possibly January 13, 1866a date that is listed in one passport. However, another passport puts the date as December 28, 1877, and some close friends believed that his birth year was 1872. Gurdjieff himself was vague about his origins.

Gurdjieff's mother was Armenian and his father was Greek. Though his father worked as a carpenter, he also regaled Gurdjieff and others with recitations of legends, such as the epic of Gilgamesh. These tales may have spurred Gurdjieff's later belief in the existence of ancient knowledge that surpassed what was offered by science and religion.

Gurdjieff received early tutelage from the dean of the military cathedral at Kars, who was a priest and family friend. According to his autobiography, Meetings with Remarkable Men, he journeyed across Central Asia, Egypt and India in a voyage of spiritual discovery. However, there is no corroboration for Gurdjieff's self-reported accounting of his travels between 1887 and 1911.

When his travels were over, Gurdjieff returned to Russia. Following the Russian Revolution of 1917, he moved to Tiflis, Georgia, where he opened the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man in 1919. A few years later, Gurdjieff settled in France, where his institute took shape once more.

From his base at the Chteau du Prieur, near Fontainebleau, Gurdjieff shared his new philosophy. He believed that man was in an almost constant sleep state, and that people must work to revive themselves in order to regain the higher consciousness that they are capable of. He also averred that the sleep state made people easy to manipulate, and was therefore a proponent of questioning everything.

At Fontainebleau, Gurdjieff often required people to listen to his writings as they were read aloud. People at the center also performed exercises and dance movements, sometimes to music created by Gurdjieff and composer Thomas de Hartmann.

Though he had brought followers with him to France, Gurdjieff gained more once he was ensconced in Fontainebleau, particularly as one early acolyte, P.D. Ouspensky, elucidated and propagated his teachings. His prominent followers included architect Frank Lloyd Wright's third wife, Olgivanna Hinzenburg, writer Katherine Mansfield, editor A.R. Orage and Mary Poppins author P.L. Travers.

Gurdjieff developed a special vocabulary of his own in some of his writings, using words such as "blastegoklornian." For his disciples, these words increased his aura of deep understanding and mystery. For Gurdjieff's detractors, they made his writings even more nonsensical.

Gurdjieff continued teaching even after his Fontainebleau center closed its doors in 1933. He remained in Paris during World War II, surviving under the German occupation. On October 29, 1949, in Neuilly, France (near Paris), he died at the approximate age of 83. He left behind works that include All and Everything (containing Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson, Meetings with Remarkable Men and Life Is Real Only Then, When 'I Am') and The Herald of Coming Good.

Go here to read the rest:
George Gurdjieff - Religious Figure - Biography

During the 1920s and '30s, George Gurdjieff accumulated followers who were interested in his methods for attaining a higher level of consciousness.

G.I. Gurdjieff was born circa 1866 in Alexandropol (present-day Armenia). In 1922, after settling in France, he reopened his Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man. There, he taught students to reintegrate their spiritual nature with their daily modern lives. Gurdjieff's followers included writers P.L. Travers and Katherine Mansfield. He died in Neuilly, France (near Paris) in 1949.

George Ivanovich Gurdjieff, generally referred to as G.I. Gurdjieff, was born in Alexandropol, in the Armenian region of the Russia Empire (present-day Armenia). His birth date is possibly January 13, 1866a date that is listed in one passport. However, another passport puts the date as December 28, 1877, and some close friends believed that his birth year was 1872. Gurdjieff himself was vague about his origins.

Gurdjieff's mother was Armenian and his father was Greek. Though his father worked as a carpenter, he also regaled Gurdjieff and others with recitations of legends, such as the epic of Gilgamesh. These tales may have spurred Gurdjieff's later belief in the existence of ancient knowledge that surpassed what was offered by science and religion.

Gurdjieff received early tutelage from the dean of the military cathedral at Kars, who was a priest and family friend. According to his autobiography, Meetings with Remarkable Men, he journeyed across Central Asia, Egypt and India in a voyage of spiritual discovery. However, there is no corroboration for Gurdjieff's self-reported accounting of his travels between 1887 and 1911.

When his travels were over, Gurdjieff returned to Russia. Following the Russian Revolution of 1917, he moved to Tiflis, Georgia, where he opened the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man in 1919. A few years later, Gurdjieff settled in France, where his institute took shape once more.

From his base at the Chteau du Prieur, near Fontainebleau, Gurdjieff shared his new philosophy. He believed that man was in an almost constant sleep state, and that people must work to revive themselves in order to regain the higher consciousness that they are capable of. He also averred that the sleep state made people easy to manipulate, and was therefore a proponent of questioning everything.

At Fontainebleau, Gurdjieff often required people to listen to his writings as they were read aloud. People at the center also performed exercises and dance movements, sometimes to music created by Gurdjieff and composer Thomas de Hartmann.

Though he had brought followers with him to France, Gurdjieff gained more once he was ensconced in Fontainebleau, particularly as one early acolyte, P.D. Ouspensky, elucidated and propagated his teachings. His prominent followers included architect Frank Lloyd Wright's third wife, Olgivanna Hinzenburg, writer Katherine Mansfield, editor A.R. Orage and Mary Poppins author P.L. Travers.

Gurdjieff developed a special vocabulary of his own in some of his writings, using words such as "blastegoklornian." For his disciples, these words increased his aura of deep understanding and mystery. For Gurdjieff's detractors, they made his writings even more nonsensical.

Gurdjieff continued teaching even after his Fontainebleau center closed its doors in 1933. He remained in Paris during World War II, surviving under the German occupation. On October 29, 1949, in Neuilly, France (near Paris), he died at the approximate age of 83. He left behind works that include All and Everything (containing Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson, Meetings with Remarkable Men and Life Is Real Only Then, When 'I Am') and The Herald of Coming Good.

Read the rest here:
George Gurdjieff - Religious Figure - Biography.com

A practical and sacred teaching of great scale, The Fourth Way shows how to use one's ordinary lifewith all its uncertainty, negativity, suffering and pleasuresto come to real life. Rather than avoiding life or being magnetized or entrapped in it, one learns to consciously live one's life fearlessly, without imagination or regret. Actualizing the practices and principles of the teaching develops self-knowledge and being, which lead to real understanding and objective conscience.

Unlike the three classic ways of self-transformationwork with the body (hatha yoga), work with the emotions (monasticism), work with the mind (raja yoga)in The Fourth Way one stays in the midst of life working on all three centersbody, emotions, mind. The aim is to develop a harmonious individual capable of intelligent and creative response to life's opportunities and challengesa New Type of Man. [The word Man, here as elsewhere, is used in its active sense, not as gender.]

Fundamental to the teaching, yet often overlooked, is its focus on the sacred. While eschewing contemporary notions of love and the self-calming manufactured meanings of ordinary life, the teaching is grounded in Man as being the image of God, and whose actualization of that image will lessen the sorrow of our Common Father Creator. The teaching offers a unique means and perspective by which that image can be realized. Prayer is a definite part of the teaching. See the Gurdjieff Prayer Book.

Gurdjieff said, "One must learn to pray, just as one must learn everything else. Whoever knows how to pray and is able to concentrate in the proper way, his or her prayer can give results." Gurdjieff begins All and Everything with a prayer. Many prayers and hymns are given in the pages that follow. Read "Is Gurdjieff Prince Ozay?"

Excerpt from:
Gurdjieff's Teaching of The Fourth Way

Friedman was born in a log cabin in the South, the South Bronx, He has always kept his New York accent. He attended P.S. 95, a public grammar school, and DeWitt Clinton High School, an all boys public high school. He started the University of Michigan at 17 but was unprepared socially. This has been his modus operandi throughout life. He then spent six months in active duty and five and half years in the reserve. After active service, he attended UCLA studying for a PhD in Clinical Psychology, but after two and a half years, he flunked out. He worked as a research psychologist in the defense industry for eighteen months, and then not knowing what to do, he applied to law school since there were no requirements other than having a B.A. On a lark, he applied to Harvard Law School, and much to his amazement, was accepted. At Harvard, he was one of the students there who made the top half of the class possible. After graduation, he settled in San Francisco where he obtained a job in a small firm in San Carlos, about 25 miles south of the city. While there he created, The Goldwater Calendar: Time for a Change??? about Barry Goldwater, the Republican candidate in the 1964 presidential election. After six months at the San Carlos firm, he was fired, one of the happiest days of his life. He next worked as a lawyer in a mixed neighborhood in San Francisco which he enjoyed, but had the thought he wanted to be a university teacher. While teaching Business Law at the University of Connecticut, he wrote his unpublished book about auto insurance entitled Are You Being Taken For a Ride? A chapter of the book entitled 'Why Auto Insurance Rates Keep Going Up' was published in the September 1969 issue of The Atlantic. After one year at Uconn, he came back to San Francisco to the hippie revolution. As a staff attorney for the Legal Aid Society of Alameda County, he reached the pinnacle of his writing career having five articles published in The New Republic in the space of seven months. After eighteen months at Legal Aid, he was asked to leave because he wasn't filing any big issue cases. He had a few thousand in the bank and wondered if he could go a few months without a job. The legal aid job was the last job Friedman ever had with the exception of teaching Family Law at Warwick University in Coventry, England for eighteen months, which was more of a vacation than a job, but the vacation abruptly ended when he received an advance to write a book on English divorce laws

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Gurdjieff, A Beginner's Guide: How Changing The Way We React ...

GurdjieffLegacy.Org - Trailer for The Life & Significance of George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff, Part II Gurdjieff's Mission: Introducing The Teaching to the West, 1912--1924. Shot on site in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Constantinople, London, Fontainebleau-en-Avon, New York and Lascaux, this documentary videonarrated by William Patrick Patterson and based on his book Struggle of the Magiciansretraces Gurdjieff's mission to introduce the teaching to the West. P.D. Ouspensky's and J.G. Bennett's enigmatic relationship with Gurdjieff are explored. Particularly stressed are the "St. Petersburg Conditions" and Gurdjieff's technique of "divine acting." The video vividly demonstrates Gurdjieff's warning to America of the rise and challenge of the East with footage recalling the 9/11 attack and its aftermath.

William Patrick Patterson, a leading international exponent and teacher of The Fourth Way is the founder/director of The Gurdjieff Legacy Foundation and has led groups, as well as given seminars and talks throughout the United States for many years. He has written nine books on the teaching and directed, written and narrated the award-winning video trilogy The Life & Significance of George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff, Introduction To Gurdjieff's Fourth Way: From Selves To Individual Self To The Self and the just released Spiritual Pilgrimage Mr. Gurdjieffs Fathers Grave. He is also the founder/editor of The Gurdjieff Journal (est. 1992), the first domestic and international Fourth Way journal.

If you are interested in Gurdjieffs Fourth Way Teaching or have questions please contact us. Come experience the Teaching firsthand at a public seminar or event. For a listing of current events visit http://www.gurdjiefflegacy.org/20anno.... For those not in a geographical area where The Gurdjieff Legacy Foundation groups exist, the Online Fourth Way School is offered. To apply visit http://www.gurdjiefflegacy.org/ofws/o.... Alternatively, you can email us at Arete@GurdjieffLegacy dot org.

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Gurdjieff's Mission - YouTube