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An abridged version of this article was published in America's
Alternative Religions, SUNY Press, Albany, 1992
All rights reserved
Back to Gurdjieff Main Page
Gurdjieff in America: An Overview
by
George Baker
Walter Driscoll
Contents
Summary
History
Key Pupils
Post-Gurdjieff Developments
Methodology
Gurdjieff Issues
Liturgy
Conclusion
Sources and References
Notes
Summary
The Gurdjieff movement deserves renewed attention by sociologists, historians and
philosophers of r
eligion who might find in the data a new axis for organizing their analysis of the
contemporary rel
igious scene in America
. Such attention will, to some degree, have to be carried out in the status of
participant-observer
.
Scholarly efforts to date to classify the twentieth-century Gurdjieff phenomena have
not met with m
uch success.[1] There is the understandable wish to put Gurdjieff into an ethnic or
religious tradi
tion, or, failing this,
to classify his ideas according to generally known philosophical orientations.[2]
This essay seeks
to report on field interviews conducted mainly in the San Francisco area during the
period 1977-92
and point the reader t
o historical and philosophical accounts dealing with the subject, with an emphasis on
Gurdjieff's i
nfluence in America.
History
George I. Gurdjieff was born in the area between Greece and the Caspian Sea in the
late 1860s or ea
rly 1870s. He grew up in a Christian home (Greek or Russian Orthodox), but, as a
child, was exposed
to a variety of religi
ous practices by local populations. Aside from such generalizations, nothing about his
first forty
years that can be corroborated independently from his philosophically instructive
autobiography, Me
etings with Remarkable
Men (1963), is available.[3] What is reliably known about Gurdjieff's life dates from
the time of h
is arrival in Moscow at the beginning of the First World War.[4]
Two accounts provide parallel chronologies of Gurdjieff's activities during the period
1917- 1929.
One of these is that of the Russian polymath, P. D. Ouspensky, whose work, In Search
of the Miracul
ous: Fragments of an Un
known Teaching, was first published, posthumously, in 1949. The second is that of
Thomas and Olga d
e Hartmann, whose Our Life with Mr. Gurdjieff, first published in 1964, was reissued
in expanded ed
itions in 1983 and 1992
.
Gurdjieff was in the Russian cities of Moscow, St. Petersburg, Essentuki, and Tiflis,
among others,
until 1920, then briefly in Constantinople and Berlin. He arrived in Paris in 1922,
where, at firs
t, he rented a house in
the Auteuil district that was divided into three flats. Gurdjieff lived on the ground
floor, women
on the second, men on the third. "Every morning, after breakfast," Butkowsky
recalled, "we all wen
t by tram to Jacques Da
lcrose's studio, which Gurdjieff had rented, to practice our dancing for several
hours. . . . Our e
venings were spent with Gurdjieff, listening either to him or to two of his pupils
discussing vario
us problems, followed b
y general questions in which everyone would join."[5]
In October 1922 Gurdjieff and his followers moved to Fountainbleau, located south of
Paris.[6] In e
ach of these places he put in motion his experimental center for the study of
consciousness. Gurdji
eff's system of ideas a
nd values was so complex and interconnected that, looking back, it is difficult to
select a single
aspect or idea as the "basic" one.[7] Common to the several approaches Gurdjieff
employed was the p
rinciple that his ideas
needed to be reinvented, rediscovered, in the experience of the pupil. For this
reason he said, as
Ouspensky later put it, that "the study of psychology begins with the study of
oneself." Self-stud
y, as pupils were to le
arn quickly, was never a matter of quiet contemplation in a cell; it was just the
opposite. Gurdjie
ff threw his people into unexpected, often strenuous, activities reminiscent of the
style of Marpa,
the thirteenth-century
Tibetan teacher of Milarepa
The most elaborate of these research centers, called the Institute for the Harmonious
Development o
f Man,[8] was that at Fountainbleau, which operated from 1922 to 1934[9] on the
grounds of a mansio
n that had belonged to
a member of the French aristocracy of the eighteenth century. One of the
characteristic activities
pursued at these institutes was the study of Gurdjieff's original choreographed
dances, which, duri
ng the years in Russia,
were called "Sacred Gymnastics," and which, after the arrival of Gurdjieff in France,
were called
"Movements."[10]
Financial support for Gurdjieff's activities in Western Europe came initially from
England, where h
is ideas found a receptive audience, and where, from the early 1920s to his death in
1947, Ouspensk
y made his principal re
sidence.[11] Later, with Gurdjieff's tour of New York and Chicago in 1924, a
considerable American
following developed, thanks in large measure to the successful efforts of A. R. Orage
in attracting
American writers and a
rtists. Gurdjieff returned to the United States on several occasions during the
periods 1929- 35,[1
2] 1939 and 1948-49.[13]
Gurdjieff was in France for over a decade before prospective French pupils expressed
interest in hi
s ideas and methods.[14] From 1925 to 1935, while Gurdjieff was absorbed by his
writing projects, h
is ideas and Movements
were being introduced to French circles quietly by Alexandre and Jeanne de Salzmann,
two pupils who
had initially joined Gurdjieff in Russia.
After Ouspensky died in 1947, his widow Sophia, disregarding her deceased husband's
wishes, told fo
llowers in England and America to make direct contact with Gurdjieff, who was still
alive in Paris.
The final period of Gu
rdjieff's life, 1948-49, became the harvest years when former and new pupils came to
Paris and were
introduced to Gurdjieff, who, by all accounts was very ill-and who was just
recovering from a rece
nt automobile accident.
Some of the new pupils, such as Rina Hands, from John G. Bennett's group in London,
were invited t
o become part of Gurdjieff's extended household. A typical day in Gurdjieff's crowded
apartment beg
an at 12:30 or 1:00 p.m
. with a one- or two-hour reading from one of Gurdjieff's then unpublished
manuscripts. The reading
was followed by a highly ceremonialized mid-afternoon meal. After the meal guests
left, only to re
turn about 9:30 or 10 o
'clock p.m. for another reading and a late supper and, often, music played on a
harmonium by Gurdji
eff himself. Typically, guests would leave at 2:30 a.m.[15]
The year following Gurdjieff's death in Paris in 1949, the first volume of his
three-volume work, A
ll and Everything, was published.[16] The first volume was entitled Beelzebub's Tales
to His Grands
on: An Impartial Critic
ism of the Life of Man. The book, written in the format of an epic science fiction
novel, treats th
e Fall of man and the initial arising of civilizations and customs that evoke in the
individual imp
ulses and associations
becoming to creatures made in the image of God. The book is meant to upset the world
view of the re
ader; in the end, it evokes in the reader feelings of compassion and hope--for
himself, if not for
humanity at large.[17]
The use to which Gurdjieff societies have made of Beezelbub's Tales varies. Some of
the smaller, in
dependent groups view the book as a canonical text that, like the New Testament in
Christian church
es, is the object of pa
raphrase and interpretation. The groups associated with the Gurdjieff Foundations,
however, general
ly eschew discussion of the meaning of the passages of Gurdjieff's principal book. It
is as if they
believed that the impa
ct of the book has to be received directly and individually, and that attempts to
restate the argum
ents of the book would, paradoxically, make Gurdjieff's ideas and message less
accessible.[18] It m
ay be, then, that the l
ess said here about the ideas of Beelzebub's Tales the better; yet, it would be wrong
to conclude t
hat every attempt to apply social scientific standards to the interpretation of
religious texts--in
cluding the one under d
iscussion--is bound to reduce the transcendental to the mundane.
Consider Chapter 27 in Beelzebub's Tales: here, in the literary vehicle of a
grandfather's instruct
ive reflections to his grandson, Gurdjieff describes how, in a prehistoric period, a
great saint br
ought about a transform
ation of the religious, social and political outlooks of his people. He accomplished
this aim by a
reorganization of the psyche of his countrymen, as a result of which the feeling of
conscience, nor
mally scarcely noticed
in the course of everyday life, came to participate more richly and organically in the
social, poli
tical and, even, economic transactions of society. As a result of this transformation
of outlook, l
ong- standing moral sco
urges of society such as slavery and social castes briefly disappeared.
In digesting this account the reader is left with multiple impressions: one is that
were it ever th
e case that everyday human relationships were to be governed by feelings other than
those typically
associated with the pr
esence (or absence) of political and economic power, then such a remarkable change
surely would hav
e to be the work of a very great saint indeed. Gurdjieff observes, at the end of this
chapter, that
contemporary people ha
ve only the vaguest notions of a remote "priestly organization" of society, which they
mistakenly a
ssume to have been a period of religious tyranny. Perhaps, then, these scraps of
information that h
ave been preserved abou
t some ancient civilizations should be given another interpretation. Finally, the
reader may experi
ence a half-felt question about how, in his own life, feelings of conscience
appear.[19]
Although there are differences in the status accorded to Gurdjieff's books by
Gurdjieff groups, the
re is less variation in the interest shown in the biography of the founder of their
movement. Gener
ally, there seems to be
only a minimal curiosity about the details of Gurdjieff's life--as if to say that,
because Gurdjie
ff taught that life was to be lived in the present moment, only the ideas, music and
sacred gymnast
ics were important. Unl
ike Christian churches in which every detail of the life of Jesus is made the object
of commentary
and interpretation, in the Gurdjieff society the historical Gurdjieff is seldom even
mentioned. If
the tendency in new rel
igious movements toward a cult of the personality could be measured, the Gurdjieff
movement would s
urely score at the very bottom of the scale.
Some Gurdjieff pupils, however, say that reading about how Gurdjieff interacted with
society and wi
th individuals of different temperaments is subtly instructive; the instructive
quality, they say,
is indirect. Although G
urdjieff could not be imitated, still, they say, the harmonic of his fearless and
uncompromising at
titude still sounds in first-hand accounts of episodes in his life.
Gurdjieff's Key Pupils
Gurdjieff recruited[20] six or seven key persons who, as followers, made lasting
contributions to t
he preservation of his teaching. These early followers were in large measure
responsible for the tr
ansmission of his ideas
, music, movements and sacred texts.
The Gurdjieff pupil who is best known in the West is P. D. Ouspensky, who expounded
"the System" in
England and America from the early 1920s until his death in the late 40's.[21]
Ouspensky's book, I
n Search of the Miracul
ous, which narrates the years from 1915 to 1924, was published posthumously with
Gurdjieff's author
ization. Ouspensky succeeded in capturing on paper Gurdjieff's system of
interconnected ideas that
had been explained, per
haps, for Ouspensky's ears alone. None of Gurdjieff's other pupils remotely came close
to expressin
g, in writing, the power of Gurdjieff's way of working with people through ideas.
Ouspensky was key
pupil in the spreading
of Gurdjieff's ideas in the United States, where he and his wife took refuge during
the Second Wor
ld War.[22]
A second key pupil was Thomas de Hartmann, a composer who had performed for the
Russian aristocracy
prior to the First World War. Gurdjieff worked with de Hartmann in the 1920s to
compose what was l
ater published as the G
urdjieff/de Hartman music,[23] and which set the framework within which the music for
the Gurdjieff
Movements are performed.
It is doubtful that the sacred gymnastics of Gurdjieff would have been preserved
without Jeanne de
Salzmann. A choreographer and dancer, de Salzmann on her own initiative continued
teaching the Move
ments when, in the late
'20s and early '30s, Gurdjieff had turned to other pursuits. Only later in the 1930s
did she succe
ed in getting Gurdjieff to renew his interest in teaching his singular exercises for
developing inn
er faculties.[24]
Gurdjieff's writings in three volumes would not have materialized without the
administrative and ed
itorial collaboration of Olga de Hartmann, the aristocratic wife of the Russian
composer, and a lon
g-time Gurdjieff follow
er, and Alfred R. Orage, a prominent English editor. Mme. de Hartmann was the person
to whom Gurdji
eff dictated much of his writings and who worked with Orage and others to render the
Russian text i
nto English.[25]
Orage (d. 1934) was a highly regarded English stylist, author, editor and long-time
student of phil
osophy.[26] Orage was in residence at Gurdjieff's center in Fountainbleau in the early
'20s, prior
to being "stationed" in
New York for seven years as Gurdjieff's first "representative" in the United
States.[27] Orage, wh
o did not know Russian himself, served as the senior editor in charge of the
translation of the Rus
sian text of Beelzebub
and Meetings with Remarkable Men into publishable English.[28]
Another Gurdjieff pupil was Sophia Ouspensky, who was associated with Gurdjieff from
the Russian pe
riod and who had special influence on the development of interest in America in the
Gurdjieff teach
ing. Mme. Ouspensky was
a resident of the United States from the Second World War to her death in the early
1960s.[29] She
directed the Gurdjieff studies at Mendham, New Jersey.
All of these pupils were Europeans. What, then, of American pupils? In the 1920s and
30s there were
numerous persons with public careers who became followers of Gurdjieff's ideas and
who would seek
to carry his message to
others. In large measure because of Orage's literary reputation, at first there was a
disproportio
nate representation of writers and editors, such as Jane Heap, Jean Toomer and Gorham
Munson. Some
American writers in thi
s period, such as as Margaret Anderson, Janet Flanner and Solita Solano (n� Sarah
Wilkinson), were
in contact with Gurdjieff mainly in France.[30]
Jane Heap (1887-1964), born in Kansas, read Ouspensky's Tertium Organum when the
American edition a
ppeared in 1920, met Orage, then Gurdjieff, in 1923-24, and first visited Gurdjieff's
institute nea
r Paris in 1925. During
the period 1927-1936 she lived in the Montparnasse district of Paris, where she was
the center of
a group of women that included Gertrude Stein, Georgette Leblanc, Kathryn Hulme and,
when she was i
n Paris, Margaret Ander
son. In 1936, at Gurdjieff's request, Heap moved to London and there directed
Gurdjieff groups unti
l shortly before her death in 1964.
Most contemporary Gurdjieff followers, as would be expected, are not writers, artists
or public fig
ures of any sort. At the same time, a sociological slice of the population of
Gurdjieffians would n
ot yield a cross-sectio
n of American society: the membership in the United States is made up, with few
exceptions, of whit
e, middle-class, college-educated people who live in large metropolitan centers.[31]
Post-Gurdjieff developments
By the mid-1950s the Gurdjieff Foundation of New York was formally established, under
the guidance
of senior American and European pupils of Ouspensky, Gurdjieff and other Gurdjieff
followers.[32] T
he Foundation faced the
difficult task of bringing together the followers of Orage, Ouspensky and Gurdjieff
himself. Soon,
other Gurdjieff centers were set up in cities such as San Francisco, Los Angeles and
Washington, D
.C.
Jeanne de Salzmann gave structure and direction to Gurdjieff centers worldwide. As one
aspect of he
r activities, she conceived of and initiated work on a feature film, Meetings with
Remarkable Men,
with director Peter Bro
ok, which was released in 1978 and which was based on Gurdjieff's autobiography.[33]
The film itsel
f is remarkable in giving the viewer an impression of the energy of Gurdjieff's
spiritual quest.[34
]
The president of the New York and California Gurdjieff Foundations, meanwhile, was,
from its beginn
ing to his death in 1984, Henry Sinclair (Lord Pentland), a Scotsman and Christ
College graduate wh
ose father had been Gov
ernor of Madras and who had spent some of his childhood in India. Pentland had been an
Ouspensky pu
pil in England prior to the Second World War, and emigrated to America with Ouspensky
in 1940. Pent
land, who met Gurdjieff
only in the last two years of Gurdjieff's life, was very much the junior of other
pupils in New Yo
rk who had worked with Gurdjieff and Orage from the 1920s.
Gurdjieff, recognizing Pentland's singular qualities,[35] facilitated his coming to
have a position
of authority among Gurdjieff pupils in New York. Pentland was closely involved with
the publicatio
n of Gurdjieff's and Ou
spensky's posthumous works, although not principally as an editor.
As of mid-1992, several of Gurdjieff's own pupils remained actively involved in the
centers that be
ar his name; much of the responsibility for the day-to-day activities of these
Gurdjieff-oriented c
enters was in the hands
of "second-generation" followers who studied with Gurdjieff's pupils but who never
worked with Gur
djieff himself. In addition, there are a number of organizations that invoke
Gurdjieff's name but h
ave no connection with
either the Gurdjieff Foundations or any pupil who worked directly with Gurdjieff.[36]
Methodology
It may seem, in an essay reporting on research on new religious groups and trends,
that to use the
term "research center" to describe a Gurdjieff-oriented institution is to invite
confusion.[37] In
the general area of rel
igion and spirituality, social scientists and humanistic scholars do research, the
people whom they
study are devotees, followers, practitioners or, simply, members. The members, in
turn, have belie
fs, values, customs and
conventions, all of which can be classified and studied comparatively. A "Gurdjieff
follower," the
n, can be distinguished from a "Zen practitioner" by certain empirically verifiable
traits.
Unfortunately, as was said at the beginning, such scholarly exercises, at least those
reported in t
he literature to date, have not yielded much substance.[38] Further, the extent to
which academic r
eporting may capture th
e nature of the Gurdjieff approach to a religious life is questionable. There seem to
be two proble
ms: one, already alluded to, is the tendency of what might be called the taxonomic
mind in every sc
holar, the natural expr
ession of which is the formulation of a new matrix or linear explanation of his topic
under study.
The second problem might be called that of the false cognate.[39] Numerous interviews
with Gurdjief
f followers on the natu
re of the Gurdjieff teaching produces one, nearly uniform, empirical finding, namely,
that Gurdjief
f followers believe that the ideas in the Gurdjieff oral tradition cannot be
communicated accuratel
y outside of the condit
ions of the activities of the Gurdjieff Foundations. It as if Gurdjieff followers
believed that a t
erm like "inner work" as used in the Gurdjieff oral tradition were a false cognate to
the term "inn
er work" as used by the
general public. They believe that little is to be gained from discussing with
outsiders the ideas
and activities of the Gurdjieff Work in the terms that are common in its oral
tradition. On the con
trary, such discussions
could put at risk the specificity of meaning of the Gurdjieff language. They cite the
use of the t
erm "enneagram" that Gurdjieff first used (to Western pupils) in the 1916-17 period,
and that, subs
equently, in the 1970's
and '80's was indiscriminately incorporated into new-age psychology and
spirituality.[40] Gurdjief
fians believe that the further incorporation of terminology from the oral tradition
into general pu
blic use could have the
unwanted effect of creating new and needless confusion about the ideas themselves.
Three conclusions follow. One, some Heisenberg-like Uncertainty Principle may be at
work in researc
h on the Gurdjieff phenomena: that is, the reliability of field interview data may
vary inversely w
ith the specificity of
the content of the data. Two, for reasons already explained, it may not be appropriate
to approach
the data in the manner of a descriptive linguist bent on capturing the idiom and
syntax of the spee
ch acts of communities
under study. Three, it may be better to concentrate on Gurdjieff-oriented issues
instead of trying
to classify the beliefs and practices of Gurdjieff followers.
Gurdjieff issues
The principal Gurdjieff "issue" is the the study of the underlying conditions of one's
life from th
e point of view of the possibility of inner unity. In his book Beelzebub Gurdjieff
observes that al
though man has the func
tion of conscience that at moments serves the invididual as a kind of North Star in
life, this func
tion is only rarely active in the individual's daily life. How, then, to intensify the
rhythm and l
ife of the organism (th
at is, the individual) so that his half-buried conscience might come to participate in
the ordinary
exchanges and engagements that his life brings?
As with a number of teachings, a study of "the way" begins with a study of what is not
the way. Gur
djieff taught that an individual must make a microscopic examination of moments of
awareness of the
intersection of though
t (or what was taken for thought), feeling and the presence of the body. This
examination was not o
f the sort that required the individual to reconstruct his childhood or any other part
of his past,
nor was he expected to
come to any psychological conclusions as to the reasons for his behavior.
Gurdjieff said that one's life, at the time of an individual's initial contact with
his work (as he
called it), offered the best material for the study of the core issues of the human
condition. Unl
ike other traditions th
at require that an individual make some real or ceremonial "break" with his past (such
as the rite
of Baptism in Christianity), in the Gurdjieff world one's present life is exactly what
an individua
l needs to meet himself
in an inner way.
Gurdjieff himself gave a few close pupils a number of spiritual exercises intended to
increase thei
r sense of self-presence. One Gurdjieff exercise described by several sources in the
1948-49 period
entailed a pupil's say
ing to himself the words "I AM." Gurdjieff instructed the pupil that when he said the
word "I" to b
e aware of his state of feeling, and, in saying the word "am" to be aware of his total
state of sen
sation. Gurdjieff said
a pupil should attempt to carry out this exercise at least once an hour.[41] This
exericse, as with
most of Gurdjieff's exercises, is either incomprehensible or impossible to
re-experience outside o
f the unique context of
the teacher-pupil relationship. For this reason, Gurdjieff pupils generally allude to
Gurdjieff's
exercises, but generally insist that only in context of oral tradition can their inner
sense be com
municated.
Gurdjieff students are encouraged to read Ouspensky's principal work, but are
cautioned that all te
achings will have to be re-verified in the individual's own experience. An example is
Gurdjieff's r
adical position on huma
n volition. Gurdjieff insisted, at least in the Russian period, that an individual,
except in rare
moments, cannot "do" at all, has no volition of his own. On the contrary, everything
is "done" thro
ugh him, that is, as a
result of the promptings of childhood and cultural conditioning, adult instinctive
needs, and the i
diosyncratic workings of the personality. Only rarely is anything ever felt or done by
the individu
al in a way that authen
tically expresses, in one gesture, his body, feelings and mind. The Gurdjieff pupil is
asked (altho
ugh not in so many words), Is this an accurate description of his everyday experience
or not? That
is, he is asked to veri
fy, and re-verify, the basic ideas of the Gurdjieff teaching with his own
experience.[42]
A well-known Korean Zen teacher in the United States, Seung-Sahn, is fond of advising
his pupils "O
nly go straight." Familiarity with Gurdjieff's ideas gives a basis for a critique of
such injunctio
ns. What does "only go"
mean? The part of ourselves that can respond to orders like "[you may] only go
straight" is passiv
e and authoritarian. Further, there is nothing in experience that corresponds to
"straight."
Another matter is the importance of undertaking the study of Gurdjieff issues in
company and associ
ation with others.[43] The group serves as a forum for verifying one's study of one's
experience wi
th the Gurdjieff ideas
and spiritual exercises. Gurdjieff believed that the context of working in a group is
beneficial to
the individual seeker and to the person responsible for guiding the group's
activities. At Gurdjie
ff centers in North Ame
rica (the United States, Canada and Mexico) special attention is given to the study
and practice of
traditional crafts and disciplines, such as weaving, pottery, carpentry, gardening
and translation
s.
Finally, Gurdjieff Foundations stress the study of what might be called the "presence"
of the body.
For Gurdjieff followers, the age-old philosophical paradox of the mind-body problem
is addressed i
n a practical way throu
gh a many-layered study of the attentiveness, or presence, of the human body.[44]
Awareness of the
presence of the body is, in the Gurdjieff world, a profoundly rich subject for
individual experimen
tation and discussion.
For the human body to serve as a vehicle for the expression of the Will of God (that
is, as a commu
nication link between the cosmos and human psychology) it must be sensed and felt in a
new way, and
its parts or elements
must be in the right relation to the others. When Gurdjieff spoke of the "harmonious"
development o
f man, he evidently referred to the possibility of a momentary state of balance
between mind, feeli
ng and presence-of-the-
body. In Gurdjieffian micro-existential theory, being available at any given moment
to receive hig
her or divine influences requires a progressively more sensitive awareness of nuances
of one's phys
ical existence.[45]
Liturgy
It's not entirely clear that the sum of what we have called "Gurdjieff issues" points
to religion.
A brief discussion of liturgical time[46] in Gurdjieff societies might make the
religious character
of the phenomena clear
er.
Perhaps, from a Gurdjieffian point of view, it would make sense to think of religion
as the art of
invoking liturgical order in human affairs. That is, the claim to religious status by
Gurdjieff fol
lowers[47] would not be
made on the basis of belief in spirits (or any other belief), but on the basis of an
oral traditio
n that addresses the subjects of sacred time, space and order.
We may consider two time dimensions of liturgical order, the year and the day. The
Gurdjieff teachi
ng has been adapted to many cultures and societies. In the United States, where,
perhaps, there are
5,000 Gurdjieff follow
ers,[48] the Gurdjieffian "year" in the Northern hemisphere follows the cycle of the
public schools
, from early September to sometime in June. In the summer months, with the exception
of special ret
reats, institutional ac
tivities are suspended. During the active months a Gurdjieff-oriented study center
will typically o
ffer members the opportunity to participate in a number of weekly activities, such as
Movements cla
sses,[49] group meeting
s,[50] sitting meditation,[51] group craft work,[52] and a lecture-discussion
seminar.[53]
With such a program, a member[54] of a Gurdjieff society may be invited to activities
four or five
nights a week and all day on Saturday or Sunday.[55] In contrast to the liturgical
year,[56] which
has a period of inactiv
ity, the liturgical day in the Gurdjieff world is every day of the year. The Gurdjieff
follower is
enjoined to practice a regular discipline of individual meditational sittings in the
morning.[57]
Special topics: There are numerous places where the Gurdjieff approach to spiritual
direction can b
e compared to the terminology and orientation of mainline religions and human
potential movements.
While a systematic comp
arison will not be undertaken here, it may be useful to give one or two points of
similiarity and c
ontrast. The sacred lexicon of the Gurdjieff movement is similar to that of two Middle
Eastern reli
gions of nomadic origin
s (Judaism and Islam) in that there is a strong emphasis on spatial metaphors for
religious and spi
ritual ideas. The use of terms like "path," "way," "direction," "higher," "lower" and
"balance" is
common.
A common expression used in Gurdjieff circles from the earliest documented period in
Russia is "rem
embering oneself," by which he meant the occurrence of moments in which thought,
feeling and sensat
ion of one's physical p
resence were in an unmistakable relationship. Gurdjieff said that a core problem in
modern life is
that people do not remember (that is, have experiences of themselves in this
reintegrated state). H
is teaching was intende
d, in large part, to provide people the needed special conditions in which such
reintegrative momen
ts would come to be increasingly possible. these special moments were ones of "I
am."[58]
An outsider might regard an individual's unique-I as the capability to create a
literary whole from
one's lifetime of memories; that is, to be able to connect one's present
circumstances with everyt
hing that came before i
n one's life. Consider the account of neurosurgeon Oliver Sacks in his story of Jimmy
G., the parti
al amnesiac. Jimmy could not remember his actions from one minute to the next, the
ability to tell
a roughly accurate, coh
erent story of one's life is likely to be an inadequate measure of the meaning of
one's personal li
fe. Jimmy could remember himself in a moment, but the content of one moment would not
be remembered
in the next moment. (E
xample: Jimmy has a normal conversation with Sacks, but afterwards, when Sacks leaves
the examinati
on room and re-enters ten minutes later, Jimmy insists that, previously, they had
never met.) Dr. S
acks concluded, after o
bserving Jimmy at Mass, that Jimmy found some measure of fulfillment and meaning the
nature of whic
h was beyond medical science's ability to describe.[59]
An imperfect analogy exists between the issues that Dr. Sacks described in Jimmy G.'s
life and the
issues that Gurdjieff followers regard as important in their spiritual quest. Whereas
Jimmy did not
remember himself from
one moment to the next, the ordinary person is likely to remember mainly his tensions,
anxieties an
d goals--the micropolitics of everyday life. To paraphrase Gurdjieff, "An individual
begins with 'I
' in talking about ever
ything he does, but he mainly refers to his habits and fears ingrained in him from
childhood, plus
his newly acquired resentments and petty conquests; he has all but forgotten the
possibility of a s
ense of 'I' that impart
ially accepts his life as it is." An individual, in other words, falsely represents to
himself his
actual ability to stay connected with his deeper self, which, occasionally, is
expressed in impress
ions of impartiality an
d feelings of compassion in relation to his own life and its circumstances. At this
deeper level, t
hen, modern life is much more like Jimmy's than one would ordinarily believe.
Gurdjieffians believe that no ordered, institutionalized set of words or ceremonies
can help the mo
dern person remember himself at this deeper level. There is, therefore, no Book of
Common Prayer at
Gurdjieff Foundations.
At the same time, Gurdjieffians reject the idea that, since everyone is on his own,
life offers no
help in this morally crucial area. Gurdjieffians, then, seem to be taking a middle
ground between
ethical nihilism and re
ligious orthodoxy: "It's not true," they seem to say, "that there is no basis for
ethical or moral
philosophy, but that basis cannot be codified in ways that religion and philosophy
have tried in mo
dern times. The experie
nce that we are looking for is at the intersection of the personal and impersonal
lines of life, of
inquiry. The Gurdjieff teaching gives us tools for studying the impersonal."
Our problem, as Gurdjieff said repeatedly from the beginning of the Russian period, is
that we do n
ot have a language in which to express ourselves accurately.[60]
Quite different meanings are given to the term "dream" by Gurdjieff and C. G. Jung,
the eclectic Sw
iss psychologist. Jungian-oriented thinkers use the word "dream" as a technical term
that refers to
a manifestation or exp
ression of the deeper, unconscious self. The Jungian psychotherapist will encourage a
patient to re
cord, and report on, during sessions, interesting dreams that the patient has had
during the week.
The dream is interprete
d, or commented on, in the light of what the therapist understands to be the
unresolved issues and
natural strivings of the individual at a deeper level of awareness. In contrast,
Gurdjieffian-orien
ted theorists, who also
use the word "dream" as a technical term," stress the idea of awakening from dreams,
with the impl
ication that, in general, dreaming is a function of the organism in its most passive
state (sleep)
and that, therefore, th
ere is no possibility of obtaining in this state the specific benefits from the effort
of collected
attention. In a Gurdjieff institutional context it would almost never be the case
that the occurre
nce or details of a nig
httime dream would be mentioned; on the contrary, since Gurdjieff insisted that
day-dreaming was of
the same order as dreaming at night, the day (including its dreams) offers all the
material needed
for the study of onese
lf.[61]
Conclusion
All religious systems say that man lives from two sources of energy: natural and
divine. To use con
temporary language, it could be said that man lives from both chemical and alchemical
sources of en
ergy. Chemical energy c
omes from eating, sleeping and impressions of oneself making love and money. Religious
systems seem
to differ on the fluid dynamics of alchemical energy flows.
The great debate in religion seems to be the nature and activation-mechanism of
alchemical energy.
Christians warn us, and rightly so, that alchemical energy is wholly other than normal
chemical ene
rgy. Christians speak o
f the Grace of God and the Holy Spirit as if to tell us that such energy must never be
thought of a
s something that can be packaged and mass-marketed.[62] The phrase from the prayer
attributed to Je
sus "and lead us not in
to temptation," may refer to the temptation to regard the peak experiences of one's
ordinary chemic
al life as if they were of alchemical origin. Religion, then, seems to be about the
basis of discer
nment between what Chri
stians call ordinary life, the life of sin, and the life, or footsteps, of Christ.
There are probably two characteristics common to many new religious movements: one is
an initial in
tuitive discernment that the established forms of religion have, in some central way,
mixed gold wi
th alloy. It is an intu
ition that what originally had been an insight into the basis of discernment between
what we have c
alled the alchemical and chemical sides of life, but which, over time, had degenerated
into mere in
struments of personal o
r institutional power. The second characteristic is probably a willingness to say, in
relation to t
he Christian warning, "But we can make an exception in our individual case." Such
movements would t
ell us that such-and-su
ch a technique, practice, or set of ideals or articles of spiritual surrender will
lead us out of t
he maze of sensory and mental impulses that make up our lives.
What is interesting about the Gurdjieff teaching is its unusual quietness, approaching
silence, abo
ut what awaits the spiritual seeker who would ask, What do I have to do?, What is up
to me? For wha
t am I responsible?
With the problem expressed in this way, the aims of the Gurdjieff teaching may be
expressed in two
or three essential points: one, the individual is in profound need of purification in
his understan
ding of the difference
between the flows of chemical and alchemical energy in his life; he needs years of
impressions of d
iscovering how chemical energy can disguise itself in a beguiling outer form
suggestive of the pres
ence of alchemical ener
gy. Second, the individual is responsible for undertaking and maintaining working
relationships wit
h others who, also, seek verification of the inner and outer conditions in which
contact with alche
mical energy becomes mo
re likely. Finally, the probability that an individual will succeed in gaining even a
partial discr
imination between the two rivers of life, as Gurdjieff called them, will directly vary
with the int
ensity of his associati
on with others similarly embarked on the path of verification.
It's difficult to know what, then, is the specific gravity of the Gurdjieff phenomena.
To listen be
tween the lines, Gurdjieff followers seem to be saying that their approach t offers a
new basis for
spiritual self-interes
t, a new reason for living, that did not previously exist in their lives. The
Gurdjieff society pro
vides opportunities to associate with others on a new basis of sincerity and inner
relaxation not e
lsewhere found in Ameri
can society. Gurdjieff followers claim (although not in so many words) to have
rediscovered in a pr
actical way the possibility of contact with the sacred mystery of one's own life and,
by extension,
that of the lives of o
thers.
Gurdjieff seems to have foreseen much of the present state of confusion in religious
inquiry in the
West. His teaching invites the religious seeker to develop in himself a moral
sensitivity that is
nourished, not by techn
iques or metaphysical answers, but by an ineffable opening to himself and others.
Sources and References
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Sprititual a
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Choices: The Prob
lem of Recognizing Auth
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Baker, George (1982). "The Ethics and Psychology of Media Consumption," in Eileen
Barker, ed., New
Religious Movements: A Perspective for Understanding Society . New York: Edwin Mellen
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2-323.
________ . (1978). "Language and Mind in New Religious Movements" in Jacob Needleman
and George Bak
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________. "Gurdjieff and the Line of Silence." In preparation.
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Bennett and Elizabe
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Francisco: Fa
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Driscoll, Walter and the Gurdjieff Foundation of California (1985). Gurdjieff: A
Bibliography, New
York: Garland.
[Edmonds, Richard], comp. 1987. Jane Heap, 1987-1964: A Monograph; also, The
Aphorisms. Printed by
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Gurdjieff, G. I. (1950) All and Everything: Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson. New
York: E. P. Dutt
on; Arkana, 1992.
________ (1963). Meetings with Remarkable Men. New York: Dutton
________ (1963a). "The Material Question," published as an appendix to his book,
Meetings with Rema
rkable Men (1963).
________ (1973). Views from the Real World: Early Talks in Moscow, Essentuki, Tiflis,
Berlin, Londo
n, Paris, New York and Chicago, as Recollected by His Pupils. Foreword by Jean de
Salzmann. New Yor
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________ (1975). Life is Real Then, When "I Am." New York, privately printed.
Hands, Rina (1991). Diary of Mme. Egout Pour Sweet: With Mr. Gurdjieff in Paris,
1948-49, 1991. Aur
ora, Oregon: Two Rivers Press; limited edition of 500 copies.
Kherdian, David (1990). On a Spaceship with Beelzebub by a Grandson of Gurdjieff.
Moore, James (1991). Gurdjieff: Anatomy of a Myth. London: Element.
Munson, Gorham (1985). The Awakening Twenties: A Memoir-History of a Literary Period.
Batan Rouge a
nd London: Louisiana State University Press.
Ouspensky, Peter D. (1949). In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of an Unknown
Teaching. New York
.
________. (1974). The Psychology of Man's Possible Evolution (1st ed., 1950; 2nd ed.,
enlarged, New
York: Vintage, 1974.
Palmer, Helen (1988). The Enneagram: Understanding yourself and the Others in Your
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Charles T. Tart. San Francisco: Harper & Row.
Patterson, Wm. Pat (1992). Eating the "I." San Anselmo, Calif.: Arete Publications.
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________ (1965). Gurdjieff Remembered . New York: Victor Gollancz, 1965, Samuel
Weiser, 1971.
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Other Clinic
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Speeth, Kathleen (1989) . The Gurdjieff Work . 2nd ed., Los Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher.
Tracol, Henri (1967). George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff: Man's Awakening and the Practice of
Remembering
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Webb, James (1980). The Harmonious Circle:
Wineapple, Brenda (1989). Gen�t: A Biography of Jannet Flanner .
Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press.
Notes
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