The Fourth Way is an approach to self-development described by George Gurdjieff which he developed over years of travel in the East (c. 1890 - 1912). It combines and harmonizes what he saw as three established traditional "ways" or "schools": those of the mind, emotions, and body, or of yogis, monks, and fakirs respectively. Students often refer to the Fourth Way as "The Work", "Work on oneself," or "The System". The exact origins of some of Gurdjieff's teachings are unknown, but people have offered various sources.[1]

The term "Fourth Way" was further used by his student P. D. Ouspensky in his lectures and writings. After Ouspensky's death, his students published a book entitled The Fourth Way based on his lectures.

According to this system, the three traditional schools, or ways, "are permanent forms which have survived throughout history mostly unchanged, and are based on religion. Where schools of yogis, monks or fakirs exist, they are barely distinguishable from religious schools. The fourth way differs in that "it is not a permanent way. It has no specific forms or institutions and comes and goes controlled by some particular laws of its own."[2]

When this work is finished, that is to say, when the aim set before it has been accomplished, the fourth way disappears, that is, it disappears from the given place, disappears in its given form, continuing perhaps in another place in another form. Schools of the fourth way exist for the needs of the work which is being carried out in connection with the proposed undertaking. They never exist by themselves as schools for the purpose of education and instruction.[3]

The Fourth Way addresses the question of humanity's place in the Universe and the possibilities of inner development. It emphasizes that people ordinarily live in a state referred to as a semi-hypnotic "waking sleep," while higher levels of consciousness, virtue, unity of will are possible.

The Fourth Way teaches how to increase and focus attention and energy in various ways, and to minimize day-dreaming and absent-mindedness. This inner development in oneself is the beginning of a possible further process of change, whose aim is to transform man into "what he ought to be."

Gurdjieff's followers believed he was a spiritual master,[4] a human being who is fully awake or enlightened. He was also seen as an esotericist or occultist.[5] He agreed that the teaching was esoteric but claimed that none of it was veiled in secrecy but that many people lack the interest or the capability to understand it.[6] Gurdjieff said, "The teaching whose theory is here being set out is completely self supporting and independent of other lines and it has been completely unknown up to the present time."[citation needed]

The Fourth Way teaches that humans are not born with a soul and are not really conscious but only believe they are. A person must create a soul by following a teaching which can lead to this aim, or else "die like a dog". Humans are born asleep, live in sleep and die in sleep, only imagining that they are awake.[7] The ordinary waking "consciousness" of human beings is not consciousness at all but merely a form of sleep.

Gurdjieff taught "sacred dances" or "movements", now known as Gurdjieff movements, which they performed together as a group.[8] He left a body of music, inspired by that which he had heard in remote monasteries and other places, which was written for piano in collaboration with one of his pupils, Thomas de Hartmann.[9]

Gurdjieff taught that traditional paths to spiritual enlightenment followed one of three ways:

Gurdjieff insisted that these paths - although they may intend to seek to produce a fully developed human being - tend to cultivate certain faculties at the expense of others. The goal of religion or spirituality was, in fact, to produce a well-balanced, responsive and sane human being capable of dealing with all eventualities that life may present. Gurdjieff therefore made it clear that it was necessary to cultivate a way that integrated and combined the traditional three ways.

Gurdjieff said that his Fourth Way was a quicker means than the first three ways because it simultaneously combined work on all three centers rather than focusing on one. It could be followed by ordinary people in everyday life, requiring no retirement into the desert. The Fourth Way does involve certain conditions imposed by a teacher, but blind acceptance of them is discouraged. Each student is advised to do only what they understand and to verify for themselves the teaching's ideas.

Ouspensky documented Gurdjieff as saying that "two or three thousand years ago there were yet other ways which no longer exist and the ways now in existence were not so divided, they stood much closer to one another. The fourth way differs from the old and the new ways by the fact that it is never a permanent way. It has no definite forms and there are no institutions connected with it."[10]

Ouspensky quotes Gurdjieff that there are fake schools and that "It is impossible to recognize a wrong way without knowing the right way. This means that it is no use troubling oneself how to recognize a wrong way. One must think of how to find the right way."[11]

In his works, Gurdjieff credits his teachings to a number of more or less mysterious sources:[12]-

Attempts to fill out his account have featured:

The Fourth Way focuses on "conscious labor" and "intentional suffering."

Conscious Labor is an action where the person who is performing the act is present to what he is doing; not absentminded. At the same time he is striving to perform the act more efficiently.

Intentional suffering is the act of struggling against automatism such as daydreaming, pleasure, food (eating for reasons other than real hunger), etc... In Gurdjieff's book Beelzebub's Tales he states that "the greatest 'intentional suffering' can be obtained in our presences by compelling ourselves to endure the displeasing manifestations of others toward ourselves"[19]

To Gurdjieff these two were the basis of all evolution of man.

Self-Observation

This is to strive to observe in oneself behavior and habits usually only observed in others, and as dispassionately as one may observe them in others, to observe thoughts, feelings, and sensations without judging or analyzing what is observed.[20]

The Need for Effort

Gurdjieff emphasized that awakening results from consistent, prolonged effort. Such efforts may be made as an act of will after one is already exhausted.

The Many 'I's

This indicates fragmentation of the psyche, the different feelings and thoughts of I in a person: I think, I want, I know best, I prefer, I am happy, I am hungry, I am tired, etc. These have nothing in common with one another and are unaware of each other, arising and vanishing for short periods of time. Hence man usually has no unity in himself, wanting one thing now and another, perhaps contradictory, thing later.

Centers

Gurdjieff classified plants as having one center, animals two and humans three. Centers refer to apparati within a being that dictate specific organic functions. There are three main centers in a man: intellectual, emotional and physical, and two higher centers: higher emotional and higher intellectual.

Body, Essence and Personality

Gurdjieff divided people's being into Essence and Personality.

Cosmic Laws

Gurdjieff focused on two main cosmic laws, the Law of Three and the Law of Seven[citation needed].

How the Law of Seven and Law of Three function together is said to be illustrated on the Fourth Way Enneagram, a nine-pointed symbol which is the central glyph of Gurdjieff's system.

In his explanations Gurdjieff often used different symbols such as the Enneagram and the Ray of Creation. Gurdjieff said that "the enneagram is a universal symbol. All knowledge can be included in the enneagram and with the help of the enneagram it can be interpreted ... A man may be quite alone in the desert and he can trace the enneagram in the sand and in it read the eternal laws of the universe. And every time he can learn something new, something he did not know before."[21] The ray of creation is a diagram which represents the Earth's place in the Universe. The diagram has eight levels, each corresponding to Gurdjieff's laws of octaves.

Through the elaboration of the law of octaves and the meaning of the enneagram, Gurdjieff offered his students alternative means of conceptualizing the world and their place in it.

To provide conditions in which attention could be exercised more intensively, Gurdjieff also taught his pupils "sacred dances" or "movements" which they performed together as a group, and he left a body of music inspired by what he heard in visits to remote monasteries and other places, which was written for piano in collaboration with one of his pupils, Thomas de Hartmann.

Gurdjieff laid emphasis on the idea that the seeker must conduct his or her own search. The teacher cannot do the student's work for the student, but is more of a guide on the path to self-discovery. As a teacher, Gurdjieff specialized in creating conditions for students - conditions in which growth was possible, in which efficient progress could be made by the willing. To find oneself in a set of conditions that a gifted teacher has arranged has another benefit. As Gurdjieff put it, "You must realize that each man has a definite repertoire of roles which he plays in ordinary circumstances ... but put him into even only slightly different circumstances and he is unable to find a suitable role and for a short time he becomes himself."

Having migrated for four years after escaping the Russian Revolution with dozens of followers and family members, Gurdjieff settled in France and established his Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man at the Chteau Le Prieur at Fontainebleau-Avon in October 1922.[22] The institute was an esoteric school based on Gurdjieff's Fourth Way teaching. After nearly dying in a car crash in 1924, he recovered and closed down the Institute. He began writing All and Everything. From 1930, Gurdjieff made visits to North America where he resumed his teachings.

Ouspensky relates that in the early work with Gurdjieff in Moscow and Saint Petersburg, Gurdjieff forbade students from writing down or publishing anything connected with Gurdjieff and his ideas. Gurdjieff said that students of his methods would find themselves unable to transmit correctly what was said in the groups. Later, Gurdjieff relaxed this rule, accepting students who subsequently published accounts of their experiences in the Gurdjieff work.

After Gurdjieff's death in 1949 a variety of groups around the world have attempted to continue The Gurdjieff Work. The Gurdjieff Foundation, was established in 1953 in New York City by Jeanne de Salzmann in cooperation with other direct pupils.[23]J. G. Bennett ran groups and also made contact with the Subud and Sufi schools to develop The Work in different directions. Maurice Nicoll, a Jungian psychologist, also ran his own groups based on Gurdjieff and Ouspensky's ideas. The French institute was headed for many years by Madam de Salzmann - a direct pupil of Gurdjieff. Under her leadership, the Gurdjieff Societies of London and New York were founded and developed.

There is debate regarding the ability to use Gurdjieff's ideas through groups. Some critics believe that none of Gurdjieff's students were able to raise themselves to his level of understanding. Proponents of the continued viability of Gurdjieff's system, and its study through the use of groups, however, point to Gurdjieff's insistence on the training of initiates in interpreting and disseminating the ideas that he expressed cryptically in Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson. This, combined with Gurdjieff's almost fanatical dedication to the completion of this text (Beelzebub's Tales), suggest that Gurdjieff himself intended his ideas to continue to be practiced and taught long after his death. Other proponents of continuing the Work are not concerned with external factors, but focus on the inner results achieved through a sincere practice of Gurdjieff's system.

In contrast, some former Gurdjieffians joined other movements,[24][25] and there are a number of offshoots, and syntheses incorporating elements of the Fourth Way, such as:

The Enneagram is often studied in contexts that do not include other elements of Fourth Way teaching.

The rest is here:
Fourth Way - Wikipedia

This site, and the content herein except where noted, was created byAsaf Braverman. The posts are written by Asaf and several guest contributors.Asaf takes responsibility for any points of view expressed on this site, originating as they do, from his own experience with the Fourth Way and his own study of ancient wisdom.

After the deaths of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, students in Washington and New York continue, as best as they can, experimenting with Fourth Way principles. America now enters the post World War II era, characterized by the breaking down of form and the emergence of the Hippie movement. It is a decade ripe for esotericism and spirituality. Gurdjieffs student William Nyland connects with the young generation of people reacting to the increasingly materialist values of the postwar world.

The old image of teacher infallibility and the best of all schools has worn thin. It does not correspond to the modes of thought in a society where uncertainty and hazard are seen to be the price of existence itself. The school must be seen as a community that has undertaken an almost impossible task of producing a new type of man that will be needed to cope with the predicted world crises for the next hundred years. The image of the Temple of Wisdom must be replaced by that of Noahs Ark riding the flood. Unless awareness of social needs and the awakening of social conscience are recognized respectively as the beginning and end of the educational process, there is little hope for the future. J G Bennett

William Nylands circle includes Alexander Francis Horn, a teacher of theatre, dramatist, and playwright. Horn learns more about the Fourth Way from J.G. Bennets New York groups, from the Gurdjieff Foundation, as well as from Rodney Collin himself, whom he visits in Mexico. Upon Collins death, Horn is dissatisfied with the condition in which he finds the Gurdjieff Foundation (now institutionalized without its founder). He recommends that Lord Pentland disband it.

Horn establishes the Theatre of All Possibilities and incorporates Fourth Way principles into his theatrical work. Horns methods are severe, forcing his students to work on themselves by subjecting them to pressure and charging them with large demands. His plays In Search for a Solar Hero and Ponderings of a Citizen of the Milky Way sum the ideals of the sixties, ideals which that decade never fully attains. Yet in so doing, Horn translates and transports Gurdjieffs work to a new generation.

Horn moves his group to San Francisco, where he meets and marries actress Sharon Ganz. The Theatre of All Possibilities is eventually taken over by Sharon, forcing Horn to return to New York. As the flower children turn into the increasingly materially prosperous baby-boomers, the spirit of the sixties is extinguished. Alexander Horns teaching splits, his wife taking the more active role with the groups, while he continues working with a smaller circle of students until his death in 2007.

Esotericism inevitably flounders and degenerates in the course of time, giving rise to the need for the esoteric impulse to be constantly revivified and redefined. Alexander Francis Horn

Robert Burton joins the Theatre of All Possibilities in 1967 in San Francisco. He dedicates himself to Alexander Horns work, in which he learns the principles of the Fourth Way as expressed by Horn, as well as reads the extensive literature left by Gurdjieff, Ouspensky and Collin.

Burton leaves Horn in 1969, and establishes the Fellowship of Friends in 1970. In 1971, Burton purchases property in the Sierra Foothills and establishes the heart of his school. Outlying centres spring up in Carmel, San Francisco, Los Angles, San Diego, and then throughout the United States. In the 1980s, he sends his students to open centers abroad, and the Fellowship draws students interested in the Fourth Way internationally.

Burton departs from Horns severe methods. He uses, as his foundation, the Fourth Way as expressed by Gurdjieff, Ouspensky and Collin. In the 1990s his teaching gradually assumes its own hue, as he blends it with earlier expressions of ancient wisdom. His work and organization grow to an international scale and attract more students, as well as criticism, mostly from former members of his organization.

As of 2015, the Fellowship of Friends still resides in the Sierra Foothills, under the direction of Robert Burton.

The work never belongs to anyone. The same esoteric knowledge belongs to all schools, which, in fact, are the same school. Robert Earl Burton

And so ends the arguable history of the Fourth Way as it manifests in the 20th century. Arguable, I say, because many will claim that it ended with Gurdjieffs death in 1949, denouncing even Peter Ouspensky from the title of heir to its spirit (let alone giving any credit to the later generations of Nyland, Horn and Burton). History is, inevitably, an inexact science, one subject to the interpretation of the historian. But since those interested in Gurdjieff who has passed away may find interest in his influence which stays on I have here given its outline as best as I could.

I encountered the Fourth Way in 1995, joining Burtons Fellowship of Friends, and am still a member of that organization. I moved to the California headquarters in 2000 and began working closely with Burton on his teaching. In 2007, I was forced to set out on a two year journey, which brought me in contact with the origin of the ancient wisdom that I had been previously studying in theory.I traveled to all the major ancient sites of the world, spanning Asia, Europe, the Middle East, Central and South America.

Those two years of travel were an odyssey a genuine encounter with the miraculous which is always bitter-sweet and involves as much payment as it bestows reward. The experience was proof, if any were needed, that the spirit of ancient wisdom is as alive and accessible today as it ever was in previous days. The spark didnt leave with Gurdjieffs departure nor had it arrived only when he set foot on the stage. But to tell more than this would require telling a whole story which I am in the process of writing.

Original post:
Backstage | Gurdjieff Becoming Conscious

Sam Shepard, who has died aged 73 from complications of ALS, a form of motor neurone disease, excelled as an actor, screenwriter, playwright and director. In each of those disciplines he challenged and reimagined mythic American archetypes. He wrote nearly 50 plays; the most coruscating of them, such as the Pulitzer prize-winning Buried Child (1978), True West (1980) and Fool for Love (1983), established him as one of the visionaries of US theatre and created a fresh vernacular for exploring the disparity in American life between myth and reality, past and present, fathers and sons.

He took flawed macho heroes who might have staggered out of an Anthony Mann western, and broken, overheated families redolent of a Tennessee Williams clan, and forced them into claustrophobic hothouse scenarios; the result was like Beckett performed in cowboy duds. He found in the process a large audience receptive to this blend of stormy psychodrama, pitiless analysis and bruised romanticism. By the age of 40, he had become the second most widely performed US playwright after Williams.

He was fascinated by the violence that arose in American life from feelings of inadequacy. This sense of failure runs very deep maybe it has to do with the frontier being systematically taken away, with the guilt of having gotten this country by wiping out a native race of people, with the whole Protestant work ethic, he said in 1984. I cant put my finger on it, but its the source of a lot of intrigue for me.

To articulate the charged, often oedipal confrontations that littered his work, and its friction between progress and tradition, he forged a genuinely original writing voice. His runaway soliloquies made urgent, rhythmic poetry out of the banal. I drive on the freeway every day, says Austin, the screenwriter grappling with notions of authenticity in True West. I swallow the smog. I watch the news in colour. I shop in the Safeway Theres no such thing as the west any more! Its a dead issue! But he could be just as eloquent with silence, as he proved in his screenplay (co-written by LM Kit Carson) for Paris, Texas (1984). Wim Wenderss plangent masterpiece reshaped the western as a modern road movie in which the wandering loner, played by Harry Dean Stanton, is mute for almost the first hour of the film.

As an actor, Shepard was a softer presence, cast early on for his wan, arresting handsomeness and his connotations of nobility. Later, as he grew craggier, his presence was typically used to denote grizzled tradition. He was fey as the dying farmer caught unwittingly in a love triangle in Terrence Malicks Days of Heaven (1978). His finest acting work was as the pilot Chuck Yeager in Philip Kaufmans mighty adaptation of Tom Wolfes The Right Stuff (1983). Shepard evoked achingly the determination of Yeager, who had been the first person to fly at supersonic speed, to set a new altitude record even if it meant jeopardising his life. Burned and battered at the end of the movie, he falls to earth with a bang but gathers up his dignity along with his tattered parachute. The performance, which brought him an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor, marked the point where his acting began to blur with his writing to create the intrepid artist-cowboy of popular imagination, as John J Winters put it in his book Sam Shepard: A Life (2017).

This impression persisted in films such as the Cormac McCarthy adaptation All the Pretty Horses (2000), The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007) and the Mississippi melodrama Mud (2012). Recently Shepard starred in the Netflix series Bloodline (2015), as the patriarch in a tempestuous family scarred by murder and double-crossing. The impression that he was having a whale of a time was enhanced by the suspicion that the programme makers had raided Shepards own thematic larder in cooking up the shows heady gumbo. No wonder he looked at home.

He was born in Fort Sheridan, Illinois, and raised largely in southern California, the son of Samuel Shepard Rogers, a teacher, farmer and former US army pilot, and Jane (nee Schook), also a teacher. The family moved around, living in Utah and Florida before settling for a while in Duarte, California, where his father owned an avocado farm. Sam was educated at Duarte high school, Los Angeles, and at Mt San Antonio College, where he studied agriculture.

Though he claimed to have been a rabble-rouser, classmates later recalled a nice, polite, quiet boy. He did, however, clash repeatedly with his alcoholic father, and left home after intervening in a parental argument. He had various odd jobs and briefly joined a travelling theatre troupe. Ending up in New York, he worked as a waiter and started knocking out one-act plays for the off-off-Broadway circuit.

These immediately earned him notoriety. A double-bill of Cowboys and The Rock Garden caused an uproar by its profane language; a scene from the latter was excerpted in Kenneth Tynans 1969 revue Oh! Calcutta! Shepards work was said to have caused a significant cancellation of subscriptions at some of the venues that staged it. But along with controversy came acclaim: between 1966 and 1968 he won six Obie awards for plays including Icaruss Mother and La Turista.

His own emerging creative life brought him into the orbit of other artists of that time. He became friendly with the Rolling Stones. Along with Allen Ginsberg, he was one of the writers of Robert Franks film Me and My Brother (1969). Less happily, he also co-wrote Michelangelo Antonionis Zabriskie Point (1970). Antonioni wanted to make a political statement about contemporary youth, write in a lot of Marxist jargon and Black Panther speeches, he said. I couldnt do it. I just wasnt interested. Shepards name ended up being one of five credited for the script.

He also drummed for the Holy Modal Rounders and married the actor O-Lan Jones, with whom he had a child. At the same time, he fell into a seven-month relationship with the musician Patti Smith, and co-wrote with her the 1971 semi-autobiographical play Cowboy Mouth, in which they both starred. Another of his plays, Back Bog Beast Bait, was included on the same bill and featured Jones as a character based on Smith.

When Shepard and Jones moved briefly to London to escape that imbroglio, he met the director Peter Brook, who introduced Shepard to the teachings of the spiritual philosopher GI Gurdjieff and encouraged him to think more closely about character in his writing. Upon returning to the US, he went on tour with Bob Dylans Rolling Thunder revue, where he began a brief relationship with Joni Mitchell; her song Coyote was said to have been written about him (He pins me in a corner and he wont take no/ He drags me out on the dance floor/ And were dancing close and slow). Out of his friendship with Dylan came a screenwriting credit on the singers film Renaldo and Clara (1978) and a co-writing one on his song Brownsville Girl.

Unsettled by life on the road, and with Brooks advice in his ears, Shepard took up the post of playwright-in-residence at the Magic theatre in San Francisco and produced the plays that were to mark his most celebrated period and define him forever in audiences minds. Curse of the Starving Class, which had its premiere at the Royal Court in London in 1977, concerns a debt-ridden, alcoholic former pilot trying to offload his Californian farm.

In Buried Child, a dysfunctional family is haunted by the memory of a dead son and dominated by Dodge, the gone-to-seed patriarch marinated in booze. Shepards own father pitched up at one performance and began berating the actors on stage. He took it personally and he was drunk, the playwright said. He was kicked out and then was readmitted once he confessed to being my father. And then he started yelling at the actors again.

True West, about two warring brothers, dramatised what Shepard saw as an essential divide in human nature. I think were split in a much more devastating way than psychology can ever reveal Its something weve got to live with. (In a notable 2000 Broadway staging admired by Shepard, the connection between the characters was amplified by having the actors Philip Seymour Hoffman and John C Reilly swap roles on alternate nights.)

Fool for Love (1983) was a feverish, motel-bound drama about incestuous half-siblings; Shepard also adapted it and starred in Robert Altmans 1985 film version. Completing the playwrights most distinguished period, A Lie of the Mind (1985) examined an abusive marriage. It, too, was haunted by yet another drunk, domineering father.

During this time, Shepards career as an actor was picking up. Though he made only a mild impression in Frances (1982), a biopic of the actor Frances Farmer, it was important for another reason: he fell in love with its star, Jessica Lange, with whom he was in a relationship for 26 years. They appeared together in the rural dramas Country (1984) and Crimes of the Heart (1986), while Shepard directed her in Far North (1988), one of only two movies he directed. The other, Silent Tongue (1993), was a mystical western starring River Phoenix, Richard Harris and Alan Bates.

He starred with Diane Keaton in the comedy Baby Boom (1987) and alongside Julia Roberts in the weepie Steel Magnolias (1989) and the thriller The Pelican Brief (1993). He was a good choice to play the Ghost to Ethan Hawkes Prince in a modern-day Hamlet (2000) by Michael Almereyda, who also directed a revealing documentary about Shepard, This So-Called Disaster (2003), which followed the preparations for a staging of his play The Late Henry Moss. Other films included Black Hawk Down (2001), The Notebook (2004), Killing Them Softly (2012), an adaptation of Tracy Lettss play August: Osage County (2013) and the thriller Cold in July (2014).

Shepard continued writing, acting and directing throughout the rest of his life, branching out also into short fiction in collections such as Cruising Paradise (1996) and Day Out of Days: Stories (2010) and a novel, The One Inside, published this year. Asked in 2016 if he felt he had achieved something substantial, he replied: Yes and no. If you include the short stories and all the other books and you mash them up with some plays and stuff, then, yes, Ive come at least close to what Im shooting for. In one individual piece, Id say no. There are certainly some plays I like better than others, but none that measure up. For all the messy domestic histrionics that litter his work, he seemed ultimately to be grappling with solitude. Writing, he said in 2010, is almost a response to that aloneness which cant be answered in any other way.

He is survived by his son, Jesse, from his marriage to Jones, and two children, Hannah and Walker, from his relationship with Lange.

Samuel Shepard Rogers, writer and actor, born 5 November 1943; died 27 July 2017

Read more here:
Sam Shepard obituary - The Guardian

The Fourth Way of Self-Transformation

"Real love is a cosmic force which goes through us. If we crystallize it, it becomes the greatest power in the world."

G. I. Gurdjieff

Views from the Real World

"With the right methods and efforts, a man can acquire consciousness. What this implies we, in our present state, cannot even imagine."

P. D. Ouspensky

GurdjieffWork.com is for those who are seeking to understand the nature of self, the universe, and the inner meaning of the Gospel message. It is for those who care about our world a world which seems tragically out of balance not what we imagine it could be. It is for those who sense the urgency of participating more consciously in their own transformation, and thus the transformation of the larger world.

We must realize that man cannot expect to live in harmony if he cannot undergo a definite and radical transformation of his consciousness as it relates to the significance of human life on earth. If we are unable to achieve the needed transformation, we can expect more of what we have seen throughout man's tragic history: violence, wars, and the slaughter of innocent men, women and children to settle our racial, religious, and political differences.

GurdjieffWork.com is a comprehensive source of information and material on the Teachings of G.I. Gurdjieff, known as "The Work" and the "Fourth Way," including numerous contributions from many of his closest students such as P.D. Ouspensky and Maurice Nicoll as well as articles, audios and videos from well-known Fourth Way teachers such as Theodore Nottingham, James Parkinson, Jacob Needleman, Tim Cook(Church of Conscious Harmony) and many others. In addition, GurdjieffWork.com also includes selected writings, videos and audios of J. Krishnamurti and aFourth Way Bookstore.These teachings and resources are offered to sincere seekers to help you gain access toa living truth referred to throughout the Gospels as the "Kingdom of Heaven", and in the Work as "Real I" ...spiritual understanding that resides in the minds and heart ofevery soul.

The Terror of The Situation

"We see everywhere a preponderance of vulgarity and stupidity of all kinds, and in life, we only see new divisions, new hostility, new misunderstandings."

Gurdjieff called this the terror of the situation. Through whatever form Gurdjieff expressed himself, his voice must be understood as an urgent call to each of us. He calls each of us to free ourselves from the inner chaos in which we live. He calls us to open our inner awareness. He asks us why we are here, what humanity wishes, and what spiritual forces will we ultimately commit our entire being to. Above all, Gurdjieff asks us if we understand who we are, and more importantly, what we might become.

Gurdjieff Calls Us to Awaken

"Man's possibilities are very great. You cannot even conceive a shadow of what man is capable of attaining."

Go out one clear starlit night to some open space and look up at the sky, at those millions of worlds over your head. Look at the Milky Way. The earth cannot even be called a grain of sand in this infinity. It dissolves and vanishes, and with it, you. Where are you, and is what you want simply madness?

Man's possibilities are very great. You cannot even conceive a shadow of what man is capable of attaining. But nothing can be attained in sleep. In the consciousness of a sleeping man, his illusions and dreams are mixed with reality. He lives in a subjective world and he can never escape from it. And this is the reason why he can never make use of all the powers he possesses and why he lives in only a small part of himself. For a man who wishes to wholly be himself one day, the search for the truth of what he is becomes the most urgent necessity.

What is the sense and significance of life on earth, and human life in particular?

This was George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff's question. At an early age he had realized a high degree of being. Experiencing the mindless mechanicality of man, the wars, the destruction, the misery, the question arose in him: Why is there life on earth, what purpose does it serve, if any? Gurdjieff studied orthodox religion and science but their answers didn't satisfy him. He came to intuit that the wisdom societies of ancient civilizations held the key to man's true identity and purpose. Humanity, he recognized, was in dire need of this knowledge, for humanity had entered a crucial period in its development. "Unless the wisdom of the East and the energy of the West," he said, "could be harnessed and used harmoniously, the world would be destroyed." In 1911 Gurdjieff took a vow to awaken people to a new level of being, of consciousness, of conscience; in a word, to a new type of man. He vowed to introduce and establish in the West the esoteric teaching of self-transformation he had discovered, one he said that was completely unknown up to the present time. He called it The Fourth Way.

In his talks, Gurdjieff gave a keen analysis of the modern dilemma. "There is a growth of personality at the cost of essence, that is, a growth of the artificial, the unreal and what is foreign, at the cost of the natural, the real and what is one's own. We see everywhere a preponderance of vulgarity and stupidity of all kinds, and in life, we only see new divisions, new hostility, new misunderstandings. To avoid a complete disaster, it was necessary to achieve world harmony as soon as possible. It could not be achieved by politics, philosophy, religion or any organized movement that treated man in the mass. It could only be accomplished through the individual development of man. If enough individuals could develop themselves, even partially, into genuine natural beings, each such individual would then be able to convince and win over as many as a hundred others who would, each in his turn, be able to influence another hundred and so on." What Gurdjieff was saying was that everyone, like Atlas, would hold up, be responsible for, their own world and thus the larger world.

We Are One Humanity

The Golden Rule Norman Rockwell

"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. You shall love your neighbor as yourself."

"He on whom your attention rests is your neighbor; he also will die. If you acquire data always to realize the inevitability of their death and your own death, you will have a feeling of pity for others, and be just toward them.

From realizing the significance of your neighbor when your attention rest on him, pity for him and compassion toward him will arise in you, and finally you will love him. Also, by doing this constantly, real faith, conscious faith, will arise in some part of you and spread to other parts, and you will have the possibility of knowing real happiness."

G. I. Gurdjieff

Prayer forWorld Peace

Pray to become a vehicle of divine love, a channel of the creator's will. Pray for direction and divine guidance and surrender all personal will through devotion to truth. Dedicate your life to the service of our common creator and your neighbor. Choose love and peace above all other options, and strive to reach the state of being of unconditional love and compassion for all life.

Living a Conscious Life

"If a man reasons soundly, he inevitably arrives back at himself, and begins to search for the answer of what he is, and what his place is in the world."

Maurice Nicoll

Psychological Commentaries on the Teachings of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, by Maurice Nicoll, provides a roadmap that leads one to liberation from self-illusions into the inner sanctuary of the heart where he can discover what G. I. Gurdjieff calls 'Real I', and what the Bible calls the 'Kingdom of Heaven'. It is from this heart where a man or woman can develop the wish, as the Gospels instructs, to love God with all your heart, all your strength, and all your mind, and to love your neighbor as yourself.

In every age, there is sown into the world esoteric teaching which gives the direction in which individual evolution should take place. In our epoch, we have been given the esoteric teaching in the Gospels indicating the direction in which individual evolution should take place at this stage. The word esoteric is commonly misunderstood to mean secret or hidden. Esoteric schools have existed for many thousands of years, but in the pre-industrial technological world they consisted of relatively small isolated groups.

The vast majority of humanity has never heard of esotericism and extremely few people came into contact with a real school. The 'secret society' mentality connected with esotericism arose partly from this ignorance due to circumstances, and it is used in current Fourth Way schools as a selling tactic. People love secrets; they love elitism, 'hats', and agreed-upon delineated hierarchical groups. But esoteric does not mean secret or hidden; it refers to the inner meaning of a thing. In the first place, this knowledge is not concealed and in the second place it cannot, because of its very nature, become common property.

There Exists Great Meaning to Life and The Universe

Esoteric knowledge is not hidden, it is available, however the enormous majority of people cannot hear it or, if they do, they find it fantastic or, at least, unnecessary. Esoteric teaching is for those who are not satisfied with themselves or with life as it is, those who feel there must be some greater meaning to life and who yearn to find their own meaning in it. If you are mostly satisfied with yourself, with the kind of person you are, the esoteric path is not for you. You must have a question in yourself and feel a longing for understanding, for completeness and for personal meaning and direction. Then, if you seek, and when you find, you will be able to hear.

This work is beautiful when you see why it exists and what it means. It is about liberation. It is as beautiful as if, locked for years in a prison, you see a stranger entering who offers you a key. But you may refuse it because you have acquired prison-habits and have forgotten your origin, which is from the stars.

Whoever meets these ideas without prejudice feels touched to the heart by a force of truth that cannot be denied, and also called upon to question all the values which, until then, have supported him through life. Ideas of this magnitude are such that, in front of which, one's personal ideas and prejudices must stand aside to make way for the deeper meaning of the thoughts to penetrate a man's understanding and affect his being. However, by finding again and again in himself the taste of these ideas, a man can receive practical help in his search for an unchangeable truth.

The Mark

There is something in us eternally young, that can understand beyond the visible world, beyond phenomenal reality, but this one thing in us is lost to us in the world of objects, and the external things of the senses and using the logic of the senses.

"The Work is something living in our hearts and minds. Follow the path, see what changes take place within you, and what light begins to dawn in you."

Maurice Nicoll

The Gurdjieff Work

Introduction to The Gurdjieff Work by Jacob Needleman

Introduction to the Gurdjieff Work

Man, Gurdjieff taught, is an unfinished creation. He is not fully Man, considered as a cosmically unique being whose intelligence and power of action mirror the energies of the source of life itself. That the fate of the earth is somehow bound up with the possibility of the inner evolution of individual men and women resonates with the contemporary sense of impending planetary disaster.

"The Gurdjieff Work may be understood as the practical, painstaking cultivation of that state of awakening to the truth of the human condition in the world and in oneself."

How are human beings to change this state of affairs and begin drawing on the universal conscious energies which we are built to absorb but which now pass through us untransformed? How is humanity to assume its proper place in the great chain of being? It is necessary for individual men and women to awaken, to remember who they are, and then to become who they really are, to live it in the service of truth. Without this awakening and this becoming, nothing else can help us. But it is very difficult. An extraordinary quality of help is needed. To this end, Gurdjieff created what has come to be called The Work.

"The practice of self-observation, in accordance with the overall aim of the Work, is not a form in and of itself, but is fundamentally a preparation for the inner search within the midst of life."

The work of self-observation acquires a completely new meaning as the developing attention lets go of its effort, joining and willingly submitting to a higher conscious seeing. Through such experience, a man or woman begins to come into contact with an ever-deepening sense of an inner need which allows an opening to a powerful conscious influence within oneself. According to Gurdjieff, without a relationship to this more central aspect of oneself, everyday life is bound to be an existential prison, in which the individual is held captive, not so much by the so-called forces of modernity, as by the parts of the self that cannot help but react automatically to the influences of the world.

Journey to Essence Newsletter

The Kindom ofHeaven

""For a human being, any serious critique of reality must commence with himself, that is, with him who is making the critique in the first place."

Charles Daly King

"The level above Man is called the Kingdom of Heaven or Kingdom of God in the Gospels. It has many other names in different writings. In the Gospels, it is said that the Kingdom of Heaven is within. It is at a higher level of a man. To reach it, a man must reach a higher level in himself. If everyone did this, the level of life on this earth would change."

Maurice Nicoll

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Gurdjieff Work - The Fourth Way, Maurice Nicoll, Spiritual ...

Georges Ivanovich Gurdjieff (Armenian: , Georgian: , Greek: , Russian: , Georgiy Ivanovich Gyurdzhiev, or Gurdjiev) was an influential Greek-Armenian mystic, spiritual teacher of the early to mid-20th century, and a self-professed 'teacher of dancing'.

He taught that the vast majority of humanity lives their entire lives in a state of hypnotic "waking sleep," but that it was possible to transcend to a higher state of consciousness and achieve full human potential. Gurdjieff developed a method for doing so, calling his discipline "The Work" (connoting "work on oneself") or "the Method." According to his principles and instructions, Gurdjieff's method for awaken

He taught that the vast majority of humanity lives their entire lives in a state of hypnotic "waking sleep," but that it was possible to transcend to a higher state of consciousness and achieve full human potential. Gurdjieff developed a method for doing so, calling his discipline "The Work" (connoting "work on oneself") or "the Method." According to his principles and instructions, Gurdjieff's method for awakening one's consciousness is different from that of the fakir, monk or yogi, so his discipline is also called (originally) the "Fourth Way." At one point he described his teaching as being "esoteric Christianity."

At different times in his life, Gurdjieff formed and closed various schools around the world to teach the work. He claimed that the teachings he brought to the West from his own experiences and early travels expressed the truth found in ancient religions and wisdom teachings relating to self-awareness in people's daily lives and humanity's place in the universe. The title of his third series of writings, Life Is Real Only Then, When 'I Am', expresses the essence of his teachings. His complete series of books is entitled All and Everything.

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G.I. Gurdjieff (Author of Meetings With Remarkable Men)

A critical investigation of a subject who inspired a partisan movement and also much controversy. Gurdjieff has been diversely described as an occultist, a hypnotist, a mystic, a holistic philosopher, and a charlatan.

G. I. Gurdjieff, New York 1924

CONTENTS KEY

1. Introduction

2. Biographical Factors

3. From Moscow to Constantinople

4. The Carpet Dealer

5. Chateau du Prieure (the Priory)

6. Dr. Young Rejects an Experiment

7. The Issue of Hypnotism

8. New York, Alfred Orage, and Rom Landau

9. Surviving the Second World War

10. P. D. Ouspensky and the System

11. The Philosophical Issue

12. Gurdjieff Versus Aleister Crowley

13. Criticism

14. Life is Real Only Then, When 'I Am'

15. Astrology

16. Beelzebub's Tales

17. An "unknown teaching"

18. Development not possible for all

19. The Fourth Way

Annotations

Bibliography

1. Introduction

Georgii Ivanovich Gurdjieff (c.1866-1949) has met with very diverse assessments. In what follows, I will attempt a summary of some biographical features. (1) I have never been a follower of Gurdjieff, and am not committed to defending him where flaws can be detected. In my opinion, an effort to penetrate basic events needs to be conducted outside the antipodal gamut of enthusiast and repudiatory approaches. (2) The bibliographic complement is substantial, (3) and a web article cannot be exhaustive in that respect.

Some critical arguments can amount to: Gurdjieff was charismatic, with an eccentric personality, and his writings are bizarre; therefore, he never said or did anything of relevance. This angle is not convincing. More difficult to overlook is the factor of unpredictability. Gurdjieff often exhibited disconcerting behaviour, and was known to speak or write exaggeratedly to produce an effect. In 1919 he promoted at Tbilisi (in Georgia) his Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man. In a prospectus, he claimed that his agenda was already operative in cities such as Bombay, Kabul, Alexandria, New York, Chicago, Stockholm, Moscow, and Essentuki (Ouspensky, Search, p. 381). This was very misleading. His teaching had gained a foothold in Moscow and Essentuki, but had not yet reached the other places, insofar as is known.

Many of the critical reactions occurring during Gurdjieff's lifetime were distorting. In the 1920s, the negative image of a "black magician" was created by the press. After his decease, Gurdjieff was wrongly portrayed by a French critic as influencing Nazi ideology (Pauwels, Monsieur Gurdjieff). Other writers created a myth that the subject was identical with a "secret agent" working in Tibet and Russia, namely Aghwan Dordjieff (Landau, God is My Adventure). More ingeniously, Gurdjieff became identified with another "secret agent," Ushe Narzunoff (Webb, The Harmonious Circle), a theory since discredited. Clearly, more care must be exercised in charting the nature of events.

A recent commentator has emphasised the shortcomings in partisan literature. "Writings about Gurdjieff... are often replete with erroneous dates and movements, speculations based on hearsay evidence, and, unfortunately, pure invention." Professor Taylor here refers to the well known memoirs (e.g., Bennett, Nott, and Peters), and also the two biographies by James Webb and James Moore. Taylor comments:

"Unfortunately, the number of lacunae, contradictions and speculations that mark the greater part of these accounts confuse more than inform. Though James Moore cautiously called Gurdjieff's own account of his early life, 1866(?)-1912, 'auto-mythology,' he and other writers on Gurdjieff's life seem to have mythologised the whole of his life.... In fact, much written on Gurdjieff's life after 1912 is pure invention, in some instances speculation paraded as fact. The unwary reader who would trust [partisan] accounts is led into perpetuating error." (Paul Beekman Taylor, Inventors of Gurdjieff)

This challenging diagnosis marks a radical departure. The partisan accounts here become a subjective minefield of opinions and uncertainties, attending facts that require resolution. According to Taylor, "the factual accuracy of recollections by Gurdjieff's pupils are always suspect, since each pupil sees his relationship to the man subjectively. With rare exceptions, those who write from a pupil's point of view either invent a privileged relationship with Gurdjieff or exaggerate the actual one" (article linked above). (4)

There is a huge problem, scarcely possible to overstate, with regard to Gurdjieff's own version of his life. According to Taylor, "whatever Gurdjieff has said of himself is parable; he invented himself.... he was wont to say that truth is served best by lies, and by lies he meant stories that objectify meanings unperceived by those who think they can grasp fact" (article linked above). In the face of such implications, Gurdjieff's "storytelling" has nevertheless been interpreted in terms of biographical data. The pitfalls are very obvious. We know very little about his early life. My own recourse here is to follow through some partisan associations, but in terms of factors, not facts. The pre-1912 phase is largely a blank in terms of clearly confirmed detail.

2. Biographical Factors

Georgii Ivanovich Gurdjieff was born in the Greek quarter of Alexandropol, a Russian garrison town in Armenia, and near the borderline of Anatolia (Turkey). He has been described as an Armenian Greek, a half-Armenian, and also as a Greco-Armenian. His mother was an Armenian, and his father a Greek. The date of birth has been urged by two major biographers (Moore and Taylor) as 1866. The date of 1872 has also been favoured. The contrasting date of 1877 has frequently found currency, being based on a passport; however, the subject resorted to several passports with conflicting birthdates (Moore, 1991, pp. 339-40). We can be quite certain that Alexandropol was renamed Leninakan in subsequent decades, and is today known as Gumri.

Armenia was a southern zone in the mountain country of Caucasia (the Caucasus). To the north were Georgia and Daghestan, and to the east was Azerbaijan. The almost bewildering ethnic diversity of Caucasia meant that the Armenians were only one segment of the population. Numerous languages and local dialects were represented. Some reports say that over eighty languages existed in this region during the nineteenth century; many of these have since vanished. A strong Turkic presence should be emphasised in terms of a population density. The Armenian presence dates back to the sixth century BCE, evolving a high degree of urban culture, and being associated with the ancient kingdom of Urartu. (5) However, it is relevant to understand that in such antiquity, Armenia was a province of the Achaemenian and Parthian empire phases extending from Iran. (6)

Alexandropol was also the name of the surrounding province (Aleksandrapol), which was largely Armenian in terms of ethnic substrate, though a minority of Kurds and Azeris (Azeri Turks, often identified as Azerbaijanis, and not to be confused with Ottoman Turks) existed in the south-eastern pocket at the time of the 1896 Imperial (Russian) Census. This situation contrasted markedly with that of Erivan province, named after the old city, a major urban centre in Armenia. At the end of the nineteenth century, only 37% of the population in Erivan province was Armenian. (7) Over half (53%) was Azeri, meaning the Turkic people who were descendants of the Oghuz Turkmen (alias the Black Sheep Turkmen), a phenomenon originally allied with the Mongol wave during the fourteenth century, and so strongly associated with the city of Tabriz, located to the south in Iran. In addition, 8% were Kurds, both settled and nomadic, a distinctive tribal people who could also be found in Iran and Anatolia.

l to r: Giorgios Giorgiades; Gurdjieff and pets at Olghniki, 1917

Gurdjieff's Greek father was Giorgios Giorgiades, a cattle herdsman who exercised the additional vocation of a bardic poet or ashokh. "He rehearsed through chapped lips his phenomenal repertoire of folklore, myth and legend" (Moore, 1991, p. 9). The antiquity underlying his form of existence can be associated with the oral process that preserved and elaborated the Homeric epics over centuries. Giorgiades spoke a Cappadocian dialect and also the Turkic language employed by the ashokhs. The Turkic oral tradition was a strong factor here (associated with the Azerbaijani dialect spoken by Azeris, deriving from the old milieux of the eclipsed Khanates). It is scarcely possible to understand Gurdjieff without reference to the antique Caucasian scene and cultural convergences. One of the texts with which he became familiar was the Epic of Gilgamesh, an ancient literary artefact associated with Uruk in Mesopotamia, and dating back to the early second millenium BCE. (8) This text was apparently a strong early influence upon him.

Reared to beliefs of Armenian Christianity, Gurdjieff was also exposed to elements of Islamic culture via the Turkic repertory. On some evenings, his father "would tell him stories of Mullah Nassr Eddin, or of the One Thousand and One Nights, and especially of Mustapha the Lame Carpenter, an embodiment of resourcefulness who could make anything" (Moore, 1991, p. 9). Mulla Nassr Eddin (Nasruddin) has been described as the wise fool of Turkic folklore, a humorous figure associated to some extent with Sufism. The adult Gurdjieff was to employ sayings of Nasr Eddin in his writings, though he is thought to have "largely invented or adapted" these (ibid., p. 348).

"In his autobiography Meetings with Remarkable Men, Gurdjieff confides an impressionistic version of his early manhood, unrolling the lands of Transcaucasia and Central Asia before us, even while he hints at a parallel geography of man's psyche and the route he followed to penetrate it. Well and good on the level of essential meaning. Yet judged by more straight-laced historical criteria the book is unhelpful. The disciplined biographic mind stands aghast at its contradictions and omissions... frequently enough the entire narrative disappears over the rim of some telling allegory." (Moore, Gurdjieff: A Biography, p. 24)

The British biographer James Moore chose as his sub-title The Anatomy of a Myth. In the process, he made clear that his subject's "four impressionistic accounts... are innocent of consistency, Aristotelian logic and chronological discipline; notoriously problematical are 'the missing twenty years' from 1887 to 1907" (ibid., p. 319).

It is easy to credit that Giorgiades suffered the loss of his large cattle herd due to a plague. The conditions of life in Caucasia were frequently harsh. The pater resorted to a lumber yard, which failed; he then changed to a carpentry shop for a meagre livelihood. Giorgiades decided to move about forty miles away to Kars, the border town in Anatolia (perhaps shortly after the Russians had captured that citadel from the Ottoman Sultan in 1877). While Giorgiades continued his carpentry shop in the Greek quarter, his son gained a further education. The local Christian schools were unsatisfactory, though his parents wished Gurdjieff to become a priest. Private tuition was arranged in secular subjects like mathematics and chemistry. In extension, the keen student resorted to the library of Kars military hospital, and subsequently claimed to have read all the books on neuropathology and psychology.

From his parents Gurdjieff had learned Armenian and a Cappadocian dialect of Greek; he was also acquainted, via his father, with the "Turko-Tartar" dialect employed by the ashokh oral tradition. He later acquired familiarity with modern Greek from a refugee priest. Gurdjieff gleaned the Russian language from soldiers, and the Kars milieu enabled his assimilation of Osmanli Turkish. One biographer says that he "grew up communicating easily in all the local languages, including Greek and Turkish" (Taylor, Gurdjieff and Orage, p. x). Yet he appears to have spoken Russian and Turkish imperfectly even in later years.

His family was poor, and he tried to compensate for this. The young Gurdjieff occasionally journeyed back from Kars by mail-coach to Alexandropol, where at the home of his uncle, "he set feverishly to work mending locks, repairing watches, shaping stone, and even embroidering cushions" (Moore, 1991, p. 16). This would explain his tendency in later years to industry and improvisation of a practical kind. Ouspensky wrote that Gurdjieff "was an extraordinarily versatile man; he knew everything and could do everything" (In Search of the Miraculous, p. 34).

Circa 1883 he moved to Tiflis, the capital of Georgia; his father wanted him to join the famous theological seminary in that city, but Gurdjieff was disconcerted by what he considered an arid formalism. Instead, at the age of seventeen, he took casual work as a stoker with the Transcaucasian Railway Company. By now, he was despairing of finding due explanations in science for matters elusive to materialist thought. In a religious mood, he studied for three months at the Christian monastery of Sanaine, and made a laborious pilgrimage on foot to the Armenian sacred city of Echmiadzin. Yet these resorts proved unsatisfying, and the mental turmoil continued.

Both religion and science had failed him. The only answer seemed to lie in the past, via bookshops. He and his close friends investigated traditions like Pythagoreanism, Kabbalism, Hinduism, and Buddhism. He visited Constantinople in order to study the Mevlevi and Bektashi dervishes of Sufism. Retiring to the deserted ruins of Ani, an old Armenian capital, he purportedly found ancient Armenian parchments, one of which referred to the "Sarmoung Brotherhood," supposedly existing in the sixth/seventh centuries CE. He came to believe that this community still existed. The basic intention behind the story was evidently to indicate his link with an esoteric tradition believed to derive from ancient Mesopotamia.

His book Meetings with Remarkable Men has been described as "semi-fictional" (Taylor, Gurdjieff and Orage, p. x). According to this uncertain account, Gurdjieff joined the "Seekers After Truth," a grouping who travelled extensively between Egypt and Tibet. His quest for the Sarmoung gained legendary proportions. "His itinerary is impossible to confirm or even to discern with perfect clarity, but he certainly tramped through deserts and rocky wastes and made 'journeys to inaccessible places' " (Moore, 1991, p. 26). This pursuit lasted for many years and required funding; his account has been suspected of embellishments in the effort to underline such an independent career.

"He deals shrewdly in antiques, Oriental carpets and Chinese cloisonn; he services sewing machines and typewriters; trades in oil-wells and pickled herrings; cures drug addicts and psychosomatic patients by hypnotism; opens restaurants, works them up, and sells them; remodels corsets; poses as a sword-swallower; and even paints sparrows, offloading them as 'American canaries' " (Moore, Gurdjieff: A Biography, pp. 26-7).

Gurdjieff relates that, along with a companion, he gained access to the major Sarmoung monastery, to which he attributed his deepest inspiration and also the sacred dances he later instigated. A provisional dateline for this event is 1898-9. Access was purportedly achieved (while blindfolded) via a twelve day mounted trek from Bukhara, the Islamic city in Central Asia which had fallen to Russian rule. A link with Sufism is implied, following on from the investigations at Constantinople. The Sarmoung story has been interpreted by some in a literal manner, and by others as an allegory. "The allegorists, perhaps more adroitly, construe Gurdjieff's entire monastery story symbolically, beginning with a wayside episode involving a dangerous rope bridge over a deep gorge" (Moore, 1991, p. 31).

He also claimed to have visited Tibet, an episode which has been allocated to 1901-2. "For a year or more he lingered in Upper Tibet, preoccupied with the 'Red Hat' lamas. He studied the Tibetan language, ritual, dance, medicine, and above all psychic techniques. Long years afterwards he would fan the rumour that he took a wife in Tibet and fathered two children there" (ibid., p. 33). He returned to Tibet not long after, and seems to have reacted strongly to the British incursion led by Colonel (Sir) Francis Younghusband; in 1904, the British guns afflicted 700 poorly equipped Tibetan soldiers in a ninety-second volley. Gurdjieff does not mention the massacre at Guru, and understates by complaining about the shooting of only one man, a lama associated with the lineage of Padma Sambhava. The Nyingmapa tradition of Lamaism is here implied.

Despite Gurdjieff's strong association with both Sufi dervish and Tibetan Buddhist environments, the biographer Paul Beekman Taylor has duly stressed the lack of evidence that Gurdjieff ever appeared as a Muslim or a Buddhist. Gurdjieff has been confused with "secret agents" of a political background, including Lama Aghwan Dordjieff. One story credits him as being a collector of monastic revenue for the Dalai Lama, but this scenario arose from the imagination of Alfred Orage in the 1920s.

Moving on from Tibet to other places, Gurdjieff is strongly associated with Tashkent, the Uzbek stronghold in Central Asia acquired by the conquering Russians. He advertised himself as a hypnotist with the ability to cure alcoholism, drug addiction, and sexual disorders. Plus other specialities in the supernatural. "His venue certainly was appropriate. In Old Tashkent the effects of opium and hashish were harrowingly evident and in New Tashkent vodka was a curse" (Moore, 1991, p. 37). The Russians of New Tashkent were not only addicted to vodka, but to Spiritualist seances and Theosophy. Gurdjieff was averse to both Spiritualism and Theosophy, and apparently regarded himself as a rival. According to his own report, he had earlier vowed to renounce the practice of hypnotism, which he perceived as a danger, except in the pursuit of scientific and altruistic ends. It was Asian hypnotism that he studied, and this subject is associated with his interest in Tibetan and Mongolian medicine.

3. From Moscow to Constantinople

In moving to the big cities of Western Russia, the subject's career gains more tangibility. In 1912, Gurdjieff arrived in Moscow; his own report claims that he was a wealthy man by this time, and possessing two valuable collections of rare carpets and porcelain/Chinese cloisonn. He was soon active in St. Petersburg (Petrograd; later Leningrad), where that same year he married or partnered Julia Ostrowska (d. 1926), a Polish woman of humble background and half his age. She proved loyal to him until her death. Gurdjieff made her the chief participant in the "sacred dance" activity that he inaugurated.

l to r: P. D. Ouspensky; Gurdjieff

The major intellectual disciple was Piotr D. Ouspensky, a Russian who first heard of Gurdjieff in 1914, finding a newspaper advert referring to a ballet scenario entitled The Struggle of the Magicians, belonging to a "Hindu." He subsequently discovered that the Hindu was a "Caucasian Greek," namely Gurdjieff. Ouspensky was at first dismissive of the Caucasian, whom he learned was the leader of a group in Moscow which conducted paranormal investigations. He assumed that Gurdjieff was just another occultist, of whom there were many at that time, influenced by Theosophy and other interests. He only agreed to meet the Caucasian after persistent persuasion (Ouspensky, Search, pp. 6-7).

This situation amounted to the fact that Gurdjieff was "an unfashionable provincial" (Moore, Gurdjieff, p. 81), whereas Ouspensky was a published author and metropolitan lecturer with an increasing status amongst the Russian literati. The venue of their meeting was a small caf in a noisy backstreet of Moscow. The date was 1915. Gurdjieff wore a black overcoat and bowler hat. Ouspensky subsequently wrote:

"My first meeting with him entirely changed my opinion of him.... I saw a man of an oriental type, no longer young, with a black moustache and piercing eyes, who astonished me first of all because he seemed to be disguised and entirely out of keeping with the place and its atmosphere.... He spoke Russian incorrectly with a strong Caucasian accent; and this accent, with which we are accustomed to associate anything apart from philosophical ideas, strengthened still further the strangeness and the unexpectedness." (In Search of the Miraculous, p. 7)

Ouspensky became Gurdjieff's pupil. The latter requested a thousand roubles from each pupil; this was regarded as exorbitant by outsiders. Yet "in practice he never refused anybody on the grounds that they had no money. And it was found out later that he even supported many of his pupils" (Search, p. 166). At a later period, Gurdjieff said that only "one and a half persons paid" the specified amount (ibid., p. 371).

In 1916, a group was formed in St. Petersburg, over three hundred miles from Moscow, including Ouspensky and his wife Sophie, the engineer Anthony Charkovsky, the musician Anna Butkovsky, the psychiatrist Leonid Stjoernval, the mathematician Andrei Zaharoff, and the composer Thomas de Hartmann. A basic teaching of Gurdjieff was that man is mechanical and effectively asleep in relation to real life. Most men cannot develop or progress, he maintained.

Gurdjieff became based at Petrograd, and his group increased to thirty strong. In 1917, he retreated from Russia and settled at Essentuki, a town slightly north of the Caucasus. A small group of pupils were invited to his villa from Moscow and Petrogad. These included Ouspensky, who was disconcerted several weeks later when Gurdjieff dispersed the group in August and moved with a few other companions to the Black Sea coast (staying at places like Tuapse and Olghniki). The civil war between the White Russians and Bolshevik revolutionaries eventually percolated this zone. Gurdjieff returned to Essentuki early in 1918, furthering a new phase of discipline, and summoning about forty pupils from the former Moscow and Petrograd groups. There was a new emphasis on "sacred gymnastics" or dance. This and other factors did not suit Ouspensky, who withdrew in a dissident mood.

At this time Gurdjieff had many people becoming dependent upon him. His group at Essentuki swelled to some eighty-five diverse pupils, refugees, and relatives. There was an overflow in neighbouring Piatigorsk. Some of these people faced destitution. Gurdjieff provided food and clothing via strategies such as selling a bale of silk. Money and food were becoming scarce in the chaos of revolutionary Russia (see further de Hartmann, Our Life with Mr. Gurdjieff; Taylor, G. I. Gurdjieff: A New Life).

In May 1918, the invading Ottoman Turks shot Gurdjieff's father Giorgiades at Alexandropol; the harmless old man, over eighty years old, had declined to leave for Essentuki, though the rest of the family got clear. By July of 1918, Gurdjieff perceived that the situation at Essentuki was extremely grave, being in fresh peril from the civil war. Not all of his group foresaw the dangers of a subsequent "reign of terror" created by Bolsheviks. Thomas de Hartmann (an officer in the Imperial Rifles) was a case in point, complaining that his wife Olga was too tired to move on. Gurdjieff was unrelenting in his new decision to leave. Had the tired couple remained, "with other Guards officers he [de Hartmann] would have been forced to dig his own grave, then shot and covered with earth alive or dead" (Moore, 1991, p. 113).

Gurdjieff carefully planned the daring departure, which occurred in August. His resourcefulness was considerable, even if the travelling party was relatively small. Many of his associates wished to stay behind. He spread the story that his party would be undertaking an archaeological field study and prospecting for alluvial gold. He actually requested the Bolsheviks (or Soviets) for equipment, and they complied, despite severe shortages. This episode became dramatic when the party of fifteen arrived by rail at Maikop, a town surrounded by warring "White army" Cossacks and "Red army" Bolshevik forces. The Cossacks were victorious, and their military general conducted court martials and hangings in an anti-Bolshevik purge. Gurdjieff then adroitly moved over to the Cossack side, though a few days later the Bolshevik army retaliated with a vengeance, and secured Maikop. Gurdjieff and his party escaped the havoc just in time, with only a day to spare.

Five times thereafter, this tense expedition across the Caucasus had to cross army lines southwards. The problem was to identify which army the sentries and scouts represented. This distinction was crucial. Gurdjieff would twirl his right moustachio as a sign for his companions to produce White papers and conformable manners. If he moved his left moustachio, this meant that Bolshevik papers had to be revealed and peasant manners demonstrated.

Eventually, in October the party reached the port of Sochi, which had been taken by the Georgian republicans. However, the majority of Gurdjieff's companions defected, including Andrei Zaharoff. In this confusion, some journeyed to Kiev, and others moved back to Maikop and Essentuki in a reverse feat. With only five companions, in January 1919 Gurdjieff embarked on a voyage south to Poti in Georgia, and from there he took a train to Tiflis. The five accompanying persons were his wife Julia, Thomas and Olga de Hartmann, and Dr. Leonid Stjoernval (a psychiatrist) and his wife Elizabeta.

There was purpose in this difficult flight south. Georgia was subject to very different political conditions in the wake of a Georgian nationalism consolidating in 1917. The new social democracy, or Menshevik republic, was not afflicted with civil war. Tiflis had been renamed Tbilisi, and Gurdjieff was very familiar with this city via his activities there in former years. Adjoining the Russian quarter was Old Tiflis, where the "Tartar" (Azeri) bazaar was still much the same, being an Asiatic scene where women were veiled and traders did things in the old way. Gurdjieff made a beeline for this locale, being in desperate need of money. His knowledge of rugs and carpets enabled him to resurrect his fortunes, in a productive economic avenue contrasting with the depression found elsewhere in Caucasia. Not only that, but Dr. Stjoernval was able to create a new practice in the Russian quarter, while Thomas de Hartmann became a professor of music at a local academy.

At Tbilisi, Gurdjieff created his Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man. The founding members were the de Hartmanns, Dr. Stjoernval, and two new pupils, namely Alexandre and Jeanne de Salzmann. Alexandre was a Russian artist, and his wife was a French musician. Jeanne was reared in Geneva, and established her own school of music based on the Dalcroze system. She was a talented dancer, and assisted Gurdjieff with the first public demonstration of his distinctive "sacred dances" at Tbilisi Opera House that same year of 1919. She left a retrospective description of Gurdjieff:

"He had an expression I had never seen, and an intelligence, a force, that was different, not the usual intelligence of the thinking mind.... He was, at the same time, both kind and very, very demanding.... The impression he gave of himself was never the same.... You might think you knew Gurdjieff very well, but then he would act quite differently, and you would see that you did not really know him." (de Salzmann, The Reality of Being, p. 1)

Gurdjieff interviewed all applicants to his Institute. One of these was a young aristocratic lady (born in Montenegro, a kingdom in the Balkans) who had married a Russian architect. Olgivanna Hinzenberg (1898-1985) said that she wanted immortality, and that her servants looked after her. Gurdjieff told her to dispense with servants, and to do everything herself. "You must work, make effort, for immortality" (Moore, 1991, p. 134). She complied, and became a leading performer in the "sacred dance" activity at Tbilisi.

Another new contact at this time was the British traveller and writer Carl E. Bechofer-Roberts (1894-1949), who did not become a follower. A book he authored, namely In Denikin's Russia (1921), included an account of his association with Gurdjieff at Tbilisi.

"He [Gurdjieff] claims to have spent much of his life in Thibet [sic], Chitral, and India, and generally in Eastern monasteries.... No one could be in his company for many minutes without being impressed by the force of his personality.... There was no denying his extraordinary all-round intelligence.... The dances, he declared, were based on movements and gestures which had been handed down by tradition and paintings in Thibetan monasteries where he had been." (text in Journey Through Georgia)

Meanwhile, Ouspensky survived the oppressive Bolshevik occupation of Essentuki by resorting to identity as a "Soviet librarian." In January 1919, he and others were set free by the triumphant Cossacks, but in June he moved to other places like Rostov. There he met Zaharoff, who had arrived from Kiev, and who was in a negative frame of mind concerning Gurdjieff. Talking with Ouspensky convinced Zaharoff that he had been wrong to move at a tangent. Zaharoff resolved to contact Gurdjieff at Tbilisi, but by now had contracted smallpox; in January 1920, he met a miserable death in the bloodstained ruins of Novorossiysk. Soon afterwards, Ouspensky departed for Constantinople (Search, pp. 381-2).

In 1920, the conditions in Georgia were threatened. Refugees arrived in Tbilisi with grim accounts of the Bolshevik victory to the north. The national independence of Georgia grew precarious. Southwards, the Turks again invaded Armenia in January, destroying Baytar, where Gurdjieff's sister Anna and most of her family were killed in a massacre. Only one of her children (Valentin, or Valia) escaped, and he reported that the Turks had raped his mother. Savage nationalism has since repeated in too many instances, abundantly proving that the worst beasts on the planet are men, and that the standard of their education is frequently nil. Valia was rescued by the Bolsheviks, and eventually managed to reach Tbilisi, about a hundred and fifty miles away, though the baby he took with him died (Luba Gurdjieff: A Memoir, p. 18). The boy afterwards became one of Gurdjieff's entourage.

Gurdjieff had already moved on, leading a party of thirty people on foot (in the heat of May) to the Black Sea port of Batoum, from where they voyaged to Constantinople (Istanbul). In desperation, Ouspensky had independently arrived at the same Turkish city a few months earlier. Gurdjieff stayed in this location for just over a year, in the European quarter of Pera.

One of those who encountered him at this juncture was Captain John G. Bennett, then the leader of a British Intelligence unit. Bennett discovered that local gossip was depicting Gurdjieff as a great linguist, a convert to Islam, and the representative of a Nestorian sect. Bennett ascertained the truth, which annulled the gossip.

"His linguistic attainments stopped short near the Caspian Sea, so that we could converse only with difficulty in a mixture of Azerbaidjan Tartar and Osmanli Turkish. Nevertheless, he unmistakeably possessed knowledge very different from that of the itinerant Sheikhs of Persia and Trans-Caspia, whose arrival in Constantinople had been preceded by similar rumours. It was, above all, astonishing to meet a man, almost unacquainted with any Western European language, possessing a working knowledge of physics, chemistry, biology and modern astronomy, and able to make searching comments on the new and fashionable theory of relativity [associated with Einstein], and also on the psychology of Sigmund Freud" (cited in Munson, Black Sheep Philosophers).

Bennett also left a description of the subject at this time. "He was powerfully built - his neck rippled with muscles - and although of only medium height, he was physically dominating. He had a shaven dome, an unlined swarthy face, piercing black eyes, and a tigerish moustache that curled out to big points" (Munson, article cited).

Constantinople was flooded with Russian refugees at that time. A reconcilement occurred between Gurdjieff and Ouspensky. The latter had gained his own group of Russian students, which expanded to some thirty people, whom he now generously allocated to Gurdjieff. The latter often visited Ouspensky at the island of Prinkipo. Together they visited the bazaars and also the Mevlevi dervishes. "He (Gurdjieff) explained something to me that I had not been able to understand before. And this was that the whirling of the Mehlevi [sic] dervishes was an exercise for the brain based upon counting, like those exercises that he had shown to us in Essentuki" (Ouspensky, Search, pp. 382-3).

Ouspensky and Gurdjieff made several visits together to the Mevlevi dervishes, attending the mukabele or turning ceremony at the Galatahane tekke. They both appreciated the proceedings, but viewed the ceremony differently. Gurdjieff was far more in affinity with sacred music and dance, while Ouspensky resisted what he considered to be an emotional allurement. The mathematical mind of Ouspensky tended to view the ritual in terms of a planetary model, whereas Gurdjieff "strove to awaken his pupil's feelings to the totality of the experience" (Moore, 1991, p. 144). Nevertheless, both of them were later represented by the British press (in 1923) as believing that the dervishes had lost almost all knowledge of the true significance of their dances (in the sense of exercises associated with resolution of problems and acquisition of faculties).

Gurdjieff revived his Institute in October, and gave lectures twice a week, "in Russian, Greek, Turkish or Armenian according to the audience" (ibid., p. 146). Three doors away, he gave much attention to his sacred dance exercises, and more specifically the Struggle of the Magicians. His aggressive deportment and admonition here included bad language, though reserved for the "black magic" dancers who performed an evocative counter to the "white magic" complement.

Ouspensky withdrew when the Institute opened, but "the inner relationship between us remained very good" (Search, p. 383). In the spring of 1921, by special invitation he began to give weekly lectures at the Institute, with Gurdjieff supplementing his explanations. In May, Gurdjieff closed the Institute as a result of diminishing public interest, and retired to Prinkipo, maintaining contact with Ouspensky. The Russian ex-pupil disclosed his plan to write a book recording the talks of the Caucasian in Petrograd. Gurdjieff "agreed to this plan and authorised me to write and publish" the projected account (ibid.). Nevertheless, when these two left Constantinople in August, they parted company. Gurdjieff suggested that Ouspensky accompany him to Germany, but the offer was declined. "In the first place I did not believe it was possible to organise work in Germany and secondly I did not believe that I could work with Gurdjieff" (ibid., p. 384).

The misgivings about Germany were proven correct. Ouspensky maintained an underlying resistance to Gurdjieff's projection; he moved to London, where he commenced to lecture successfully. In contrast, Gurdjieff's plans for Germany met with obstruction. Yet Ouspensky's wife Sophie Grigorievna refused to accompany him to London, instead remaining with Gurdjieff's party. Madame Ouspensky is noted for the loyalist assertion: "No one knows who is the real Georgy Ivanovitch, for he hides himself from all of us" (Moore, 1991, p. 153).

Gurdjieff was certainly a robust and charismatic entity. His background was to become legendary. In Constantinople, a visitor (Boris Mouravieff) asked Gurdjieff about the source of his teachings. According to Professor Taylor, the flippant reply was "I stole them." This would indicate the derived nature of his concepts, from a pre-existing tradition or traditions. The matter is obscure, because Gurdjieff did not elaborate. Mouravieff subsequently claimed that Gurdjieff borrowed from Eastern Orthodox Christianity (section 17 below). In contrast, other writers have insisted that certain Sufi teachings were utilised. Ouspensky is on record for saying that he and others in the early Russian phase would ask Gurdjieff several times a day about the origin of his teaching, and the replies were evidently circuitous.

4. The Carpet Dealer

In eighteenth century Caucasia, local Turkic Khans ruled in their territories such as Shirvan, Karabagh, Baku, Kuba, and Erivan. Yet these kingdoms were eliminated by 1830, when the militant Russian incursion from the north extended the Empire of the Czars. The process of Westernisation was encouraged by the Russian presence. Yet artistically, the old traditions were diehard. "The region was a repository for the arts of Sassanian Iran and of Byzantium, the influences of Arabia and Islam, the customs of Central Asian Turks, the cultures of the Seljuk, Ottoman, and Safavid empires, and the Europeanising influence of Imperial Russia. All are interwoven in Caucasian textiles." (9) Textiles are applicable to Gurdjieff's mercantile tendencies during the early decades of the twentieth century, during the phase when rugs and carpets were woven for export demand, including the destination cities in Russia, America, and Britain.

Ouspensky supplied details about a practical and mundane role exercised by Gurdjieff. The Armenian Greek possessed a mercantile skill, and had evidently acquired a close knowledge of Eastern rugs and carpets (and not just the Caucasian variety, it is possible to deduce). "He told me a great deal about carpets which, as he often said, represented one of the most ancient forms of art" (Search, p. 35). (10)

Recent textile scholarship has intensively classified Eastern rugs and carpets on an ethnographic basis. The general findings have concluded that specific attributions of design significances are frequently arbitrary, motifs being customarily preserved amongst weavers in terms of a folk art and urban commercial activity. However, some ancient connections are discernible, and tangibly going back to the earliest known pile weavings, such as the Pazyryk rug. In terms of design influences, even the relevant gauge of which came first (nomadic or urban design) has been strongly debated, and involving the scenario of early Turkish carpets versus Persian court luxury weavings. Nevertheless, one argument is that "a number of motifs in tribal and village rugs of the nineteenth and even the twentieth centuries may be traced to sources that are even older than the Pazyryk [rug]." (11)

Pazyryk rug, featuring borders with horsemen and deer

In 1949, a Russian archaeologist discovered the now famous Pazyryk rug, which had been preserved for nearly two and a half thousand years by the enveloping ice layer. The site was a tribal tomb in the Pazyryk valley, located in the Altai mountains of Siberia. This is a technically accomplished weaving, comparing well with more recent finely knotted examples. Arguments arose about the source of this weaving, one theory urging an Achaemenian origin in Iran, and another maintaining a nomadic origin. The theory has since been streamlined. Certainly, the proficiency of weaving indicates a far earlier phase of development. The complex ethnographic data and arguments relating to the Pazyryk rug are generally lost in popular coverage. (12)

Gurdjieff's theme of an ancient carpet art is justified. His form of assessment was quite rare in his day, and perhaps even unique. Eastern rugs and carpets were generally purchased merely for their decorative value, and vast numbers of them have worn out under the impact of unsympathetic feet. In the West today, a more informed knowledge of these weavings has developed, with much attention given to tribal and village environments, in addition to well known urban centres of production like Tabriz and Isfahan. The weavings in tribal communities, rural areas, and many urban locales were made by women, though men customarily sold the loom products. This rather basic fact has afforded extra interest.

Ouspensky seems to have been puzzled when Gurdjieff purchased carpets (and/or rugs) in Moscow and sold them in Petersburg (Petrograd), where they commanded higher prices. The Russian intellectual attributed this activity to the factor of "acting." Ouspensky himself obviously knew little about rugs/carpets, and was not a businessman. Many woven artefacts were small rugs rather than large carpets, and the former were far easier to transport. Most Caucasian pile weavings were rugs, not carpets, though one could easily credit Gurdjieff with a knowledge of expensive Persian carpets.

The intellectual was evidently fascinated by the procedure involved. Gurdjieff would place an advertisement in a Petersburg newspaper, and "all kinds of people came to buy carpets" (Search, p. 34). In these situations, the customers assumed that Gurdjieff was merely a Caucasian rug/carpet dealer. "I often sat for hours watching him as he talked to the people who came" (ibid.). The clientele must have been wealthy middle class/upper class persons, like the lady who selected "a dozen fine carpets" and bargained relentlessly for more.

"With these carpets, in the role of travelling merchant, he again gave the impression of being a man in disguise" (ibid.). Ouspensky relates how one day Gurdjieff paid close attention to the technique of a Persian carpet restorer whose services he utilised. Carpet repair is skilled work, and even Gurdjieff had not yet learned the art. The Persian would not sell the tool that he used, and Gurdjieff improvised a replica from the the blade of a penknife, which he filed to size. The next day, Ouspensky found that Gurdjieff "was sitting on the floor mending a carpet exactly as the Persian had done" (Search, p. 35).

Link:
G. I. Gurdjieff - Life and Controversy

FIRST SERIES: Three books under the title of An Objectively Impartial Criticism of the Life of Man, or, Beelzebubs Tales to His Grandson.

SECOND SERIES: Three books under the common title of Meetings with Remarkable Men.

THIRD SERIES: Four books under the common title of Life is Real Only Then, When I Am.

All written according to entirely new principles of logical reasoning and strictly directed towards the solution of the following three cardinal problems:

FIRST SERIES: To destroy, mercilessly, without any compromises whatsoever, in the mentation and feelings of the reader, the beliefs and views, by centuries rooted in him, about everything existing in the world.

SECOND SERIES: To acquaint the reader with the material required for a new creation and to prove the soundness and good quality of it.

THIRD SERIES: To assist the arising, in the mentation and in the feelings of the reader, of a veritable, non-fantastic representation not of that illusory world which he now perceives, but of the world existing in reality.

[Written impromptu by the author on delivering this book, already prepared for publication, to the printer.]

ACCORDING TO the numerous deductions and conclusions made by me during experimental elucidations concerning the productivity of the perception by contemporary people of new impressions from what is heard and read, and also according to the thought of one of the sayings of popular wisdom I have just remembered, handed down to our days from very ancient times, which declares: Any prayer may be heard by the Higher Powers and a corresponding answer obtained only if it is uttered thrice:

Firstlyfor the welfare or the peace of the souls of ones parents. Secondlyfor the welfare of ones neighbor. And only thirdlyfor oneself personally.

I find it necessary on the first page of this book, quite ready for publication, to give the following advice: Read each of my written expositions thrice:

Firstlyat least as you have already become mechanized to read all your contemporary books and newspapers. Secondlyas if you were reading aloud to another person. And only thirdlytry and fathom the gist of my writings.

Only then will you be able to count upon forming your own impartial judgment, proper to yourself alone, on my writings. And only then can my hope be actualized that according to your understanding you will obtain the specific benefit for yourself which I anticipate, and which I wish for you with all my being.

Original post:
ALL AND EVERYTHING - George Gurdjieff

Movement 11 - Lord Have Mercy Performance on 25 April 2010 in Gwangju/South Korea by Seekers of Truth. Dance no. 5 of 10. Visit http://cafe.daum.net/dharmameditation for more information (in Korean) . --------------------------------------------------------------- We don't claim this Gurdjieff Movement presentation to be complete and correct (if such a thing exists). It is not our intention to convey the correct way of performing a Gurdjieff Movement through the internet. Though the movements are extremely beautiful and designed with genius, their technicality is our second concern. For us they are a means to our primary concern, which is the inner process of the people performing them. For us Gurdjieff Movements are a means to be more conscious and aware, a technique of inner growth. If something touches the audience and some seed is planted in them, we are happy about that too. If anyone achieves to more than 20 sec of continuous self-awareness, that is wonderful. If anyone takes up the courage to strive for more than 30 sec on a daily basis, that is good enough to make our efforts worthwhile.

View post:
Gurdjieff Sacred Dance - Movement 11 - YouTube

Da Wikipedia, l'enciclopedia libera.

Georges Ivanovi Gurdjieff, (in armeno: ?, traslitterato: Georgi Gyowriew; in russo: ?, traslitterato: Georgij Ivanovi Gjurdiev; in greco ), noto nella forma latinizzata francese Georges Gurdjieff (pron. [ rdif]), o G.I. Gurdjieff (Alexandropol, 14 gennaio 1872[1] Neuilly-sur-Seine, 29 ottobre 1949), stato un filosofo, scrittore, mistico e "maestro di danze" armeno.

Di origini greco-armene, visse a lungo in Turchia e in Francia. Il suo insegnamento combina sufismo, scuola mistica dell'Islam (in particolare studi sulle danze sacre dei dervisci), e altre tradizioni religiose (cristianesimo, sikhismo, buddhismo, induismo), esoterismo e filosofia, in un sistema sincretico di tecniche psicofisiche e meditative che cerca di favorire il superamento degli automatismi psicologici ed esistenziali che condizionano l'essere umano.

L'insegnamento fondamentale di Gurdjieff che la vita umana vissuta in uno stato di veglia apparente prossimo al sogno. Per trascendere lo stato di sonno (o di sogno) elabor uno specifico lavoro su s stessi al fine di ottenere un livello superiore di vitalit e consapevolezza. La sua tecnica prevede il raggiungimento di uno stato di calma e isolamento, a cui segue il confronto con altre persone.

Dopo aver attratto a s un consistente numero di allievi e discepoli tra i quali vi erano persone di una certa rilevanza, fond una scuola per lo sviluppo spirituale, chiamata Istituto per lo Sviluppo Armonico dell'Uomo. Gurdjieff fu noto anche come insegnante di danze sacre. La Scuola, una volta a Parigi, prende il nome di Institut Gurdjieff.

Negli anni, l'insegnamento di Gurdjieff ha influenzato diversi personaggi noti della cultura e della letteratura: fra questi, uno dei pi importanti architetti statunitensi del XX secolo, Frank Lloyd Wright, che spos in seconde nozze Olgivanna Hinzenberg, allieva di Gurdjieff e che gli tribut un pubblico riconoscimento durante un congresso svoltosi dopo la morte del maestro. Suoi allievi furono anche la scrittrice Pamela Lyndon Travers, nota per avere creato il personaggio di Mary Poppins e Ren Daumal, scrittore francese che entr in contatto con le sue idee attraverso Alexandre Gustav Salzmann, oltre alla celebre poetessa e scrittrice Katherine Mansfield che, affetta da tubercolosi, volle passare l'ultimo periodo della sua vita accanto al Maestro, vivendo quasi come un eremita in una casetta che Gurdjieff le aveva offerto nella sua tenuta.

L'influenza gurdjieffiana, inoltre, presente anche nella pedagogia grazie al "Modello educativo Etievan", creato da Nathalie de Salzmann de Etievan (figlia di Alexandre e Jeanne de Salzmann) e applicato in diversi collegi del Sudamerica, diffusi tra Venezuela, Cile e Bolivia. Le sue idee hanno anche influenzato diversi artisti, come il cantautore Franco Battiato, e pensatori - tra cui Osho Rajneesh e la New Age - nel corso del XX secolo e in seguito.

Gurdjieff nasce in una data imprecisata (egli avrebbe indicato la mezzanotte all'inizio del giorno del nuovo anno, cio del 14 gennaio) tra il 1866 e il 1877 nella citt di Alexandropol nell'Armenia russa (oggi Gyumri, Repubblica di Armenia) da padre greco (che insieme ad altre professioni anche ashukh, cantastorie) e madre armena.[2] Alcuni autori (come James Moore) optano per il 1866. Sia l'amica Olga de Hartmann che la segretaria Louise Goepfert March, credevano che fosse nato nel 1872. Un passaporto indicava il 28 novembre 1877, ma non coincide con quello da lui sostenuto. Sulla pietra tombale comunque incisa la data del 1872.[3]

Dopo che la famiglia si trasferisce nella citt turca di Kars, Gurdjieff riceve un'educazione religiosa dal suo tutore, il decano Borsh, con cui studia medicina e ingegneria, e prende in considerazione il sacerdozio nella chiesa ortodossa.[2]

Dall'estate del 1885 comincia un lungo percorso in diverse tradizioni spirituali, in particolare quella sufi. Il suo viaggio di ricerca inizi a Costantinopoli (oggi Istanbul) per studiare i dervisci Mevlevi e Bektaschi.[2]

Tra il 1887 e il 1907 forma un gruppo chiamato "Cercatori della verit", compie numerosi viaggi in Medio Oriente, in India, che lo portano dall'Asia Centrale fino al Tibet (dove assiste al massacro dei tibetani da parte dei britannici a Guru e alla successiva conquista di Lhasa). Il motivo (o la suggestione) che lo spinge a continuare il suo pellegrinaggio per vent'anni la ricerca di una misteriosa "Confraternita di Sarmoung", ipoteticamente sviluppatesi nel 2500 a.C. in Babilonia, di cui aveva trovato un riferimento nel 1886. Egli conduce anche ricerche di antichi documenti egizi.[2]

Gurdjieff racconta (in modo romanzato e metaforico) questo periodo della sua vita nel romanzo autobiografico Incontri con uomini straordinari da cui, nel 1978, il regista Peter Brook ricaver l'omonimo film.[2]

Nel 1907, a Tashkent, inizia a insegnare "Scienze Soprannaturali". Nel 1912 forma un primo gruppo a Mosca, e nel 1913 un altro a San Pietroburgo.

Secondo un suo racconto, in questo periodo si sostent anche con lavori bizzarri e talvolta truffaldini, tra cui il venditore di uccelli, in cui spacciava per preziosi canarini uccelli di valore inferiore.[4]

Nel 1915, Gurdjieff accetta Piotr Demianovi Ouspensky (autore del Tertium Organum, un trattato sulla natura dell'universo) come allievo a Mosca. Ouspensky, uomo di cultura e scrittore, fu il tramite per il pensiero di Gurdjieff in Occidente e avrebbe in seguito testimoniato nel libro Frammenti di un insegnamento sconosciuto (tradotto in Italiano da Henri Thomasson) l'esperienza dell'insegnamento di Gurdjieff.

Nel 1916 e 1917 entrano nel gruppo anche il compositore e pianista Thomas de Hartmann e sua moglie Olga Arkadievna de Hartmann. A de Hartmann Gurdjieff detter varie composizioni per pianoforte che vennero pubblicate a nome di entrambi.[2]

Dopo la rivoluzione russa Gurdjieff si rifugia a Essentuki vicino al Mar Nero, dove inizia a sperimentare con alcuni allievi il suo "Laboratorio di Consapevolezza", spostandosi poi in altre localit fra cui Tiflis (oggi Tbilisi), in Georgia. Qui nel 1919 Gurdjieff incontra l'artista Alexandre Gustav Salzmann e la moglie Jeanne Matignon de Salzmann, che aveva studiato danza sotto la guida di mile Jacques-Dalcroze.[2] In collaborazione con Jeanne, Gurdjieff elabora i suoi movimenti, o danze sacre, che presenta per la prima volta a Tiflis nel giugno 1919. Nello stesso anno costituisce l'Istituto per lo Sviluppo Armonico dell'Uomo.[2]

Nel 1920 Gurdjieff e l'Istituto per sfuggire alla guerra civile si trasferiscono a Costantinopoli (oggi Istanbul).[2]

Il 24 novembre 1921 Gurdjieff tiene a Berlino la sua prima conferenza europea. Nel frattempo Ouspensky in Inghilterra aveva divulgato il lavoro di Gurdjieff raccogliendo attorno a s molti allievi. Gurdjieff acquist la tenuta di le Prieur des Basses Loges a Fontainbleu-Avon, alle porte di Parigi, dove si stabilisce nel 1922. Al Prieur fonda una grande Casa di Studi in cui vissero e lavorarono accanto a lui artisti, scrittori, pittori, matematici, filosofi, architetti, musicisti, e ogni genere di individui, impegnati in una seria e profonda ricerca interiore. Qui organizz una vera e propria comunit indipendente con pascoli, coltivazioni, diverse attivit lavorative orientate ad un "intenso lavoro su di se". I "movimenti" o "danze sacre" erano il coronamento del suo insegnamento.[2]

Le serate di musica e danze sacre organizzate da Gurdjieff riscuotono interesse tra numerosi intellettuali anche oltre i confini europei, tanto da organizzare nel 1924, e negli anni successivi, diverse tourne negli Stati Uniti.[2]

Sempre nel 1924 ebbe un gravissimo incidente automobilistico che quasi lo uccise, e al quale fece seguito una lunga e dolorosa convalescenza, assistito dalla moglie e dalla madre (morta di cancro nel 1926). Questo cambi anche l'orientamento del suo lavoro.[2]

Gurdjieff deve lasciare il Prieur nel 1932, e lo perde definitivamente a causa di difficolt economiche nel 1933. Allo scoppio della seconda guerra mondiale, Gurdjieff abita in un piccolo appartamento in Rue des Colonels-Renard al numero 6, e si rifiuta di abbandonare Parigi quando le truppe tedesche la occupano. Pare che sia riuscito a intessere rapporti anche con gli occupanti.[2]

Gurdjieff continua tuttavia a insegnare le sue idee e le sue tecniche nella Parigi occupata e nei frequenti viaggi negli Stati Uniti. Nel 1924 fond dei gruppi negli Stati Uniti diretti da Alfred Richard Orage. Inizi a scrivere una serie di opere con lo scopo di trasmettere i fondamenti del suo insegnamento per le generazioni a venire.[2]

Negli anni 1936-1937 anima il gruppo "La Corda" (The Rope), costituito da scrittrici americane lesbiche, fra cui Margaret Anderson e Jane Heap, che erano state le fondatrici della Little Review a New York.[2]

Dopo la fine della Guerra, dal 1945 l'opera di Gurdjieff volta a riunire tutti i propri allievi sparsi per il mondo (Parigi, Londra, New York), dando vita a un intenso periodo di lavoro nell'appartamento parigino di Rue des Colonels-Renard.[2]

Nel 1948 le sue condizioni di salute si aggravano. Muore il 29 ottobre 1949 all'Ospedale Americano di Neuilly, dopo avere trasmesso le sue ultime istruzioni a Jeanne de Salzmann.[2] lei, a partire dal 1950, seguendo le istruzioni del Maestro, a organizzare i tanti gruppi di allievi nella Scuola diffusa in tutto il mondo e nota ancora oggi sotto il nome Gurdjieff Foundation, i cui centri principali sono Parigi ("Institut Gurdjieff"), New York ("Gurdjieff Foundation"), Londra ("The Gurdjieff Society") e Caracas ("Fundacin Gurdjieff Caracas"), e che presente anche in Italia con il nome di "Associazione o Centro Italiano Studi sull'Uomo G.I. Gurdjieff" e le sedi di Milano, Torino, Roma, Palermo, Cagliari. Dopo Jeanne de Salzmann, sar suo figlio Michel de Salzmann ad occuparsi a livello internazionale della Scuola, fino alla sua morte avvenuta nel 2001.

L'organizzazione denominata The Gurdjieff Foundation dunque l'espressione delle Scuole di Parigi, New York, Londra e Caracas, che vennero create seguendo le dirette istruzioni di Georges Ivanovitch Gurdjieff. Scopo dell'Associazione Internazionale delle Fondazioni Gurdjieff, definita a volte semplicemente come "la Scuola di Gurdjieff", di preservare l'essenza, la specificit e l'integrit dell'insegnamento del maestro.

Sono numerosi gli allievi anziani di Gurdjieff ad aver continuato il proprio lavoro all'interno della Fondazione dopo la sua morte. Fra questi, si ricordano Olga Arkadievna de Hartmann, Henri Tracol, Henriette Lannes, William Segal, John Pentland, Michel De Salzmann, William Welch, Louise Welch e molti altri. In Italia, l'organizzazione stata costituita a partire dai primi anni settanta da Henri Thomasson. Le teorie di Gurdjieff furono trattate anche dal famoso mistico e guru indiano Osho Rajneesh (riprese in particolare l'uso del corpo e del movimento, la necessit di creare meditazioni adatte all'uomo moderno e occidentale e alcuni comportamenti appositamente provocatori), che tuttavia giudic il sistema del filosofo armeno "incompleto".[5]

Fra i discepoli e ammiratori attuali pi noti, vi sono il regista teatrale inglese Peter Brook - il cui film Incontri con uomini straordinari e la sua autobiografia I fili del tempo riportano ampie testimonianze della sua vicinanza all'insegnamento di Gurdjieff -, il polistrumentista e compositore britannico Robert Fripp (fondatore dei King Crimson), il cantautore e regista Franco Battiato (riferimenti alle tematiche del filosofo e mistico armeno si trovano ad esempio in brani come Il Re del mondo, Centro di gravit permanente e Voglio vederti danzare), la cantante Alice, il pianista e compositore Roberto Cacciapaglia, il politico e imprenditore Gianroberto Casaleggio.[6]. Il cantante e compositore inglese David Sylvian.

Gurdjieff afferm che l'uomo non nasce con un'anima, ma che la deve creare durante l'arco della sua vita, altrimenti morir come un cane, ossia senz'anima. Per "anima", egli si riferiva alla coscienza superiore, distinta dalla coscienza ordinaria degli esseri umani, definita come una forma di sonno, sostenendo che gli stati di coscienza superiori sono possibili. Fece riferimento allo strumento dell'attenzione come mezzo per accedere a nuove percezioni ed al "ricordo di s". Insegn attraverso lo strumento delle "danze sacre" o "movimenti" di gruppo, accompagnati da musiche composte in collaborazione con il musicista Thomas de Hartmann, musiche che Gurdjieff compose ispirandosi a ci che aveva sentito e assimilato durante i suoi viaggi.[7]

Gurdjieff propose una sua personale classificazione delle tradizioni spirituali esistenti[7]:

Secondo Gurdjieff[7], le "vie" tradizionali per lo sviluppo interiore dell'uomo risultano inadatte alla vita dell'uomo occidentale, in quanto richiedono l'abbandono della vita ordinaria per dedicarsi interamente ad esse.[7]

La Quarta Via (termine introdotto da Ouspensky, in quanto Gurdjieff usava solo l'espressione "lavoro su di s"), la "via dell'uomo astuto", pone l'accento sull'armonizzazione dell'uomo in tutte le sue parti costituenti, permettendogli di poter continuare la propria vita quotidiana normalmente. La sua particolarit consiste nell'essere attiva nella vita di tutti i giorni, perch propone l'apprendimento di un sapere antichissimo, tramandato esclusivamente oralmente e per pratica diretta, con il quale l'uomo addormentato pu risvegliarsi dal suo torpore profondo, iniziare a conoscere se stesso, ed "aprirsi" a quelle zone luminose interiori, inesplorate e sacre, attraverso il primo raggiungimento di una nuova qualit di Essere.[8]

Piotr Demianovitch Ouspensky lo descriveva cos:

Secondo Pietro Citati, che ha dedicato un saggio a Katherine Mansfield[9], Gurdjieff "emanava una forza sinistra" e "torturava i suoi discepoli". Tra quei discepoli la Mansfield era stata accolta a Fontainebleau, dove incontr anche la vedova del suo autore prediletto Anton Cechov, durante lo stadio terminale della malattia che la condusse alla morte, secondo Citati a causa delle privazioni e delle pratiche "sciamaniche" a cui si sarebbe sottoposta nella comunit di Gurdjieff, su consiglio del maestro. Rest nella comunit per circa tre mesi, fino alla morte, in una piccola casa messale a disposizione.[10]

Ben diversa da quella del saggista italiano la versione dell'eminente anglista Nadia Fusini, che sulla base di documenti autografi (tra cui i diari e le lettere della Mansfield al marito, pubblicate in un Epistolario tradotto anche in italiano) ha pubblicato una biografia accurata della scrittrice (bench inserita in un romanzo che le fa da cornice)[11]. A Fontainebleau tra danze, meditazioni, lavoro duro, incontri, la grande scrittrice neozelandese decide dove e come morire e scrive nelle sue ultime pagine di diario Al Sole va chi morendo pensa al Sole. Gurdjieff venne per accusato gi all'epoca di essere "l'uomo che uccise Katherine Mansfield".[12] Tuttavia autori come James Moore e il contemporaneo (amico di Gurdjieff e conoscente della Mansfield) Piotr Demianovi Ouspensky[13] affermarono che la Mansfield sarebbe comunque morta molto presto dato lo stadio avanzato e incurabile della tubercolosi, e che Gurdjieff rese invece felici e appaganti i suoi ultimi giorni di vita.[14]

Secondo alcuni, Gurdjieff indossava appositamente una "maschera di apparente fraudolenza" per percorrere la via che i sufi chiamano la via di malamat ossia la "via del biasimo", consistente nello scandalizzare appositamente, come un maestro zen, ad esempio comportandosi anche in maniera incoerente o poco consona.[15] Henri Tracol scrisse che per esempio, non ha mai esitato a far sorgere dubbi su s stesso con il tipo di linguaggio che usava, con le sue contraddizioni calcolate e col suo comportamento, ad un punto tale che la gente intorno a lui, in particolare chi aveva la tendenza ad idolatrarlo ciecamente, fosse finalmente costretta ad aprire gli occhi sul caos delle sue reazioni.[15]

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Georges Ivanovi Gurdjieff - Wikipedia

However, there was one kind of publicity that he always got in Europe and America, and that was the kind made by the wagging human tongue: gossip. In 1921 he showed up in Constantinople. "His coming to Constantinople," says the British scientist, J. G. Bennett, "was heralded by the usual gossip of the bazaars. Gurdjieff was said to be a great traveler and a linguist who knew all the Oriental languages, reputed by the Moslems to be a convert to Islam, and by the Christians to be a member of some obscure Nestorian sect." In those days Bennett, who is now an expert on coal utilization, was in charge of a British Intelligence section working in Constantinople. He met Gurdjieff and found him neither Moslem nor Christian. Bennett reported that "his linguistic attainments stopped short near the Caspian Sea, so that we could converse only with difficulty in a mixture of Azerbaidjan Tartar and Osmanli Turkish. Nevertheless, he unmistakably possessed knowledge very different from that of the itinerant Sheikhs of Persia and Trans-Caspia, whose arrival in Constantinople had been preceded by similar rumors. It was, above all, astonishing to meet a man, almost unacquainted with any Western European language, possessing a working knowledge of physics, chemistry, biology and modern astronomy, and able to make searching comments on the new and fashionable theory of relatively, and also on the psychology of Sigmund Freud."

To Bennett, Gurdjieff didn't look at all like an Eastern sage. He was powerfully builthis neck rippled with musclesand although of only medium height, he was physically dominating. He had a shaven dome, an unlined swarthy face, piercing black eyes, and a tigerish mustache that curled out to big points. In his later years he had a large paunch. But in one respect Gurdjieff's reputation followed the pattern of all the swamis, gurus and masters who have roamed the Western world: his past in the East was veiled in mystery. Only the scantiest facts are known about him before he appeared in Moscow about 1914.

Gurdjieff was born in Alexandropol, an Armenian city, in 1866. His father was a kind of local bard. It is said the boy was educated for the priesthood but as a young man he joined a society called Seekers of the Truth, and went with this group on an expedition into Asia. He was in Asia for many years and then came to Moscow where there was talk that he planned to produce a ballet called "The Struggle of the Magicians."

The rest is hearsay. It has been said that the Seekers of the Truth went into the Gobi desert. It has been said that they were checking on Madame Blavatsky'sSecret Doctrine, and at places where she said there were "masters" they found none; whereas at places unspecified by her, they did find "masters." It has been said that Gurdjieff found one teacher under whom he studied for fifteen years and from whom he acquired his most important knowledge. It has been said that several times he became a rich man in the East. This is all hearsay.

A better grade of hearsay centers around Gurdjieff in Tibet. Was he or was he not the chief political officer of the Dalai Lama in 1904 when the British invaded Tibet? According to Achmed Abdullah, the fiction writer, Gurdjieff was the "Dordjieff" to whom the history books make passing reference, supposedly a Russian who influenced the Dalai Lama at the time of the Younghusband Expedition. Abdullah was a member of the British Intelligence assigned to spy on this "Dordjieff," and when Abdullah saw Gurdjieff in New York in 1924, he exclaimed, "That man is Dordjieff!" At any rate, when there were plans in 1922 for Gurdjieff to live in England, it was found that the Foreign Office was opposed, and it was conjectured that their file dated from the time of the trouble between the British government and Tibet. According to rumor, Gurdjieff counseled the Dalai Lama to evacuate Lhasa and let the British sit in an empty city until the heavy snow could close the passes of the Himalayas and cut off the Younghusband expedition. This was done, and the British hurried to make a treaty while their return route was still open.

Much more is known about Gurdjieff after 1914. A recently published book by P. D. Ouspensky which the author calledFragments of a Forgotten Teaching, but which the publisher has renamed In Search of the Miraculous, gives a running account of Ouspensky's relations with Gurdjieff over a ten-year period. Of his first interview with Gurdjieff, Ouspensky says: "Not only did my questions not embarrass him but it seemed to me that he put much more into each answer than I had asked for." By 1916 Ouspensky was holding telepathic conversations with Gurdjieff. He also records one example of Gurdjieff's transfiguring of his whole appearance on a railroad journey, so that a Moscow newspaperman took him to be an impressive "oil king from Baku" and wrote about his unknown fellow passenger. The greater part ofIn Search of the Miraculous consists of the copious notes Ouspensky made on Gurdjieff's lectures in St. Petersburg and Moscow, which give us the only complete and reliable outline of Gurdjieff's system of ideas thus far in print1. It is plain from Ouspensky's exposition that Gurdjieff attempted to convey Eastern knowledge in the thought-forms of the West; he was trying to bridge the gap between Eastern philosophy and Western science.

For us in America the story of Gurdjieff is the story of three men whom I call the "black sheep philosophers." Gurdjieff was the master, and the other twoAlfred Richard Orage who died in the fall of 1934, and Peter Demianovich Ouspensky who died in the fall of 1947were his leading disciples. I call them philosophers; others would call them psychologists; many have called them charlatans. Whatever one names them, they were black sheep: they were looked at askance by the professional philosophers and psychologists because of the different color of their teachings. Nor were they accepted by theosophists, mystics, or various occult professors. They stood apart and their appeal was to what I shall call, for want of a more inclusive word, the intelligentsia.

It is impossible to assimilate Orage, Ouspensky and Gurdjieff into any recognized Western school of thought. The New York obituaries of Gurdjieff called him the "founder of a new religion." It was said that he taught his followers how to attain "peace of mind and calm." This was an attempt to assimilate him. But Gurdjieff claimed no originality for his system and did not organize his followers; furthermore, he did nothing to establish a new religion. As for "peace of mind and calm" There is the incident of an American novelist who calls himself a "naturalistic mystic." In the middle of a dinner with Gurdjieff in Montmarte, this novelist jumped up, shouted, "I think you are the Devil!" and rushed from the restaurant. The truth is that Gurdjieff violated all our preconceptions of a "spiritual leader" and sometimes repelled "religious seekers."

In my view, the man was an enigma, and that means that my estimate must necessarily be a suspended estimate. The supposition that he was founding a religion will not hold up. And I do not believe he was a devil out of the pages of Dostoevski. There is an old saying that a teacher is to be judged by his pupils, and by that test Gurdjieff had knowledge that two of the strongest minds in our period wanted to acquire. These minds belonged to the English editor, A.R. Orage, and the Russian mathematical philosopher, P.D. Ouspensky. Both surrendered to Gurdjieff. Let us look at the disciples and then come to their teacher.

ORAGE, a Yorkshireman, bought a small London weekly, The New Age, in 1906. From then until 1922, when he relinquished the paper and went to Fontainebleau where Gurdjieff had his headquarters, Orage made journalistic history. He was remarkable for finding and coaching new writers. Among these was Katherine Mansfield, who acknowledged her great indebtedness to him as a literary mentor. Another was Michael Arlen, who once dedicated a novel to Orage in terms like these: "To A.R. Orageslow to form a friendship but never hesitant about making an enemy." Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells, G.K. Chesterton, Hilarie Belloc and Arnold Bennett debated with each other in The New Age, and Shaw called Orage a "desperado of genius."

The New Age was more than a literary review. It played a lively role in British political and economic movements. It began by being highly critical of Fabianism, then took a positive turn by advocating National Guilds, or Guild Socialism, as the Guilds movement was popularly called. With A.G. Penty and S.G. Hobson, Orage was one of the prime instigators of the National Guilds movement, but he always had a lingering doubt of the practicability of its platforms and in 1919 he dropped it and joined with Major C.H. Douglas to found the Social Credit movement. With him went many of the more brilliant Guild Socialists, to the mortification of G.D.H. Cole who denounced the "Douglas-New Age heresy."

To literature and economics, Orage added a sustained interest in occultism, and it was this that finally led him to Gurdjieff's Chteau du Prieur at Fontainebleau-Avon. Nietzsche had extended the horizons of Orage's thought during his formative years, and Orage's weekly became a forum for Nietzscheans. He himself wrote two small books on that grossly misunderstood philosopher which remain the clearest expositions yet penned of the superman doctrine. On the spoor of the superman, Orage investigated theosophy, psychical research, and Indian literature, and he wrote one book,Consciousness: Animal, Human and Superman, which hinted at the mental exercises he practiced to enlarge and elevate consciousness. T.S. Eliot called Orage the finest critical intelligence of his generation, which is an assurance to the reader that Orage was no gull in his excursions into mysticism. In 1922, at the age of forty-nine, he cut all ties in England, went to Gurdjieff at Fontainebleau-Avon, and was set to digging trenches and washing casseroles.

At that time Gurdjieff'sInstitute for the Harmonious Development of Man was in full swing. With funds provided by Lady Rothermere, Gurdjieff had acquired the historic Chteau du Prieur, once the residence of Madame de Maintenon, the consort of Louis Quatorze, and in latter years the property of Labori, the attorney for the exonerated French officer, Dreyfus. The institute provided a thorough work-out for the three "centers" of human psychology. Its members engaged in hard physical tasks ranging from long hours of kitchen drudgery to the felling of trees in the chateau's forest. Unusual situations, friction between members, and music insured great activity for the emotional "center." For the mental "center" there were exercises that often had to be performed concurrently with physical tasks. An airplane hangar had been set up on the grounds. This was known as the "study house" and was the scene for instruction in complicated dance movements. There were mottoes on the walls of the "study house." One of them in translation read: "You cannot be too skeptical." This was the milieu the brilliant English editor entered to become a kitchen scullion.

In 1924 Gurdjieff came to America with forty pupilsEnglish and Russianand gave public demonstrations of dervish dances, temple dances, and sacred gymnastics. Orage came along but did not perform the movements, although he had practiced them for a Paris demonstration. Nothing like these dances had ever been seen in New York, and they aroused intense interest. They called for great precision in execution and required extraordinary coordination. One could well believe they were, as claimed, written in an exact language, even though one could not read that language but only received an effect of wakefulness quite different from the pleasant sense of harmony most art produces. When Gurdjieff and his pupils sailed for France, Orage was left in New York to organize groups for the study of Gurdjieff's system, and for the next seven years he was engaged in this task.

Let me call up from memory one of the evenings Orage talked to a group in New York. The place is a large room above a garage on East Fortieth Street. It is Muriel Draper's flat and there is a bizarre note in its furnishings produced by the gilt throne from a production ofHamlet which Mrs. Draper had picked up. In those days Mrs. Draper was the "music at midnight" hostess she had been in Florence and London. By nine o'clock about seventy people had gathered. Let us look around the room. Seated well back is Herbert Croly, the founder and editor of the New Republic, an admirer of Auguste Comte and therefore a rationalist. A few rows in front is Carl Zigrosser, the print expert. Well off to one side is Amos Pinchot, the liberal publicist, and just coming in we see John O'Hara Cosgrave, the Sunday editor of the New York World. Near the front sits Helen Westley of the Theatre Guild, and always on the front row is the historical novelist Mary Johnston. Squatting on the floor up front with an Indian blanket around his shoulders is impassive Tony, the full-blooded Indian husband of Mabel Dodge Luhan, and near him, but seated on a chair is the celebrated memoirist herself; she is reputed to have bought one of the $12,000 "shares" of Gurdjieff's Institute. Now arriving is Dr. Louis Berman, the authority on glands, and just behind him waves the handsome beard of the painter Boardman Robinson. It is the sort of crowd you might find on the opening night ofStrange Interlude, which is currently playing on Broadway. Some of the men you would see at the luncheons of the Dutch Treat Club; some of the women at the meetings of that advanced exclusive group called "Heterodoxy." A worldly crowd, a 1920-ish crowd, for in retrospect the 1920's seems a period vibrating with intellectual curiosity.

Orage comes in a little after nine. Deliberately, he is always a little late, and often he takes a snifter of bootleg gin in Mrs. Draper's kitchen before entering the big room. He is tall, with a strong Yorkshireman's frame, an alert face, an elephantine nose, sensitive mouth, hair still dark. He is a chain-smoker throughout the meeting. He calls for questions. Someone asks about "self-observation," someone wants to know "what this system teaches about death," someone else makes a long speech that terminates in a question about psychoanalysis. After he has five or six questions, Orage begins to talkand he talks well in lucid sentences often glinting with wit. A graduate student in psychology at Columbia objects to one of his remarks. Orage handles the objection and goes on until a progressive schoolteacher interjects a question. It is like a Socratic dialogue, with Orage elucidating a single topic from all sides. Every question eventually gets back to "the method," and by eleven o'clock he has once again illuminated the method of self-observation with non-identification that appears to be the starting procedure prescribed by Gurdjieff for self-study.

Briefly, what Orage has said is that man is a mechanical being. He cannot do anything. He has no will. His organism acts without his concurrent awareness and he identifies himself with various parts of this victim of circumstances, his organism. There is only one thing he can try to do. He can try to observe the physical behavior of his organism while at the same time not identifying his 'I' with it. Later he can attempt to observe his emotions and thoughts. The trouble is that he can only fleetingly observe with non-identification, but he must continue to make the effort. It is claimed that this method differs from introspection. The non-identifying feature differentiates it from an apperception. The man who finally succeeds in developing the power of self-observation is on the path to self-knowledge and the actualizing of a higher state of consciousness. This higher state, which Orage calls "Self-consciousness" or "Individuality," stands to our present waking state as the waking state stands to our state of sleep.

This bare summary will not, of course, explain why so many New Yorkers came to hear Orage between 1924 and 1931. Some came only once or twice out of a weak curiosity, like Heywood Broun who listened through one meeting, then asked, "When do we get to sex?" and shuffled off, never to return. Others were fascinated by the charm and keenness of Orage's literary personality and found such epigrams as "H. G. Wells is an ordinary man with a carbuncle of genius" full compensation for the dissertations on psychology they sat through. But the solid core of his group were probably the people who prefer Plato to Aristotle; that is, people who feel that there is some kind of film over reality and respond to the idea that this film can be penetrated.

In 1931 Orage faced a personal crisis. He had married an American girl and had an infant son. Gurdjieff, a hard task-maker, wanted him to bring his family to the Chteau du Prieur and continue work on the translation into English of the huge book then called Tales of Beelzebub to His Grandson, which Gurdjieff had written partly in Russian and partly in Armenian. Orage neither wanted to leave his family nor to put them in the never-stable environment of Fontainebleau-Avon. He decided to go to London and there founded theNew English Weekly. On Guy Fawkes Day [Nov. 5] in 1934, he who had never addressed more than a few thousand readers addressed hundreds of thousands of B.B.C. listeners with a speech on Social Credit, went home, and died before morning.

THE link between Orage and Gurdjieff was originally P. D. Ouspensky, who came to London in 1921 and started groups for the study of the Gurdjieff system. Orage attended these, as did Katherine Mansfield, and both went to the source at Fontainebleau. As explained by Ouspensky, there were three main ways to a higher development of man: the way of the fakir who struggles with the physical body, the way of the monk who subjects all other emotions to the emotion of faith, and the way of the yogi who develops his mind. But these ways produce lopsided men; they produce the "stupid fakir," the "silly saint," the "weak yogi." There is a fourth way, that of Gurdjieff, in which the student continues in his usual life-circumstances but strives for a harmonious development of his physical, emotional and intellectual lifethe non-monastic "way of the sly man." The accent was on harmonious, all-around development.

Ouspensky was a highly mental type. At his lectures in New York he seemed like a European professor. He was not nervous in manner and he had a peculiar kind of emotional serenity; one felt that it did not matter to him what his listeners thought of him. In his youth he had been fascinated by the problem of the fourth dimension, the nature of time, and the doctrine of recurrence. When only thirty-one, he wrote a book,The Fourth Dimension, which was recognized as a contribution to abstract mathematical theory. He also practiced journalism for a St. Petersburg newspaper. At thirty-four, he completed the book on which his popular fame rests,Tertium Organum. This book had a great influence on the American poet, Hart Crane, an influence Brom Weber has carefully traced in his biography of Crane. ButTertium Organum is a pre-Gurdjieffian work, and much of it has to be reset in a later pattern of Ouspensky's thought, as he implied in a cryptic note inserted after the early editions. Ouspensky also wrote a short book on the tarot cards, which are surmised to contain occult meaning.

The young Russian thinker attempted to be practical about his speculative thinking. He made trips to Egypt, India and Ceylon in search of keys to knowledge. He experimented with drugs, fasting and breathing exercises to induced higher states of consciousness. When he met Gurdjieff in Moscow in 1914, he was ripe for a teacher.

As the years went on, Ouspensky began to make a distinction between Gurdjieff the man and the ideas conveyed by Gurdjieff. Remaining true to the ideas, he finally decided about 1924 to teach independently of the man Gurdjieff. The last chapter of In Search of the Miraculous, deals with this "break," but it is too reticent to make the "break" understood.

Ouspensky held groups in London throughout the 1920's and 1930's, and had a place outside London for his more devoted pupils, some of whom were quite wealthy. When the bombs began to rain on England, he and a number of his English pupils migrated to America and purchased Franklin Farms, a large estate at Mendham, New Jersey. In New York he lectured to shifting groups of sixty or so, while at Mendham his wife supervised the pupils who carried out farm and household tasks as part of their psychological training. Instruction in the Gurdjieff dance movements was also given at Mendham.

Ouspensky's later books have includedA New Model of the Universe, begun in pre-Gurdjieff days but revised and completed under his influence, and a novel,Strange Life of Ivan Osokin, which has a flavor that reminds one of Gogol. Although Ouspensky has written extensively on relativity, the professional physicists appear to have given him a cold shoulder; at least, he is never mentioned in scientific literature. However,A New Model of the Universe produced a great impression on the novelist J.B. Priestly, who wrote one of his most enthusiastic essays2 about it.

GURDJIEFF was by far the most dramatic of the trio; in fact, Gurdjieff as a pedagogue was mainly an improvising dramatist, a difficult aspect of his character to explain briefly. Most people believe that they can make decisions. They believe that when they say "Yes" or "No" in regard to a course of action, they mean "Yes" or "No." They think they are sincere and can carry out their promises and know their own minds. Gurdjieff did not lecture them on the illusion of free will. Instead, in conversation with a person, he would produce a situation, usually trivial and sometimes absurd, in which that person would hesitate, perhaps say "Yes," then change to "No," become paralyzed between choices like Zeno's famous donkey starving between two equidistant bales of hay, and end full of doubt about any "decision" reached. If the person afterwards looked at the little scene he had been put through, he saw that his usual "Yes" or "No" had no weight; that, in fact, he had drifted as the psychological breezes blew.

Often, in his early acquaintance with a person, Gurdjieff would hit upon one or both of two "nerves" which produced agitation. These were the "pocketbook nerve" and the "sex nerve." He would, as our slang goes, "put the bee on somebody for some dough," or he might, as he did with one priest from Greece, egg him on to tell a series of ribald jokes. The event often proved that he didn't need the money he had been begging for. As for the poor priest, when he had outdone himself with an anecdote, Gurdjieff deflated him with the disgusted remark, "Now you are dirty!" and turned away. "I wished to show him he was not true priest," Gurdjieff said afterwards. To go for the "pocketbook nerve" or the "sex nerve" was to take a short cut to a person's psychology; instead of working through the surfaces, Gurdjieff immediately got beneath them. "Nothing shows up people so much," he once said, "as their attitude toward money."

There are legends about how Gurdjieff came by the large sums of money he freely spent. It has been rumored that he earned money by hypnotic treatment of rich drug addicts. There used to be a tale that he owned a restaurant, or even a small chain of restaurants, in Paris. His fortunes varied extremely, and there were times when he had little money. He lost his chateau at Fontainebleau-Avon in the early 1930's. His expenses were large and included the support of a score or two of adherents. He tipped on a fabulous scale. Money never stuck to his fingers but he himself did not lead a luxurious life. He joked with his pupils about his financial needs and openly called his money-raising maneuvers "shearing sheep."

When the Bolshevik revolution struck Russia, Gurdjieff moved south. He halted at various places, notably at Tiflis, to launch groups, but eventually he and his followers crossed the Caucasian mountains on foot and made their way to Constantinople. Via Germany, he reached France where, as related, Lady Rothermere enabled him to found the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man at the Chteau du Prieur. This Institute, Orage once told me, was to have made Bacon's project for an Academy for the Advancement of Learning look like a rustic school. But in 1924, Gurdjieff met with an automobile accident which nearly killed him, and thereafter he turned to the less strenuous activity of writing. The Institute plans were canceled, and he began the tales of Beelzebub as told to his grandson on a ship in interstellar space. This book is a huge parable with chapters on the engulfed civilization of Atlantis, the "law of three" and the "law of seven," objective art, and many riddles of man's history. It purports to be an impartial criticism of the life of man on the planet Earth. In this period Gurdjieff also composed many pieces of music, making original use of ancient scales and rhythms.

In the last year or two of his long life, Gurdjieff finished with his writings and intensified his direct contacts with his followers. Movement classes were started in Paris, and several hundred Frenchmen now come more or less regularly to these and other meetings. In England the exposition of Gurdjieff's ideas is carried on by the mathematical physicist, J. G. Bennett3. Bennett is the author ofThe Crisis in Human Affairs, an introduction to the Gurdjieff system. It is said that Bennett attracts about three hundred to his lectures and that the class in movements numbers nearly two hundred.

Gurdjieff spent the winter of 194849 in New York, as usual unnoticed by the press. The remnant of the old Orage groups came to him, as did the Ouspenskyites from Mendham and many new people. With Oriental hospitality, he provided supper night after night for seventy and upwards in his big suite at the Hotel Wellington, the supper being punctuated by toasts in armagnac to various kinds of idiots: "health ordinary idiots," "health candidates for idiots," "health squirming idiots," "health compassionate idiots." When Gurdjieff drank water, he always proposed, "health wise man." Prepositions were left out of the toasts; Gurdjieff spoke a simplified English that often required an effort to follow. After the supper, Gurdjieff's writings were read until the small hours of the morning. While he was here, he signed a contract with a New York publisher to bring out in 1950 the English version of the 1000-page tales of Beelzebub, under the title All and Everything. It is also expected that after the book appears, his American pupils will give a public demonstration of the dance movements.

Gurdjieff had passage booked for America last October but fell gravely ill. An American doctor flew to Paris, had him removed to the American Hospital, and made him comfortable. "Bravo, America!" he said to the doctor. "Now we can have a cup of coffee." Those were his last words.

How shall I sum up this strange man? A twentieth century Cagliostro? But the evidence about Cagliostro is conflicting, and the stories you will hear about Gurdjieff are highly conflicting. I can personally vouch for his astonishing capacity for work. Two to four hours' sleep seemed sufficient for him; yet he always appeared to have abundant energy for a day spent in writing, playing an accordion-harmonium, motoring, caf conversation, cooking. Those who had to keep up with him were sometimes ready to drop from fatigue, but he seemed inexhaustible after twenty hours and fresh the next morning from a short sleep. He was eighty-three this last winter at the Hotel Wellington. He would retire at three or four in the morning. Around seven the elevator boys would take him down and he would go over to his "office," a Child's restaurant on upper Fifth Avenue. Here, as at a European cafe, he would receive callers all morning.

I have sometimes asked myself what our civilization of specialists would make of certain men of the Renaissancemen like Roger Bacon, a forerunner, and Francis Bacon and Paracelsus who came at the heightif they reappeared among us. I think we would find them baffling, and it would be their many-sidedness that would puzzle us. The biographers and historians have never quite known how to take their scandalous unorthodoxy. To me Gurdjieff was an enigma whom I associate with the stranger figures of the Renaissance rather than with religious leaders. He never claimed originality for his ideas but asserted they came from ancient science transmitted in esoteric schools. His humor was Rabelaisian, his roles were dramatic, his impact on people was upsetting. Sentimentalists came, expecting to find in him a resemblance to the pale Christ-figure literature has concocted, and went away swearing that Gurdjieff was a dealer in black magic. Scoffers came, and some remained to wonder if Gurdjieff knew more about relativity than Einstein.

"A Pythagorean Greek," Orage called him, thus connecting the prominence given to numbers in the Gurdjieffian system with Gurdjieff's descent from Ionian Greeks who had migrated to Turkey. Perhaps this appellation, "Pythagorean Greek," is as short a way as any to indicate the strangeness of Gurdjieff to our civilization, which has never been compared to Greece in its great period from the sixth to the fourth centuries before Christ.

How shall we account for the interest persons of metropolitan culture in the Western world have shown in the Eastern ideas of Gurdjieff and his transmitters, Orage and Ouspensky? One explanation is easy, and it holds for people who seek respite for their personal unhappiness in psychoanalysis, pseudo-religious cults, and the worship of the group (nostrism as manifested in Communism and Fascism). This is the therapeutic interest, and many who have come to the Gurdjieffian meetings have had it. Let us disregard this common interest and ask why Eastern ideas have attracted in these years the interest of sophisticated thinkers like Aldous Huxley who has been remarkable for his typicality. The answer here is that Western culture is in crisis. Ours is a period of two world wars and one world depression. In this period it has been impossible for a thoughtful person not to have been deeply disappointed in his hopes for man. He has seen one effort after another produce an unintended result. World War I made the world unsafe for democracy. The prosperity of the 1920's led to economic drought. World War II turned into cold war. The socialist dream flickered into a totalitarian nightmare. Science becomes an agency of destruction. The doctrine of progress gives place to the feeling the Western man is at a standstill. In a crisis one hopes or one despairs. Gurdjieff, Orage and Ouspensky confirmed the despair but simultaneously raised the hope of Westerners whose mood was disappointment over the resources of their culture. It is said that Aldous Huxley, that modern of moderns, went to a few Ouspensky meetings in London. Eventually Huxley settled for Gerald Heard who draws heavily on Eastern philosophy. In Huxley we may find a symptom of a desperate tendency to turn in our crisis to ideas and teachings that stand outside the stream of Western culture. Orage, Ouspensky and Gurdjieff painted a crisis-picturein one part as black as any school of Western pessimism, in another part so bright as early Christianity. In this balance-by-contrast of the dark and the light is a principal reason for their appeal to moderns.

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Black Sheep Philosophers - Gurdjieff