Georges Ivanovich Gurdjieff


From Cassiopedia, The True Encyclopedia

Georges Ivanovich Gurdjieff (Георгий Иванович Гюрджиев, Georgiy Ivanovich Gyurdzhiev,Gurdjiev; January 13, 1872 ? – October 29, 1949 ), was a Greek-Armenian mystic and self-professed 'teacher of dancing'. He claimed that the teachings he brought to the West from his own experiences and early travels expressed the truth found in other ancient religions and teachings relating to self-awareness in one's daily life and humanity's place in the universe. It might be summed up by the title of his book: Life is Real Only Then, When 'I Am'.

wrapBiography

Gurdjieff was born in Alexandropol (now Gyumri), Armenia. The exact year is unknown; anything from 1866 to 1877 has been offered. James Moore's biography ("Gurdjieff: The Anatomy Of A Myth") argues persuasively for 1866. Gurdjieff grew up in Kars, traveled to many parts of the world (such as Central Asia, Egypt, Rome) before returning to Russia and teaching in Moscow and St. Petersburg in 1913.

In the midst of revolutionary upheaval in Russia he left Petrograd (St. Petersburg was renamed Petrograd on September 1 1914) in 1917 to return to his family home in Alexandropol. During the Bolshevik Revolution he set up temporary study communities in Essentuki in the Caucasus, then Tuapse, Maikop, Sochi and Poti, all on the Black Sea coast of Southern Russia where he worked intensively with many of his Russian pupils.

In mid-January 1919 he and his closest pupils moved to Tbilisi. In late May 1920 when political conditions in Georgia changed and the old order was crumbling, they walked by foot to Batumi on the Black Sea coast, and then Istanbul. There Gurdjieff rented an apartment on Koumbaradji Street in Péra and later at 13 Abdullatif Yemeneci Sokak near the Galata Tower. The apartment is near the tekke (monastery) of the Mevlevi Order of Sufis (founded by Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi) where Gurdjieff, Ouspensky and Thomas de Hartmann experienced the sema ceremony of The Whirling Dervishes. In Istanbul Gurdjieff also met John G. Bennett.

In August 1921 Gurdjieff traveled around western Europe, lecturing and giving demonstrations of his work in various cities such as Berlin and London. In October 1922, he established the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man south of Paris at the Prieuré des Basses Loges in Fontainebleau-Avon near the famous Château de Fontainebleau.

In 1924 he nearly died in a car crash. After he recovered, he began writing All and Everything originally written by him in Russian and Armenian. He stopped writing in 1935 having completed the first two parts of the trilogy and only having started on the Third Series which had been published under the title Life is Real Only Then, When 'I Am'.

In Paris, Gurdjieff lived at 6 Rue des Colonels-Rénard where he continued to teach throughout World War II.

Gurdjieff died on October 29 1949 at the American Hospital in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France. His funeral was held at the St. Alexandre Nevsky Russian Orthodox Cathedral at 12 Rue Daru, Paris. He is buried in the cemetery at Fontainebleau-Avon.

Timelines, facts and whereabouts of Gurdjieff's early biography before he appeared in Moscow in 1913 are found in his text Meetings with Remarkable Men.

Teaching

Some of those who had contact with Gurdjieff saw him as a Master – able to practice self-remembering, and work on oneself; in other words a human being able to be conscious of himself. Others saw him as an esotericist or occultist. Gurdjieff himself widely admitted his teaching was esoteric, he claimed that none of it was veiled in secrecy for secrecy sake, it was simply to prevent the misinterpretation of the more advanced concepts Gurdjieff's system taught. Evidence of this can be seen today (as well as in other esoteric teachings such as Freemasonry) where advanced allegories, and especially symbols (e.g. the enneagram) are now taken out of context, causing great confusion as to the intended meanings.

About his teaching, Gurdjieff once said, "What do I teach? I teach people how to listen to themselves." The teaching addresses the question of people's place in the Universe and their possibilities for spiritual development. He said that people live their lives in a form of waking sleep, and that higher levels of consciousness are possible. In developing the inner possibility of becoming more aware of ourselves in our daily lives, one is shown a fresh way of living which can enrich our experience of life, and our feeling of ourselves alive. 'Know thyself' takes on a more organic meaning rather than an intellectual pursuit. The ability to be 'present' more often (instead of being absent as we usually are), does not happen automatically and requires work on oneself over time, guided initially by a teacher trained in the practice of the teaching by those who were taught directly by Gurdjieff, or by one of his pupils.

Gurdjieff taught that by making frequent efforts to activate their attention in small things, such as walking, speaking or sitting etc., people can gradually wish to become more aware of themselves as living beings through the development of their attention instead of spending their lives asleep in dreams. To provide conditions in which attention can be exercised more intensively, Gurdjieff also taught "sacred dances" or "movements" (which are performed as part of a class) as an aid, and he left a body of music inspired by what he heard in visits to remote monasteries and other places, which was written for piano in a collaboration with one of his pupils, Thomas de Hartmann.

This presence to oneself is the beginning of a possible further process of transformation, whose aim is to change the whole nature of human beings, ultimately preparing them, speaking symbolically as is necessary in such matters, to be a conscious servant of the divine purpose behind the created world.

Gurdjieff is best-known through the published works of his pupils. His one-time student P. D. Ouspensky wrote In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching, which some regard as a crucial introduction to the teaching. Others refer to Gurdjieff's own books (detailed below) as the primary texts.

Accounts of time spent with Gurdjieff have been published by A. R. Orage, Charles Stanley Nott, Thomas and Olga de Hartmann, Fritz Peters, René Daumal, John G. Bennett, Maurice Nicoll, and Louis Pauwels among others. Many others were drawn to his 'ideas table': Frank Lloyd Wright, Kathryn Hulme, P.L. Travers, Katherine Mansfield, Jean Toomer, and the pianist and composer Keith Jarrett.

Gurdjieff was also an author. Three books by Gurdjieff were published after his death: Beelzebub's Tales to his Grandson, Meetings with Remarkable Men, and Life is Real Only Then, When 'I Am'. This trilogy is Gurdjieff's legominism known collectively as All and Everything. A legominism is, according to Gurdjieff, "one of the means of transmitting information about certain events of long-past ages through initiates." A book of his early talks was also collected by his student and personal secretary, Olga de Hartmann, and published in 1973 as Views from the Real World: Early Talks in Moscow, Essentuki, Tiflis, Berlin, London, Paris, New York and Chicago, as recollected by his pupils.

The feature film Meetings with Remarkable Men (1979), based on Gurdjieff's book by the same name, depicts rare performances of the sacred dances taught to serious students of his work known simply as the movements. The film was written by Jeanne de Salzmann and Peter Brook, directed by Brook, and stars Dragan Maksimovic and Terence Stamp.

His teaching has been continued by various groups originated after his death, some under the umbrella of the Gurdjieff Foundations in New York, London, and Paris. Gurdjieff founded the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man to train what he called "helper-instructors" to help disseminate and practice his teaching. Today many groups use Gurdjieff's name and ideas, but they may not have been developed via a teacher-student relationship originating with Gurdjieff himself.

Gurdjieff used the "Stop" exercise to prompt his students. Suddenly and without notice a pre-arranged signal would be made, and all students would 'freeze' whatever they were doing to hold the position they found themselves in when this signal was made. The students were encouraged by this exercise to notice their habits, sense their tensions, and observe thoughts – in a word, to become able to strengthen their attention so as to remember themselves. Later another signal would be made and ordinary movement would recommence. Other shocks to help awaken his pupils from constant day-dreaming were always possible at any moment.

Much has been written about Gurdjieff, and many anecdotes about his life have been recorded. At one time in his life he set up a workshop to mend things in order to earn money for his work. Customers would bring Gurdjieff something broken to fix, and he would then find a way of fixing it – whatever it was. If he did not know how to mend a particular item he would set about learning enough to repair it.

Reception

The nature of Gurdjieff's activities and philosophies as presented in his writings tends to polarize opinion. Sympathizers regard him as a charismatic master, who brought new knowledge into Western culture and whose "operational readiness" concept is valid and applicable in modern psychology[cite this quote]. Critics assert he was simply a charlatan with a large ego and a constant need for self-glorification. His Biography and other writings offer plenty of material used to support both views.

Criticism of Gurdjieff's system seems to spring mostly from his insistence that nearly all people today live in a state of "waking sleep." This assertion is applied to the entire moral gamut of modern society. Gurdjieff said, even specifically at times, that a pious, good, and moral man was no more "spiritually developed" (as he would define it) than a common criminal. The Gurdjieff teaching involves the development of what Gurdjieff and others would term "higher bodies," and has very little, especially at the onset, to do with altering one's actions in what most would call everyday, or normal, life. Gurdjieff denied the spiritual value, and indeed the existence altogether, of moral right and wrong, or of "good and evil" as we understand it, saying it was not the actions of a man that were of value (as Gurdjieff would say that man cannot lay claim to the commission of these acts, and that they were entirely automatic); the only thing of value was the extent to which a man may observe and understand his actions.

While this is not a wholesale disregard of morality, ethics, and the countless institutions in life that teach these values, it is a rather staunch rebuke to those who believe that these are of spiritual value. The primary criticism of Gurdjieff's work frequently is that it attaches no "real" value to almost everything that composes the life of an average man. According to Gurdjieff, everything a man possesses, everything he has accomplished, everybody he calls a friend, and indeed everything as basic as his own thoughts and feelings are not his own, because all of them proceeded to become part of a man either automatically, or by accident.

What follows is a large quote from Beelzebub's Tales to his Grandson, which is a rather concise reduction of the principles of Gurdjieff's work which most commonly evokes criticism:

"Contemporary 'exact-positive science' says that a man is a very complex organism developed by evolution from the simplest organisms, and who has now become capable of reacting in a very complex manner to external impressions. This capability of reacting in a man is so complex, and the responsive movements can appear to be so far removed from the causes evoking them and conditioning them, that the actions of man, or at least part of them, seem to naïve observation quite spontaneous."

"But according to the ideas of Mr. Gurdjieff, the average man is indeed incapable of the single smallest independent or spontaneous action or word. All of him is only the result of external effect. Man is a transforming machine, a kind of transmitting station of forces.

"Thus from the point of view of the totality of Mr. Gurdjieff's ideas and also according to contemporary "exact-positive-science," man differs from the animals only by the greater complexity of his reactions to external impressions, and by having a more complex construction for perceiving and reacting to them.

"And as to that which is attributed to man and named "will," Mr. Gurdjieff completely denies the possibility of its being in the common presence of the average man."

It is important to note that "average man" as Gurdjieff defines him encompasses everyone who has not made distinct, purposeful, and long attempts at spiritual development. Someone who goes to church on Sunday, or even a rather strict adherent to Buddhism (unless he had received special instructions) almost certainly fall under the category Gurdjieff's "average man," as would of course almost all atheists, agnostics, and similar people. These claims by Gurdjieff have been interpreted by many to be a total disregard for the value of mainstream religion, philanthropic work, and the value of doing right or wrong in general. While Gurdjieff himself had said that his teachings were no substitute for faith or philanthropic works, his teaching necessitated the understand that these "things of this world" are at the very least of a "different" value than those that his teaching hopes to develop in people.

However one regards Gurdjieff's teaching, or Gurdjieff personally, he appears to have introduced certain esoteric ideas into Western society (for instance, the enneagram) which were previously unknown to western culture.

Quotes By and About Gurdjieff

"Details of Gurdjieff's early life are uncertain, but he is thought to have spent his early adult years traveling in northeast Africa, the Middle East, India, and especially Central Asia, learning about various spiritual traditions." - - Encyclopaedia Britannica

"In the course of his years of seeking, Gurdjieff fell ill with some of the most pugnacious micro-organisms the East could muster; and more than once he was grievously wounded by stray bullets, as he skirted the edges of wars and revolutions. He spent years in monasteries in Central Asia, including a spiritual community in the mountains of Bokhara, the Hindu Kush of Afghanistan; he was apparently in close contact with mystics tucked away in the esoteric circles of the Russian Orthodox orders; he studied in Tibet and India." - - John Shirley, The Shadows of Ideas - A Distant Glimpse of Gurdjieff

"He moved to Moscow about 1913 and began teaching there and in Petrograd, returning to the Caucasus at the outbreak of the Russian Revolution in 1917. Rejoined by some followers, Gurdjieff established the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man in 1919 at Tiflis (now Tbilisi), Georgia; it was reestablished at Fontainebleau, Fr., in 1922. Its members, many from prominent backgrounds, lived a virtually monastic life, except for a few banquets, at which Gurdjieff would engage in probing dialogue and at which his writings were read. Ritual exercises and dance were also part of the regimen, often accompanied by music composed by Gurdjieff and an associate Thomas deHartmann. Performers from the institute appeared in Paris in 1923 and in four U.S. cities the following year and brought considerable attention to Gurdjieff's work." - - Encyclopaedia Britannica

"It is clear from Gurdjieff's writings that hypnotism, mesmerism and various arcane methods of expanding consciousness must have played a large part in the studies of the Seekers of Truth. But none of these processes had any bearing on black magic..." - P. Travers, "Gurdjieff", Man, Myth & Magic, An Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Supernatural

"Men are machines who are not responsible for their actions. We cannot do. With us everything happens." "Buffers are appliances by means of which man can always be in the right. To destroy inequality and suffering would destroy evolution and the "shock" needed to overcome the buffers." - - - Georges Gurdjieff

"Gurdjieff's basic assertion was that human life as ordinarily lived is similar to sleep; transcendence of the sleeping state required work, but when it was achieved, an individual could reach remarkable levels of vitality and awareness. The Fontainebleau centre was closed in 1933, but Gurdjieff continued teaching in Paris until his death." - Encyclopaedia Britannica

"The year 1946 marked the beginning of the last phase of his teaching, a period that, for those who had known him earlier, was richer than any that had gone before." "The exotic flavors and the vodka in which the famous 'Toasts to the Idiots' were drunk ('idiot' in this case having its original Greek meaning of private person, that which in myself I am) did not make things easier. But easiness was not the aim. The patriarchal host, massive of presence, radiating a serene power at once formidable and reassuring, dispensed this 'food' in various ways, always unexpected; sometimes in thunderclaps of rage, sometimes telling a story that only one of all the table would know was meant for himself, sometimes merely by look or gesture thrusting home the truth. Masks were mercilessly stripped off. Beneath the exacting benevolence of Gurdjieff's gaze everyone was naked. "But occasionally for those who could face their own situations, he would fleetingly let fall his own mask. It was possible then to see that behind the apparent mercilessness was sorrow and compassion." - P. Travers, "Gurdjieff", Man, Myth & Magic, An Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Supernatural

"Constant awareness of the inevitability of death is the only means to acquire the urgency to override the robot." - - Georges Gurdjieff
People interested in esoteric matters will probably have read the book by P.D. Ouspensky, published posthumously, titled In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching. The ideas in that book were presented to Ouspensky by Georges Gurdjieff. Gurdjieff indicates the basis of his teaching: “for the benefit of those who know already, I will say that, if you like, this is esoteric Christianity. - - Boris Mouravieff, Gnosis, Volume I

Numerous biographies have been written on Gurdjieff, one of the 20th century's most influential esoteric teachers. Gurdjieff is one of the great influences on the QFS, representing a prior living tradition that has proven valuable in explaining the human condition time and again. Gurdjieff's teaching is comparable to a cold shower of realism, dispelling much of the fluffy wishfulness of other esoteric teaching or of the New Age. While Gurdjieff teaches a rather dim conception of the human condition, where man is by default only a mechanical part of a food chain, Gurdjieff's life's work demonstrates a faith in the possibility of this being altered, at least for a small portion of humanity. Most of Gurdjieff's system of metaphysics and cosmology has been transmitted through P. D. Ouspensky but Gurdjieff stands apart from his followers as the uncontested source of the teaching. The 4th Way Work consists of mental exercises of awareness, specific physical exercises such as traditional temple dances and specific movements aimed at developing attention, group work in a school context and applied study of an extensive body of teachings on the inner structure of man and the universe.Quantum Future School

Bibliography

Works by Gurdjieff

▪ Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson by G. I. Gurdjieff (1950) ISBN 0-919608-12-4
▪ In Russian: ISBN 0-919608-11-6
▪ Audio recording (in mp3 format) as read by William J. Welch: ISBN 0-919608-16-7
▪ Meetings with Remarkable Men by G. I. Gurdjieff (1963)
▪ Life is only real, then, when "I am" by G. I. Gurdjieff (1974)
▪ Views from the Real World Talks of G. I. Gurdjieff (1973)
▪ The Herald of Coming Good by G. I. Gurdjieff (1933, 1971, 1988)

Books about G. I. Gurdjieff and The Fourth Way

▪ In Search of the Miraculous by P.D. Ouspensky (1949)
▪ The Oragean Version by C. Daly King (1951)
▪ Psychological Commentaries on the Teachings of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky by Maurice Nicoll (1952, 1955. 1972, 1980, 6 volumes)
▪ The Fourth Way by P.D. Ouspensky (1957)
▪ A Study of Gurdjieff's Teaching by Kenneth Walker (1957)
▪ Teachings of Gurdjieff - The Journey of a Pupil by C.S. Nott, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London (1961)
▪ Our Life with Mr. Gurdjieff by Thomas and Olga de Hartmann (1964, Revised 1983 and 1992)
▪ Boyhood with Gurdjieff by Fritz Peters (1964)
▪ Gurdjieff Remembered by Fritz Peters (1965)
▪ Undiscovered Country by Kathryn Hulme (1966)
▪ Gurdjieff: A Very Great Enigma by J.G. Bennett (1969)
▪ Gurdjieff: Making a New World by J.G. Bennett (1973), ISBN 0-06-090474-7
▪ Mount Analogue by René Daumal (1974)
▪ On Love by A.R. Orage (1974)
▪ Psychological Exercises by A.R. Orage (1976)
▪ The Psychology of Man's Possible Evolution by P.D. Ouspensky (1978)
▪ Eating The "I": An Account of The Fourth Way—The Way of Transformation in Ordinary Life by William Patrick Patterson (1992, 1993, 1997)
▪ Ladies of the Rope: Gurdjieff's Special Left Bank Women's Group by William Patrick Patterson (1999)
▪ Struggle of the Magicians: Exploring the Teacher-Student Relationship by William Patrick Patterson (1996, Second Edition 1998)
▪ "The Gurdjieff Years 1929-1949: Recollections of Louise March" by Annabeth McCorkle
▪ Taking with the Left Hand: Enneagram Craze, The Fellowship of Friends, & the Mouravieff Phenomenon by William Patrick Patterson (1998)
▪ Voices in the Dark: Esoteric, Occult & Secular Voices in Nazi-Occupied Paris 1940–44 by William Patrick Patterson (2001)
▪ Idiots in Paris by J.G. and E. Bennett (1980)
▪ The Harmonious Circle: The Lives and Work of G. I. Gurdjieff, P.D. Ouspensky, and Their Followers (1980) Putnam Publishing. ISBN 0-399-11465-3
▪ Toward Awakening by Jean Vaysse (1980)
▪ The War Against Sleep: The Philosophy of Gurdjieff by Colin Wilson (1980)
▪ Who Are You Monsieur Gurdjieff? by René Zuber (1980)
▪ Gurdjieff: The anatomy of a Myth by James Moore (1991)
▪ Gurdjieff; An Introduction To His Life and Ideas by John Shirley (2004)
▪ Gurdjieff Unveiled by Seymour Ginsburg (2005)
▪ The Secret History of the World by Laura Knight-Jadczyk

Videos/DVDs about G. I. Gurdjieff and the Fourth Way

▪ Gurdjieff's Legacy: Establishing The Teaching in the West, 1924–1949 Part III
▪ Gurdjieff's Mission: Introducing The Teaching to the West, 1912–1924 Part II
▪ Gurdjieff in Egypt: The Origin of Esoteric Knowledge Part I
▪ Meetings with Remarkable Men

External links






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