Introduction to HE GURDJIEFF W W ORK ORK
Published by Sandpoint Press 2009 Copyright © 2009 Sandpoint S andpoint Press, an imprint o Morning Light Press Cover: Detail o 19th Century Centur y Dorasht Kelege carpet, car pet, Northeast Persia. Photograph: Photog raph: © om om Woodward, Woodward, Woodward Woodward Images, I mages, Hope, ID Previously published as the Introduction to Te Inner Journey: Views From the Gurdjief Work, Morning Light Press, 2008. Portions have been drawn rom “G. I. Gurdjief and His School” by Jacob Needleman, originally published in: Antoine Faivre and Jacob Needleman eds. Modern Esoteric Spirituality , New York: Crossroad, 1992 and rom “Te Gurdjief radition” by Jacob Needleman, originally published as an entry in: Wouter J. Hanegraaf (ed.) Dictionary o Gnosis and Western Esotericism, Leiden: Brill B rill,, NV, NV, 2005. All rights reserved. No part o this publication may be reproduced or utilized in any orm or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any inormation storage and retrieval system, without without prior written permission rom Sandpoint Press, an imprint o Morning Light Press. ISBN: 978-1-934686-02-7
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Needleman, Needl eman, Jacob. [Inner journey] journe y] Introduction to the Gurdjief work / Jacob Needleman. Originally published: Te inner journey : views rom the Gurdjief work. Sandpoint, ID : Morning Light Press, 2008. Includes bibliographical reerences. ISBN 978-1-934686-02-7 (Sandpoint Press : alk. paper) -ISBN 978-1-59675-029-6 (Morning Light Press : alk. paper) 1. Gurdjief, Gurdji ef, Georges George s Ivanovitch, Ivanovi tch, 1872-1949. 1872- 1949. I. itle. itl e. BP605.G94G873 2009 197--dc22 2009000080
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Introduction to HE GURDJIEFF W ORK
Jacob Needleman
HE GURDJIEFF W ORK It has been nearly a hundred years since G. I. Gurdjie rst appeared in Moscow in 1912, bringing with him a teaching unlike anything known or heard o in the modern world. And although his ideas have since then been explored in hundreds o books and articles, and now exert a signicant inuence throughout the Western world, both the teaching and the man himsel remain essentially as new and unknown, and as astonishing, as when they rst appeared. Gurdjie ’s undamental aim was to help human beings awaken to the meaning o our existence and to the eorts we must make to realize that meaning in the midst o the lie we have been given. As with every messenger o the spirit, Gurdjie ’s 1
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undamental intention was ultimately or the sake o others, never only or himsel. But when we rst encounter the gure o Gurdjie, this central aspect o his lie is oten missed. Faced with the depth o his ideas and the inner demands he placed upon himsel and upon those who were drawn to him, and becoming aware o the uniquely eective orms o inner work he created, we may initially be struck mainly by the vastness o his knowledge and the strength o his being. But sooner or later what may begin to touch us is the unique quality o selessness in his actions, the sacrices he made both or those who came to him, and or all o humanity. We begin to understand that his lie was a work o love; and at the same time that word, “love,” begins to take on entirely new dimensions o meaning, inconceivable in the state o what Gurdjie called waking sleep. In most major cities o the Western world, men and women are now trying to live his teaching. It is not too soon, thereore, to consider what this teaching has
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brought or can bring to the world. As human lie in our era spirals downward toward dissolution in violence and illusion, one central question rises up beore us in the shadow o which all teachings, including the Gurdjie Work, must now be measured: How can humanity reverse the process leading to its seemingly inevitable sel-destruction? In the ace o this question, the heart is restless, but the mind soon alls silent. It is as though the unprecedented crisis o our modern world conounds and all but reutes thousands o years o religious doctrine and centuries o scientic progress. Who now dreams o turning to religion or the answer when it is religion itsel that lies so close to the root o war and barbarism? Who dares turn to science or the answer when it is advancing technology, the very ruit o scientic progress, that has so amplied the destructive powers o human egoism? And who imagines that new theories o society, new social programs, new ideologies can do anything more than wrap the alling earth in dreams o ying?
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Te mind alls silent. But in that silence something within can awaken. In that moment an entirely new kind o hope can appear. Te Gurdjie Work may in part be understood as the practical, painstaking cultivation o that silence and that hope, that state o embodied awakening to the truth o the human condition in the world and in onesel. Te unanswerable question about the ate o humanity and the world is transormed into the question, also unanswerable: What is a human being? Who am I? But it is now a question asked with more o onesel, not only with the mind alone—the mind which, with all its explanations, has so little power to resist the orces o violence and brutality; nor with emotion alone, which, with all its ervor, oten ends by making the most sacred o doctrines into instruments o agitation and death. Nor, so the Gurdjie teaching also shows us, can the question o who and what we are be answered by giving way again and again to the endlessly recurring
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obsessions rooted in the physical body. Tat is to say, the great question o who and what we are cannot be answered by only one part o the whole o ourselves pretending to be the master. Tis sel-deceptive state o the human being is precisely what Gurdjie meant by mankind’s state o waking sleep . In this sleep, he tells us, we are born, live and die, write books, invent religions, build monuments, commit murders, and destroy all that is good. One thing, and one thing only, is thereore necessary. It is necessary or 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 o ruth. Without this awakening and this becoming, nothing else can help us. But it is very difcult. An extraordinary quality o help is needed. o this end, Gurdjie created what has come to be called the Work.
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Te Gurdjie Work oday Te Gurdjie Foundation Beore his death in 1949, Gurdjie entrusted the task o transmitting the teaching to his chie pupil, Jeanne de Salzmann, and a small circle o other pupils in France, England, and America who acknowledged her leadership. Under her guidance, the rst centers o the Work were established in Paris, London, New York, and Caracas. Over the past hal-century other centers have radiated rom them to major cities o the Western world. Most o the groups maintain close correspondence with the principal centers and most have developed under the personal guidance o one or two o the rst-generation pupils o Gurdjie. Te general articulation o all these groups is a cooperative one, rather than one based on strictly sanctioned jurisdictional control. Tere are also groups that no longer maintain close
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correspondence with the main body o pupils and operate independently. And there are numerous other organizations led by individuals who claim no historical lineage with either Gurdjie or his direct pupils. In what ollows, we limit ourselves to the teaching as it has been studied and transmitted by groups that may be historically designated as representing the direct Gurdjie lineage. Tese groups now exist in each specic location under the name o “Te Gurdjie Foundation,” or, in the United Kingdom, “Te Gurdjie Society.” 6
A central ocus o the Gurdjie teaching is the awakening to consciousness and the creation o proper communal and psychological conditions that can support this multi-leveled process. For this, a preparatory work is necessary, as stated by Jeanne de Salzmann:
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According to Gurdjie, the truth can be approached only i all the parts which make the human being, the thought, the eeling, and the body, are touched with the same orce in a particular way appropriate to each o them—ailing which, development will inevitably be one-sided and sooner or later come to a stop. In the absence o an eective understanding o this principle, all work on onesel is certain to deviate rom the aim. Te essential conditions will be wrongly understood and one will see a mechanical repetition o the orms o eort which never surpass a quite ordinary level.1 Gurdjie gave the name o “sel-remembering” to the central state o conscious attention in which the higher orce that is available within the human structure makes contact with the unctions o thought, eeling, and body. Te individual “remembers,” as it were, who and what he really is and is
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meant to be, over and above his ordinary sense o identity. Tis conscious attention is not a unction o the mind but is the active conscious orce which all our unctions o thought, eeling, and movement can begin to obey as the “inner master.” Consistent with the knowledge behind many contemplative traditions o the world, the practice o the Gurdjie work places chie emphasis on preparing our inner world to receive this higher attention, which can open us to an inconceivably ner energy o love and understanding. 6
Te Gurdjie work remains above all essentially an oral tradition, transmitted under specially created conditions rom person to person, continually unolding, without xed doctrinal belies or external rites, as a way toward reeing humanity rom the waking sleep that holds us in a kind o hypnotic illusion. Te moving lie o the tradition thus supports
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the individual search and helps to overcome the seemingly universal impulse o resistance or inertia: the tendency toward attachment, and the gradual xing on partial aspects, institutionalized orms, dogmatic doctrines and a habitual reliance on the known rather than acing and entering the unknown. According to the Gurdjie teaching, the orms exist only to help discover, incarnate, and elaborate a ormless energy o awakening, and without this understanding, the orms o the teaching become an end in themselves and lose their meaning. At present, the general orms o practice in the Gurdjie tradition may be characterized as ollows: Group meetings: Gurdjie taught that alone, an indi vidual can do nothing. In group meetings, students regularly come together to participate in a collective atmosphere that is meant to unction as a principal means or the transormation o the individual state o consciousness. Although, with the help o more advanced pupils, questions are shared and responded
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to in words, the undamental support o the group is directed to the individual work o acing onesel and consciously recognizing one’s own inner lack, until the appearance o a new quality o energy is possible. Te more experienced pupils, helping the group as part o their own search, strive to be sensitive not so much to the content o the exchange, but to the process o the developing energy and the mutual teaching that can take place under its inuence. In their turn, more advanced pupils just as urgently need to work in groups, and in this way a redenition o the conventional image o the “leader” is inevitable. At each level o inner work, what has been understood needs to be individually and collectively re-examined and veried in the movement o a dynamic living esoteric school. Te sacred dances and movements which Gurdjie taught were partially a result o his research in the monasteries and schools o Asia, and are o a nature that seems unique in the modern Western world.
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In certain respects, they are comparable to sacred dances in traditional religious systems (or example, the ’Cham dances o ibetan Buddhism or the der vish dances o the Sus). Like them, the Gurdjie Movements are based on the view that a series o specic postures, gestures, and movements, supported by an intentional use o melody and rhythm and an essential element o right individual eort, can help to evoke an inner condition that is closer to a more conscious existence, or a state o unity, which can allow an opening to the conscious energy o the Sel. Te Gurdjie Movements are now regularly given at major centers o the work by careully prepared pupils who emphasize the need or exactitude and a special quality o eeling, without which the movements cannot provide the help or which they were brought. Te practice o sitting is difcult to characterize apart rom observing that, in accordance with the overall aim o the work, it is not a “orm” in and o itsel, but
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is undamentally a preparation or the inner search within the midst o lie. With or without spoken guidance, the aim is ultimately to help individuals search or an embodied presence that sustains the attempt to enter more deeply into an awareness o all the opposing orces constantly moving within the body. Madame de Salzmann gave this special work to her older pupils in the way Gurdjie had given it at the Prieuré.2 Later, in the l960s, when groups had become more advanced, she gradually introduced it more broadly. Work in lie : o be able to work in lie in the ull sense would be considered a very high achievement. Te struggle to be “present” in everyday lie constitutes a major aspect o Gurdjie ’s teaching, a struggle which leads to a ull engagement in the duties and rewards o human lie, now and here. In this context, Gurdjie created conditions to help his pupils experience the undamental practice o sel-observation. Trough such experience, a man or woman can begin
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to come into contact with an ever-deepening sense o inner need which allows an opening to a powerul conscious inuence within onesel. According to Gurdjie, without a relationship to this more central aspect o onesel, everyday lie is bound to be an existential prison, in which the individual is held captive, not so much by the so-called orces o modernity, as by the parts o the sel that cannot help but react automatically to the inuences o the world. Te help oered by the special conditions o the work is thereore understood not as replacing our lie in the world, but as enabling us, in the course o time, to live lie with authentic understanding and ull participation. Briey, the movement toward awakening, which is meant to be supported by the ideas and these orms o practice, becomes in act an organic process in lie and movement, and or that reason, dogmatic approaches will inevitably ail. Te process o awakening requires not only an understanding o the constituent orces and laws governing man’s psyche and
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actions, but also a deep sensitivity and appreciation o individual subjective needs and conditions. In other words, or an eective guidance, the principle o relativity must be recognized in the transmission o the teaching: individuals must be approached according to their respective levels o development and experience. Gurdjie might have stressed one view to a student at a certain level o understanding and quite another view when that student had reached another level. Tis might give the appearance o contradiction, but in act it was consistent in applying only those aspects o the whole teaching truly necessary at a given moment. Te same principle applies to the ideas, some o which seemed more accessible at one period while others still remained to be revealed in the unolding lie o the teaching.3 For example, the work o “sel-observation” acquires a completely new meaning as the developing attention lets go o its eort, joining and willingly submitting to a higher conscious seeing. Te action that might take place in this condition—in the quiet
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o meditation or even in outer action—reects the simultaneous dual nature o both an impersonal consciousness and a personal attention that has a new capacity to maniest and act in the world. Te qualities o both these aspects o consciousness and attention are quite unknown to the ordinary mind. In this new relationship o individual attention and a higher impersonal consciousness, a man or woman can become a vessel, serving another energy which can act through the individual, an energy which at the same time transorms the materiality o the body at the cellular level. Tis understanding o inner work introduced by Jeanne de Salzmann can be ound today in many o the Gurdjie Foundation groups worldwide.
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Te Lie o Gurdjie and the Principal Ideas Te Early Years What we know o Gurdjie ’s early lie is based mainly on what he has revealed in the autobiographical portions o his own writings, especially Meetings with Remarkable Men. Although there is no reason to doubt the accuracy o his account, the act remains that the principal aim o Gurdjie ’s writings was not to provide historical inormation, but to serve as a call to awakening and as a continuing source o guidance or the inner search that is the raison d’être o his teaching. His writings are cast in orms that are directed not only to the intellectual unction but also to the emotional and even subconscious sensitivities that, all together, make up the whole o the human psyche. His writings thereore demand and support the search or
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a ner quality o sel-attention on the part o the reader, ailing which the thought contained in them is unveriable at its deeper levels. Gurdjie was born, probably in 1866, to a Greek ather and an Armenian mother in Alexandropol (now Gumri), Armenia, a region where Eastern and Western cultures mixed and oten clashed.Te environment o his childhood and early adolescence, while suggesting a near-biblical patriarchal culture, is also marked by elements not usually associated with these cultural traditions. Te portrait Gurdjie draws o his ather, a well-known ashokh, or bard, suggests some orm o participation in an oral tradition stretching back to humanity’s distant past. At the same time, Gurdjie speaks o having been exposed to all the orms o modern knowledge, especially experimental science, which he explored with an impassioned diligence. Te inuence o his ather and certain o his early teachers contrasts very sharply with the orces o modernity that he experienced as a child. Tis contrast, however, is not easily describable. Te
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dierence is not simply that o ancient versus modern worldviews or patterns o behavior, though it certainly certa inly includes incl udes that. t hat. Te impression, impres sion, rather, is that tha t these “remarkable men” men” o his earl ea rlyy years maniested mani ested a certain quality o personal presence or being. Tat the vital dierence between human beings is a matter o their level o being became one o the undamental elements in Gurdjie ’s teaching and is not reducible to conventional psychological, behavioral, or cultural typologies. Meetings with Remarkable Men shows us the youthul Gurdjie journeying to monasteries and schools o awakening in remote parts o Central Asia and the Middle East, searching or a knowledge that neither traditional religion nor modern science by itsel could oer him. Te clues to what Gurdjie actuall act uallyy ound, inwardly inwardl y and outwardl outwa rdlyy, on these journeys are subtly distributed throughout the narrative, narrat ive, rather than than laid out in doctrinal doct rinal orm. orm. Discursive statements o ideas are relatively rare in the book, and where they are given it is with a deceptive
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simplicity that serves to turn the reader back to the teachings woven in the narrative portions o the text. Repeated readings o Meetings Meetings with Remarkable Men yield the realization that Gurdjie meant to draw our attention to the search itsel, and that what he intended to bring to the West was not only a new statement o what has been called “the primordial tradition,” but the knowledge o how to conduct a search within the conditions o contemporary lie. For Gurdjie, as we shall s hall see, the search sea rch itsel, itse l, when rightly conducted, emerges as the principal spiritualizing orce in human lie, what one observer has termed “a transorming transor ming search,” sea rch,” rather than “a “a search or transormation.” As has been noted, noted, Gurdjie began his work work as a teacher in Russia around 1912, on the eve o the civil war that led to the Russian Revolution. In 1914, he was joined by the philosopher P. P. D. Ouspensky and soon ater by the well-known Russian composer Tomas de Hartmann. Ouspensky was later to produce In Search o the Miraculous , by ar the best
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account o Gurdjie ’s teaching written by a pupil or anyone other than Gurdjie, while de Hartmann, working in a unique collaboration with Gurdjie, would produce what has come to be called the “Gurdjie/de Hartmann music.” Soon ater, as the Revolution drew near and the coming breakdown o civil order began to announce annou nce itsel, Gurdjie and a small band o dedicated pupils, including Tomas and Olga de Hartmann, made perilous journeys to the Crimea Crimea and iis (now bilisi). Tere they were joined by Alexandre and Jeanne de Salzmann, the ormer a well-known artist and theatrical designer and the latter a teacher o the Dalcroze system o rhythmic dance who was later to emerge as Gurd jie ’s greatest pupil and the principal guide under whom his teaching continued to be passed on ater his death in 1949. It was in iis, in 1919, that Gurdjie organized the rst version o his Institute or the Harmonious Development o Man. Te account by Ouspensky and notes by other pupils published in 1973 under the title Views rom
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the Real World show that in the Moscow period, beore the journey out o Russia, Gurdjie tirelessly articulated a vast body o ideas about man and the cosmos. It is appropriate here to interrupt the historical narrative in order to summarize some o these ormulations, which played an important role in the subsequent development o his teaching, even as Gurdjie changed the outer orms and certain inner emphases in his direct work with pupils. Also, to a limited extent, these ideas throw light on developments that came later, some o which have given rise to unnecessary conusion in the minds o outside observers. One caveat, however, is necessary. I in his writings Gurdjie never sought merely to lay out a philosophical system, all the more in his direct work with pupils did he mercilessly resist the role o guru, preacher, or schoolteacher. In Search o the Miraculous shows, with considerable orce, that Gurdjie always gave his ideas to his pupils under conditions designed to break through the crust o emotional and intellectual associations which, he
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taught, shut out the voice o conscience in man. Te oten awesome precision with which he was able to break through that crust—ways o behaving with his pupils that were, in turn, shocking, mysterious, rightening, magical, delicately gentle, and clairvoyant—remains one o the principal actors around which both the Gurdjie legend and the misunderstandings about him have arisen, as well as being the element most written about by those who came in touch with him, and the most imitated in the current age o “new religions.”
Te Gurdjie Ideas It is true enough to say that Gurdjie ’s system o ideas is complex and all-encompassing, but one must immediately add that their ormulation is designed to point us toward a central and simple power o apprehension that Gurdjie taught is merely latent within the human mind and that is the only power
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by which we can actually understand ourselves in relation to the universe. In this sense, the distinction between doctrine and method does not entirely obtain in Gurdjie ’s teaching. Te ormulations o the ideas are themselves meant to have a special action on the sense o sel and may thereore be regarded as part o the practical method. Tis characteristic o Gurdjie ’s teaching reects what Gurdjie perceived as the center o gravity o the contemporary subjectivity—the act that modern civilization is lopsidedly oriented around the thinking unction. Modern man’s illusory eeling o “I” is to a great extent built up around his thoughts and thereore, in accordance with the level o the pupil, the ideas themselves are meant to aect this alse sense o sel. For Gurdjie, the deeply penetrating inuence o scientic thought in modern lie was not something merely to be deplored, but to be understood as the channel through which the eternal ruth must rst nd its way toward the human heart.
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Man, Gurdjie taught, is an unnished creation. He is not ully Man, considered as a cosmically unique being whose intelligence and power o action mirror the energies o the source o lie itsel. On the contrary, man, as he is, is an automaton. Our thoughts, eelings, and deeds are little more than mechanical reactions to external and internal stimuli. In Gurdjie ’s terms, we cannot do anything. In and around us, everything “happens” without the participation o an authentic consciousness. But human beings are ignorant o this state o aairs because o the pervasive and deeply internalized inuence o culture and education, which engrave in us the illusion o autonomous conscious selves. In short, man is asleep. Tere is no authentic I am in his presence, but only a ractured egoism which masquerades as the authentic sel, and whose machinations poorly imitate the normal human unctions o thought, eeling, and will. Many actors reinorce this sleep. Each o the reactions that proceed in one’s presence is
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accompanied by a deceptive sense o I—one o many I’s, each imagining itsel to be the whole, and each buered o rom awareness o the others. Each o these many I’s represents a process whereby the subtle energy o consciousness is absorbed and degraded, a process that Gurdjie termed “identication.” Man identies—that is, squanders his conscious energy— with every passing thought, impulse, and sensation. Tis state o aairs takes the orm o a continuous sel-deception and a continuous procession o egoistic emotions, such as anger, sel-pity, sentimentality, and ear, which are o such a pervasively painul nature that we are constantly driven to ameliorate this condition through the endless pursuit o social recognition, sensory pleasure, or the vague and unrealizable goal o “happiness.” According to Gurdjie, the human condition cannot be understood apart rom considering humanity within the unction o organic lie on earth. Te human being is constructed to transorm energies o a specic nature, and neither
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our potential inner development nor our present actual predicament is understandable apart rom this unction. Tus, in the teaching o Gurdjie, psychology is inextricably connected with cosmology and metaphysics and, in a certain sense, biology. Te diagram known as “the Ray o Creation” provides one o the conceptual keys to approaching this interconnection between humanity and the uni versal order, and as such invites repeated study rom a variety o angles and stages o understanding. Te reader is reerred to chapters 5, 7, and 9 o In Search o the Miraculous or a discussion o this diagram, but the point to be emphasized here is that, at the deepest level, the human mind and heart are enmeshed in a concatenation o causal inuences o enormous scale and design. A study o the Ray o Creation makes it clear that the aspects o human nature through which one typically attempts to improve one’s lot are without any orce whatever within the network o universal inuences that act upon man on earth. In this consists our undamental
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illusion, an illusion only intensied by the technological achievements o modern science. We are simply unable to draw upon the conscious energies passing through us which, in the cosmic scheme, are those possessing the actual power o causal efcacy. We do not and cannot participate consciously in the great universal order, but instead are tossed about en masse or purposes limited to the unctions o organic lie on earth as a whole. Even in this relatively limited sphere—limited, that is, when compared to man’s latent destiny—humanity has become progressively incapable o ullling its unction, a point that Gurdjie strongly emphasized in his own writings. Tis aspect o the Ray o Creation—namely, that the “ate o the earth” is somehow bound up with the possibility o the inner evolution o individual men and women—resonates with the contemporary sense o impending planetary disaster. How are human beings to change this state o aairs and begin drawing on the universal conscious energies which we are built to absorb but which now
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pass through us untransormed? How is humanity to assume its proper place in the great chain o being? Gurdjie ’s answer to these questions actually circumscribes the central purpose o his teaching— namely, that human lie on earth may now stand at a major transitional point, comparable perhaps to the all o the great civilizations o the past, and that development o the whole being (rather than one or another o the separate human unctions) is the only thing that can permit us to pass through this transition in a manner worthy o human destiny. But whereas the descent o humanity takes place en masse, ascent or evolution is possible only within the individual. In Search o the Miraculous presents a series o diagrams dealing with the same energies and laws as the Ray o Creation, not only as a cosmic ladder o descent but also in their evolutionary aspect within the individual. In these diagrams, known collectively as the Food Diagram, Ouspensky explains in some detail how Gurdjie regarded the energy transactions within the individual human organism.
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Again, the reader is reerred to Ouspensky’s book. Te point o these energy transactions is that humanity can begin to occupy its proper place within the chain o being only through an inner work which within the individual human being may be subsumed under the general term attention. Te many levels o attention possible or man, up to and including an attention that in traditional teachings has been termed Spirit, are here ranged along a dynamic, vertical continuum that reaches rom the level o biological sustenance, which humans require or their physical bodies, up to the incomparably ner sustenance that we require or the inner growth o the soul. Tis ner substance is termed “the ood o impressions,” a deceptively matter-o-act phrase that eventually denes the uniquely human cosmic obligation and potentiality o constantly and in everything working or an objective understanding o the Real.
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Te Ray o Creation and the Food Diagram, extraordinary though they are, are only a small part o the body o ideas contained in In Search o the Miraculous . Tey are cited here as examples o how Gurdjie not only restated the ancient, perennial teachings in a language adapted to the modern mind, but also brought to these ancient principles something o such colossal originality that those who ollowed him detected in his teaching the signs o what in Western terminology may be designated a new revelation. However, as was indicated above, the organic interconnection o the ideas in In Search o the Miraculous is communicated not principally through conceptual argument but as a gradual unolding, which Ouspensky experienced to the extent that there arose within him that agency o inner unity which Gurdjie called “the real I”—the activation o which required o Ouspensky an ego-shattering
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inner work under the guidance o Gurdjie and within the general group conditions he created or his pupils. Each o the great ideas in the book leads to the others. Te Ray o Creation and the Food Diagram are inseparable rom Gurdjie ’s teaching about the undamental law o three orces and the law o the sevenold development o energy (the Law o Octaves), and the interrelation o these laws as expressed in the symbol o the enneagram. Tese ideas are in turn inseparable rom Gurdjie ’s teaching about the tripartite division o human nature, the three “centers” o mind, eeling, and body. Likewise, the astonishing account o how Gurdjie structured the conditions o group work is inseparable rom the idea o his work as a maniestation o the Fourth Way, the Way o Consciousness, distinct rom the traditionally amiliar paths termed “the way o the akir,” “the way o the monk,” and “the way o the yogi.” Te notion o the Fourth Way is one o Gurd jie ’s ideas that have captured the imagination o
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contemporary people and have brought quite a new meaning to the idea o esotericism. Te meaning o this idea is perhaps best approached by resuming the narrative o Gurdjie ’s lie, with special attention given to the conditions o work which he created or his pupils.
Te Institute or the Harmonious Development o Man Ater a brie period in Constantinople, Gurdjie and his group o pupils made their way through Europe and nally settled in France where, in 1922, he established his Institute or the Harmonious Development o Man at the Château du Prieuré at Fontainebleau-Avon, just outside Paris. Te brie intense period o activity at the Prieuré has been described in numerous books, but even or those amiliar with these accounts, the establishment and day-to-day activities o the Prieuré still evoke
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astonishment. It was during this period that Gurd jie developed many o the methods and practices o group work that have retained a central place in the work throughout the world today, including many o the Movements or sacred dances. All serious accounts o the conditions Gurdjie created at the Prieuré give the impression o a community lie pulsating with the uncompromising search or truth engaging all sides o human nature—demanding physical work, intensive emotional interactions, and the study o a vast range o ideas about humanity and the universal world. Tese accounts invariably speak o the encounter with onesel that these conditions made possible and the experience o the sel which accompanied this encounter. Te most active period o the Prieuré lasted less than two years, ending with Gurdjie ’s nearly atal motor accident on July 6, 1924. In order to situate this period properly, it is necessary to look back once again to the year 1909, when Gurdjie had nished his twenty-one years o traveling throughout Asia,
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the Middle East, Arica, and Europe meeting indi viduals and visiting communities who possessed knowledge unsuspected by most people. By 1909 Gurdjie had learned secrets o the human psyche and o the universe that he knew to be necessary or the uture welare o humanity, and he set himsel the task o transmitting them to those who could use them rightly. Ater trying to cooperate with existing societies, he decided to create an organization o his own. He started in 1911 in ashkent, where he had established a reputation as a wonder-worker and an authority on “questions o the Beyond.” He moved to Moscow in 1912 and ater the revolution o February 1917 he began his remarkable journeys through the war-torn Caucasus region, leading a band o his pupils to Constantinople and nally to France, where he reopened his institute at the Château de Prieuré at Fontainebleau-Avon. His avowed aim during this period was to set up a worldwide organization or the dissemination o his ideas and
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the training o helpers. Te motor accident o July 1924 occurred at this critical juncture. When he began to recover rom his injuries, Gurdjie was aced with the sheer impossibility o realizing his plans or the institute. He was a stranger in Europe; his health was shattered; he had no money; and many o his riends and pupils had abandoned him. At that point he made the decision to nd a new way o transmitting to posterity what he had learned about human nature and human destiny. Tis he would do by writing. His period as an author began in December o 1924 and continued until May 1935. It was during this period that he produced the monumental expression o his thought, Beelzebub’s ales to His Grandson; the subtle, crystalline call to inner work, Meetings with Remarkable Men; and the prooundly encoded, unnished Lie is Real Only Ten, When “I Am.” It was also during this period that he culminated his collaboration with the composer Tomas de Hartmann, rounding o
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the unique corpus o music that now bears both their names. In act, although the period o the Prieuré had ended, and although struck by numerous personal blows and tragedies, Gurdjie by no means limited himsel to writing. Quite the contrary. His travels to America, and his seeding o the work there, accelerated and intensied. Te creation and development o the Movements continued. And, perhaps above all, assisted by Jeanne de Salzmann, his work with groups and individuals in Paris not only attracted rom Europe and America the men and women who would later carry the work to the cities o the Western world, but at the same time allowed him, within the silence and energy o his Paris apartment, to transmit a portion o his understanding o inner work to many other men and women rom many parts o the world. Ater his death in Paris in 1949, the work continued under the guidance o Jeanne de Salzmann
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and now rests largely in the hands o the second generation o his circle o direct pupils. 6
In conclusion, and returning to the idea o the three centers, a succinct statement o this undamental aspect o what Gurdjie brought to the modern world as “the Fourth Way” may be cited rom the descriptive brochure published at the Prieuré in 1922: Te civilization o our time, with its unlimited means or extending its inuence, has wrenched man rom the normal conditions in which he should be living. It is true that civilization has opened up or man new paths in the domain o knowledge, science and economic lie, and thereby enlarged his world perception. But, instead o raising him to a higher all-round level o development, civilization has developed only certain sides
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o his nature to the detriment o other aculties, some o which it has destroyed altogether . . . Modern man’s world perception and his mode o living are not the conscious expression o his being taken as a complete whole. Quite the contrary, they are only the unconscious maniestation o one or another part o him. From this point o view our psychic lie, both as regards our world perception and our expression o it, ail to present a unique and indivisible whole, that is to say a whole acting both as common repository o all our perceptions and as the source o all our expressions. On the contrary, it is divided into three separate entities, which have nothing to do with one another, but are distinct both as regards their unctions and their constituent substances.
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Tese three entirely separate sources o the intellectual, emotional or moving lie o man, each taken in the sense o the whole set o unctions proper to them, are called by the system under notice the thinking, the emotional and the moving centers.4 It is difcult conceptually, and in a ew words, to communicate the meaning o this idea o the three centers, which is one o the central aspects o Gurdjie ’s teaching. Te modern person simply has no conception o how sel-deceptive a lie can be that is lived in only one part o onesel. Te head, the emotions, and the body each have their own perceptions and actions, and each in itsel can live a simulacrum o human lie. In the modern era this has gone to an extreme point, and most o the technical and material progress o our culture serves to push the individual urther into only one o the centers—one third, as it were, o our real sel-nature. Te growth o vast areas o scientic
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knowledge is, according to Gurdjie, outweighed by the diminution o the conscious space and time within which we live and experience ourselves. With an ever-diminishing “I,” we gather an ever-expanding corpus o inormation about the universe. But to be human—to be a whole sel possessed o moral power, will, and intelligence—requires all the centers, and more. Tis more is communicated above all in Gurdjie ’s own writings, in which the levels o spiritual development possible or human beings are connected with a breathtaking vision o the levels o possible service that the developing individual is called on to render to mankind and to the universal source o creation itsel. Tus, the proper relationship o the three centers o cognition in the human being is a necessary precondition or the reception and realization o what in the religions o the world has been variously termed the Holy Spirit, Atman, or the Buddha nature. Te conditions Gurdjie created or his pupils cannot be understood apart rom this act. “I wished to create
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around mysel,” Gurdjie wrote,“conditions in which a man would be continuously reminded o the sense and aim o his existence by an unavoidable riction between his conscience and the automatic maniestations o his nature.” 5 Deeply buried though it is, the awakened conscience is the something more that, according to Gurdjie, is the only orce in modern man’s nearly completely degenerate psyche that can actually bring the parts o his nature together and open him to that energy and unnamable awareness o which all the religions have always spoken as the git that descends rom above, but which in the conditions o modern lie is almost impossible to receive without an extraordinary quality o help.
Notes: 1 From the Introduction to Lie is Real, Only Ten, When “I Am,” p xii. 2 In 1922, Gurdjie acquired the Prieuré d’Avon, a large estate and ormer priory located about 40 miles
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rom Paris where he established intense communal conditions or inner work, especially rom 1922 until his automobile accident in 1924. 3 In this light, it is interesting to note that groups that break away at dierent moments, to work by themselves and on their own, run the risk o clinging dogmatically to certain specic orms and practices. 4 G. Gurdjie ’s Institute or the Harmonious Development o Man: Prospectus No. 1, p 3 (privately printed, ca. 1922). 5 Meetings with Remarkable Men, p 270.
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For Further Study Te Gurdjief Foundation Te most comprehensive directory o websites and contact inormation or the Gurdjie Foundations throughout the world may, at present, be accessed on the website o Te Gurdjie International Review, at www.gurdjie.org/oundation.htm.
Books, Music and Film Note: rst publication o all books is cited, ollowed, in parentheses, by most recent or more readily available editions.
Books by Gurdjief Gurdjie, G. I. All and Everything: Beelzebub’s ales to His Grandson. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1950 (New York: Penguin Arkana, 1999); and New York: Jeremy P. archer/Penguin (revised), 2006 archer/ Penguin (second revision), 2008. Long read and respected, and perennially
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in print, the 1950 edition was edited by A. R. Orage on the basis o a literal English text prepared rom Gurdjie ’s original Russian and Armenian by pupils at the Institute or the Harmonious Development o Man. Tis version may become the reader’s preerence. However, the revised translation, initially published in 1992 and republished with corrections in 2006, should also be read. Tis edition reects, to some extent, the greater ease o expression o the French edition o 1956 and also beneted rom direct access to the original Russian text, published in 2000 by raditional Studies Press (oronto). Both versions o the book can be trusted. ———. Meetings with Remarkable Men . New York: Dutton, 1963 (New York: Penguin Arkana, 1985). Gurdjie ’s account o his youth and early search or hidden knowledge was written as an autobiographical narrative. It possesses an uncommon inner calm and presence which oers a taste o the path that he brought to the modern world.
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———. Lie is Real Only Ten, When “I Am.” New York: Dutton, 1982 (New York: Penguin Arkana, 1991). Here Gurdjie speaks on many levels and with great precision and candor o the discoveries and difculties in his personal struggle to bring the Work to birth. ———. Views rom the Real World . New York: Dutton, 1973 (New York: Penguin Compass, 1984). A collection o Gurdjie ’s lectures rom the years 1917 to 1933. “Tat any record o these lectures exists at all is due to a ew pupils who, with astonishing powers o memory . . . managed to write down what they heard aterwards” during the turbulence o revolutionary Russia, at the Institute or the Harmonious Development o Man, and during Gurdjie ’s visits to American pupils in New York and elsewhere. Te book oers a rare opening to the vast scale o the Gurdjie ideas expressed in the human resonance o his own “voice.”
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Accounts by Direct Pupils Ouspensky, P. D. In Search o the Miraculous . New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1949 (New York: Harcourt, 2001). Tis book may be given a special signicance in this list o reliable recommended works. Since its rst publication in 1949, Ouspensky’s In Search o the Miraculous has served as the most artul, electriying and proound account written by a pupil. Ouspensky’s book retains a remarkable strength and reshness to this day and continues to help readers at all levels o their preparation and acquaintance with the Gurdjie teaching. For many, it remains the book o choice or those approaching the teaching or the rst time. de Hartmann, Tomas and Olga. Our Lie with Mr. Gurdjie . New York: Cooper Square, 1962. Several revised and enlarged editions have been published over the years. Te most recent and denitive: Sandpoint: Sandpoint Press, 2008.
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Tis book describes the dangerous ight by Gurdjie and a handul o pupils out o war-torn revolutionary Russia, ending with the establishment o the Prieuré community in France. One o the most aithul portraits o Gurdjie the man. Lannes, Henriette. Tis Fundamental Quest . San Francisco: Far West Institute, 2007. A direct pupil o Gurdjie, Henriette Lannes was responsible in later years or the practical study o the Gurdjie teaching in Lyon (France) and in London. Many o the brie chapters in this record o her work in Lyon are deceptively simple, recording a kind o higher common sense based on ew but undamental assumptions: the need or sel-knowledge, the necessity o challenging ourselves, the revelatory power o attention, the imperative o honesty with onesel and o claried relations with others. Pentland, John. Exchanges Within . New York: Continuum, 1997 (New York: archer Penguin, 2004).
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John Pentland was immensely inuential in the transmission o the Gurdjie teaching in America. A aithul and dynamic record o both the energy and the thought exchanged in a Gurdjie group as led by one o its most powerul and creative leaders. de Salzmann, Michel. “Man’s Ever New and Eternal Challenge.” In On the Way to Sel Knowledge , pp 54-83, New York: Alred A. Knop, 1976. Also “Seeing: Te Endless Source o Inner Freedom” in Material or Tought , #14, 12-30. Michel de Salzmann was both a trained psychiatrist and one o the most respected leaders o the Work throughout the world. Tese two magisterial essays show the place o psychotherapy in the process o inner development while at the same time oering a ar-reaching vision o the several levels o the Gurdjie work. Segal, William. A Voice at the Borders o Silence . New York: Te Overlook Press, 2003.
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A highly successul businessman, an important American artist and a devoted practitioner o Zen, William Segal was or many years a leading gure in the development o the Gurdjie Work in America. Tis book generously oers a window into all sides o this remarkable “Gurdjie man.” ———. Opening . New York: Te Continuum Publishing Company, 1998. racol, Henri. Te aste For Tings Tat Are rue . Longmead, Shatesbury, Dorset: Element Books, Ltd., 1994. (Expanded and revised edition orthcoming, entitled Te Real Question Remains by Sandpoint Press, Sandpoint). Henri racol was a pupil o Gurdjie or over ten years and worked as a leader o the Work closely alongside Jeanne de Salzmann in the years ollowing Gurdjie ’s death. Te essays, talks and interviews in this book reveal an approach to the Gurdjie teaching unsurpassed in its subtlety, depth and purity.
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Te ollowing books seem to me to be among the most honest attempts by pupils o Gurdjief to depict the personal impact o the man and his way o teaching: Anderson, Margaret. Te Unknowable Gurdjie. New York: Weiser, 1962 (London and New York: Penguin Arkana, 1991). Hulme, Kathryn. Undiscovered Country. Boston: Little Brown, 1966. Hands, Rina. Diary o Madame Egout Pour Sweet . Aurora, Oregon: wo Rivers Press, 1991. Nott, C. S. eachings o Gurdjie: Te Journal o a Pupil . London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961 (London and New York: Penguin Arkana, 1991). chekhovitch, cheslaw. Gurdjie: A Master in Lie . oronto: Dolmen Meadow Editions, 2006. Zuber, René. Who Are You, Monsieur Gurdjie? London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980.
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Accounts by Other Pupils o the Gurdjief Work Ravindra, Ravi. Heart Without Measure . Haliax: Shaila Press, 1999. (Sandpoint: Morning Light Press, 1999). Te rst published account o the teaching o Jeanne de Salzmann, Gurdjie ’s greatest pupil, who was responsible or the Work ater his death. Vaysse, Jean. oward Awakening: An Approach to the eaching Let by Gurdjie . San Francisco: Far West Undertakings, 1978. (London and New York: Penguin Arkana, 1988); (Sandpoint: Morning Light Press, 2009). Written by a long-time pupil o Jeanne de Salzmann, this concise exposition claries much that has seemed obscure in the Gurdjie teaching.
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Also recommended: Material or Tought , a journal published occasionally in San Francisco by the Gurdjie Foundation o Caliornia under the imprint o Far West Editions. See: http://www.arwesteditions.com Gurdjie International Review: see http://www.gurd jie.org Guide and Index to Beelzebub’s ales . oronto: raditional Studies Press, 2003. Second edition, reerencing all editions o Beelzebub’s ales .
Needleman, Jacob and George Baker, eds., Gurdjie: Essays and Refections on the Man and His eaching . New York: Continuum, 2004. Needleman, Jacob, ed., Te Inner Journey: Views rom the Gurdjie Work. Sandpoint: Morning Light Press, 2008. Te rst major collection o essays and inter views by the rst and second generation o Gurdjie
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pupils. Te present essay has been drawn, with minor changes, rom the Introduction to this book.
Music Te Music o Gurdjie/de Hartmann . Tomas de Hartmann, piano. 3-disc set. riangle Records, a division o riangle Editions. In these essential recordings one eels immediately the authority o the composer’s interpretation o his own music, although de Hartmann was not always aware that his perormances were being recorded. Tus certain pieces contain spontaneous departures rom the printed text. Te original recordings were made largely on an early, somewhat primitive, wire recorder. Many years later the transer to LP, and eventually to CD, included an electronic process designed to clariy the sound and eliminate extraneous noises and background hiss. Nevertheless, the spiritual authenticity o these recordings make this a denitive rendition o one o the central orms o the teaching.
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Gurdjie/de Hartmann: Music or the Piano , Volumes 1-4. Linda Daniel-Spitz, Charles Ketcham, Laurence Rosenthal, pianists. Wergo (Schott Wergo Music Media, Mainz, Germany). Tese perormances were recorded by the three editors o the published complete works. Tis edition was produced under the guidance o Jeanne de Salzmann. A major eature o these our sets o CDs is that they comprise a complete recording o the our volumes o the published music, presented in the same order. Tus it is possible or the listener to ollow in sequence the printed scores. Gurdjie/de Hartmann, Volumes 1-10 (Various titles: Meditations, Music o the Sayyids and Der vishes, Hymn or Christmas Day, First Dervish Prayer, Circles, etc.). Alain Kremski, piano. Fano, Italy: Naïve Recording Studio. Alain Kremski’s interpretations are oten imaginative and unusual, and always there is great authority in his playing and technique. Although the
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music or the Gurdjie Movements is generally not designed to be heard separately rom the sacred dances themselves, Kremski has elected to include many o de Hartmann’s compositions or the Movements in these collections. Gurdjie/de Hartmann, Volumes 1 and 2. Laurence Rosenthal, piano. Windemere. Tese recent recordings, part o a series still in progress, were made by a composer and pianist with a long association with the Gurdjie/de Hartmann music. Rosenthal arranged and orchestrated many o these pieces or inclusion in the musical score o Peter Brook’s lm Meetings with Remarkable Men. Te CD o the score or the lm is available on Citadel records.
Film Meetings with Remarkable Men , directed by Peter
Brook, produced by Remar Production, Inc., 1978, distributed by Morning Light Press, Sandpoint. Filmed on location in Aghanistan, and based
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on the book by Gurdjie, this deeply evocative lm includes what is currently the only publicly available perormance o the Gurdjie Movements.
